The Other Son: Chapter Twenty
Title: The Other Son
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Twenty: DESCENT
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter twenty | DESCENT
Dean thought about it, mostly while they were on the road, when the yellow stripes and road signs flashed in repetitive blurs and conversation dwindled. He thought about fire and trees as old as time and how the last thing he needed was someone to complicate things for him. He was vague on who that someone might be - sometimes it was the demons, sometimes it was Sam, sometimes he turned the anger on himself and figured that it was unfair that the Freak from Fitchburg should have even more to worry about.
……………………………….
Dean took the coffee from Sam’s hands - curling his fingers around it like he was holding the Holy Grail - bringing it to his lips and breathing in before taking a sip. Sam had watched the ritual a hundred times but it never failed to bring a fond smile to his lips. He concentrated on the look of quiet ecstasy on the other man’s face as he savored his first sip of sanity -- concentrated on the curl of his fingers or the bob of his Adam’s apple and tried to disregard the shake in those hands.
Dean had been jittery going on three days. Sam didn’t bring it up, and he was fairly certain that Dean was under the impression that he hadn’t noticed. He had, though, and every day he created new reasons for it, tried to invent his own interpretations. There hadn’t been another incident like in Pueblo, with Dean becoming so overwhelmed that he collapsed. As far as Sam was aware Dean hadn’t been overwhelmed since, but that was small consolation.
“Still no hunts?” Dean asked.
“Nothing really worth checking out,” Sam lied. “There was one, out in Arizona, but I got word from Helen that a hunter’s already on it. Something personal, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dean finished his coffee and chucked it into the garbage. “I know.”
A moment of tense silence passed before Sam set his own coffee aside and rose from where he had settled onto the edge of the bed. “Which means, you and I have some time to just take it easy.”
Sam was looking for just about any way he could find to ensure that Dean didn’t double-over at the smell of fire or something burning anymore, didn’t flinch at a specter or have a dizzy-spell for what he insisted was no reason whatever. It was impossible to keep Dean protected from that, the other day he’d taken one look at the steak he’d been talking about eating for dinner all day and had barely made it to the men’s room in time. Sam promised himself that there would be no more hunts until he could find a way to help Dean, because if there was anything he was sure of, it was that Dean was no longer able to keep himself together.
At night he’d do what he could. Hold Dean’s fracturing pieces together with tracing, questing fingertips and a licking, kissing mouth and slow thrusts until Dean’s shaking was something that Sam could understand - was familiar with. All he wanted was an explanation, something to put his lover’s strange moods into context; some place that he could start from in finding a solution. What he had was a lot of mumbled, dismissive lies. Most days Sam felt fractured too, if for no other reason than that it felt that was the only way he could share something with the other man anymore.
………………………….……
When Dean thought of home he thought of a lot of things. Blue shutters and wood floors, a garden full of the brightest colors and sweetest smells. He thought of wide smiles and warm hugs that brought only the best of memories, and pictures with names and places scrawled on the back in fine black ink. He thought about home a lot and the more he thought about it, the more it felt like an ideal, like something bright and perfect and in the past. With increasing certainty, Dean knew that ‘home’ was some place that he didn’t belong, not any longer. Even if he could go back, it was something that would never be enough. Not after everything he had seen, and done.
……………………………….
Dean stood in bare feet with the button of his jeans undone and part of his hipbone peaking out above the waistline. He didn’t have a shirt and from the way he was twitching his fingers - index, middle, ring, pinky and then again in reverse - each touch perfectly against his thumb before he repeated the pattern, it was clear that he didn’t care about his state of undress. For Sam, though, it was just about all he could see.
“I want to talk about what happens when it all goes quiet,” Sophia had said. Her voice had been hesitant across the line, like she hadn’t been certain Sam wanted to talk about it, like she didn’t even really want to say it. “It doesn’t, you know. Go quiet, I mean. It fades a bit but it’s never really quiet. So if he says it’s quiet, he’s lying to you.” Sam had scratched his head and snuck a betrayed look to the bed where Dean had been sprawled in the clutches of a deep sleep.
Dean had been insisting everything was fine, and quiet and right as rain since they’d left the cemetery after watching Janice Hikida being ripped apart. “There’s quiet, and then there’s quiet. Learn to tell the difference.” Sam hadn’t quite known what she’d meant. He was learning.
“Maybe you want to sit down?”
“What?” Dean glanced over like he hadn’t realized Sam had been in the room with him.
“Over there,” Sam said, motioning to the bed. “Or, y’know. The chair. Wherever is fine. Just somewhere.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, you’re twitching is making me nervous.” Dean frowned, and then, like he did on slow mornings when it was only Sam’s kisses that roused him, he blinked his eyes and seemed to notice, as if for the first time, his surroundings. “Have you talked to Sophia?” Sam prompted, wanting to keep control of the conversation - wanting to have some kind of conversation at all.
“Hm? Yeah, a couple of days ago. Are you sure there’s nothing out there?” Sam frowned and checked the windows. “No, I mean, are you sure there’s no hunts? I’m going crazy with this leisurely cross-country trek. It feels like we should be doing something.”
“Sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes things are quiet.”
“Well, it seems like an odd time for things to get quiet. What happened to all that ‘storm’s coming’ crap that Bobby and you and your dad were talking about? Possessions and all that. Where are all the demons, huh?”
“Dean.” But lately Sam’s arms around Dean had the opposite effect, instead of calming or distracting, Dean moved away, broke the hold and took to pacing.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I just don’t see how this makes sense. Where’s the strategy in backing-off at a time like this?”
“The calm before the storm,” Sam offered, and settled back to the newspapers scattered on the table, and didn’t notice Dean’s frown.
………………………………………
Jitters were contagious, that was the only explanation. Sam figured there was only so much of himself he could devote to unsolvable problems before the need to get out and do something that really could affect change became overwhelming. No matter what he did for Dean it didn’t seem to help his lover, and it wasn’t like the man needed babysitting. Sam put-up the usual protections, checked the salt lines and had even re-inked Dean’s protection sigil earlier that evening. He wasn’t reckless.
A simple haunting was all it was. He had figured as much from the article in the paper. Routine. Sam had been dealing with spirits like that since he was ten. Nothing to it. He wasn’t even gone that long.
Dinner at the truck stop across from the motel, a shower and a few hours spent in front of the TV with Dean, where the crappy programming covered the growing silence between them. He curled around Dean when he started to look sleepy, and when he was certain his lover was fast asleep, he slipped from the bed and from the room. Dean hadn’t even noticed he was missing, and it was just a couple of hours. Just something to take him away from the worrying he was doing lately, and it helped some. He came back and felt better, at least, for having been able to do something right for a change. When he slid back into bed and wrapped his arms around Dean, Sam was feeling far more optimistic about everything.
…………………………………………
Sam had developed a game. If he had to describe Dean right then, in that moment, using only one word, what would it be? The motivation for the game was to keep him tuned-in to his confusing lover. Force him to make distinctions between a bad mood caused by something Dean was thinking, something Dean was feeling, and something Dean was picking-up from someone else. The trick was to not re-use a word unless Sam was almost certain it was the same emotion.
Driving through Jericho, Sam thought: “Quiet”, and the hair on the back of his neck stood-up and he had a rush of pricking goose bumps followed by a wave of relief. “Eyes on the road, Genius,” Dean said, and Sam quickly returned his focus to the asphalt ahead. “So, what do you think?”
“About what?” Sam said.
“Dude, seriously. What is with you? I have been talking for twenty minutes about this thing, are you telling me you haven’t heard any of it?” Sam clenched and unclenched his jaw because honestly, he had been focusing on Dean more than he had been focusing on what was being discussed. “The little girl? Possible malevolent spirit? Any of this ringing any bells?”
“Sure.”
“You’re so full of shit.” Dean grabbed the map from the backseat and scanned it for a moment, glancing-up periodically to check the road. “You’re gonna hang a right just ahead.”
“I am?”
“I am going crazy sitting around doing nothing. I get that there hasn’t been much going on but this sounds like it could be a case, so we’re gonna check it out because otherwise I am finding a friggin’ hellmouth and opening it myself, so help me god. Here, right here. Go right.” Sam steered the impala down the street, tamping down on a smile because for the first time in weeks Dean was starting to sound like himself again.
“Watching a bit of Buffy lately?”
“Shaddup.”
…………………………..
Sam drove passed the house a second time on his way to pick-up something for them to eat. Dean had disappeared doing something case-related - or so he insisted - and promised to be back at the motel before Sam returned with dinner. The house was old but well kept, and like the last time there was only a single car in the driveway. Sam knew that both parents were spending the majority of their time at the hospital with their daughter who was recovering.
He thought about Bill and his fiancé and their little shop back in Fitchburg as he ordered a steak sandwich meal for himself and Dean from a deli and wondered if Dean missed his hometown, if the size of this place brought memories and made him ache for home. He thought about it as he drove back to the motel, the smell of the warm food filling the impala, and decided that it was not entirely strange that Dean didn’t show signs of being homesick. That maybe time away from Fitchburg was exactly what Dean needed.
With great skill, Sam managed to unlock the door to their motel room while juggling the bags with their dinner and a tray of drinks, and not fall on his face or spill anything. He almost did drop everything, however, when he saw Dean sitting at the cheap plastic table the motel offered as furniture, surrounded by books, one of which was opened and seemed to have garnered Dean’s complete attention. “Who are you and what have you done to Dean?” Sam half-joked as he deposited his purchases on the nightstand.
“Hm?” Dean looked-up from the books, catching Sam’s bewildered expression he frowned. “I read,” he said defensively.
Sam scanned the titles of the books, and thumbed through a volume of ghost stories from the town. “What are you doing?”
“Research.”
“Spooks and Kooks of Grace County?” Sam said, reading the title of one of the books Dean had on his pile.
“D’you know that they had a totally legit woman in white back in the 1990’s?”
“How do you know she was totally legit?”
“I learned a thing or two from you.”
“Where did she go?”
“Doesn’t say. Hey, maybe she’s still around,” Dean said, turning back to his book.
For a moment Sam simply looked at the other man. “I got dinner.”
“Awesome.” Dean closed the book with a thump and looked around for the food.
They sat on their bed and ate, Sam making comments on the increasing likelihood that they would die of a heart attack if they kept eating the way they were, and Dean teasing and reminding Sam of the fact that, more often than not, it was Sam himself who was picking where they ate. “What difference would it make?” Sam asked, expression serious.
“A pretty big one. I mean, I’m not gonna accept responsibility for our heart attacks if you’re the one going and getting us this shit.” Dean took another bite into his sandwich and groaned in appreciation.
“That’s not what I meant. I was talking about the woman in white. If she was still around - what difference would it make?”
Dean frowned and put his sandwich down. “You’re the one always going on about how important it is to save people from spirits and demons and things that go bump in the night.” Sam looked away, not entirely satisfied with the answer. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Well that ‘nothing’ has been making you act all weird for the passed few days.”
“I’ve been acting weird? You’ve been -“ Sam cut himself off and turned back to his sandwich.
“I’ve been what?”
“Nothing.”
“No, Sam, I wanna know.”
The anger had left Sam, and in its wake there was only fatigue combined with concern. “I dunno. You’ve been - different.”
“This is gonna be one of those times when we have to hug, isn’t it?”
“I’m being serious. I’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m fine, Sam. I’m right here, and I’m fine.” Sam had been so certain of what he had needed to hear from Dean, what he had needed to see in order to be satisfied that things were okay, but even though what Dean had said did not match what Sam imagined, he felt a sense of profound relief, felt a weight lifted from his shoulders that he hadn’t realized had settled there so heavily since Dean had been taken by the demons.
It maybe wasn’t the most romantic thing - shoving a pair of half-eaten deli sandwiches and their wrappers onto the floor, their breath smelling heavily of the pastrami they had been eating, but it was satisfying in a way that Sam hadn’t felt for weeks. Pressing Dean into the mattress and settling in the cradle of his lover’s hips, savoring the presses of Dean’s body as he arched into Sam’s touch, feeling their tongues twist and their teeth biting. Dean’s skin, soft and warm beneath Sam’s fingertips as he worked the simple black T-shirt up his torso - slowly, no reason to rush. Because Dean was there and Sam was just starting to believe again that he really was fine. Everything in its place, and for once, just once, the rest of the world - the frightened screaming people, the hungry seeking demons and everything that went bump in the night - could wait, because Dean was there, and warm, and moaning - relaxed and free and startlingly present in a way he hadn’t been for so long.
…………………………………..
There was silence, and then there was chaos. Shutters flapped and smacked against the side of the house, Sam and Dean ducked as a vase was relocated from a table in the hallway to the floor of the kitchen. The noise had them wincing and they had to duck and weave through the obstacle course of objects whizzing back and forth across the main floor. “This is fucked up!” Dean stated. “Give me the other damn bag and I’ll get the south east corner.” Sam tossed the last of the pouches to his partner and then turned and ran to the south west corner of the house, trying to stay alive long enough to bash a hole through he drywall big enough to stuff the pouch through.
It wasn’t a malevolent spirit - not exactly. When Sam had been unsure of a way to properly the spirit of a little girl who had been abused in life, and cremated in death, with no remains left to speak of to rest, he had turned to Missouri, who had listed herbs and plants each more bizarre than the last and recommended purifying the house entirely. They’d done the second floor, and one corner of the first and they were already beat to hell. The girl seemed to grow increasingly infuriated at the prospect that she might be permanently expelled from her own home.
Sam stuff the pouch into the hole he made and then ran to the opposite side of the house, meeting with Dean partway there. “Cranky little bitch,” Dean muttered. There was a gash on his brow but it didn’t look too deep.
“Last one,” Sam said. Dean nodded his head and hefted his axe but a second later he was being yanked backward, losing his grip on the weapon and grappling with an unseen force. Sam reacted as fast as he could, racing to the wall and swimming the hammer against the wall, wrapping through the mottled green wallpaper. One hit, two -- Dean’s body flew across the room and crashed onto the dining room table. Sam struck through the wall and stuffed the pouch inside and there was a burst of light so bright.
That was probably why. Sam couldn’t see, half blinded and everything looked like it was in shadow anyway. It didn’t make it any less chilling to look across at Dean who was just recovering from the fall and thinking, for a brief moment, that his eyes looked almost black. “Thank God that’s over,” Dean said.
“Yeah,” Sam echoed, a frown on his face.
“You okay, Sammy?” Dean crossed the room, idly massaging his shoulder and moving it to test that it hadn’t been damaged. He offered a hand and Sam took it. Up close, Dean’s eyes were a swirl of color and concern.
“I’m fine.”
“Whooee, told you there was a job here.” Dean clapped a hand on Sam’s back and picked up the axe that had been pried from his grip earlier. “Let’s head before the police get here to check out all the noise.”
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
Asbestos Cancer
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Twenty: DESCENT
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter twenty | DESCENT
Dean thought about it, mostly while they were on the road, when the yellow stripes and road signs flashed in repetitive blurs and conversation dwindled. He thought about fire and trees as old as time and how the last thing he needed was someone to complicate things for him. He was vague on who that someone might be - sometimes it was the demons, sometimes it was Sam, sometimes he turned the anger on himself and figured that it was unfair that the Freak from Fitchburg should have even more to worry about.
……………………………….
Dean took the coffee from Sam’s hands - curling his fingers around it like he was holding the Holy Grail - bringing it to his lips and breathing in before taking a sip. Sam had watched the ritual a hundred times but it never failed to bring a fond smile to his lips. He concentrated on the look of quiet ecstasy on the other man’s face as he savored his first sip of sanity -- concentrated on the curl of his fingers or the bob of his Adam’s apple and tried to disregard the shake in those hands.
Dean had been jittery going on three days. Sam didn’t bring it up, and he was fairly certain that Dean was under the impression that he hadn’t noticed. He had, though, and every day he created new reasons for it, tried to invent his own interpretations. There hadn’t been another incident like in Pueblo, with Dean becoming so overwhelmed that he collapsed. As far as Sam was aware Dean hadn’t been overwhelmed since, but that was small consolation.
“Still no hunts?” Dean asked.
“Nothing really worth checking out,” Sam lied. “There was one, out in Arizona, but I got word from Helen that a hunter’s already on it. Something personal, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dean finished his coffee and chucked it into the garbage. “I know.”
A moment of tense silence passed before Sam set his own coffee aside and rose from where he had settled onto the edge of the bed. “Which means, you and I have some time to just take it easy.”
Sam was looking for just about any way he could find to ensure that Dean didn’t double-over at the smell of fire or something burning anymore, didn’t flinch at a specter or have a dizzy-spell for what he insisted was no reason whatever. It was impossible to keep Dean protected from that, the other day he’d taken one look at the steak he’d been talking about eating for dinner all day and had barely made it to the men’s room in time. Sam promised himself that there would be no more hunts until he could find a way to help Dean, because if there was anything he was sure of, it was that Dean was no longer able to keep himself together.
At night he’d do what he could. Hold Dean’s fracturing pieces together with tracing, questing fingertips and a licking, kissing mouth and slow thrusts until Dean’s shaking was something that Sam could understand - was familiar with. All he wanted was an explanation, something to put his lover’s strange moods into context; some place that he could start from in finding a solution. What he had was a lot of mumbled, dismissive lies. Most days Sam felt fractured too, if for no other reason than that it felt that was the only way he could share something with the other man anymore.
………………………….……
When Dean thought of home he thought of a lot of things. Blue shutters and wood floors, a garden full of the brightest colors and sweetest smells. He thought of wide smiles and warm hugs that brought only the best of memories, and pictures with names and places scrawled on the back in fine black ink. He thought about home a lot and the more he thought about it, the more it felt like an ideal, like something bright and perfect and in the past. With increasing certainty, Dean knew that ‘home’ was some place that he didn’t belong, not any longer. Even if he could go back, it was something that would never be enough. Not after everything he had seen, and done.
……………………………….
Dean stood in bare feet with the button of his jeans undone and part of his hipbone peaking out above the waistline. He didn’t have a shirt and from the way he was twitching his fingers - index, middle, ring, pinky and then again in reverse - each touch perfectly against his thumb before he repeated the pattern, it was clear that he didn’t care about his state of undress. For Sam, though, it was just about all he could see.
“I want to talk about what happens when it all goes quiet,” Sophia had said. Her voice had been hesitant across the line, like she hadn’t been certain Sam wanted to talk about it, like she didn’t even really want to say it. “It doesn’t, you know. Go quiet, I mean. It fades a bit but it’s never really quiet. So if he says it’s quiet, he’s lying to you.” Sam had scratched his head and snuck a betrayed look to the bed where Dean had been sprawled in the clutches of a deep sleep.
Dean had been insisting everything was fine, and quiet and right as rain since they’d left the cemetery after watching Janice Hikida being ripped apart. “There’s quiet, and then there’s quiet. Learn to tell the difference.” Sam hadn’t quite known what she’d meant. He was learning.
“Maybe you want to sit down?”
“What?” Dean glanced over like he hadn’t realized Sam had been in the room with him.
“Over there,” Sam said, motioning to the bed. “Or, y’know. The chair. Wherever is fine. Just somewhere.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, you’re twitching is making me nervous.” Dean frowned, and then, like he did on slow mornings when it was only Sam’s kisses that roused him, he blinked his eyes and seemed to notice, as if for the first time, his surroundings. “Have you talked to Sophia?” Sam prompted, wanting to keep control of the conversation - wanting to have some kind of conversation at all.
“Hm? Yeah, a couple of days ago. Are you sure there’s nothing out there?” Sam frowned and checked the windows. “No, I mean, are you sure there’s no hunts? I’m going crazy with this leisurely cross-country trek. It feels like we should be doing something.”
“Sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes things are quiet.”
“Well, it seems like an odd time for things to get quiet. What happened to all that ‘storm’s coming’ crap that Bobby and you and your dad were talking about? Possessions and all that. Where are all the demons, huh?”
“Dean.” But lately Sam’s arms around Dean had the opposite effect, instead of calming or distracting, Dean moved away, broke the hold and took to pacing.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I just don’t see how this makes sense. Where’s the strategy in backing-off at a time like this?”
“The calm before the storm,” Sam offered, and settled back to the newspapers scattered on the table, and didn’t notice Dean’s frown.
………………………………………
Jitters were contagious, that was the only explanation. Sam figured there was only so much of himself he could devote to unsolvable problems before the need to get out and do something that really could affect change became overwhelming. No matter what he did for Dean it didn’t seem to help his lover, and it wasn’t like the man needed babysitting. Sam put-up the usual protections, checked the salt lines and had even re-inked Dean’s protection sigil earlier that evening. He wasn’t reckless.
A simple haunting was all it was. He had figured as much from the article in the paper. Routine. Sam had been dealing with spirits like that since he was ten. Nothing to it. He wasn’t even gone that long.
Dinner at the truck stop across from the motel, a shower and a few hours spent in front of the TV with Dean, where the crappy programming covered the growing silence between them. He curled around Dean when he started to look sleepy, and when he was certain his lover was fast asleep, he slipped from the bed and from the room. Dean hadn’t even noticed he was missing, and it was just a couple of hours. Just something to take him away from the worrying he was doing lately, and it helped some. He came back and felt better, at least, for having been able to do something right for a change. When he slid back into bed and wrapped his arms around Dean, Sam was feeling far more optimistic about everything.
…………………………………………
Sam had developed a game. If he had to describe Dean right then, in that moment, using only one word, what would it be? The motivation for the game was to keep him tuned-in to his confusing lover. Force him to make distinctions between a bad mood caused by something Dean was thinking, something Dean was feeling, and something Dean was picking-up from someone else. The trick was to not re-use a word unless Sam was almost certain it was the same emotion.
Driving through Jericho, Sam thought: “Quiet”, and the hair on the back of his neck stood-up and he had a rush of pricking goose bumps followed by a wave of relief. “Eyes on the road, Genius,” Dean said, and Sam quickly returned his focus to the asphalt ahead. “So, what do you think?”
“About what?” Sam said.
“Dude, seriously. What is with you? I have been talking for twenty minutes about this thing, are you telling me you haven’t heard any of it?” Sam clenched and unclenched his jaw because honestly, he had been focusing on Dean more than he had been focusing on what was being discussed. “The little girl? Possible malevolent spirit? Any of this ringing any bells?”
“Sure.”
“You’re so full of shit.” Dean grabbed the map from the backseat and scanned it for a moment, glancing-up periodically to check the road. “You’re gonna hang a right just ahead.”
“I am?”
“I am going crazy sitting around doing nothing. I get that there hasn’t been much going on but this sounds like it could be a case, so we’re gonna check it out because otherwise I am finding a friggin’ hellmouth and opening it myself, so help me god. Here, right here. Go right.” Sam steered the impala down the street, tamping down on a smile because for the first time in weeks Dean was starting to sound like himself again.
“Watching a bit of Buffy lately?”
“Shaddup.”
…………………………..
Sam drove passed the house a second time on his way to pick-up something for them to eat. Dean had disappeared doing something case-related - or so he insisted - and promised to be back at the motel before Sam returned with dinner. The house was old but well kept, and like the last time there was only a single car in the driveway. Sam knew that both parents were spending the majority of their time at the hospital with their daughter who was recovering.
He thought about Bill and his fiancé and their little shop back in Fitchburg as he ordered a steak sandwich meal for himself and Dean from a deli and wondered if Dean missed his hometown, if the size of this place brought memories and made him ache for home. He thought about it as he drove back to the motel, the smell of the warm food filling the impala, and decided that it was not entirely strange that Dean didn’t show signs of being homesick. That maybe time away from Fitchburg was exactly what Dean needed.
With great skill, Sam managed to unlock the door to their motel room while juggling the bags with their dinner and a tray of drinks, and not fall on his face or spill anything. He almost did drop everything, however, when he saw Dean sitting at the cheap plastic table the motel offered as furniture, surrounded by books, one of which was opened and seemed to have garnered Dean’s complete attention. “Who are you and what have you done to Dean?” Sam half-joked as he deposited his purchases on the nightstand.
“Hm?” Dean looked-up from the books, catching Sam’s bewildered expression he frowned. “I read,” he said defensively.
Sam scanned the titles of the books, and thumbed through a volume of ghost stories from the town. “What are you doing?”
“Research.”
“Spooks and Kooks of Grace County?” Sam said, reading the title of one of the books Dean had on his pile.
“D’you know that they had a totally legit woman in white back in the 1990’s?”
“How do you know she was totally legit?”
“I learned a thing or two from you.”
“Where did she go?”
“Doesn’t say. Hey, maybe she’s still around,” Dean said, turning back to his book.
For a moment Sam simply looked at the other man. “I got dinner.”
“Awesome.” Dean closed the book with a thump and looked around for the food.
They sat on their bed and ate, Sam making comments on the increasing likelihood that they would die of a heart attack if they kept eating the way they were, and Dean teasing and reminding Sam of the fact that, more often than not, it was Sam himself who was picking where they ate. “What difference would it make?” Sam asked, expression serious.
“A pretty big one. I mean, I’m not gonna accept responsibility for our heart attacks if you’re the one going and getting us this shit.” Dean took another bite into his sandwich and groaned in appreciation.
“That’s not what I meant. I was talking about the woman in white. If she was still around - what difference would it make?”
Dean frowned and put his sandwich down. “You’re the one always going on about how important it is to save people from spirits and demons and things that go bump in the night.” Sam looked away, not entirely satisfied with the answer. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Well that ‘nothing’ has been making you act all weird for the passed few days.”
“I’ve been acting weird? You’ve been -“ Sam cut himself off and turned back to his sandwich.
“I’ve been what?”
“Nothing.”
“No, Sam, I wanna know.”
The anger had left Sam, and in its wake there was only fatigue combined with concern. “I dunno. You’ve been - different.”
“This is gonna be one of those times when we have to hug, isn’t it?”
“I’m being serious. I’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m fine, Sam. I’m right here, and I’m fine.” Sam had been so certain of what he had needed to hear from Dean, what he had needed to see in order to be satisfied that things were okay, but even though what Dean had said did not match what Sam imagined, he felt a sense of profound relief, felt a weight lifted from his shoulders that he hadn’t realized had settled there so heavily since Dean had been taken by the demons.
It maybe wasn’t the most romantic thing - shoving a pair of half-eaten deli sandwiches and their wrappers onto the floor, their breath smelling heavily of the pastrami they had been eating, but it was satisfying in a way that Sam hadn’t felt for weeks. Pressing Dean into the mattress and settling in the cradle of his lover’s hips, savoring the presses of Dean’s body as he arched into Sam’s touch, feeling their tongues twist and their teeth biting. Dean’s skin, soft and warm beneath Sam’s fingertips as he worked the simple black T-shirt up his torso - slowly, no reason to rush. Because Dean was there and Sam was just starting to believe again that he really was fine. Everything in its place, and for once, just once, the rest of the world - the frightened screaming people, the hungry seeking demons and everything that went bump in the night - could wait, because Dean was there, and warm, and moaning - relaxed and free and startlingly present in a way he hadn’t been for so long.
…………………………………..
There was silence, and then there was chaos. Shutters flapped and smacked against the side of the house, Sam and Dean ducked as a vase was relocated from a table in the hallway to the floor of the kitchen. The noise had them wincing and they had to duck and weave through the obstacle course of objects whizzing back and forth across the main floor. “This is fucked up!” Dean stated. “Give me the other damn bag and I’ll get the south east corner.” Sam tossed the last of the pouches to his partner and then turned and ran to the south west corner of the house, trying to stay alive long enough to bash a hole through he drywall big enough to stuff the pouch through.
It wasn’t a malevolent spirit - not exactly. When Sam had been unsure of a way to properly the spirit of a little girl who had been abused in life, and cremated in death, with no remains left to speak of to rest, he had turned to Missouri, who had listed herbs and plants each more bizarre than the last and recommended purifying the house entirely. They’d done the second floor, and one corner of the first and they were already beat to hell. The girl seemed to grow increasingly infuriated at the prospect that she might be permanently expelled from her own home.
Sam stuff the pouch into the hole he made and then ran to the opposite side of the house, meeting with Dean partway there. “Cranky little bitch,” Dean muttered. There was a gash on his brow but it didn’t look too deep.
“Last one,” Sam said. Dean nodded his head and hefted his axe but a second later he was being yanked backward, losing his grip on the weapon and grappling with an unseen force. Sam reacted as fast as he could, racing to the wall and swimming the hammer against the wall, wrapping through the mottled green wallpaper. One hit, two -- Dean’s body flew across the room and crashed onto the dining room table. Sam struck through the wall and stuffed the pouch inside and there was a burst of light so bright.
That was probably why. Sam couldn’t see, half blinded and everything looked like it was in shadow anyway. It didn’t make it any less chilling to look across at Dean who was just recovering from the fall and thinking, for a brief moment, that his eyes looked almost black. “Thank God that’s over,” Dean said.
“Yeah,” Sam echoed, a frown on his face.
“You okay, Sammy?” Dean crossed the room, idly massaging his shoulder and moving it to test that it hadn’t been damaged. He offered a hand and Sam took it. Up close, Dean’s eyes were a swirl of color and concern.
“I’m fine.”
“Whooee, told you there was a job here.” Dean clapped a hand on Sam’s back and picked up the axe that had been pried from his grip earlier. “Let’s head before the police get here to check out all the noise.”
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
Asbestos Cancer