A Family Business 2/6
Title: A Family Business 2/6
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. It’s all Kripke’s and the CW’s and blah blah blah. We all know who the real brain trust is around here.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: General for the series. Takes place in two time periods, one pre-series and the other situated at some point between 3x04 (Sin City) and 3x05 (Bedtime Stories).
Summary: The Winchesters never stay, and when they go they leave more than burned corpses behind them.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
November 21, 1996
Waverly High School
Lansing, MI
School had been over for long enough for the library to have nearly emptied out. Gillian was bent over in one of the hard wooden chairs, a paperback held in one hand and her head propped in the other. She was pretty sure that she’d read this book countless times since childhood but it was the only thing she could think to read. It was comforting and familiar in a way that had nothing to do with the storms going on around and inside of her. She only had a few more minutes before Angie was done with whatever after school extravaganza she had going on today - ‘student government,’ the responsible part of her brain that still remembered how to be a big sister whispered at her - and life came crashing back down. She was going to enjoy every second of peace that she could.
She didn’t want to think about anything but the words on the page.
Gillian glanced up for a second and caught that kid staring at her again. She’d seen him in here all week, ostensibly roaming around the shelves but he was always staring at her. It was starting to creep her out. She’d never seen that skinny, floppy-haired kid before in her life and now he wouldn’t go away. Even Lauren, who had every right to pester her about her feelings, had backed off after a day. That stupid brat was getting on her last nerve.
She put her book down and stood up. A week ago she wouldn’t have done anything, she would’ve sat there and let that kid do whatever it was that he wanted to do, but that was a week ago. The entire world had changed since then. She’d ignore the whispers when she walked through the halls and she’d endure the pitiful looks teachers sent her way but some snot-nosed stalker was the final straw.
By the time she made it over to the pitiful folklore/mythology section of Waverly’s “vaunted” high school library the kid had his nose buried in some book about the Norse pantheon. If not for the quick, nervous flash of his eyes she almost would’ve bought his act.
“Hey,” she hissed, her voice a whisper because libraries were still sacred areas. His head whipped up. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He gazed up at her, eyes wide in a pantomime of innocence. “Looking for a book,” he bit off a little peevishly with an undertone of you crazy bitch thrown in for good measure.
“I’ve seen you in here every single day this week.” She leaned in and down until her nose was nearly level with his. She hardly even noticed that she’d backed him into the shelf. “I’ve seen you watching me and I don’t like it. I don’t care if you’re curious or if you and your buddies get a kick out of laughing about the weird chick whose dad was killed or if maybe you’re just some sweet, innocent kid whose only crime is reading a book. I’m sick and tired of seeing you hanging around.” A small part of her was trying to get her to shut up and step back out of that poor kid’s space. This wasn’t the way she acted, this wasn’t who she was, she was a good girl. There was another, louder part of her, though, that needed this, needed to lash out and make someone hurt as much as she did.
The kid’s face was completely still and expressionless and she had no way of knowing what that meant. He didn’t even flinch. Somehow that made her even angrier, her knuckles turning white around the spine of the book in her hand. Her arm tensed and she knew she was going to clock him upside the head, she could see herself doing it. She’d never hit anyone, not for real, in her entire life.
“Hey, Sam, you okay?” Her back stiffened at the interruption of a voice with enough violence in it to match her own. The kid used the distraction to slip past her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” was the kid’s stolid reply.
She turned and saw the kid, Sam, standing by some guy she recognized. He was in her chemistry class, he was the one who always knew just what to say to make the class descend into chaos and make Mr. Gigante look like he was having a stroke. But now he didn’t look anything like that person. He stood still and focused, body poised and a glare so fierce that it should’ve had her tripping over herself to get away. Now she raised her chin in response. She wasn’t going to back down and she wasn’t going to feel guilty for bullying someone younger than her, no matter how sick her stomach felt.
He narrowed his eyes and took a step forward. He would’ve taken another - she was counting on it, ready for it - if not for the hand that reached up and grabbed his arm. He and Sam shared some indefinable look and the violence flowed out of him. Without looking back at her they turned as one and left the library.
The library door slammed and her spine deflated, collapsing against the shelf behind her. She rubbed a hand over her face and was surprised to find that she wasn’t crying, that she didn’t even feel like she wanted to. All she felt was hollow and a tiny bit frightened of the person she was becoming.
“Gillian?” She looked up and Angie was there. She had no idea how long she’d been slumped against the books. Angie looked genuinely scared by what she saw on her sister’s face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Gillian took a deep breath and stood up. She pulled a grin up from somewhere deep inside and prayed that it was enough. She needed to protect her little sister from everything that was bad in the universe, including herself. “Yeah, just kind of tired, I guess.”
Angie nodded and was relieved enough to give her a small smile in return. “Are you ready to go?” She asked carefully.
“Just let me get my things.” Gillian swallowed and turned to pack up her stuff. She could do this, she could hold it all together. She had to.
~~~
Dean pulled the beat up old GMC truck into the muddy tracks that constituted the driveway of the tiny house Dad had somehow found to rent. He’d known a guy who had a buddy who could get them in, no questions asked, as long as the Winchesters took care of a little poltergeist problem at the nearby car plant. Apparently nothing scared Big Auto more than the pissed-off ghost of some dude killed on the line.
It was that same friend of a guy, Tim, who’d dug up the old beater of a truck that had gotten Dean and Sam back and forth to school. There might’ve been doubt in his voice when he’d let Dean use his garage to bang it back into some kind of working condition but there’d been none by the time it was running. It might be a piece of shit but anything was better than sitting out at the bus stop freezing his ass off.
Dean glanced over at the sullen lump on the other side of the bench seat. Sam hadn’t said a word since the fiasco in the library but he didn’t need to. His pissy silence said plenty. “Great use of those surveillance skills back there, champ.”
“Shut up,” Sam snipped, his brows furrowing even closer together in frustration. “I told you yesterday that she’d made me. You should’ve covered for me instead of making out with cheerleaders in the locker room.”
“Yeah, that was pretty awesome,” Dean smirked. Hell, he wished he’d been getting some in the locker room instead of making small talk with the choir geeks and the band dorks. But, hey, if that’s what Sam wanted to believe he wasn’t about to disabuse him of the notion.
“You’re so gross.” The tone in Sam’s voice said it all. Dean struggled to keep from busting out with a belly laugh. He wasn’t sure what switch had flipped in Sam’s brain to turn him into this whiny little brat but he was bound and determined to get all the fun out of it that he could.
Dean got himself under control with a deep breath. He rolled his eyes with a flourish. “Yeah, well, at least I got something done. Dad’s gonna be thrilled with what you accomplished.”
“Shut up,” Sam repeated. He kicked his door open and then slammed it hard enough to make the whole car shake. He barged through the swamp that passed as a front lawn, backpack bouncing in time to every snitty stomp.
“Real eloquent there, Sammy,” Dean said quietly to the steering wheel. He sighed and rolled his shoulders in an attempt to loosen the kinks that had been his constant friends ever since Sammy turned thirteen. Once upon a time there’d been a little kid who thought he had the coolest big brother in the world. As fun as riling Sam up could be sometimes he really missed those days.
He pushed his own door open. Its rusty old hinges sounded as tired and stiff as he suddenly felt. He slowly followed Sam’s path into the house, the cold drizzle seeping down into his bones. It felt like it had been raining for months.
It wasn’t much warmer inside, but at least it was dry. He could track Sam’s pissed-off march to his room by the muddy footprints he’d left on the carpet. That little bitch was so cleaning that mess up, with his tongue, if necessary. He pitched his bag in the general direction of the couch and turned toward the kitchen. He needed coffee more than he needed to breathe.
Dad was sitting straight-backed at the rickety old table, his hands clasped around a steaming mug. The only hint that he’d been up since yesterday was the hunch in his shoulders. There was a little mud in his hair, the only evidence of whatever it was he’d been getting up to while Dean was stuck in school.
“Long day?” Dean asked on his way to the coffeepot on the stove. Dad grunted in reply as Dean poured himself some of the sludge that called itself coffee in the Winchester household.
The folding chair squeaked on the peeling linoleum when he pulled it out from underneath the table. He sprawled in the hard seat and gulped down nearly half of the still-scorching tar in his mug. Damn, that felt good. Its heat didn’t quite dampen the chill deep in his bones, but it was a start.
“How’d it go today?”
Dean didn’t have to look to know that Dad’s eyes were watching him, weighing and measuring in that way that only John Winchester could. He’d like to ask Dad the same question but that wasn’t an option now. He’d have to rely on the tried-and-true method of wait and watch and hope like hell he was enough to take care of any problems that might come their way.
“Not bad.” Dean smirked. “I got Lisa Silva into the janitor’s closet during fourth hour. The things that chick can do with her tongue.” He whistled low in appreciation. Dad’s only response was a long, steady, implacable stare. So, it’d been one of those days. No joking around just straight to the debrief.
Dean sat up ramrod straight and met that stare head on. “Everything was status quo during school hours. The Dewar girl was there the entire time, and Sammy kept an eye on her in the library after school while I talked to all the drama dorks. None of them had much to report. No, they didn’t notice her acting weird in the past few weeks. No, none of them know her very well, but they think she’s nice. They all suggested I talk to this Lauren Deyonke kid who’s apparently her bestest friend in the whole wide world.” Dean couldn’t help rolling his eyes. Seriously, what was up with chicks and that, ‘best friends forever’ crap? “I wasn’t able to catch her today but I’ll pin her down first thing tomorrow and see what she has to say.”
Dad grunted and stared down into his mug. His eyes flickered from there to the clippings pinned haphazardly to the wall, and Dean knew that he was slotting this information in with whatever it was that he’d gleaned on his own today. Dean was almost ready to ask Dad about his day, to be clued in - if only a little - about what was going on in his head when Dad beat him to the punch.
“How’d it go for Sammy?” Dad’s tone was the same, but Dean could hear all the things Dad wasn’t saying about protection and exasperation and a love so deep it scared him.
Sam exploded into the kitchen. For a kid who took up so much space, he could lurk like nobody’s business. He banged open cupboard and refrigerator with angry, precise movements, obviously in search of sustenance to feed his Hulk-like rage.
“It’s going fine for Sammy,” he prissed over his shoulder, hands busy unscrewing the peanut butter jar and then jamming a plastic spoon into its half-empty depths. “What did Dean tell you?” he asked, mouth half-full of gooey slime.
Dad took a deep breath but didn’t look back at his youngest, wouldn’t engage with whatever mood Sam was indulging in now. “What should Dean have told me?”
“Nothing,” Sam replied quickly, too quickly, eyes darting from Dean to Dad in a delayed attempt to measure the situation. “Nothing happened. She sat there reading her book until her sister showed up.” Sam frowned. “Anyway, I think you’re wrong about her. I don’t think she had anything to do with her dad’s death.” Dean could see straight through Sam’s subject-change strategy; hell, he was the one who’d taught it to him, and it was a sure thing that Dad knew what he was doing, too. After all, all of Dean’s best tricks came straight from him.
“Really.” Dad could make one word pretty freaking intimidating. That and the way he turned around and caught Sam in that stare of his, and it was no wonder that Sam gulped down his peanut butter and stood up straight, all of the attitude knocked right out of him.
“It’s-” Sam swallowed. “I talked to her today and, yeah, she’s a little crazy, but most people are after something like that. She just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d do something like that. It doesn’t feel right.”
Dad stared at Sam, and Sam met him head on, stubborn will flashing against stubborn will. All Dean could do was sit there and stare, mug going cold in his hands. Sam’s opinions weren’t new - he’d made those abundantly clear starting on the day he’d spit up pureed squash all over everything and he hadn’t stopped expressing them since - but this bull-headed refusal to back down was fresh and exciting.
“Sammy’s feelings aside, we proceed as planned,” Dad ordered. Dean knew that Dad was talking to him even if his eyes never left Sam’s. “You find out as much as you can about that Dewar girl. Her story doesn’t match with what I picked up at the scene and I want to know why.” Dad smiled at Sam, but there wasn’t anything particularly nice about it. “That is, as long as Sammy can keep his feelings under control.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth but nothing came out. With a huff he stalked out of the kitchen and a second later the TV blared loud from the other room. Dad turned back to the clippings on the wall, all of his attention focused on the case at hand.
Dean abandoned his mug and slipped away from the table. The lights were on in the main room, and it was nominally warmer than the kitchen. The Warner Brothers and their Sister Dot were running around on the screen, mischievous cartoon smiles on their weird faces. Dean plopped down next to Sam with a grunt, but Sam ignored him, attention firmly fixed on a point on the wall above the TV.
“You’re not gonna tell Dad about that thing in the library, are you?” Sam asked quietly.
Dean elbowed him in the side. “I’m no stool pigeon.”
Sam nodded and passed him the jar of peanut butter. Dean stuck his finger in and ignored Sam’s disgust with a grin.
~~~
September 13, 2007
Hart, MI
Sam staggered into their terminally quaint room at the ‘Hart of the Forest’ motel. It felt like he was being smothered in a blanket of autumn leaves too garish to ever exist on a real tree. He dropped the weapons duffle on the dark orange comforter on the bed furthest from the door and let his other bag follow suit. He stretched up, cracking his back with a satisfied grunt.
Dean was two steps behind him and he kicked the door closed with a slam. He tossed his own bag on the other bed and, without a word or a glance in Sam’s direction, stalked into the bathroom. He slammed that door too, for good measure.
Sam grimaced and started weeding through his bag for the three books he’d cajoled Bobby into loaning him the last time they passed through. At least the trip from Petoskey to Hart hadn’t been that long. They could fake civility pretty well, most of the time, but on the road all of their pretenses cracked and everything came spilling out. After all of the time they’d spent in that damn car in their lives you’d think they would’ve figured out how not to bite each other’s heads off during a long trip. They’d both been well-conditioned by the fear of John Winchester’s strong right hand reaching out to smack the loudest offender but Dad was gone now and Dean was a stubborn idiot. No amount of careful foresight was enough to avoid the new pitfalls strewn throughout the ever-treacherous Winchester Emotional Minefield.
There were a million things he wanted to tell his brother about life and love and hope, but everything got mixed-up and twisted by the rage and frustration that never stopped burning in the pit of his stomach. Sometimes it felt like they were falling backwards into the people they’d been years ago with Dean pretending to be Dad and Sam trying to poke as many holes in that bullshit facade as he possibly could.
Thank God they had a job to work. It was funny how hunting was the one thing they could still do together.
Dean stepped out of the bathroom just as Sam was opening his laptop, books and paper spread out around him in organized chaos on the cheap particle-board desk in the far corner of the room.
“I’m going out for a bit,” Dean glibly announced. He shrugged back into his leather jacket, face and neck still shiny and flushed from the fierce scrubbing he must have given them.
“Really? It’s not even five o’clock yet.” Sam tried hard for reasonable, but he was pretty sure the tone he’d actually achieved was closer to ‘petulant little brother’ than anything else, especially if the look on Dean’s face was anything to go by.
Dean shrugged, the unspoken, ‘So?’ implicit in the gesture. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. Thought I’d take a look around, get a feel for the area before we dive into things.”
Sam sighed. “Just, leave me the car. And try not to pick up any infections.” He’d been stuck in enough crappy motels in the past month. It was Dean’s turn to hoof it around town.
“Sure thing, Sammy.” Dean smirked and tossed him the keys in one fluid gesture. “Don’t wait up,” he added unnecessarily before the door blew shut behind him.
Sam sighed again and rubbed viciously at the pain that was building behind his temples. Saving Dean from himself never got any easier.
~~~
Angela pulled off of the highway onto the dirt road that lead to her sister’s house as twilight was deepening into night. Every time she came here it felt strangely like the forest was swallowing her up, that it would never let her go.
She turned the radio down and squinted through the gloom. She twitched when a flash of light sparked off to her right but didn’t turn to look. The first time she’d come here she’d almost driven into a ditch when a rabbit had startled in her peripheral vision. It was even worse at night, the wooded shadows making everything a surrealistic dream.
Gillian’s bungalow was dark and quiet. The headlights ghosted over it as Angela pulled up, the high beams pulling out colors in the paint that never appeared in daylight. She shut the car off and plunged the yard back into darkness. The creak of the cooling engine was echoed by the groaning of tree branches tossed in the evening breeze. They loomed over the house communicating their dark disdain for its ordered imposition.
Before her over-active imagination could do its worst she levered herself out of the car and slammed the door, refusing to notice the way the sharp clap splintered between the trees. In a few long strides she was up the creaking porch and through the door that Gillian never locked.
She called her sister’s name as she pushed the door closed and locked the deadbolt in a gesture born of equal parts habit and nerves. Her only reply was the muffled, stuffy silence of an empty house. She flipped on the thin yellow overhead light and gasped.
Everything was a mess. The front room was covered in papers and empty pop cans. There were paper plates full of old, dried-out food stacked by the far corner of the couch, and two overflowing baskets of laundry had spilled their contents all over the niche behind the half ladder/half staircase that sketched a path to the space under the eaves that Gillian used as her bedroom. The sheer fact that there wasn’t a bra dangling from a lamp was the only thing that convinced her that she hadn’t wandered into some MSU fraternity house by mistake.
She picked her way across the bomb crater, praying with every tentative step that some rodent wouldn’t come scurrying out of the destruction.
“Gillian,” she called again but with less hope of reply. Her sister wasn’t the neatest person in the world, but she’d never let things get this out of control before.
She clicked on the kitchen light only to be bombarded by more of the same. Dirty pots filled the sink, and crumbs and caked-on food were sprayed across the stove top. The paper avalanche spared the appliances but the table at the other end of the rectangular room hadn’t been quite so lucky. She collapsed into one of the mismatched chairs, the only empty seat she’d seen. She idly flipped through a few sheets, computer printouts and speckled photocopies with print too small for her road-weary eyes to decipher.
Her elbow knocked a heavy tome off of its precarious perch, and it fell with a muffled thump onto the sticky linoleum. It uncovered some kind of map checkered with names and dates and esoteric symbols that must have meant something to Gillian but wouldn’t give up their secrets to the uninitiated.
She rested her forehead on her hands and breathed. It was all too much. She’d spent the car ride up here convincing herself that she was worried over nothing, that Gillian was fine and only escaping into the uncommunicative neurotic that she could sometimes be. But somehow she’d known that her sister wouldn’t be here when she drove up.
She’d finally been left behind.
Angela picked herself up and stumbled towards the staircase and Gillian’s miraculously uncluttered bed. She couldn’t deal with any of this right now. She’d been running on adrenaline and fear for what felt like days and she had nothing left. It was all gone.
She left the bedroom light on. She wasn’t ready to face what was hiding in the dark.
~~~
Chapter Three
Fandom: Supernatural
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. It’s all Kripke’s and the CW’s and blah blah blah. We all know who the real brain trust is around here.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: General for the series. Takes place in two time periods, one pre-series and the other situated at some point between 3x04 (Sin City) and 3x05 (Bedtime Stories).
Summary: The Winchesters never stay, and when they go they leave more than burned corpses behind them.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
November 21, 1996
Waverly High School
Lansing, MI
School had been over for long enough for the library to have nearly emptied out. Gillian was bent over in one of the hard wooden chairs, a paperback held in one hand and her head propped in the other. She was pretty sure that she’d read this book countless times since childhood but it was the only thing she could think to read. It was comforting and familiar in a way that had nothing to do with the storms going on around and inside of her. She only had a few more minutes before Angie was done with whatever after school extravaganza she had going on today - ‘student government,’ the responsible part of her brain that still remembered how to be a big sister whispered at her - and life came crashing back down. She was going to enjoy every second of peace that she could.
She didn’t want to think about anything but the words on the page.
Gillian glanced up for a second and caught that kid staring at her again. She’d seen him in here all week, ostensibly roaming around the shelves but he was always staring at her. It was starting to creep her out. She’d never seen that skinny, floppy-haired kid before in her life and now he wouldn’t go away. Even Lauren, who had every right to pester her about her feelings, had backed off after a day. That stupid brat was getting on her last nerve.
She put her book down and stood up. A week ago she wouldn’t have done anything, she would’ve sat there and let that kid do whatever it was that he wanted to do, but that was a week ago. The entire world had changed since then. She’d ignore the whispers when she walked through the halls and she’d endure the pitiful looks teachers sent her way but some snot-nosed stalker was the final straw.
By the time she made it over to the pitiful folklore/mythology section of Waverly’s “vaunted” high school library the kid had his nose buried in some book about the Norse pantheon. If not for the quick, nervous flash of his eyes she almost would’ve bought his act.
“Hey,” she hissed, her voice a whisper because libraries were still sacred areas. His head whipped up. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He gazed up at her, eyes wide in a pantomime of innocence. “Looking for a book,” he bit off a little peevishly with an undertone of you crazy bitch thrown in for good measure.
“I’ve seen you in here every single day this week.” She leaned in and down until her nose was nearly level with his. She hardly even noticed that she’d backed him into the shelf. “I’ve seen you watching me and I don’t like it. I don’t care if you’re curious or if you and your buddies get a kick out of laughing about the weird chick whose dad was killed or if maybe you’re just some sweet, innocent kid whose only crime is reading a book. I’m sick and tired of seeing you hanging around.” A small part of her was trying to get her to shut up and step back out of that poor kid’s space. This wasn’t the way she acted, this wasn’t who she was, she was a good girl. There was another, louder part of her, though, that needed this, needed to lash out and make someone hurt as much as she did.
The kid’s face was completely still and expressionless and she had no way of knowing what that meant. He didn’t even flinch. Somehow that made her even angrier, her knuckles turning white around the spine of the book in her hand. Her arm tensed and she knew she was going to clock him upside the head, she could see herself doing it. She’d never hit anyone, not for real, in her entire life.
“Hey, Sam, you okay?” Her back stiffened at the interruption of a voice with enough violence in it to match her own. The kid used the distraction to slip past her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” was the kid’s stolid reply.
She turned and saw the kid, Sam, standing by some guy she recognized. He was in her chemistry class, he was the one who always knew just what to say to make the class descend into chaos and make Mr. Gigante look like he was having a stroke. But now he didn’t look anything like that person. He stood still and focused, body poised and a glare so fierce that it should’ve had her tripping over herself to get away. Now she raised her chin in response. She wasn’t going to back down and she wasn’t going to feel guilty for bullying someone younger than her, no matter how sick her stomach felt.
He narrowed his eyes and took a step forward. He would’ve taken another - she was counting on it, ready for it - if not for the hand that reached up and grabbed his arm. He and Sam shared some indefinable look and the violence flowed out of him. Without looking back at her they turned as one and left the library.
The library door slammed and her spine deflated, collapsing against the shelf behind her. She rubbed a hand over her face and was surprised to find that she wasn’t crying, that she didn’t even feel like she wanted to. All she felt was hollow and a tiny bit frightened of the person she was becoming.
“Gillian?” She looked up and Angie was there. She had no idea how long she’d been slumped against the books. Angie looked genuinely scared by what she saw on her sister’s face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Gillian took a deep breath and stood up. She pulled a grin up from somewhere deep inside and prayed that it was enough. She needed to protect her little sister from everything that was bad in the universe, including herself. “Yeah, just kind of tired, I guess.”
Angie nodded and was relieved enough to give her a small smile in return. “Are you ready to go?” She asked carefully.
“Just let me get my things.” Gillian swallowed and turned to pack up her stuff. She could do this, she could hold it all together. She had to.
~~~
Dean pulled the beat up old GMC truck into the muddy tracks that constituted the driveway of the tiny house Dad had somehow found to rent. He’d known a guy who had a buddy who could get them in, no questions asked, as long as the Winchesters took care of a little poltergeist problem at the nearby car plant. Apparently nothing scared Big Auto more than the pissed-off ghost of some dude killed on the line.
It was that same friend of a guy, Tim, who’d dug up the old beater of a truck that had gotten Dean and Sam back and forth to school. There might’ve been doubt in his voice when he’d let Dean use his garage to bang it back into some kind of working condition but there’d been none by the time it was running. It might be a piece of shit but anything was better than sitting out at the bus stop freezing his ass off.
Dean glanced over at the sullen lump on the other side of the bench seat. Sam hadn’t said a word since the fiasco in the library but he didn’t need to. His pissy silence said plenty. “Great use of those surveillance skills back there, champ.”
“Shut up,” Sam snipped, his brows furrowing even closer together in frustration. “I told you yesterday that she’d made me. You should’ve covered for me instead of making out with cheerleaders in the locker room.”
“Yeah, that was pretty awesome,” Dean smirked. Hell, he wished he’d been getting some in the locker room instead of making small talk with the choir geeks and the band dorks. But, hey, if that’s what Sam wanted to believe he wasn’t about to disabuse him of the notion.
“You’re so gross.” The tone in Sam’s voice said it all. Dean struggled to keep from busting out with a belly laugh. He wasn’t sure what switch had flipped in Sam’s brain to turn him into this whiny little brat but he was bound and determined to get all the fun out of it that he could.
Dean got himself under control with a deep breath. He rolled his eyes with a flourish. “Yeah, well, at least I got something done. Dad’s gonna be thrilled with what you accomplished.”
“Shut up,” Sam repeated. He kicked his door open and then slammed it hard enough to make the whole car shake. He barged through the swamp that passed as a front lawn, backpack bouncing in time to every snitty stomp.
“Real eloquent there, Sammy,” Dean said quietly to the steering wheel. He sighed and rolled his shoulders in an attempt to loosen the kinks that had been his constant friends ever since Sammy turned thirteen. Once upon a time there’d been a little kid who thought he had the coolest big brother in the world. As fun as riling Sam up could be sometimes he really missed those days.
He pushed his own door open. Its rusty old hinges sounded as tired and stiff as he suddenly felt. He slowly followed Sam’s path into the house, the cold drizzle seeping down into his bones. It felt like it had been raining for months.
It wasn’t much warmer inside, but at least it was dry. He could track Sam’s pissed-off march to his room by the muddy footprints he’d left on the carpet. That little bitch was so cleaning that mess up, with his tongue, if necessary. He pitched his bag in the general direction of the couch and turned toward the kitchen. He needed coffee more than he needed to breathe.
Dad was sitting straight-backed at the rickety old table, his hands clasped around a steaming mug. The only hint that he’d been up since yesterday was the hunch in his shoulders. There was a little mud in his hair, the only evidence of whatever it was he’d been getting up to while Dean was stuck in school.
“Long day?” Dean asked on his way to the coffeepot on the stove. Dad grunted in reply as Dean poured himself some of the sludge that called itself coffee in the Winchester household.
The folding chair squeaked on the peeling linoleum when he pulled it out from underneath the table. He sprawled in the hard seat and gulped down nearly half of the still-scorching tar in his mug. Damn, that felt good. Its heat didn’t quite dampen the chill deep in his bones, but it was a start.
“How’d it go today?”
Dean didn’t have to look to know that Dad’s eyes were watching him, weighing and measuring in that way that only John Winchester could. He’d like to ask Dad the same question but that wasn’t an option now. He’d have to rely on the tried-and-true method of wait and watch and hope like hell he was enough to take care of any problems that might come their way.
“Not bad.” Dean smirked. “I got Lisa Silva into the janitor’s closet during fourth hour. The things that chick can do with her tongue.” He whistled low in appreciation. Dad’s only response was a long, steady, implacable stare. So, it’d been one of those days. No joking around just straight to the debrief.
Dean sat up ramrod straight and met that stare head on. “Everything was status quo during school hours. The Dewar girl was there the entire time, and Sammy kept an eye on her in the library after school while I talked to all the drama dorks. None of them had much to report. No, they didn’t notice her acting weird in the past few weeks. No, none of them know her very well, but they think she’s nice. They all suggested I talk to this Lauren Deyonke kid who’s apparently her bestest friend in the whole wide world.” Dean couldn’t help rolling his eyes. Seriously, what was up with chicks and that, ‘best friends forever’ crap? “I wasn’t able to catch her today but I’ll pin her down first thing tomorrow and see what she has to say.”
Dad grunted and stared down into his mug. His eyes flickered from there to the clippings pinned haphazardly to the wall, and Dean knew that he was slotting this information in with whatever it was that he’d gleaned on his own today. Dean was almost ready to ask Dad about his day, to be clued in - if only a little - about what was going on in his head when Dad beat him to the punch.
“How’d it go for Sammy?” Dad’s tone was the same, but Dean could hear all the things Dad wasn’t saying about protection and exasperation and a love so deep it scared him.
Sam exploded into the kitchen. For a kid who took up so much space, he could lurk like nobody’s business. He banged open cupboard and refrigerator with angry, precise movements, obviously in search of sustenance to feed his Hulk-like rage.
“It’s going fine for Sammy,” he prissed over his shoulder, hands busy unscrewing the peanut butter jar and then jamming a plastic spoon into its half-empty depths. “What did Dean tell you?” he asked, mouth half-full of gooey slime.
Dad took a deep breath but didn’t look back at his youngest, wouldn’t engage with whatever mood Sam was indulging in now. “What should Dean have told me?”
“Nothing,” Sam replied quickly, too quickly, eyes darting from Dean to Dad in a delayed attempt to measure the situation. “Nothing happened. She sat there reading her book until her sister showed up.” Sam frowned. “Anyway, I think you’re wrong about her. I don’t think she had anything to do with her dad’s death.” Dean could see straight through Sam’s subject-change strategy; hell, he was the one who’d taught it to him, and it was a sure thing that Dad knew what he was doing, too. After all, all of Dean’s best tricks came straight from him.
“Really.” Dad could make one word pretty freaking intimidating. That and the way he turned around and caught Sam in that stare of his, and it was no wonder that Sam gulped down his peanut butter and stood up straight, all of the attitude knocked right out of him.
“It’s-” Sam swallowed. “I talked to her today and, yeah, she’s a little crazy, but most people are after something like that. She just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d do something like that. It doesn’t feel right.”
Dad stared at Sam, and Sam met him head on, stubborn will flashing against stubborn will. All Dean could do was sit there and stare, mug going cold in his hands. Sam’s opinions weren’t new - he’d made those abundantly clear starting on the day he’d spit up pureed squash all over everything and he hadn’t stopped expressing them since - but this bull-headed refusal to back down was fresh and exciting.
“Sammy’s feelings aside, we proceed as planned,” Dad ordered. Dean knew that Dad was talking to him even if his eyes never left Sam’s. “You find out as much as you can about that Dewar girl. Her story doesn’t match with what I picked up at the scene and I want to know why.” Dad smiled at Sam, but there wasn’t anything particularly nice about it. “That is, as long as Sammy can keep his feelings under control.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth but nothing came out. With a huff he stalked out of the kitchen and a second later the TV blared loud from the other room. Dad turned back to the clippings on the wall, all of his attention focused on the case at hand.
Dean abandoned his mug and slipped away from the table. The lights were on in the main room, and it was nominally warmer than the kitchen. The Warner Brothers and their Sister Dot were running around on the screen, mischievous cartoon smiles on their weird faces. Dean plopped down next to Sam with a grunt, but Sam ignored him, attention firmly fixed on a point on the wall above the TV.
“You’re not gonna tell Dad about that thing in the library, are you?” Sam asked quietly.
Dean elbowed him in the side. “I’m no stool pigeon.”
Sam nodded and passed him the jar of peanut butter. Dean stuck his finger in and ignored Sam’s disgust with a grin.
~~~
September 13, 2007
Hart, MI
Sam staggered into their terminally quaint room at the ‘Hart of the Forest’ motel. It felt like he was being smothered in a blanket of autumn leaves too garish to ever exist on a real tree. He dropped the weapons duffle on the dark orange comforter on the bed furthest from the door and let his other bag follow suit. He stretched up, cracking his back with a satisfied grunt.
Dean was two steps behind him and he kicked the door closed with a slam. He tossed his own bag on the other bed and, without a word or a glance in Sam’s direction, stalked into the bathroom. He slammed that door too, for good measure.
Sam grimaced and started weeding through his bag for the three books he’d cajoled Bobby into loaning him the last time they passed through. At least the trip from Petoskey to Hart hadn’t been that long. They could fake civility pretty well, most of the time, but on the road all of their pretenses cracked and everything came spilling out. After all of the time they’d spent in that damn car in their lives you’d think they would’ve figured out how not to bite each other’s heads off during a long trip. They’d both been well-conditioned by the fear of John Winchester’s strong right hand reaching out to smack the loudest offender but Dad was gone now and Dean was a stubborn idiot. No amount of careful foresight was enough to avoid the new pitfalls strewn throughout the ever-treacherous Winchester Emotional Minefield.
There were a million things he wanted to tell his brother about life and love and hope, but everything got mixed-up and twisted by the rage and frustration that never stopped burning in the pit of his stomach. Sometimes it felt like they were falling backwards into the people they’d been years ago with Dean pretending to be Dad and Sam trying to poke as many holes in that bullshit facade as he possibly could.
Thank God they had a job to work. It was funny how hunting was the one thing they could still do together.
Dean stepped out of the bathroom just as Sam was opening his laptop, books and paper spread out around him in organized chaos on the cheap particle-board desk in the far corner of the room.
“I’m going out for a bit,” Dean glibly announced. He shrugged back into his leather jacket, face and neck still shiny and flushed from the fierce scrubbing he must have given them.
“Really? It’s not even five o’clock yet.” Sam tried hard for reasonable, but he was pretty sure the tone he’d actually achieved was closer to ‘petulant little brother’ than anything else, especially if the look on Dean’s face was anything to go by.
Dean shrugged, the unspoken, ‘So?’ implicit in the gesture. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. Thought I’d take a look around, get a feel for the area before we dive into things.”
Sam sighed. “Just, leave me the car. And try not to pick up any infections.” He’d been stuck in enough crappy motels in the past month. It was Dean’s turn to hoof it around town.
“Sure thing, Sammy.” Dean smirked and tossed him the keys in one fluid gesture. “Don’t wait up,” he added unnecessarily before the door blew shut behind him.
Sam sighed again and rubbed viciously at the pain that was building behind his temples. Saving Dean from himself never got any easier.
~~~
Angela pulled off of the highway onto the dirt road that lead to her sister’s house as twilight was deepening into night. Every time she came here it felt strangely like the forest was swallowing her up, that it would never let her go.
She turned the radio down and squinted through the gloom. She twitched when a flash of light sparked off to her right but didn’t turn to look. The first time she’d come here she’d almost driven into a ditch when a rabbit had startled in her peripheral vision. It was even worse at night, the wooded shadows making everything a surrealistic dream.
Gillian’s bungalow was dark and quiet. The headlights ghosted over it as Angela pulled up, the high beams pulling out colors in the paint that never appeared in daylight. She shut the car off and plunged the yard back into darkness. The creak of the cooling engine was echoed by the groaning of tree branches tossed in the evening breeze. They loomed over the house communicating their dark disdain for its ordered imposition.
Before her over-active imagination could do its worst she levered herself out of the car and slammed the door, refusing to notice the way the sharp clap splintered between the trees. In a few long strides she was up the creaking porch and through the door that Gillian never locked.
She called her sister’s name as she pushed the door closed and locked the deadbolt in a gesture born of equal parts habit and nerves. Her only reply was the muffled, stuffy silence of an empty house. She flipped on the thin yellow overhead light and gasped.
Everything was a mess. The front room was covered in papers and empty pop cans. There were paper plates full of old, dried-out food stacked by the far corner of the couch, and two overflowing baskets of laundry had spilled their contents all over the niche behind the half ladder/half staircase that sketched a path to the space under the eaves that Gillian used as her bedroom. The sheer fact that there wasn’t a bra dangling from a lamp was the only thing that convinced her that she hadn’t wandered into some MSU fraternity house by mistake.
She picked her way across the bomb crater, praying with every tentative step that some rodent wouldn’t come scurrying out of the destruction.
“Gillian,” she called again but with less hope of reply. Her sister wasn’t the neatest person in the world, but she’d never let things get this out of control before.
She clicked on the kitchen light only to be bombarded by more of the same. Dirty pots filled the sink, and crumbs and caked-on food were sprayed across the stove top. The paper avalanche spared the appliances but the table at the other end of the rectangular room hadn’t been quite so lucky. She collapsed into one of the mismatched chairs, the only empty seat she’d seen. She idly flipped through a few sheets, computer printouts and speckled photocopies with print too small for her road-weary eyes to decipher.
Her elbow knocked a heavy tome off of its precarious perch, and it fell with a muffled thump onto the sticky linoleum. It uncovered some kind of map checkered with names and dates and esoteric symbols that must have meant something to Gillian but wouldn’t give up their secrets to the uninitiated.
She rested her forehead on her hands and breathed. It was all too much. She’d spent the car ride up here convincing herself that she was worried over nothing, that Gillian was fine and only escaping into the uncommunicative neurotic that she could sometimes be. But somehow she’d known that her sister wouldn’t be here when she drove up.
She’d finally been left behind.
Angela picked herself up and stumbled towards the staircase and Gillian’s miraculously uncluttered bed. She couldn’t deal with any of this right now. She’d been running on adrenaline and fear for what felt like days and she had nothing left. It was all gone.
She left the bedroom light on. She wasn’t ready to face what was hiding in the dark.
~~~
Chapter Three