You're Gonna Be the One Who Saves Me (the Oasis Remix) [Supernatural; Sam, Dean]
Title: You're Gonna Be the One Who Saves Me (the Oasis Remix)
Author: angelgazing
Summary: No point in chasing down people who don't want to be saved.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Disclaimer: Everything here belongs to someone else.
Original story: No One You Can Save Who Can't Be Saved by black_regalia
i.
Dean lost track of the number of times he'd nearly died by the time he turned twenty-four.
There'd been the fire, when he was barely big enough to be carrying Sammy at all; the werewolf pack outside of Phoenix; the thing in Austin, when he was twelve, shoved tight into a corner, toes curled up inside his tennis shoes on the baseboard; a fucking ghost in New Orleans, where spirits were usually cursed, instead of just hanging on.
Dean stopped counting, stopped trying, stopped remembering, when his eyes drifted shut, fingers curled around the neck of a bottle. When he got to fourteen, and the number couldn't be held on his free hand anymore.
He'd almost died so many times, he couldn't remember them all.
The only time his life flashed before his eyes was when it was Sam sinking to his knees, mouth opened, surprised.
He thought of Dad, a lot. He thought of late nights; of all the questions Sam used to ask. He thought of the two of them hiding in the floorboards of Dad's old truck, the wind howling, and Dean was maybe seven and he'd been left with a Colt forty-five and orders to keep his little brother safe.
Dean thought about Sam, smiling, about Jessica, and mom, and Carmen.
After, when the only person breathing too loudly in the room was him, he'd known what to do. Dean was always the one to follow orders, to learn the lessons that their father set. He knew how, he knew there was a way, and he knew-selfishly, stubbornly, clearly-he'd do anything that could be done.
So he did.
Dean doesn't think about it now because there's nothing to think about.
He steers the car east, and cranks up the radio to drown out how loud Sam is thinking.
ii.
It happens unexpectedly, somewhere between the Devil's Gate and Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Sam's snoring, temple pressed against Dean's shoulder, fingers curled into a book written in an ancient language. Seek & Destroy is playing through the speakers; the sun is shining, and Dean's happy.
He can breathe.
Dean laughs, too loud, and it wakes Sam.
iii.
"I think we should look-" Sam says, and stops and kicks Dean's shin under the table, when Dean's too busy focusing on the waitress bent over the table across from them, stretching to grab a water glass that'd been pushed against the wall. "Dean," he says, and sighs, but there's no sharpness behind it. He's pushing his eggs around on his plate like he's got something to say.
And Dean means to be paying attention, he does. But that girl (Melissa, her name tag reads, the I dotted with a heart) has got on a skirt so short it might be infringing on indecency standards. He can't turn away. "I am only a man, Sam," he says, and the awesome thing about talking to Sam is that sometimes, he doesn't have to.
Sam rolls his eyes, and Dean doesn't have to look at him to know it.
"Disappearance," Sam says, once Long Legs Melissa walks back to the kitchen, and he keeps pushing his eggs around on this plate with his fork. It's one thirty-eight in the morning, and Dean's got too much buzzing under his skin. There's a TV in the corner flashing weather warnings in black and white. "We should look into it, I mean, it could be- Dean, we don't know how many got out."
Dean's not worried, though, wouldn't be even if he couldn't count the months he's got left on his fingers. The sound of Sam flipping pages follows him in his sleep every night now. "So?" he asks, and grins around his chili cheese fries. "You telling me you don't have the whole exorcism speech memorized by now? We had three last week."
"That's my point, Dean." Sam leans closer, slouches a little lower over the table, keeps his voice pitched so it stays between the two of them. "Three exorcisms in a week? You don't think maybe that's something to be worried about? There have been five people in Nebraska who just... vanished. Five people went outside after dark and haven't been seen since, in the last five days. We don't know how many got out, Dean. It could take years to track them all down, and that's just the ones who slip up enough to send up a sign."
"Just means you won't get bored," Dean says, and shrugs. He grins again and he's pretty sure, from the twist of Sam's mouth, that he just said exactly the wrong thing again.
Sam's jaw sets, after about two minutes, and he pushes his plate away. "Five is a pattern. Whatever it is, it's heading east."
"Huh," Dean says, "Guess we are too."
iv.
They get sidetracked, in a tiny town hovering on the border of Iowa, just outside of Omaha.
Sam is in the passenger's seat, leaning his weight against the door, flipping pages in Dad's journal so it's angled just enough to keep Dean's eyes off what's on the page. His hair is getting long, and he's got his left knee pulled up into the seat with them.
"What was it like when I was gone?" Sam asks, suddenly, making Dean's jaw twitch. He spreads his hands wide, in the air, like he's trying to hold off Dean's answer. And Sam is… Sam is just so fucking huge, sometimes, when Dean suddenly remembers that he's not sixteen anymore, and they spent years apart. "When I was at Stanford," he clarifies, before Dean can swallow his own tongue to put off the conversation.
"Jesus, Sam," Dean answers, "I don't know."
"Come on, just… What did you and Dad hunt? What did you talk about?"
"Well," Dean says, "after a long, hard hunt, we'd go back to our motel rooms, mix us up some cosmopolitans and dirty martinis , then we'd braid each other's hair and talk about our feelings."
"Dean-"
"We hunted the same stuff, ghosts, poltergeists, boogymen. It's not like we were best friends or anything. We did our jobs." Dean shakes his head, like that'll dislodge things he isn't used to thinking about, even after a year.
He hopes that's not what it'll be like for Sam, that stab in his chest, when the memories come up.
Dean turns of the road, pulling up to fill the tank, to maybe escape the car for five minutes. Can't talk about monsters loudly in public, after all-Sam's rule.
There's a blonde at the pump next to his, but when she smiles it looks like she's baring her teeth. She looks at Sam and her eyes flash black.
v.
Sam shoves Dean, hard, into the door of their room. "What the hell, Dean?"
"Dude," Dean says, and raises his eyebrows, "you just pushed me; I think that's my question."
"You can't just-"
"Kick ass? Take names? Oh, Sammy, I think I can." Dean grins, wide, because ever since Cold Oak, Sam's got the same temper he had before he left, before Jess and Stanford and age calmed him down. "Come on, man, this calls for beer."
And maybe it's just that Sam's so angry about the deal that he can't see straight, but as long as he's not trying to get Dean to talk about it, then Dean's cool with it. Worst case, Sam's so busy being pissed at Dean for making the deal that he forgets to miss him.
It's a win-win type of situation.
But then Sam just kind of squares his jaw and, grabs Dean's arm when Dean goes to move past him. Sam's got a trunk full of luggage under his eyes, but his grip is strong. Dean's got a bruise the size of a fucking baseball two inches further up, and his eye is probably gonna be black in the morning. "You can't just-Dean, you can't."
Dean knows perfectly well that Sam doesn't think he gets it, and he kind of likes it better that way. "Dude, seriously, beer."
vi.
"Seven people, now," Sam says, and his jaw twitches.
They lost three days and Dean leans on the gas, just a little more, and feels the roar of the motor under his skin.
vii.
Dean does not snoop. There are things, there are times when a man needs his privacy, and even if Sam did go through his nightstand drawer when Dean was fifteen and throw every single embarrassing and illicit thing he owned on the bed for all and their dad to see-Dean respects that.
Not so much when it comes to trying to get his brother to loosen up and have some fun, but Jesus, it's not like he's going to break the lock of Sam's unicorn diary and spill all the secrets out of it.
Except that's kind of what he ends up doing, when he goes to look for the Metallica tape that flew off the dash with that last, sharp left he took out of Nebraska. Sam's inside, buying snacks (Dean, he says, isn't allowed, after he spent forty-seven dollars on gummy worms.), and Dean just finds the manila folder that was hidden under the car seat.
He tries to flip through the pages-the research, the notes scrawled over Starbucks napkins, and numbers from the yellow pages Sam must not have a use for-and keep one eye on the door at the same time, but it's hard. He manages to shove everything back together and under the seat just before Sam makes it close enough to the car to see Dean crouched low, hand in the floorboards.
Dean doesn't bother trying to be surprised. It wouldn't be like Sam to leave well enough alone.
"Dude," Dean says, when Sam folds himself into the passenger's side, "did you hide my Metallica tape? And I hope you got me nachos."
"No and no," Sam answers, and Dean's not stupid. He's not.
He can see how this whole thing is weighing down on Sam.
viii.
"You're looking-" Dean swallows, drinks half his glass of orange juice and tries again, when he sees that Sam's just waiting, like he didn't think Dean was done. "I mean, it's kinda like the tree and the forest thing, right? Are we just seeing the disappearances because we're looking?"
"That's a terrible metaphor," Sam says, and lays his newspaper down on the table. Dean doesn't bother telling him it might not come off again.
"Shut up." Dean makes stabbing motions toward him with his French fry. "I'm just saying, you know, I bet you could find just as many disappearances to the north and south as you can to the east. You're looking for them there, so that's where you're going to find them."
Sam tilts his head to the left, scratches as his right cheek and looks away, for a minute, like maybe he thinks Dean just made a good point. Dean's pretty sure it's a trick. "It's just a feeling, ok?" Sam says, quietly, nine and a half minutes later.
"Ok," Dean answers. Because it is.
ivx.
The number gets up to twelve, and Dean feels useless, chasing after something that they can't catch.
Sam shrugs, nose buried in a book that translates an ancient language to, well, another ancient one. And Sam's always been smart, but now he's just kind of pushing it. He scribbles notes in the margins that Dean doesn't bother trying to read.
"Dean," Sam says, not looking up, "we just ate, like, twenty minutes ago."
"That was six hours ago." Dean doesn't bother, you know, trying to figure out how he'd known where they were with his nose pressed in a book.
Dean tries not to think of the handwriting on the notes in Sam's folder, sharp and frustrated. He just sighs into the silence and makes a u turn. He doesn't think about hopeless cases, when a smile tugs at the corner of Sam's mouth.
Dean just keeps driving.
x.
"This is ridiculous, Sammy. There's this guy-"
"Sluagh," Sam says, finally, triumphantly.
"parrots," Dean finishes, half-heartedly. " Gesundheit."
Sam shakes his head. "Sluagh."
"Jesus, are you choking?" Dean asks, and swings his feet off the bed quickly, his stomach dropping to his knees.
"Dean," Sam says, and rolls his eyes. "That's the thing. The reason behind the disappearances. Sluagh, spirits doomed to eternal unrest, it's like a plague of spirits." Sam stretches his fingers across the book in front of him, thumbs hooked over the edge of the table. "It's people moving across the earth, constantly; it says even hell is too good for them."
"Sounds like my kind of people," Dean breaks in, absently. His heart rate finally starts returning to normal.
"There are thousands of them, wandering, and they feed on despair."
"And they've got an endless buffet, don't they?" Dean sighs, heavy, and finds it kind of hard sometimes, to watch the expression on Sam's face when he's learning something new. "So how do we stop it?"
"Unless we can get everyone to keep their west-facing windows shut, we don't." Sam pushes his fingertips against the page, like he can press the truth out. He's the size of a redwood, and his jaw is tight, gaze dropped down. He turns, puts his elbows on his knees and puts his hands together like he's praying. "Some things," he says, and looks Dean in the eye and looks so lost that Dean doesn't know how to answer, "are bigger than we are."
But Dean already knew that.
xi.
It's like flight of birds, and Dean isn't sure how they stopped chasing long enough to catch up. The Sluagh move like a flock, following the leader this way and that, until the leader gets tired and the next one steps up, takes charge.
They sit along the telephone wires, watching, waiting.
Dean's spent the better part of his life in tornado alley. He's watched the gates of hell open up and spill out. He's never seen this much black dot the sky, circling, waiting in the horizon.
And this, it's just like a storm.
You listen to the warnings and find whatever protection you can, (Dean's got his sawed-off, his favorite, the shells packed tight with rock salt at his side, his finger on the trigger.) hope to God it'll do this time, and settle down for a wait.
This is just something to weather.
They block off the street a block on either side with sawhorses they find under the overpass half a mile away, to keep it between the two of them and the Sluagh. Like that's a fair fight. Dean presses his shoulder against Sam's, briefly, for a pause, because it says, 'hey, right here, you and me against the world' again, without Dean having to say it.
And he knows it's not enough, that none of it is.
Then the peaked edge of the sun sinks past the horizon.
xii.
When Dean wakes, it's to nothing. No radio, no bed, no ground. Just light and the Sluagh.
"It's time," one of them says, voice like sandpaper and glass. And they all follow suit, one by one by one, until it's constant, a hum in the background, under his skin, the white noise of hotel parking lots.
There are so many, more than Sam could ever explain, could ever guess. More than Dean would've imagined. They're like clouds, endless, shapeless unless you squint, heavy when they're down around you, like they're trying to see how low they can go and bring you too.
"Are you ready?" another one asks, head tilted low, sharp features, like she's mostly just bone now. "We came for you. We know you've been waiting."
"Hell will not have us, so they cannot take us."
The smell of decay is thick, and Dean sits up, leans forward on his knees and gags into nothing. "Where am I?"
"With us. You are with us, and we are everywhere."
"Yeah," Dean groans hard, fingers folded into his sides, sawed-off missing. "Thanks, I figured that one out on my own."
"We know you've been waiting."
"Hell will not have us, so they cannot take us."
"It's time, it's time, it's time" is repeated, over and over. Still there in the background, over everything they've said. "It's time."
For Dean, it's not really a choice.
xiii.
He's made too many deals already.
xiv.
Waste of time, Sam wrote, on a page torn from Dad's journal, shoved deep into a manila folder. No point in chasing down people that don't want to be saved.
And, well, it makes a lot of sense to Dean.
xv.
Dean leans against the hood of his car, the long neck of a beer in his hand; his baby parked in the sand of the beach because they drove east until they ran out of land.
The air is starting to cool, around them, everyday. The seasons are changing, again, and Dean hopes he hasn't seen his last summer day, suddenly, with a fierceness that twists his stomach. Sam doesn't get it, maybe, or he does, because he's quiet, but he's got his index finger folded into a book to hold his place.
Because Dean's never been to the beach just to go.
The tape player's still playing How Many More Times, loudly, and the windows are rolled down so Dean can still just listen, head tipped back toward the blue sky.
Sam presses against his side, bends his knees and slouches hard against Dean's car to push his shoulder into Dean's.
Dean doesn't need a book of translations; he earned his masters in Sammy long ago.
He wraps his free hand around the back of Sam's neck, curls his fingers so he can feel the pulse of Sam's blood against his fingertips. So he can feel the life there, right under the thin skin and stubble.
"So," Dean says, carefully, shoulders relaxed, eyes toward the horizon, "I've been thinking what a shame it would be to not hear Zeppelin anymore."
And Sam nods, because the awesome thing about talking to him is still that Dean doesn't really have to. So he nods, and Dean feels it against every part of him. He looks over and Sam's grinning wide enough, relieved enough to hurt. "Might be a shame for you," Sam answers, finally. "Personally, I think I could deal with it just fine."
"Whatever," Dean says, and pulls his hand away with a pat to Sam's back. "Let's go get food now. I'm starving."
"You're always starving." Sam bumps their shoulders again, and folds himself into the passenger's seat even while he's complaining.
Their doors shut on three, and Dean turns up the radio as he pulls out.
***
Author: angelgazing
Summary: No point in chasing down people who don't want to be saved.
Rating: PG
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Disclaimer: Everything here belongs to someone else.
Original story: No One You Can Save Who Can't Be Saved by black_regalia
i.
Dean lost track of the number of times he'd nearly died by the time he turned twenty-four.
There'd been the fire, when he was barely big enough to be carrying Sammy at all; the werewolf pack outside of Phoenix; the thing in Austin, when he was twelve, shoved tight into a corner, toes curled up inside his tennis shoes on the baseboard; a fucking ghost in New Orleans, where spirits were usually cursed, instead of just hanging on.
Dean stopped counting, stopped trying, stopped remembering, when his eyes drifted shut, fingers curled around the neck of a bottle. When he got to fourteen, and the number couldn't be held on his free hand anymore.
He'd almost died so many times, he couldn't remember them all.
The only time his life flashed before his eyes was when it was Sam sinking to his knees, mouth opened, surprised.
He thought of Dad, a lot. He thought of late nights; of all the questions Sam used to ask. He thought of the two of them hiding in the floorboards of Dad's old truck, the wind howling, and Dean was maybe seven and he'd been left with a Colt forty-five and orders to keep his little brother safe.
Dean thought about Sam, smiling, about Jessica, and mom, and Carmen.
After, when the only person breathing too loudly in the room was him, he'd known what to do. Dean was always the one to follow orders, to learn the lessons that their father set. He knew how, he knew there was a way, and he knew-selfishly, stubbornly, clearly-he'd do anything that could be done.
So he did.
Dean doesn't think about it now because there's nothing to think about.
He steers the car east, and cranks up the radio to drown out how loud Sam is thinking.
ii.
It happens unexpectedly, somewhere between the Devil's Gate and Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Sam's snoring, temple pressed against Dean's shoulder, fingers curled into a book written in an ancient language. Seek & Destroy is playing through the speakers; the sun is shining, and Dean's happy.
He can breathe.
Dean laughs, too loud, and it wakes Sam.
iii.
"I think we should look-" Sam says, and stops and kicks Dean's shin under the table, when Dean's too busy focusing on the waitress bent over the table across from them, stretching to grab a water glass that'd been pushed against the wall. "Dean," he says, and sighs, but there's no sharpness behind it. He's pushing his eggs around on his plate like he's got something to say.
And Dean means to be paying attention, he does. But that girl (Melissa, her name tag reads, the I dotted with a heart) has got on a skirt so short it might be infringing on indecency standards. He can't turn away. "I am only a man, Sam," he says, and the awesome thing about talking to Sam is that sometimes, he doesn't have to.
Sam rolls his eyes, and Dean doesn't have to look at him to know it.
"Disappearance," Sam says, once Long Legs Melissa walks back to the kitchen, and he keeps pushing his eggs around on this plate with his fork. It's one thirty-eight in the morning, and Dean's got too much buzzing under his skin. There's a TV in the corner flashing weather warnings in black and white. "We should look into it, I mean, it could be- Dean, we don't know how many got out."
Dean's not worried, though, wouldn't be even if he couldn't count the months he's got left on his fingers. The sound of Sam flipping pages follows him in his sleep every night now. "So?" he asks, and grins around his chili cheese fries. "You telling me you don't have the whole exorcism speech memorized by now? We had three last week."
"That's my point, Dean." Sam leans closer, slouches a little lower over the table, keeps his voice pitched so it stays between the two of them. "Three exorcisms in a week? You don't think maybe that's something to be worried about? There have been five people in Nebraska who just... vanished. Five people went outside after dark and haven't been seen since, in the last five days. We don't know how many got out, Dean. It could take years to track them all down, and that's just the ones who slip up enough to send up a sign."
"Just means you won't get bored," Dean says, and shrugs. He grins again and he's pretty sure, from the twist of Sam's mouth, that he just said exactly the wrong thing again.
Sam's jaw sets, after about two minutes, and he pushes his plate away. "Five is a pattern. Whatever it is, it's heading east."
"Huh," Dean says, "Guess we are too."
iv.
They get sidetracked, in a tiny town hovering on the border of Iowa, just outside of Omaha.
Sam is in the passenger's seat, leaning his weight against the door, flipping pages in Dad's journal so it's angled just enough to keep Dean's eyes off what's on the page. His hair is getting long, and he's got his left knee pulled up into the seat with them.
"What was it like when I was gone?" Sam asks, suddenly, making Dean's jaw twitch. He spreads his hands wide, in the air, like he's trying to hold off Dean's answer. And Sam is… Sam is just so fucking huge, sometimes, when Dean suddenly remembers that he's not sixteen anymore, and they spent years apart. "When I was at Stanford," he clarifies, before Dean can swallow his own tongue to put off the conversation.
"Jesus, Sam," Dean answers, "I don't know."
"Come on, just… What did you and Dad hunt? What did you talk about?"
"Well," Dean says, "after a long, hard hunt, we'd go back to our motel rooms, mix us up some cosmopolitans and dirty martinis , then we'd braid each other's hair and talk about our feelings."
"Dean-"
"We hunted the same stuff, ghosts, poltergeists, boogymen. It's not like we were best friends or anything. We did our jobs." Dean shakes his head, like that'll dislodge things he isn't used to thinking about, even after a year.
He hopes that's not what it'll be like for Sam, that stab in his chest, when the memories come up.
Dean turns of the road, pulling up to fill the tank, to maybe escape the car for five minutes. Can't talk about monsters loudly in public, after all-Sam's rule.
There's a blonde at the pump next to his, but when she smiles it looks like she's baring her teeth. She looks at Sam and her eyes flash black.
v.
Sam shoves Dean, hard, into the door of their room. "What the hell, Dean?"
"Dude," Dean says, and raises his eyebrows, "you just pushed me; I think that's my question."
"You can't just-"
"Kick ass? Take names? Oh, Sammy, I think I can." Dean grins, wide, because ever since Cold Oak, Sam's got the same temper he had before he left, before Jess and Stanford and age calmed him down. "Come on, man, this calls for beer."
And maybe it's just that Sam's so angry about the deal that he can't see straight, but as long as he's not trying to get Dean to talk about it, then Dean's cool with it. Worst case, Sam's so busy being pissed at Dean for making the deal that he forgets to miss him.
It's a win-win type of situation.
But then Sam just kind of squares his jaw and, grabs Dean's arm when Dean goes to move past him. Sam's got a trunk full of luggage under his eyes, but his grip is strong. Dean's got a bruise the size of a fucking baseball two inches further up, and his eye is probably gonna be black in the morning. "You can't just-Dean, you can't."
Dean knows perfectly well that Sam doesn't think he gets it, and he kind of likes it better that way. "Dude, seriously, beer."
vi.
"Seven people, now," Sam says, and his jaw twitches.
They lost three days and Dean leans on the gas, just a little more, and feels the roar of the motor under his skin.
vii.
Dean does not snoop. There are things, there are times when a man needs his privacy, and even if Sam did go through his nightstand drawer when Dean was fifteen and throw every single embarrassing and illicit thing he owned on the bed for all and their dad to see-Dean respects that.
Not so much when it comes to trying to get his brother to loosen up and have some fun, but Jesus, it's not like he's going to break the lock of Sam's unicorn diary and spill all the secrets out of it.
Except that's kind of what he ends up doing, when he goes to look for the Metallica tape that flew off the dash with that last, sharp left he took out of Nebraska. Sam's inside, buying snacks (Dean, he says, isn't allowed, after he spent forty-seven dollars on gummy worms.), and Dean just finds the manila folder that was hidden under the car seat.
He tries to flip through the pages-the research, the notes scrawled over Starbucks napkins, and numbers from the yellow pages Sam must not have a use for-and keep one eye on the door at the same time, but it's hard. He manages to shove everything back together and under the seat just before Sam makes it close enough to the car to see Dean crouched low, hand in the floorboards.
Dean doesn't bother trying to be surprised. It wouldn't be like Sam to leave well enough alone.
"Dude," Dean says, when Sam folds himself into the passenger's side, "did you hide my Metallica tape? And I hope you got me nachos."
"No and no," Sam answers, and Dean's not stupid. He's not.
He can see how this whole thing is weighing down on Sam.
viii.
"You're looking-" Dean swallows, drinks half his glass of orange juice and tries again, when he sees that Sam's just waiting, like he didn't think Dean was done. "I mean, it's kinda like the tree and the forest thing, right? Are we just seeing the disappearances because we're looking?"
"That's a terrible metaphor," Sam says, and lays his newspaper down on the table. Dean doesn't bother telling him it might not come off again.
"Shut up." Dean makes stabbing motions toward him with his French fry. "I'm just saying, you know, I bet you could find just as many disappearances to the north and south as you can to the east. You're looking for them there, so that's where you're going to find them."
Sam tilts his head to the left, scratches as his right cheek and looks away, for a minute, like maybe he thinks Dean just made a good point. Dean's pretty sure it's a trick. "It's just a feeling, ok?" Sam says, quietly, nine and a half minutes later.
"Ok," Dean answers. Because it is.
ivx.
The number gets up to twelve, and Dean feels useless, chasing after something that they can't catch.
Sam shrugs, nose buried in a book that translates an ancient language to, well, another ancient one. And Sam's always been smart, but now he's just kind of pushing it. He scribbles notes in the margins that Dean doesn't bother trying to read.
"Dean," Sam says, not looking up, "we just ate, like, twenty minutes ago."
"That was six hours ago." Dean doesn't bother, you know, trying to figure out how he'd known where they were with his nose pressed in a book.
Dean tries not to think of the handwriting on the notes in Sam's folder, sharp and frustrated. He just sighs into the silence and makes a u turn. He doesn't think about hopeless cases, when a smile tugs at the corner of Sam's mouth.
Dean just keeps driving.
x.
"This is ridiculous, Sammy. There's this guy-"
"Sluagh," Sam says, finally, triumphantly.
"parrots," Dean finishes, half-heartedly. " Gesundheit."
Sam shakes his head. "Sluagh."
"Jesus, are you choking?" Dean asks, and swings his feet off the bed quickly, his stomach dropping to his knees.
"Dean," Sam says, and rolls his eyes. "That's the thing. The reason behind the disappearances. Sluagh, spirits doomed to eternal unrest, it's like a plague of spirits." Sam stretches his fingers across the book in front of him, thumbs hooked over the edge of the table. "It's people moving across the earth, constantly; it says even hell is too good for them."
"Sounds like my kind of people," Dean breaks in, absently. His heart rate finally starts returning to normal.
"There are thousands of them, wandering, and they feed on despair."
"And they've got an endless buffet, don't they?" Dean sighs, heavy, and finds it kind of hard sometimes, to watch the expression on Sam's face when he's learning something new. "So how do we stop it?"
"Unless we can get everyone to keep their west-facing windows shut, we don't." Sam pushes his fingertips against the page, like he can press the truth out. He's the size of a redwood, and his jaw is tight, gaze dropped down. He turns, puts his elbows on his knees and puts his hands together like he's praying. "Some things," he says, and looks Dean in the eye and looks so lost that Dean doesn't know how to answer, "are bigger than we are."
But Dean already knew that.
xi.
It's like flight of birds, and Dean isn't sure how they stopped chasing long enough to catch up. The Sluagh move like a flock, following the leader this way and that, until the leader gets tired and the next one steps up, takes charge.
They sit along the telephone wires, watching, waiting.
Dean's spent the better part of his life in tornado alley. He's watched the gates of hell open up and spill out. He's never seen this much black dot the sky, circling, waiting in the horizon.
And this, it's just like a storm.
You listen to the warnings and find whatever protection you can, (Dean's got his sawed-off, his favorite, the shells packed tight with rock salt at his side, his finger on the trigger.) hope to God it'll do this time, and settle down for a wait.
This is just something to weather.
They block off the street a block on either side with sawhorses they find under the overpass half a mile away, to keep it between the two of them and the Sluagh. Like that's a fair fight. Dean presses his shoulder against Sam's, briefly, for a pause, because it says, 'hey, right here, you and me against the world' again, without Dean having to say it.
And he knows it's not enough, that none of it is.
Then the peaked edge of the sun sinks past the horizon.
xii.
When Dean wakes, it's to nothing. No radio, no bed, no ground. Just light and the Sluagh.
"It's time," one of them says, voice like sandpaper and glass. And they all follow suit, one by one by one, until it's constant, a hum in the background, under his skin, the white noise of hotel parking lots.
There are so many, more than Sam could ever explain, could ever guess. More than Dean would've imagined. They're like clouds, endless, shapeless unless you squint, heavy when they're down around you, like they're trying to see how low they can go and bring you too.
"Are you ready?" another one asks, head tilted low, sharp features, like she's mostly just bone now. "We came for you. We know you've been waiting."
"Hell will not have us, so they cannot take us."
The smell of decay is thick, and Dean sits up, leans forward on his knees and gags into nothing. "Where am I?"
"With us. You are with us, and we are everywhere."
"Yeah," Dean groans hard, fingers folded into his sides, sawed-off missing. "Thanks, I figured that one out on my own."
"We know you've been waiting."
"Hell will not have us, so they cannot take us."
"It's time, it's time, it's time" is repeated, over and over. Still there in the background, over everything they've said. "It's time."
For Dean, it's not really a choice.
xiii.
He's made too many deals already.
xiv.
Waste of time, Sam wrote, on a page torn from Dad's journal, shoved deep into a manila folder. No point in chasing down people that don't want to be saved.
And, well, it makes a lot of sense to Dean.
xv.
Dean leans against the hood of his car, the long neck of a beer in his hand; his baby parked in the sand of the beach because they drove east until they ran out of land.
The air is starting to cool, around them, everyday. The seasons are changing, again, and Dean hopes he hasn't seen his last summer day, suddenly, with a fierceness that twists his stomach. Sam doesn't get it, maybe, or he does, because he's quiet, but he's got his index finger folded into a book to hold his place.
Because Dean's never been to the beach just to go.
The tape player's still playing How Many More Times, loudly, and the windows are rolled down so Dean can still just listen, head tipped back toward the blue sky.
Sam presses against his side, bends his knees and slouches hard against Dean's car to push his shoulder into Dean's.
Dean doesn't need a book of translations; he earned his masters in Sammy long ago.
He wraps his free hand around the back of Sam's neck, curls his fingers so he can feel the pulse of Sam's blood against his fingertips. So he can feel the life there, right under the thin skin and stubble.
"So," Dean says, carefully, shoulders relaxed, eyes toward the horizon, "I've been thinking what a shame it would be to not hear Zeppelin anymore."
And Sam nods, because the awesome thing about talking to him is still that Dean doesn't really have to. So he nods, and Dean feels it against every part of him. He looks over and Sam's grinning wide enough, relieved enough to hurt. "Might be a shame for you," Sam answers, finally. "Personally, I think I could deal with it just fine."
"Whatever," Dean says, and pulls his hand away with a pat to Sam's back. "Let's go get food now. I'm starving."
"You're always starving." Sam bumps their shoulders again, and folds himself into the passenger's seat even while he's complaining.
Their doors shut on three, and Dean turns up the radio as he pulls out.
***