"Lost and Found: Splitting Down the Seems"
Title: Splitting Down the Seems
’Verse: Lost and Found
Author: LadyMacbeth
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG13 (for some cussin’ and some kissin’)
Word Count: 2931
Disclaimer: “Supernatural” and all its characters belong to the genius that is Eric Kripke. I make no profit.
Summary: Missouri reveals a secret to the boys that send them on a journey to Santa Cruz where they find a brother they never knew and an even darker revelation that none of them saw coming.
The story so far:
1. Santa Cruz
2. The Road to Missouri
3. Revelations
4. Look Back, Leap Forward
5. Second Sight
6. Fury and Fitchburg
7. Conjoined
8. Distant Voices
9. The Warning
10. Wrought Asunder
11. Family Ties
12. Black Dog
*****
It’s three days after the black dog hunt when Dean’s mask finally cracks.
It’s just after two in the morning, back at Bobby’s place when Sam finds himself suddenly and unexplainably awake. He’s staring at the dark ceiling with no idea of how he moved from a blissfully dreamless sleep to this. He lays there for several minutes, trying to pinpoint what it is that roused him, when he hears it.
The noise is barely audible above his own breathing. It’s soft and shapeless, hovering above the room like a gray cloud. It’s floating, just above Sam’s reach, without an apparent origin. It’s like a spirit, stuck between astral planes, pleading with words Sam can’t understand. He squints harder at the ceiling, no longer sure whether or not he’s really awake, or still dreaming. He’s bracing himself, waiting for the image of a blonde in a white nightgown to pin herself above him. He’s waiting for her to stare down at him with mournful, accusing eyes; waiting for her to ignite.
Instead, he traces the noise to the bed beside him. The realization that it’s coming from Dean and that the sound is crying hits him all at once, right in the chest. He feels the blood rush out of his body, somewhere, somehow, when he turns his head to the left, and strains his eyes in the dark.
A sliver of moonlight slices across the room, arching across Priestly’s back as he leans over his twin’s turbulent, sleeping form. Dean is sobbing unconsciously, his body trembling, like tiny earthquakes are trickling out of his head and into his blood. His face is twisted into something pained and grotesque, but young and afraid, all at the same time. Priestly is watching his twin silently, tears rolling freely down his cheeks.
“Nightmares,” he breathes, speaking to Sam though he doesn’t take his eyes from Dean. “I don’t want to wake him. The shock…” he trails off, still watching. He’s almost a silhouette against the moonlight, the blue snaking around his shoulder and illuminating Dean’s face.
“What do we do?” Sam whispers, propping himself on an elbow while his heart rips in two.
Priestly doesn’t answer him right away. He continues to watch Dean cry in his sleep; continues to run a hand through the short cropped hair. Sam begins to think there will be no answer when Priestly suddenly jerks his head. It takes Sam a second to understand the motion, but he’s already moving, climbing out of his own bed while Priestly pulls Dean’s limp body towards him, making room.
Sam slides in next to Dean, face forward as Priestly spoons in behind him. Dean is in the middle, pinned between his brothers; the safest place in the world he could be. After a while, Sam’s right hand comes to rest on Dean’s hip, Priestly’s left arm is slung over his twin’s chest, and his right begins to card the strands of Sam’s longer hair.
The gray cloud overhead begins to drift, and Sam feels a weight in the room go with it. Dean’s breathe is warm against his neck and Priestly’s fingers in his hair are lulling him back to sleep.
In half an hour, Dean stops crying.
Ten minutes after that, Sam and Priestly fall back asleep.
*****
“Pull!”
The license plate catches the light as it flies in the air, glinting in the sun. It soars, unnaturally, arching over the tree line until a loud shots rings out. The thin piece of metal flinches when the bullet tears through it, and seems to pause in midair before plummeting into a freefall.
Before it can even hit the ground, Sam yells again, “Pull!”
Priestly’s eyes flash once more as he grips another plate with his mind and sends it flying into the sky.
Sam actually laughs as he lets loose another shot.
Dean sits on the steps of the back porch, watching, a cup of coffee in his hands. His brain is muddled and a dark cloud hangs just over his shoulders, but as he gazes on his brothers, playing, he smiles.
“He’s getting better,” a voice says from behind him.
Dean glances over his shoulder to see Bobby leaning against the doorframe, watching the boys in his scrap yard. He’s got a twin mug in his hands and a sharp look in his eye. He’s watching Sam and Dean intently, as if cataloging their movements for later analyses and dissection.
“Which one?” Dean asks, though he already knows the answer.
“Your double,” he says, sliding his eyes over to Dean and giving him a very pointed look. There’s a question in those eyes, and Dean feels a cold feeling start to creep up his spine.
“I find it… interesting,” he starts slowly, “that Priestly has displayed so much power… and you haven’t.”
“What do you, uh…” Dean flounders.
“I’m not stupid, boy,” Bobby drawls leisurely, pausing to take a sip from his mug. “I know you two have some sort of… “psychic connection”, but Priestly also has telekinesis. So I’ve just been wondering… what it is you can do.”
The coffee feels suddenly cold in Dean’s hands. A cool morning breeze tickles the back of his neck and he shivers. His shoulders hunch up against the cold, and his eyes fall away from the old hunter, as if afraid that Bobby will discover the truth if he stares into Dean’s eyes hard enough.
Behind him, Bobby sighs, an unexpected noise. “Look, Dean,” he says, voice soft, “I know you’re afraid I’m gonna find out there’s more to you than I thought, and that it’ll change things between us; change you as a hunter, but just you remember one thing: I stood by you boys when Sam started having visions. I didn’t turn tail or put a gun on you then. So why the hell would I do it now?”
Dean says nothing and keeps his eyes forward, his brothers’ antics muted to his ears.
“Hell, Dean,” Bobby breathes, “You boys are all the family I’ve got. Don’t you know that?”
******
Sam’s awaked for the second night in a row by the soft sound of crying. It’s easier to pull himself from sleep this time, and he crawls out of bed without thinking. He pads over to where Dean lies asleep, troubled, and finds that Priestly is already awake, and ready for him.
Dean is pulled back against his twin so that Sam can slip into the bed and curl around his brothers.
As the night before, within half an hour, everyone is back asleep.
*****
Sam returns from the shower to find a very strange scene transpiring in the bedroom. Priestly, hair mussed from sleep, dressed only in pajama pants, tattoos drastic against pale skin, crouches over Dean’s still-sleeping body.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks, running a hand through his wet hair.
“Shhh!” Priestly answers him immediately, glancing over his shoulder.
Sam clamps his mouth shut and moves more quietly into the room. He struggles to stay silent, however, when he gets a look at Dean. Priestly is diligently applying a coat of mascara to Dean’s lashes. His face is set in determination, moving without noise when he smudges on eyeliner and then some purple lipstick.
“I think I have some glitter somewhere,” he seems to mumble to himself.
Sam thinks he might die. The laughter bubbles inside him, threatening to explode, but he needs Priestly to finish, so he can take a few pictures with his phone. You know, for blackmail.
“There,” Priestly whispers after a few more minutes, sitting back on his heels, observing his work. “Doesn’t he look pretty?”
Sam snaps a picture.
*****
The fight in the scrap yard about an hour later is like something out of a comic book.
When Dean discovers his makeover, he lets loose a string of curses that startle the birds from the telephone wires outside, scattering them into the sky. He tears through the house like a wild, rabid thing, searching for the brother he intends to maim.
He finds him in the scrap yard, along with Sam, laughing amongst the ruined license plates. He lets out a terrible snarl and barrels towards Priestly, fists balled and shoulders hunched in a charge.
Sam jumps and dashes out of the way of the runaway train, but Priestly seems rooted to the spot. His eyes are wide and shocked. Dean closes in, seconds from a tackle. He can hear Bobby yelling something from the porch behind him, but he doesn’t stop to sift through the noise. He jumps, a few feet from his twin, intent on knocking him to the ground and pummeling him silly.
He’s mid-leap when Priestly seems to snap back into the world. The pink-haired boy’s eyes flash and he throws up his hands. Dean feels himself collide with something solid and invisible.
“Dean, what the hell?” Priestly says, a single eyebrow raised, looking down at his brother in confusion.
“The face,” Dean snarls, pointing a finger at the smudged makeup all over his skin, “is off limits!”
Despite the previous attack, Priestly smiles and drops his hands. “You don’t like your makeover?”
Dean yells something unintelligible and leaps at his twin, the force field having been discarded. He tackles Priestly around the middle like a football player and slams the both of them into the ground.
Priestly lets out a grunt as he collides with the hard-packed earth, the weight of Dean pushing all the air from his lungs. His eyes flutter briefly, then blow wide, bright green and angry.
Dean feels a strange sensation in his stomach and suddenly he’s flying backwards, an invisible hand throwing him like he weighs nothing. He hits the ground with a thick whump. His back lets out a resentful cry and begins to throb, but Dean is already back on his feet. His indignation at being used as a human palette has been replaced with real anger. It springs up from somewhere deep in his gut, exploding when Priestly uses his powers.
The rage flares up, irrational and hot, and he feels an electric charge flow through his skin. Voices start seeping into the corners of his mind, and he doesn’t think to shut them out. His eyes feel hot in his head.
“Dean?” a far off voice calls.
The whispers nag at him, prodding him, filling up his head. They’re full of energy, the power coiling inside him, building. Dean feels the electric current ripple again through his skin, and it’s like a light bulb goes on in his head.
His body seeming to move on its own accord, Dean turns to his side, irrational anger still burning, and picks up half a crushed car like it ways nothing.
He thinks he hears someone yell when he throws it, but he isn’t sure. He isn’t really sure about anything right now, because the voices inside him, driving him, filling him with unnatural strength, seem to have their own plans.
He barely registers his target, his twin brother. The foreign feelings inside him cloud over his vision and judgment, and he can only sit back as others, the dead, flail his body about like a cheap puppet.
Priestly screams at him in muted tones as he grabs the projectile in a mental grip and tosses it overhead, flinching when the car comes down hard on another one behind him.
Dean growls low and loud and his eyes feel like they’re going to set the rest of his skull on fire. Anger burns bright inside his chest, but it feels so out of place, like it’s not his. Confusion starts seeping into the edges of his mind, but the voices hum louder to drown in out.
Fear grips Dean. Pure fear. Fear that the things in his head are going to kill everyone around him.
He screams suddenly, grabbing his crowded head in his hands. Tears are streaming down his cheeks in waves. He feels like he’s about to explode.
So when something hard and solid hits him in the back of the head, sending him into peaceful black, Dean can only be thankful.
*****
When Dean comes to, he finds himself tied to a chair in the middle of Bobby’s living room. There’s a painful throb in the back of his head that makes his vision swim a little, but not enough to distort the ring of salt circling his chair.
“What…” he tries, his mouth feeling dry. “What happened?”
Priestly appears in front of his eyes. His twin stares down at him, a mix of horror and desperation. There are mascara tracks down his cheeks and in Dean’s muddled mind, he registers that his brother has been crying.
He tries to speak again, but a swell of lethargy washes over him and he slumps lower in the chair, as much as his binds will allow. He sees more blurred movement in the corner of his eye, and then Sam is there too, standing just behind Priestly, hands on his shoulders.
Dean’s vaguely aware that someone is missing, and speak of the devil, Bobby materializes next to him, hard faced with poorly-shielded hurt in his eyes and a shotgun in his hands.
“Bobby,” Dean breathes, hearing the plead in his voice. “What happened?”
More hurt seems to pool in the old hunters eyes and for a second, Dean sees his father instead. The vision makes his chest hurt and his whole body shudders.
“Dean?” a voice calls to him. He looks up to see Priestly take a step forward. The gun to the left of him twitches, just a little, but Priestly stands his ground. “Dean, you… you Hulked-out on us, man.” There’s uncertainty and fear in the identical eyes and it makes Dean feel like crying because he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.
“I don’t… I can’t…” he hears himself say. Hot, salty tears sting his eyes, and he begins to hyper-ventilate.
“Oh, Dean,” Priestly moans, mirrored tears starting to run down his face. “Bobby,” he says, almost choking on the name, “can you… can you give us a minute, please?”
The aged hunter holds fast for minute, not quite willing to give or pull his gun away. Dean can’t really blame him. Bobby’d seen Sam possessed before. The famed Winchesters were far from immune to the whims of devils.
But eventually, the tired old man breaks, giving into the faith he has in his surrogate sons. The shotgun turns its deadly gaze away from Dean, and follows Bobby into the kitchen.
As soon as the man is out of the room, Priestly drops to his knees in front of Dean, scattering the salt line. His eyes glow with power and he shreds the thick ropes restraining Dean with pure force of will.
The moment Dean is free, he falls from the chair and into Priestly’s arms. He has just enough strength to reach out for Sam’s hand, pulling him to the floor also. Piled on the ground, they hold fast to each other, all they have left in the world, and just breathe each other in.
The moment Priestly kisses the side of his face, Dean’s brain seems to unlock and it all comes tumbling out.
“Oh God, oh God… I can’t control it,” he sobs into his brothers’ shoulders, more terrified than he has ever been in his entire life. “I can’t. They just... they get in there and… and they mess with my head… my emotions…” A terrible shudder passes through Dean’s body. “Oh God, I could have killed you! I almost killed you!” He pulls away suddenly and pitches forward, slamming his fists into the floor with shattering force.
To their credit, neither Sam nor Priestly flinches. Instead, they watch him with a look of helplessness.
“What’s happening to me?” Dean sobs, staring at his perfectly intact hands, and the craters they have made in the floor.
Sam shuffles forward awkwardly on his knees. He places a hand against Dean’s neck, letting his thumb rub soothing circles against the hot skin. “I think,” he starts slowly, glancing at Priestly before continuing, “that your powers are accelerating too fast for you to adjust.”
“Huh?” Dean manages when Sam pulls his gaze up by his chin.
“I could be wrong, but,” a ridiculous blush suddenly bursts in Sam’s cheeks, “ever since you two started… you know… your abilities seem to have been growing in power.”
Priestly’s brow furrows, but he nods in ascension. “Now that you’ve said, I know exactly what you mean. I guess I just thought it was natural progression, but my powers did seem to get pretty jazzed up after the initial mattress dance.”
Sam shudders exaggeratedly. “Oh God,” he groans before he can stop himself. “I’m going to need so much therapy.”
Dean actually laughs, a loud bark that breaks some stiff thing hanging over their heads. He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand and sighs.
Before he can speak, Priestly leans in and kisses his lips gently. “Don’t worry,” he breathes into his face, eyes tired but resolute, “we’ll figure this out. We’ll find a way to help you. We’ll find a way to get control over your powers.” Priestly kisses him again, as if in emphasis, and Sam pulls Dean off the floor, hands strong on his shoulders.
I hope so, Dean thinks to himself as the three of them file out of the living room in search of Bobby, because next time, I might just kill us all.
*****
To be continued…
’Verse: Lost and Found
Author: LadyMacbeth
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG13 (for some cussin’ and some kissin’)
Word Count: 2931
Disclaimer: “Supernatural” and all its characters belong to the genius that is Eric Kripke. I make no profit.
Summary: Missouri reveals a secret to the boys that send them on a journey to Santa Cruz where they find a brother they never knew and an even darker revelation that none of them saw coming.
The story so far:
1. Santa Cruz
2. The Road to Missouri
3. Revelations
4. Look Back, Leap Forward
5. Second Sight
6. Fury and Fitchburg
7. Conjoined
8. Distant Voices
9. The Warning
10. Wrought Asunder
11. Family Ties
12. Black Dog
*****
It’s three days after the black dog hunt when Dean’s mask finally cracks.
It’s just after two in the morning, back at Bobby’s place when Sam finds himself suddenly and unexplainably awake. He’s staring at the dark ceiling with no idea of how he moved from a blissfully dreamless sleep to this. He lays there for several minutes, trying to pinpoint what it is that roused him, when he hears it.
The noise is barely audible above his own breathing. It’s soft and shapeless, hovering above the room like a gray cloud. It’s floating, just above Sam’s reach, without an apparent origin. It’s like a spirit, stuck between astral planes, pleading with words Sam can’t understand. He squints harder at the ceiling, no longer sure whether or not he’s really awake, or still dreaming. He’s bracing himself, waiting for the image of a blonde in a white nightgown to pin herself above him. He’s waiting for her to stare down at him with mournful, accusing eyes; waiting for her to ignite.
Instead, he traces the noise to the bed beside him. The realization that it’s coming from Dean and that the sound is crying hits him all at once, right in the chest. He feels the blood rush out of his body, somewhere, somehow, when he turns his head to the left, and strains his eyes in the dark.
A sliver of moonlight slices across the room, arching across Priestly’s back as he leans over his twin’s turbulent, sleeping form. Dean is sobbing unconsciously, his body trembling, like tiny earthquakes are trickling out of his head and into his blood. His face is twisted into something pained and grotesque, but young and afraid, all at the same time. Priestly is watching his twin silently, tears rolling freely down his cheeks.
“Nightmares,” he breathes, speaking to Sam though he doesn’t take his eyes from Dean. “I don’t want to wake him. The shock…” he trails off, still watching. He’s almost a silhouette against the moonlight, the blue snaking around his shoulder and illuminating Dean’s face.
“What do we do?” Sam whispers, propping himself on an elbow while his heart rips in two.
Priestly doesn’t answer him right away. He continues to watch Dean cry in his sleep; continues to run a hand through the short cropped hair. Sam begins to think there will be no answer when Priestly suddenly jerks his head. It takes Sam a second to understand the motion, but he’s already moving, climbing out of his own bed while Priestly pulls Dean’s limp body towards him, making room.
Sam slides in next to Dean, face forward as Priestly spoons in behind him. Dean is in the middle, pinned between his brothers; the safest place in the world he could be. After a while, Sam’s right hand comes to rest on Dean’s hip, Priestly’s left arm is slung over his twin’s chest, and his right begins to card the strands of Sam’s longer hair.
The gray cloud overhead begins to drift, and Sam feels a weight in the room go with it. Dean’s breathe is warm against his neck and Priestly’s fingers in his hair are lulling him back to sleep.
In half an hour, Dean stops crying.
Ten minutes after that, Sam and Priestly fall back asleep.
*****
“Pull!”
The license plate catches the light as it flies in the air, glinting in the sun. It soars, unnaturally, arching over the tree line until a loud shots rings out. The thin piece of metal flinches when the bullet tears through it, and seems to pause in midair before plummeting into a freefall.
Before it can even hit the ground, Sam yells again, “Pull!”
Priestly’s eyes flash once more as he grips another plate with his mind and sends it flying into the sky.
Sam actually laughs as he lets loose another shot.
Dean sits on the steps of the back porch, watching, a cup of coffee in his hands. His brain is muddled and a dark cloud hangs just over his shoulders, but as he gazes on his brothers, playing, he smiles.
“He’s getting better,” a voice says from behind him.
Dean glances over his shoulder to see Bobby leaning against the doorframe, watching the boys in his scrap yard. He’s got a twin mug in his hands and a sharp look in his eye. He’s watching Sam and Dean intently, as if cataloging their movements for later analyses and dissection.
“Which one?” Dean asks, though he already knows the answer.
“Your double,” he says, sliding his eyes over to Dean and giving him a very pointed look. There’s a question in those eyes, and Dean feels a cold feeling start to creep up his spine.
“I find it… interesting,” he starts slowly, “that Priestly has displayed so much power… and you haven’t.”
“What do you, uh…” Dean flounders.
“I’m not stupid, boy,” Bobby drawls leisurely, pausing to take a sip from his mug. “I know you two have some sort of… “psychic connection”, but Priestly also has telekinesis. So I’ve just been wondering… what it is you can do.”
The coffee feels suddenly cold in Dean’s hands. A cool morning breeze tickles the back of his neck and he shivers. His shoulders hunch up against the cold, and his eyes fall away from the old hunter, as if afraid that Bobby will discover the truth if he stares into Dean’s eyes hard enough.
Behind him, Bobby sighs, an unexpected noise. “Look, Dean,” he says, voice soft, “I know you’re afraid I’m gonna find out there’s more to you than I thought, and that it’ll change things between us; change you as a hunter, but just you remember one thing: I stood by you boys when Sam started having visions. I didn’t turn tail or put a gun on you then. So why the hell would I do it now?”
Dean says nothing and keeps his eyes forward, his brothers’ antics muted to his ears.
“Hell, Dean,” Bobby breathes, “You boys are all the family I’ve got. Don’t you know that?”
******
Sam’s awaked for the second night in a row by the soft sound of crying. It’s easier to pull himself from sleep this time, and he crawls out of bed without thinking. He pads over to where Dean lies asleep, troubled, and finds that Priestly is already awake, and ready for him.
Dean is pulled back against his twin so that Sam can slip into the bed and curl around his brothers.
As the night before, within half an hour, everyone is back asleep.
*****
Sam returns from the shower to find a very strange scene transpiring in the bedroom. Priestly, hair mussed from sleep, dressed only in pajama pants, tattoos drastic against pale skin, crouches over Dean’s still-sleeping body.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks, running a hand through his wet hair.
“Shhh!” Priestly answers him immediately, glancing over his shoulder.
Sam clamps his mouth shut and moves more quietly into the room. He struggles to stay silent, however, when he gets a look at Dean. Priestly is diligently applying a coat of mascara to Dean’s lashes. His face is set in determination, moving without noise when he smudges on eyeliner and then some purple lipstick.
“I think I have some glitter somewhere,” he seems to mumble to himself.
Sam thinks he might die. The laughter bubbles inside him, threatening to explode, but he needs Priestly to finish, so he can take a few pictures with his phone. You know, for blackmail.
“There,” Priestly whispers after a few more minutes, sitting back on his heels, observing his work. “Doesn’t he look pretty?”
Sam snaps a picture.
*****
The fight in the scrap yard about an hour later is like something out of a comic book.
When Dean discovers his makeover, he lets loose a string of curses that startle the birds from the telephone wires outside, scattering them into the sky. He tears through the house like a wild, rabid thing, searching for the brother he intends to maim.
He finds him in the scrap yard, along with Sam, laughing amongst the ruined license plates. He lets out a terrible snarl and barrels towards Priestly, fists balled and shoulders hunched in a charge.
Sam jumps and dashes out of the way of the runaway train, but Priestly seems rooted to the spot. His eyes are wide and shocked. Dean closes in, seconds from a tackle. He can hear Bobby yelling something from the porch behind him, but he doesn’t stop to sift through the noise. He jumps, a few feet from his twin, intent on knocking him to the ground and pummeling him silly.
He’s mid-leap when Priestly seems to snap back into the world. The pink-haired boy’s eyes flash and he throws up his hands. Dean feels himself collide with something solid and invisible.
“Dean, what the hell?” Priestly says, a single eyebrow raised, looking down at his brother in confusion.
“The face,” Dean snarls, pointing a finger at the smudged makeup all over his skin, “is off limits!”
Despite the previous attack, Priestly smiles and drops his hands. “You don’t like your makeover?”
Dean yells something unintelligible and leaps at his twin, the force field having been discarded. He tackles Priestly around the middle like a football player and slams the both of them into the ground.
Priestly lets out a grunt as he collides with the hard-packed earth, the weight of Dean pushing all the air from his lungs. His eyes flutter briefly, then blow wide, bright green and angry.
Dean feels a strange sensation in his stomach and suddenly he’s flying backwards, an invisible hand throwing him like he weighs nothing. He hits the ground with a thick whump. His back lets out a resentful cry and begins to throb, but Dean is already back on his feet. His indignation at being used as a human palette has been replaced with real anger. It springs up from somewhere deep in his gut, exploding when Priestly uses his powers.
The rage flares up, irrational and hot, and he feels an electric charge flow through his skin. Voices start seeping into the corners of his mind, and he doesn’t think to shut them out. His eyes feel hot in his head.
“Dean?” a far off voice calls.
The whispers nag at him, prodding him, filling up his head. They’re full of energy, the power coiling inside him, building. Dean feels the electric current ripple again through his skin, and it’s like a light bulb goes on in his head.
His body seeming to move on its own accord, Dean turns to his side, irrational anger still burning, and picks up half a crushed car like it ways nothing.
He thinks he hears someone yell when he throws it, but he isn’t sure. He isn’t really sure about anything right now, because the voices inside him, driving him, filling him with unnatural strength, seem to have their own plans.
He barely registers his target, his twin brother. The foreign feelings inside him cloud over his vision and judgment, and he can only sit back as others, the dead, flail his body about like a cheap puppet.
Priestly screams at him in muted tones as he grabs the projectile in a mental grip and tosses it overhead, flinching when the car comes down hard on another one behind him.
Dean growls low and loud and his eyes feel like they’re going to set the rest of his skull on fire. Anger burns bright inside his chest, but it feels so out of place, like it’s not his. Confusion starts seeping into the edges of his mind, but the voices hum louder to drown in out.
Fear grips Dean. Pure fear. Fear that the things in his head are going to kill everyone around him.
He screams suddenly, grabbing his crowded head in his hands. Tears are streaming down his cheeks in waves. He feels like he’s about to explode.
So when something hard and solid hits him in the back of the head, sending him into peaceful black, Dean can only be thankful.
*****
When Dean comes to, he finds himself tied to a chair in the middle of Bobby’s living room. There’s a painful throb in the back of his head that makes his vision swim a little, but not enough to distort the ring of salt circling his chair.
“What…” he tries, his mouth feeling dry. “What happened?”
Priestly appears in front of his eyes. His twin stares down at him, a mix of horror and desperation. There are mascara tracks down his cheeks and in Dean’s muddled mind, he registers that his brother has been crying.
He tries to speak again, but a swell of lethargy washes over him and he slumps lower in the chair, as much as his binds will allow. He sees more blurred movement in the corner of his eye, and then Sam is there too, standing just behind Priestly, hands on his shoulders.
Dean’s vaguely aware that someone is missing, and speak of the devil, Bobby materializes next to him, hard faced with poorly-shielded hurt in his eyes and a shotgun in his hands.
“Bobby,” Dean breathes, hearing the plead in his voice. “What happened?”
More hurt seems to pool in the old hunters eyes and for a second, Dean sees his father instead. The vision makes his chest hurt and his whole body shudders.
“Dean?” a voice calls to him. He looks up to see Priestly take a step forward. The gun to the left of him twitches, just a little, but Priestly stands his ground. “Dean, you… you Hulked-out on us, man.” There’s uncertainty and fear in the identical eyes and it makes Dean feel like crying because he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.
“I don’t… I can’t…” he hears himself say. Hot, salty tears sting his eyes, and he begins to hyper-ventilate.
“Oh, Dean,” Priestly moans, mirrored tears starting to run down his face. “Bobby,” he says, almost choking on the name, “can you… can you give us a minute, please?”
The aged hunter holds fast for minute, not quite willing to give or pull his gun away. Dean can’t really blame him. Bobby’d seen Sam possessed before. The famed Winchesters were far from immune to the whims of devils.
But eventually, the tired old man breaks, giving into the faith he has in his surrogate sons. The shotgun turns its deadly gaze away from Dean, and follows Bobby into the kitchen.
As soon as the man is out of the room, Priestly drops to his knees in front of Dean, scattering the salt line. His eyes glow with power and he shreds the thick ropes restraining Dean with pure force of will.
The moment Dean is free, he falls from the chair and into Priestly’s arms. He has just enough strength to reach out for Sam’s hand, pulling him to the floor also. Piled on the ground, they hold fast to each other, all they have left in the world, and just breathe each other in.
The moment Priestly kisses the side of his face, Dean’s brain seems to unlock and it all comes tumbling out.
“Oh God, oh God… I can’t control it,” he sobs into his brothers’ shoulders, more terrified than he has ever been in his entire life. “I can’t. They just... they get in there and… and they mess with my head… my emotions…” A terrible shudder passes through Dean’s body. “Oh God, I could have killed you! I almost killed you!” He pulls away suddenly and pitches forward, slamming his fists into the floor with shattering force.
To their credit, neither Sam nor Priestly flinches. Instead, they watch him with a look of helplessness.
“What’s happening to me?” Dean sobs, staring at his perfectly intact hands, and the craters they have made in the floor.
Sam shuffles forward awkwardly on his knees. He places a hand against Dean’s neck, letting his thumb rub soothing circles against the hot skin. “I think,” he starts slowly, glancing at Priestly before continuing, “that your powers are accelerating too fast for you to adjust.”
“Huh?” Dean manages when Sam pulls his gaze up by his chin.
“I could be wrong, but,” a ridiculous blush suddenly bursts in Sam’s cheeks, “ever since you two started… you know… your abilities seem to have been growing in power.”
Priestly’s brow furrows, but he nods in ascension. “Now that you’ve said, I know exactly what you mean. I guess I just thought it was natural progression, but my powers did seem to get pretty jazzed up after the initial mattress dance.”
Sam shudders exaggeratedly. “Oh God,” he groans before he can stop himself. “I’m going to need so much therapy.”
Dean actually laughs, a loud bark that breaks some stiff thing hanging over their heads. He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand and sighs.
Before he can speak, Priestly leans in and kisses his lips gently. “Don’t worry,” he breathes into his face, eyes tired but resolute, “we’ll figure this out. We’ll find a way to help you. We’ll find a way to get control over your powers.” Priestly kisses him again, as if in emphasis, and Sam pulls Dean off the floor, hands strong on his shoulders.
I hope so, Dean thinks to himself as the three of them file out of the living room in search of Bobby, because next time, I might just kill us all.
*****
To be continued…