Will You Settle For Love, Ch 3
Sam couldn’t quite get the story the teen had told him out of his head, though. The next day, he was off and Dean was working, so he did some research on the history of the school. Turned out that it used to be a Catholic girls’ school and convent sponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis. The Franciscan Order was one dedicated to social justice, devoted to chastity and poverty, as well as missionary work, he discovered. Not a surprise. Over time, though, the school had merged with another Catholic high school, and eventually been purchased by the corporation that currently ran it as a for-profit university and the Franciscan Order was no longer affiliated with it at all.
Only one sad story came from his online journey into the history of the place. One of the novices who’d been studying there had been found dead not far from the now-deserted building that Manuel had told him about. The article stated that it appeared the girl had jumped from the roof of the building, which sent up a red flag in Sam’s mind. It was a one-story structure, and unless the girl had landed at some kind of horrific angle or hit something on the way down, it was unlikely that her neck would have snapped from a drop that short. A few more clicks got him into the coroner’s database so he could look at the faded, scanned autopsy report. Maybe someone who wasn’t looking for it (or who didn’t want to see it) could ignore the injuries on this corpse, but to him, the report made it clear that this was no fall, or even a jump.
With a little more digging, Sam found archived journals that alluded to rumors of some of the novices at the school being sexually abused, and the possibility that at least one of them was making a ruckus about it instead of keeping her mouth shut as expected. Was that what had happened? This girl was ready to tell the tale and someone decided to silence her permanently?
As the wheels in his mind kept turning in directions he couldn’t control, he didn’t hear Dean come in.
“What are you doing, Sam?” sounded from behind his left shoulder. Dean’s tone was definitely not a curious one, more accusatory and cold.
“Oh. Ah…” Well, screw it, he wasn’t going to lie to Dean, that was ridiculous. “Okay. This weekend Manuel was telling me about some strange things happening over in an abandoned building at the campus there at Ashford. Kids sneak off there to drink or get some action and lately they’ve been talking about things moving, hearing weird noises. One of the kids, a friend of Manuel’s, swears he got pushed down by something. The kid was scared, worried about his friend, I thought, you know, I could just take a look, see if anything popped out, suspicious, I guess, I don’t know…”
Dean cut off his rambling at that point. “We made an agreement, Sam”, his voice even but with a hint of anger. “We were done with this, done with all of it. Hunting’s not our life anymore. We made this new one. And I kind of thought we both liked it that way.”
“I do, Dean, come on, I do like this life! You have to know that! It’s just…habit? I don’t fucking know, it made me curious, I couldn’t help it. I’m not gonna do anything-”
With more heat behind his words this time, Dean replied, “Fuck that, you’re not gonna do anything, you already have! And you know once you get started with this shit, you’re not just going to forget about it, go tell that kid he’s got nothing to worry about. You’ll be out there with a flashlight and an EMF meter in a hot minute and you fucking know it.”
Sam wasn’t sure how to respond. He hadn’t really thought much about how Dean would react to his research but he certainly didn’t expect him to be quite this pissed off.
“Dean, no, I’m not-”
“Sure, no, you’re not. Not now. You’ll wait til I’m not here. Like you waited til I wasn’t here to do your internet archeology. Jesus, Sam, I thought we’d gotten past hiding shit from each other.” There was no way for Dean to keep the pure hurt out of his voice. He was shocked, couldn’t believe this was happening.
“You think I’m gonna go sneaking around behind your back? Seriously?” Sam shouted back at his brother, his tone full of all the righteous indignation he felt at the moment.
“Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” Aw, shit. Dean regretted the words the second they came out of his mouth, wished like hell he could take them back.
For his part, Sam almost fell off his chair and just looked up at Dean with eyes that shone with unshed tears.
Both of them felt their hearts shatter a little with that one simple question.
Seriously, Dean was going to pick now to throw Ruby in his face? The most horrific decision he’d ever made, the actions that pushed him to throw himself voluntarily into that fucking hole in the ground at Stull, the things that led to what would probably be a lifetime of panic and occasionally sinking into insanity? All of the apologies he’d made…had Dean only pretended to accept them? Sam stood up and started moving closer to where Dean was standing.
“Wow. Man, if I thought you were still holding on to a grudge like that from years ago, I would have tried to get you to talk about it. Try to resolve it, maybe. But if you can still be angry with me for something I did way back then, even when you know, you fucking know I thought I was doing the right thing…I don’t even…” Sam got up then, and started walking toward the kitchen. “Fuck it. Here you are accusing me of keeping secrets and you never said you’re not over what happened with-”
At this point, Dean knew he’d fucked up, bad, but he couldn’t back down. He really was mad at Sam for looking into this kind of shit. And yeah, he shouldn’t have made that crack about what had happened before. His instinctive I’m pissed-off feeling seemed to be taking the lead, though. “Don’t you dare, Sam. Don’t you fucking dare say her name.”
Sam stared up at the ceiling for a minute, trying to figure out what to say or do that wouldn’t escalate the argument. His instinct was to clock his brother in the jaw hard enough to knock a couple of teeth loose, but he was stuck here in this crazy feeling, this guilty-mad-confused-defensive thing and he had no idea how to deal with any of it at that moment. He just kept walking, and ended up standing at the kitchen counter.
“You’re being an asshole, Dean. I’m not cooking you dinner.” Ohhh, okay, so here comes pouty ten year old Sam. “I’m heating up some leftovers. You can do whatever you want.”
Not being a man with a handy set of reasonable coping mechanisms at the ready, Dean did the only thing he knew how to do. He grabbed his keys and headed back toward the front door. “I’m going out. Don’t wait up.”
“Fine. I’ll leave you a detailed list of what I ate for dinner and what time I went to bed so you won’t think I’m keeping secrets, asshole.”
The only reply he got was the slamming of the door.
All right. So, fighting was certainly going to happen. It certainly wasn’t the first time they’d argued since they’d settled down. But this one…this was bad. It was really bad, not anything like whose turn it was to haul the trash to the curb on Tuesday mornings or which movie they were going to watch on a Friday night.
It took Sam hours to fall asleep, constantly listening for the front door to open, but eventually he drifted off restlessly. His dreams were of ghosts, murders, and being left alone. Waking with the sun, he realized he was still by himself in bed. Had Dean really stayed out all night? Sam knew he was mad, but Jesus. That mad? Stay out all night mad?
Regardless of the terrible dreams, Sam didn’t want to get up. He didn’t want to find himself in an empty house. He didn’t want to face whatever was coming after the epic fight that had occurred the night before. But he was off work again that day, and Dean was off too. No matter what his dreams told him, Dean wasn’t going to just take off and never be seen again. So he forced himself out of bed and down the hallway.
That’s where he found his brother, sound asleep on the sofa.
Okay, so he’d come home, but he was still angry enough that he hadn’t wanted to share their bed.
Fuck. That was almost worse than if he hadn’t come home at all.
As quietly as he could, Sam made his way to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Not surprisingly, by the time it had finished brewing, Dean was stirring and getting up, walking toward the comforting aroma. Sam poured him a cup, then said, “Are you really that pissed? Enough that you wouldn’t come to bed? You don’t even want to be near me?”
Dean was silent.
Sam waited. He knew his brother.
After a few shots of caffeine, Dean responded. “No. More like embarrassed. I overreacted. Said some shitty things. I didn’t think you’d want me to come to bed with you.” He didn’t look at Sam at all, just sipped on his coffee.
“Yeah, that was shitty. You were being a total jerk. But I had time to think about it. I know you didn’t mean it, what you said about - well, you know. That stuff. From before. You were just mad. We both say stupid shit when we’re mad.”
“Sam, I swear to you, I am not still angry about…that. I let it go a long time ago. I said it on purpose to hurt you, and that was a total dick move on my part. I’m sorry. Honestly, it was way out of line and I know that.”
“Yeah, Dean, it was. I was up half the night thinking you were harboring some resentment about that whole…thing. It’s not like I don’t feel bad enough about it already.” Years - fucking years had gone by and still neither of them were able to even say her name.
“I know, I know you do, which is why it was such a fucking stupid thing for me to say.” Dean moved in close then, rubbing Sam’s cheekbone with his fingers. “I didn’t mean it, please, you have to believe me. I will take full responsibility for dredging up something that was hurtful to you, and doing it deliberately because I wanted to make you feel bad. I was angry that you’d been researching the supernatural.” He took a deep breath then, still not entirely comfortable admitting his own insecurities. “We made this choice, you know, getting out of that life, and it made me feel like maybe you thought you made the wrong choice.”
Sam reached out and pulled Dean into his arms, a tight embrace that he knew his brother wouldn’t be able to wiggle away from. To his surprise, Dean didn’t even try, just melted into Sam’s touch like it was gravity. For just a few moments, they held on like that. It couldn’t last forever, though.
Dean pulled away and said, “If you think this is something worth looking at, we’ll check it out. Together. But I’m telling you, this is it. This is the very last thing. Next time you get wind of something supernatural, you ignore it or you pass it off to someone else.”
The relief Sam felt must have been palpable in the air around them. “Thanks, Dean. You know I’ve got a soft spot for Manuel, he was just so upset, I wanted to help. But you’re absolutely right. We made this decision together. Hunting is not what we do now. It’s not what we’re going to do, ever again. Maybe we can go out there tonight, see if anything feels weird or sets off the EMF meter. But if it does, we’ll call Garth, and anything that needs to be taken care of, he can handle it.”
Chuckling softly, Dean replied, “Garth? Seriously?”
“Give the guy some credit, Dean. He can salt and burn just as well as we can. And he helped us out with that shojo, remember?”
Neither of them wanted to say that they didn’t really have anyone else to call. Every other hunter they’d ever known was dead, except for that one guy, Lee, who’d retired at their behest after the whole vetala incident.
So they agreed, tonight they’d go see if there might be something genuinely supernatural happening in this abandoned building. If not, Sam could assure Manuel that everything was all right and he had nothing to worry about. If so, they’d call Garth, tell him what they knew, and leave the rest of it to him, washing their hands of the entire situation.
In the meantime, they had a little bit of ‘making up’ to do. Since they both needed a shower, they decided to conserve water and get in together. Dean got onto his knees, sucked Sam off and swallowed every drop of his cum before pushing his brother against the cold, wet tile. Using conditioner as makeshift lube, he pushed his fingers into Sam’s ass with probably more force than he usually did.
So maybe they were both still feeling a little of the anger from the previous night. That was okay.
As soon as he thought he’d done enough prep, Dean slicked up his cock (which was now going to smell like grapefruit, fucking whatever), lined it up at his brother’s hole, and fucked right in.
Sam’s breath caught in his throat, just for a minute, before he was able to articulate his thoughts. Which, by the way, seemed to be something along the lines of fuckfuckDeanloveyou hardermorepleasefuck sorrysosorry.
Dean was more than happy to comply with the demands that his brother was throwing at him even with his face pressed against the back of the shower tiles. He’d thought about taking it slow but the hot water wasn’t going to last forever and the atmosphere didn’t really call for sweet and romantic. Thrusting into Sam while holding him still with a hand on his shoulder, he let go and allowed his orgasm to overtake him, coming with a bitten-off shout that sounded more like a grunt than anything else.
Once they were both dressed again, and had repeated their apologies, Dean figured they might as well go ahead and get down to the business at hand. “All right, tell me what you’ve got on this thing.”
Sam proceeded to fill Dean in on his research, the story of the girl who’d died next to that building and showed him the old coroner’s report and journals. He finished with recounting what Manuel had told him about his friend swearing that he’d been pushed to the ground. “What do you think? Could this be a legit haunting? A ghost, vengeful spirit, maybe?”
Dean had to be honest, Sam was right. It sounded like their kind of thing. Or, what used to be their kind of thing, anyway. And he’d agreed that they should check this out, for the sake of that nice kid up the street. “Yeah, I - yeah, it could be. More likely than not, actually. Why don’t we just go tonight? Then we’ll have our answers.”
Of course, it was obvious that what he really meant was “let’s just get this over with”. Sam wasn’t kidding himself, he knew that Dean wasn’t happy about this development, no matter what had been said between them. Still, the agreement had been made, and neither of them were going to break the promises that had been made that day.
Chapter 4