Ramblin' Man Pt 2, OR I am not dead
Title: A Ramblin' Man (Lord I Was Born) [2/ actually like 3 or 4]
Author: nirvana_falling
Rating: PG-13 for this part
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Lisa sort of, inevitable Dean/Cas
Spoilers: 5x22, everything ever
Word Count: 5915
Summary: After Lucifer's back in his cage and Dean's where he thinks he ought to be, Cas comes by with a job he can't refuse.
Notes: Still unbetaed, y'all. ALSO I am so sorry this took so long. Finals week hurt me real bad and then I had real life things. ):
When Bobby finally opened to door, after five minutes of Dean knocking and swearing, the first thing he did was shut it right back in their faces. Actually, he said, “No way am I gettin’ caught up in this shit again,” first. It took Dean another two tries and a face full of holy water to convince Bobby that they weren’t going to draft him into The Apocalypse, Round Two.
“Then what do you want?” Bobby asked. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but I figured you were still settling in with Lisa.”
“I was,” Dean stopped. “Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Sam,” Dean blurted, and the name hung in the air, as much of a presence as Sam was when he had been there, huge and skulking around the house or researching or bitching at Dean or doing any of the million little things people do throughout the day.
“What about Sam?” Bobby’s voice got the edge it always did when he thought something or someone (Dean) had fucked up.
“Cas thinks he’s alive.”
“Dammit, Dean. I know you’re a fool for your brother and almost as much of one for that angel of yours,” and at that Cas, who had been content to sit on Bobby’s counter and watch Dean flounder, made a noise of protest, “but your brother fell into the Pit.”
“And he has somehow climbed back out,” Castiel said.
“So he’s-”
“No. Lucifer is still in his cage. In all likelihood, God freed Sam from Hell.”
“And you’re telling me that Sam came back to life and just decided not to tell anybody? That doesn’t sound like Sam.”
“Bobby,” Dean started, “you know Sam’s an idiot. If he thinks I have this perfect, white picket fence and dog kinda life, he’s going to go martyr himself for it.”
“Alright, point. But he hasn’t come round to see me either.”
“Well, Samantha’s always needed time alone with her feelings.” And Dean knew that he sounded like he was rationalizing, but everything he said was true. He needed it to be true, yeah, but it also happened to be God’s honest truth.
“Dean,” Bobby sighed, in the way that Dean knew meant he was going to give in but didn’t like it, “I don’t know anything about Sam, but I’ll call Rufus, and Jake out on the West Coast, and a couple of hunters I know down South and see if anyone’s heard about Sam. There’s some cars out there that could use your attention, if you happen to be feelin’ guilty about crashing.”
“Aw, thanks Bobby.” But as Dean moved to go out to the salvage yard and get back in Bobby’s good graces, Castiel cleared his throat.
“It would be wise if you talked to as few people as possible, Bobby.” Before Bobby could give Cas the piece of his mind he was clearly preparing to, the angel continued. “I choose to intervene in this affair because I feared other hunters would not be so…sympathetic to Sam’s predicament.”
“You think they’re hunting Sam.”
“Look, Bobby,” Dean jumped in, “it’s not that far-fetched. I mean, Gordon was hunting us before we even really started the Apocalypse. And it was hunters that killed me and Sam when we went to Heaven. So if word got out that Sammy had come back from Hell,” Dean trailed off there with a shrug and Bobby rolled his eyes.
“Fine, I’ll only call Rufus. He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
Cas vanished after that, and Dean dicked around with some decrepit Ford until Bobby came out and coughed. “Look, son, I’m sorry, but”
“It’s fine, Bobby,” Dean cut him off. “If no one knows, it means no one’s hunting him.”
“Hopefully. Are you sure Cas is right, though?”
“About?”
“Not about Sam being the Devil, you idjit, about the rest of the angels not having any interest in this.”
“Oh.” Dean let out a breath he pretended he wasn’t holding. “I trust Cas, Bobby,” Dean said with his chin tilted up, a challenge.
“Alright.” Bobby shrugged but didn’t argue. “So, where are you gonna look?”
-
After a week of thinking and checking for omens and one incredibly tense fight between Dean and Bobby that ended with Dean’s hands shaking the way they had when he once sided with Sam against their father, Dean and Cas headed for California first, because while Dean didn’t think Sam would settle himself there, it was also the last place Dean wanted to look so he figured he’d look first. He called Zach and Becky from that fucking Saint Louis shapeshifter affair, and they gave him a list of Sam’s friends who were still out in California. Luckily, they had been pretty keen on helping him, since Dean didn’t really want to have to mention how much trouble that case had eventually caused them, though, really, the FBI? Had nothing on Lucifer.
California was sickeningly pleasant for late September. The first people on Dean’s list were Katharine and Joseph DeWitt. According to Becky, they had gotten married during Dean’s first last year on earth, and Sam had met them through Jess. He imagined they had held joint dinner parties or something else equally middle-America and nauseating.
Katharine was an Amazon of a woman, taller than Cas, who had gone back to Heaven once they crossed the California border, so the smile in her eyes was practical level with Dean’s stare when she opened the door. “Can I help you?”
“I sure hope so.” Dean smiled, the same good ol’ boy smile he gave every witness and every victim’s mother across America. “I’m Dean Winchester,” that part was new, being himself for once, “and I was wondering if you’d heard from my brother recently.”
“Sam?” Her eyes got wide and excited. “You’re Sam’s brother? He talked about you like you were the only person he’d ever known.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dean muttered, but he couldn’t help grinning up at her.
“Has something happened? Is Sam okay?”
“As far as I know, but I haven’t seen him in months.”
“Oh my God,” Katherine breathed out and covered her mouth with a hand. “I’m so sorry, but I haven’t seen him since, since Jess.”
“That’s okay,” Dean sighed. “Thanks, though. I’ll let you know when I find him.”
“Of course.”
As Dean was leaving, already down the steps and halfway to his car, she called out, “Wait!”
Dean turned.
“If, if you do find Sam,” she called, “can you, ah, can you tell him we miss him?”
“Yeah,” Dean told her, and something twisted in his chest, fierce and insistent that finding Sam was the most important task he’d ever given himself.
He wouldn’t ever stop looking, he knew, as he opened the Impala’s door and checked his list for the next address. It wasn’t as though he didn’t want to find Sam, God, finding Sam is all he’d ever wanted, but a part of him was tired of driving and motels and endless tasks. There were three more people for him to hit in California, but Dean wasn’t sure he wanted any of them to have the answer.
They didn’t, of course, though all of them affected variations on the same expression: concerned and upset but a little confused that after a radio silence of six years Sam was suddenly reentering their life, even if as a specter. When he closed the last door, Dean drove back to his motel outside Santa Monica and just sat with his head in his hands. He could call Lisa, should, really, she had called him twice and he had answered with short and clipped replies, tired and drawn and a little angry, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually pick up his phone.
What could he tell her except that he hadn’t found Sam, but wanted to more now than he had even in the first weeks when all he was able to do was mourn. She wanted him to come back, that much Dean heard in her voice, but Dean didn’t understand the idea of coming back; it was a custom foreign to hunters. You never came back.
He spent that night awake, watching TV and wondering what he was going to do next.
Dean ended up at Bobby’s, of course, and steeled himself for the inevitable “I told you so,” but it didn’t come. Bobby got a little soft around the mouth and eyes and gave Dean a beer without saying anything. When they had finished the first round, he asked, “Where’d Cas go off to?”
“Hell if I know,” Dean said with a shrug. “I guess he figured I had it under control once we got to California.”
“Maybe,” Bobby grumbled. “I was actually thinking, boy, and have you thought about checking up around Cicero?”
“Near Lisa’s place?” Dean asked, with his own version of the bitchface. “Bobby, I’m not going to stop looking.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Bobby snapped. “But you’re right about Sam wanting you to have that, so did you ever think he might be keeping an eye on you?”
“Oh.” Dean pulled a face. “Creepy, but Sam would probably do something like that.”
Dean followed Bobby’s advice, and checked himself in to the same hotel that he had graced with his presence the nigh he became a torturer. Luckily, the clerk was different this time around. Once he’d settled in he realized he didn’t know exactly where to check for Sam.
“Damn it, Cas, I thought you were going to help me with this,” he muttered.
“I am,” Castiel said from behind him and Dean very definitely did not jump a little. “It may surprise you, but I do have other duties.”
“Important Heavenly business?”
“Things are not settling in as easily as Gabriel and I had hoped.”
“Gabriel? Gabriel’s calling the shots now?”
“Dean,” Castiel sighed, “Gabriel is an archangel, and as unorthodox as his behavior has been,” there Cas did allow himself to grimace, “he is thoroughly capable of exercising free will.”
“God wants angels with free will.”
“Yes,” Cas agreed. “After the recent debacle, He decided it was best. Something about forcing angels to recognize their own whims and not use His name in such a way.”
“Finally,” Dean grumbled, and Cas rolled his eyes. “So, uh how long are you back for?” He looked away under Castiel’s intense scrutiny, the strange softness his around his mouth when Dean asked.
“I am unsure. As long as Gabriel is capable of managing on his own.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine. I figured I’d canvas the towns around Cicero to look for Sam. He wouldn’t actually stay here. Lisa or I might see him.”
“You’re not going to visit her?”
“You too?” Dean sighed. “Bobby gave me hell about it when I told him. It’s not worth it, Cas. I seriously doubt Sam’ll actually be here. Maybe he was months ago, or whenever he first got out, but not now. I’m not going to go back when all I’ll do is leave the next day. It’s not a hotel. I can’t do that to her.”
“You have already left once,” Castiel pointed out and, Dean shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
“You don’t get it, do you, Cas?”
“Apparently not,” Cas muttered.
“Don’t get your wings all ruffled about it. If I keep coming and going, it’s worse. Just, trust me on this.”
“Very well.”
That was the last time either of them mentioned Lisa, though she loomed large over their conversations for that entire week in Indiana.
Her presence only grew in the back of Dean’s mind, as he felt like more and more of an epic douche the more time he spent on the road. She still sounded sad and worn during the month and half he and Cas spent canvassing the Northeast. He called her while they were in Maine, where sort of knew Sam wasn’t, but he’d always wanted to try Maine lobster and Cas raised a disturbingly small number of complaints.
“Do you have any leads?” Lisa asked, when they had come down from Maine and were getting ready to meet Sarah Blake for dinner.
“We’re on the way to dinner with one, actually,” Dean said, rushed and uncomfortable in his nice clothes. From what he remembered it was very Sarah to make them meet her somewhere upscale, just to make Dean uncomfortable. He had actually liked her, had hoped for a brief hour that she and Sam would hit it off.
“You’re still with Castiel?”
“Yeah,” he told her, a weird half-grin on his face, “guess he figured he’d keep me in line as much as he could.”
“An impossible task, really,” Cas added.
Dean thumped him on the shoulder and could feel Cas stiffen as the Impala cruised through traffic with no hands on her wheel.
“Hm? No,” Dean replied to Lisa, “a woman who had a haunted painting about five years ago. Well, we didn’t so much tell her has she found out. Little bit like you, actually. Sam had a thing for her. Chicks like that are his thing, I was thinking maybe he came up here to, like, watch her sleep or something. Sam would.”
“Chicks like what?”
“Smart chicks. Stanford did it to him probably. She could probably kick his ass, though, so at least he learned something.”
“From hunting?”
“Yeah.” Dean paused to wonder when exactly this conversation had turned from “where are you and what are you doing” to “tell me about your childhood, Dean, and maybe we could get to your mother today, too.” “You, uh, you don’t take up with anyone who can’t hold their own. Too risky.”
“Dean,” Lisa sounded like she did when she berated him for drinking too much, which he never really denied but certainly didn’t feel like changing, sort of sad and upset and completely breaking Dean’s heart.
“Listen, Lisa, I’ll call you when we’re done with dinner. Hopefully I’ll have heard about Sam by then.”
Cas looked at him slantwise as they walked into the restaurant, but Dean just held up his hand. Before Cas could sass him, and Dean knew he would, because the angel was beginning to develop his own version of Sam’s bitchface, Clearly, Dean was fated to be surrounded by people who didn’t appreciate his greatness.
Sarah practically mauled Dean when they walked in, much to their waiter’s confusion and Castiel’s very quiet amusement.
“So,” she started, once they had settled down with drinks, “what exactly is going on with Sam?”
“He’s missing,” Dean started, and before he could explain the situation Sarah interrupted him.
“What?” Several other customers turned to looked at her, and she rolled her eyes, but ducked her head and continued more quietly. “What happened?”
“He’s fine,” Dean assured her, and then Castiel, apparently time-travelling back about two years to when he just opened his mouth and said things, busted out with,
“We suspect he is being hunted.”
“Damn it, Cas,” Dena hissed as Sarah’s eyes grew wide and pretty terrified. “We don’t know that,” he assured her, “but we can’t take any chances. That’s why we’re looking for him like this.”
“Why, exactly,” Sarah asked, “is Sam being hunted?” Dean didn’t really want to tell her. He’d never tried giving the whole Apocalypse spiel to anyone before, except Lisa, who got it in bits and pieces after sex or when something in Dean would shatter and it was all he could do to prevent himself from spilling everything to everyone he met.
“Sam and I,” he started, and she leaned forward, “may have inadvertently started the Apocalypse. But we stopped it!” He added as her eyes grew comically large.
“You know what,” Sarah said, “this is going to require a few more drinks. Let’s go back to my place. You too,” she nodded at Castiel.
Dean almost felt like a scumbag for saying yes, and for letting Sarah pay for dinner, but it had been her idea and she was the wealthy one, after all, and Cas was going to be there so it wasn’t like he was going to get handsy, He had some self-control, and Sarah wasn’t exactly his type, anyway, and Sam would be so pissed if he found out.
They went back to Sarah’s anyway, because Dean was used to feeling like a scumbag and she probably had really nice drinks. On her couch Dean told her the whole story, and if maybe he tucked away certain things under his tongue or behind his ribs, before they ever got out of his mouth, well, she didn’t need to know the stench of Hell, not really. When he finished Sarah’s mouth was soft around the edges, turned down a little the way Lisa’s was the second night he dreamt of Hell, and she hugged him.
“I’m sorry doesn’t really cut it, does it?” She asked against his shoulder.
Dean met Castiel’s eyes over her head, but Cas didn’t offer him any help. He didn’t know what to tell her, that, no, no apology would ever be enough for either of the brothers Winchester, or that yes, just hearing it from someone meant something to him. He opened his mouth to tell her anything, and found himself laughing. Loud, endless whoops of something that sounded a lot like joy, until Sarah pulled away from him and Castiel wrapped fingers around Dean’s shoulder, and even then it wouldn’t stop.
The two of them sat there with him until he calmed down, his ribs and his cheeks arching, and Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”
“I think I am,” he told her, and that made her smile, “but we should probably get going. Still got almost half a country to cover. But I’ll, ah, I’ll have Sam call when I find him, if you want.”
“I’d like that,” Sarah said.
“Alright, great, well, I’ll probably be seeing you later, so,” Dean trailed off as he hauled himself up and opened the door. Sarah just rolled her eyes and waved him off, and Castiel loomed behind him.
“Let’s go,” Cas whispered and Dean raised an eyebrow, but complied.
Back at the hotel Dean slumped onto the bed and threw his arm over his eyes. “Sorry about that, Cas,” he mumbled.
“About what?”
“This whole evening,” Dean waved his free arm around. He didn’t apologize, not really, but Sarah had given him some absolutely exquisite liquor, and Lisa had put him on edge, and he was, frankly, tired of Cas’s lingering in silence.
“There’s nothing to apologize for, Dean.” Dean could see the look on Cas’s face without actually needing to move his arm: head tilted slightly, eyebrows furrowed, mouth a little tense.
“So you’re telling me you enjoyed watching me lose my shit at Sarah’s,” Dean retorted.
“I did not enjoy it,” Cas said, “but that does not mean you need to apologize.”
“It kind of does, Cas, between that and talking to Lisa I can’t imagine how fucking awkward it was, but I bet angels don’t even understand the concept,” Dean trailed off. Even through the buzz of drunkenness he could tell that things were getting weird. Not, of course, that things weren’t always a little weird with Cas around.
The angel wasn’t speaking, and Dean wasn’t sure that he was even there anymore, but he took a shot in the dark and opened his mouth with the firm decision to ruin everything, because that was what Dean Winchester did. “I guess what I’m saying is, Cas, man, why are you still here? I’m doing what you want, I’m going to find Sam if he’s even able to be found. You never stuck around this much when it was the fucking end of the world. What’s going on?”
“Would you prefer it if I left?” That was Cas’s angel voice, cold and smacking of threats of Hell. Not that Dean really believed that Cas would actually toss him back, not anymore.
“No, that’s not what I meant. Dammit,” Dean pulled himself into a sitting position. “Cas, look, it’s just weird. You have all that important Heavenly business to handle and you’re down here, helping me look for Sam? I appreciate it, but come on, you have to admit it’s not like you.”
“I have always helped both you and your brother, at great cost to myself.” And, yeah, Dean had clearly fucked this up beyond belief because Castiel’s tone was approaching the one that he saved for very special occasions that usually involved beating the shit out off Dean.
“I know, Cas, I know.” Dean turned to look at Castiel for the first time since they started arguing.
“Then why,” Cas asked, “are you asking me?”
“Because,” Dean stopped. “Winchesters don’t get gift horses.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Dean.”
“Forget about it, Cas.”
-
Dean wasn’t sure if Cas actually forgot about their conversation, which was unlikely considering the fact that he was, you know, an angel, but they had some sort of unspoken agreement to never bring it up again that Dean was absurdly thankful for. They had gone back to Bobby’s after the Northeast had yielded up nothing more than dinner with Sarah, where Bobby had spend three days dancing around the suggestion that Dean go look for Sam in Lawrence.
“Sam wouldn’t,” Dean had said, but realized he was wrong. Dean would never go back to Lawrence, not with hell and high water at his back, but Sam may, because Sam always had weird thoughts about things, like reconnecting with his roots or something. Sam didn’t have the memories Dean did, of their burning house and cold grip of John’s hand on his shoulder as firefighters tried in vain to save Dean’s childhood.
That’s how Dean found himself on Missouri Moseley’s doorstep. He figured if he had to be in Lawrence he might as well try and actually make something of it.
Even though she had obviously seen him coming she made him wait on the stoop for five minutes before she opened to door and offered him tea. Dean never had liked tea but he didn’t say anything because Missouri was being suspiciously nice. It was probably some kind of test.
“Sorry I left you out there for so long, honey. You’re a hard one to get a lock on.”
“Well, the Apocalypse, you know, things come up.”
“I’m sure. It’s been a hard two years for all of us, you Winchesters especially. I only wish I could help you more.”
“You can’t help me?”
“Sorry, Dean. I don’t know where Sam is, except that he’s not here and hasn’t been.”
“I guess I’m not that hidden from you after all,” Dean teased. He kept his eyes trained on Missouri, though, wary that she might kick him out.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Dean. You’re just transparent. What else would you be doing back in Lawrence?”
“I could be paying me respects,” Dean said, voice thick. Missouri only raised an eyebrow. “Fine,” Dean admitted, “I’m trying to find Sam.”
“Last I heard, your brother was down somewhere you couldn’t go.”
“Been there before.”
“And got out by the grace of God. Was Sam that lucky?”
“Grace of Castiel, actually,” Dean muttered. “I thought you liked Sam. Wouldn’t you want him to be alive?”
“Sam’s still my favorite Winchester, so don’t get your hopes up, boy, but I’m no fool. Coming back from the dead’s bad business in ordinary times. It’s not the end of the world anymore, Dean. Things are supposed to stay put.”
“Sam’s alive, I know it, and before you say anything, I know he’s not possessed.”
“Do you, now.” Missouri raised her eyebrow again, a delicate reproach.
“Yeah, I do,” Dean told her, rising from his seat. “From the mouths of angels.”
“You trust this angel? I tried to keep out of all that Apocalypse fuss as best I could, but even I heard the angels weren’t to be trusted. Couple of hunters that passé this way said they were cold killers, bad as the devil himself.”
“Dicks with wings,” Dean agreed, and Missouri smacked the back of his head.
“Language,” she warned.
“Sorry, sorry. But, not, this angel is different, trust me.”
“As long as you trust, I suppose I might. Good luck, Dean.”
He knew a dismissal when he heard one, so Dean saw himself out of the door. He figured he might as well go back to Bobby’s and give him an earful about just how bad an idea the Lawrence trip had been, when Bobby decided to apparently make Dean’s like easier and go ahead and call him.
“Bobby! What the fuck were you thinking sending me down to Lawrence?”
“Excuse me for tryin’ to help, Dean!”
“He wasn’t there, like I told you. Missouri couldn’t even tell me anything.”
“Well, boy, she won’t need to. That’s why I’m calling. Rufus just told me that Malcolm Porter-did you ever meet him? Knew Gordon and his lot-is heading down South. Have fun.” Bobby hung up with a click and left Dean to think over what he’d been told, alone.
Hunters, as a general rule, didn’t go down South unless they had personal stake in something going on, and very few hunters were actually Southerners. Dean himself had done a few jobs in Kentucky and West Virginia, near their northern borders, but had never really worked in the Deep South. (Louisiana was another matter, with its voodoo and hoodoo.) John had explained it to him, once, the reasons hunters let the South alone. It wasn’t as though nothing supernatural happened down South. If anything, strange happenings were more common there. The South had its own, though, who handled vampires and rugarus and the like, and didn’t take kindly to those who would intrude on its ways of dealing. As for haunting, well, John had said, the South remembers.
No one knew precisely why. Some said it was just old magic, deep in the land. Some said the South was drenched in blood in a way the North wasn’t, slavery and Civil War and the Trail of Tears. Others said it was because the South didn’t turn so fast to cities, but clung hard to the land. Salt and burn as much as you want, Dean had been told, but the land won’t ever let them go. The soul of the South is haunted.
Of course Sam would be there, Dean thought. He had almost known it since the beginning, that Sam would go to a place no hunter would, and set himself up amongst the ghosts. Just girly and melodramatic, while still sort of practical, to be Sammy, Dean laughed to himself.
At the next opportunity, he turned the Impala around and headed South.
-
Castiel didn’t appear the night Dean spent in Tennessee, or at all during his drive into Georgia. Dean hadn’t even bothered with the rest of the South. If Sam did something, he did it all the way. He didn’t start second-guessing this impulse until he was a few hours outside of Savannah, basically parking on I-95. In the sweltering heat his whole plan seemed ridiculous, and even though he wasn’t moving more than a few inches every five minutes, he felt an overwhelming urge to turn around and search the entire South from top to bottom.
That, of course, was when Cas appeared. He just popped into the passenger seat and said, “Do not be so quick to doubt yourself, Dean.”
“So Sam is in Savannah?”
“I can’t be sure,” Castiel admitted, “but you of all people would be able to find him. There’s no harm in searching here first.”
“Right,” Dean said. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and traffic began to move a little faster, and then faster, until things were almost at a normal speed again. Dean looked over at Castiel, who had the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Was that,” Dean paused, “was that you just now?”
“You were saying it would take a minor miracle to get this traffic to move.”
That kept Dean smiling the whole way into town, through his check-in at the Sandman Motel (“C’mon, Cas, with a name like that how can I not stay here!”) and about halfway through his first attempt at asking a motel clerk if a Malcolm Porter had checked in. Porter was from money, Dean had checked, so he’d never needed fake names for fake credit cards the way most hunters did.
The clerk at the Traveler’s Inn seemed barely capable of speaking English, Spanish, or any other language known to humans, so Dean had to distract her while Castiel stole the check-in sheet.
“This is not part of my job,” Cas bitched as they drove to the next place, two minutes down Ogeechee Road, which was apparently a buffet of shitty motels and shittier restaurants.
“You have a job here?” Dean teased. “I thought you just kept me from getting too lonely.” And, yeah, Cas had definitely been practicing the bitchface while he was away. God, Dean thought, the two of them in the same room, the world might actually end under the collected force of their prissiness.
The image made him smile so hard his face hurt through the next four motels, even though Malcolm wasn’t staying at any of them. Dean was on the verge of stopping the car and forcing Cas to use some sort of angel mojo to track the guy down when he notice Arbor Cottages. It was one of those pay by the week places that most hunters avoided because they were rarely in place for long enough to make it worth it, but Dean figured he’d give it a shot.
As he and Cas were using the same bait and switch routine on the clerk there, who was deeply suspicious of Dean no matter how much charm he laid on, Cas tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “There, that’s him, leaving now.”
Dean thanked the clerk in a rush and watched as a man, short but layered in muscle the way all hunters were, got into a truck. “You sure,” he hissed at Cas.
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s follow this sonuvabitch.” As soon as Dean was sure Malcolm couldn’t see them, he shoved Cas in the direction of the Impala, and did his best to follow Malcolm discreetly, or as discreetly as he could while driving a ’67 Impala.
Either Malcolm Porter was a complete dumbass, something Dean wouldn’t put past somebody who went out to kill a guy without completely checking his fact, especially when that somebody’s brother was pretty much one of the most terrifying hunters out there, or he didn’t care that he was being followed by someone. Dean actually figured it was a combination of the two, and maybe a bit of Malcolm being too focused on the hunt, which Dean could understand since Sam as himself was a pain in the ass to fight, let alone Sam as worn by Satan.
They tailed Malcolm into downtown Savannah, where the narrow streets and constant traffic made Dean grit his teeth. He figured Sam would pick a part of town like this, sort of fruity and not at all the place any hunter would ever go unless a job forced him. Malcolm managed to find a parking spot, and when Dean realized he wouldn’t be able to fit the Impala in the only nearby space, he reached across Cas and opened the door.
“Get out,” he told Cas.
“What?”
“Follow him while I find a parking place. Hurry up!” Dean shooed Cas out of the car, as the roughly twelve thousand people stuck behind all seemed to honk their horns in tandem.
Cas did, grumbling, and Dean rolled his eyes are he went around what felt like a hundred squares and down about seventy back streets looking for parking. By the time he found a spot, he muttered to himself, he probably would have missed whatever went down.
Luckily, he found a spot large enough to accommodate the Impala, and parked like a complete jackass. Cas called a minute later, as Dean was headed back in what he was pretty sure was the right direction.
“We’ve found Sam,” Cas said, without preamble. Dean nearly tripped. “More accurately, we’ve found Sam’s room. He appears to be out.”
“Where are you?”
“He lives in an apartment over a CVS on Bull Street.”
“I think I remember that one. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Cas was waiting for Dean on a corner near the CVS, and fell in step with him easily. “Malcolm’s up in Sam’s apartment. I assumed you would want the honor of surprising him.”
“You know me too well, Cas.” Dean grinned.
“I know you down to your bones, Dean Winchester.”
Dean had nothing to say to that, so he settled for the same intense stare that had characterized his and Cas’s relationship since the beginning. Being an archangel and earning Heaven’s approval had clearly done nothing to tamp down on Cas’s intensity, His eyes still cut through Dean, down to those bones he had marked and remade. It made Dean shiver.
They had to break eye contact while Dean tried to break in to the apartment, failing miserably until Cas reached across him and keyed in the passcode.
“I saw Malcolm do it,” he offered as explanation.
Dean just raised a finger to his lips as they crept up the stairs. Cas pointed out the door to Sam’s apartment, and Dean pulled out his gun. Cas reached for the knob and Dean stopped him, hand pressed against Castiel’s wrist. Cas raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
“He’s bound to be waiting for someone to come in. Is there a window or something?” Dean whispered in Castiel’s ear.
“No,” Cas responded, “but there is another way.” Dean knew what it was before Cas reached out with two fingers, heard it in the amused twist of Cas’s voice.
Malcolm obviously wasn’t expecting two men, one armed, to teleport into the room he had carefully booby-trapped. Dean had never been one for such elaborate set-ups, but he had to admit the careful system of strings and knives around the door was something else. While Malcolm scrambled to aim at Dean, Dean knocked his gun from his hand and gestured to the bed.
“Sit down, Porter. Cas, can you undo that mess he’s made by the door?”
“You actually need to ask?” Dean could have sworn Cas smirked as pulled on one of the strings and the entre web fell to the floor.
“So, Malcolm,” Dean dragged the name out, tested it on his tongue and prodded Malcolm in the stomach with the barrel of his gun, “what are you doin’ all the way this far south?”
“Don’t treat me like a fool, Dean Winchester, you know exactly what I’m doing. I’m putting down that rabid dog you call a brother.”
Dean struck Malcolm across the face with the butt of the gun before he could think. As Malcolm spat at him and held his cheek, Cas gripped his shoulder.
“You listen to me, you goddamn ignorant son of a bitch-” Dean was cut off by the opening door, and the sound of footfalls he’d known their entire life.
Behind him, he heard Castiel say, “Hello, Sam.”
Author: nirvana_falling
Rating: PG-13 for this part
Genre and/or Pairing: Dean/Lisa sort of, inevitable Dean/Cas
Spoilers: 5x22, everything ever
Word Count: 5915
Summary: After Lucifer's back in his cage and Dean's where he thinks he ought to be, Cas comes by with a job he can't refuse.
Notes: Still unbetaed, y'all. ALSO I am so sorry this took so long. Finals week hurt me real bad and then I had real life things. ):
When Bobby finally opened to door, after five minutes of Dean knocking and swearing, the first thing he did was shut it right back in their faces. Actually, he said, “No way am I gettin’ caught up in this shit again,” first. It took Dean another two tries and a face full of holy water to convince Bobby that they weren’t going to draft him into The Apocalypse, Round Two.
“Then what do you want?” Bobby asked. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but I figured you were still settling in with Lisa.”
“I was,” Dean stopped. “Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Sam,” Dean blurted, and the name hung in the air, as much of a presence as Sam was when he had been there, huge and skulking around the house or researching or bitching at Dean or doing any of the million little things people do throughout the day.
“What about Sam?” Bobby’s voice got the edge it always did when he thought something or someone (Dean) had fucked up.
“Cas thinks he’s alive.”
“Dammit, Dean. I know you’re a fool for your brother and almost as much of one for that angel of yours,” and at that Cas, who had been content to sit on Bobby’s counter and watch Dean flounder, made a noise of protest, “but your brother fell into the Pit.”
“And he has somehow climbed back out,” Castiel said.
“So he’s-”
“No. Lucifer is still in his cage. In all likelihood, God freed Sam from Hell.”
“And you’re telling me that Sam came back to life and just decided not to tell anybody? That doesn’t sound like Sam.”
“Bobby,” Dean started, “you know Sam’s an idiot. If he thinks I have this perfect, white picket fence and dog kinda life, he’s going to go martyr himself for it.”
“Alright, point. But he hasn’t come round to see me either.”
“Well, Samantha’s always needed time alone with her feelings.” And Dean knew that he sounded like he was rationalizing, but everything he said was true. He needed it to be true, yeah, but it also happened to be God’s honest truth.
“Dean,” Bobby sighed, in the way that Dean knew meant he was going to give in but didn’t like it, “I don’t know anything about Sam, but I’ll call Rufus, and Jake out on the West Coast, and a couple of hunters I know down South and see if anyone’s heard about Sam. There’s some cars out there that could use your attention, if you happen to be feelin’ guilty about crashing.”
“Aw, thanks Bobby.” But as Dean moved to go out to the salvage yard and get back in Bobby’s good graces, Castiel cleared his throat.
“It would be wise if you talked to as few people as possible, Bobby.” Before Bobby could give Cas the piece of his mind he was clearly preparing to, the angel continued. “I choose to intervene in this affair because I feared other hunters would not be so…sympathetic to Sam’s predicament.”
“You think they’re hunting Sam.”
“Look, Bobby,” Dean jumped in, “it’s not that far-fetched. I mean, Gordon was hunting us before we even really started the Apocalypse. And it was hunters that killed me and Sam when we went to Heaven. So if word got out that Sammy had come back from Hell,” Dean trailed off there with a shrug and Bobby rolled his eyes.
“Fine, I’ll only call Rufus. He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”
Cas vanished after that, and Dean dicked around with some decrepit Ford until Bobby came out and coughed. “Look, son, I’m sorry, but”
“It’s fine, Bobby,” Dean cut him off. “If no one knows, it means no one’s hunting him.”
“Hopefully. Are you sure Cas is right, though?”
“About?”
“Not about Sam being the Devil, you idjit, about the rest of the angels not having any interest in this.”
“Oh.” Dean let out a breath he pretended he wasn’t holding. “I trust Cas, Bobby,” Dean said with his chin tilted up, a challenge.
“Alright.” Bobby shrugged but didn’t argue. “So, where are you gonna look?”
-
After a week of thinking and checking for omens and one incredibly tense fight between Dean and Bobby that ended with Dean’s hands shaking the way they had when he once sided with Sam against their father, Dean and Cas headed for California first, because while Dean didn’t think Sam would settle himself there, it was also the last place Dean wanted to look so he figured he’d look first. He called Zach and Becky from that fucking Saint Louis shapeshifter affair, and they gave him a list of Sam’s friends who were still out in California. Luckily, they had been pretty keen on helping him, since Dean didn’t really want to have to mention how much trouble that case had eventually caused them, though, really, the FBI? Had nothing on Lucifer.
California was sickeningly pleasant for late September. The first people on Dean’s list were Katharine and Joseph DeWitt. According to Becky, they had gotten married during Dean’s first last year on earth, and Sam had met them through Jess. He imagined they had held joint dinner parties or something else equally middle-America and nauseating.
Katharine was an Amazon of a woman, taller than Cas, who had gone back to Heaven once they crossed the California border, so the smile in her eyes was practical level with Dean’s stare when she opened the door. “Can I help you?”
“I sure hope so.” Dean smiled, the same good ol’ boy smile he gave every witness and every victim’s mother across America. “I’m Dean Winchester,” that part was new, being himself for once, “and I was wondering if you’d heard from my brother recently.”
“Sam?” Her eyes got wide and excited. “You’re Sam’s brother? He talked about you like you were the only person he’d ever known.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dean muttered, but he couldn’t help grinning up at her.
“Has something happened? Is Sam okay?”
“As far as I know, but I haven’t seen him in months.”
“Oh my God,” Katherine breathed out and covered her mouth with a hand. “I’m so sorry, but I haven’t seen him since, since Jess.”
“That’s okay,” Dean sighed. “Thanks, though. I’ll let you know when I find him.”
“Of course.”
As Dean was leaving, already down the steps and halfway to his car, she called out, “Wait!”
Dean turned.
“If, if you do find Sam,” she called, “can you, ah, can you tell him we miss him?”
“Yeah,” Dean told her, and something twisted in his chest, fierce and insistent that finding Sam was the most important task he’d ever given himself.
He wouldn’t ever stop looking, he knew, as he opened the Impala’s door and checked his list for the next address. It wasn’t as though he didn’t want to find Sam, God, finding Sam is all he’d ever wanted, but a part of him was tired of driving and motels and endless tasks. There were three more people for him to hit in California, but Dean wasn’t sure he wanted any of them to have the answer.
They didn’t, of course, though all of them affected variations on the same expression: concerned and upset but a little confused that after a radio silence of six years Sam was suddenly reentering their life, even if as a specter. When he closed the last door, Dean drove back to his motel outside Santa Monica and just sat with his head in his hands. He could call Lisa, should, really, she had called him twice and he had answered with short and clipped replies, tired and drawn and a little angry, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually pick up his phone.
What could he tell her except that he hadn’t found Sam, but wanted to more now than he had even in the first weeks when all he was able to do was mourn. She wanted him to come back, that much Dean heard in her voice, but Dean didn’t understand the idea of coming back; it was a custom foreign to hunters. You never came back.
He spent that night awake, watching TV and wondering what he was going to do next.
Dean ended up at Bobby’s, of course, and steeled himself for the inevitable “I told you so,” but it didn’t come. Bobby got a little soft around the mouth and eyes and gave Dean a beer without saying anything. When they had finished the first round, he asked, “Where’d Cas go off to?”
“Hell if I know,” Dean said with a shrug. “I guess he figured I had it under control once we got to California.”
“Maybe,” Bobby grumbled. “I was actually thinking, boy, and have you thought about checking up around Cicero?”
“Near Lisa’s place?” Dean asked, with his own version of the bitchface. “Bobby, I’m not going to stop looking.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Bobby snapped. “But you’re right about Sam wanting you to have that, so did you ever think he might be keeping an eye on you?”
“Oh.” Dean pulled a face. “Creepy, but Sam would probably do something like that.”
Dean followed Bobby’s advice, and checked himself in to the same hotel that he had graced with his presence the nigh he became a torturer. Luckily, the clerk was different this time around. Once he’d settled in he realized he didn’t know exactly where to check for Sam.
“Damn it, Cas, I thought you were going to help me with this,” he muttered.
“I am,” Castiel said from behind him and Dean very definitely did not jump a little. “It may surprise you, but I do have other duties.”
“Important Heavenly business?”
“Things are not settling in as easily as Gabriel and I had hoped.”
“Gabriel? Gabriel’s calling the shots now?”
“Dean,” Castiel sighed, “Gabriel is an archangel, and as unorthodox as his behavior has been,” there Cas did allow himself to grimace, “he is thoroughly capable of exercising free will.”
“God wants angels with free will.”
“Yes,” Cas agreed. “After the recent debacle, He decided it was best. Something about forcing angels to recognize their own whims and not use His name in such a way.”
“Finally,” Dean grumbled, and Cas rolled his eyes. “So, uh how long are you back for?” He looked away under Castiel’s intense scrutiny, the strange softness his around his mouth when Dean asked.
“I am unsure. As long as Gabriel is capable of managing on his own.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine. I figured I’d canvas the towns around Cicero to look for Sam. He wouldn’t actually stay here. Lisa or I might see him.”
“You’re not going to visit her?”
“You too?” Dean sighed. “Bobby gave me hell about it when I told him. It’s not worth it, Cas. I seriously doubt Sam’ll actually be here. Maybe he was months ago, or whenever he first got out, but not now. I’m not going to go back when all I’ll do is leave the next day. It’s not a hotel. I can’t do that to her.”
“You have already left once,” Castiel pointed out and, Dean shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
“You don’t get it, do you, Cas?”
“Apparently not,” Cas muttered.
“Don’t get your wings all ruffled about it. If I keep coming and going, it’s worse. Just, trust me on this.”
“Very well.”
That was the last time either of them mentioned Lisa, though she loomed large over their conversations for that entire week in Indiana.
Her presence only grew in the back of Dean’s mind, as he felt like more and more of an epic douche the more time he spent on the road. She still sounded sad and worn during the month and half he and Cas spent canvassing the Northeast. He called her while they were in Maine, where sort of knew Sam wasn’t, but he’d always wanted to try Maine lobster and Cas raised a disturbingly small number of complaints.
“Do you have any leads?” Lisa asked, when they had come down from Maine and were getting ready to meet Sarah Blake for dinner.
“We’re on the way to dinner with one, actually,” Dean said, rushed and uncomfortable in his nice clothes. From what he remembered it was very Sarah to make them meet her somewhere upscale, just to make Dean uncomfortable. He had actually liked her, had hoped for a brief hour that she and Sam would hit it off.
“You’re still with Castiel?”
“Yeah,” he told her, a weird half-grin on his face, “guess he figured he’d keep me in line as much as he could.”
“An impossible task, really,” Cas added.
Dean thumped him on the shoulder and could feel Cas stiffen as the Impala cruised through traffic with no hands on her wheel.
“Hm? No,” Dean replied to Lisa, “a woman who had a haunted painting about five years ago. Well, we didn’t so much tell her has she found out. Little bit like you, actually. Sam had a thing for her. Chicks like that are his thing, I was thinking maybe he came up here to, like, watch her sleep or something. Sam would.”
“Chicks like what?”
“Smart chicks. Stanford did it to him probably. She could probably kick his ass, though, so at least he learned something.”
“From hunting?”
“Yeah.” Dean paused to wonder when exactly this conversation had turned from “where are you and what are you doing” to “tell me about your childhood, Dean, and maybe we could get to your mother today, too.” “You, uh, you don’t take up with anyone who can’t hold their own. Too risky.”
“Dean,” Lisa sounded like she did when she berated him for drinking too much, which he never really denied but certainly didn’t feel like changing, sort of sad and upset and completely breaking Dean’s heart.
“Listen, Lisa, I’ll call you when we’re done with dinner. Hopefully I’ll have heard about Sam by then.”
Cas looked at him slantwise as they walked into the restaurant, but Dean just held up his hand. Before Cas could sass him, and Dean knew he would, because the angel was beginning to develop his own version of Sam’s bitchface, Clearly, Dean was fated to be surrounded by people who didn’t appreciate his greatness.
Sarah practically mauled Dean when they walked in, much to their waiter’s confusion and Castiel’s very quiet amusement.
“So,” she started, once they had settled down with drinks, “what exactly is going on with Sam?”
“He’s missing,” Dean started, and before he could explain the situation Sarah interrupted him.
“What?” Several other customers turned to looked at her, and she rolled her eyes, but ducked her head and continued more quietly. “What happened?”
“He’s fine,” Dean assured her, and then Castiel, apparently time-travelling back about two years to when he just opened his mouth and said things, busted out with,
“We suspect he is being hunted.”
“Damn it, Cas,” Dena hissed as Sarah’s eyes grew wide and pretty terrified. “We don’t know that,” he assured her, “but we can’t take any chances. That’s why we’re looking for him like this.”
“Why, exactly,” Sarah asked, “is Sam being hunted?” Dean didn’t really want to tell her. He’d never tried giving the whole Apocalypse spiel to anyone before, except Lisa, who got it in bits and pieces after sex or when something in Dean would shatter and it was all he could do to prevent himself from spilling everything to everyone he met.
“Sam and I,” he started, and she leaned forward, “may have inadvertently started the Apocalypse. But we stopped it!” He added as her eyes grew comically large.
“You know what,” Sarah said, “this is going to require a few more drinks. Let’s go back to my place. You too,” she nodded at Castiel.
Dean almost felt like a scumbag for saying yes, and for letting Sarah pay for dinner, but it had been her idea and she was the wealthy one, after all, and Cas was going to be there so it wasn’t like he was going to get handsy, He had some self-control, and Sarah wasn’t exactly his type, anyway, and Sam would be so pissed if he found out.
They went back to Sarah’s anyway, because Dean was used to feeling like a scumbag and she probably had really nice drinks. On her couch Dean told her the whole story, and if maybe he tucked away certain things under his tongue or behind his ribs, before they ever got out of his mouth, well, she didn’t need to know the stench of Hell, not really. When he finished Sarah’s mouth was soft around the edges, turned down a little the way Lisa’s was the second night he dreamt of Hell, and she hugged him.
“I’m sorry doesn’t really cut it, does it?” She asked against his shoulder.
Dean met Castiel’s eyes over her head, but Cas didn’t offer him any help. He didn’t know what to tell her, that, no, no apology would ever be enough for either of the brothers Winchester, or that yes, just hearing it from someone meant something to him. He opened his mouth to tell her anything, and found himself laughing. Loud, endless whoops of something that sounded a lot like joy, until Sarah pulled away from him and Castiel wrapped fingers around Dean’s shoulder, and even then it wouldn’t stop.
The two of them sat there with him until he calmed down, his ribs and his cheeks arching, and Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”
“I think I am,” he told her, and that made her smile, “but we should probably get going. Still got almost half a country to cover. But I’ll, ah, I’ll have Sam call when I find him, if you want.”
“I’d like that,” Sarah said.
“Alright, great, well, I’ll probably be seeing you later, so,” Dean trailed off as he hauled himself up and opened the door. Sarah just rolled her eyes and waved him off, and Castiel loomed behind him.
“Let’s go,” Cas whispered and Dean raised an eyebrow, but complied.
Back at the hotel Dean slumped onto the bed and threw his arm over his eyes. “Sorry about that, Cas,” he mumbled.
“About what?”
“This whole evening,” Dean waved his free arm around. He didn’t apologize, not really, but Sarah had given him some absolutely exquisite liquor, and Lisa had put him on edge, and he was, frankly, tired of Cas’s lingering in silence.
“There’s nothing to apologize for, Dean.” Dean could see the look on Cas’s face without actually needing to move his arm: head tilted slightly, eyebrows furrowed, mouth a little tense.
“So you’re telling me you enjoyed watching me lose my shit at Sarah’s,” Dean retorted.
“I did not enjoy it,” Cas said, “but that does not mean you need to apologize.”
“It kind of does, Cas, between that and talking to Lisa I can’t imagine how fucking awkward it was, but I bet angels don’t even understand the concept,” Dean trailed off. Even through the buzz of drunkenness he could tell that things were getting weird. Not, of course, that things weren’t always a little weird with Cas around.
The angel wasn’t speaking, and Dean wasn’t sure that he was even there anymore, but he took a shot in the dark and opened his mouth with the firm decision to ruin everything, because that was what Dean Winchester did. “I guess what I’m saying is, Cas, man, why are you still here? I’m doing what you want, I’m going to find Sam if he’s even able to be found. You never stuck around this much when it was the fucking end of the world. What’s going on?”
“Would you prefer it if I left?” That was Cas’s angel voice, cold and smacking of threats of Hell. Not that Dean really believed that Cas would actually toss him back, not anymore.
“No, that’s not what I meant. Dammit,” Dean pulled himself into a sitting position. “Cas, look, it’s just weird. You have all that important Heavenly business to handle and you’re down here, helping me look for Sam? I appreciate it, but come on, you have to admit it’s not like you.”
“I have always helped both you and your brother, at great cost to myself.” And, yeah, Dean had clearly fucked this up beyond belief because Castiel’s tone was approaching the one that he saved for very special occasions that usually involved beating the shit out off Dean.
“I know, Cas, I know.” Dean turned to look at Castiel for the first time since they started arguing.
“Then why,” Cas asked, “are you asking me?”
“Because,” Dean stopped. “Winchesters don’t get gift horses.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Dean.”
“Forget about it, Cas.”
-
Dean wasn’t sure if Cas actually forgot about their conversation, which was unlikely considering the fact that he was, you know, an angel, but they had some sort of unspoken agreement to never bring it up again that Dean was absurdly thankful for. They had gone back to Bobby’s after the Northeast had yielded up nothing more than dinner with Sarah, where Bobby had spend three days dancing around the suggestion that Dean go look for Sam in Lawrence.
“Sam wouldn’t,” Dean had said, but realized he was wrong. Dean would never go back to Lawrence, not with hell and high water at his back, but Sam may, because Sam always had weird thoughts about things, like reconnecting with his roots or something. Sam didn’t have the memories Dean did, of their burning house and cold grip of John’s hand on his shoulder as firefighters tried in vain to save Dean’s childhood.
That’s how Dean found himself on Missouri Moseley’s doorstep. He figured if he had to be in Lawrence he might as well try and actually make something of it.
Even though she had obviously seen him coming she made him wait on the stoop for five minutes before she opened to door and offered him tea. Dean never had liked tea but he didn’t say anything because Missouri was being suspiciously nice. It was probably some kind of test.
“Sorry I left you out there for so long, honey. You’re a hard one to get a lock on.”
“Well, the Apocalypse, you know, things come up.”
“I’m sure. It’s been a hard two years for all of us, you Winchesters especially. I only wish I could help you more.”
“You can’t help me?”
“Sorry, Dean. I don’t know where Sam is, except that he’s not here and hasn’t been.”
“I guess I’m not that hidden from you after all,” Dean teased. He kept his eyes trained on Missouri, though, wary that she might kick him out.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Dean. You’re just transparent. What else would you be doing back in Lawrence?”
“I could be paying me respects,” Dean said, voice thick. Missouri only raised an eyebrow. “Fine,” Dean admitted, “I’m trying to find Sam.”
“Last I heard, your brother was down somewhere you couldn’t go.”
“Been there before.”
“And got out by the grace of God. Was Sam that lucky?”
“Grace of Castiel, actually,” Dean muttered. “I thought you liked Sam. Wouldn’t you want him to be alive?”
“Sam’s still my favorite Winchester, so don’t get your hopes up, boy, but I’m no fool. Coming back from the dead’s bad business in ordinary times. It’s not the end of the world anymore, Dean. Things are supposed to stay put.”
“Sam’s alive, I know it, and before you say anything, I know he’s not possessed.”
“Do you, now.” Missouri raised her eyebrow again, a delicate reproach.
“Yeah, I do,” Dean told her, rising from his seat. “From the mouths of angels.”
“You trust this angel? I tried to keep out of all that Apocalypse fuss as best I could, but even I heard the angels weren’t to be trusted. Couple of hunters that passé this way said they were cold killers, bad as the devil himself.”
“Dicks with wings,” Dean agreed, and Missouri smacked the back of his head.
“Language,” she warned.
“Sorry, sorry. But, not, this angel is different, trust me.”
“As long as you trust, I suppose I might. Good luck, Dean.”
He knew a dismissal when he heard one, so Dean saw himself out of the door. He figured he might as well go back to Bobby’s and give him an earful about just how bad an idea the Lawrence trip had been, when Bobby decided to apparently make Dean’s like easier and go ahead and call him.
“Bobby! What the fuck were you thinking sending me down to Lawrence?”
“Excuse me for tryin’ to help, Dean!”
“He wasn’t there, like I told you. Missouri couldn’t even tell me anything.”
“Well, boy, she won’t need to. That’s why I’m calling. Rufus just told me that Malcolm Porter-did you ever meet him? Knew Gordon and his lot-is heading down South. Have fun.” Bobby hung up with a click and left Dean to think over what he’d been told, alone.
Hunters, as a general rule, didn’t go down South unless they had personal stake in something going on, and very few hunters were actually Southerners. Dean himself had done a few jobs in Kentucky and West Virginia, near their northern borders, but had never really worked in the Deep South. (Louisiana was another matter, with its voodoo and hoodoo.) John had explained it to him, once, the reasons hunters let the South alone. It wasn’t as though nothing supernatural happened down South. If anything, strange happenings were more common there. The South had its own, though, who handled vampires and rugarus and the like, and didn’t take kindly to those who would intrude on its ways of dealing. As for haunting, well, John had said, the South remembers.
No one knew precisely why. Some said it was just old magic, deep in the land. Some said the South was drenched in blood in a way the North wasn’t, slavery and Civil War and the Trail of Tears. Others said it was because the South didn’t turn so fast to cities, but clung hard to the land. Salt and burn as much as you want, Dean had been told, but the land won’t ever let them go. The soul of the South is haunted.
Of course Sam would be there, Dean thought. He had almost known it since the beginning, that Sam would go to a place no hunter would, and set himself up amongst the ghosts. Just girly and melodramatic, while still sort of practical, to be Sammy, Dean laughed to himself.
At the next opportunity, he turned the Impala around and headed South.
-
Castiel didn’t appear the night Dean spent in Tennessee, or at all during his drive into Georgia. Dean hadn’t even bothered with the rest of the South. If Sam did something, he did it all the way. He didn’t start second-guessing this impulse until he was a few hours outside of Savannah, basically parking on I-95. In the sweltering heat his whole plan seemed ridiculous, and even though he wasn’t moving more than a few inches every five minutes, he felt an overwhelming urge to turn around and search the entire South from top to bottom.
That, of course, was when Cas appeared. He just popped into the passenger seat and said, “Do not be so quick to doubt yourself, Dean.”
“So Sam is in Savannah?”
“I can’t be sure,” Castiel admitted, “but you of all people would be able to find him. There’s no harm in searching here first.”
“Right,” Dean said. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and traffic began to move a little faster, and then faster, until things were almost at a normal speed again. Dean looked over at Castiel, who had the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Was that,” Dean paused, “was that you just now?”
“You were saying it would take a minor miracle to get this traffic to move.”
That kept Dean smiling the whole way into town, through his check-in at the Sandman Motel (“C’mon, Cas, with a name like that how can I not stay here!”) and about halfway through his first attempt at asking a motel clerk if a Malcolm Porter had checked in. Porter was from money, Dean had checked, so he’d never needed fake names for fake credit cards the way most hunters did.
The clerk at the Traveler’s Inn seemed barely capable of speaking English, Spanish, or any other language known to humans, so Dean had to distract her while Castiel stole the check-in sheet.
“This is not part of my job,” Cas bitched as they drove to the next place, two minutes down Ogeechee Road, which was apparently a buffet of shitty motels and shittier restaurants.
“You have a job here?” Dean teased. “I thought you just kept me from getting too lonely.” And, yeah, Cas had definitely been practicing the bitchface while he was away. God, Dean thought, the two of them in the same room, the world might actually end under the collected force of their prissiness.
The image made him smile so hard his face hurt through the next four motels, even though Malcolm wasn’t staying at any of them. Dean was on the verge of stopping the car and forcing Cas to use some sort of angel mojo to track the guy down when he notice Arbor Cottages. It was one of those pay by the week places that most hunters avoided because they were rarely in place for long enough to make it worth it, but Dean figured he’d give it a shot.
As he and Cas were using the same bait and switch routine on the clerk there, who was deeply suspicious of Dean no matter how much charm he laid on, Cas tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “There, that’s him, leaving now.”
Dean thanked the clerk in a rush and watched as a man, short but layered in muscle the way all hunters were, got into a truck. “You sure,” he hissed at Cas.
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s follow this sonuvabitch.” As soon as Dean was sure Malcolm couldn’t see them, he shoved Cas in the direction of the Impala, and did his best to follow Malcolm discreetly, or as discreetly as he could while driving a ’67 Impala.
Either Malcolm Porter was a complete dumbass, something Dean wouldn’t put past somebody who went out to kill a guy without completely checking his fact, especially when that somebody’s brother was pretty much one of the most terrifying hunters out there, or he didn’t care that he was being followed by someone. Dean actually figured it was a combination of the two, and maybe a bit of Malcolm being too focused on the hunt, which Dean could understand since Sam as himself was a pain in the ass to fight, let alone Sam as worn by Satan.
They tailed Malcolm into downtown Savannah, where the narrow streets and constant traffic made Dean grit his teeth. He figured Sam would pick a part of town like this, sort of fruity and not at all the place any hunter would ever go unless a job forced him. Malcolm managed to find a parking spot, and when Dean realized he wouldn’t be able to fit the Impala in the only nearby space, he reached across Cas and opened the door.
“Get out,” he told Cas.
“What?”
“Follow him while I find a parking place. Hurry up!” Dean shooed Cas out of the car, as the roughly twelve thousand people stuck behind all seemed to honk their horns in tandem.
Cas did, grumbling, and Dean rolled his eyes are he went around what felt like a hundred squares and down about seventy back streets looking for parking. By the time he found a spot, he muttered to himself, he probably would have missed whatever went down.
Luckily, he found a spot large enough to accommodate the Impala, and parked like a complete jackass. Cas called a minute later, as Dean was headed back in what he was pretty sure was the right direction.
“We’ve found Sam,” Cas said, without preamble. Dean nearly tripped. “More accurately, we’ve found Sam’s room. He appears to be out.”
“Where are you?”
“He lives in an apartment over a CVS on Bull Street.”
“I think I remember that one. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Cas was waiting for Dean on a corner near the CVS, and fell in step with him easily. “Malcolm’s up in Sam’s apartment. I assumed you would want the honor of surprising him.”
“You know me too well, Cas.” Dean grinned.
“I know you down to your bones, Dean Winchester.”
Dean had nothing to say to that, so he settled for the same intense stare that had characterized his and Cas’s relationship since the beginning. Being an archangel and earning Heaven’s approval had clearly done nothing to tamp down on Cas’s intensity, His eyes still cut through Dean, down to those bones he had marked and remade. It made Dean shiver.
They had to break eye contact while Dean tried to break in to the apartment, failing miserably until Cas reached across him and keyed in the passcode.
“I saw Malcolm do it,” he offered as explanation.
Dean just raised a finger to his lips as they crept up the stairs. Cas pointed out the door to Sam’s apartment, and Dean pulled out his gun. Cas reached for the knob and Dean stopped him, hand pressed against Castiel’s wrist. Cas raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
“He’s bound to be waiting for someone to come in. Is there a window or something?” Dean whispered in Castiel’s ear.
“No,” Cas responded, “but there is another way.” Dean knew what it was before Cas reached out with two fingers, heard it in the amused twist of Cas’s voice.
Malcolm obviously wasn’t expecting two men, one armed, to teleport into the room he had carefully booby-trapped. Dean had never been one for such elaborate set-ups, but he had to admit the careful system of strings and knives around the door was something else. While Malcolm scrambled to aim at Dean, Dean knocked his gun from his hand and gestured to the bed.
“Sit down, Porter. Cas, can you undo that mess he’s made by the door?”
“You actually need to ask?” Dean could have sworn Cas smirked as pulled on one of the strings and the entre web fell to the floor.
“So, Malcolm,” Dean dragged the name out, tested it on his tongue and prodded Malcolm in the stomach with the barrel of his gun, “what are you doin’ all the way this far south?”
“Don’t treat me like a fool, Dean Winchester, you know exactly what I’m doing. I’m putting down that rabid dog you call a brother.”
Dean struck Malcolm across the face with the butt of the gun before he could think. As Malcolm spat at him and held his cheek, Cas gripped his shoulder.
“You listen to me, you goddamn ignorant son of a bitch-” Dean was cut off by the opening door, and the sound of footfalls he’d known their entire life.
Behind him, he heard Castiel say, “Hello, Sam.”