I didn't MEAN to.
But the lure of teh crack!fic is too much to resist, not that resistance has ever been my strongest suit, anyway. Whatever. It's my Sunday, which for the rest of the world is Monday, and back to work tomorrow, thus slowing the writing spree WAY down, so I won't be posting as much then. I don't think. Um. Yeah. I also seem unable to write in anything but present tense, which is sort of an aberration, but this, too, should pass. Eventually. Ah. My thanks to ann_tara, for having an advance look and doing a bit of hand-holding.
Under a Haystack
by Emily Brunson
(c)2006
2. One Shoe Off, and One Shoe On
They’d briefly discussed heading west/northwest before this unexpected development, and Sam’s feeling the pressure to get out of town. Hole up someplace, maybe West Texas or Taos or Santa Fe or wherever, until Dean re-grows up, or Sam can figure something out. But he definitely needs to put some space between them and Houston. Blood relative or not, Dean’s not his kid, and those displays at their motel might have gotten unwelcome attention Sam just doesn’t know about yet. Those kinds of things have a way of coming back to bite you on your unsuspecting ass, so after a fast-food lunch near the highway he piles them both in the Impala and heads out.
But when they start leaving the city behind, Dean freaks on him. They’re on a smaller highway, not the interstate, and traffic isn’t bad, which is all that saves them. Suddenly Sam’s got a lapful of pissed-off kid, grabbing at the wheel and screaming at him to stop, let me out, you ugly piece of shit, and the car tries to fishtail and Sam brings it to a shuddering halt on the shoulder.
“Don’t you EVER do that again,” Sam roars, adrenaline hitting his veins like pure crank. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You’re not my dad!” Dean screams back. “Now he won’t be able to find me! Let me GO!”
It’s surprisingly hard to fight Dean in this size and shape; it’s like holding onto a pissed-off cat, and Sam feels like a giant in a glass factory, so aware of how delicate those little-boy arms feel in his hands. But he finally manhandles Dean to a standstill, clasps him against his chest and feels Dean’s heart going a mile a freaking minute.
“I’m not your dad,” Sam agrees quietly, nodding. “I know. And I know you want him back. But he’s not here, D - kid, and -“
Dean arches his back, and there’s another struggle. Shorter this time; Sam thinks he’s getting tired. “Where is he? What’d you do with my daddy?”
“Dean, I didn’t do anything! You just woke up like this!”
Dean goes very still, and Sam can hear his fast panicked breathing. “You said my name,” Dean says in a low accusing voice, and twists in Sam’s arms until he can glare at him. “How’d you know my name?”
Sam nods slowly. “Okay, I’ll tell you. But will you just sit still for a minute so we can get off the highway first?”
Dean ducks away, slithering back into the passenger seat, curling into a protective ball.
“Okay.” Sam checks the road, pulls them back into traffic. “I think there’s some kind of roadside park not too far from here. You okay?”
Dean props his chin on his knees and wraps his arms tightly around his legs.
It’s about twenty miles to the rest stop, not nearly far enough for Sam to come up with any kind of reasonable story for how he knows Dean’s name, what the hell is going on here. He parks as far away as he can from the two RVs already at the stop, and watches Dean carefully while they climb out. Dean sits on the other side of a concrete table, and Sam sighs and lowers himself onto the seat, leaning forward on his elbows.
“Okay. You know weird things sometimes happen, right? And just because they’re weird, just because people say it’s just imaginary stuff doesn’t mean they can’t happen?”
Dean gives a hesitant nod. “Like the thing that killed Mommy.”
“Like that, yeah.” Sam swallows; it’s been twenty-two years for his Dean, but for this one it’s practically yesterday, and he can see the wan look in Dean’s eyes, the desperate loneliness. “Sort of. And something really weird happened to you, too. Last night.”
Dean presses his lips together, then whispers, “Am I dead too?”
Sam exhales loudly, shakes his head. “Oh, Dean, no, man, you’re not dead. I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. You’re fine, okay?”
“But -“
“What’s the last thing you remember? Before you woke up in the room with me?”
Dean shrugs. “Dunno.”
“Think, okay? Were you at home? Where do you live right now?”
“In Portland.”
“Was that where you were? At home?”
Dean nods hesitantly. “I had to practice, and then Dad said he’d be back real soon, and I should keep an eye on Sammy. That’s my little brother.”
“Did you fall asleep?”
Dean looks down and says, “I didn’t mess up. If anything had happened to him I would have known because he was right there with me.”
Sam leans forward again, puts every bit of conviction in his voice that he can. “I’m sure you’re right, Dean. I know you took real good care of Sammy. So did you go to sleep?”
“Yes,” Dean whispers. “Sammy was already asleep, and I was -“ He looks away, lips trembling. “I got sleepy.”
“That’s okay. I swear, that’s fine. But you were at home when you went to sleep?”
“Uh-huh.” Dean’s eyes are starry with tears. “Is Daddy mad at me? Sometimes he gets mad.”
There is something terrible about the matter-of-fact quality to Dean’s voice, something that burrows into Sam’s stomach and burns like acid, and he shakes his head vigorously. “No. No, Dad’s not mad at you.”
“Are you sure? He didn’t come.”
“That’s what we have to talk about.” Sam considers, then gets up and comes around to sit next to Dean on the warm bench. “See, something sort of - magical happened to you last night, okay?” Sam sighs. “You know when I told you my name was Sam?”
Dean nods minutely.
“This is gonna be really hard to explain, but the reason I know your name is because I’m your brother. I’m your Sammy.”
Dean gives him a speaking look, and then snorts. “Sammy’s just a baby. You aren’t Sammy.”
“Well, where you were, I was a really little kid, yeah.” Sam nods slowly. “But this is much later now, and I’m all grown up. And until this morning, you were grown up, too.”
There is absolutely no comprehension in Dean’s wide, tired eyes, nothing but confusion and that wandering fear. He doesn’t say a word, and gives only a token resistance when Sam takes his hand and warms it between his own.
“See, the last thing you remember, it was about 1986? Was that the right year?”
Dean nods so vaguely it isn’t really an affirmation, but Sam takes it as one. “And now,” he says carefully, “it’s 2006. It’s about twenty years later, okay? Somebody - did something to you, I’m not sure what. And it made you get a lot younger, overnight.”
Dean starts to cry, silently and without any histrionics. It’s a kind of exhausted un-self-conscious weeping that tears at Sam, makes him feel helpless and useless, and Dean doesn’t struggle while Sam gathers him against him, strokes his skinny back and rocks him a little. There’s no answering clasp of arms around his neck; Dean isn’t welcoming it, just enduring it, a fact of life, and Sam isn’t sure he’s taking any comfort at all from it.
“It’ll be okay,” Sam says thickly, feeling his own eyes sting more than a little. “I’m gonna figure out how to fix things, Dean. I am. But Dad’s a long way away right now, and I don’t know how to find him. We’ve - you and me - we’ve been looking for him for a long time, and we found him once, but now he’s gone again, and we’re on our own. Just me and you, all right? Just for a while, until I can make things right.”
Dean lays his hot cheek against Sam’s shoulder and sighs. He’s not really crying anymore, but his weight is limp and Sam thinks, Maybe he needs a nap or something. Is he young enough for naps? “You okay?” he whispers, and feels the pause before a slow nod. “I’m sorry. I know it’s scary. I’m scared, too.”
“Are you really Sammy?” Dean asks softly.
Sam smiles against Dean’s bright gold hair. “Yeah, I really am.”
“You got big.”
It makes him think of his Dean, of how if it had been Sam who regressed like this, Dean would have known what to do. Sam’s floundering, terra incognita, and he stands, awkwardly clasping Dean to him. “Tell you what,” he says quietly while he walks back to the car. “Why don’t you get in the back and sleep for a while? You sleepy?”
“Supposed to watch Sammy.” But Dean’s voice is a blurry mumble, and he yawns on the name.
“Well, this Sammy’s okay for now, I promise.” He opens the back door and slides in, untangling Dean from around his neck and laying him on the leather seat. Revealed, Dean’s face is blotchy with tears, and his eyes are already at half-mast. Sam reaches out to push the hair from Dean’s forehead and smiles, and Dean’s eyes finish fluttering closed.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Sam hopes maybe by the next morning Dean will have reverted back to his grown-up self. It happened overnight; maybe it can un-happen the same way.
No joy. Sam isn’t sleepy anyway; too keyed up and a little wary of nightmares, and so he watches Dean instead. Dean as a child sleeps differently from adult Dean; this is a totality of sleep, and after a while Sam stops worrying about being quiet because he’s pretty sure Armageddon would only make Dean turn over and sigh, and maybe not even that. The Dean Sam remembers was too vigilant to ever sleep so heavily. This Dean hasn’t learned all those lessons yet.
It’s nearly two when Sam grabs his phone and hits the speed-dial.
“Hey, Dad,” he says, and sighs. “I figure you won’t pick this up for a while, like I have any idea when or if you ever pick up your messages at all, but anyway. We got a little bit of a situation here, I guess. I think something maybe - put a curse on Dean. Anyway, I’m gonna see what I can do about breaking it, but I could always use a little help. He’s kinda - different right now.” He snorts. “And that’s putting it mildly.” A stab of frustration makes him add, “So if you can take time out of your busy demon-hunting schedule to call me back and maybe give me some pointers, I’m all ears, okay? Okay. Later.”
The call doesn’t make him feel much better. Dad’s the last person he’d trust to know beans about proper child-raising, and it’s mostly on the off chance he might know anything about specific kinds of curses than anything else that Sam bothered calling at all. Hell, Dad never showed when Dean was dying. Why would he make the effort if Dean’s just a little younger now?
It IS a curse. Must be. Who’d want to go back and relive their childhood? Sam’s dead certain he’s glad he’s done with his own.
Sleep wins out sometime after four, the deadest darkest time of night, and Sam wakes up with a gasp to watery sunlight and the remnants of a dream he thankfully can’t clearly remember. He sits bolt upright in his chair, hissing at the soreness in his body from the awkward position, scans the room, but Dean’s a motionless figure on top of the sheets, splayed every which way, and Sam relaxes.
He decides it’s cool to risk the time for a shower - needs it like air to breathe - and when he comes out of the bathroom Dean’s sitting next to the window, wearing the Army tee shirt, staring out at the parking lot.
“You want some breakfast?”
Dean nods without looking at him. “Sam?”
Sam touches his wet hair and thinks about how kids just accept things, don’t over-think or dismiss out of hand. Sam has said he’s Sammy; Dean believes him. It’s marvelous and terrifying. “Yeah?”
“Look.” Dean points to a smear on the window and turns wide eyes at Sam.
“Is it dirty?” Sam rubs the towel over his head and tosses it on the mattress before walking over. “What -“
“Looks like -“
“Crap.” Without thinking, Sam grabs Dean’s arm, sweeps him up against him, backing away until his legs hit the bed. He sits without strength, gazing at the streaked window.
“Somebody put that there?” Dean asks in a hushed whisper.
Sam chews on his lip before he says, “I’m not sure.” He can’t say what he’s thinking. It’s on the tip of his tongue: Dean, are you thinking what I’m thinking, only this Dean isn’t thinking it, this Dean is looking at him like he has all the answers, knows exactly what to do, just like Dad always did, and Sam doesn’t have a goddamn clue.
“Don’t go outside,” he says, lifting Dean off his lap.
Dean follows him, watches him take out the journal. “That’s Dad’s,” he whispers. “But it doesn’t look new anymore.”
“Little wear and tear, yeah,” Sam agrees absently, thumbing through it, past the yeti and the Scandinavian crap. There. He glances at the window, back at the shaky sketch. Not identical, but sufficiently similar that he’s fairly sure he’s on the right track.
He looks at Dean, who’s still watching him expectantly. Ghūls like children. Like to take them, and eat them. Sam’s stomach clenches hard, and he makes himself smile. “Probably just graffiti,” he says calmly. “Nothing to worry about.”
Dean gives him another doubtful look, but then nods equably. “Can we get breakfast now?”
Sam nods stiffly. “Sure, buddy. Hey, comb your hair, okay? You look like a haystack.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Ghūls are able to travel by day, but don’t like it much, and so he’s pretty sure this one’s just marked the room. They’ll be leaving anyway, now that Sam’s aware of the threat. No problem, right?
At the diner next to the motel he gets a paper and checks the headlines, but there’s nothing about newly missing kids. If it was only a few hours ago, though, it wouldn’t have made the front page yet.
A cop car pulls up outside, two uniforms getting out, and Sam has a brief moment of panic, thinking they’re after him, something to do with Dean’s outbursts yesterday. But the cops are headed for the main motel office, and it feels no better to realize, sharply, that if the ghūl is around, there may be someone else’s child missing right now.
What would Dean say? We gotta check it out, Sam. That’s what we do, remember? We help people.
He watches Dean wolfing down blueberry pancakes, mouth smeared with indigo-tinted syrup, and wonders who would help him if it were HIS child missing right now. Not that Dean is his son. But the fierce shock of fear and anger in his chest jolts him anyway. He wants Dean back the way he was - older, wiser in his own cockeyed ways, aggravating and annoying and so deeply loved it’s like the granite that holds up Sam’s soul - but until that Dean is here again, Sam will do anything in his power to keep this one safe. Come hell or high water. No ghūl or any other fucking creature is getting its claws on this kid.
The waitress sets the check on the table and smiles at Dean. “He’s a cutie,” she tells Sam. “Gonna be a heartbreaker when he grows up.”
“Probably,” Sam agrees, and digs for his wallet.
Outside, he walks Dean back to their room and tells him to pack up. “Where are we going?” Dean asks.
“Hang on. Don’t open the door for anybody.” He waves the key to show Dean he has it. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay.”
There’s a clot of people over near the office, guests and a couple of uniformed employees. Sam sidles up, glances at a potbellied man wearing a wifebeater gone gray with too many washings. “What’s going on?”
The man lifts his chin. “Those folks over there, little boy’s missing.”
Sam feels a chill like cold fingers, sliding icily down his spine. “Jesus.”
“Didn’t see no kids last night.” The guy shrugs and works at the lump of snuff in his cheek a moment. “You?”
“Just mine,” Sam says.
“Got two at home. Nine and fourteen. Good boys. How old is your boy?”
“Seven.” Sam gazes over the heads in front of him, sees a woman and man embracing, the mother’s sobs audible from a hundred yards away. The father looks old and bewildered, eyes circled with rings of white.
“You look young for having kids.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Sam murmurs. “Excuse me.”
He’s heard enough. It’s too exposed to get out any equipment, but ghūls leave their spoor all over, easy to track if you know what to look for. Most people don’t; they think it’s dirt, schmutz, just an annoyance. They can’t see the jagged, insane intelligence behind the marks. Doors, walls, windows - there will be signs.
He finds them on the lobby window, and on two other guestroom doors, eight and sixteen. And the window of his own room, of course.
He stares at one of the intricate smears, and hears Dean’s adult voice next to his ear: “Now that’s just nasty.”
But when he turns, there’s no one there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3. Old Father Baldpate
That afternoon, sequestered in their room, Dean practices with the throwing knives.
It’s creepy, watching a little kid handle a razor-sharp knife as competently as he does. Sam’s supposed to be doing research - boning up on killing ghūls, along with, oh yeah, by the way, figuring out a way to break the curse currently affecting his previously older brother - but instead he’s studying Dean, watching him whisper near-inaudible admonishments to himself.
“See it go in,” Dean murmurs, eyes closed. “That’s what he said.”
There’s a chalked circle on the motel-room door, and Sam draws a breath to tell Dean that defacing motel property will be expensive and therefore a no-way-Jose, and blinks when the knife thuds home. Not the absolute center of the circle, but inside, and it’s a solid hit, more solid than he’d have thought a seven-year-old could do.
“Dean?” Sam asks.
Dean looks at him, already hefting the second knife in his hand.
“You don’t have to do that. Dad’s not here.”
Dean gives him a lofty, disinterested look, and goes back to not-staring at the door target. “I’ll find him,” he says. This time the knife hits almost dead center.
Sam pushes the laptop aside and stands. “Wow,” he says slowly. “You’re pretty good at that.”
Dean retrieves the knives and rubs his fingers over the divots in the fake wood. He doesn’t reply.
“What else can you do?”
Dean shrugs as he walks back to stand by the dresser. “Lots of stuff. Dad says I need to practice more.”
“What kinds of stuff, Dean? Here, give me those.” He takes the knives, and endures Dean’s offended scowl, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What about school?”
Dean’s full mouth draws into a familiar frown. “School’s boring,” he says. “It’s not the important stuff.”
“School’s not boring. School’s important, too.”
“It won’t help,” Dean tells him indifferently.
Sam swallows and says, “Come over here.”
Dean sits where he’s told, his face still studiously blank, and Sam reaches out to turn the laptop to face them. “Here. Read this.”
Dean glances at the laptop and frowns. “What’s that?”
“It’s a computer. A portable computer.”
“There’s no such thing. Dad said -“
“Don’t think about what Dad says. Just for a second, okay? Just read it to me.”
Dean squints at the screen, and then looks at him. “That’s boring, too.”
“I can’t put you in school right now. So think of it as - homeschooling, okay? Wait, most kids in 1986 didn’t -- Never mind. Just read it, Dean.”
Dean’s eyes narrow. “You’re not my dad,” he says. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Sam nods, and says, “That’s right, I’m not Dad. But right now I am your older brother. And that means I get to say, right? I’m in charge.”
“I don’t got an older brother,” Dean whispers.
“I don’t HAVE an older brother, and right now, you do. I’m Sammy, and I’m older than you are, and I want you to read that to me. Can you read?”
“Course I can read. I’m not a baby.”
“Then read me that. Out loud, please.”
Dean’s face has gone a dull pink, and he looks back at the screen with a flicker of dread, colored with shame. That’s when Sam knows Dean hasn’t learned to read yet. He’s seven, and seven-year-olds should be reading, but Dean’s gazing at the laptop like Sam’s told him to translate a wall of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Anger boils up in him like lava. THIS is Dean’s childhood. Priorities that have nothing to do with him, that have everything to do with John Winchester’s quixotic demon quest, screw a little kid’s education, social skills, anything but what’s needed to hunt, to kill. Does Dad even know - did he know - that Dean doesn’t know how to read yet? What about math?
“I can do it,” Dean says, sounding shakily defiant. “I can.”
Sam blinks, and pushes at his rage, a familiar feeling of packing a suitcase, zipping it up over too many things he can’t say aloud. “That one’s kinda complicated, anyway,” he mutters, nodding. “I’m not sure I could pronounce all those words very well, either. It’s okay, buddy.”
“Daddy says -“
“Dean, right now I don’t want to hear about what Dad says,” Sam interrupts, launching himself to his feet and pacing over to the other side of the room. “Okay? Just -- Let’s leave Dad out of it for a while.”
“You’re mean,” Dean says. “You’re not Sammy.”
He wants to snap at him: No, I’m not Sammy, I’m SAM, stop calling me by that stupid nickname, and would you just shut up and leave me alone for two minutes, is it too much to ask? Except that’s too close to what Dad would say, isn’t it? He’s all for leaving Dad out when he wants to but when it comes down to it, he’s doing the same goddamn things.
Sam draws a deep breath and comes back over. Dean’s looking at him with wall-eyed uncertainty, doesn’t smile when Sam does. “Hey, sorry,” Sam says gruffly. “Look, let’s go grab some dinner, okay? I want to be back before sundown.”
“Not hungry,” Dean says, dropping his eyes to stare at his lap.
“Liar. You’re always hungry.”
Dean shrugs.
“Okay, come on.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
He’s made some kind of critical error, because the tenuous trust established yesterday has mostly disappeared. Dean’s silent, uncooperative, and just pokes his food with his fork, doesn’t eat much. Sam’s feeble attempts to draw him out over the dinner table are met with the return of the lizard stare, but now Sam sees through that, knows Dean is pining for his father, for the life that’s familiar, and there is nothing he can do to restore that, even if he wanted to. He isn’t sure he does. The anger is still there, banked like good coals but ready to flare up again when he lets it, and he can’t stop thinking about all the things he never knew, never saw, because he was too young to know what it was. It had never been Dad who encouraged his studies; always Dean. Dean, who went over homework with him, Dean who when he didn’t know, either, consulted dictionaries and notes over his shoulder until they both got it. Hell, Dean was sometimes the only one who saw Sam’s report cards, read his letters from teachers or whatever. Dad was too damn busy, and when he wasn’t, he was too distracted, and sometimes he wasn’t either one, but drunk or getting there, and Sam wonders now just who Dean was, anyway, his brother or his goddamn REAL father after all.
But there had been no one to play that role for Dean himself, and it shows now, shows in Dean’s reluctance to trust, in his reliance on himself even at this absurdly young age. Sam has no doubt that Dean could probably do okay in a lot of respects if Sam - grown-up Sam - weren’t here at all. He’d remember to brush his teeth, bathe, clean his goddamn weapons. For Dean, childhood is a matter of height and outside perception, not fact; for Dean, childhood is pretty much over already, and that makes it hard for Sam to eat, too, his overdone fish sticking in his throat like a wad of wet newspaper.
“I gotta do some things tonight,” he says, after swigging half a glass of water to push the swallow down.
Dean looks alert suddenly, fork sagging in his grip. “Are we hunting?”
Sam regards him soberly. “I’m going hunting,” he says carefully. “You’re staying in the room.”
Dean’s mouth turns down. “I can help. Dad lets me help. I’m good at it.”
“I know you are. And maybe you can help me next time. But not this one, Dean. I mean it. This one’s different.”
Dean stares at him, the distant façade vanished. “Is it - that one? The one that made Mommy catch on fire?”
“No.” Sam pushes his plate away with something like revulsion. “No, not that one. But this one -- It hurts people, Dean, especially little kids. I need to know you’re safe, so I can do what I need to do.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Okay. And I’m gonna trust you to do that, okay? But you’re staying at the motel.” He nods, more to himself than Dean, who is glaring at him anyway like he wants to argue some more. “Come on, I need to make a stop on the way back.”
He buys books at the local Barnes and Noble, the most basic ones he can. Primers, really. The Rosetta Stones for Dean’s impaired learning. Dean wanders around the children’s section, and when Sam comes over to get him he sees Dean watching the group of children sitting listening to a woman reading aloud, something about a china rabbit named Edward. Dean’s face is a study in silent conflict, and while Sam watches Dean presses his lips together, then creeps forward, sitting Indian-style on the edge of the carpet, outside the circle but close enough to listen.
They need to get going. But Sam doesn’t have the heart. He stands motionless, arms full of books that aren’t very entertaining but quite educational, while Dean listens to the woman read the story, edges a little closer until he’s almost inside the group of children. All of the too-adult look has gone from Dean’s face: he’s rapt, caught by the story and the knowledge of other kids like him around him, strangers but not, and he blends. He really blends, he’s a child listening to a story, that’s all.
The woman finishes, the other children start clapping, and Dean scrambles to his feet, his eyes wide as if he’s realized he’s done something wrong. There’s worry in his eyes when he reaches Sam’s side, only relaxing when Sam smiles down at him, touches his bright hair.
“Good story?”
Dean hesitates, then nods. “Do we have to go?”
“Yeah. Hey, give me a minute.”
He catches the woman as she’s talking with a parent, shuffles his feet awkwardly and meets her smile. “What book was that?” Sam asks.
“The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.” The woman cocks her head slightly. “Kate Dicamillo is a marvelous writer, isn’t she? Newbery Medal winner.” She looks at Dean, who’s standing uncertainly waiting. “Might be a little old for him, though.”
Sam spots the stack of books nearby. “He’s precocious.” He adds the book to his stack, and gives the woman another fast grin before heading to collect Dean.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The missing boy hasn’t been found yet. If asked, Sam could have told the authorities there would be very little, if anything, to find by this point anyway. Ghūls eat everything. That little boy - and Sam feels his stomach clench every time he says it in his mind - is long gone, permanently, and there will be another child victim tonight if he doesn’t succeed in stopping it.
So at sunset he puts together his version of the mutant Winchester Care Package, and keeps himself from recoiling while Dean silently assists him. Checking what he can, the seal on the holy water Sam will almost certainly not need, the ammo cartridges he will definitely need, coiling the rope into a neat circle while Sam hunts for the firestarters. Dean is silent and efficient; he’s done this much more than once, and Sam is grateful and stricken with sharp, awful yearning for his older brother.
He zips the bag. “Good work,” he tells Dean, who nods gravely. “Now listen.” Sam sits on the edge of the bed. “You know the drill. You stay here. No matter what. No matter what you hear, or see, or think you see or hear. Right?”
“But what if you need me?” Dean says.
“I’ll be fine. Trust me. Nothing’s gonna happen, it’s all under control.” He smiles, and hopes he doesn’t sound too much like a liar. He has never, ever done this by himself. Never without the safety net, somewhere, of Dean, or their father, or both. He feels like the world’s biggest impostor, in front of a really tough crowd of one. “When everything’s okay again, I’ll be back. Won’t take that long.”
“Promise me,” Dean whispers.
“Promise what?”
“You’ll come back.”
Sam swallows. “I promise, Dean. Okay?”
“Pinky swear?”
Sam smiles and pinky swears. “Lock the deadbolt,” he says, slinging the bag over his shoulder and touching the doorknob. “And when I come back, I’ll say - uh - it’s Edward. Like the rabbit in the book. How’s that?”
“Dad just says, Let me in, Dean.”
That makes Sam laugh. “Okay, but this way we’ll have our own code. That’s what brothers do, right? You have code words with Sammy, right?”
“Yeah,” Dean says doubtfully.
“Okay. So this way, if I ever say, It’s Sam, let me in, you’ll know NOT to. Just in case.”
“O-kay.”
“So Edward gets me in the room, and Sam doesn’t. Got it?”
Dean nods vigorously.
Sam pauses. “And don’t touch the guns. Okay?”
“Dad let me -“
“Don’t care what Dad did. This is Sam’s rules now.”
Dean gives a tiny twitch of his lips, almost a smile. “You mean Edward, right?”
“Right,” Sam agrees, smiling slowly. “Edward it is.”
“Come back,” Dean says.
“I will.”
He turns the knob, and the door flies inward, a waft of putrid air smacking him in the face before the impact sends him sprawling back. Sam thinks distantly, Well, no need for secret passwords and pinky swears this time, and the ghūl snarls and flattens him with one clawed foot.
~~~~~~~~~~~
TBC, probably sooner than later, damn it all.
Under a Haystack
by Emily Brunson
(c)2006
2. One Shoe Off, and One Shoe On
They’d briefly discussed heading west/northwest before this unexpected development, and Sam’s feeling the pressure to get out of town. Hole up someplace, maybe West Texas or Taos or Santa Fe or wherever, until Dean re-grows up, or Sam can figure something out. But he definitely needs to put some space between them and Houston. Blood relative or not, Dean’s not his kid, and those displays at their motel might have gotten unwelcome attention Sam just doesn’t know about yet. Those kinds of things have a way of coming back to bite you on your unsuspecting ass, so after a fast-food lunch near the highway he piles them both in the Impala and heads out.
But when they start leaving the city behind, Dean freaks on him. They’re on a smaller highway, not the interstate, and traffic isn’t bad, which is all that saves them. Suddenly Sam’s got a lapful of pissed-off kid, grabbing at the wheel and screaming at him to stop, let me out, you ugly piece of shit, and the car tries to fishtail and Sam brings it to a shuddering halt on the shoulder.
“Don’t you EVER do that again,” Sam roars, adrenaline hitting his veins like pure crank. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You’re not my dad!” Dean screams back. “Now he won’t be able to find me! Let me GO!”
It’s surprisingly hard to fight Dean in this size and shape; it’s like holding onto a pissed-off cat, and Sam feels like a giant in a glass factory, so aware of how delicate those little-boy arms feel in his hands. But he finally manhandles Dean to a standstill, clasps him against his chest and feels Dean’s heart going a mile a freaking minute.
“I’m not your dad,” Sam agrees quietly, nodding. “I know. And I know you want him back. But he’s not here, D - kid, and -“
Dean arches his back, and there’s another struggle. Shorter this time; Sam thinks he’s getting tired. “Where is he? What’d you do with my daddy?”
“Dean, I didn’t do anything! You just woke up like this!”
Dean goes very still, and Sam can hear his fast panicked breathing. “You said my name,” Dean says in a low accusing voice, and twists in Sam’s arms until he can glare at him. “How’d you know my name?”
Sam nods slowly. “Okay, I’ll tell you. But will you just sit still for a minute so we can get off the highway first?”
Dean ducks away, slithering back into the passenger seat, curling into a protective ball.
“Okay.” Sam checks the road, pulls them back into traffic. “I think there’s some kind of roadside park not too far from here. You okay?”
Dean props his chin on his knees and wraps his arms tightly around his legs.
It’s about twenty miles to the rest stop, not nearly far enough for Sam to come up with any kind of reasonable story for how he knows Dean’s name, what the hell is going on here. He parks as far away as he can from the two RVs already at the stop, and watches Dean carefully while they climb out. Dean sits on the other side of a concrete table, and Sam sighs and lowers himself onto the seat, leaning forward on his elbows.
“Okay. You know weird things sometimes happen, right? And just because they’re weird, just because people say it’s just imaginary stuff doesn’t mean they can’t happen?”
Dean gives a hesitant nod. “Like the thing that killed Mommy.”
“Like that, yeah.” Sam swallows; it’s been twenty-two years for his Dean, but for this one it’s practically yesterday, and he can see the wan look in Dean’s eyes, the desperate loneliness. “Sort of. And something really weird happened to you, too. Last night.”
Dean presses his lips together, then whispers, “Am I dead too?”
Sam exhales loudly, shakes his head. “Oh, Dean, no, man, you’re not dead. I didn’t mean to make it sound like that. You’re fine, okay?”
“But -“
“What’s the last thing you remember? Before you woke up in the room with me?”
Dean shrugs. “Dunno.”
“Think, okay? Were you at home? Where do you live right now?”
“In Portland.”
“Was that where you were? At home?”
Dean nods hesitantly. “I had to practice, and then Dad said he’d be back real soon, and I should keep an eye on Sammy. That’s my little brother.”
“Did you fall asleep?”
Dean looks down and says, “I didn’t mess up. If anything had happened to him I would have known because he was right there with me.”
Sam leans forward again, puts every bit of conviction in his voice that he can. “I’m sure you’re right, Dean. I know you took real good care of Sammy. So did you go to sleep?”
“Yes,” Dean whispers. “Sammy was already asleep, and I was -“ He looks away, lips trembling. “I got sleepy.”
“That’s okay. I swear, that’s fine. But you were at home when you went to sleep?”
“Uh-huh.” Dean’s eyes are starry with tears. “Is Daddy mad at me? Sometimes he gets mad.”
There is something terrible about the matter-of-fact quality to Dean’s voice, something that burrows into Sam’s stomach and burns like acid, and he shakes his head vigorously. “No. No, Dad’s not mad at you.”
“Are you sure? He didn’t come.”
“That’s what we have to talk about.” Sam considers, then gets up and comes around to sit next to Dean on the warm bench. “See, something sort of - magical happened to you last night, okay?” Sam sighs. “You know when I told you my name was Sam?”
Dean nods minutely.
“This is gonna be really hard to explain, but the reason I know your name is because I’m your brother. I’m your Sammy.”
Dean gives him a speaking look, and then snorts. “Sammy’s just a baby. You aren’t Sammy.”
“Well, where you were, I was a really little kid, yeah.” Sam nods slowly. “But this is much later now, and I’m all grown up. And until this morning, you were grown up, too.”
There is absolutely no comprehension in Dean’s wide, tired eyes, nothing but confusion and that wandering fear. He doesn’t say a word, and gives only a token resistance when Sam takes his hand and warms it between his own.
“See, the last thing you remember, it was about 1986? Was that the right year?”
Dean nods so vaguely it isn’t really an affirmation, but Sam takes it as one. “And now,” he says carefully, “it’s 2006. It’s about twenty years later, okay? Somebody - did something to you, I’m not sure what. And it made you get a lot younger, overnight.”
Dean starts to cry, silently and without any histrionics. It’s a kind of exhausted un-self-conscious weeping that tears at Sam, makes him feel helpless and useless, and Dean doesn’t struggle while Sam gathers him against him, strokes his skinny back and rocks him a little. There’s no answering clasp of arms around his neck; Dean isn’t welcoming it, just enduring it, a fact of life, and Sam isn’t sure he’s taking any comfort at all from it.
“It’ll be okay,” Sam says thickly, feeling his own eyes sting more than a little. “I’m gonna figure out how to fix things, Dean. I am. But Dad’s a long way away right now, and I don’t know how to find him. We’ve - you and me - we’ve been looking for him for a long time, and we found him once, but now he’s gone again, and we’re on our own. Just me and you, all right? Just for a while, until I can make things right.”
Dean lays his hot cheek against Sam’s shoulder and sighs. He’s not really crying anymore, but his weight is limp and Sam thinks, Maybe he needs a nap or something. Is he young enough for naps? “You okay?” he whispers, and feels the pause before a slow nod. “I’m sorry. I know it’s scary. I’m scared, too.”
“Are you really Sammy?” Dean asks softly.
Sam smiles against Dean’s bright gold hair. “Yeah, I really am.”
“You got big.”
It makes him think of his Dean, of how if it had been Sam who regressed like this, Dean would have known what to do. Sam’s floundering, terra incognita, and he stands, awkwardly clasping Dean to him. “Tell you what,” he says quietly while he walks back to the car. “Why don’t you get in the back and sleep for a while? You sleepy?”
“Supposed to watch Sammy.” But Dean’s voice is a blurry mumble, and he yawns on the name.
“Well, this Sammy’s okay for now, I promise.” He opens the back door and slides in, untangling Dean from around his neck and laying him on the leather seat. Revealed, Dean’s face is blotchy with tears, and his eyes are already at half-mast. Sam reaches out to push the hair from Dean’s forehead and smiles, and Dean’s eyes finish fluttering closed.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Sam hopes maybe by the next morning Dean will have reverted back to his grown-up self. It happened overnight; maybe it can un-happen the same way.
No joy. Sam isn’t sleepy anyway; too keyed up and a little wary of nightmares, and so he watches Dean instead. Dean as a child sleeps differently from adult Dean; this is a totality of sleep, and after a while Sam stops worrying about being quiet because he’s pretty sure Armageddon would only make Dean turn over and sigh, and maybe not even that. The Dean Sam remembers was too vigilant to ever sleep so heavily. This Dean hasn’t learned all those lessons yet.
It’s nearly two when Sam grabs his phone and hits the speed-dial.
“Hey, Dad,” he says, and sighs. “I figure you won’t pick this up for a while, like I have any idea when or if you ever pick up your messages at all, but anyway. We got a little bit of a situation here, I guess. I think something maybe - put a curse on Dean. Anyway, I’m gonna see what I can do about breaking it, but I could always use a little help. He’s kinda - different right now.” He snorts. “And that’s putting it mildly.” A stab of frustration makes him add, “So if you can take time out of your busy demon-hunting schedule to call me back and maybe give me some pointers, I’m all ears, okay? Okay. Later.”
The call doesn’t make him feel much better. Dad’s the last person he’d trust to know beans about proper child-raising, and it’s mostly on the off chance he might know anything about specific kinds of curses than anything else that Sam bothered calling at all. Hell, Dad never showed when Dean was dying. Why would he make the effort if Dean’s just a little younger now?
It IS a curse. Must be. Who’d want to go back and relive their childhood? Sam’s dead certain he’s glad he’s done with his own.
Sleep wins out sometime after four, the deadest darkest time of night, and Sam wakes up with a gasp to watery sunlight and the remnants of a dream he thankfully can’t clearly remember. He sits bolt upright in his chair, hissing at the soreness in his body from the awkward position, scans the room, but Dean’s a motionless figure on top of the sheets, splayed every which way, and Sam relaxes.
He decides it’s cool to risk the time for a shower - needs it like air to breathe - and when he comes out of the bathroom Dean’s sitting next to the window, wearing the Army tee shirt, staring out at the parking lot.
“You want some breakfast?”
Dean nods without looking at him. “Sam?”
Sam touches his wet hair and thinks about how kids just accept things, don’t over-think or dismiss out of hand. Sam has said he’s Sammy; Dean believes him. It’s marvelous and terrifying. “Yeah?”
“Look.” Dean points to a smear on the window and turns wide eyes at Sam.
“Is it dirty?” Sam rubs the towel over his head and tosses it on the mattress before walking over. “What -“
“Looks like -“
“Crap.” Without thinking, Sam grabs Dean’s arm, sweeps him up against him, backing away until his legs hit the bed. He sits without strength, gazing at the streaked window.
“Somebody put that there?” Dean asks in a hushed whisper.
Sam chews on his lip before he says, “I’m not sure.” He can’t say what he’s thinking. It’s on the tip of his tongue: Dean, are you thinking what I’m thinking, only this Dean isn’t thinking it, this Dean is looking at him like he has all the answers, knows exactly what to do, just like Dad always did, and Sam doesn’t have a goddamn clue.
“Don’t go outside,” he says, lifting Dean off his lap.
Dean follows him, watches him take out the journal. “That’s Dad’s,” he whispers. “But it doesn’t look new anymore.”
“Little wear and tear, yeah,” Sam agrees absently, thumbing through it, past the yeti and the Scandinavian crap. There. He glances at the window, back at the shaky sketch. Not identical, but sufficiently similar that he’s fairly sure he’s on the right track.
He looks at Dean, who’s still watching him expectantly. Ghūls like children. Like to take them, and eat them. Sam’s stomach clenches hard, and he makes himself smile. “Probably just graffiti,” he says calmly. “Nothing to worry about.”
Dean gives him another doubtful look, but then nods equably. “Can we get breakfast now?”
Sam nods stiffly. “Sure, buddy. Hey, comb your hair, okay? You look like a haystack.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Ghūls are able to travel by day, but don’t like it much, and so he’s pretty sure this one’s just marked the room. They’ll be leaving anyway, now that Sam’s aware of the threat. No problem, right?
At the diner next to the motel he gets a paper and checks the headlines, but there’s nothing about newly missing kids. If it was only a few hours ago, though, it wouldn’t have made the front page yet.
A cop car pulls up outside, two uniforms getting out, and Sam has a brief moment of panic, thinking they’re after him, something to do with Dean’s outbursts yesterday. But the cops are headed for the main motel office, and it feels no better to realize, sharply, that if the ghūl is around, there may be someone else’s child missing right now.
What would Dean say? We gotta check it out, Sam. That’s what we do, remember? We help people.
He watches Dean wolfing down blueberry pancakes, mouth smeared with indigo-tinted syrup, and wonders who would help him if it were HIS child missing right now. Not that Dean is his son. But the fierce shock of fear and anger in his chest jolts him anyway. He wants Dean back the way he was - older, wiser in his own cockeyed ways, aggravating and annoying and so deeply loved it’s like the granite that holds up Sam’s soul - but until that Dean is here again, Sam will do anything in his power to keep this one safe. Come hell or high water. No ghūl or any other fucking creature is getting its claws on this kid.
The waitress sets the check on the table and smiles at Dean. “He’s a cutie,” she tells Sam. “Gonna be a heartbreaker when he grows up.”
“Probably,” Sam agrees, and digs for his wallet.
Outside, he walks Dean back to their room and tells him to pack up. “Where are we going?” Dean asks.
“Hang on. Don’t open the door for anybody.” He waves the key to show Dean he has it. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay.”
There’s a clot of people over near the office, guests and a couple of uniformed employees. Sam sidles up, glances at a potbellied man wearing a wifebeater gone gray with too many washings. “What’s going on?”
The man lifts his chin. “Those folks over there, little boy’s missing.”
Sam feels a chill like cold fingers, sliding icily down his spine. “Jesus.”
“Didn’t see no kids last night.” The guy shrugs and works at the lump of snuff in his cheek a moment. “You?”
“Just mine,” Sam says.
“Got two at home. Nine and fourteen. Good boys. How old is your boy?”
“Seven.” Sam gazes over the heads in front of him, sees a woman and man embracing, the mother’s sobs audible from a hundred yards away. The father looks old and bewildered, eyes circled with rings of white.
“You look young for having kids.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Sam murmurs. “Excuse me.”
He’s heard enough. It’s too exposed to get out any equipment, but ghūls leave their spoor all over, easy to track if you know what to look for. Most people don’t; they think it’s dirt, schmutz, just an annoyance. They can’t see the jagged, insane intelligence behind the marks. Doors, walls, windows - there will be signs.
He finds them on the lobby window, and on two other guestroom doors, eight and sixteen. And the window of his own room, of course.
He stares at one of the intricate smears, and hears Dean’s adult voice next to his ear: “Now that’s just nasty.”
But when he turns, there’s no one there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3. Old Father Baldpate
That afternoon, sequestered in their room, Dean practices with the throwing knives.
It’s creepy, watching a little kid handle a razor-sharp knife as competently as he does. Sam’s supposed to be doing research - boning up on killing ghūls, along with, oh yeah, by the way, figuring out a way to break the curse currently affecting his previously older brother - but instead he’s studying Dean, watching him whisper near-inaudible admonishments to himself.
“See it go in,” Dean murmurs, eyes closed. “That’s what he said.”
There’s a chalked circle on the motel-room door, and Sam draws a breath to tell Dean that defacing motel property will be expensive and therefore a no-way-Jose, and blinks when the knife thuds home. Not the absolute center of the circle, but inside, and it’s a solid hit, more solid than he’d have thought a seven-year-old could do.
“Dean?” Sam asks.
Dean looks at him, already hefting the second knife in his hand.
“You don’t have to do that. Dad’s not here.”
Dean gives him a lofty, disinterested look, and goes back to not-staring at the door target. “I’ll find him,” he says. This time the knife hits almost dead center.
Sam pushes the laptop aside and stands. “Wow,” he says slowly. “You’re pretty good at that.”
Dean retrieves the knives and rubs his fingers over the divots in the fake wood. He doesn’t reply.
“What else can you do?”
Dean shrugs as he walks back to stand by the dresser. “Lots of stuff. Dad says I need to practice more.”
“What kinds of stuff, Dean? Here, give me those.” He takes the knives, and endures Dean’s offended scowl, sitting on the edge of the bed. “What about school?”
Dean’s full mouth draws into a familiar frown. “School’s boring,” he says. “It’s not the important stuff.”
“School’s not boring. School’s important, too.”
“It won’t help,” Dean tells him indifferently.
Sam swallows and says, “Come over here.”
Dean sits where he’s told, his face still studiously blank, and Sam reaches out to turn the laptop to face them. “Here. Read this.”
Dean glances at the laptop and frowns. “What’s that?”
“It’s a computer. A portable computer.”
“There’s no such thing. Dad said -“
“Don’t think about what Dad says. Just for a second, okay? Just read it to me.”
Dean squints at the screen, and then looks at him. “That’s boring, too.”
“I can’t put you in school right now. So think of it as - homeschooling, okay? Wait, most kids in 1986 didn’t -- Never mind. Just read it, Dean.”
Dean’s eyes narrow. “You’re not my dad,” he says. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Sam nods, and says, “That’s right, I’m not Dad. But right now I am your older brother. And that means I get to say, right? I’m in charge.”
“I don’t got an older brother,” Dean whispers.
“I don’t HAVE an older brother, and right now, you do. I’m Sammy, and I’m older than you are, and I want you to read that to me. Can you read?”
“Course I can read. I’m not a baby.”
“Then read me that. Out loud, please.”
Dean’s face has gone a dull pink, and he looks back at the screen with a flicker of dread, colored with shame. That’s when Sam knows Dean hasn’t learned to read yet. He’s seven, and seven-year-olds should be reading, but Dean’s gazing at the laptop like Sam’s told him to translate a wall of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Anger boils up in him like lava. THIS is Dean’s childhood. Priorities that have nothing to do with him, that have everything to do with John Winchester’s quixotic demon quest, screw a little kid’s education, social skills, anything but what’s needed to hunt, to kill. Does Dad even know - did he know - that Dean doesn’t know how to read yet? What about math?
“I can do it,” Dean says, sounding shakily defiant. “I can.”
Sam blinks, and pushes at his rage, a familiar feeling of packing a suitcase, zipping it up over too many things he can’t say aloud. “That one’s kinda complicated, anyway,” he mutters, nodding. “I’m not sure I could pronounce all those words very well, either. It’s okay, buddy.”
“Daddy says -“
“Dean, right now I don’t want to hear about what Dad says,” Sam interrupts, launching himself to his feet and pacing over to the other side of the room. “Okay? Just -- Let’s leave Dad out of it for a while.”
“You’re mean,” Dean says. “You’re not Sammy.”
He wants to snap at him: No, I’m not Sammy, I’m SAM, stop calling me by that stupid nickname, and would you just shut up and leave me alone for two minutes, is it too much to ask? Except that’s too close to what Dad would say, isn’t it? He’s all for leaving Dad out when he wants to but when it comes down to it, he’s doing the same goddamn things.
Sam draws a deep breath and comes back over. Dean’s looking at him with wall-eyed uncertainty, doesn’t smile when Sam does. “Hey, sorry,” Sam says gruffly. “Look, let’s go grab some dinner, okay? I want to be back before sundown.”
“Not hungry,” Dean says, dropping his eyes to stare at his lap.
“Liar. You’re always hungry.”
Dean shrugs.
“Okay, come on.”
~~~~~~~~~~~
He’s made some kind of critical error, because the tenuous trust established yesterday has mostly disappeared. Dean’s silent, uncooperative, and just pokes his food with his fork, doesn’t eat much. Sam’s feeble attempts to draw him out over the dinner table are met with the return of the lizard stare, but now Sam sees through that, knows Dean is pining for his father, for the life that’s familiar, and there is nothing he can do to restore that, even if he wanted to. He isn’t sure he does. The anger is still there, banked like good coals but ready to flare up again when he lets it, and he can’t stop thinking about all the things he never knew, never saw, because he was too young to know what it was. It had never been Dad who encouraged his studies; always Dean. Dean, who went over homework with him, Dean who when he didn’t know, either, consulted dictionaries and notes over his shoulder until they both got it. Hell, Dean was sometimes the only one who saw Sam’s report cards, read his letters from teachers or whatever. Dad was too damn busy, and when he wasn’t, he was too distracted, and sometimes he wasn’t either one, but drunk or getting there, and Sam wonders now just who Dean was, anyway, his brother or his goddamn REAL father after all.
But there had been no one to play that role for Dean himself, and it shows now, shows in Dean’s reluctance to trust, in his reliance on himself even at this absurdly young age. Sam has no doubt that Dean could probably do okay in a lot of respects if Sam - grown-up Sam - weren’t here at all. He’d remember to brush his teeth, bathe, clean his goddamn weapons. For Dean, childhood is a matter of height and outside perception, not fact; for Dean, childhood is pretty much over already, and that makes it hard for Sam to eat, too, his overdone fish sticking in his throat like a wad of wet newspaper.
“I gotta do some things tonight,” he says, after swigging half a glass of water to push the swallow down.
Dean looks alert suddenly, fork sagging in his grip. “Are we hunting?”
Sam regards him soberly. “I’m going hunting,” he says carefully. “You’re staying in the room.”
Dean’s mouth turns down. “I can help. Dad lets me help. I’m good at it.”
“I know you are. And maybe you can help me next time. But not this one, Dean. I mean it. This one’s different.”
Dean stares at him, the distant façade vanished. “Is it - that one? The one that made Mommy catch on fire?”
“No.” Sam pushes his plate away with something like revulsion. “No, not that one. But this one -- It hurts people, Dean, especially little kids. I need to know you’re safe, so I can do what I need to do.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Okay. And I’m gonna trust you to do that, okay? But you’re staying at the motel.” He nods, more to himself than Dean, who is glaring at him anyway like he wants to argue some more. “Come on, I need to make a stop on the way back.”
He buys books at the local Barnes and Noble, the most basic ones he can. Primers, really. The Rosetta Stones for Dean’s impaired learning. Dean wanders around the children’s section, and when Sam comes over to get him he sees Dean watching the group of children sitting listening to a woman reading aloud, something about a china rabbit named Edward. Dean’s face is a study in silent conflict, and while Sam watches Dean presses his lips together, then creeps forward, sitting Indian-style on the edge of the carpet, outside the circle but close enough to listen.
They need to get going. But Sam doesn’t have the heart. He stands motionless, arms full of books that aren’t very entertaining but quite educational, while Dean listens to the woman read the story, edges a little closer until he’s almost inside the group of children. All of the too-adult look has gone from Dean’s face: he’s rapt, caught by the story and the knowledge of other kids like him around him, strangers but not, and he blends. He really blends, he’s a child listening to a story, that’s all.
The woman finishes, the other children start clapping, and Dean scrambles to his feet, his eyes wide as if he’s realized he’s done something wrong. There’s worry in his eyes when he reaches Sam’s side, only relaxing when Sam smiles down at him, touches his bright hair.
“Good story?”
Dean hesitates, then nods. “Do we have to go?”
“Yeah. Hey, give me a minute.”
He catches the woman as she’s talking with a parent, shuffles his feet awkwardly and meets her smile. “What book was that?” Sam asks.
“The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.” The woman cocks her head slightly. “Kate Dicamillo is a marvelous writer, isn’t she? Newbery Medal winner.” She looks at Dean, who’s standing uncertainly waiting. “Might be a little old for him, though.”
Sam spots the stack of books nearby. “He’s precocious.” He adds the book to his stack, and gives the woman another fast grin before heading to collect Dean.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The missing boy hasn’t been found yet. If asked, Sam could have told the authorities there would be very little, if anything, to find by this point anyway. Ghūls eat everything. That little boy - and Sam feels his stomach clench every time he says it in his mind - is long gone, permanently, and there will be another child victim tonight if he doesn’t succeed in stopping it.
So at sunset he puts together his version of the mutant Winchester Care Package, and keeps himself from recoiling while Dean silently assists him. Checking what he can, the seal on the holy water Sam will almost certainly not need, the ammo cartridges he will definitely need, coiling the rope into a neat circle while Sam hunts for the firestarters. Dean is silent and efficient; he’s done this much more than once, and Sam is grateful and stricken with sharp, awful yearning for his older brother.
He zips the bag. “Good work,” he tells Dean, who nods gravely. “Now listen.” Sam sits on the edge of the bed. “You know the drill. You stay here. No matter what. No matter what you hear, or see, or think you see or hear. Right?”
“But what if you need me?” Dean says.
“I’ll be fine. Trust me. Nothing’s gonna happen, it’s all under control.” He smiles, and hopes he doesn’t sound too much like a liar. He has never, ever done this by himself. Never without the safety net, somewhere, of Dean, or their father, or both. He feels like the world’s biggest impostor, in front of a really tough crowd of one. “When everything’s okay again, I’ll be back. Won’t take that long.”
“Promise me,” Dean whispers.
“Promise what?”
“You’ll come back.”
Sam swallows. “I promise, Dean. Okay?”
“Pinky swear?”
Sam smiles and pinky swears. “Lock the deadbolt,” he says, slinging the bag over his shoulder and touching the doorknob. “And when I come back, I’ll say - uh - it’s Edward. Like the rabbit in the book. How’s that?”
“Dad just says, Let me in, Dean.”
That makes Sam laugh. “Okay, but this way we’ll have our own code. That’s what brothers do, right? You have code words with Sammy, right?”
“Yeah,” Dean says doubtfully.
“Okay. So this way, if I ever say, It’s Sam, let me in, you’ll know NOT to. Just in case.”
“O-kay.”
“So Edward gets me in the room, and Sam doesn’t. Got it?”
Dean nods vigorously.
Sam pauses. “And don’t touch the guns. Okay?”
“Dad let me -“
“Don’t care what Dad did. This is Sam’s rules now.”
Dean gives a tiny twitch of his lips, almost a smile. “You mean Edward, right?”
“Right,” Sam agrees, smiling slowly. “Edward it is.”
“Come back,” Dean says.
“I will.”
He turns the knob, and the door flies inward, a waft of putrid air smacking him in the face before the impact sends him sprawling back. Sam thinks distantly, Well, no need for secret passwords and pinky swears this time, and the ghūl snarls and flattens him with one clawed foot.
~~~~~~~~~~~
TBC, probably sooner than later, damn it all.