The Other Son: Chapter Twelve
Title: The Other Son
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Twelve: CAPSIZED
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 twelve | CAPSIZED
Sam eyed Dean, brief darting glances to where the other man had fallen asleep in the passenger seat of the impala. His colour was returning slowly and the dark bruising that had marred the skin beneath Dean’s eyes were only faint smudges, he didn’t move quite so clumsily anymore but he was still quiet. “Stop it,” Dean muttered.
“What?” Sam asked, glancing at the road and then back at Dean.
“You’re staring at me. It’s hard to relax when you’re staring at me.”
“You’ve never complained about it before.”
“Well, you’ve never done it when you’ve been behind the wheel of a car, dude. How often do you watch me sleep, anyway? Is this a creepy fetish I should know about?”
Sam smiled but didn’t say anything; he stretched his hand across the space to rest on Dean’s left leg. “We’re almost there.”
“Where?” Dean asked, sitting-up finally and looking somewhat blearily around them. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Sam admitted.
“Okay. I won’t ask.” They’d been driving for the better part of the day and Sam was starting to get tired. They’d spent three days in Fitchburg because Dean had barely been able to keep his eyes open for more than a few hours and Sam wanted to spend as much time as he could in a place he knew was safe before they headed-out. There was the added fact that Dean had to say good-bye to Rosemary and Sophia, and tie-up loose ends. Sophia had quit the diner to look after the Wyvern, and promised to keep an eye on Dean’s house, although it had been Sam that had asked her to do so, Dean wanted nothing to do with the place. Rosemary had been teary-eyed and sobbing, and had held Dean for a long time (while Dean pretended that he didn’t appreciate it), and Sam had sat there trying to assure himself and everyone else that this wasn’t permanent, that they’d figure something out.
They hadn’t explained to Rosemary why Dean had to leave, as far as she knew, Dean just needed some time away from Fitchburg to recover from his dad’s death. “I’ll look after your mama’s garden,” she promised, pressing a cut sunflower into Dean’s hand. “It’ll be just the way you left it when you get back.” Dean didn’t say anything, and he’d put the flower in a drawer, but that night when Sam had been flipping through one of his spell books, he’d found the flower pressed between a spell to lock small spaces from dark energy and an incantation to summon a water spirit.
Dean scratched at his neck and Sam glanced over again. “Turn for a second?” he asked.
Dean twisted in the seat so Sam could look at the marking he’d made. “We need to re-do it, it’s rubbing off again.” It had been forgotten between the horrible migraine Dean had suffered that first day in the motel, and the good-byes. Sam had maybe gotten a little confident that the protections he and his dad had put-up in that room were enough, and he re-drew it with the pen each night after Dean’s shower, that was fine - just a precaution.
“You said you’d do it in henna?”
“Yeah, I need to get the stuff,” Sam said. “We’ll find a place tonight. If we’re going to be on the road then it should probably be at least semi-permanent.” Dean nodded his head vaguely. “Hey, how are you holding-up?”
“Don’t go all mushy-caring on me, okay?”
“Just asking.” They were quiet, and then Dean fished-out that box of tapes and selected a new one: CCR and he kept sneaking-up the volume. Sam thought maybe that was Dean’s way of blocking-out the world - if the music was loud enough, it would distract him from whatever he was picking-up from the people just beyond the car, the other drivers that shared their road. “We should probably pick-up something to eat.”
“Hm,” Dean said, noncommittally.
“Do you need another pain killer?” Dean shook his head but let his eyes fall closed. Sam started checking the road signs for a motel close-by.
…………………………………………
John stood on the front porch and looked around at the fresh green lawn and bright painted door. Every inch of the house was light and welcoming. He pulled his picklocks from his pocket and opened the door with ease, stepping inside. Everything in the space looked normal, and there was nothing that would even hint that demons might have gone through and made the home a nightmare for a psychic they were hoping to take-over and apparently control.
He dropped the picklocks back in his coat pocket, pulled his EMF meter free and paced slowly back-and-forth through the main floor of the house. There was enough there to prove conclusively that something got in before Sam had had a chance to pass-on how to protect the place. It made him more than a little irritated. Psychics were delicate and needed protection - extra protection. This kid’s parents didn’t know what they were doing, not a single charm or sigil, nothing to keep that house safe.
He let out a breath of air, realized it hadn’t been all that long ago that he was just as lax as well. The difference was that these parents known better - had probably thought that their son’s weird gifts were the extent of the weirdness in the world. That is was his own gifts that he needed protecting from when the truth was that psychics attracted the supernatural like moths to flame.
He climbed the stairs and continued onward, inspecting paintings and artwork and furniture cluttering the space - making it a home - until he was standing in a yellow room with blue bedding and photographs on the walls. The EMF was squealing, and John flicked it off, stepping towards the frames and peering at smiling faces. A young girl that he had seen going in and out of Sam’s motel room, and also the plump smiling woman who had always left that room clutching a handkerchief. In another John guessed it was the kid with his parents. One photograph made him pause - a woman with her hair held-back by a bandana and Sam’s friend - Dean - grinning like he’d won the lottery and holding a book up.
It was the smile more than anything that had him staring, memories flickering in his head that he fought with everything in him, but regardless of the hurt he reached his hand-up, ran the barest touch of fingertips across a smile that was almost - but there was no way. John shook his head and tucked the EMF back in his pocket. He was quick to leave.
…………………………………
Dean sat on the bed, his legs crossed under him, his head bowed forward and wearing nothing but a pair of washed out blue jeans. Sam dragged his fingertips across the faded ink markings, mostly because the skin was smooth and sensitive beneath his touch. “It won’t hurt and it’s not permanent,” Sam said.
“Just get on with it,” Dean said. “M’not a baby.” It was half-hearted protest, mostly said just to distract from the barely repressed shudder. Sam picked-up the brush he was using and set to work re-working the protection charm in thick, goopy henna. Dean stayed perfectly still, but Sam kept one hand resting on the juncture between neck and shoulder - just a reminder - while the other hand wielded the brush. When the design was done, Sam couldn’t help blowing air across it - not that it would actually help the ink dry any faster - and then Dean really did shiver, then.
“Okay, you have to let it dry.”
“No shit, really?” Dean quipped.
“Which means don’t get your hair in it.”
“I’m not the one with the mop on my head.” Sam smacked Dean lightly, but Dean only settled carefully down on the bed so he could watch the TV and not worry about wrecking Sam’s work. Sam dropped down into the space between Dean and the pillows, draped an arm casually around his waist and the other propped beneath his head. He could see the TV over Dean’s shoulder, but it was not the TV that he was watching - the wet henna was drying on Dean’s neck and he knew what it was, what each curve of the complicated and self-created sigil meant, but he couldn’t stop thinking that it was something he designed and that he had painted onto his lover’s skin.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, he wasn’t aware of what he was doing until his lips were pressed on the mark. Dean’s eyes had dropped closed but they slit open for a moment as his sleep-blurred voice mumbled, “D’you smudge it?”
“Naw,” Sam said. “It’s dry. I was just checking.”
“Liar. You were staring again,” Dean mumbled, but then he had fallen back asleep so Sam didn’t have to lie. Sam kissed a lazy trail up Dean’s neck and then ran his tongue along the arch of Dean’s right ear. “Mm,” Dean mumbled in his sleep. Sam smiled a little and shifted his body closer until there was no space between them.
…………………………………..
Sam blinked his eyes open. It was too early to be awake - and he was an early riser. He wondered at first what had woken him, but realized a moment later when the total absence of Dean’s body registered in his mind. He had put-up the same wards that had been place on their motel room back in Fitchburg, and either way, Dean had been marked with protection directly on his skin - but the thought still passed through Sam’s head that something had taken him. John had warned that demons could always find a loophole if they wanted something bad enough and were given enough time.
The fear ebbed as soon as Sam had managed to focus his eyes and get them opened more than a squint, because Dean’s ruffled ducky-hair came into focus and he could see him sitting in the darkness by his duffle bag, peering inside it and not moving. Sam stayed quiet for a moment, wondering what the man was thinking about, but it seemed as if Dean had been set on pause, and no one was intending to press play.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Dean jerked a little, and Sam noticed that Dean’s hand had been inside the duffle, resting atop something. He turned and mustered a smile. “Sophia,” he said, and then pulled the corner of a quilt up that had been folded neatly and stuffed into the duffle.
“I was wondering what the hell she’d but in there,” Sam muttered, dragging himself-up and slipping off the bed. He settled onto the floor beside Dean, their shoulders pressed together, maybe leaning on the other just a little.
“It’s home,” Dean said, still holding a fistful of the quilt. “My mom made it for me.” They were quiet, sitting there leaning on each other, and Sam wasn’t exactly certain what to say. He pulled the quilt free, draping it over their shoulders and then wrapping his arm around Dean, smiling a little when Dean slid his arm around Sam’s waist. “Do we know what we’re doing, Sam? I mean, where are we going?”
Hunting wasn’t Dean’s life. Sam might have explained what it entailed, but it was quite a different thing to actually live it. Dean had left his home behind, and his friends and everything he’d ever known. He’d left behind certainty and predictability. He had Sam, and he had a fast car and a trunk full of weapons, but Sam thought that maybe it was a bit much to ask of anyone to accept that graciously and not feel any fear when they started a freefall.
“We have to keep moving,” Sam said. “For a while, that means avoiding anything familiar - so, that means I can’t take you to my friend Bobby’s place. We can hunt, if you want, or we could just … go and see the second largest ball of twine, if you want.”
“We’ll hunt,” Dean said. “No sense just wastin’ time.” He picked at one of the squares of the quilts. “What are we runnin’ from, exactly?”
Sam sighed. He had wanted to put-off telling Dean the truth until he had the chance to really deal with his dad’s death, and leaving everything behind. He hadn’t really had high hopes for Dean following along without asking questions, but it would have been better - easier - if they could just take one thing at a time, because there was a long happening all at once.
“A demon,” Sam said. “Or maybe demons. We’re not entirely sure. There’s been incidents across the country - sometimes houses, sometimes people - burning, and always there was this mark present.”
“Show me,” Dean said. Sam shifted away so he could kneel-up and drag his own duffel off the chair it had been lying on and onto the floor. He snatched his journal from inside and unwound the leather cord that kept it closed, flipped to the black-and-white photographs he’d been collecting from each scene and handed them over. Dean looked at them closely and then ruffled-up his hair even more. “You maybe have a piece of something you picked-up from one of these places?”
“Dean, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” Sam didn’t want to point-out that Dean was still pale and exhausted and that every time they took a pit-stop somewhere, Sam worried that Dean might get hit with something. He could tell that Dean was still having difficulty keeping the world in its place and not letting it overwhelm him, there was no way he was going to drop a demon-marked remnant from a violent attack that ended someone’s life into Dean’s palm - even if he had one.
“Just asking,” Dean said, then slid his hand back to rub at the bump on his neck that the dried-henna left.
“You can peel that off, now. I can re-ink it when it starts to fade, but that shouldn’t be for over a week or two so…” Dean started picking at the dried ink. He’d wanted black ink instead of the orangey-red that the woman in the store had been covered in, and Sam had agreed, he wasn’t certain if the lighter colour would make the marking weaker, and he didn’t particularly feel like experimenting with that.
“So tomorrow we find a hunt somewhere and begin our adventures,” Dean muttered.
“Yeah,” Sam said, took the pictures from Dean’s hand and tossed them back in the general direction of his bag. He dragged them both up and smirked as Dean tumbled onto the bed, forgoing the scratchy motel blanket for the quilt.
Sam waited until Dean had settled, curled on his side, and then Dean stretched his arm behind him, lifted up the quilt in invitation. “Get your butt down here,” Dean said, and Sam slid onto the bed and beneath the quilt.
“You’re bossy,” Sam muttered.
“And you’re a giant freak-‘o-nature, call it even.”
…………………………………….
“You look like you’ve bitten down on a lemon,” Ellen said, wiping-off a glass and setting aside so she could lean across the bar to get just the right angle for that ‘tell me what the hell your problem is this time’ glare that John was all too familiar with.
The truth was that John was at a loss. His son was jackrabbitting across the country, zigzagging from hunt to hunt with a civilian tagging along - a civilian psychic, and damned if John wasn’t kicking himself in the head for giving out that order because he should have known better. One psychic was the equivalent of a shining beacon - two? Not a good thing.
“Come on,” Ellen coaxed. “You can’t keep glaring at that glass, it’s not gonna solve anyone’s problems.”
“It’s Dean,” John muttered, not even really intending to. He hadn’t even thought the name in the weeks he had separated from Sam. It was habit, memories pressed-down so deep that even as the name slipped passed his lips he almost thought that he meant someone else - that psychic travelling with his son - anyone else.
“John,” Ellen said, but her tone was completely different, her expression was completely different.
John knocked back his whisky and shook his head, didn’t want to talk about it - couldn’t stop talking about it. “He was always so much like Mary.”
“What’s got you thinkin’ about your boy?”
“Do you know it’s been years since I ---“ but he couldn’t finish the sentence because it was a lie. It hadn’t been years since he’d thought about Dean. He tried with everything he was to tuck the memories away, but they were persistent and a part of him didn’t want to let them go. His fingers fumbled in his wallet, drew-out the crinkled photograph - he and a very young Dean and an even younger Sam, grinning at the camera. He took it out now and then, just to see if he still remembered his boy’s smile - so much like Mary. “You know, I must be out of my mind.”
“Dean’s loss was hard on everyone, especially you, John.”
John shook his head, flipped the photo for her to see. “It’s his smile, you know? Mary’s smile. I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“What are you talking about?” John slid another photo from his pocket, this one folded in half - a grinning boy in that awkward stage of puberty that stretched him out, made him tall and gangly. Ellen plucked the photo from his fingers and shook her head. “Jesus, John.”
John let out a relieved breath. “So it wasn’t just me.”
“Is that …?”
“I don’t see how it could be. …He’s riding with Sam; they’re running from demons. And he’s psychic. Same damned smile.”
“You don’t think that’s a bit of a coincidence?”
“I might have but … my boy is dead - this one isn’t.” He looked back down at the photograph and himself and his boys. “God, he had a lot freckles.”
“John, if this boy is psychic, like you say, and there are demons after him? Maybe it’s not so ridiculous. Demons have done a lot of crazy things to mess with a person’s mind.”
“My son’s dead,” John said, his tone strict and breaking. “He was taken - I was right there and they still got him - and I looked everywhere and I found him. I watched my wife burn, and I saw what they did to... That demon, he took my boy, and he - and now Dean’s dead.”
“A demon would say or do just about anything to keep itself safe,” Ellen said.
“You didn’t see what I saw,” John said. “What that - that thing - left of my boy. My boy is dead and this,” he held-up the other photograph - another smiling face - “it’s just wishful thinking.” He pushed away from the bar, tossing several bills down, the door swinging shut behind him with a whine and a creak.
“I don’t understand,” Jo asked, stepped up beside her mother to where the other hunter had disappeared to. “Why wouldn’t he be happy? His son could be alive.”
Ellen slung her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her close. “It’s not so simple. John’s got guilt coming out his ears about his boys. If that wasn’t Dean’s body, then he stopped looking for his son, left him in a demon’s clutches, and he has to square with that.”
……………………………………
Sam walked into the motel room and immediately into the path of a careening rubber ball. It smacked his leg and then bounced back across the room, directly into Dean’s awaiting hands. “Ouch. Seriously, what the hell?”
Dean was sitting on the floor, his knees up and his back resting against the wall, his feet, as usual, were bare and he wiggled his toes a little as he looked blankly up at Sam. “I’m having a Steve McQueen moment,” Dean said. “Cooler!” he said in a gruff, accented voice, and then threw the ball back across the room.
Sam dodged it and rolled his eyes. “You’re being a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“You won’t let me out of this friggin’ room!”
“Because you nearly threw a porcelain cat at Mr. Adams’ head when we were questioning him, and then had a full-on episode on the way back to the motel!” Which was true. Sam had been more than a little freaked-out when Dean’s wincing had turned into full-on body-spasms right there in the passenger seat of the impala. They’d been ricocheting from state to state for over a month, and Dean was back to looking as healthy as he ever had, but he wasn’t back to a hundred percent because it was far too easy for him to lose control of everything and get overwhelmed, Sam had seen it happen more than once and was quickly learning the best ways to deal with Dean when he got like that. “I didn’t jail you in here,” Sam said. “I told you to get some sleep.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t sleep,” Dean pouted. He lobbed the ball at the wall again but Sam snatched it-up before it could reach its target. “Hey.”
“Bed!”
“No way!” Dean said, but Sam had learned that with Dean, any direct order (unless it was given in bed) was (by some unwritten law that Sam himself was not aware of) required to be answered with at least a token amount of resistance. Sam was not dissuaded.
“Yes, bed!” he said. “You’re practically vibrating right there, you’re so wired!”
“Well, how the hell is bed supposed to help me?” Dean said as he shot to his feet. Sam raised both his eyebrows and then snatched the hem of Dean’s shirt and yanked it cleanly over his head. “Hey!” Sam’s palm landed smack in the centre of Dean’s chest, and he pushed, toppled Dean backwards onto the bed and climbed on top of him. “Oh.” He pulled Dean’s pants down his legs and watched as Dean let his arms fall to either side of him. “Yeah, this could help,” Dean said, and Sam rolled his eyes, tongue his way up Dean’s left thigh and then along the length of Dean’s hardening cock. “Mm. Harder.”
“Bossy,” Sam muttered, kissed the tip of Dean’s cock then slid his lips around it and swallowed it down.
“Uh,” Dean said. “Even.”
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
Finishline Coupons
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Twelve: CAPSIZED
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 twelve | CAPSIZED
Sam eyed Dean, brief darting glances to where the other man had fallen asleep in the passenger seat of the impala. His colour was returning slowly and the dark bruising that had marred the skin beneath Dean’s eyes were only faint smudges, he didn’t move quite so clumsily anymore but he was still quiet. “Stop it,” Dean muttered.
“What?” Sam asked, glancing at the road and then back at Dean.
“You’re staring at me. It’s hard to relax when you’re staring at me.”
“You’ve never complained about it before.”
“Well, you’ve never done it when you’ve been behind the wheel of a car, dude. How often do you watch me sleep, anyway? Is this a creepy fetish I should know about?”
Sam smiled but didn’t say anything; he stretched his hand across the space to rest on Dean’s left leg. “We’re almost there.”
“Where?” Dean asked, sitting-up finally and looking somewhat blearily around them. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Sam admitted.
“Okay. I won’t ask.” They’d been driving for the better part of the day and Sam was starting to get tired. They’d spent three days in Fitchburg because Dean had barely been able to keep his eyes open for more than a few hours and Sam wanted to spend as much time as he could in a place he knew was safe before they headed-out. There was the added fact that Dean had to say good-bye to Rosemary and Sophia, and tie-up loose ends. Sophia had quit the diner to look after the Wyvern, and promised to keep an eye on Dean’s house, although it had been Sam that had asked her to do so, Dean wanted nothing to do with the place. Rosemary had been teary-eyed and sobbing, and had held Dean for a long time (while Dean pretended that he didn’t appreciate it), and Sam had sat there trying to assure himself and everyone else that this wasn’t permanent, that they’d figure something out.
They hadn’t explained to Rosemary why Dean had to leave, as far as she knew, Dean just needed some time away from Fitchburg to recover from his dad’s death. “I’ll look after your mama’s garden,” she promised, pressing a cut sunflower into Dean’s hand. “It’ll be just the way you left it when you get back.” Dean didn’t say anything, and he’d put the flower in a drawer, but that night when Sam had been flipping through one of his spell books, he’d found the flower pressed between a spell to lock small spaces from dark energy and an incantation to summon a water spirit.
Dean scratched at his neck and Sam glanced over again. “Turn for a second?” he asked.
Dean twisted in the seat so Sam could look at the marking he’d made. “We need to re-do it, it’s rubbing off again.” It had been forgotten between the horrible migraine Dean had suffered that first day in the motel, and the good-byes. Sam had maybe gotten a little confident that the protections he and his dad had put-up in that room were enough, and he re-drew it with the pen each night after Dean’s shower, that was fine - just a precaution.
“You said you’d do it in henna?”
“Yeah, I need to get the stuff,” Sam said. “We’ll find a place tonight. If we’re going to be on the road then it should probably be at least semi-permanent.” Dean nodded his head vaguely. “Hey, how are you holding-up?”
“Don’t go all mushy-caring on me, okay?”
“Just asking.” They were quiet, and then Dean fished-out that box of tapes and selected a new one: CCR and he kept sneaking-up the volume. Sam thought maybe that was Dean’s way of blocking-out the world - if the music was loud enough, it would distract him from whatever he was picking-up from the people just beyond the car, the other drivers that shared their road. “We should probably pick-up something to eat.”
“Hm,” Dean said, noncommittally.
“Do you need another pain killer?” Dean shook his head but let his eyes fall closed. Sam started checking the road signs for a motel close-by.
…………………………………………
John stood on the front porch and looked around at the fresh green lawn and bright painted door. Every inch of the house was light and welcoming. He pulled his picklocks from his pocket and opened the door with ease, stepping inside. Everything in the space looked normal, and there was nothing that would even hint that demons might have gone through and made the home a nightmare for a psychic they were hoping to take-over and apparently control.
He dropped the picklocks back in his coat pocket, pulled his EMF meter free and paced slowly back-and-forth through the main floor of the house. There was enough there to prove conclusively that something got in before Sam had had a chance to pass-on how to protect the place. It made him more than a little irritated. Psychics were delicate and needed protection - extra protection. This kid’s parents didn’t know what they were doing, not a single charm or sigil, nothing to keep that house safe.
He let out a breath of air, realized it hadn’t been all that long ago that he was just as lax as well. The difference was that these parents known better - had probably thought that their son’s weird gifts were the extent of the weirdness in the world. That is was his own gifts that he needed protecting from when the truth was that psychics attracted the supernatural like moths to flame.
He climbed the stairs and continued onward, inspecting paintings and artwork and furniture cluttering the space - making it a home - until he was standing in a yellow room with blue bedding and photographs on the walls. The EMF was squealing, and John flicked it off, stepping towards the frames and peering at smiling faces. A young girl that he had seen going in and out of Sam’s motel room, and also the plump smiling woman who had always left that room clutching a handkerchief. In another John guessed it was the kid with his parents. One photograph made him pause - a woman with her hair held-back by a bandana and Sam’s friend - Dean - grinning like he’d won the lottery and holding a book up.
It was the smile more than anything that had him staring, memories flickering in his head that he fought with everything in him, but regardless of the hurt he reached his hand-up, ran the barest touch of fingertips across a smile that was almost - but there was no way. John shook his head and tucked the EMF back in his pocket. He was quick to leave.
…………………………………
Dean sat on the bed, his legs crossed under him, his head bowed forward and wearing nothing but a pair of washed out blue jeans. Sam dragged his fingertips across the faded ink markings, mostly because the skin was smooth and sensitive beneath his touch. “It won’t hurt and it’s not permanent,” Sam said.
“Just get on with it,” Dean said. “M’not a baby.” It was half-hearted protest, mostly said just to distract from the barely repressed shudder. Sam picked-up the brush he was using and set to work re-working the protection charm in thick, goopy henna. Dean stayed perfectly still, but Sam kept one hand resting on the juncture between neck and shoulder - just a reminder - while the other hand wielded the brush. When the design was done, Sam couldn’t help blowing air across it - not that it would actually help the ink dry any faster - and then Dean really did shiver, then.
“Okay, you have to let it dry.”
“No shit, really?” Dean quipped.
“Which means don’t get your hair in it.”
“I’m not the one with the mop on my head.” Sam smacked Dean lightly, but Dean only settled carefully down on the bed so he could watch the TV and not worry about wrecking Sam’s work. Sam dropped down into the space between Dean and the pillows, draped an arm casually around his waist and the other propped beneath his head. He could see the TV over Dean’s shoulder, but it was not the TV that he was watching - the wet henna was drying on Dean’s neck and he knew what it was, what each curve of the complicated and self-created sigil meant, but he couldn’t stop thinking that it was something he designed and that he had painted onto his lover’s skin.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, he wasn’t aware of what he was doing until his lips were pressed on the mark. Dean’s eyes had dropped closed but they slit open for a moment as his sleep-blurred voice mumbled, “D’you smudge it?”
“Naw,” Sam said. “It’s dry. I was just checking.”
“Liar. You were staring again,” Dean mumbled, but then he had fallen back asleep so Sam didn’t have to lie. Sam kissed a lazy trail up Dean’s neck and then ran his tongue along the arch of Dean’s right ear. “Mm,” Dean mumbled in his sleep. Sam smiled a little and shifted his body closer until there was no space between them.
…………………………………..
Sam blinked his eyes open. It was too early to be awake - and he was an early riser. He wondered at first what had woken him, but realized a moment later when the total absence of Dean’s body registered in his mind. He had put-up the same wards that had been place on their motel room back in Fitchburg, and either way, Dean had been marked with protection directly on his skin - but the thought still passed through Sam’s head that something had taken him. John had warned that demons could always find a loophole if they wanted something bad enough and were given enough time.
The fear ebbed as soon as Sam had managed to focus his eyes and get them opened more than a squint, because Dean’s ruffled ducky-hair came into focus and he could see him sitting in the darkness by his duffle bag, peering inside it and not moving. Sam stayed quiet for a moment, wondering what the man was thinking about, but it seemed as if Dean had been set on pause, and no one was intending to press play.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
Dean jerked a little, and Sam noticed that Dean’s hand had been inside the duffle, resting atop something. He turned and mustered a smile. “Sophia,” he said, and then pulled the corner of a quilt up that had been folded neatly and stuffed into the duffle.
“I was wondering what the hell she’d but in there,” Sam muttered, dragging himself-up and slipping off the bed. He settled onto the floor beside Dean, their shoulders pressed together, maybe leaning on the other just a little.
“It’s home,” Dean said, still holding a fistful of the quilt. “My mom made it for me.” They were quiet, sitting there leaning on each other, and Sam wasn’t exactly certain what to say. He pulled the quilt free, draping it over their shoulders and then wrapping his arm around Dean, smiling a little when Dean slid his arm around Sam’s waist. “Do we know what we’re doing, Sam? I mean, where are we going?”
Hunting wasn’t Dean’s life. Sam might have explained what it entailed, but it was quite a different thing to actually live it. Dean had left his home behind, and his friends and everything he’d ever known. He’d left behind certainty and predictability. He had Sam, and he had a fast car and a trunk full of weapons, but Sam thought that maybe it was a bit much to ask of anyone to accept that graciously and not feel any fear when they started a freefall.
“We have to keep moving,” Sam said. “For a while, that means avoiding anything familiar - so, that means I can’t take you to my friend Bobby’s place. We can hunt, if you want, or we could just … go and see the second largest ball of twine, if you want.”
“We’ll hunt,” Dean said. “No sense just wastin’ time.” He picked at one of the squares of the quilts. “What are we runnin’ from, exactly?”
Sam sighed. He had wanted to put-off telling Dean the truth until he had the chance to really deal with his dad’s death, and leaving everything behind. He hadn’t really had high hopes for Dean following along without asking questions, but it would have been better - easier - if they could just take one thing at a time, because there was a long happening all at once.
“A demon,” Sam said. “Or maybe demons. We’re not entirely sure. There’s been incidents across the country - sometimes houses, sometimes people - burning, and always there was this mark present.”
“Show me,” Dean said. Sam shifted away so he could kneel-up and drag his own duffel off the chair it had been lying on and onto the floor. He snatched his journal from inside and unwound the leather cord that kept it closed, flipped to the black-and-white photographs he’d been collecting from each scene and handed them over. Dean looked at them closely and then ruffled-up his hair even more. “You maybe have a piece of something you picked-up from one of these places?”
“Dean, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” Sam didn’t want to point-out that Dean was still pale and exhausted and that every time they took a pit-stop somewhere, Sam worried that Dean might get hit with something. He could tell that Dean was still having difficulty keeping the world in its place and not letting it overwhelm him, there was no way he was going to drop a demon-marked remnant from a violent attack that ended someone’s life into Dean’s palm - even if he had one.
“Just asking,” Dean said, then slid his hand back to rub at the bump on his neck that the dried-henna left.
“You can peel that off, now. I can re-ink it when it starts to fade, but that shouldn’t be for over a week or two so…” Dean started picking at the dried ink. He’d wanted black ink instead of the orangey-red that the woman in the store had been covered in, and Sam had agreed, he wasn’t certain if the lighter colour would make the marking weaker, and he didn’t particularly feel like experimenting with that.
“So tomorrow we find a hunt somewhere and begin our adventures,” Dean muttered.
“Yeah,” Sam said, took the pictures from Dean’s hand and tossed them back in the general direction of his bag. He dragged them both up and smirked as Dean tumbled onto the bed, forgoing the scratchy motel blanket for the quilt.
Sam waited until Dean had settled, curled on his side, and then Dean stretched his arm behind him, lifted up the quilt in invitation. “Get your butt down here,” Dean said, and Sam slid onto the bed and beneath the quilt.
“You’re bossy,” Sam muttered.
“And you’re a giant freak-‘o-nature, call it even.”
…………………………………….
“You look like you’ve bitten down on a lemon,” Ellen said, wiping-off a glass and setting aside so she could lean across the bar to get just the right angle for that ‘tell me what the hell your problem is this time’ glare that John was all too familiar with.
The truth was that John was at a loss. His son was jackrabbitting across the country, zigzagging from hunt to hunt with a civilian tagging along - a civilian psychic, and damned if John wasn’t kicking himself in the head for giving out that order because he should have known better. One psychic was the equivalent of a shining beacon - two? Not a good thing.
“Come on,” Ellen coaxed. “You can’t keep glaring at that glass, it’s not gonna solve anyone’s problems.”
“It’s Dean,” John muttered, not even really intending to. He hadn’t even thought the name in the weeks he had separated from Sam. It was habit, memories pressed-down so deep that even as the name slipped passed his lips he almost thought that he meant someone else - that psychic travelling with his son - anyone else.
“John,” Ellen said, but her tone was completely different, her expression was completely different.
John knocked back his whisky and shook his head, didn’t want to talk about it - couldn’t stop talking about it. “He was always so much like Mary.”
“What’s got you thinkin’ about your boy?”
“Do you know it’s been years since I ---“ but he couldn’t finish the sentence because it was a lie. It hadn’t been years since he’d thought about Dean. He tried with everything he was to tuck the memories away, but they were persistent and a part of him didn’t want to let them go. His fingers fumbled in his wallet, drew-out the crinkled photograph - he and a very young Dean and an even younger Sam, grinning at the camera. He took it out now and then, just to see if he still remembered his boy’s smile - so much like Mary. “You know, I must be out of my mind.”
“Dean’s loss was hard on everyone, especially you, John.”
John shook his head, flipped the photo for her to see. “It’s his smile, you know? Mary’s smile. I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“What are you talking about?” John slid another photo from his pocket, this one folded in half - a grinning boy in that awkward stage of puberty that stretched him out, made him tall and gangly. Ellen plucked the photo from his fingers and shook her head. “Jesus, John.”
John let out a relieved breath. “So it wasn’t just me.”
“Is that …?”
“I don’t see how it could be. …He’s riding with Sam; they’re running from demons. And he’s psychic. Same damned smile.”
“You don’t think that’s a bit of a coincidence?”
“I might have but … my boy is dead - this one isn’t.” He looked back down at the photograph and himself and his boys. “God, he had a lot freckles.”
“John, if this boy is psychic, like you say, and there are demons after him? Maybe it’s not so ridiculous. Demons have done a lot of crazy things to mess with a person’s mind.”
“My son’s dead,” John said, his tone strict and breaking. “He was taken - I was right there and they still got him - and I looked everywhere and I found him. I watched my wife burn, and I saw what they did to... That demon, he took my boy, and he - and now Dean’s dead.”
“A demon would say or do just about anything to keep itself safe,” Ellen said.
“You didn’t see what I saw,” John said. “What that - that thing - left of my boy. My boy is dead and this,” he held-up the other photograph - another smiling face - “it’s just wishful thinking.” He pushed away from the bar, tossing several bills down, the door swinging shut behind him with a whine and a creak.
“I don’t understand,” Jo asked, stepped up beside her mother to where the other hunter had disappeared to. “Why wouldn’t he be happy? His son could be alive.”
Ellen slung her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her close. “It’s not so simple. John’s got guilt coming out his ears about his boys. If that wasn’t Dean’s body, then he stopped looking for his son, left him in a demon’s clutches, and he has to square with that.”
……………………………………
Sam walked into the motel room and immediately into the path of a careening rubber ball. It smacked his leg and then bounced back across the room, directly into Dean’s awaiting hands. “Ouch. Seriously, what the hell?”
Dean was sitting on the floor, his knees up and his back resting against the wall, his feet, as usual, were bare and he wiggled his toes a little as he looked blankly up at Sam. “I’m having a Steve McQueen moment,” Dean said. “Cooler!” he said in a gruff, accented voice, and then threw the ball back across the room.
Sam dodged it and rolled his eyes. “You’re being a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“You won’t let me out of this friggin’ room!”
“Because you nearly threw a porcelain cat at Mr. Adams’ head when we were questioning him, and then had a full-on episode on the way back to the motel!” Which was true. Sam had been more than a little freaked-out when Dean’s wincing had turned into full-on body-spasms right there in the passenger seat of the impala. They’d been ricocheting from state to state for over a month, and Dean was back to looking as healthy as he ever had, but he wasn’t back to a hundred percent because it was far too easy for him to lose control of everything and get overwhelmed, Sam had seen it happen more than once and was quickly learning the best ways to deal with Dean when he got like that. “I didn’t jail you in here,” Sam said. “I told you to get some sleep.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t sleep,” Dean pouted. He lobbed the ball at the wall again but Sam snatched it-up before it could reach its target. “Hey.”
“Bed!”
“No way!” Dean said, but Sam had learned that with Dean, any direct order (unless it was given in bed) was (by some unwritten law that Sam himself was not aware of) required to be answered with at least a token amount of resistance. Sam was not dissuaded.
“Yes, bed!” he said. “You’re practically vibrating right there, you’re so wired!”
“Well, how the hell is bed supposed to help me?” Dean said as he shot to his feet. Sam raised both his eyebrows and then snatched the hem of Dean’s shirt and yanked it cleanly over his head. “Hey!” Sam’s palm landed smack in the centre of Dean’s chest, and he pushed, toppled Dean backwards onto the bed and climbed on top of him. “Oh.” He pulled Dean’s pants down his legs and watched as Dean let his arms fall to either side of him. “Yeah, this could help,” Dean said, and Sam rolled his eyes, tongue his way up Dean’s left thigh and then along the length of Dean’s hardening cock. “Mm. Harder.”
“Bossy,” Sam muttered, kissed the tip of Dean’s cock then slid his lips around it and swallowed it down.
“Uh,” Dean said. “Even.”
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
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