Hearts and Flowers Part 1
Title: Hearts and Flowers
Artist: Merakieross
Author: Tifaching
Characters: Sam, Dean, OFC, OMCs
Rating: N/C 17
Word count:
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Summary: Dean stumbles across a case that spans generations in an old men of letters journal that leads to an evil Reverend in a time traveling church.
A/N: Written for spn_reversebang and Merakieross' fabulous art! Thank you so much to the mods for giving me time after I accidently deleted half my story on the day I was supposed to post. I felt like such an idiot. Thank you! And Thank you so much to the fabulous creator of this art! Everyone should go give their gorgeous, sexy pics lots of love. I was hoping to post earlier today (yesterday, now)but some last minute porn demanded to be part of it, lol. I hope you enjoy!
Art post: https://merakieross.livejournal.com/16082.html
It’s quiet in the bunker. Dean checked on Sam ten minutes ago, palmed his forehead to check for fever, pulled up blankets displaced by his brother’s tosses and turns and replaced the warm bottle of water on the nightstand with a cold one. Now he’s back at the library table, slouched low in his chair with a cut glass tumbler full of bourbon and ice in his hand. Sam’s on the mend. His fever is low grade now, not furnace hot and there’s hint of color returning to his face. Dean swallows a yawn and rubs a hand across his eyes. He hasn’t gotten much rest since Sam got skewered by a tree branch fending off a black dog. Now that Sam’s shuffled off death’s doorstep the idea of dropping face first onto his mattress and sleeping straight through the weekend has an appeal that can’t be denied. Still, Sam’s not up and about yet and he’s in Dean’s bed. Blinking back exhaustion he yawns so wide his jaw hurts and goes back to leafing through an old journal of the Men of Letters unsolved cases.
*
“Hey.”
Dean looks up blearily to see Sam looming over him, one big hand propping his tottering frame up against the table and the other shaking Dean’s shoulder. Groaning, Dean pushes himself upright, shooting a guilty glance downward in reassurance that the inevitable puddle of drool was pooling on the table and not soaking the pages of an irreplaceable book. “Hey, yourself,” he says. “About time you rolled your lazy ass out of bed.”
Sam just blows out a breath and nods. “Probably could have slept another few hours but I wanted to see if I could make it to the bathroom without your help.” At Dean’s raised eyebrow, he grins and nods. “Affirmative.”
Dean runs his gaze over Sam’s week old stubble and lank hair. “Should have stayed there, dude. You need a shower like whoah.”
“I’m starving, though.” Sam looks at his brother plaintively. Ninety nine times out of one hundred this will work but Dean’s not having it now.
“No way. I didn’t keep you from bleeding to death, lug your oversized self back here and nurse you back to reasonable health just to have you die from Ebola or some shit. You’re getting soaped up and rinsed clean- including that mess on your head- before I scramble you a single egg.”
A heavy sigh is the only answer and Sam’s shoulders slump as he turns away. Dean’s out of his chair and right behind his brother before he’s three steps down the hallway. Sam’s slow but steady on his feet and Dean feels a little better about making Sam shower before breakfast. Sam turns his head and quirks an eyebrow as Dean comes up beside him.
“Gotta make sure you don’t slip or something.” Dean smirks up at Sam. “Can’t have you out of commission for another week.”
“Not up for much right now,” Sam warns.
“Ah, we’ll think of something.”
*
Dean flips on the light to the shower room and grimaces as he always does. The room’s warm and clean but it’s like showering in a barracks or an especially gloomy gym. The extra space comes in handy for some of the ways they’ve gotten it on, but sometimes Dean misses the tight squeeze of Sam against his back in a motel shower. They’re not going to be having a rodeo tonight anyway so he shrugs it off and shimmies out of his jeans, dropping them to the floor. His shirt comes next and he peels it over his head slowly, knowing without looking that Sam is enjoying the view. When he does glance his brother’s way, Sam’s eyes are wide and dark, his lips parted in a small smile. Dean grins and Sam snorts and rolls his eyes without changing his expression one damn bit. Dean heads for the closet shower head and gets the water running steamy hot before heading back to his brother. Sam’s sweatpants are pooled around his bare feet but his bruised ribs are giving him a problem maneuvering his t-shirt up over his head. Dean blows out a heavy breath because the half of Sam that’s visible is pretty darn impressive and once his shirt comes off Dean’s not going to be able to keep his hands to himself.
“Here,” Dean says, taking the hem of Sam’s shirt and rolling it up the mile of Sam torso until Sam can first wriggle his good arm out of the sleeve and then his head. Dean slides the shirt carefully over his brother’s bad side and then off and Sam’s there in all his bare naked glory. Dean’s tongue comes out to slide over his lips and he takes a step forward to run it over Sam’s nipples, perking up in the rising steam, before he remembers Ebola and grips Sam’s arm to drag him under the pounding spray.
“Ow,” Sam yells and Dean instantly releases his bruised forearm and mentally hurries Sam along until his brother groans as he steps beneath the streaming water. Dean lets Sam soak himself for a long moment, satisfied to watch water cascade down Sam’s body. Dean fills his hand with shampoo, knowing that Sam’s not going to be able to get both hands up to wash his hair and pulls his brother’s head gently forward until he can lather up the tangled locks. When Sam’s head is foamy and smelling of coconut, Dean lets him straighten up and moves around behind him to gently massage the tension out of the base of his brother’s skull. Dean slicks his hands with soap and begins to wash Sam’s body, digging his thumbs into knotted muscles as they move across his brother’s back and arms, down his ass cheeks, his thighs, his calves. Sam’s moaning softly over the noise of the shower and Dean reaches up to rinse his hair until it squeaks before moving around to finish the job. Sam’s eyes are heavy lidded and his cock is hard and he holds out his hand for the soap. “I can take it from here.”
“Like hell,” Dean says. “Close your eyes.” Sam sputters as Dean soaps up his face and neck and raises his head into the spray. Sam’s chest is next and Dean circles Sam’s nipples with his soap slick fingers until his brother is panting. Dean moves down Sam’s taut belly and squats to wash his legs before straightening up for the grand finale. His preference would be to blow Sam, but the way his brother looks right now, he’s likely to fall over when he orgasms and Dean wants to be in a position to catch him if that happens rather than be crushed. Dean’s hard enough to pound nails himself. Just having his hands on Sam has that effect on him. He slides a palm under Sam’s balls, fingers quick and light as he gently massages them. Leaning forward, he sucks Sam’s nipple into his mouth, his brother’s big hand gripping the back of his head to hold him there. Sam’s breathing is coming hard and fast as is Dean’s and Dean twists his head out of Sam’s grasp and grins up at his brother. He wraps one hand around Sam’s shaft and the other around his own and begins to stroke in rhythm, in unison. Neither one of them is going to last long, but he goes slow and steady to try and make it last. Up and down, twist and grip, thumb sliding across the head, flesh hot and slick in his hands and Sam leans forward to grip his shoulder and rest their foreheads together. Dean comes first, fountaining over his fist a split second before Sam, whose knees begin to buckle before he catches himself. They lean against each other for a long moment, letting the water rinse them clean before Dean turns the taps off, wraps Sam in big fluffy towels from the shelf by the door and pushes him onto a stool in front of a sink.
“Shave and a haircut?” Dean vigorously towels Sam’s hair then uses the damp towel to wipe steam off the mirror.
Sam wrinkles his nose as he turns his face side to side to get a good look. “Definite no to the haircut, but nice try. And a shave would take too long, man, I’m starving.”
“Yeah, maybe tomorrow,” Dean says, running a comb through Sam’s hair and ignoring his brother’s curses when he hits the occasional snag. “Quit complaining. That shampoo you use kicks ass. I’m surprised I don’t have to shave your head bald to straighten this mess out.”
“Okay, okay.” Sam bats Dean’s hand away impatiently and hauls himself to his feet. “I’m clean. My hair is combed. Feed me.”
Dean’s dead guy robe is hanging on a hook by the door and he pulls it on as he follows Sam out of the room. Sam’s got a towel knotted around his waist and another draped across his shoulders. “Yes, your royal highness,” he says, heroically resisting the urge to pull Sam’s towel off and snap his ass with it.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sam warns, flipping him off, and Dean grins as he trails Sam down the hall.
“Hey.” Dean grabs Sam’s arm and steadies him as he sways slightly when they reach the library. “You ready to head back to bed?”
“Not until you change the Ebola plagued sheets.” Sam grins up at his brother as he sinks into the library chair Dean had been sleeping in that morning. “And make me a sandwich.”
“Could go back to your own bed, you mooch,” Dean grumbles. He heads down the hallway to his room anyway and strips the bedding off before throwing it in the corner. Fresh sheets with military corners, two clean blankets and cases for the pillows have the memory foam all ready for Sam to head back whenever he wants. Dean’s going to join him this time.
Sam’s got his head bowed over the open journal and doesn’t look up when his brother drops into the chair opposite him and slides a plate holding two ham and cheese sandwiches across the table. Dean sits in silence for a few minutes while Sam slowly peruses the handwritten pages and chews absently. Finally he can’t contain himself and reaches across the table to poke Sam in the shoulder.
“What ‘cha looking at?” He’s got a pretty good idea. He’d been locked on one himself before dropping off.
“This church in Virginia.” Sam spins the book around, showing Dean a drawing of an old wooden church with a graveyard on one side. “According to legend, it vanished three hundred years ago after a string of missing women over several years were found mutilated in one of the vaults.”
“Then it showed up again a hundred years later and more women disappeared.”
“And then a hundred years after that.” Sam spins the book to face him again and runs his finger down the page. “Apparently the men of letters were there for this one. They managed to keep the deaths down to a minimum but they couldn’t stop the building from vanishing again.” Sam turns the page. “Looks like they came up with a spell they thought would beat it next time it showed up, though.”
“Then they went and all got killed before they got a chance.”
“Yeah.” Sam blows out a breath. “Yeah. But, Dean,”
“It’s in a little over two weeks. You just Rip Van Winkled for almost that long. You sure you’re up for it?”
“Well, we’re not going to be around in another hundred years to take it on then.”
“God, I hope not,” Dean mutters. “But good point. Might as well take our shot at it now before it Brigadoons away again.”
Sam raises an eyebrow in his brother’s direction. “I can’t believe you watch old movie musicals.”
“Dude, you see the legs on those chicks? All the way up and when they twirl around those skirts just rise. Mmmh.” Dean shakes his head and stifles a yawn, raising his wrist to glance at his watch. “Man, I’m beat and it’s only four o’clock.”
“Morning or afternoon,” Sam asks with a yawn of his own.
“Damned if I know. Let’s go back to bed and check that when we wake up again.”
“Sounds good to me.” Sam pushes himself to his feet and yawns his way back to the bedroom, Dean close behind. Sam doesn’t say anything as he drops his towels and slides naked between the cool clean sheets but he makes a happy murmur that Dean echoes as he slips in beside him. Dean flops around a bit before he’s comfortable and drapes his arm across the warm wide expanse of Sam’s back.
“Night, Sammy,” he whispers, but Sam’s dead to the world and Dean follows him into sleep moments later.
*
Sam wants to leave the next day but Dean puts his foot down hard on that idea. Sam’s still weak and underfed and he’s not going anywhere until he’s fully hydrated.
“It’s less than a day’s drive.” Dean slaps a plate of pancakes down in front of his brother, having ascertained that, having slept all night and into the next day, it’s ten o’clock in the morning. He slathers his own cakes with real butter and syrup before sliding the containers Sam’s way. “And I think that maybe it’d be a good idea to do a little more research into this place? Make sure there’s no haunted orchards? No creepy townsfolk? I mean, why would people still live there anyway?”
“A hundred years is a long time, Dean. People forget, they don’t believe in the first place, new folks move in. Lots of reasons.”{C}
“Not a single one good enough to risk spending eternity naked with your throat slit in a crypt in a dimension traveling evil church.”
“I don’t know.” Sam chews his pancakes slowly. “Some people have a strong connection to place. It’s their home and they won’t leave. Evil time traveling churches be damned.”
“So to speak.”
“Yeah,” Sam says with a laugh. “So to speak.”
*
Sam’s worked hard on sorting the card catalogue in the library and it pays off in spades in finding materials on their prospective case. The journal Dean pulled out totally at random to kill time has a good solid base for what they will be up against but more potentially lifesaving information is never a bad thing in Sam’s mind. When Dean gets back from his grocery run, long neglected during Sam’s recovery, the table in the library is piled with books on the history of Virginia, colonial religion and inter-dimensional travel. Sam grins at the look on his brother’s face as he passes the library, laden down with grocery bags.
“Come straight back after you put that away,” he yells at Dean’s back.
Dean doesn’t come straight back but when he eventually appears he’s got a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup with a spoon in it and a sleeve of crackers in his hands. He does an about face after setting them down in front of Sam and is back in minutes with his own portion. Sliding into the chair opposite his brother, he crushes saltines into his bowl and glowers at the towers of books.
“Dude, I thought maybe a couple of more journals, maybe a map…”
Sam just shrugs as he slurps down his soup. “I’m sorry, who was worried about haunted orchards or creepy townspeople? Pretty sure that was you. Besides, the spell itself isn’t that complicated but getting what we need for it might take some work?”
“Yeah,” Dean sighs, setting his empty bowl aside. “It would be great to have everything we need before we get there, but it’s pretty clear we have to get the major component after the bad guys show up. We’ve got a limited amount of time and a lot of chopping and hacking to do.”
Sam wrinkles his nose but stays silent as he jots a few notes onto the yellow pad in front of him before closing his book and pulling another from the stack. He hands it wordlessly to his brother and Dean opens Religious Practices in Colonial Virginia and grudgingly gets to work.
*
Sam’s still worn down and Dean keeps a close eye on him. He ignores the way Sam’s eyes roll when he deposits a bottle of water at his elbow and then sits down across him with a beer. There’s a steady stream of food headed Sam’s way at any hour of the day. Meal times are an arbitrary construct anyway, Dean’s always thought. Sam protests and tries to pretend he’s full, but Dean’s not fooled. His brother doesn’t maintain that oh, so delicious mountain of muscle he calls a body on lettuce and air. And then there are the naps. Sam’s getting stronger every day but he’s still got circles under his eyes and his eyelids droop after every carb and protein heavy meal Dean insists he eat. Dean absolutely doesn’t have ulterior motives for feeding his brother. Sam needs to eat to regain his strength. His guiding Sam down the hall to the bedroom, helping him strip to his boxers and tucking him into bed is just a happy side effect. If he crawls in with him and nestles up to his warmth to catch up on some of his own missed shut eye, it’s just icing on the cake. The day Sam’s up before him, out of bed and out of the bunker for a run, coming back from his shower clean shaven is the day Dean decides for sure they’re going to Virginia.
“OK,” he says as Sam sits down with a cup of coffee and a sandwich he made for himself. Dean doesn’t miss the slight hitch as his brother lowers himself to his chair, though. Sam’s still not completely healed. “You’re, like, eighty-five percent. We’re going to need a couple of days advance time to set things up. You good for this?”
“Definitely.” Sam takes a gulp of his coffee. “I’m ready to go.”
“Awesome.” Dean flips open his notebook. “Let’s go over this one more time. The town was settled in, uh, 1620 by a group of about thirty colonists who cleared the land and built some houses before bringing their families over from England. They built the church in 1640 and had two ministers before a Reverend William Platt took over in 1705.”
“The first minister died in a fairly straightforward fall from a horse.” Sam stares morosely at the bottom of his almost empty coffee cup. “The second disappeared, coincidentally, a few days before Reverend Platt showed up.”
“Dangerous times back then. Wild animals, hostile natives, not that I blame them, heavy growth forests. Anything could have happened to him. Knowing what we know about this Platt guy, I’m betting he happened, though.”
“Probably. The timing was pretty convenient.” Sam shifts a bit in his chair, catches Dean looking and straightens up. “He came in and basically just took over the church. I guess nobody questioned a man of God.”
“Supposed man of God. People are so gullible.”
“lt’s come in handy for us a time or two.”
Dean nods. “Yeah, can’t argue with that. Still, according to the records, nobody liked this dude and they just let him waltz in and take over.”
“Well, especially back in those days, religion ruled everything in that area. You got a preacher and went to his church no matter what. People who didn’t go to church had bad reputations and nobody wanted to deal with what that meant.”
“Scarlet letters? Burning at the stake? Can’t imagine why they didn’t make waves. Too bad they didn’t know how much God didn’t give a damn about any of it.”
“Yeah, well, people believe what they want to believe.” Sam flips the page. “So the good people of the settlement attended church on Sunday and had the reverend over for dinner and kept their eyes on their daughters and their valuables. The first woman, Prudence Blackwell, wife of the town blacksmith, disappeared in 1710. He bided his time. Over the next seven years, five more women vanished without a trace. All different ages, sixteen to forty five and no similar characteristic other than they were all female. The last one was Sarah, uh, Prufrock, in the fall of 1717. She was the daughter of a farmer who lived on the outskirts of town.”
“When they finally,” Dean says with a roll of his eyes, “decided to check out the skeevy reverend’s church while he was out mooching off one of their fellow town folk. And the men found the entrance to a tunnel beneath the floorboards that led to an underground vault behind the church. In that vault were the corpses of six women in various states of decomposition, but from clothes and other belongings scattered around the room, they identified all of them as the missing women from their town. So they gathered up their pitchforks and torches and muskets for those who had them and went to collect the dirtbag.”
“He’d already headed back to the church, though, and by the time they’d tracked him there he’d figured out he was screwed. When the townsmen arrived to arrest him, they heard ‘chanting in the Devil’s tongue’ from the church and then it vanished right in front of their eyes.” Sam flips the last page over. “The Men of Letters couldn’t get the reverend, because, it seems, he’s stuck somehow in the church. Some screw up in the vanishing spell, they figure. But in his time away, he majicked up some constructs that can leave and they do the girl grabbing for him.”
“Yeah.” Dean holds up an old photograph by one corner, careful not to smudge it. “Fugly mothers, slow according to the report, but hard to bring down and impossible to kill. Still, they think, like with the spell for the church, they’ve come up with a way to beat them.”
Sam blows out a long breath. “They knew their stuff. If anyone could come up with these plans it would be them. Trial and error, though. If it’s wrong this time, who’ll be around in a hundred years to learn from our mistakes?”
“Better not make any then. Improvise if we have to.”
“If we have to.”
*
The sun’s out when they head for Virginia, bright in a cloudless blue sky. Sam’s got the window rolled down, elbow on rim, enjoying the warm wash of air as he stares out into a golden Indian Summer.
“Hey.” Dean reaches across to poke him on the shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam says, “Just thinking about the church. Where does it go? I mean if it was there and you just couldn’t see it, I’d think someone would have figured that out by now. Back in time? Alternate dimension? Be interesting to know what spell got used for it, anyway.”
“Why?” Dean stares at his brother. “We’ve been back in time and it pretty much sucks. Though a spell to an alternate dimension might not be that bad. Got to be one that’s better than this one, right?”
“With our luck?” Sam snorts and pretends to put his fingers in his ears to block out Dean’s descriptions of his perfect alternate realities.
*
Keller, Virginia is a neat, well kept small town, and, Dean can’t help but notice, there aren’t a lot of citizens out and about. He drives slowly down the main street, past the post office and the town hall, garnering quick glances from the few people on the sidewalks.
“Maybe people do remember,” Sam says, craning his neck to look back as they roll back out of town.
“Yeah, we’ll check the people later. There’s a hotel just past the edge of town and the church, well, where the church will be in a couple of days, is about half a mile past that. First things first.”
The sun is sinking toward the horizon when they reach the patch of weathered, overgrown gravestones set back from the road. Sam grabs a shotgun from the weapons duffle and tosses a second to his brother. Dean’s got the EMF detector out and he’s walking slowly among the stones, peering at the faded, lichen encrusted writing on them.
“Nothing going on here right now,” he calls to Sam, wandering over to the flat patch of ground where the church would have been. He stands in silence, staring, until Sam comes up beside him. It’s a rectangular space, the earth dark and bare, not a hint of the weeds covering the surrounding ground poking through the soil.
“Burned, do you think?” Sam reaches to grab Dean as he bends down to touch it. “Don’t, man. Let’s check around town first. Maybe they come out and burn it every year or something.”
“Yeah, or maybe there’s a spell on the earth too.” Dean straightens up and punches Sam lightly on the shoulder. “Might have been cool to get sucked into an alternate dimension, though.”
“I don’t know.” Sam follows his brother back to the car. “I think where ever that church goes isn’t full of beer, cheeseburgers, hot showers and memory foam.”
*
The hotel parking lot is empty and the clerk eyes them warily as they walk into the lobby. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“We’d like a room, please.” Dean slaps a credit card down on the counter. The clerk just looks at it.
“Are you sure? Most folks head to the harvest festival over in Meriden this week. Half the town’s already there.
“We’re sure,” Sam says.
“Yep.” Dean taps his finger on the card. “We don’t like crowds.”
“Might get more crowded than you like in a couple of days.” The card remains untouched.
Sam looms over the counter and eyes the clerk’s nametag. “Look, James. We just drove all the way from Kansas to be in your town today and through the weekend. You’re not really doing your job as a tourism representative if you just tell us to move on.”
“Yeah, well if you get…” James trails off. “You don’t understand, it’s…”
“We understand that in two days a church is going to appear out of thin air half a mile from here and evil sons of bitches are going to come into this really nice seeming little town and make off with some of your really nice seeming neighbors and it won’t end well.” Dean smiles pleasantly. “Unless we stick around and make it a bad day for the bad guys instead. Run the card.”
James picks the card up, gaze darting between the brothers. “You know about the church? And, really, you believe this is going to happen?”
“Don’t you?” Sam raises an eyebrow. “You were practically throwing us out the door two minutes ago.”
James just shrugs. “My sister believes. I don’t really remember my grandma Helen, but she does. Grandma was a little girl in 1917 but she was old enough to remember what happened, according to Mandy. Other people in town had relatives that were there too and passed down the stories. Some believe and some don’t. Me, I don’t want to take any chances. Hey.” His eyes widen as he stares at them. “Are you men of letters?”
“You know about the men of letters?” Dean shakes his head. “This really isn’t turning out how I expected.”
“They were here last time, according to Mandy. The men of letters, I mean. I don’t know that much about them, but Grandma Helen’s mother Matilda got letters from one for while after it happened. I read them once a long time ago and, I mean, it seems crazy what they told us to do, how to prepare. Crazy…” James runs his hands up and down his arms like he’s suddenly gotten a chill and peers at them through wire rimmed glasses.
“Does Mandy still have these letters?” Dean steps forward to take the card James finally rings up.
“She’s the town librarian,” James says with a wry twist of his lips. “She archived them all.”
“Nerdy and efficient.” Dean nods approvingly, gently punching Sam’s arm. “A good combination.”
“Would Mandy be at the library now?” Sam reaches out for the key James is holding out.
“Nah, it’s closed. Opens at nine tomorrow morning.”
“No,” Sam says, correctly interpreting Dean’s raised eyebrow. “We’ll go tomorrow and see what other information Mandy might have.”
“You’re the room all the way down the end,” James says, gesturing vaguely to his left. “If you don’t want to drive half an hour for dinner, Lauren’s Café on Spring Street is your best bet. Hey,” he adds as Sam opens the door. “What do you think of the wards? Did we do them right?”
Sam stares at James for a moment then follows the direction of his finger to an iron framework entwined with red wildflowers that’s hanging on the door. He tilts his head as he studies it. “It’s a bidrun,” he says, finally. “Old and powerful. And done right, for sure.”
“Men of Letters told you how to do this?” Dean peers outside to see similar floral frames decorating every door on the motel.
“Yep.” James grins weakly. “Good to know we didn’t mess it up. Really good.”
Part 2: Here