Alone I Fear the Tide (Wash These Dreams Away) (Supernatural, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, PG)
Title: Alone I Fear the Tide (Wash These Dreams Away)
Author: luzdeestrellas
Summary: It's all about pie.
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Disclaimer: All Kripke's, all the time
Original story: Alone I Fear the Tide, by Victoria P.
Notes: Thank you so much to my lovely betas: javajunkie13, Lyras, and shaggydogstail. All remaining mistakes are mine.
***
Alone I Fear the Tide (Wash These Dreams Away)
"I got you, um--" Sam dives into the bag as Dean starts the car, appears with a pack of M&Ms, a pack of Twinkies, two power bars, a bag of Cheetos, and that's only the crap he can fit in his freakishly huge hand; Dean's pretty sure there's still stuff to be pulled out.
"Dude," Dean says, eyebrows raised, "you leave any food in the place?"
Sam colours a little, but he doesn't look away. "I didn't know what you might want, is all."
Dean bites back the sigh. He knows what Sam really means is that Dean's not eating enough, because Sam's started monitoring that--probably has a little chart somewhere in his duffle, "calories Dean consumed today," colour coded and broken down into food groups. It's not like Dean can really argue the point, though, of course, he did the one time Sam brought it up.
Arguing is easier than agreeing, because if he agrees, Sam will think they're communicating, and Dean can't--doesn't want to--explain this.
When Sam left (even before Sam left, when Dean knew it was coming, a point on the horizon he could never pick up enough speed to escape), Dean tasted ashes on his tongue. He knew it was stupid, tried to pretend it wasn't true, but all the hunting he'd done had never been as terrifying as Sam packing up and not looking back, going where they couldn't protect him, and fear has always tasted like smoke, felt like fire, to Dean.
Even years after Mom, when smoke is righteous, a promise they've done what they're meant to, it's never ice that paralyses him but heat, burning in his blood, bitter and acrid in his mouth. He felt it from the moment Sam left until he finished his first solo hunt--killed a poltergeist, no one at his back, no one's back to look out for, and it only subsided when Dad called three days later, I need you back here, buddy. Move your ass, pride in his tone if not in his words. And then it was back again on the long drive to Cali, three days of driving and calling, no messages from Dad, no certainty what Sam would say when Dean crashed back into his life.
He's been running from that fire for as long as he can remember, and he feels it now again, ash and death on his tongue, in his throat. Sometimes he watches Sammy sleep, wonders if it's worse that, in spite of everything, he's still glad Sam hasn't turned and walked away, still wants him within hand's reach and shouting distance.
Now, he almost says he's not hungry, that he'll eat later, but Sam's still looking at him, all earnest puppy eyes and stubborn set to his jaw, so Dean swats the back of his head. "Give me my M&Ms, bitch."
Sam smiles, and Dean figures it's worth it just for that.
"Dude," Sam says, "what?" And Dean realises he hasn't looked away, somehow can't quite stop these days, watching and waiting, for Sam to disappear, for Sam not to be Sam, for some sign of something he never wants to see and might not recognise even if he does.
"You got..." he says, gesturing at his own face, "looks kinda freakish."
Sam is instantly lifting his hands to check his face, peering in the mirror to get a better view.
"Man, we should get you one of those compact things."
Sam glares. "Whatever. I don't see anything."
"Kinda hard to miss, Sammy. Right between your eyes."
He only grins when Sam lobs a power bar at his head. "Shut up and drive, you moron."
Dean does, still glad to have her running again, all that power under his hands, her engine whispering the only secrets he wants to hear. "You're sure you don't wanna reconsider? Montauk? The middle of winter?"
"Not scared of a little cold, are you?"
Dean relaxes into the rhythm of this, the easy back and forth a beat he knows all the parts to. "Sam, Montauk's a little cold like zombies are a little awesome. I just don't want you going all emo on me when your gigantor fingers fall off."
"Your concern'll warm me from the inside, Dean. Stop bitching already. Bobby thinks it could be something."
"Or maybe, Bobby secretly hates us. Could be he's punishing the guy who got drunk and threw up all over his kitchen."
Sam ignores that, though his ears go a little red. "You're absolutely right. The four women who have disappeared in the last four weeks, and the many women who have disappeared in the area in the last twenty years, clearly cannot counter your awesome powers of deduction. Let's go to Florida, instead."
"Shut up."
"Come on," Sam says, "we've even got a house for once. Even you can't bitch about that."
"Oh, Sam, I can bitch about anything."
Sam looks tired, though, has for weeks, circles under his eyes and skin too pale, worrying he should never have to do eating him up. Dean can't be sure and he won't ask, but he suspects Sam and Bobby got together on this, organised an easy hunt, a nice house--a break they don't have to call a break, like that's what Dean needs, like sitting still is something he can afford to do. If he stops, he's defenceless, an empty house inviting his ghosts to take up residence, and if he lets them in, Dean doesn't have the weapons to get them out. It's just one more thing he can't tell Sam.
He feels Sam's gaze on him, forces his mouth into a smile. "If this place isn't set up for winter, I will fucking drown you in that goddamn lake."
Sam grins round a mouthful of Twinkie. "If your moves were as smart as your mouth, I'd be scared."
Dean flips him off and floors the pedal. The Impala eats up the road, and they leave another town behind them, happy families behind closed doors, Christmas lights twinkling like cheap stars in the window, as if the darkness is that easy to keep out. Dean knows better than to cling to light, has weapons and words, a brother and a father, instead, stars that wouldn't ever fall. Except that they do, and now Dean feels darkness crawling under his skin, ice-cold fingers wrapping around his heart, and he's afraid to cling to Sam, afraid not to, because letting go feels a lot like drowning.
"You need me to tell you where we're going?" Sam asks, and Dean nearly laughs.
Always. "I'll let you know when I do, Sasquatch."
Sam yawns, curls in the seat, head almost touching Dean's shoulder. "Wake me when you get us lost," he says, "and I'll save your ass. Again."
Dean grins, cranks the music just to piss Sam off, and they keep going. They always do.
***
Montauk is just as cold as Dean knew it would be, driving wind and dark skies, air that's sharp and painful in his lungs.
The house is winterised, though, with an endless supply of hot water, and it's obviously a hunter's house, because there are runes carved in the windowsills and on the walls, salt eating away at the wood in a way that makes Dean breathe a little easier. He draws salt lines, anyway, knows he'll draw them again before they leave, before they go to bed, as often as he has to. It's as much in honour of Dad as it is to keep them safe, like unpacking the way he taught them--place for everything, vital stuff always within reach, never more out of their bag than needs to be, in case they have to leave suddenly--Dean does it almost without thinking, same way he salts and doesn't need to look to do it right, but his chest still aches whenever he sees the orderly way they've both laid out their stuff in the bathroom, or the unbroken line of white along the window. John Winchester was here, it always says, but Dean is his father's son and not his father, and it'll never be enough.
"Did you light the pilot?" Sam asks, appearing in the doorway, and Dean wonders if he has some freak-assed psychic sense now that lets him know whenever Dean is brooding--if Dean Winchester were the type to brood, that is.
Dean turns around, salt still in hand, and smirks. "No, I'm just going to use the power of my mind to set things on fire. Oh, wait…that's you."
"I think I might have ruptured something," Sam says, and Dean throws an ugly green cushion at him.
"Yes, I lit the pilot. The boiler's in the basement." He drops down onto the sofa, closes his eyes, and says, "So, these women? Locals?"
"Uh-huh. Lived here all year round. All the women who disappeared before did, too. And the husbands always claim there's nothing weird about it." He sits on the chair by the window, leaning forward the way he does when he's reciting the facts. "Two of the husbands are brothers this time, and both their wives disappeared just over six weeks ago. The other two went missing a few days later."
"Okay, then. Town this size, someone's bound to know something."
Sam hums agreement. "There was a Subway in the strip mall about a mile back. We could get some lunch, do some investigating. Or you could sleep first, then we could go."
Dean snorts and opens his eyes. "Like I do naps," he says. He's tired, exhaustion lying in wait for him to fall into it, but all the sleep in the world won't change that. "Come on, sparky. Time for you to earn your paycheck."
***
Subway is almost deserted, and Sam spends a ridiculous amount of time obsessing over what he wants.
"Jesus Christ, Sam, pick one and be done. You're gonna bitch about whatever you get, anyway." He always does.
"So would you, if you'd worked here." He says it casually, offhand, like Dean knows, like Sam's told him, and maybe he has; Dean's not exactly always listening when Sam talks, but the reminder of how normal Sam used to be hits him like a punch to the gut, the way it hasn't in a while.
"In Montauk?" Dean asks, covering his surprise with a smile.
He had seen Sam work bars, watched from afar as he came out late at night, tired, but the good kind, the kind Sam always wanted, moving easy, no injuries, no worries, like there was nothing in the dark to hurt him. He thinks Dad mentioned a library, but Subway is new and kind of unexpected; Sam's lack of culinary skills is damn near legendary.
Sam rolls his eyes. "Made myself so sick of heroes you wouldn't believe it."
Dean shrugs. "They're never as good as you expect them to be," he says. "Goddamn bread always smells so good."
Sam nods. "Fools you every time."
"Pretty much." Dean wonders how tragic it is to be comparing his life to a sandwich, and when the kids come over to serve them, wearing Fall Out Boy t-shirts Dean had mocked earlier, more because Sam expected him to than because he really cares, he's already on edge, already just wants the hell out of here.
The kids look like they're related, same lean build, dark hair and dark eyes, and when Sam asks, they confirm they're cousins.
"You know anything about these missing women?" Dean asks, feels Sam pull a face beside him--upset that Dean hasn't offered candy and flowers, maybe some personal revelations of his own, to start the ball rolling.
The kids, at least, don't seem pissed--they're suspicious, more than anything else. "You cops?" one of them asks, and Dean shakes his head.
"We're just checking they're okay."
"They aren't missing," the other one says, fingers drumming on the cash register, like he's still not entirely sure he should be saying anything.
His cousin nods. "They just, you know, left. It was time."
Dean's fingers tighten round the Styrofoam cup in his hand. "That's it? They just left? Left their families--their kids--behind?"
"It happens," one of the boys says. "People leave. You love them, and they love you, but sometimes they can't stay. Sometimes, keeping them just ain't right."
It's not that Dean doesn't know this, but he doesn't think he'll ever really understand it, or maybe he just doesn’t want to. It's one of the many things he doesn't look too closely at these days.
"If you love somebody, set them free," the other one says, nodding.
Dean's sense of musical decency is kind of offended, and maybe it's not the shittiest thing he's heard all day, but it's still up near the top of the list. "Dude, I cannot believe you're quoting song lyrics at me. This is serious. If something happened, if these women are hurt or in danger or--"
"They're not." The Sting fan shakes his head. "They left because they couldn't stay. That's just how it is."
Beside him, Sam is nodding, and Dean kind of wants to punch him. "Sure," Sam says, "people leave, but sometimes they come back."
The boys shrug, and Dean doesn't look at Sam, though he can feel Sam's eyes on him. Sometimes they don't, is on the tip of his tongue, but all he says is, "Thanks. We appreciate the help."
He picks up the sandwiches, leaves without looking back, and even Sam has to walk quickly to catch up with him.
"Hey," Sam says, "Hey."
He reaches out to touch Dean's shoulder, and Dean sidesteps, pushes the hurt look on Sam's face out of his mind. "That's bullshit, Sammy. They couldn't stay? What the hell is that?"
Sam leans against the car, hands in his pockets, look on his face now like maybe they're discussing the weather, or the latest box scores, or maybe like they're debating some hypothetical legal question. "Dean, you've left women from Tallahassee to Seattle because you couldn't stay."
Dean shrugs, shoulders hunching into his jacket, and glances away. "That's different." Sam is stupider than he looks, if he doesn't know it.
Apparently he is, because he snorts, challenging. "Really?"
"I never make any promises. I never--"
"Lie? You lie all the time, Dean. Every day, in every single way, you lie."
Dean shakes his head. "I never tell them--" He thinks of easy smiles and smooth skin, alcohol and kisses and need and desperation that never offer anymore than a few hours, maybe a night, taken and understood and accepted. He thinks of college envelopes in anonymous PO boxes, secrets Sam thought he was keeping well, a waitress on Sam's graduation day, long legs and talented fingers, never wanting to be more than a quick fuck before they both moved on, whispering, hot and perfect against his skin, "Your brother made it to Stanford, huh? You must be so proud," of silence in the motel room, of an empty seat beside him in the car. He thinks of Dad's gunmetal smile, bullet-proof, the only promises Dean has ever believed made in the tight movement of his fingers as he loaded the gun, his hand on Dean's shoulder, cups of coffee, teaching him how to make his baby tick, conversations over sports pages, his voice the only constant besides Sam Dean had ever wanted. "Not about that."
"Dean--"
Dean turns away, opens the door and has to force himself not to slam it. "I don't say I'm gonna stick around and then run out when things don't go my way."
He'd thought about it--sat outside while the sound of raised voices carried on the breeze, you can't and you will and when I leave and your mother would be ashamed--thought about heading out, the road his only destination, and his baby under his hands, forever stretching out as vast as the sky, but he knows, has always known, that it's reality you put your money on, and he'd never really wanted a reality without his family in it.
Even now, when his own secrets burn like holy water, he knows he'll never leave, never walk away unless Sam follows. He thinks Sam might have no choice in that anymore, and it keeps his mouth closed when he'd like to share the weight of Dad's words, makes everything inside him ache when he thinks that maybe Sam Winchester and normal were as alien to each other as Dad always told Sam they were. He wouldn't keep Sam at that price, got him back once before when the cost was too high, and he doesn't want to make staying something Sam does because all his alternatives have been taken away, obliterated like the tin cans they used to use for target practice.
Sam stands still for a second, confused, probably, and then he gets in, and Dean can feel the desire to have a chick flick moment coming off him in waves, but there's nothing Dean can tell him that won't reveal too much, leave him bleeding and raw and lost. "We need stuff to eat for the house," he says, voice neutral, casual, like breathing isn't something he's having to concentrate on to get right. "At the very least, some beer."
"Fine. Whatever."
***
There's a girl on the street when they pull up to the local store; the wind whips her hair around her face, and she seems impossibly small huddled in her jacket, out of place in so much winter. Her head's down, and she looks like she didn't get the memo about the holiday spirit, either.
Her hands are deep in her pockets, and Dean isn't exactly a normal family expert, but he figures this time of year and this kind of weather they're all meant to be indoors, big dinners and warm drinks, the stuff Sam always wanted and Dean never needed. Besides, he's pretty expert at recognising lost when he sees it, and he's seeing it now.
"She's gotta be freezing," Sam says, fight forgotten just like that, and Dean nods.
"Stop staring and move your ass," he says, because he hates being helpless. "It's gonna snow. I can taste it."
"You're so full of shit," Sam says, but when they come out of the local store half an hour later, laden down with milk and cereal and fruit, and who the hell knows what else Sam thought might be good for them, Sam stops and looks upward, lets the flakes fall on his face and catch in his smile. "Huh," he says, and then he looks at Dean.
"Told you," Dean says. "I think I could be developing freakish super powers of my own."
"Uh-huh. We'll take you round the country, and you can predict the weather twenty minutes before it happens. We'll make a fortune." Sam shakes his head to get the snow out of his hair as they start moving again, and Dean laughs.
"God, you need to cut that. People are gonna start mistaking you for some huge fucker of a beast, otherwise. You'll be on the news and everything. Probably get yourself put in some kind of cage."
"You're getting more hilarious by the day."
"Kinda like your hair, huh?"
Sam doesn't say anything, just pushes him with his free hand, not hard, but the ground's already getting slippery, and Dean goes sprawling, falls on his ass, because he doesn't have a hand free to stop it. The shopping goes everywhere--tins of soup and oranges rolling towards the road--and Sam stands above him, laughing so hard he nearly falls himself.
"Your face," he says, gasping for breath. "Oh, man, your face."
Dean starts to laugh, too, and then he lunges, knocks Sam's knees out from under him and brings him flailing down on top of him. They roll around on the ground, laughing like they haven't in too long, and they forget the cold, and for a while, Dean forgets that this is all he has, and maybe it's not even his to keep.
"Okay," Sam says, as Dean looms over him, pinning his arms and his legs, still laughing. "Okay. Lemme up. We need to get all this shit together. Preferably before I freeze to death."
Dean holds a hand out, and Sam pulls himself up, their shoulders bumping. Dean looks over to where the girl had been standing before they went in, not sure what he's planning to do if she's stil there, but the place is deserted, just another small town, waiting for summer to come back around, like this time it might live up to the promise. Dean already knows it won't.
Sam smacks his arm to bring his attention back to him. "Hey, neither of us ate those heroes. You wanna get some food? I'll buy."
It's an apology of sorts, and Dean just grins, doesn't even point out that it's his money they'll be using. "Lead the way, Sammich."
***
The diner is the kind Dean loves, will never get tired of, homemade pie and well-cooked burgers, waitresses who smile and music just loud enough to be noticed.
Their waitress has the same dark eyes, the same dark hair as the boys in Subway, and Dean glances at Sam, eyebrows raised in question. Sam only shrugs, picks up a pile of brochures and flips through them idly.
"Montauk Point's supposed to have a ghost ship, apparently," he says.
Dean leans back, wraps his hands around his coffee cup. "Nah, bastard was banished years ago. Just a story now for tourists." He waits a beat while Sam comes up with a new reason why they should go and let Sam indulge his super dork tendencies, and then he grins. "It's still pretty cool, anyway. Staffed by hot chicks, too."
Sam rolls his eyes on instinct, and then they widen. "You've been?"
"Sure. Couple years back. They have all this stuff about how they saved the beach from erosion."
Sam puts his head on the table, moans into his arms. "Oh, God, please don't start with the achievements of modern engineering." He lifts his head again, looks accusingly at Dean. "You never told me you'd been here."
Dean shrugs. He's seen a lighthouse and Sam worked in Subway. They don't talk about it, because then it's real, separation and distance more than just memories Dean would rather not think about. It's only done like this, titbits gleaned accidentally (though normally they like to keep their revelations to one a day), shoring up their knowledge while they pretend not to. Four years can't be explained away by words; it's not knowing, doesn't fill up the blanks and the silences, and Dean mostly likes to pretend it doesn't matter, not when Sam came back, and certainly not now. "I've been most places, Sam."
Sam flips a page back and forward between his fingers. "Guess so." He finally smoothes the glossy paper down with his hand. "You go with Dad?"
"Yeah, had some downtime." He picks up the menu, answers the question Sam won't ask. "He wasn't blown away by the achievements of modern engineering, either. Liked the history, though." Sam smiles, and Dean returns it. "Knew you got all that geek from somewhere."
"It would've been cool if we'd all gone," Sam says, quiet and young.
Dean doesn't know what to say to that, so he shrugs, says, "Yeah, well. Shit happens," as relaxed as he can make it, anything to take that hurt tone from Sam's voice.
Their waitress, thank fuck, comes over, tells them her name is Sherry, smiles when she sees the brochure. "You guys been out to the beach?" she asks.
Sam shakes his head.
"You should go. See the seals. I know a girl up there. I could hook you up."
"I bet you could," Dean says, putting all his Winchester charm in his smile. She blushes and smiles back, and Dean flirts with her while she takes their order, likes the sound of her laugh and the easy tilt of her smile, works to see it again when she brings them the food--cheese burgers and fries for both of them, though Dean drowns his in ketchup and Sam makes a face.
Later, she brings them pie, still all smiles, assures them it's quiet, that everyone gets what's left over at the end of the day. Dean grins. He's determined to enjoy this on principle, just because it's free, given to them by a pretty girl he's known all his life and who is always different. "Free pie never gets old, man," he says, and Sam's grin is razor sharp, supernova bright.
"The wit and wisdom of Dean Winchester," he says. "Right there in six words."
Dean grins back, and makes to pull Sam's plate towards him. "If you don't want it..."
Sam brandishes his fork at him. "I totally didn't say that."
They eat for a while in silence, and Sam says, wary, "You think those kids were telling the truth?"
Dean chews his pie longer than necessary and then half shrugs. "Dunno, Sam. We'll talk to the families tomorrow, try to figure it out."
"Yeah, okay."
Sam taps his fingers on the table, drinks his coffee, puts the cup down, picks it back up, fiddles with the brochure, clears his throat.
"Jesus," Dean says. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Uh-huh. You're putting me off my pie, man. You have no idea how much I hate that."
Sam stays silent for a little while, and Dean thinks they're done. He never gets that lucky, though. "I didn't mean--it was never meant to be so long. Hell, you stopped calling, too."
Dean groans. "We aren't gonna do this."
Dean remembered calling--alone in the car, heavy thump of bass, Metallica pumping through him like his heartbeat. He remembered Sammy's sleep drowsy voice, uncomprehending and pissed, no idea what the date was, no idea why he should know. Dean had hung up, driven instead of drinking and fucking like he wanted to, because it was Mom's birthday, and he couldn't honour her in any other way, only with bullets and a hope of vengeance every other day, a promise to save everyone he could, and when the eleventh of April rolled around, remembering how she smelled and how her smile held the world. He didn't know if she'd be proud, and he didn't think on it. Sam had called back that afternoon, breathed instead of speaking, and Dean had only fuck you as response, the cell, cold and hard in his hand when he hung up. He hadn't called after that, and neither had Sam.
"We aren't gonna do this," he says again, a hundred miles away and too many years later, drawing patterns in his whipped cream with his fork. "You can't change it, even if you wanted to, so eat your pie and shut up."
Sam taps his plate meaningfully, and Dean grins. "Shouldn't have eaten so quick, Sam." Then he pushes his own plate across. "You can have some of mine, if you want."
"No way," Sam says, shaking his head vehemently. "You're gonna eat it all."
"Damn right," Dean says, pulling his plate back.
Sam watches him, and then he gets that furrow between his eyebrows, the one that means he's over thinking. "Thanks, man. I appreciate it."
"Dude," Dean says. "It's just pie. No need to get all emo about it."
"Idiot," Sam says, and Dean just smiles.
Sam keeps watching, and whatever it is he wants to say--whatever he's wanted to say since the crash--is still there. Sam's just waiting, pushing just far enough and pulling back when he figures Dean isn't ready. Dean's kind of hoping never to be ready for whatever it is.
***
In the morning, there's a couple of inches of snow over everything, powdered white that turns the town into something from a Christmas card. Dean bitches about it as they track down the families, but it crunches like promise, feels like memory under Dean's boots, reminds him of playing with Dad and Sammy, when the air was thick with snowballs and laughter, the world made warm by Sam's grin and Dad's strength.
"It'll be slushy shit by the time we're done," Sam says, and dean nods.
Though after the second husband slams the door in their faces before they've asked half a question, he figures the snow will probably be there long after they're finished.
Sam starts bitching about the cold then, too, mouth turned down in a frown Dean always has to resist making fun of.
He grins at Sam, instead. "For people with nothing to hide, they're sure acting pretty guilty."
"Yeah, like Dad would've invited people in willingly."
Dean snorts. "Exactly. We were always hiding things."
Sam huffs out a laugh, and Dean wishes, not for the first time, that everything was still as simple as just making Sam smile, when keeping him safe meant just making sure he didn't fall over or run too far ahead.
"The McGuigans next?" he asks. "The brothers?"
Sam nods. "James is nearer."
James McGuigan might be Dad's age, maybe a little older, grey hair and gnarled hands, looks a lot like Dad would've, if he'd been able to spend his life in a town like this, nothing to kill but the occasional fish, and Dean can't imagine it, but he knows once that's what Dad did have, what he'd planned on. James is powerfully built, gone to seed a little, more laugh lines around his face than Dad had, but his eyes look like they've lost something, can't quite figure out why, or understand how to go on without it. It's a look Dean's all too familiar with: Dad and Sammy, hell, maybe himself now, though he tries not to think about that, either.
Sam zooms in on it right away, all earnest and you can trust me; I save small puppies for a living, but for once, nobody's buying. "You boys got no business round here," he says, and Sam nods.
"I understand this is hard for you, but we've been hired--"
McGuigan shakes his head. "I didn't hire you."
"No, sir. A third party. There might be an inheritance."
McGuigan just laughs, mirthless and cold. "There's no inheritance, no third party. She left; she ain't coming back. End of story. I always knew it would happen--just didn't think it would be so soon."
His hands curl into fists at his side, and Dean consciously makes himself as unthreatening as he knows how to be. "You were married a long time?"
McGuigan looks away. "Twenty eight years," he says, "Would've been twenty nine soon enough."
Dean doesn't know what to say to that, doesn't think there's much of anything he can say. McGuigan reaches the same conclusion, because he's stepping back, eyes hard again. "Don't expect to be seeing you again," he says, and he slams the door.
"Small town hospitality never gets old," Sam says.
Dean cuffs him on the shoulder. "One more to go, kiddo. We might get lucky."
It doesn't seem like they will. Donald McGuigan, who talks and looks and sounds like his brother, blocks the doorway and stares them down. "My brother called," he says, before they can say anything. "Says you've been asking questions. we don't like outsiders knowing our business round here, boys."
"Sir," Sam says, "we just want to make sure they're safe. Then we'll go."
He looks hard at them for a couple of seconds, but where Sam's shtick got them nowhere with James, Donald seems to believe it. "Okay," he says. "Five minutes."
They follow him inside. The house isn't exactly winning any style contests; even Dean can see that--furniture that was fashionable maybe twenty years ago, carpet worn by a lifetime of footsteps--but it has family and home and safety written all over it. There are pictures on the wall: smiling Donald and his smiling wife and their smiling kids, and there are knick knacks on the shelves, some of them matching and some of them not, all of them probably meaning something, the kind of thing you only get after a lifetime of being in the one place. Dean wonders if Donald McGuigan's changed anything since his wife left, wonders what this place might look like in ten years, when family doesn't mean what he thought it did.
In the living room, they all stand awkwardly--or Sam and Donald do; Dean paces the few steps from one end to the other, restless energy crackling under his skin even now. "What can you tell us about your wife's disappearance?" he asks. "Did you notice anything strange beforehand, any odd occurrences or--"
"Have you been to the beach?" McGuigan interrupts. "It's seal season."
Sam looks over at Dean, who gives him the same barely-there shrug and widening of eyes that means he doesn't know either. Whole fucking town is obsessed with seals, and Dean's adding it to his already extensive list of reasons never to live anywhere where there are more animals than people.
"I didn't realize seals had a season," Sam says.
"Oh, yeah. They give tours and everything out at Montauk."
"Oh," Sam says, like an idiot, and Dean has to suppress a smile.
"Is this your wife, Mr. McGuigan?" he asks finally, fingers hovering over a framed picture that stands on the piano in the corner of the room. It's obviously been taken at a formal occasion; the whole family's there, Donald and his wife and their two kids, dressed up and smiling like they can't ever imagine not being happy.
"Yeah," Donald says, as he and Sam come over, "that's Brigid."
He runs his fingers over the frame, fingers skimming over his wife's face. She's slim and pretty, with long dark hair and eyes that look almost black in the photograph, the kind of woman any man would be proud to have. Donald looks at her in the photograph the way Dad used to look at Mom in the few photographs they'd look at on anniversaries or when Dad got wistful, when the anger of the hunt wasn't enough to drown the loss.
"She's quite a looker," Dean says, and Sam elbows him in the ribs. Dean raises his eyes in triumph when Donald picks up the photograph, starts to talk, the tone of a man who just wants to tell someone what he had. It makes Dean think of smokey bars and the burn of whiskey, the glint of Dad's ring and the way he said Mary like it was the only word meant for his mouth.
"She is," he says, and Dean doesn't miss the way he still refers to her in the present tense. "Prettiest of them all, I think. Though, of course, James would hand me my ass if I ever said that."
Sam picks up another photograph, and Dean recognises a younger James McGuigan, red hair and smiling mouth, standing beside a woman with the same black hair and dark eyes as Brigid. He's beginning to think everyone in this town is related, and it's freaking him out just a little.
"Did you and your brother marry sisters?" Sam asks, and Donald nods.
"Looks that way." He stares at the photographs and shrugs. "The kids are taking it hard." He points at the boy in the picture in his hand. "That's Donald Jr. Just finished school this year."
He doesn't identify the girl beside the boy, and Sam has never liked blanks. "That your daughter?" he asks.
McGuigan puts the photograph down, turns away. "Caitlin," he says, voice hard around the edges. "We no longer speak."
Dean feels Sam fidget beside him; it doesn't take much to remind them of Dad these days, wounds still raw and throbbing. "Mind if I use your bathroom?" Dean asks. He doesn't really expect the EMF meter to throw up anything, but protocol is protocol, and if Sam's about to start trying to patch a family back together, Dean doesn't really need to be there.
There are traces upstairs, but they're only faint, and whatever was here has been gone for at least a couple of weeks. It makes Dean doubt that the women just left, though he's still nowhere near an explanation.
When he gets back downstairs, he can hear the low murmur of Sam's voice, reassuring and steady. Dean motions for him to wrap it up, because they aren't getting any more information here, and Dean figures he already knows Sam's next move.
"If you can think of anything," Sam says, "anything that seemed odd or unusual around or just before the disappearance, just let us know." He pulls out a card, scribbles his phone number on it. "We'll be around for a few days, investigating."
"You're wasting your time," McGuigan says, but he pockets the card, follows them out to the door. Dean's already got one hand on the doorknob when McGuigan says, "If you see Caitlin--" but then he shakes his head, and Sam's got that look on his face, like he'd fix everything if only he could.
"I will, Mr. McGuigan. Thank you for your time."
"So you think Caitlin's estrangement is related to her Mom's disappearance?" Sam asks, as they walk back to the car.
"Dunno. Could be. Could be they're just fighting. Ain't like it would be a first."
"Guess not, no." Sam walks round the car, and Dean hates that he sometimes forgets that Sam can't fix what he and Dad broke, or that Dean's not the only one with guilt.
"We should go see her," he says. "You could be right."
"Seems like the smart move, yeah." Sam gets in, glances over at Dean with a look that's obviously meant to be casual. Dean's got years of pulling that off, has it down to an art, but Sam's still a novice. "That diner from yesterday isn't too far from here. We could get some food first."
"Amateur," he says, pulling out of the driveway.
They go back, and Sherry's working again, but this time it's Sam's turn to do the charming. They don't get any pie, but they do get information, so Dean figures they're about even.
"I'm looking for a girl," Sam says. "We met last summer, but I've just realised she doesn't live where she used to. Her name's Caitlin. Caitlin McGuigan."
Sherry is instantly all smiles. "That's the girl I was telling you about--works up at Montauk with the tours now." She taps her pen against her leg for a second. "It would be cool if you could go see her," she says. "It's been hard for her--hard on all the kids, but the McGuigans always wanted more than they should have. Got greedy. Caitlin's living with the Walshes, but, well, it's not the same. Especially not this time of year, you know?"
Sam nods, and Dean wishes his little brother had never had to really find out how that felt.
"I can't blame her for what she did," Sherry is saying, "but it isn't like her old man's objective on the subject."
"No," Sam says, like he has a clue what she's talking about. "Guess not."
***
The visitors' centre is deserted by the time they get there, and there are flakes of snow in the air again; they settle gently on the hood of the Impala, and Dean watches them, while Sam gets the guns from the trunk. It's been less than two months since the shit went down with the demon, but it already feels like they never went anywhere without their guns, never didn't see threat in everything and everyone, even in girls who've just lost their mothers, by all accounts.
They start towards the beach, Dean taking the lead without even thinking. The wind bites through his jacket, and he thinks it must be even colder by the water, but there are two women down there by the shore--one in jeans and a parka; the other with dark hair and a dress that flutters like a warning in the wind. The seals swim close to the women, closer than Dean would expect, and Dean figures it's one of the first things he's seen that's a good advertisement for this town. He watches the animals play, caught by their easy movement, the sleek lines of their bodies, their barks oddly comforting, like careless laughter.
"Hey, Dean," Sam says behind him, and Dean doesn't have to look to know he's smiling. "You know you've always kind of reminded me of a seal, right?"
Dean glares over his shoulder, and Sam laughs. "Come on. I mean it as a compliment. They're very…graceful."
"Yeah, whatever." He's about to expound on the many and various ways Sam can go fuck himself, when he hears it--human laughter on the wind, mingling with the sounds of the seals. Behind him, Sam stops, and Dean looks at him again, light bulbs going on above both their heads.
"You think?" he asks, and Sam nods.
"Yeah, I think."
They start moving again, speed up just in case the girl disappears, and when marshland gives way to sand, she's standing by herself, and Dean breathes in sharply when he recognizes her as the girl from the store that first night. He slips the gun into his jeans, walks forward and clears his throat so they don't take her by surprise.
"Caitlin?" Sam asks, and when she looks up, she's blinking back tears.
"There aren't any more tours today. Sorry."
Dean puts his hands in his pockets. "Hey," he says, gentle as he used to be with Sam when he was scared, "was that your Mom?"
Her eyes widen, and she looks startled before she can hide it. "Uh, what?"
"We're just--" Dean looks at Sam, always better at this part, especially when it's crying women they're dealing with, but he wants to do this. He takes a breath. "We were investigating your mother's disappearance," he says, "and we wanted to make sure nothing... bad had happened."
"Oh." She looks back out at the ocean, the waves fierce and powerful against the shore. "No, nothing bad. What makes you think--"
"It's our...job to find out," Sam says. "If it's nothing bad--if it's been going on for a long time, why--"
She swallows hard. "Why did my father stop speaking to me?"
"Yeah, I--" Sam stops, because this is none of their business, never a part of the mystery they can solve or fix, but Dean doesn't correct her, doesn't tell her they don't need to know.
"I found the skins, locked away up in the attic," she says, like she wants to tell it, wants to explain, and her voice is rough but steady. "They'd had a deal, my parents; she'd stay for as long as we needed her, and then she'd get to go back." She bites her lip. "When we got older, every year, my mother would ask if she could go home, and every year my father would say, no, Brigid, not yet, please, one more year." She sniffs, rubs at her eyes with the backs of her hands. "DJ and I would hear them arguing, and then she would go down to the water and cry.
"I didn't understand, you know? Used to think it was something we'd done, but once I knew," she jerks her chin at the seals, "I knew it was time to let her go." She shrugs, wipes stray tears away with her fingers. "She offered to stay. Said if she had the choice, it wouldn't be so bad, but I couldn't--I just wanted--" she breaks off, and Dean's hands come out of his pockets seemingly of their own volition, and he smoothes a lock of her hair behind her ear. He blames the trembling of his fingers on the cold.
"Okay," he says, and again, "okay. It's okay."
He turns away, lets the crashing waves drown out the beating of his heart, failure and guilt in his blood like salt in the ocean.
"And the others?" Sam asks.
"Once I'd let her go, it didn't seem right to make the others stay, you know?"
"Yeah, I know."
There's silence for a while, and Dean watches the seals in the distance, free and happy where they belong, and he thinks about the things he'd do to keep Sam and Dad safe, how it's never been enough, and now he's lost Dad--no doubt that it's something he did, no choice given and it's never the choice he would've taken--and Sammy's future is never the one he wanted, never the one Dean would have picked for him, and now maybe it's no future at all.
Finally, he says, "She comes back, though? You'll see her again, right?" He means it to be comfort, but it comes out of his mouth fragile and scared, like broken shells swept away by the ocean. He clears his throat and feels Sam move in behind him, warm and solid, probably planning some stealth hugging, and he fingers the gun in his waistband, wonders if it would freak Caitlin out too much if he drew it.
"I think so," Caitlin says, and she sounds just as miserable as Dean did.
***
They walk Caitlin back to her car, one on either side, protecting her from God knows what--the wind, dive-bombing seagulls, maybe the snow that's turned to sleet while they've been talking--because it's the only thing they can do.
"Your Dad'll come around," Sam says, and Caitlin nods, doesn't believe him.
Dean remembers when Sam didn't believe the same thing, and he doesn't know what to say, doesn't have anything he can do; there's no monster he can kill, no ghost he can waste to help her. If there were bullets or magic words that could fix this kind of hurt, Dean would be an expert in all of them.
"Take care of yourself," he says, and he means it
***
"You think she'll be okay?" Sam asks when they're back in the car, and Dean can only shrug.
"I hope so."
He starts the engine. Sam flicks through the tapes, probably looking for something he hasn't heard a million times already. "It was brave, letting her mom go like that."
Dean nods. "Yeah. It's meant to be the other way round." He doesn't say it's the parents that are meant to make the sacrifices, doesn't need to; his guilt is probably written all over him, and Sam's always been better at reading Dean than is good for him. Sam looks over, apology in his eyes, and Dean shakes his head. "I know you weren't talking about that," he says. He can't look at Sam. "I think I like Caitlin's way more, is all."
Sam sits very still, tapes scattered across his lap. "I know, Dean." He touches Dean's arm, and his fingers are light against the leather of Dean's jacket, but Dean thinks he feels their warmth all the same. "Christ. I kind of hate this case. A lot."
Dean manages a smile. "Yeah, man, I hear you."
Sam doesn't say anything else, pulls a Zeppelin tape from the selection, and cranks it up as loud as Dean needs it to be.
***
He wakes in the night to find Sam watching over him. "Never freak out the guy with the knife under his pillow, Sam," he says, without lifting his head. "Survival 101."
"Sorry," Sam says, though he doesn't sound it.
"You have a nightmare? Vision? Seizure of some kind? Alien encounter? Something equally serious that explains you interrupting my sleep?"
"I, um," Sam fidgets and drops to the floor beside Dean's bed. "I just."
"Oh my God," Dean says, sitting up dramatically, "someone came in and stole all your words, didn't they? Don't worry, Sammy, we'll find them."
Sam reaches up, smacks Dean on the leg. "Shut up." He tips his head back, looks up at Dean from under his lashes. "You want a beer?"
"Do I--dude," he looks at the glowing numbers on his watch, then back at Sam. "It's three fucking thirty five. And you understand I mean in the AM?"
"Yeah. You want one, anyway?"
Dean sighs and flops back on the pillow. "Sure," he says. "Fine. Why not? Fucking lunatic."
Sam comes back a couple of minutes later, six pack in hand, two bottles already open. He hands one to Dean, and Dean slides over, leaves him room on the bed. They sit shoulder to shoulder, not saying anything, and Dean waits, not sure he wants to hear what Sam's got on his mind, not sure he has a choice. And then Sam says, "when you were--" he waves his hand, in a gesture that means absolutely nothing, comes to rest on Dean's shoulder, a gesture that means everything. "You know," he says, and Dean nods. When you were dying, when Dad was selling his soul, another thing in their lives words can't possibly touch, can't possibly explain.
"Yeah," Dean says, "I do."
"Bobby wanted to scrap the Impala."
Dean nods. "He told me. I'd've kicked your ass if you'd let him."
Sam laughs. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. But that's not--Dean, man, I just." He squeezes Dean's shoulder tighter, hard enough to hurt.
Dean turns to look at him. "Sammy, hey, chill."
"No, you gotta--you should know it goes both ways, okay?"
Dean bites his lip, thinks of a million things he could say--I'd choose the Impala over you, I can't do this without you, if you cry, I will shoot myself--but he eventually curls his fingers round the back of Sam's neck and holds on. "I know, Sammy. I know."
"Okay." Sam slides down on the bed, draws his legs up so he's almost human sized, and Dean watches him. It isn't right that he's made Sam do this--come in the middle of the night like he's scared, as if Dean didn't know, not when it counts, that Sam would fight for him. There's no demon and no sacrifice that can take that knowledge from him, no distance Sam could go that he wouldn't come back if Dean really need him to. Not anymore, and probably not ever.
"Hey, Sam," he says, because he's damned if he's going to be outdone by his little brother. "I always wanted--" you to be happy "--you to, you know. Have your own pie." He knows how lame it is, and he's preparing himself for Sam to demand an explanation, but Sam actually laughs, and Dean feels it curl round him, like Sam's fingers used to, when Dean could stop anything hurting him.
"Man, you really suck at this. I know that, dumbass. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
And Dean doesn't want that to make him feel better; it doesn't fix anything, not really, and they're still a fuck load of miles from okay, but he can't help the smile. "Well," he says, sliding down on the bed, too, until his head's back on the pillow. "Okay then. We're done with chick flick moments for at least ten years now. If I think you're even considering the possibility of thinking about one, I'll break your other hand, okay?"
Sam laughs, sleepy now, the way he always is when he's got whatever's eating up his freaky brain out in the open. "'Kay. You wanna go to the lighthouse tomorrow? You can, I dunno, talk about erosion some more, if you want."
"Sure. We could do that." He digs an elbow into Sam's side. "You gonna move your ass back to your own bed?"
"Yeah," Sam says, and doesn't move, except to burrow his face into the second pillow he's stolen from Dean.
Dean just sighs, pulls the blanket over Sam and closes his eyes. "I really do have a knife, and I'm really not afraid to use it. Think about that before you kick me in your sleep."
He falls asleep to the sound of Sam's breathing and rain against the window, and for the first time since he woke up in a hospital room with a tube down his throat, that's all he hears.
***
Author: luzdeestrellas
Summary: It's all about pie.
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Disclaimer: All Kripke's, all the time
Original story: Alone I Fear the Tide, by Victoria P.
Notes: Thank you so much to my lovely betas: javajunkie13, Lyras, and shaggydogstail. All remaining mistakes are mine.
***
Alone I Fear the Tide (Wash These Dreams Away)
"I got you, um--" Sam dives into the bag as Dean starts the car, appears with a pack of M&Ms, a pack of Twinkies, two power bars, a bag of Cheetos, and that's only the crap he can fit in his freakishly huge hand; Dean's pretty sure there's still stuff to be pulled out.
"Dude," Dean says, eyebrows raised, "you leave any food in the place?"
Sam colours a little, but he doesn't look away. "I didn't know what you might want, is all."
Dean bites back the sigh. He knows what Sam really means is that Dean's not eating enough, because Sam's started monitoring that--probably has a little chart somewhere in his duffle, "calories Dean consumed today," colour coded and broken down into food groups. It's not like Dean can really argue the point, though, of course, he did the one time Sam brought it up.
Arguing is easier than agreeing, because if he agrees, Sam will think they're communicating, and Dean can't--doesn't want to--explain this.
When Sam left (even before Sam left, when Dean knew it was coming, a point on the horizon he could never pick up enough speed to escape), Dean tasted ashes on his tongue. He knew it was stupid, tried to pretend it wasn't true, but all the hunting he'd done had never been as terrifying as Sam packing up and not looking back, going where they couldn't protect him, and fear has always tasted like smoke, felt like fire, to Dean.
Even years after Mom, when smoke is righteous, a promise they've done what they're meant to, it's never ice that paralyses him but heat, burning in his blood, bitter and acrid in his mouth. He felt it from the moment Sam left until he finished his first solo hunt--killed a poltergeist, no one at his back, no one's back to look out for, and it only subsided when Dad called three days later, I need you back here, buddy. Move your ass, pride in his tone if not in his words. And then it was back again on the long drive to Cali, three days of driving and calling, no messages from Dad, no certainty what Sam would say when Dean crashed back into his life.
He's been running from that fire for as long as he can remember, and he feels it now again, ash and death on his tongue, in his throat. Sometimes he watches Sammy sleep, wonders if it's worse that, in spite of everything, he's still glad Sam hasn't turned and walked away, still wants him within hand's reach and shouting distance.
Now, he almost says he's not hungry, that he'll eat later, but Sam's still looking at him, all earnest puppy eyes and stubborn set to his jaw, so Dean swats the back of his head. "Give me my M&Ms, bitch."
Sam smiles, and Dean figures it's worth it just for that.
"Dude," Sam says, "what?" And Dean realises he hasn't looked away, somehow can't quite stop these days, watching and waiting, for Sam to disappear, for Sam not to be Sam, for some sign of something he never wants to see and might not recognise even if he does.
"You got..." he says, gesturing at his own face, "looks kinda freakish."
Sam is instantly lifting his hands to check his face, peering in the mirror to get a better view.
"Man, we should get you one of those compact things."
Sam glares. "Whatever. I don't see anything."
"Kinda hard to miss, Sammy. Right between your eyes."
He only grins when Sam lobs a power bar at his head. "Shut up and drive, you moron."
Dean does, still glad to have her running again, all that power under his hands, her engine whispering the only secrets he wants to hear. "You're sure you don't wanna reconsider? Montauk? The middle of winter?"
"Not scared of a little cold, are you?"
Dean relaxes into the rhythm of this, the easy back and forth a beat he knows all the parts to. "Sam, Montauk's a little cold like zombies are a little awesome. I just don't want you going all emo on me when your gigantor fingers fall off."
"Your concern'll warm me from the inside, Dean. Stop bitching already. Bobby thinks it could be something."
"Or maybe, Bobby secretly hates us. Could be he's punishing the guy who got drunk and threw up all over his kitchen."
Sam ignores that, though his ears go a little red. "You're absolutely right. The four women who have disappeared in the last four weeks, and the many women who have disappeared in the area in the last twenty years, clearly cannot counter your awesome powers of deduction. Let's go to Florida, instead."
"Shut up."
"Come on," Sam says, "we've even got a house for once. Even you can't bitch about that."
"Oh, Sam, I can bitch about anything."
Sam looks tired, though, has for weeks, circles under his eyes and skin too pale, worrying he should never have to do eating him up. Dean can't be sure and he won't ask, but he suspects Sam and Bobby got together on this, organised an easy hunt, a nice house--a break they don't have to call a break, like that's what Dean needs, like sitting still is something he can afford to do. If he stops, he's defenceless, an empty house inviting his ghosts to take up residence, and if he lets them in, Dean doesn't have the weapons to get them out. It's just one more thing he can't tell Sam.
He feels Sam's gaze on him, forces his mouth into a smile. "If this place isn't set up for winter, I will fucking drown you in that goddamn lake."
Sam grins round a mouthful of Twinkie. "If your moves were as smart as your mouth, I'd be scared."
Dean flips him off and floors the pedal. The Impala eats up the road, and they leave another town behind them, happy families behind closed doors, Christmas lights twinkling like cheap stars in the window, as if the darkness is that easy to keep out. Dean knows better than to cling to light, has weapons and words, a brother and a father, instead, stars that wouldn't ever fall. Except that they do, and now Dean feels darkness crawling under his skin, ice-cold fingers wrapping around his heart, and he's afraid to cling to Sam, afraid not to, because letting go feels a lot like drowning.
"You need me to tell you where we're going?" Sam asks, and Dean nearly laughs.
Always. "I'll let you know when I do, Sasquatch."
Sam yawns, curls in the seat, head almost touching Dean's shoulder. "Wake me when you get us lost," he says, "and I'll save your ass. Again."
Dean grins, cranks the music just to piss Sam off, and they keep going. They always do.
***
Montauk is just as cold as Dean knew it would be, driving wind and dark skies, air that's sharp and painful in his lungs.
The house is winterised, though, with an endless supply of hot water, and it's obviously a hunter's house, because there are runes carved in the windowsills and on the walls, salt eating away at the wood in a way that makes Dean breathe a little easier. He draws salt lines, anyway, knows he'll draw them again before they leave, before they go to bed, as often as he has to. It's as much in honour of Dad as it is to keep them safe, like unpacking the way he taught them--place for everything, vital stuff always within reach, never more out of their bag than needs to be, in case they have to leave suddenly--Dean does it almost without thinking, same way he salts and doesn't need to look to do it right, but his chest still aches whenever he sees the orderly way they've both laid out their stuff in the bathroom, or the unbroken line of white along the window. John Winchester was here, it always says, but Dean is his father's son and not his father, and it'll never be enough.
"Did you light the pilot?" Sam asks, appearing in the doorway, and Dean wonders if he has some freak-assed psychic sense now that lets him know whenever Dean is brooding--if Dean Winchester were the type to brood, that is.
Dean turns around, salt still in hand, and smirks. "No, I'm just going to use the power of my mind to set things on fire. Oh, wait…that's you."
"I think I might have ruptured something," Sam says, and Dean throws an ugly green cushion at him.
"Yes, I lit the pilot. The boiler's in the basement." He drops down onto the sofa, closes his eyes, and says, "So, these women? Locals?"
"Uh-huh. Lived here all year round. All the women who disappeared before did, too. And the husbands always claim there's nothing weird about it." He sits on the chair by the window, leaning forward the way he does when he's reciting the facts. "Two of the husbands are brothers this time, and both their wives disappeared just over six weeks ago. The other two went missing a few days later."
"Okay, then. Town this size, someone's bound to know something."
Sam hums agreement. "There was a Subway in the strip mall about a mile back. We could get some lunch, do some investigating. Or you could sleep first, then we could go."
Dean snorts and opens his eyes. "Like I do naps," he says. He's tired, exhaustion lying in wait for him to fall into it, but all the sleep in the world won't change that. "Come on, sparky. Time for you to earn your paycheck."
***
Subway is almost deserted, and Sam spends a ridiculous amount of time obsessing over what he wants.
"Jesus Christ, Sam, pick one and be done. You're gonna bitch about whatever you get, anyway." He always does.
"So would you, if you'd worked here." He says it casually, offhand, like Dean knows, like Sam's told him, and maybe he has; Dean's not exactly always listening when Sam talks, but the reminder of how normal Sam used to be hits him like a punch to the gut, the way it hasn't in a while.
"In Montauk?" Dean asks, covering his surprise with a smile.
He had seen Sam work bars, watched from afar as he came out late at night, tired, but the good kind, the kind Sam always wanted, moving easy, no injuries, no worries, like there was nothing in the dark to hurt him. He thinks Dad mentioned a library, but Subway is new and kind of unexpected; Sam's lack of culinary skills is damn near legendary.
Sam rolls his eyes. "Made myself so sick of heroes you wouldn't believe it."
Dean shrugs. "They're never as good as you expect them to be," he says. "Goddamn bread always smells so good."
Sam nods. "Fools you every time."
"Pretty much." Dean wonders how tragic it is to be comparing his life to a sandwich, and when the kids come over to serve them, wearing Fall Out Boy t-shirts Dean had mocked earlier, more because Sam expected him to than because he really cares, he's already on edge, already just wants the hell out of here.
The kids look like they're related, same lean build, dark hair and dark eyes, and when Sam asks, they confirm they're cousins.
"You know anything about these missing women?" Dean asks, feels Sam pull a face beside him--upset that Dean hasn't offered candy and flowers, maybe some personal revelations of his own, to start the ball rolling.
The kids, at least, don't seem pissed--they're suspicious, more than anything else. "You cops?" one of them asks, and Dean shakes his head.
"We're just checking they're okay."
"They aren't missing," the other one says, fingers drumming on the cash register, like he's still not entirely sure he should be saying anything.
His cousin nods. "They just, you know, left. It was time."
Dean's fingers tighten round the Styrofoam cup in his hand. "That's it? They just left? Left their families--their kids--behind?"
"It happens," one of the boys says. "People leave. You love them, and they love you, but sometimes they can't stay. Sometimes, keeping them just ain't right."
It's not that Dean doesn't know this, but he doesn't think he'll ever really understand it, or maybe he just doesn’t want to. It's one of the many things he doesn't look too closely at these days.
"If you love somebody, set them free," the other one says, nodding.
Dean's sense of musical decency is kind of offended, and maybe it's not the shittiest thing he's heard all day, but it's still up near the top of the list. "Dude, I cannot believe you're quoting song lyrics at me. This is serious. If something happened, if these women are hurt or in danger or--"
"They're not." The Sting fan shakes his head. "They left because they couldn't stay. That's just how it is."
Beside him, Sam is nodding, and Dean kind of wants to punch him. "Sure," Sam says, "people leave, but sometimes they come back."
The boys shrug, and Dean doesn't look at Sam, though he can feel Sam's eyes on him. Sometimes they don't, is on the tip of his tongue, but all he says is, "Thanks. We appreciate the help."
He picks up the sandwiches, leaves without looking back, and even Sam has to walk quickly to catch up with him.
"Hey," Sam says, "Hey."
He reaches out to touch Dean's shoulder, and Dean sidesteps, pushes the hurt look on Sam's face out of his mind. "That's bullshit, Sammy. They couldn't stay? What the hell is that?"
Sam leans against the car, hands in his pockets, look on his face now like maybe they're discussing the weather, or the latest box scores, or maybe like they're debating some hypothetical legal question. "Dean, you've left women from Tallahassee to Seattle because you couldn't stay."
Dean shrugs, shoulders hunching into his jacket, and glances away. "That's different." Sam is stupider than he looks, if he doesn't know it.
Apparently he is, because he snorts, challenging. "Really?"
"I never make any promises. I never--"
"Lie? You lie all the time, Dean. Every day, in every single way, you lie."
Dean shakes his head. "I never tell them--" He thinks of easy smiles and smooth skin, alcohol and kisses and need and desperation that never offer anymore than a few hours, maybe a night, taken and understood and accepted. He thinks of college envelopes in anonymous PO boxes, secrets Sam thought he was keeping well, a waitress on Sam's graduation day, long legs and talented fingers, never wanting to be more than a quick fuck before they both moved on, whispering, hot and perfect against his skin, "Your brother made it to Stanford, huh? You must be so proud," of silence in the motel room, of an empty seat beside him in the car. He thinks of Dad's gunmetal smile, bullet-proof, the only promises Dean has ever believed made in the tight movement of his fingers as he loaded the gun, his hand on Dean's shoulder, cups of coffee, teaching him how to make his baby tick, conversations over sports pages, his voice the only constant besides Sam Dean had ever wanted. "Not about that."
"Dean--"
Dean turns away, opens the door and has to force himself not to slam it. "I don't say I'm gonna stick around and then run out when things don't go my way."
He'd thought about it--sat outside while the sound of raised voices carried on the breeze, you can't and you will and when I leave and your mother would be ashamed--thought about heading out, the road his only destination, and his baby under his hands, forever stretching out as vast as the sky, but he knows, has always known, that it's reality you put your money on, and he'd never really wanted a reality without his family in it.
Even now, when his own secrets burn like holy water, he knows he'll never leave, never walk away unless Sam follows. He thinks Sam might have no choice in that anymore, and it keeps his mouth closed when he'd like to share the weight of Dad's words, makes everything inside him ache when he thinks that maybe Sam Winchester and normal were as alien to each other as Dad always told Sam they were. He wouldn't keep Sam at that price, got him back once before when the cost was too high, and he doesn't want to make staying something Sam does because all his alternatives have been taken away, obliterated like the tin cans they used to use for target practice.
Sam stands still for a second, confused, probably, and then he gets in, and Dean can feel the desire to have a chick flick moment coming off him in waves, but there's nothing Dean can tell him that won't reveal too much, leave him bleeding and raw and lost. "We need stuff to eat for the house," he says, voice neutral, casual, like breathing isn't something he's having to concentrate on to get right. "At the very least, some beer."
"Fine. Whatever."
***
There's a girl on the street when they pull up to the local store; the wind whips her hair around her face, and she seems impossibly small huddled in her jacket, out of place in so much winter. Her head's down, and she looks like she didn't get the memo about the holiday spirit, either.
Her hands are deep in her pockets, and Dean isn't exactly a normal family expert, but he figures this time of year and this kind of weather they're all meant to be indoors, big dinners and warm drinks, the stuff Sam always wanted and Dean never needed. Besides, he's pretty expert at recognising lost when he sees it, and he's seeing it now.
"She's gotta be freezing," Sam says, fight forgotten just like that, and Dean nods.
"Stop staring and move your ass," he says, because he hates being helpless. "It's gonna snow. I can taste it."
"You're so full of shit," Sam says, but when they come out of the local store half an hour later, laden down with milk and cereal and fruit, and who the hell knows what else Sam thought might be good for them, Sam stops and looks upward, lets the flakes fall on his face and catch in his smile. "Huh," he says, and then he looks at Dean.
"Told you," Dean says. "I think I could be developing freakish super powers of my own."
"Uh-huh. We'll take you round the country, and you can predict the weather twenty minutes before it happens. We'll make a fortune." Sam shakes his head to get the snow out of his hair as they start moving again, and Dean laughs.
"God, you need to cut that. People are gonna start mistaking you for some huge fucker of a beast, otherwise. You'll be on the news and everything. Probably get yourself put in some kind of cage."
"You're getting more hilarious by the day."
"Kinda like your hair, huh?"
Sam doesn't say anything, just pushes him with his free hand, not hard, but the ground's already getting slippery, and Dean goes sprawling, falls on his ass, because he doesn't have a hand free to stop it. The shopping goes everywhere--tins of soup and oranges rolling towards the road--and Sam stands above him, laughing so hard he nearly falls himself.
"Your face," he says, gasping for breath. "Oh, man, your face."
Dean starts to laugh, too, and then he lunges, knocks Sam's knees out from under him and brings him flailing down on top of him. They roll around on the ground, laughing like they haven't in too long, and they forget the cold, and for a while, Dean forgets that this is all he has, and maybe it's not even his to keep.
"Okay," Sam says, as Dean looms over him, pinning his arms and his legs, still laughing. "Okay. Lemme up. We need to get all this shit together. Preferably before I freeze to death."
Dean holds a hand out, and Sam pulls himself up, their shoulders bumping. Dean looks over to where the girl had been standing before they went in, not sure what he's planning to do if she's stil there, but the place is deserted, just another small town, waiting for summer to come back around, like this time it might live up to the promise. Dean already knows it won't.
Sam smacks his arm to bring his attention back to him. "Hey, neither of us ate those heroes. You wanna get some food? I'll buy."
It's an apology of sorts, and Dean just grins, doesn't even point out that it's his money they'll be using. "Lead the way, Sammich."
***
The diner is the kind Dean loves, will never get tired of, homemade pie and well-cooked burgers, waitresses who smile and music just loud enough to be noticed.
Their waitress has the same dark eyes, the same dark hair as the boys in Subway, and Dean glances at Sam, eyebrows raised in question. Sam only shrugs, picks up a pile of brochures and flips through them idly.
"Montauk Point's supposed to have a ghost ship, apparently," he says.
Dean leans back, wraps his hands around his coffee cup. "Nah, bastard was banished years ago. Just a story now for tourists." He waits a beat while Sam comes up with a new reason why they should go and let Sam indulge his super dork tendencies, and then he grins. "It's still pretty cool, anyway. Staffed by hot chicks, too."
Sam rolls his eyes on instinct, and then they widen. "You've been?"
"Sure. Couple years back. They have all this stuff about how they saved the beach from erosion."
Sam puts his head on the table, moans into his arms. "Oh, God, please don't start with the achievements of modern engineering." He lifts his head again, looks accusingly at Dean. "You never told me you'd been here."
Dean shrugs. He's seen a lighthouse and Sam worked in Subway. They don't talk about it, because then it's real, separation and distance more than just memories Dean would rather not think about. It's only done like this, titbits gleaned accidentally (though normally they like to keep their revelations to one a day), shoring up their knowledge while they pretend not to. Four years can't be explained away by words; it's not knowing, doesn't fill up the blanks and the silences, and Dean mostly likes to pretend it doesn't matter, not when Sam came back, and certainly not now. "I've been most places, Sam."
Sam flips a page back and forward between his fingers. "Guess so." He finally smoothes the glossy paper down with his hand. "You go with Dad?"
"Yeah, had some downtime." He picks up the menu, answers the question Sam won't ask. "He wasn't blown away by the achievements of modern engineering, either. Liked the history, though." Sam smiles, and Dean returns it. "Knew you got all that geek from somewhere."
"It would've been cool if we'd all gone," Sam says, quiet and young.
Dean doesn't know what to say to that, so he shrugs, says, "Yeah, well. Shit happens," as relaxed as he can make it, anything to take that hurt tone from Sam's voice.
Their waitress, thank fuck, comes over, tells them her name is Sherry, smiles when she sees the brochure. "You guys been out to the beach?" she asks.
Sam shakes his head.
"You should go. See the seals. I know a girl up there. I could hook you up."
"I bet you could," Dean says, putting all his Winchester charm in his smile. She blushes and smiles back, and Dean flirts with her while she takes their order, likes the sound of her laugh and the easy tilt of her smile, works to see it again when she brings them the food--cheese burgers and fries for both of them, though Dean drowns his in ketchup and Sam makes a face.
Later, she brings them pie, still all smiles, assures them it's quiet, that everyone gets what's left over at the end of the day. Dean grins. He's determined to enjoy this on principle, just because it's free, given to them by a pretty girl he's known all his life and who is always different. "Free pie never gets old, man," he says, and Sam's grin is razor sharp, supernova bright.
"The wit and wisdom of Dean Winchester," he says. "Right there in six words."
Dean grins back, and makes to pull Sam's plate towards him. "If you don't want it..."
Sam brandishes his fork at him. "I totally didn't say that."
They eat for a while in silence, and Sam says, wary, "You think those kids were telling the truth?"
Dean chews his pie longer than necessary and then half shrugs. "Dunno, Sam. We'll talk to the families tomorrow, try to figure it out."
"Yeah, okay."
Sam taps his fingers on the table, drinks his coffee, puts the cup down, picks it back up, fiddles with the brochure, clears his throat.
"Jesus," Dean says. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Uh-huh. You're putting me off my pie, man. You have no idea how much I hate that."
Sam stays silent for a little while, and Dean thinks they're done. He never gets that lucky, though. "I didn't mean--it was never meant to be so long. Hell, you stopped calling, too."
Dean groans. "We aren't gonna do this."
Dean remembered calling--alone in the car, heavy thump of bass, Metallica pumping through him like his heartbeat. He remembered Sammy's sleep drowsy voice, uncomprehending and pissed, no idea what the date was, no idea why he should know. Dean had hung up, driven instead of drinking and fucking like he wanted to, because it was Mom's birthday, and he couldn't honour her in any other way, only with bullets and a hope of vengeance every other day, a promise to save everyone he could, and when the eleventh of April rolled around, remembering how she smelled and how her smile held the world. He didn't know if she'd be proud, and he didn't think on it. Sam had called back that afternoon, breathed instead of speaking, and Dean had only fuck you as response, the cell, cold and hard in his hand when he hung up. He hadn't called after that, and neither had Sam.
"We aren't gonna do this," he says again, a hundred miles away and too many years later, drawing patterns in his whipped cream with his fork. "You can't change it, even if you wanted to, so eat your pie and shut up."
Sam taps his plate meaningfully, and Dean grins. "Shouldn't have eaten so quick, Sam." Then he pushes his own plate across. "You can have some of mine, if you want."
"No way," Sam says, shaking his head vehemently. "You're gonna eat it all."
"Damn right," Dean says, pulling his plate back.
Sam watches him, and then he gets that furrow between his eyebrows, the one that means he's over thinking. "Thanks, man. I appreciate it."
"Dude," Dean says. "It's just pie. No need to get all emo about it."
"Idiot," Sam says, and Dean just smiles.
Sam keeps watching, and whatever it is he wants to say--whatever he's wanted to say since the crash--is still there. Sam's just waiting, pushing just far enough and pulling back when he figures Dean isn't ready. Dean's kind of hoping never to be ready for whatever it is.
***
In the morning, there's a couple of inches of snow over everything, powdered white that turns the town into something from a Christmas card. Dean bitches about it as they track down the families, but it crunches like promise, feels like memory under Dean's boots, reminds him of playing with Dad and Sammy, when the air was thick with snowballs and laughter, the world made warm by Sam's grin and Dad's strength.
"It'll be slushy shit by the time we're done," Sam says, and dean nods.
Though after the second husband slams the door in their faces before they've asked half a question, he figures the snow will probably be there long after they're finished.
Sam starts bitching about the cold then, too, mouth turned down in a frown Dean always has to resist making fun of.
He grins at Sam, instead. "For people with nothing to hide, they're sure acting pretty guilty."
"Yeah, like Dad would've invited people in willingly."
Dean snorts. "Exactly. We were always hiding things."
Sam huffs out a laugh, and Dean wishes, not for the first time, that everything was still as simple as just making Sam smile, when keeping him safe meant just making sure he didn't fall over or run too far ahead.
"The McGuigans next?" he asks. "The brothers?"
Sam nods. "James is nearer."
James McGuigan might be Dad's age, maybe a little older, grey hair and gnarled hands, looks a lot like Dad would've, if he'd been able to spend his life in a town like this, nothing to kill but the occasional fish, and Dean can't imagine it, but he knows once that's what Dad did have, what he'd planned on. James is powerfully built, gone to seed a little, more laugh lines around his face than Dad had, but his eyes look like they've lost something, can't quite figure out why, or understand how to go on without it. It's a look Dean's all too familiar with: Dad and Sammy, hell, maybe himself now, though he tries not to think about that, either.
Sam zooms in on it right away, all earnest and you can trust me; I save small puppies for a living, but for once, nobody's buying. "You boys got no business round here," he says, and Sam nods.
"I understand this is hard for you, but we've been hired--"
McGuigan shakes his head. "I didn't hire you."
"No, sir. A third party. There might be an inheritance."
McGuigan just laughs, mirthless and cold. "There's no inheritance, no third party. She left; she ain't coming back. End of story. I always knew it would happen--just didn't think it would be so soon."
His hands curl into fists at his side, and Dean consciously makes himself as unthreatening as he knows how to be. "You were married a long time?"
McGuigan looks away. "Twenty eight years," he says, "Would've been twenty nine soon enough."
Dean doesn't know what to say to that, doesn't think there's much of anything he can say. McGuigan reaches the same conclusion, because he's stepping back, eyes hard again. "Don't expect to be seeing you again," he says, and he slams the door.
"Small town hospitality never gets old," Sam says.
Dean cuffs him on the shoulder. "One more to go, kiddo. We might get lucky."
It doesn't seem like they will. Donald McGuigan, who talks and looks and sounds like his brother, blocks the doorway and stares them down. "My brother called," he says, before they can say anything. "Says you've been asking questions. we don't like outsiders knowing our business round here, boys."
"Sir," Sam says, "we just want to make sure they're safe. Then we'll go."
He looks hard at them for a couple of seconds, but where Sam's shtick got them nowhere with James, Donald seems to believe it. "Okay," he says. "Five minutes."
They follow him inside. The house isn't exactly winning any style contests; even Dean can see that--furniture that was fashionable maybe twenty years ago, carpet worn by a lifetime of footsteps--but it has family and home and safety written all over it. There are pictures on the wall: smiling Donald and his smiling wife and their smiling kids, and there are knick knacks on the shelves, some of them matching and some of them not, all of them probably meaning something, the kind of thing you only get after a lifetime of being in the one place. Dean wonders if Donald McGuigan's changed anything since his wife left, wonders what this place might look like in ten years, when family doesn't mean what he thought it did.
In the living room, they all stand awkwardly--or Sam and Donald do; Dean paces the few steps from one end to the other, restless energy crackling under his skin even now. "What can you tell us about your wife's disappearance?" he asks. "Did you notice anything strange beforehand, any odd occurrences or--"
"Have you been to the beach?" McGuigan interrupts. "It's seal season."
Sam looks over at Dean, who gives him the same barely-there shrug and widening of eyes that means he doesn't know either. Whole fucking town is obsessed with seals, and Dean's adding it to his already extensive list of reasons never to live anywhere where there are more animals than people.
"I didn't realize seals had a season," Sam says.
"Oh, yeah. They give tours and everything out at Montauk."
"Oh," Sam says, like an idiot, and Dean has to suppress a smile.
"Is this your wife, Mr. McGuigan?" he asks finally, fingers hovering over a framed picture that stands on the piano in the corner of the room. It's obviously been taken at a formal occasion; the whole family's there, Donald and his wife and their two kids, dressed up and smiling like they can't ever imagine not being happy.
"Yeah," Donald says, as he and Sam come over, "that's Brigid."
He runs his fingers over the frame, fingers skimming over his wife's face. She's slim and pretty, with long dark hair and eyes that look almost black in the photograph, the kind of woman any man would be proud to have. Donald looks at her in the photograph the way Dad used to look at Mom in the few photographs they'd look at on anniversaries or when Dad got wistful, when the anger of the hunt wasn't enough to drown the loss.
"She's quite a looker," Dean says, and Sam elbows him in the ribs. Dean raises his eyes in triumph when Donald picks up the photograph, starts to talk, the tone of a man who just wants to tell someone what he had. It makes Dean think of smokey bars and the burn of whiskey, the glint of Dad's ring and the way he said Mary like it was the only word meant for his mouth.
"She is," he says, and Dean doesn't miss the way he still refers to her in the present tense. "Prettiest of them all, I think. Though, of course, James would hand me my ass if I ever said that."
Sam picks up another photograph, and Dean recognises a younger James McGuigan, red hair and smiling mouth, standing beside a woman with the same black hair and dark eyes as Brigid. He's beginning to think everyone in this town is related, and it's freaking him out just a little.
"Did you and your brother marry sisters?" Sam asks, and Donald nods.
"Looks that way." He stares at the photographs and shrugs. "The kids are taking it hard." He points at the boy in the picture in his hand. "That's Donald Jr. Just finished school this year."
He doesn't identify the girl beside the boy, and Sam has never liked blanks. "That your daughter?" he asks.
McGuigan puts the photograph down, turns away. "Caitlin," he says, voice hard around the edges. "We no longer speak."
Dean feels Sam fidget beside him; it doesn't take much to remind them of Dad these days, wounds still raw and throbbing. "Mind if I use your bathroom?" Dean asks. He doesn't really expect the EMF meter to throw up anything, but protocol is protocol, and if Sam's about to start trying to patch a family back together, Dean doesn't really need to be there.
There are traces upstairs, but they're only faint, and whatever was here has been gone for at least a couple of weeks. It makes Dean doubt that the women just left, though he's still nowhere near an explanation.
When he gets back downstairs, he can hear the low murmur of Sam's voice, reassuring and steady. Dean motions for him to wrap it up, because they aren't getting any more information here, and Dean figures he already knows Sam's next move.
"If you can think of anything," Sam says, "anything that seemed odd or unusual around or just before the disappearance, just let us know." He pulls out a card, scribbles his phone number on it. "We'll be around for a few days, investigating."
"You're wasting your time," McGuigan says, but he pockets the card, follows them out to the door. Dean's already got one hand on the doorknob when McGuigan says, "If you see Caitlin--" but then he shakes his head, and Sam's got that look on his face, like he'd fix everything if only he could.
"I will, Mr. McGuigan. Thank you for your time."
"So you think Caitlin's estrangement is related to her Mom's disappearance?" Sam asks, as they walk back to the car.
"Dunno. Could be. Could be they're just fighting. Ain't like it would be a first."
"Guess not, no." Sam walks round the car, and Dean hates that he sometimes forgets that Sam can't fix what he and Dad broke, or that Dean's not the only one with guilt.
"We should go see her," he says. "You could be right."
"Seems like the smart move, yeah." Sam gets in, glances over at Dean with a look that's obviously meant to be casual. Dean's got years of pulling that off, has it down to an art, but Sam's still a novice. "That diner from yesterday isn't too far from here. We could get some food first."
"Amateur," he says, pulling out of the driveway.
They go back, and Sherry's working again, but this time it's Sam's turn to do the charming. They don't get any pie, but they do get information, so Dean figures they're about even.
"I'm looking for a girl," Sam says. "We met last summer, but I've just realised she doesn't live where she used to. Her name's Caitlin. Caitlin McGuigan."
Sherry is instantly all smiles. "That's the girl I was telling you about--works up at Montauk with the tours now." She taps her pen against her leg for a second. "It would be cool if you could go see her," she says. "It's been hard for her--hard on all the kids, but the McGuigans always wanted more than they should have. Got greedy. Caitlin's living with the Walshes, but, well, it's not the same. Especially not this time of year, you know?"
Sam nods, and Dean wishes his little brother had never had to really find out how that felt.
"I can't blame her for what she did," Sherry is saying, "but it isn't like her old man's objective on the subject."
"No," Sam says, like he has a clue what she's talking about. "Guess not."
***
The visitors' centre is deserted by the time they get there, and there are flakes of snow in the air again; they settle gently on the hood of the Impala, and Dean watches them, while Sam gets the guns from the trunk. It's been less than two months since the shit went down with the demon, but it already feels like they never went anywhere without their guns, never didn't see threat in everything and everyone, even in girls who've just lost their mothers, by all accounts.
They start towards the beach, Dean taking the lead without even thinking. The wind bites through his jacket, and he thinks it must be even colder by the water, but there are two women down there by the shore--one in jeans and a parka; the other with dark hair and a dress that flutters like a warning in the wind. The seals swim close to the women, closer than Dean would expect, and Dean figures it's one of the first things he's seen that's a good advertisement for this town. He watches the animals play, caught by their easy movement, the sleek lines of their bodies, their barks oddly comforting, like careless laughter.
"Hey, Dean," Sam says behind him, and Dean doesn't have to look to know he's smiling. "You know you've always kind of reminded me of a seal, right?"
Dean glares over his shoulder, and Sam laughs. "Come on. I mean it as a compliment. They're very…graceful."
"Yeah, whatever." He's about to expound on the many and various ways Sam can go fuck himself, when he hears it--human laughter on the wind, mingling with the sounds of the seals. Behind him, Sam stops, and Dean looks at him again, light bulbs going on above both their heads.
"You think?" he asks, and Sam nods.
"Yeah, I think."
They start moving again, speed up just in case the girl disappears, and when marshland gives way to sand, she's standing by herself, and Dean breathes in sharply when he recognizes her as the girl from the store that first night. He slips the gun into his jeans, walks forward and clears his throat so they don't take her by surprise.
"Caitlin?" Sam asks, and when she looks up, she's blinking back tears.
"There aren't any more tours today. Sorry."
Dean puts his hands in his pockets. "Hey," he says, gentle as he used to be with Sam when he was scared, "was that your Mom?"
Her eyes widen, and she looks startled before she can hide it. "Uh, what?"
"We're just--" Dean looks at Sam, always better at this part, especially when it's crying women they're dealing with, but he wants to do this. He takes a breath. "We were investigating your mother's disappearance," he says, "and we wanted to make sure nothing... bad had happened."
"Oh." She looks back out at the ocean, the waves fierce and powerful against the shore. "No, nothing bad. What makes you think--"
"It's our...job to find out," Sam says. "If it's nothing bad--if it's been going on for a long time, why--"
She swallows hard. "Why did my father stop speaking to me?"
"Yeah, I--" Sam stops, because this is none of their business, never a part of the mystery they can solve or fix, but Dean doesn't correct her, doesn't tell her they don't need to know.
"I found the skins, locked away up in the attic," she says, like she wants to tell it, wants to explain, and her voice is rough but steady. "They'd had a deal, my parents; she'd stay for as long as we needed her, and then she'd get to go back." She bites her lip. "When we got older, every year, my mother would ask if she could go home, and every year my father would say, no, Brigid, not yet, please, one more year." She sniffs, rubs at her eyes with the backs of her hands. "DJ and I would hear them arguing, and then she would go down to the water and cry.
"I didn't understand, you know? Used to think it was something we'd done, but once I knew," she jerks her chin at the seals, "I knew it was time to let her go." She shrugs, wipes stray tears away with her fingers. "She offered to stay. Said if she had the choice, it wouldn't be so bad, but I couldn't--I just wanted--" she breaks off, and Dean's hands come out of his pockets seemingly of their own volition, and he smoothes a lock of her hair behind her ear. He blames the trembling of his fingers on the cold.
"Okay," he says, and again, "okay. It's okay."
He turns away, lets the crashing waves drown out the beating of his heart, failure and guilt in his blood like salt in the ocean.
"And the others?" Sam asks.
"Once I'd let her go, it didn't seem right to make the others stay, you know?"
"Yeah, I know."
There's silence for a while, and Dean watches the seals in the distance, free and happy where they belong, and he thinks about the things he'd do to keep Sam and Dad safe, how it's never been enough, and now he's lost Dad--no doubt that it's something he did, no choice given and it's never the choice he would've taken--and Sammy's future is never the one he wanted, never the one Dean would have picked for him, and now maybe it's no future at all.
Finally, he says, "She comes back, though? You'll see her again, right?" He means it to be comfort, but it comes out of his mouth fragile and scared, like broken shells swept away by the ocean. He clears his throat and feels Sam move in behind him, warm and solid, probably planning some stealth hugging, and he fingers the gun in his waistband, wonders if it would freak Caitlin out too much if he drew it.
"I think so," Caitlin says, and she sounds just as miserable as Dean did.
***
They walk Caitlin back to her car, one on either side, protecting her from God knows what--the wind, dive-bombing seagulls, maybe the snow that's turned to sleet while they've been talking--because it's the only thing they can do.
"Your Dad'll come around," Sam says, and Caitlin nods, doesn't believe him.
Dean remembers when Sam didn't believe the same thing, and he doesn't know what to say, doesn't have anything he can do; there's no monster he can kill, no ghost he can waste to help her. If there were bullets or magic words that could fix this kind of hurt, Dean would be an expert in all of them.
"Take care of yourself," he says, and he means it
***
"You think she'll be okay?" Sam asks when they're back in the car, and Dean can only shrug.
"I hope so."
He starts the engine. Sam flicks through the tapes, probably looking for something he hasn't heard a million times already. "It was brave, letting her mom go like that."
Dean nods. "Yeah. It's meant to be the other way round." He doesn't say it's the parents that are meant to make the sacrifices, doesn't need to; his guilt is probably written all over him, and Sam's always been better at reading Dean than is good for him. Sam looks over, apology in his eyes, and Dean shakes his head. "I know you weren't talking about that," he says. He can't look at Sam. "I think I like Caitlin's way more, is all."
Sam sits very still, tapes scattered across his lap. "I know, Dean." He touches Dean's arm, and his fingers are light against the leather of Dean's jacket, but Dean thinks he feels their warmth all the same. "Christ. I kind of hate this case. A lot."
Dean manages a smile. "Yeah, man, I hear you."
Sam doesn't say anything else, pulls a Zeppelin tape from the selection, and cranks it up as loud as Dean needs it to be.
***
He wakes in the night to find Sam watching over him. "Never freak out the guy with the knife under his pillow, Sam," he says, without lifting his head. "Survival 101."
"Sorry," Sam says, though he doesn't sound it.
"You have a nightmare? Vision? Seizure of some kind? Alien encounter? Something equally serious that explains you interrupting my sleep?"
"I, um," Sam fidgets and drops to the floor beside Dean's bed. "I just."
"Oh my God," Dean says, sitting up dramatically, "someone came in and stole all your words, didn't they? Don't worry, Sammy, we'll find them."
Sam reaches up, smacks Dean on the leg. "Shut up." He tips his head back, looks up at Dean from under his lashes. "You want a beer?"
"Do I--dude," he looks at the glowing numbers on his watch, then back at Sam. "It's three fucking thirty five. And you understand I mean in the AM?"
"Yeah. You want one, anyway?"
Dean sighs and flops back on the pillow. "Sure," he says. "Fine. Why not? Fucking lunatic."
Sam comes back a couple of minutes later, six pack in hand, two bottles already open. He hands one to Dean, and Dean slides over, leaves him room on the bed. They sit shoulder to shoulder, not saying anything, and Dean waits, not sure he wants to hear what Sam's got on his mind, not sure he has a choice. And then Sam says, "when you were--" he waves his hand, in a gesture that means absolutely nothing, comes to rest on Dean's shoulder, a gesture that means everything. "You know," he says, and Dean nods. When you were dying, when Dad was selling his soul, another thing in their lives words can't possibly touch, can't possibly explain.
"Yeah," Dean says, "I do."
"Bobby wanted to scrap the Impala."
Dean nods. "He told me. I'd've kicked your ass if you'd let him."
Sam laughs. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. But that's not--Dean, man, I just." He squeezes Dean's shoulder tighter, hard enough to hurt.
Dean turns to look at him. "Sammy, hey, chill."
"No, you gotta--you should know it goes both ways, okay?"
Dean bites his lip, thinks of a million things he could say--I'd choose the Impala over you, I can't do this without you, if you cry, I will shoot myself--but he eventually curls his fingers round the back of Sam's neck and holds on. "I know, Sammy. I know."
"Okay." Sam slides down on the bed, draws his legs up so he's almost human sized, and Dean watches him. It isn't right that he's made Sam do this--come in the middle of the night like he's scared, as if Dean didn't know, not when it counts, that Sam would fight for him. There's no demon and no sacrifice that can take that knowledge from him, no distance Sam could go that he wouldn't come back if Dean really need him to. Not anymore, and probably not ever.
"Hey, Sam," he says, because he's damned if he's going to be outdone by his little brother. "I always wanted--" you to be happy "--you to, you know. Have your own pie." He knows how lame it is, and he's preparing himself for Sam to demand an explanation, but Sam actually laughs, and Dean feels it curl round him, like Sam's fingers used to, when Dean could stop anything hurting him.
"Man, you really suck at this. I know that, dumbass. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
And Dean doesn't want that to make him feel better; it doesn't fix anything, not really, and they're still a fuck load of miles from okay, but he can't help the smile. "Well," he says, sliding down on the bed, too, until his head's back on the pillow. "Okay then. We're done with chick flick moments for at least ten years now. If I think you're even considering the possibility of thinking about one, I'll break your other hand, okay?"
Sam laughs, sleepy now, the way he always is when he's got whatever's eating up his freaky brain out in the open. "'Kay. You wanna go to the lighthouse tomorrow? You can, I dunno, talk about erosion some more, if you want."
"Sure. We could do that." He digs an elbow into Sam's side. "You gonna move your ass back to your own bed?"
"Yeah," Sam says, and doesn't move, except to burrow his face into the second pillow he's stolen from Dean.
Dean just sighs, pulls the blanket over Sam and closes his eyes. "I really do have a knife, and I'm really not afraid to use it. Think about that before you kick me in your sleep."
He falls asleep to the sound of Sam's breathing and rain against the window, and for the first time since he woke up in a hospital room with a tube down his throat, that's all he hears.
***