Fic: Wild By Skye (5/27)
When the same time rolled around the following month, Dean was done pretending he wasn't going to vanish. Sam knew he was going to leave, and Dean preferred the quiet understanding to flimsy subterfuge.
As dusk approached, Dean was pacing the motel room, hands slapping a broken drum solo against his jean-clad thighs. Sam was watching him closely from his bed, brow knit in consternation and book in hand all but forgotten.
When Dean finally lost his patience and grabbed up the keys to the car, Sam piped in, "I'll go with you." He had no idea where he was volunteering to go, but he had to figure anywhere would be acceptable, at least once, just to solve the mystery.
Dean spun to face him, frozen mid-stride to the door. He blinked at Sam, hesitated half a second, then the mask slipped into place. Dean smirked. "Dude, I don't go for that ménage a trois stuff; I don't know what kind of crap you got up to in college, but keep it on campus."
Sam narrowed his eyes at Dean and snarled, "Jerk."
"Bitch… later, Sammy." Before Sam could make any further appeals to tag along, Dean was gone.
Sam sat in the silence of the room staring mutinously at the door a moment, then with a resolute slam of the book in his hands he got up and fished a binder and pen from his bag.
He sat down at the small room table, turned to a fresh page, and wrote the first possibility down to the big question 'what is up with Dean':
Woman
That wasn't very likely, given the fact they were never in the same place any given month. If Dean had found himself a chick he thought worth seeing repeatedly, he'd be making sure they were in a certain town for their agreed rendezvous.
He drew a line through his first scribble and wrote another below it.
Hunt
Sam stared at that scrawled possibility for a few moments. He might believe that one. He might suspect Dean was secretly working his own hunt on the sly, as it were, if Dean had been picking all their hunts so far. Sam picked some of them, sending them to scattered locations in the United States. If Dean was tracking something on his spare time, it was something that could be hunted anywhere in the continental United States, because Dean never objected to Sam's proposed hunts on the basis of their location.
Still… Sam left that possibility untouched and moved down to the next line of the notebook paper.
Possessed
That would explain the strange behavior, but then Dean had been handling the kind of material that made demons shriek bloody murder. Silver knives, holy water, crucifixes… not to mention Dean crossed salt lines unhindered. It also wouldn't account for the fact that aside those one or two days of the month, Dean was his normal self.
With a smirk, Sam wrote
PMS
Until Dean saw fit to come clean and tell Sam what was going on, he'd leave that one on the list. Just as a matter of principle. Served Dean right for keeping secrets.
With a dark frown, Sam slowly wrote the next thought that came to mind.
Dad
What if Dean was working with Dad all this time? He wouldn't put it past their father to shadow them, meeting with Dean in secret so the two of them could hunt down the yellow-eyed demon together while stupid, gullible Sammy was left behind. As if he were still a kid they had to leave in the Impala with a .45 for protection while the men went out and killed the bad thing.
Sam was getting mad just thinking about it, until his rational mind told him that Dean was just as worried about their father's prolonged absences as Sam was. No way his brother was faking that glint of fear in his eyes when they talked about Dad.
Hesitantly, Sam drew a line through that. Then he stopped, pressed the tip of the pen into the paper, and wrote Dad in again and left it.
Those were the obvious candidates, and he'd more or less ruled them out (for the most part).
Sam tapped the end of his pencil against the notebook, mulling over the other potential explanations. He looked at the facts. Dean was going out at night and wouldn't let Sam know why or where he was going.
Double life
Sam pursed his lips and chewed on the pen cap. Their everyday lives were the kind of things double lives were made of, so exactly what kind of double life could Dean possibly be leading? He tried to imagine Dean sneaking out to coach pee wee football and snorted.
Sam dropped down a line.
Batman
Okay, now he was just being ridiculous. Sam scratched out Batman and returned to the serious question of what his brother could be up to.
He keyed in on the pattern of Dean's disappearing act - once a month - and he paused. Something occurred to him. He got up, went to the window, and looked out at the night sky and its luminous full moon.
Sam returned to the table and wrote in the notebook
Werewolf
Sam's face screwed. That didn't really wash for the same reasons Sam wasn't leaping for the holy water with his brother. Dean handled plenty of silver on a regular basis, and it never bothered him. Besides which, deaths followed werewolves around, not vice versa, and there were never more people dead for Dean's arrival than there had already been before they got there for the hunt. The only thing that fit with that theory was the lunar cycle, which wasn't exactly a certifiable smoking gun given the lack of all other usual indicators of a werewolf's presence. He would chalk the phase of the moon up to pure coincidence.
Sam moved on to the next possibility.
Drugs
Sam pondered that a while. It would explain Dean's unusual behavior, and it wouldn't require him to have adverse reactions to supernatural safeguards. Just because Dean's skin didn't sizzle when he spilled holy water on it didn't rule out drug abuse. Then again, Dean's behavior was remarkably usual aside from those couple of days every month. If Dean was hooked on something and slipping out to meet with a dealer for more, he wasn't exhibiting any of the typical symptoms of addiction.
The PMS theory was starting to look pretty good.
Job
Sam smiled faintly, despite himself. That possibility brought back memories. When they were young, Dean had taken odd jobs, sometimes without letting their father know about it, to earn extra money. Not to buy video games or pocket money to blow on a date with some chick, but for groceries for them or clothes and school supplies for Sam. Their father hadn't always had the cash for the essentials, and Dean made damn sure he could take up the slack. He made sure Sam was provided for as best he could, and Sam confessed that was pretty damn well. He might not have the coolest stuff that all the other kids had, but the things he really needed Dean made sure he had.
Almost absently, Sam wrote on the next line
Mind my own business
His brother had done plenty and more for him his entire life; if he wanted to have one little secret, one thing to call his own, what business was it of Sam's?
But then again, Dean had been the one to drag him back into his life. Sam had been doing fine on his own in California. He'd been happy. He had a future, a normal life waiting to welcome him, and he had a great girlfriend that he fully intended to marry one day. Then Dean hauled him back into the world of hunting, almost literally by the scruff of his neck, when he pulled him from his burning apartment.
Sam by no means blamed Dean for what happened, but the fact remained that Dean was the driving force for Sam spending almost every waking hour with his brother. When they lived that enmeshed in each other's lives (so much that it was really a joke to claim they had separate lives), one brother's affairs became the other's. That was just the way it worked. The Winchesters were accountable to no one except each other.
It was a twisted sort of logic, but what about their entire lives wasn't twisted?
No closer to figuring out the mystery, Sam tossed the pen down, closed up his notebook, and stuffed it back into his bag. He'd have to gather more clues, watch his brother closer, before he could make any headway. He took some small comfort in the fact Dean didn't come back from his nocturnal jaunts sick or injured. To the contrary, he came back all shades of perky and upbeat.
Hardly a capital crime, though damn peculiar for a Winchester.
Sam watched some television, read, and generally tried not to think overly much about where Dean might be and what he might be doing.
It was a relief when he could legitimately call it a night, crawl into bed, and know he'd have a cheerful, energetic brother to look forward to in the morning.
Six
As dusk approached, Dean was pacing the motel room, hands slapping a broken drum solo against his jean-clad thighs. Sam was watching him closely from his bed, brow knit in consternation and book in hand all but forgotten.
When Dean finally lost his patience and grabbed up the keys to the car, Sam piped in, "I'll go with you." He had no idea where he was volunteering to go, but he had to figure anywhere would be acceptable, at least once, just to solve the mystery.
Dean spun to face him, frozen mid-stride to the door. He blinked at Sam, hesitated half a second, then the mask slipped into place. Dean smirked. "Dude, I don't go for that ménage a trois stuff; I don't know what kind of crap you got up to in college, but keep it on campus."
Sam narrowed his eyes at Dean and snarled, "Jerk."
"Bitch… later, Sammy." Before Sam could make any further appeals to tag along, Dean was gone.
Sam sat in the silence of the room staring mutinously at the door a moment, then with a resolute slam of the book in his hands he got up and fished a binder and pen from his bag.
He sat down at the small room table, turned to a fresh page, and wrote the first possibility down to the big question 'what is up with Dean':
Woman
That wasn't very likely, given the fact they were never in the same place any given month. If Dean had found himself a chick he thought worth seeing repeatedly, he'd be making sure they were in a certain town for their agreed rendezvous.
He drew a line through his first scribble and wrote another below it.
Hunt
Sam stared at that scrawled possibility for a few moments. He might believe that one. He might suspect Dean was secretly working his own hunt on the sly, as it were, if Dean had been picking all their hunts so far. Sam picked some of them, sending them to scattered locations in the United States. If Dean was tracking something on his spare time, it was something that could be hunted anywhere in the continental United States, because Dean never objected to Sam's proposed hunts on the basis of their location.
Still… Sam left that possibility untouched and moved down to the next line of the notebook paper.
Possessed
That would explain the strange behavior, but then Dean had been handling the kind of material that made demons shriek bloody murder. Silver knives, holy water, crucifixes… not to mention Dean crossed salt lines unhindered. It also wouldn't account for the fact that aside those one or two days of the month, Dean was his normal self.
With a smirk, Sam wrote
PMS
Until Dean saw fit to come clean and tell Sam what was going on, he'd leave that one on the list. Just as a matter of principle. Served Dean right for keeping secrets.
With a dark frown, Sam slowly wrote the next thought that came to mind.
Dad
What if Dean was working with Dad all this time? He wouldn't put it past their father to shadow them, meeting with Dean in secret so the two of them could hunt down the yellow-eyed demon together while stupid, gullible Sammy was left behind. As if he were still a kid they had to leave in the Impala with a .45 for protection while the men went out and killed the bad thing.
Sam was getting mad just thinking about it, until his rational mind told him that Dean was just as worried about their father's prolonged absences as Sam was. No way his brother was faking that glint of fear in his eyes when they talked about Dad.
Hesitantly, Sam drew a line through that. Then he stopped, pressed the tip of the pen into the paper, and wrote Dad in again and left it.
Those were the obvious candidates, and he'd more or less ruled them out (for the most part).
Sam tapped the end of his pencil against the notebook, mulling over the other potential explanations. He looked at the facts. Dean was going out at night and wouldn't let Sam know why or where he was going.
Double life
Sam pursed his lips and chewed on the pen cap. Their everyday lives were the kind of things double lives were made of, so exactly what kind of double life could Dean possibly be leading? He tried to imagine Dean sneaking out to coach pee wee football and snorted.
Sam dropped down a line.
Batman
Okay, now he was just being ridiculous. Sam scratched out Batman and returned to the serious question of what his brother could be up to.
He keyed in on the pattern of Dean's disappearing act - once a month - and he paused. Something occurred to him. He got up, went to the window, and looked out at the night sky and its luminous full moon.
Sam returned to the table and wrote in the notebook
Werewolf
Sam's face screwed. That didn't really wash for the same reasons Sam wasn't leaping for the holy water with his brother. Dean handled plenty of silver on a regular basis, and it never bothered him. Besides which, deaths followed werewolves around, not vice versa, and there were never more people dead for Dean's arrival than there had already been before they got there for the hunt. The only thing that fit with that theory was the lunar cycle, which wasn't exactly a certifiable smoking gun given the lack of all other usual indicators of a werewolf's presence. He would chalk the phase of the moon up to pure coincidence.
Sam moved on to the next possibility.
Drugs
Sam pondered that a while. It would explain Dean's unusual behavior, and it wouldn't require him to have adverse reactions to supernatural safeguards. Just because Dean's skin didn't sizzle when he spilled holy water on it didn't rule out drug abuse. Then again, Dean's behavior was remarkably usual aside from those couple of days every month. If Dean was hooked on something and slipping out to meet with a dealer for more, he wasn't exhibiting any of the typical symptoms of addiction.
The PMS theory was starting to look pretty good.
Job
Sam smiled faintly, despite himself. That possibility brought back memories. When they were young, Dean had taken odd jobs, sometimes without letting their father know about it, to earn extra money. Not to buy video games or pocket money to blow on a date with some chick, but for groceries for them or clothes and school supplies for Sam. Their father hadn't always had the cash for the essentials, and Dean made damn sure he could take up the slack. He made sure Sam was provided for as best he could, and Sam confessed that was pretty damn well. He might not have the coolest stuff that all the other kids had, but the things he really needed Dean made sure he had.
Almost absently, Sam wrote on the next line
Mind my own business
His brother had done plenty and more for him his entire life; if he wanted to have one little secret, one thing to call his own, what business was it of Sam's?
But then again, Dean had been the one to drag him back into his life. Sam had been doing fine on his own in California. He'd been happy. He had a future, a normal life waiting to welcome him, and he had a great girlfriend that he fully intended to marry one day. Then Dean hauled him back into the world of hunting, almost literally by the scruff of his neck, when he pulled him from his burning apartment.
Sam by no means blamed Dean for what happened, but the fact remained that Dean was the driving force for Sam spending almost every waking hour with his brother. When they lived that enmeshed in each other's lives (so much that it was really a joke to claim they had separate lives), one brother's affairs became the other's. That was just the way it worked. The Winchesters were accountable to no one except each other.
It was a twisted sort of logic, but what about their entire lives wasn't twisted?
No closer to figuring out the mystery, Sam tossed the pen down, closed up his notebook, and stuffed it back into his bag. He'd have to gather more clues, watch his brother closer, before he could make any headway. He took some small comfort in the fact Dean didn't come back from his nocturnal jaunts sick or injured. To the contrary, he came back all shades of perky and upbeat.
Hardly a capital crime, though damn peculiar for a Winchester.
Sam watched some television, read, and generally tried not to think overly much about where Dean might be and what he might be doing.
It was a relief when he could legitimately call it a night, crawl into bed, and know he'd have a cheerful, energetic brother to look forward to in the morning.
Six