Chapter 4: Phone Calls (part 2)
Lawrence, Kansas - November 1983
Chalendra arrives, a flurry of feathers and something as close to panic as an angel is capable of, perhaps ten yards from where her former garrison leader and grace-mate communicated her last message. It had been mostly just images with a few words that sounded tinny in Chal’s head. A baby and a small child, “vessels”, a demon whom Chal recognized immediately even without the name affixed by Raquel’s panic: “Azazel”, temporary king of Hell. Then there was the pain that radiated into the bond that the two angels shared. Piecing together what is happening, what must have befallen Raquel, is not difficult. Still, Chal is disoriented anyway, protection instinct burning inside her, making her landing inaccurate. It is this inaccuracy that saves her.
The lamplights are out along the street but there is light from a fire burning in a circle. Chal can smell the holy oil and with her keen eyes, she sees her fallen comrade, the one who had once told her that the only true autonomy came from serving others, in a limp pile inside the fire.
She is far enough away that the demons don’t notice her. She has enough time to take them in, two alive, three visible non-viable vessels. In one arm Azazel holds a screaming infant. His other hand wields an angel blade, most likely the one that struck down Raquel. She can see his true form, instinctively recoils from the black swirling mass of evil behind his human form.
Chalendra does not fear death, but she does fear failure. She has no time to mourn the loss of her grace-mate and mentor, not if she wants to rescue the human.
She spreads her wings and aims for the leader of Hell, swoops not unlike a raptor and plucks the child from his arms. Azazel is fast for a demon, begins to move before he should realize what’s happening, but he is still no match for angel flight speed. In another beat of his vessel’s heart, she is a world away, a warm chalet in a lonely mountain.
Her breathing is ragged from fear and exertion. The sound of it gets drowned by the baby’s cries. She looks down at the vessel for Lucifer and examines him. She presses a hand to his chest, uses her grace to scan him for any signs of damage. He isn’t injured, but he is still upset, round face red and wet. She wipes at his cheeks with her robe.
She wonders that she was the only one summoned by Raquel’s cry of distress. It occurs to her then that she did notice some sigils as well in the ring of holy fire. It could be that they muzzled her, that the only reason she was able to call out at all was because of the intertwining of their grace. “Raquel,” she sighs, grace heavy and sad in her chest.
Then, the baby grabs her hair and yanks. She leans back, but the small child is amazingly strong. She has to uncurl his little fist from around the strand. “You must not pull on my hair, little vessel,” she warns. Her admonition does no good because his other hand has reached out to grab more, and this fistful becomes a mouthful. “You certainly must not eat my hair.”
With a mouthful of hair, though, the child quiets. Its eyes are still shiny with tears, but the noise and the diaphragm spasms have stopped. She smiles. “Hair is not a human food though I believe you do digest quite a bit in your short life span.”
He takes this trivia tidbit like everything else, with interest.
The chalet smells of wood and pine. Chal carries the baby to a rocking chair and they sit together, the baby gnawing on her hair and her pondering the situation.
This vessel, while still very small, will one day house Lucifer in much the same way that the human holding the evil thing that calls itself Azazel did. She can’t imagine what holding something so immense and powerful will do to such a small human. Surely, he’ll grow, but even then, he looks so vulnerable now.
“You are pivotal in the apocalypse. Both demon and angelkind require your body and soul for the reincarnation of Lucifer.”
The baby chews.
“You seem to desire sustenance,” she says. Really though, she requires some time to think about the actions she must take, to figure out how much she wants angels to know about the little human. She finds him real food, baby food, and she smiles as he slurps it, half down his throat and half down his pajamas.
Flint, Michigan - May 1999
It isn’t until after dinner while Sam is browsing the internet that Dean calls back.
“Hey!” Sam greets.
“Hey,” says Dean.
“I was in class.”
“I was interviewing a witness.”
Sam isn’t sure which sounds worse. “Did you get the info you needed?”
“Kind of. I have no idea what Jack’s is and neither did my witness.”
“Jack’s?”
“Yeah, some place, thinking maybe it’s a bar.”
“What city are you in?” asks Sam.
“Westbrook, Maine.”
“One sec. I’ll check the net for it.” Sam thrills at the opportunity to be helpful for Dean. He pulls up the search engine and types in “Jack’s and “Westbrook, Maine.” “Yeah, it’s a bar on Beechwood and Bridge.”
“Hey, is it possible to see if there’s been any police involvement there recently?”
“If it made the papers, definitely. Hold on.” It’s too easy for Sam to lose himself in the net. It’s like swimming, immersing himself completely in all that knowledge, and sometimes he has to remember to come up for air. “Yeah, looks like. A murder outside the club.”
“Outside of it?”
“That’s what the article says.” Sam can practically hear the wheels in Dean’s brain turning. He reads aloud the small article in its entirety. “Doesn’t fit?” he asks.
“Maybe,” says Dean. “That’s really helpful, Sam. Thanks.”
The praise is a pleasant touch on his ear. “No problem.”
“It’s amazing how quick you can find all that out. You can find anything on the internet, huh? Heh. I bet you could find assloads of porn.” Sam, wisely, stays silent, but it makes no difference because a lack of response is as much as an admission. “You look at porn on the net, Sammy?”
Damn Dean for making him blush from so many states away. He glares at the screen, but he’s picturing Dean’s smirk, knows that it’s there behind the phone line. Dean just confirms it when he laughs and Sam wants to hang up, but doesn’t.
“Hm,” hums Dean. “What gets Sam Ackles off?”
Sam’s dick responds, just a pulse of attention, to the question much faster than his lips. Dean’s waiting this time, patience seemingly infinite when the reward is Sam’s embarrassment. “Normal stuff.”
“What’s normal?”
This is torture, slow painful death by humiliation. He doesn’t know that if he hangs up Dean will call back, but the temptation is there. Instead, he whines, “Dean!” like a parent would chastise a child for using a swear word.
“Come on, Sam, there’s a whole world of porn out there. No such thing as normal.”
Sam glances at his door, then the ceiling, imagining, incorrectly, that Chal is sitting on the other side of the wall listening. “Hold on,” he tells Dean. He rises from his computer chair, can’t believe that he is, and heads outside. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say (not the truth in a million years), but he knows whatever he does say he doesn’t want Chal to overhear. Not even the rain, just a drizzle, which Sam spies through the half round window built into the front door, keeps him inside
Everything smells like rain, the lethargic wetness making the leaves droop and the grass slosh under his socked feet. Sam hadn’t wanted to stop for shoes; worried that the time he’s wasting getting to privacy is too long and Dean will lose interest, change the question, because even though it’s humiliating and he’d wanted Dean to stop, he also wanted him to continue, to press the issue until he has no choice but to confess.
Sam climbs into the unlocked Ram and says into the phone, “back.”
“Where’d you go?” asks Dean.
“Truck.”
“Aha.” Dean’s voice, amused, puts Sam in his place, the lame younger kid too embarrassed to talk about sex within earshot of his mommy. “Private. So?”
“So, normal. One girl, one guy, in and out motion, the usual,” he lies. How can he mention getting off to man-on-man action to Dean, so ruggedly, unflinchingly, exasperatingly macho that he could be a cover model for Field and Stream? He waits for Dean to insist he give a better answer, because he’s sure that’s what’s coming. Instead, the line stays quiet. Sam offers, “There may be more of an emphasis on blowjobs,” and his hand finds his cheek, cools it with icy fingers.
“What do you like about the blowjobs?” asks Dean.
It’s a strange question, almost feels rhetorical (like asking what someone likes about being happy) but then Sam figures that Dean probably means what he likes in a scene that has blowjobs. “Uh, I guess I like their eyes. You know, when they’re looking up while they do it.”
Dean sighs and again Sam’s dick lurches, just a twinge to let him know that it’s still there and can be of use at any moment should Sam require it. “Is it because they’re down below, looking up? Like, they’re doing it all for you? Worshipping your cock and doing it to please you?”
Insta-rection. That’s what Lucas, a guy he’d hung out with in California, called it when he’d see a hot girl and get instantly hard. Well, now Sam is portraying the definition as surely as a dictionary entry and Lucas would find it all kinds of funny that he’s doing it because of a guy. Sam is so glad he’d gone to the car; maybe he’d instinctively known where Dean’s mind would go, how his words that had only hinted before would become overt, molesting his ear.
“Yeah.” The word sounds strangled from him.
“That’s a great feeling, isn’t it? Do you like having power over them?”
Sam doesn’t know if he likes it because he’s never had power over anyone, especially in the sexual sense, but he likes Dean’s voice like this, deeper and almost scripted, like he’s sharing details of a recurring dream. If it turns Dean on, then it turns Sam on too, and that is why he says yes. It’s not because he’s had power fantasies, he hasn’t, or because he knows that’s something he likes from personal experience, he doesn’t, but because Dean wants him to say yes.
“I bet the girls like that. Probably gets them all wet, having you take control of them like that.”
Sam’s hand is roving and it shouldn’t be. He’s in Chal’s truck, not his bed, and though his breath and the rain outside have fogged up the windows, they’re still glass, still transparent. Here Dean is talking about control while Sam is trying to keep from publically exposing himself. Sam wants to hang up, wants to go hide in the shower and jerk off imagining Dean below him, eyes glittering, lustful emeralds, as Sam slides into his mouth. “I should go,” says Sam, because he doesn’t know what Dean wants from him. Is he talking dirty because he really does want to have phone sex? Is it all a game for Dean? See if he can make the desperate teenager touch himself on the phone?
Surprisingly, Dean chuckles. “Okay, I’ll stop.”
Please don’t, Sam’s mind begs, but Dean isn’t telepathic, so he changes his voice, changes topics, and Sam wants to smack himself on the forehead for making it stop. “I should probably be checking out that bar that you found. Thanks for that again, by the way. Gonna make it a lot easier to put the pieces together.”
Sam doesn’t speak.
Dean resumes, “So, would it be cool if I asked you to look up some more stuff? Not now, but in the future?”
“Sure.”
“Awesome. Well, I guess I’ll go get to saving people. Bye, Sammy.”
“Goodbye, Dean.”
Sam waits for Dean to end the call then stares at the numbers on the telephone. Eighteen minutes and forty seven seconds they’d been talking. Dean drove Sam crazy in less than twenty minutes.
Cujo likes the boxes. She stands, paws grabbing the side of the boxes, and looks inside with unfettered excitement at each newspaper-wrapped trinket that Sam puts inside. Objects become new to the waheela just by the change in location and she investigates each with her nose, olfactory senses creating a blueprint of the contents of each ball of paper. Sam laughs at her. It’s impossible not to find the fluffy white ball of curiosity adorable.
Chal looks up from her soldering, precise tool poised in midair over a relic she’s been tweaking. She observes the scene and laughs. “Jo is ready to move!”
“Can’t say I blame her,” says Sam.
Chal shakes her head. “I know. No more cold states for you.”
“That’d be nice,” says Sam. He hasn’t told her that he plans to leave on his birthday, and only in part because he doesn’t know how exactly he’s going to accomplish that. He’s mostly worried about how hard she’s going to take it. They’ve always been a duo, united against the world, and while that’s the reason why he needs out ASAP, he knows she’ll have a hard time adjusting. “The only snow I want to see fall from now on is in It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“John loves snow,” says Chal.
For a second, Sam debates whether the excited puppy is cuter or his substitute mother. “Does he?” asks Sam. “What else does John like?” He says John in a lovey, sing-song voice.
Oblivious to his teasing, Chal tilts her head to the side and considers the, no doubt, long list of things she knows about John Winchester.
“Chal, I was teasing you.”
She looks confused. “About John?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Her hands continue their work on the relic. After a minute passes, she speaks again. “He likes biographies. I’ve made a few recommendations.”
Helen Forrest’s question, “How deep is the ocean?” resonates from the stereo, just background noise that Sam barely notices. He’s taping the Ann Arbor News around a statue of a fat squirrel and smiling at the lovesick fallen angel.
“He also likes baseball. I haven’t been to a game since we were in Nevada.”
“Chal, I don’t think pee-wee baseball counts.”
She shrugs. “You played very well for a child; I didn’t find watching the game less entertaining for your ages.”
A new sound fills the room, the insistent ring tone of the house phone. Sam sees the joy in her face, knows that she’s excited that it’s most likely John calling. She sets the soldering iron down carefully in its holder before rushing to answer.
Sam shakes his head, then crushes a ball of newspaper and chucks it at Cujo’s head. It bounces off the fluff and Cujo happily chases it.
It’s been four days since the incident with the blowjob interrogation and Dean is relieved as hell to see the kid’s name in the little phone window indicating an incoming call. He was sure he’d scared the brat off with the way he’d been going on about porn and control and shit that he shouldn’t have been. He’d been frisky that day and had gotten carried away, but Sam is a genuinely cool guy and it would really have sucked to run him off for good. He presses the green button on his cell phone and promises himself to be on his best behavior, regardless of whatever gutter topics flit through his mind.
“Sammy!” he calls.
“Hey, Dean. You free to talk?”
“Oh man, you have no idea how free I am. Sittin’ in front of a Satanic church and waiting for something “suspicious.” Do you have any idea how many suspicious people go in and out of Satanic churches?”
Sam laughs warmly. “Probably a lot.”
“Damn right a lot.” Dean can’t help smiling. He’s glad that Sam is still talking to him, forgiving his lapse of perviness. “What’s going on in Michigan?”
“Just finished the first day of the last week of finals.”
“All right! Then you’re out in the Texas sun!”
“Your dad told you, huh?”
“Yeah, he said that Chal does whatever you want.”
“That’s not true.”
Dean want to yank back the words because Sam sounds mad already, and it probably wasn’t something his dad planned on having Dean repeat to Sam. “Nah,” he tries to sound casual. “That’s just how it is to stick up his ass John Winchester. I’m lucky if he lets me take a piss when we’re driving eight hours.”
“Yeah,” says Sam. “Well, it’s really important to her that we make joint decisions. It’s always been that way.”
“And she liked your idea to go to Texas, so that worked out for both of you.”
Disaster averted, Sam sounds pleased again when he next speaks, and Dean relaxes. “Yep, Cujo was helping me pack boxes.”
“Without thumbs? Impressive.”
Sam laughs. “She smelled everything thoroughly. I think she could be a drug-sniffing waheela.”
“Aha! I knew you and Chal were too relaxed! That’s how the Ackles family keeps so peace and love.”
“Peace and love? The first time we met you was on a hunt, dumbass.”
The Satanic couple entering the building are later than the others for the black mass, but that doesn’t mean that they are suspicious, even if the two take note of his car and its location across the street, and Dean might be making excuses in his head for why he isn’t getting off the phone with Sam right away. He figures the congregation of freaks can wait two damn minutes for him to finish his call.
“Dude, only people smoking a hell of a lot of pot would think that being vegetarian,” he puts an added emphasis of disgust on the word, “was a good idea.”
Sam laughs again, a slight chuckle that sounds a bit evil scientist. “Yeah, and we did save the thing we were supposed to kill. Oh wait, that was you and me.”
The female half of the Satanic couple emerges from the church. Long legs on spiky black heels propel her at what they call “power walking” speed towards Dean. “Uh, Sam, shit. I have to go.” He hangs up the phone without waiting for Sam’s goodbye. He has bigger issues to deal with. He rolls down his window and sticks an elbow out, wants to look relaxed though this dame is clearly not.
“Hey there,” Dean greets the woman.
Her face is all sharp features and bold makeup, might be friendly somewhere underneath the cosmetics and rage, but that isn’t the side she’s putting forward right now.
“Get the fuck off church property!” she commands. Her hands wave in the air as she speaks. Careful, Dean thinks, Your white trash is showing.
“Thought you people were all about recruiting for your dark lord?”
“You’re thinking of Christians and you’re not a recruit.”
Her hostility doesn’t bother him. Hell, Dad with a hangover is worse than this chick “Well, not with a welcome like that!” he says, smiling. He’s not sensing any conviction behind her anger, so he’s responding in kind, barely pretending to be offended.
She tilts her head, considers him with eyelids heavy with black makeup. “Who do you work for?”
Normally when people ask him that he’s in disguise - a repairman, an electrician, an insurance agent. There’s not much point to pretending that he’s a professional anything sitting in the impala in a t-shirt and jeans. “Independent contractor,” he says. It’s certainly as honest as he can get to the truth with a civilian. Of course, this chick probably isn’t a civilian, might not even be human, and if she isn’t, chances are good that she won’t know he’s a hunter for very long. “Do I have to be a CEO to sit in your parking lot?”
The Satanist chick tries not to laugh. Her voice strains to sound threatening. She says, “We don’t care much for tourists.”
“Must be why you’re not selling me postcards.”
She shakes her head with a small smile. “Just go away. Seriously, or I’ll have to call the cops.”
He acts boldly then because doing so works out well for him so often. He reaches out a hand and places it on her arm just above her elbow. “What if I want to sight see just the tour guide?”
It’s not even close to his best line but she licks her lip absent-mindedly, and the tell lets Dean know that he’s in.
“Dean?”
Sam blinks at the red digits on his clock. 4 am. He fists at his eyes with the hand not holding his cellphone, attempts to rub away the sleep.
“Hey, Sammy.”
“It’s four in the morning.” A ridiculously delayed flash of fear crosses his stomach, jolts him awake. “Are you okay?”
“I am fan-fucking-tastic, Sammy. Just needed to say congratulations!”
“Congratulations for what?”
“It’s the last day of school!”
Sam’s pleasure that Dean remembered is far, far overshadowed by annoyance. “You’re calling me at four in the morning.”
“Yes, I am!”
“I’m going back to sleep.”
“No, wait! Talk to me, Sammy!”
“Dean, I have school in like four hours!”
“Please talk to me Sam. Tell me about Nick! Tell me about Cujo! Tell me… tell me about that shit I’m not supposed to ask you about.”
Sam’s never heard Dean whine before and there’s a desperation to it that makes him think that it isn’t something that he often does. “Are you okay?” he asks again.
“I don’t want to talk about me!” Dean yells. “Just… just distract me, Sam, please.”
It doesn’t matter that he has no idea what he’s supposed to be distracting Dean from; Sam starts talking. He tells Dean about Cujo’s leash training (Chal’s idea) and the girl in his geography class who got caught cheating on her final and the books about necromancy that Chal found at a church sale and the time he bought chicken noodle soup from a vending machine and for years hadn’t been able to smell chicken broth without feeling nauseated. He hears dean laugh or grunt, know that he’s there and still listening. Dean doesn’t interrupt through his ramblings. Even with the late hour and the pressure of his bladder, it still feels good to be listened to. And Dean doesn’t know all these things, hasn’t heard Sam’s stories over and over again like Chal has.
When Sam finally winds down, mouth starting to yawn instead of forming words, Dean whispers, “Thanks, Sammy.”
“What happened?” Sam asks.
“Had to be a hunter,” Dean replies. “Had to stop them. She was nice though, under that. It wasn’t her fault what they did. Well, it was, but she didn’t know it was wrong. She’d been raised that way.”
San stomach tightens. Dean killed someone or something that his mind identified as female. “Were they hurting people?”
“Oh yeah,” Dean’s lips flutter like a horse’s, air blasting his cell’s mic.
“And now they aren’t,” Sam says, not asking.
“I guess,” Dean says with reluctance, knows where Sam is going with his point even through his drunken haze.
“Then it’s good that you were a hunter.”
Dean makes a little sob, three parts pain, one part whiskey. “I hate these ones, Sam.”
“I know,” soothes Sam, wishing that he could give the older boy a hug and offer him some comfort.
“She was so soft and sweet.”
Sam gets it then, why Dean is drunk dialing him. Dean slept with the woman he had to kill. Sam’s sure he’s never felt such misplaced jealousy before. It’s petty, envying a dead woman, and completely inappropriate to the moment, to the suffering that Dean is going through, and to the deceased.
“Her neck was ticklish. She giggled when I kissed it.” Sam doesn’t want to hear this, is about to suggest they hang up when Dean squeaks out, “I shot her in the heart.”
“Dean,” Sam breathes, sympathy stealing his air.
“Yeah, I know, I had to. Whatever. I just wish the bad guys were always bad guys, obvious ones like Darth Vader. I can’t handle it when they’re soft and sweet and good and evil at the same time.” A sniffle snitches on Dean, lets Sam know that he’s tearing up or maybe full-on crying. Then, he laughs. “Fuck whiskey, man.”
“Seems more like whiskey’s fucking you tonight.”
Dean snorts. “Yeah well, I just wanted to call and wish you good luck on your last day of school.”
Sam’s bladder is happy that the conversation is drawing to a close and so is his heart, because he can’t stand hearing Dean hurt like he is. “Thanks, Dean.”
“All right, night Danny Boy.”
“Hey, Dean.” Sam pauses, knows that what he’s thinking is really embarrassingly cheesy, and hopes that Dean’s too drunk to hold it against him. “You’re brave for helping people even when it’s hard.”
Dean doesn’t respond, just says goodnight again.
“Night, Dean,” Sam says and closes his phone. He glares at the lightening sky and the impatient clock before shutting his eyes and trying to get at least some sleep before class.
The packing officially commences, the past week merely a warm-up. Cujo is growing more uncomfortable about her environment with each wrapped piece of furniture and every stacked box. Chal has the 80’s station on and she’s singing with impressive volume, Madonna lyrics sounding way more blasphemous on the former angel’s lips. Sam has the back claw of a hammer to the wall as he pops out nails that formerly held the large gold-frame mirror and his hips shimmy slightly from side to side with the beat.
Sam laughs at her when she attempts a high note and misses it entirely. Singing was never a talent she possessed, but the lack has never hindered her attempts.
For a second, her mind calls up her dear garrison-mate Thomas, his lovely voice and his appreciation for what humans call “low-brow” humor. “I hope Thomas has had the chance to hear Madonna. He would love her.”
“Yeah?” asks Sam, encouraging her to continue. She knows that he likes to hear about heaven and its host, but the bittersweet taste that accompanies voicing those memories often deters her.
“Thomas sings bawdy songs too.”
Sam set down the hammer and the crooked thick nails, flicks off a black spot of something stuck to his hand. “Yeah, but what’s bawdy to an angel? Partridge Family jokes?”
“Angels are hardly the saints humans care to paint us as,” she reminds him. Though Chal has never met an angel that doesn’t feel superior to humankind, she’s found many that are just as flawed as the wingless mortals of Earth, just as ready to let emotions guide them to make bad choices. “I still remember his favorite; shall I?”
He cocks his head expectantly, giving tacit permission with his attentive posture.
“Oh, but it’s in Enochian.”
“So?” asks Sam. “I can understand Enochian.”
Chal can feel the guilt that leaps onto her face. “I haven’t taught you the kind of words that you would need to know to understand the song.”
“Chal!” He chides happily.
“Give me a minute to consider how it would translate. I might not be able to make it all rhyme.”
“It rhymes?” he asks while lifting three boxes into one stack near the fireplace.
“Persephone, birthing hips and curving waist
Could use more than a pomegranate to taste
No matter if called Hercules or Heracles
He was still the best upon his knees”
Sam’s laughter is immediate and intense. He actually grips the back of the sofa to stay upright. Chal’s suspicion that his reaction is less about the lyrics and more about her singing them is confirmed when he gasps out, “You know dirty limericks!”
“Angelic dirty limericks,” she corrects. The song has eight more verses, four couplets, and even she begins to laugh when she attempts to translate an Enochian word pun about testicles. It’s embarrassing for reasons that she knows are human, specifically American, but it tickles her anyway, partially because of his amusement, greater than she’s seen in years, and partially because this is an aspect of her garrison that she has never before shared with her ward. When she finishes, he claps and she covers her face with a dirty hand. “That is Thomas’s, not mine,” she reminds him.
“Then I hope to get the chance to meet Thomas someday.”
May that day never come, she thinks. Thomas never had trouble following orders, never had twinges of conscience like she had, at least none that he voiced. Thomas would not have stolen away Sam, would have left the baby crying in his crib, blood-saturated future leaking down his throat and mother burning to ashes on the ceiling. She’d let her love for humanity, let the exaggerated sense of right and wrong, compel her actions. Fifteen years later and Chal still doesn’t know whether she’d shown weakness or strength that night, can’t even say whether it was the correct choice, but she’d definitely acted with compassion and, true to her nature, given everything she had to the path she’d chosen.
They continue packing, Chal singing along with the radio and Sam occasionally chuckling and shaking his head at her, as though the song had been her invention. When the house phone rings, Cujo growls, high-pitched warble sounding dangerous to its wild ears. She wishes she could still communicate with animals, let the young thing know that the phone poses no threat. “Shh, Jo.”
“It’s just John,” says Sam. Then, his cellphone begins to ring, perky ringtone chiming from the leg pocket of his shorts. For a second, Sam and Chal exchange a worried look before hurrying to answer. It could be coincidence, a solicitor and Dean or John and a wrong number, but the Winchesters are hunting demon today and that means it’s more dangerous, more likely to be the news that someone is hurt.
Sam retrieves his cellphone and stabs at the green button. “Dean?” he asks.
He hears Chal’s formal “Collins residence” greeting from the kitchen.
“Sammy!” greets Dean, cheerful voice calming Sam immediately.
He peeks into the kitchen, sees the way that Chal sort of oozes against the house phone, the way she hangs onto every word when it’s John talking. Sam rolls his eyes. “What’s going on?” he asks. He opens the door, starts to step outside when an excited waheela nearly trips him. “Hey!” he calls to her. She hasn’t gone far, just sniffing at the flowers in the yard, as though they are the most exotic perfume ever. “Stupid mutt.”
“What did you call me?”
“Not you, dumbass, Cujo. She’s out in the yard without her leash.” Sam should go back inside and get her leash, but he’s not going to. As long as he’s out with her, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Her nose always prevents her progress anyway. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was part hound.
“I’ve got news,” says Dean enigmatically. This must be some good news; they’ve never called simultaneously before.
Sam hoists himself atop the truck’s hood. From here he can keep an eye on Cujo and the rest of the yard. Part of him is going to miss the place, but that tends to pass quickly enough. Home is where his computer is.
“You learned to read!” Sam jokes.
“I could read Latin before you learned your ABCs.”
“Hey, take your call outside!” snaps John from the background of the phone call. Sam hopes that John isn’t that grumpy to Chal. He’d liked John okay, but the guy has a higher bar to meet if he wants to date his surrogate mother.
The phone makes bumped sounds and Sam hears a door closing. There’s a wind wherever Dean is, creating a white noise in the line.
“Dad wants some privacy with Chal, you know what that means,” says Dean before cursing loudly. “Why the fuck is there a Lego on the ground?”
“You at school?” asks Sam.
After a few more interesting swear words, Dean answers. “Nah, a hotel. Some kid left a freakin’ white Lego here. They’re sharp, man!”
“I remember,” agrees Sam. He’d been pretty good about putting away his toys after playing with them, but there was always an errant block or two that missed pickup and sometimes they became found again by the flat of his foot. “Why are you walking around barefoot?”
“I’ve got socks on and I didn’t know that Dad was gonna toss me out of the room so that he can have phone sex with your mom.”
“So, about your news…”
Dean laughs. “That’s my boy, always dodging the sex talk.”
“When it’s about my mom, yeah.”
“And when it’s about you,” points out Dean.
Sam can’t help but feel this is not a good time to discuss their borderline phone sex, nonetheless, he feels the need to defend himself. “Maybe I’m just not much of a talker.”
“I don’t buy that for a second. You never shut your damned mouth.”
“Well, dude, some things you talk about and some things you just do.”
“More a man of action?” Sam can hear Dean’s smile. He walked into that one.
“Guess you’ll have to find out,” Sam hears himself say. Oh God. He’d flirted back, hadn’t meant to. It’s one thing for to Dean to drop lines like that, Dean’s older, better-looking, and self-confident to the point of narcissism, but for Sam to do it either shows that he’s into Dean or trying to be like Dean, both true and both humiliating.
“Oh yeah?” asks Dean. Sam’s height loses an inch. “You gonna show me the next time we meet, Sammy?”
Sam, wisely, keeps his trap shut. Instead, he watches Cujo sniff around the tires of the truck, occasionally glancing up at him, perhaps suspecting that he’ll soon carry her back inside since she looks anxious.
“Well, good thing that I’m going to be seeing you soon then.”
“What?” asks Sam, heart pausing.
“My news. Dad wants you two with us on this hunt in Missouri. It’s dealing with your specialty and since he knows you’re out of school, he thought maybe you and Chal could help us out.”
“How does your dad know about my specialty?” Sam likes the idea of helping, freaking loves the opportunity to see Dean again, but he’s suspicious, knows that Chal wouldn’t put them in jeopardy by telling her new beau about the demon blood fueling his talents. Sure, he’d bragged abstractly once to Dean, but had he then told John?
“Chal told him, said you could suck them out and waste ‘em without killing the host.”
“Chal told him that?” Sam practically yells.
“Yeah why? Is this more Secret Agent Daniel stuff?”
Sam is freaking out. The phone is sweaty in his hand suddenly and he can’t catch a full breath. “Hey, you okay?” asks Dean.
Sam doesn’t know what to believe. Years of hiding his powers, his name, moving from place to place trying to stay one step ahead of angels that might come for him, they overwhelm him. He can’t believe Chal would throw all that away, tell his deepest darkest secret to a hunter. Chal never trusts anyone but Sam, he’s furious that all it’s taken is a crush and now she’s letting loose their secrets like she’s hopping up on sodium pentothal.
“What’s the problem?” asks Dean.
“He’s gonna hunt me.”
“Hunt you? Dad? Whoa, hold on there, Sam. No one’s gonna hunt you.”
“Sure you will!” Sam exclaims. He’s not even sure what’s going on anymore.
“Sam, you’re not a monster. So, you’ve got a little extra awesome. That just makes you Spiderman. You’re one of the good guys. Dad knows that. I know that.”
He can’t handle this call. “I gotta go,” Sam says, clicking his phone shut.
He jumps off the Ram and takes to the sidewalk. It’s a warm day, humid, the clouds heavy like eyes full of tears. Some days when he’s walking, he tries to guess about who people are just by the decorations in front of their houses. Right now, he might as well be walking with his eyes shut. He barely even hears the click of Cujo’s little claws behind him. His phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and stares at it, undecided until he opens it whether or not he’s going to answer. He does.
Dean talks before he does. “Look Sam, I don’t really understand what’s happening, but everything is fine. I don’t think less of you for what Chal told Dad. Are you mad cause it wasn’t her place to tell? Because I can get that. Everyone has shit they don’t want people to know about them. Those things don’t make them bad people.”
“Are any of your secrets as big as being able to kill demons with your mind?” Sam hisses. Sam’s angry at Chal; he knows he’s taking out his anger on the wrong person.
“Yeah, but not as cool.”
Sam slows, brisk near run now a normal walk. He breathes, focuses on the sky and the trees and the sign that reads “slow children,” a sign that always makes him think of baby turtles.
“Is your secret that you like messing with guys’ heads?”
“Uh,” Dean pauses. “That’s not a secret.”
“Messing with my head?”
“Again, not a secret. What’s your point, Sam?”
“Nothing. I’m… I’m pissed at Chal and fucking misdirecting.”
“Yeah, well, that’s fine cause I like talking about me. Wanna know one of my secrets, Sam?”
Sam rubs his head. He already knows where this goes. This is where Dean says something hot and his body reacts and his brain gets confused about what Dean wants from him and what he wants from Dean, besides the obvious. “Not really.”
“Well too bad. I’m going to tell you anyway. When I was twelve, I tried to gank myself.”
Sam hadn’t been expecting that. He stops on the sidewalk. “What? Why?”
“Told you your secret was cooler.”
“Twelve?” Sam asks. That is so young to want to die.
“Yeah, twelve. Got it into my head that I was a monster. I wasn’t though. Just like you aren’t.” Dean sighs. “I’m not going to hurt you, Sam, ever.”
Sam believes him this time. “And your dad?”
“He’d have to get through me.”
“He could get through you.”
Dean laughs. “Yeah, but it would slow him down.”
“This is really weird, Dean. Chal is so big on the whole “joint decision” thing. Why would she just tell him?”
“Do you actually want me to answer that?” asks Dean cautiously.
“Yes.”
Cujo circles him, then decides to chew on the small white metal wiring that old people raise around their lawns instead of fencing.
“She knows that she can trust Dad and knows that you can help us track down the demon we’re looking for. Maybe she thinks that once we get it, Dad could settle down… with her.”
“They haven’t even been on a date yet.” Of all the things that he could have picked to argue about, that shouldn’t be the one. There’s the fact that it doesn’t matter how much Chal trusts John if Sam doesn’t. That should be top priority. Yet, his words have revealed the true priority of his heart. “And I don’t know your dad. I know you.”
“I’m kind of a less cool version of him. I mean, I’m still way cooler than you, but not as cool as him.”
Reluctantly, Sam smiles. The water in his eyes, never actually formed into tears, dry with the wind.
“So, when are we joining you guys?”
Dean’s voice sounds excited. “Does that mean you’re in?”
“Hell yeah, ganking demons is my specialty after all.”
Chalendra arrives, a flurry of feathers and something as close to panic as an angel is capable of, perhaps ten yards from where her former garrison leader and grace-mate communicated her last message. It had been mostly just images with a few words that sounded tinny in Chal’s head. A baby and a small child, “vessels”, a demon whom Chal recognized immediately even without the name affixed by Raquel’s panic: “Azazel”, temporary king of Hell. Then there was the pain that radiated into the bond that the two angels shared. Piecing together what is happening, what must have befallen Raquel, is not difficult. Still, Chal is disoriented anyway, protection instinct burning inside her, making her landing inaccurate. It is this inaccuracy that saves her.
The lamplights are out along the street but there is light from a fire burning in a circle. Chal can smell the holy oil and with her keen eyes, she sees her fallen comrade, the one who had once told her that the only true autonomy came from serving others, in a limp pile inside the fire.
She is far enough away that the demons don’t notice her. She has enough time to take them in, two alive, three visible non-viable vessels. In one arm Azazel holds a screaming infant. His other hand wields an angel blade, most likely the one that struck down Raquel. She can see his true form, instinctively recoils from the black swirling mass of evil behind his human form.
Chalendra does not fear death, but she does fear failure. She has no time to mourn the loss of her grace-mate and mentor, not if she wants to rescue the human.
She spreads her wings and aims for the leader of Hell, swoops not unlike a raptor and plucks the child from his arms. Azazel is fast for a demon, begins to move before he should realize what’s happening, but he is still no match for angel flight speed. In another beat of his vessel’s heart, she is a world away, a warm chalet in a lonely mountain.
Her breathing is ragged from fear and exertion. The sound of it gets drowned by the baby’s cries. She looks down at the vessel for Lucifer and examines him. She presses a hand to his chest, uses her grace to scan him for any signs of damage. He isn’t injured, but he is still upset, round face red and wet. She wipes at his cheeks with her robe.
She wonders that she was the only one summoned by Raquel’s cry of distress. It occurs to her then that she did notice some sigils as well in the ring of holy fire. It could be that they muzzled her, that the only reason she was able to call out at all was because of the intertwining of their grace. “Raquel,” she sighs, grace heavy and sad in her chest.
Then, the baby grabs her hair and yanks. She leans back, but the small child is amazingly strong. She has to uncurl his little fist from around the strand. “You must not pull on my hair, little vessel,” she warns. Her admonition does no good because his other hand has reached out to grab more, and this fistful becomes a mouthful. “You certainly must not eat my hair.”
With a mouthful of hair, though, the child quiets. Its eyes are still shiny with tears, but the noise and the diaphragm spasms have stopped. She smiles. “Hair is not a human food though I believe you do digest quite a bit in your short life span.”
He takes this trivia tidbit like everything else, with interest.
The chalet smells of wood and pine. Chal carries the baby to a rocking chair and they sit together, the baby gnawing on her hair and her pondering the situation.
This vessel, while still very small, will one day house Lucifer in much the same way that the human holding the evil thing that calls itself Azazel did. She can’t imagine what holding something so immense and powerful will do to such a small human. Surely, he’ll grow, but even then, he looks so vulnerable now.
“You are pivotal in the apocalypse. Both demon and angelkind require your body and soul for the reincarnation of Lucifer.”
The baby chews.
“You seem to desire sustenance,” she says. Really though, she requires some time to think about the actions she must take, to figure out how much she wants angels to know about the little human. She finds him real food, baby food, and she smiles as he slurps it, half down his throat and half down his pajamas.
Flint, Michigan - May 1999
It isn’t until after dinner while Sam is browsing the internet that Dean calls back.
“Hey!” Sam greets.
“Hey,” says Dean.
“I was in class.”
“I was interviewing a witness.”
Sam isn’t sure which sounds worse. “Did you get the info you needed?”
“Kind of. I have no idea what Jack’s is and neither did my witness.”
“Jack’s?”
“Yeah, some place, thinking maybe it’s a bar.”
“What city are you in?” asks Sam.
“Westbrook, Maine.”
“One sec. I’ll check the net for it.” Sam thrills at the opportunity to be helpful for Dean. He pulls up the search engine and types in “Jack’s and “Westbrook, Maine.” “Yeah, it’s a bar on Beechwood and Bridge.”
“Hey, is it possible to see if there’s been any police involvement there recently?”
“If it made the papers, definitely. Hold on.” It’s too easy for Sam to lose himself in the net. It’s like swimming, immersing himself completely in all that knowledge, and sometimes he has to remember to come up for air. “Yeah, looks like. A murder outside the club.”
“Outside of it?”
“That’s what the article says.” Sam can practically hear the wheels in Dean’s brain turning. He reads aloud the small article in its entirety. “Doesn’t fit?” he asks.
“Maybe,” says Dean. “That’s really helpful, Sam. Thanks.”
The praise is a pleasant touch on his ear. “No problem.”
“It’s amazing how quick you can find all that out. You can find anything on the internet, huh? Heh. I bet you could find assloads of porn.” Sam, wisely, stays silent, but it makes no difference because a lack of response is as much as an admission. “You look at porn on the net, Sammy?”
Damn Dean for making him blush from so many states away. He glares at the screen, but he’s picturing Dean’s smirk, knows that it’s there behind the phone line. Dean just confirms it when he laughs and Sam wants to hang up, but doesn’t.
“Hm,” hums Dean. “What gets Sam Ackles off?”
Sam’s dick responds, just a pulse of attention, to the question much faster than his lips. Dean’s waiting this time, patience seemingly infinite when the reward is Sam’s embarrassment. “Normal stuff.”
“What’s normal?”
This is torture, slow painful death by humiliation. He doesn’t know that if he hangs up Dean will call back, but the temptation is there. Instead, he whines, “Dean!” like a parent would chastise a child for using a swear word.
“Come on, Sam, there’s a whole world of porn out there. No such thing as normal.”
Sam glances at his door, then the ceiling, imagining, incorrectly, that Chal is sitting on the other side of the wall listening. “Hold on,” he tells Dean. He rises from his computer chair, can’t believe that he is, and heads outside. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say (not the truth in a million years), but he knows whatever he does say he doesn’t want Chal to overhear. Not even the rain, just a drizzle, which Sam spies through the half round window built into the front door, keeps him inside
Everything smells like rain, the lethargic wetness making the leaves droop and the grass slosh under his socked feet. Sam hadn’t wanted to stop for shoes; worried that the time he’s wasting getting to privacy is too long and Dean will lose interest, change the question, because even though it’s humiliating and he’d wanted Dean to stop, he also wanted him to continue, to press the issue until he has no choice but to confess.
Sam climbs into the unlocked Ram and says into the phone, “back.”
“Where’d you go?” asks Dean.
“Truck.”
“Aha.” Dean’s voice, amused, puts Sam in his place, the lame younger kid too embarrassed to talk about sex within earshot of his mommy. “Private. So?”
“So, normal. One girl, one guy, in and out motion, the usual,” he lies. How can he mention getting off to man-on-man action to Dean, so ruggedly, unflinchingly, exasperatingly macho that he could be a cover model for Field and Stream? He waits for Dean to insist he give a better answer, because he’s sure that’s what’s coming. Instead, the line stays quiet. Sam offers, “There may be more of an emphasis on blowjobs,” and his hand finds his cheek, cools it with icy fingers.
“What do you like about the blowjobs?” asks Dean.
It’s a strange question, almost feels rhetorical (like asking what someone likes about being happy) but then Sam figures that Dean probably means what he likes in a scene that has blowjobs. “Uh, I guess I like their eyes. You know, when they’re looking up while they do it.”
Dean sighs and again Sam’s dick lurches, just a twinge to let him know that it’s still there and can be of use at any moment should Sam require it. “Is it because they’re down below, looking up? Like, they’re doing it all for you? Worshipping your cock and doing it to please you?”
Insta-rection. That’s what Lucas, a guy he’d hung out with in California, called it when he’d see a hot girl and get instantly hard. Well, now Sam is portraying the definition as surely as a dictionary entry and Lucas would find it all kinds of funny that he’s doing it because of a guy. Sam is so glad he’d gone to the car; maybe he’d instinctively known where Dean’s mind would go, how his words that had only hinted before would become overt, molesting his ear.
“Yeah.” The word sounds strangled from him.
“That’s a great feeling, isn’t it? Do you like having power over them?”
Sam doesn’t know if he likes it because he’s never had power over anyone, especially in the sexual sense, but he likes Dean’s voice like this, deeper and almost scripted, like he’s sharing details of a recurring dream. If it turns Dean on, then it turns Sam on too, and that is why he says yes. It’s not because he’s had power fantasies, he hasn’t, or because he knows that’s something he likes from personal experience, he doesn’t, but because Dean wants him to say yes.
“I bet the girls like that. Probably gets them all wet, having you take control of them like that.”
Sam’s hand is roving and it shouldn’t be. He’s in Chal’s truck, not his bed, and though his breath and the rain outside have fogged up the windows, they’re still glass, still transparent. Here Dean is talking about control while Sam is trying to keep from publically exposing himself. Sam wants to hang up, wants to go hide in the shower and jerk off imagining Dean below him, eyes glittering, lustful emeralds, as Sam slides into his mouth. “I should go,” says Sam, because he doesn’t know what Dean wants from him. Is he talking dirty because he really does want to have phone sex? Is it all a game for Dean? See if he can make the desperate teenager touch himself on the phone?
Surprisingly, Dean chuckles. “Okay, I’ll stop.”
Please don’t, Sam’s mind begs, but Dean isn’t telepathic, so he changes his voice, changes topics, and Sam wants to smack himself on the forehead for making it stop. “I should probably be checking out that bar that you found. Thanks for that again, by the way. Gonna make it a lot easier to put the pieces together.”
Sam doesn’t speak.
Dean resumes, “So, would it be cool if I asked you to look up some more stuff? Not now, but in the future?”
“Sure.”
“Awesome. Well, I guess I’ll go get to saving people. Bye, Sammy.”
“Goodbye, Dean.”
Sam waits for Dean to end the call then stares at the numbers on the telephone. Eighteen minutes and forty seven seconds they’d been talking. Dean drove Sam crazy in less than twenty minutes.
Cujo likes the boxes. She stands, paws grabbing the side of the boxes, and looks inside with unfettered excitement at each newspaper-wrapped trinket that Sam puts inside. Objects become new to the waheela just by the change in location and she investigates each with her nose, olfactory senses creating a blueprint of the contents of each ball of paper. Sam laughs at her. It’s impossible not to find the fluffy white ball of curiosity adorable.
Chal looks up from her soldering, precise tool poised in midair over a relic she’s been tweaking. She observes the scene and laughs. “Jo is ready to move!”
“Can’t say I blame her,” says Sam.
Chal shakes her head. “I know. No more cold states for you.”
“That’d be nice,” says Sam. He hasn’t told her that he plans to leave on his birthday, and only in part because he doesn’t know how exactly he’s going to accomplish that. He’s mostly worried about how hard she’s going to take it. They’ve always been a duo, united against the world, and while that’s the reason why he needs out ASAP, he knows she’ll have a hard time adjusting. “The only snow I want to see fall from now on is in It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“John loves snow,” says Chal.
For a second, Sam debates whether the excited puppy is cuter or his substitute mother. “Does he?” asks Sam. “What else does John like?” He says John in a lovey, sing-song voice.
Oblivious to his teasing, Chal tilts her head to the side and considers the, no doubt, long list of things she knows about John Winchester.
“Chal, I was teasing you.”
She looks confused. “About John?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Her hands continue their work on the relic. After a minute passes, she speaks again. “He likes biographies. I’ve made a few recommendations.”
Helen Forrest’s question, “How deep is the ocean?” resonates from the stereo, just background noise that Sam barely notices. He’s taping the Ann Arbor News around a statue of a fat squirrel and smiling at the lovesick fallen angel.
“He also likes baseball. I haven’t been to a game since we were in Nevada.”
“Chal, I don’t think pee-wee baseball counts.”
She shrugs. “You played very well for a child; I didn’t find watching the game less entertaining for your ages.”
A new sound fills the room, the insistent ring tone of the house phone. Sam sees the joy in her face, knows that she’s excited that it’s most likely John calling. She sets the soldering iron down carefully in its holder before rushing to answer.
Sam shakes his head, then crushes a ball of newspaper and chucks it at Cujo’s head. It bounces off the fluff and Cujo happily chases it.
It’s been four days since the incident with the blowjob interrogation and Dean is relieved as hell to see the kid’s name in the little phone window indicating an incoming call. He was sure he’d scared the brat off with the way he’d been going on about porn and control and shit that he shouldn’t have been. He’d been frisky that day and had gotten carried away, but Sam is a genuinely cool guy and it would really have sucked to run him off for good. He presses the green button on his cell phone and promises himself to be on his best behavior, regardless of whatever gutter topics flit through his mind.
“Sammy!” he calls.
“Hey, Dean. You free to talk?”
“Oh man, you have no idea how free I am. Sittin’ in front of a Satanic church and waiting for something “suspicious.” Do you have any idea how many suspicious people go in and out of Satanic churches?”
Sam laughs warmly. “Probably a lot.”
“Damn right a lot.” Dean can’t help smiling. He’s glad that Sam is still talking to him, forgiving his lapse of perviness. “What’s going on in Michigan?”
“Just finished the first day of the last week of finals.”
“All right! Then you’re out in the Texas sun!”
“Your dad told you, huh?”
“Yeah, he said that Chal does whatever you want.”
“That’s not true.”
Dean want to yank back the words because Sam sounds mad already, and it probably wasn’t something his dad planned on having Dean repeat to Sam. “Nah,” he tries to sound casual. “That’s just how it is to stick up his ass John Winchester. I’m lucky if he lets me take a piss when we’re driving eight hours.”
“Yeah,” says Sam. “Well, it’s really important to her that we make joint decisions. It’s always been that way.”
“And she liked your idea to go to Texas, so that worked out for both of you.”
Disaster averted, Sam sounds pleased again when he next speaks, and Dean relaxes. “Yep, Cujo was helping me pack boxes.”
“Without thumbs? Impressive.”
Sam laughs. “She smelled everything thoroughly. I think she could be a drug-sniffing waheela.”
“Aha! I knew you and Chal were too relaxed! That’s how the Ackles family keeps so peace and love.”
“Peace and love? The first time we met you was on a hunt, dumbass.”
The Satanic couple entering the building are later than the others for the black mass, but that doesn’t mean that they are suspicious, even if the two take note of his car and its location across the street, and Dean might be making excuses in his head for why he isn’t getting off the phone with Sam right away. He figures the congregation of freaks can wait two damn minutes for him to finish his call.
“Dude, only people smoking a hell of a lot of pot would think that being vegetarian,” he puts an added emphasis of disgust on the word, “was a good idea.”
Sam laughs again, a slight chuckle that sounds a bit evil scientist. “Yeah, and we did save the thing we were supposed to kill. Oh wait, that was you and me.”
The female half of the Satanic couple emerges from the church. Long legs on spiky black heels propel her at what they call “power walking” speed towards Dean. “Uh, Sam, shit. I have to go.” He hangs up the phone without waiting for Sam’s goodbye. He has bigger issues to deal with. He rolls down his window and sticks an elbow out, wants to look relaxed though this dame is clearly not.
“Hey there,” Dean greets the woman.
Her face is all sharp features and bold makeup, might be friendly somewhere underneath the cosmetics and rage, but that isn’t the side she’s putting forward right now.
“Get the fuck off church property!” she commands. Her hands wave in the air as she speaks. Careful, Dean thinks, Your white trash is showing.
“Thought you people were all about recruiting for your dark lord?”
“You’re thinking of Christians and you’re not a recruit.”
Her hostility doesn’t bother him. Hell, Dad with a hangover is worse than this chick “Well, not with a welcome like that!” he says, smiling. He’s not sensing any conviction behind her anger, so he’s responding in kind, barely pretending to be offended.
She tilts her head, considers him with eyelids heavy with black makeup. “Who do you work for?”
Normally when people ask him that he’s in disguise - a repairman, an electrician, an insurance agent. There’s not much point to pretending that he’s a professional anything sitting in the impala in a t-shirt and jeans. “Independent contractor,” he says. It’s certainly as honest as he can get to the truth with a civilian. Of course, this chick probably isn’t a civilian, might not even be human, and if she isn’t, chances are good that she won’t know he’s a hunter for very long. “Do I have to be a CEO to sit in your parking lot?”
The Satanist chick tries not to laugh. Her voice strains to sound threatening. She says, “We don’t care much for tourists.”
“Must be why you’re not selling me postcards.”
She shakes her head with a small smile. “Just go away. Seriously, or I’ll have to call the cops.”
He acts boldly then because doing so works out well for him so often. He reaches out a hand and places it on her arm just above her elbow. “What if I want to sight see just the tour guide?”
It’s not even close to his best line but she licks her lip absent-mindedly, and the tell lets Dean know that he’s in.
“Dean?”
Sam blinks at the red digits on his clock. 4 am. He fists at his eyes with the hand not holding his cellphone, attempts to rub away the sleep.
“Hey, Sammy.”
“It’s four in the morning.” A ridiculously delayed flash of fear crosses his stomach, jolts him awake. “Are you okay?”
“I am fan-fucking-tastic, Sammy. Just needed to say congratulations!”
“Congratulations for what?”
“It’s the last day of school!”
Sam’s pleasure that Dean remembered is far, far overshadowed by annoyance. “You’re calling me at four in the morning.”
“Yes, I am!”
“I’m going back to sleep.”
“No, wait! Talk to me, Sammy!”
“Dean, I have school in like four hours!”
“Please talk to me Sam. Tell me about Nick! Tell me about Cujo! Tell me… tell me about that shit I’m not supposed to ask you about.”
Sam’s never heard Dean whine before and there’s a desperation to it that makes him think that it isn’t something that he often does. “Are you okay?” he asks again.
“I don’t want to talk about me!” Dean yells. “Just… just distract me, Sam, please.”
It doesn’t matter that he has no idea what he’s supposed to be distracting Dean from; Sam starts talking. He tells Dean about Cujo’s leash training (Chal’s idea) and the girl in his geography class who got caught cheating on her final and the books about necromancy that Chal found at a church sale and the time he bought chicken noodle soup from a vending machine and for years hadn’t been able to smell chicken broth without feeling nauseated. He hears dean laugh or grunt, know that he’s there and still listening. Dean doesn’t interrupt through his ramblings. Even with the late hour and the pressure of his bladder, it still feels good to be listened to. And Dean doesn’t know all these things, hasn’t heard Sam’s stories over and over again like Chal has.
When Sam finally winds down, mouth starting to yawn instead of forming words, Dean whispers, “Thanks, Sammy.”
“What happened?” Sam asks.
“Had to be a hunter,” Dean replies. “Had to stop them. She was nice though, under that. It wasn’t her fault what they did. Well, it was, but she didn’t know it was wrong. She’d been raised that way.”
San stomach tightens. Dean killed someone or something that his mind identified as female. “Were they hurting people?”
“Oh yeah,” Dean’s lips flutter like a horse’s, air blasting his cell’s mic.
“And now they aren’t,” Sam says, not asking.
“I guess,” Dean says with reluctance, knows where Sam is going with his point even through his drunken haze.
“Then it’s good that you were a hunter.”
Dean makes a little sob, three parts pain, one part whiskey. “I hate these ones, Sam.”
“I know,” soothes Sam, wishing that he could give the older boy a hug and offer him some comfort.
“She was so soft and sweet.”
Sam gets it then, why Dean is drunk dialing him. Dean slept with the woman he had to kill. Sam’s sure he’s never felt such misplaced jealousy before. It’s petty, envying a dead woman, and completely inappropriate to the moment, to the suffering that Dean is going through, and to the deceased.
“Her neck was ticklish. She giggled when I kissed it.” Sam doesn’t want to hear this, is about to suggest they hang up when Dean squeaks out, “I shot her in the heart.”
“Dean,” Sam breathes, sympathy stealing his air.
“Yeah, I know, I had to. Whatever. I just wish the bad guys were always bad guys, obvious ones like Darth Vader. I can’t handle it when they’re soft and sweet and good and evil at the same time.” A sniffle snitches on Dean, lets Sam know that he’s tearing up or maybe full-on crying. Then, he laughs. “Fuck whiskey, man.”
“Seems more like whiskey’s fucking you tonight.”
Dean snorts. “Yeah well, I just wanted to call and wish you good luck on your last day of school.”
Sam’s bladder is happy that the conversation is drawing to a close and so is his heart, because he can’t stand hearing Dean hurt like he is. “Thanks, Dean.”
“All right, night Danny Boy.”
“Hey, Dean.” Sam pauses, knows that what he’s thinking is really embarrassingly cheesy, and hopes that Dean’s too drunk to hold it against him. “You’re brave for helping people even when it’s hard.”
Dean doesn’t respond, just says goodnight again.
“Night, Dean,” Sam says and closes his phone. He glares at the lightening sky and the impatient clock before shutting his eyes and trying to get at least some sleep before class.
The packing officially commences, the past week merely a warm-up. Cujo is growing more uncomfortable about her environment with each wrapped piece of furniture and every stacked box. Chal has the 80’s station on and she’s singing with impressive volume, Madonna lyrics sounding way more blasphemous on the former angel’s lips. Sam has the back claw of a hammer to the wall as he pops out nails that formerly held the large gold-frame mirror and his hips shimmy slightly from side to side with the beat.
Sam laughs at her when she attempts a high note and misses it entirely. Singing was never a talent she possessed, but the lack has never hindered her attempts.
For a second, her mind calls up her dear garrison-mate Thomas, his lovely voice and his appreciation for what humans call “low-brow” humor. “I hope Thomas has had the chance to hear Madonna. He would love her.”
“Yeah?” asks Sam, encouraging her to continue. She knows that he likes to hear about heaven and its host, but the bittersweet taste that accompanies voicing those memories often deters her.
“Thomas sings bawdy songs too.”
Sam set down the hammer and the crooked thick nails, flicks off a black spot of something stuck to his hand. “Yeah, but what’s bawdy to an angel? Partridge Family jokes?”
“Angels are hardly the saints humans care to paint us as,” she reminds him. Though Chal has never met an angel that doesn’t feel superior to humankind, she’s found many that are just as flawed as the wingless mortals of Earth, just as ready to let emotions guide them to make bad choices. “I still remember his favorite; shall I?”
He cocks his head expectantly, giving tacit permission with his attentive posture.
“Oh, but it’s in Enochian.”
“So?” asks Sam. “I can understand Enochian.”
Chal can feel the guilt that leaps onto her face. “I haven’t taught you the kind of words that you would need to know to understand the song.”
“Chal!” He chides happily.
“Give me a minute to consider how it would translate. I might not be able to make it all rhyme.”
“It rhymes?” he asks while lifting three boxes into one stack near the fireplace.
“Persephone, birthing hips and curving waist
Could use more than a pomegranate to taste
No matter if called Hercules or Heracles
He was still the best upon his knees”
Sam’s laughter is immediate and intense. He actually grips the back of the sofa to stay upright. Chal’s suspicion that his reaction is less about the lyrics and more about her singing them is confirmed when he gasps out, “You know dirty limericks!”
“Angelic dirty limericks,” she corrects. The song has eight more verses, four couplets, and even she begins to laugh when she attempts to translate an Enochian word pun about testicles. It’s embarrassing for reasons that she knows are human, specifically American, but it tickles her anyway, partially because of his amusement, greater than she’s seen in years, and partially because this is an aspect of her garrison that she has never before shared with her ward. When she finishes, he claps and she covers her face with a dirty hand. “That is Thomas’s, not mine,” she reminds him.
“Then I hope to get the chance to meet Thomas someday.”
May that day never come, she thinks. Thomas never had trouble following orders, never had twinges of conscience like she had, at least none that he voiced. Thomas would not have stolen away Sam, would have left the baby crying in his crib, blood-saturated future leaking down his throat and mother burning to ashes on the ceiling. She’d let her love for humanity, let the exaggerated sense of right and wrong, compel her actions. Fifteen years later and Chal still doesn’t know whether she’d shown weakness or strength that night, can’t even say whether it was the correct choice, but she’d definitely acted with compassion and, true to her nature, given everything she had to the path she’d chosen.
They continue packing, Chal singing along with the radio and Sam occasionally chuckling and shaking his head at her, as though the song had been her invention. When the house phone rings, Cujo growls, high-pitched warble sounding dangerous to its wild ears. She wishes she could still communicate with animals, let the young thing know that the phone poses no threat. “Shh, Jo.”
“It’s just John,” says Sam. Then, his cellphone begins to ring, perky ringtone chiming from the leg pocket of his shorts. For a second, Sam and Chal exchange a worried look before hurrying to answer. It could be coincidence, a solicitor and Dean or John and a wrong number, but the Winchesters are hunting demon today and that means it’s more dangerous, more likely to be the news that someone is hurt.
Sam retrieves his cellphone and stabs at the green button. “Dean?” he asks.
He hears Chal’s formal “Collins residence” greeting from the kitchen.
“Sammy!” greets Dean, cheerful voice calming Sam immediately.
He peeks into the kitchen, sees the way that Chal sort of oozes against the house phone, the way she hangs onto every word when it’s John talking. Sam rolls his eyes. “What’s going on?” he asks. He opens the door, starts to step outside when an excited waheela nearly trips him. “Hey!” he calls to her. She hasn’t gone far, just sniffing at the flowers in the yard, as though they are the most exotic perfume ever. “Stupid mutt.”
“What did you call me?”
“Not you, dumbass, Cujo. She’s out in the yard without her leash.” Sam should go back inside and get her leash, but he’s not going to. As long as he’s out with her, it shouldn’t be a big deal. Her nose always prevents her progress anyway. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was part hound.
“I’ve got news,” says Dean enigmatically. This must be some good news; they’ve never called simultaneously before.
Sam hoists himself atop the truck’s hood. From here he can keep an eye on Cujo and the rest of the yard. Part of him is going to miss the place, but that tends to pass quickly enough. Home is where his computer is.
“You learned to read!” Sam jokes.
“I could read Latin before you learned your ABCs.”
“Hey, take your call outside!” snaps John from the background of the phone call. Sam hopes that John isn’t that grumpy to Chal. He’d liked John okay, but the guy has a higher bar to meet if he wants to date his surrogate mother.
The phone makes bumped sounds and Sam hears a door closing. There’s a wind wherever Dean is, creating a white noise in the line.
“Dad wants some privacy with Chal, you know what that means,” says Dean before cursing loudly. “Why the fuck is there a Lego on the ground?”
“You at school?” asks Sam.
After a few more interesting swear words, Dean answers. “Nah, a hotel. Some kid left a freakin’ white Lego here. They’re sharp, man!”
“I remember,” agrees Sam. He’d been pretty good about putting away his toys after playing with them, but there was always an errant block or two that missed pickup and sometimes they became found again by the flat of his foot. “Why are you walking around barefoot?”
“I’ve got socks on and I didn’t know that Dad was gonna toss me out of the room so that he can have phone sex with your mom.”
“So, about your news…”
Dean laughs. “That’s my boy, always dodging the sex talk.”
“When it’s about my mom, yeah.”
“And when it’s about you,” points out Dean.
Sam can’t help but feel this is not a good time to discuss their borderline phone sex, nonetheless, he feels the need to defend himself. “Maybe I’m just not much of a talker.”
“I don’t buy that for a second. You never shut your damned mouth.”
“Well, dude, some things you talk about and some things you just do.”
“More a man of action?” Sam can hear Dean’s smile. He walked into that one.
“Guess you’ll have to find out,” Sam hears himself say. Oh God. He’d flirted back, hadn’t meant to. It’s one thing for to Dean to drop lines like that, Dean’s older, better-looking, and self-confident to the point of narcissism, but for Sam to do it either shows that he’s into Dean or trying to be like Dean, both true and both humiliating.
“Oh yeah?” asks Dean. Sam’s height loses an inch. “You gonna show me the next time we meet, Sammy?”
Sam, wisely, keeps his trap shut. Instead, he watches Cujo sniff around the tires of the truck, occasionally glancing up at him, perhaps suspecting that he’ll soon carry her back inside since she looks anxious.
“Well, good thing that I’m going to be seeing you soon then.”
“What?” asks Sam, heart pausing.
“My news. Dad wants you two with us on this hunt in Missouri. It’s dealing with your specialty and since he knows you’re out of school, he thought maybe you and Chal could help us out.”
“How does your dad know about my specialty?” Sam likes the idea of helping, freaking loves the opportunity to see Dean again, but he’s suspicious, knows that Chal wouldn’t put them in jeopardy by telling her new beau about the demon blood fueling his talents. Sure, he’d bragged abstractly once to Dean, but had he then told John?
“Chal told him, said you could suck them out and waste ‘em without killing the host.”
“Chal told him that?” Sam practically yells.
“Yeah why? Is this more Secret Agent Daniel stuff?”
Sam is freaking out. The phone is sweaty in his hand suddenly and he can’t catch a full breath. “Hey, you okay?” asks Dean.
Sam doesn’t know what to believe. Years of hiding his powers, his name, moving from place to place trying to stay one step ahead of angels that might come for him, they overwhelm him. He can’t believe Chal would throw all that away, tell his deepest darkest secret to a hunter. Chal never trusts anyone but Sam, he’s furious that all it’s taken is a crush and now she’s letting loose their secrets like she’s hopping up on sodium pentothal.
“What’s the problem?” asks Dean.
“He’s gonna hunt me.”
“Hunt you? Dad? Whoa, hold on there, Sam. No one’s gonna hunt you.”
“Sure you will!” Sam exclaims. He’s not even sure what’s going on anymore.
“Sam, you’re not a monster. So, you’ve got a little extra awesome. That just makes you Spiderman. You’re one of the good guys. Dad knows that. I know that.”
He can’t handle this call. “I gotta go,” Sam says, clicking his phone shut.
He jumps off the Ram and takes to the sidewalk. It’s a warm day, humid, the clouds heavy like eyes full of tears. Some days when he’s walking, he tries to guess about who people are just by the decorations in front of their houses. Right now, he might as well be walking with his eyes shut. He barely even hears the click of Cujo’s little claws behind him. His phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and stares at it, undecided until he opens it whether or not he’s going to answer. He does.
Dean talks before he does. “Look Sam, I don’t really understand what’s happening, but everything is fine. I don’t think less of you for what Chal told Dad. Are you mad cause it wasn’t her place to tell? Because I can get that. Everyone has shit they don’t want people to know about them. Those things don’t make them bad people.”
“Are any of your secrets as big as being able to kill demons with your mind?” Sam hisses. Sam’s angry at Chal; he knows he’s taking out his anger on the wrong person.
“Yeah, but not as cool.”
Sam slows, brisk near run now a normal walk. He breathes, focuses on the sky and the trees and the sign that reads “slow children,” a sign that always makes him think of baby turtles.
“Is your secret that you like messing with guys’ heads?”
“Uh,” Dean pauses. “That’s not a secret.”
“Messing with my head?”
“Again, not a secret. What’s your point, Sam?”
“Nothing. I’m… I’m pissed at Chal and fucking misdirecting.”
“Yeah, well, that’s fine cause I like talking about me. Wanna know one of my secrets, Sam?”
Sam rubs his head. He already knows where this goes. This is where Dean says something hot and his body reacts and his brain gets confused about what Dean wants from him and what he wants from Dean, besides the obvious. “Not really.”
“Well too bad. I’m going to tell you anyway. When I was twelve, I tried to gank myself.”
Sam hadn’t been expecting that. He stops on the sidewalk. “What? Why?”
“Told you your secret was cooler.”
“Twelve?” Sam asks. That is so young to want to die.
“Yeah, twelve. Got it into my head that I was a monster. I wasn’t though. Just like you aren’t.” Dean sighs. “I’m not going to hurt you, Sam, ever.”
Sam believes him this time. “And your dad?”
“He’d have to get through me.”
“He could get through you.”
Dean laughs. “Yeah, but it would slow him down.”
“This is really weird, Dean. Chal is so big on the whole “joint decision” thing. Why would she just tell him?”
“Do you actually want me to answer that?” asks Dean cautiously.
“Yes.”
Cujo circles him, then decides to chew on the small white metal wiring that old people raise around their lawns instead of fencing.
“She knows that she can trust Dad and knows that you can help us track down the demon we’re looking for. Maybe she thinks that once we get it, Dad could settle down… with her.”
“They haven’t even been on a date yet.” Of all the things that he could have picked to argue about, that shouldn’t be the one. There’s the fact that it doesn’t matter how much Chal trusts John if Sam doesn’t. That should be top priority. Yet, his words have revealed the true priority of his heart. “And I don’t know your dad. I know you.”
“I’m kind of a less cool version of him. I mean, I’m still way cooler than you, but not as cool as him.”
Reluctantly, Sam smiles. The water in his eyes, never actually formed into tears, dry with the wind.
“So, when are we joining you guys?”
Dean’s voice sounds excited. “Does that mean you’re in?”
“Hell yeah, ganking demons is my specialty after all.”