New Fic: Swamps (Supernatural, Sam/Dean) 1/?
Swamps, by Fabella (wistful_fever)
Supernatural, R, Sam/Dean
Summary
Sam has issues with his brother. And there’s something in the swamp. WIP.
Disclaimer
Nothing but the words are mine.
Notes/Warnings
This story deals with incest, violence, angst, and all other kinds of nasty things. It’s set before ‘Home’ and ‘Asylum’, but it’s written with the knowledge of them, so I’d say it contains spoilers. I’m a slow writer. You should know all these things before you choose to read this story.
*
Swamps, by Fabella
Part 1/?
“Hey, look at that sunset,” Dean said.
Sam looked up from the palm pilot to where Dean was pointing. When Sam hadn’t been paying attention the sky had been claimed by misty, pink clouds and the sun had begun the drawn-out dive behind the mountain. Soon it would vanish completely, Dean would turn on the headlights, and Sam would be fighting sleep again. The entire mountain began to glow at the top, crested with light. Dean leaned forward on the steering wheel to get a better view, his face luminous with gold shades, forehead wrinkled with the effort to see.
At fourteen, Dean had been no different, always stopping and pulling Sam aside to look at the sunset, or the hills, or the redwoods; as though the scenery could make up for their life, which even at ten, Sam had seen for what it was: unforgivably weird. And even at ten, Sam had seen the way Dean was never going to leave, and Sam was always going to be leaving, because even when they were tramping across a rain-drenched field behind their father, Dean had been happy enough in his soggy shoes, while Sam was always hyperware of the blister waking up on the back of his foot.
Sam’s sneakers were dry now and lodged awkwardly in the space under the dash, but somehow he was back beside Dean, not totally content to be there, and Dean was trying to show him pretty things. But Sam wasn’t ten anymore, and he turned off his palm pilot and put it away, unimpressed.
“What about it?” he asked, settling back in his seat.
Dean spared him an annoyed look before leaning back in his seat and propping his elbow on the door. If Dean started driving with his knees again, Sam was going to get arrested for vehicular manslaughter. Or he was going to start screaming. Or both.
They drove by a group of cows that looked exactly like the last group of cows they had driven by, which had looked like every group of cows they had ever driven by in this six month joke of a search. The screaming was a very real possibility. Sometimes Sam found himself unsure of what state they were in, what small town, and was surprised he hadn’t gone crazy yet, if only from the apparent time travel. He’d blink, it would seem, and it was two weeks ago, at that moment when they’d driven past the barn, and Sam had thought it needed a paint job while Dean wondered, out loud, if it would be warm enough that night to sleep inside it.
“You have no romance in your soul, dude,” Dean said.
“When you can tell me what’s romantic about two grown men playing hide and seek with their father while routinely killing creatures from the underworld, let me know.”
Sam waited with his eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, whatever,” Dean said, sounding bored.
After a while, the mountain overtook the sun, and Dean let Sam fiddle with the radio dials, with little success. Compromise, Sam thought, but probably another one of Dean’s consolation gifts.
“Hey, uh,” Dean said, when the sky was almost dark. Sam lifted his head from the headrest, finding Dean already looking at him, his expression uncomfortable, like there wasn’t enough space on his face to fit what he was feeling. “Did the shape shifter say anything to you when he was me?”
Sam flinched back in surprise, had to school his expression to disinterest.
“Nah,” Sam lied. A car on the other side of the road turned their headlights on, and Dean returned his focus to the road, leaving Sam to contemplate the side of his head. It had been months since St. Louis, and they’d never gone beyond the basics when they talked about what had gone on there. Sam had never even tried to.
“I mean, you said he was downloading me and stuff, so I thought I’d ask.”
“He didn’t,” Sam said dryly. “Your deep dark secrets are safe from me.”
“Cool,” Dean said, with a pale smile, and Sam turned his gaze out the window, where he could see his own face overlaying the far away line of trees. Hazily, he remembered coming to and finding the shape shifter had shed Rebecca, and was slipping into Dean’s clothes, zipping the pants and grinning dark light at Sam when Sam lifted his head off the floor, unable to mute a pained groan.
“Sleeping beauty awakes,” it had said, with Dean’s voice, as it pulled rope from within a black canvas bag, then crouched before Sam. “Gosh, you’re pretty with these eyes.”
Dean’s secrets. When Dean shifted gears, his knuckles brushed Sam’s kneecap, lingered for a single flex of Sam’s lungs, before Sam moved his knee away sharply enough that he felt Dean’s eyes on him again. Dean turned on the headlights a moment later, leaving them on high until the driver in front of them was annoyed enough to go faster.
*
Rainbow sprinkles. Jessica was dead, and he was asking for rainbow sprinkles. How was that even possible? He stared at the girl in the green apron through the lifted window, trying to make sense of the insensible.
“Is that all?” she asked, strands of hair sticking damply to the side of her neck.
“Yeah, thanks,” Sam said. “Two even, right?”
He handed her the two wrinkled bills he’d found buried in the corner of his travel bag, stained orange in spots by a crushed cheeto, and she wrapped the ice cream cone in a napkin before passing it through the opening, smiling at him. The smile was wide and open, and it made Sam’s stomach hurt. He just nodded his thanks and stepped out of line. He’d gone off blondes for good.
Around the side of the building, Dean had parked his ass on top of a picnic table, boots planted on the bench seat. He was the perfect image of sprawled indifference, with the laces from one boot dangling through the crack, the ankles of his jeans riding up enough to show Sam that, like usual, Dean hadn’t bothered with socks.
Sam walked toward him, leaving a wide slab of cement between him and a long-haired woman pushing a stroller. Dean didn’t acknowledge his approach, eyes focused some distance away, on a fenced-off area in the field, where some kids in bright yellow shorts were kicking a soccer ball around on the grass. As kids, they’d kicked a few balls around themselves when Dean wasn’t being a prick, and on good days, days when Dad was mostly content or feeling guilty enough, he had joined them, playing referee. Sam sat on the bench next to Dean’s feet, facing the opposite way, and licked at his ice cream leisurely, catching the drips with the tip of his tongue as he watched the cars on the road.
His brief moment of peace was interrupted when something cold and wet landed on Sam’s arm. Hoping against hope that it wasn’t what he thought it was, because he’d just taken his first shower in a week, he wasn’t surprised to find a blob of chocolate ice cream was dripping toward his elbow. Dean’s forgotten sundae cup was tilted almost completely on its side while he followed the scrimmage, jaw drooping.
Sam socked him in the side.
“Oof!” Dean jumped sideways on the table, a protective arm shielding his ribs. His scowl held shades of their father’s, an imperfect copy but close enough that Sam had to fight to keep his satisfied grin squinting at Dean, fight to keep the longing hollow of the bewildered child inside him where it was supposed to be-inside him. And then the clouds changed, or Sam’s eyes cleared, or Dean moved just right, and Dad was gone. Again. “What the fuck was that for, you freak?”
“You dribbled on me,” Sam accused, lifting his arm to show the evidence now dripping richly past the crease of his elbow.
“Which called for physical violence?”
“Yep.”
“Okay,” Dean said, then punched Sam in the shoulder. Sam had been expecting it, and leaned to the side to soften the blow, but he still groaned after, cupping the spot where Dean’s knuckles had dug in. Dean never pulled his punches.
Dean, content now that they were even, went back to eating his sundae, slurping at the melting parts and completely disregarding the usefulness commonly associated with a white, plastic spoon. Sam wiped at the sticky ice cream with a napkin, and his eye snagged on his wrist, locked there. The bracelet of irritated skin had long since faded, but the flesh itself was a memory.
The sound of the children playing their game faded to the background, along with the customers ordering their ice creams (“no, mom, I want chocolate sprinkles!”), the motors of passing vehicles. His wrist hazed before him as his gaze turned inward until he was there again, being pulled away from the couch, the shape shifter dragging Sam using borrowed hands.
“What the hell do you eat?” it demanded, a puff of air stirring the hair above Sam’s ear as he put every effort into becoming a dead weight. The hands under his armpits carted him another few feet, the creature huffing dramatically with every step, and Sam let the soles of his shoes drag the carpet, buying time while he scanned for a makeshift weapon. In the corner, there was an unlit mermaid-shaped lamp made out of some kind of heavy metal, and on the wall, a pair of boxing shorts had been framed in glass. If he could get free long enough, he could break it, and...
Dean’s nose touched the notch behind his ear, inhaling.
What?
It-Dean, no, but YES, Dean-stilled, twitching once like it had taken a jolt of electricity. Sam felt it shudder as it downloaded more of Dean into its brain, and wondered how long it would have to wear Dean’s skin before it didn’t want to kill him anymore. If that would make a difference at all.
“Well, well,” it hummed, sounding amused.
The hands that were but were not Dean’s slipped down Sam’s sides firmly enough not to tickle, but also gentle, as if they were simply feeling. When Sam bowed his back to avoid them, lifting his butt from the floor, the hands lunged roughly at his ass, grabbing it through Sam’s jeans, digging in. Sam’s head slammed back reflexively, but the ancient bone that met his skull was as solid as a steel rafter, and sent his head ringing forward, the room phasing in and out of focus. It laughed at him then, the hands becoming gentle where they squeezed and separated the cheeks.
“Nice ass,” it said, with Dean’s twang.
“Fuck you,” Sam slurred, and tried to swing his bound hands around to knock it in its Dean-shaped head, but it moved out of range too quickly. Sam landed on his back on the carpet, the wind knocked out of him.
“Is that any way to treat your brother?”
Sam stayed quiet, glaring at the ceiling. The shape shifter appeared above him, crocodile smile upside down, standing on Sam’s hair. When Sam’s eyes started to water, he blinked, and in that millisecond, it was crouched over him, pinning him down with a knee in his gut, and one hand on his shoulder. Sam twisted, but couldn’t knock it off, couldn’t lock his ankles around its neck and flip it, and after a long struggle, he could only pant furiously up at Dean’s face hanging over him like a red moon.
“You’re such a bitch,” it said, veins popping in its neck as it held him down.
Sam turned his face to the side when it ran a finger over his cheekbone, sickness crinkling in Sam’s stomach, and its irises clicked with light like the lense of a camera.
“Your brother really is a freak. His own one man circus act.”
The finger slid under his chin, tilting it up. Sam’s nostrils flared, but he stared straight at it with all the hate turning his chest to gruel, the sick crinkle expanding like a balloon filled with hot water. The finger jabbed Sam’s jugular with the pointed precision of someone used to wielding a knife, and Dean’s face transformed above him, rippling and twisting with fierce emotion.
“You little fucker, I just want to...”
It lunged at him. Sam flinched, squeezing his eyes shut. The bite never came. Sam kept his eyes closed, feeling the push-pull of breath on his chin, the threat of teeth an instant away from his mouth. The finger drifted lazily over Sam’s neck, stopping at the collar of his shirt, then the shape shifter chuckled, and the finger lifted away.
Sam opened his eyes, watched as it borrowed Dean’s rueful grin, and scrubbed over the brief spikes of Dean’s hair with an equally rueful hand.
“Hell,” it said, “I need a drink.”
At Sam’s shoulder, the real Dean made an obscene sucking sound, and Sam started guiltily, the vanilla ice cream drooping to the side of the cone. Sam numbly watched it drip random patterns on the wood, wishing Dean hadn’t mentioned St. Louis last night. He had learned long ago, during his first hunting jobs, that people weighed what they knew against what they wanted to know. Usually it was just easier not knowing.
Two sets of extremely gifted legs scissored through his line of sight, and two women in their twenties, a blonde and a brunette, sat down at a picnic table three spots over. They looked exactly like Dean’s idea of an opportunity, so Sam nudged Dean with his elbow, not examining too closely the desire for Dean to try and pick them up. When that earned only an annoyed grunt as a response, he nudged Dean again, a little harder this time.
“Wha... oh.” A long pause followed, and then Dean breathed out. “Whoa.”
“I thought you’d want to see that.”
“You’re not stupid,” Dean said, wearing the glaze he sometimes got when they’d gone without a real meal for a few days. Dean *liked* women.
A tense fist flattened inside Sam, and he licked melted ice cream from the bridge of his thumb, waiting for Dean to start up his wounded, but hopeful hero act. Sam half hoped Dean would be successful this time. Sam could probably make himself scarce for a few hours.
“How are you holding up?”
The hushed, concerned tone from the blonde instantly drew him, and Sam’s tongue hesitated on his thumb. The brunette was using a tissue to rub off a streak of mascara that had smeared under her eye. A dark smudge was left behind, but it had a faintly greenish tint.
Sam straightened at the same time as Dean, and knew his brother had noticed the bruise as well. Dean climbed down onto the bench seat beside Sam to face the women. He made a show out of swirling his spoon through the hardening fudge, but Dean had never been very good at inconspicious, and not just because he used enough cologne to ignite a forest fire if a match was lit near him; Dean had been born with a face so pretty that no one believed it could be sincere, and people had always been a little startled by the first sight of him, flinching at his rodeo clown grin.
“Not so-” the brunette began, but a car horn honked, obscuring some of what was said next, and Sam turned his ear toward them, trying to hear.
“Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” the brunette said, in a lowered voice, but Sam could hear the hint of rasp. She’d been screaming recently. “But I know what I saw.”
Aw, Hell.
Not an angry boyfriend, then.
Sam still ached from their last job, when he’d been thrown against a tree by the werewolf. If he could have remembered how, he would have closed his ears, and turned himself off, so that after they finished their ice creams, he and Dean could leave this small, off-the-map town behind, keep going until they found their father. But since Jess had, since she’d been gone, his ears had been open to everything, hearing the pins drop around the whole fucking world. Everything was too loud.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yeah, absolutely,” the blonde said, nodding. Lie, Sam decided, as her mouth twitched down with coy suspicion, the doubt glossed over with peach lipstick. Jess had liked shades of pink, shades of red; blatant, unsuspicious colors. When the blonde patted the brunette’s hand, it was a brief, functional motion quickly withdrawn, and she looked around the tables to see if anyone had noticed.
Dean had already leaned toward Sam, mouth close to Sam’s ear.
“Blah, blah, blah,” he whispered, his hand landing between Sam’s shoulder blades, cold breath polished with cherry juice. The blonde’s eyes paused on Dean, but she didn’t look suspicious, she looked stunned. After having a little trouble dragging her eyes away, she turned back to her friend, who was too wrapped up in her own misery to notice the blonde’s embarrassment. The brunette toyed with her ice cream, cutting a banana slice in half with her spoon, then took a bite, chewing mechanically, taking a long time to swallow.
“Someone beat her up?” Dean whispered.
“Don’t think so,” Sam said, and the brunette rubbed her forehead roughly.
“Why does everyone think I’d make something like that up?”
“Well, you said it was dark, Stacey,” the blonde offered hopefully. “It could have been some guy dressed up in a mask.”
Stacey stood suddenly, her cheeks blazing. Her friend leaned backwards, shrinking.
“I know what I saw. And it wasn’t a person that killed Jason.”
With that, she stalked away rapidly, amazing legs blurring. Eyes followed her, faces frowning, lips pulled down. In a philosophy class, Sam had read a story called The Lottery, where a woman had been stoned to death by her entire town, the same people she had called her friends. A man standing in line jerked his toddler closer when Stacey walked around them. She slammed her car door behind her, and gunned the engine, tires shrieking as she pulled out of the lot. Heads reared toward the blonde, and found her absorbed with her soda, sucking intently on the straw.
Dean’s stare was waiting for Sam to meet it. Forearms crossed on the table, his face was devoid of expression, but on Dean that was an expression itself; it was Sam’s turn to choose what they did next. The blonde slurped noisily at her soda. The customers returned to their conversations. Out in the field, a ball was kicked. These were the noises of a quiet town, located between two swamps, where someone named Jason had died.
“I’ll get the salt,” Sam said, slumping.
Dean smiled widely, and stood. “I’ll get the mystery van.”
In the trash, Sam’s ice cream continued to melt, and on the road, somewhere, their father was driving over the speed limit.
*
Small towns meant small libraries. Small. Dusty. Libraries.
And a complaining Dean.
“Stop sneezing,” Sam said. “It’s not that bad.”
Dean made a loud honking sound behind wadded toilet paper. It took more energy than usual to roll his eyes, so Sam didn’t bother, moving down another row while Dean stayed behind, blowing his nose. Sam trailed his fingers along the bindings of the books on the shelves, reading the print on the sides. Dust came off on his skin, and he rubbed his thumb and index finger together, struck suddenly by the distance between himself and his dreams.
“Hey, dude, a book on dragons!”
Sam glanced over his shoulder. Dean was at the start of the aisle, holding up a large book. On the front, there was a picture of a dragon and a knight engaged in a duel, the knight’s shield held high against the fire bursting from the dragon’s gaping jaws.
“Very good, Dean,” Sam said, exaggerating his syllables. “Are there a lot of pretty pictures?”
“Maybe. I don’t...” Dean trailed off, his smile faltering when he realized Sam was making fun of him. “Funny. You know, Mom used to read me something with dragons.”
Sam dropped his hand from the shelf, cheek tugged by a flinch. “Dean. Man, I-”
Dean waved him off. He looked down at the book, the flat of his hand moving over the cover, and Sam wondered what it had been like, being read to by their mother. Had it been a routine every night at bedtime? Had Dean lain in bed, years later, missing when his mother had sat beside him as he fell asleep, her voice filling the space between his cheek and the pillow? Dean tucked the book back onto the shelf, and Sam tried to picture him as a little boy being tucked in at night, but couldn’t. He could only picture Dean as he was now, all swagger and teeth, his body weighed down by the same weapons Sam hid under his own clothes.
“I always thought of myself as the knight in shining armor,” Dean said.
Sam laughed, not completely forced, and turned down another row. “You? Really?”
“The chicks love me.”
“Yeah, but one day you won’t have that pretty face.”
Dean stopped. “You think I’m pretty?”
Sam was already reading titles again. “Can we please get to work here?”
The library was inside a two-level house that had been built in the late eighteen hundreds. A thin man with a thin tie had led them up creaking stairs to the second level, narrower than the first because of the peaked roof, where the nonfiction section was. Red and blue glass windows sent colorful beams arcing across the rows of book shelves, early afternoon sunlight spinning with dust particles. A dim, useless lightbulb had swayed when the caretaker turned it on, and Sam had been forced to duck to the side when he passed by it.
After a half an hour of searching every shelf, and Sam seriously considering selling his soul for some organization, Dean made a sound Sam had only ever heard right before “cum-shots” in those movies his brother had given him for this fifteenth birthday. Sam returned the book on the mating habits of the tree squirrel to its slot just as Dean came jogging around the corner, waving a thin book at him.
“Opac is seriously my love slave,” his brother said gleefully.
Sam took the book when Dean handed it to him. It was short, and had a thin, magazine-like cover, a photograph of a fog-laden field on the front. The title was printed in some kind of swirly, calligraphy font; Sam read it out loud.
“The Myths and Magics of Deep South.” Sam moved to slap Dean’s waiting palm with his own, before stopping abruptly, hand hanging mid-air. “Wait a second. They have an Opac here?”
“In the corner, over there. I’ve been there for the past ten minutes.” Dean smirked. “What kind of genius are you anyway?”
“If I didn’t care so much for the sanctity of libraries, I would beat you to death with this book.”
“Geek.”
“Jock.”
“I did *not* play sports. Just because I scored with cheerleaders...”
They sat side by side at a lone wooden table they found behind the shelves. It had been pushed against the wall under the stained-glass windows, and diamonds of bloody light cut across Sam’s hands when he turned a page in the book, coloring the black and white sketches of screaming faces and hulking shapes. Dean was at Sam’s shoulder, picking at the black bands wrapped around his wrist. His elbow hit Sam in the side whenever he shifted. He shifted often.
“Find anything yet?” Dean asked. Again.
Sam very carefully did not throw the book at Dean’s head.
“No. I did have a great idea though. You could, maybe, help?”
Dean shrugged. “I helped last time.”
“Yeah,” Sam snorted. “Just like you helped do the laundry last time.”
“Dude, I am not washing your underwear.”
Something not quite honest in Dean’s voice made Sam’s fingers curl around the side of the book. Dean stretched one of the black bands out, then let it go, snapping it against his wrist. When he did it a second time, Sam calmly laid his hand over Dean’s, feeling the antsy knuckles stop shifting the instant of contact. Sam met Dean’s eyes, finding them wide and close to his own. The swaying lightbulb made the shadow of Dean’s eyelashes look like long grass across his cheekbones. Waiting had always been the hardest part for Dean. Sam squeezed the hand under his, lending patience, and shifted away.
“What are we looking for again?” he asked.
“E.T.”
“No, what did she say exactly?”
Dean grumbled and dug the article out of his shirt pocket, unfolding it across the table next to Sam’s open book. It was the entire front page of the local newspaper. Death in a small town.
“‘They came to us in a beam of light,’ the victim recounts to the police,” Dean read, voice going a pitch higher to imitate the woman’s. “‘They were tall and their heads were huge. I couldn’t move. I sat there and watched them take him away. And then it was dark, and I could hear him screaming.’”
Sam shifted closer, peering down at the article. Two black and white photos interrupted the blocks of text. The first was a blurry side-shot of a body bag being lifted into an ambulance by two officers, their faces turned away from the camera. The second was of Stacey, the woman they had overheard earlier. She was standing between two police officers, hair tangled around her face, a blanket across her shoulders. The tallest officer had his hat lowered to his hip, one hand wiping his face.
“‘And then they came back for me,’ the victim continued, her voice beginning to shake.” Dean imitated this as well. Dean was kind of an ass. “‘One of them hovered over me and looked at me with its huge, black eyes, and then it touched my neck. I don’t remember much else.’” He sat back then, throwing an arm over both of their chairs, clearly no longer in character, unless the victim sat like she had a two ton cock between her legs, as Dean liked to. “Huh. You ever meet an alien, Sam?”
“You think she’s lying.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things,” Dean said, casually. He tapped the photo with the body bag. “It’s never been an alien doing this.”
Sam shook his head, and returned to flipping through the pages.
“You’re a skeptic about the weirdest things.”
“What? You *want* little green men out there probing people?”
Sam ignored him. The pages of the book were fragile, and some of them were stuck together at the corners. Sam carefully peeled the pages apart, looking for the tall, large-eyed creature the woman had described. On page 28, there was a graphic description of slug-like monster that attached to the brains of sleeping men and poisoned the goodness in them. In one instance, the man had butchered his entire family on Thanksgiving Day, and then sat down to eat the meal he and his wife had prepared. After, he’d slit his wrists. In his myths and legends class, Sam had learned most myths were born out of the fear of human imperfection-that the man had just snapped, all by himself, was more horrifying than the idea that he had been taken over by an unseen force.
“I can’t believe she actually told the police this crap,” Dean sneered.
Sam said, turning a page, “She could be telling the-” then stopped.
“What?”
Sam angled the book so Dean could see it. Huge, dark eyes stared up from the page, and below them, slitted nostrils flexed open. The wide, lipless mouth was unsmiling.
“What does that look like to you?” Sam asked.
Dean didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he lifted his head, moving into Sam’s space. His eyes were as serious as Sam had ever seen them. Sam sat straighter in response, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling at the possibility of danger.
“It looks like the truth is out there, Scully,” Dean said, in a slow, intense voice.
If someone is murdered in a quiet library, and there is no librarian around to hear it, does the victim make a sound?
Sam considered finding out.
*
TBC.
Feedback is always wonderful.
Supernatural, R, Sam/Dean
Summary
Sam has issues with his brother. And there’s something in the swamp. WIP.
Disclaimer
Nothing but the words are mine.
Notes/Warnings
This story deals with incest, violence, angst, and all other kinds of nasty things. It’s set before ‘Home’ and ‘Asylum’, but it’s written with the knowledge of them, so I’d say it contains spoilers. I’m a slow writer. You should know all these things before you choose to read this story.
*
Swamps, by Fabella
Part 1/?
“Hey, look at that sunset,” Dean said.
Sam looked up from the palm pilot to where Dean was pointing. When Sam hadn’t been paying attention the sky had been claimed by misty, pink clouds and the sun had begun the drawn-out dive behind the mountain. Soon it would vanish completely, Dean would turn on the headlights, and Sam would be fighting sleep again. The entire mountain began to glow at the top, crested with light. Dean leaned forward on the steering wheel to get a better view, his face luminous with gold shades, forehead wrinkled with the effort to see.
At fourteen, Dean had been no different, always stopping and pulling Sam aside to look at the sunset, or the hills, or the redwoods; as though the scenery could make up for their life, which even at ten, Sam had seen for what it was: unforgivably weird. And even at ten, Sam had seen the way Dean was never going to leave, and Sam was always going to be leaving, because even when they were tramping across a rain-drenched field behind their father, Dean had been happy enough in his soggy shoes, while Sam was always hyperware of the blister waking up on the back of his foot.
Sam’s sneakers were dry now and lodged awkwardly in the space under the dash, but somehow he was back beside Dean, not totally content to be there, and Dean was trying to show him pretty things. But Sam wasn’t ten anymore, and he turned off his palm pilot and put it away, unimpressed.
“What about it?” he asked, settling back in his seat.
Dean spared him an annoyed look before leaning back in his seat and propping his elbow on the door. If Dean started driving with his knees again, Sam was going to get arrested for vehicular manslaughter. Or he was going to start screaming. Or both.
They drove by a group of cows that looked exactly like the last group of cows they had driven by, which had looked like every group of cows they had ever driven by in this six month joke of a search. The screaming was a very real possibility. Sometimes Sam found himself unsure of what state they were in, what small town, and was surprised he hadn’t gone crazy yet, if only from the apparent time travel. He’d blink, it would seem, and it was two weeks ago, at that moment when they’d driven past the barn, and Sam had thought it needed a paint job while Dean wondered, out loud, if it would be warm enough that night to sleep inside it.
“You have no romance in your soul, dude,” Dean said.
“When you can tell me what’s romantic about two grown men playing hide and seek with their father while routinely killing creatures from the underworld, let me know.”
Sam waited with his eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, whatever,” Dean said, sounding bored.
After a while, the mountain overtook the sun, and Dean let Sam fiddle with the radio dials, with little success. Compromise, Sam thought, but probably another one of Dean’s consolation gifts.
“Hey, uh,” Dean said, when the sky was almost dark. Sam lifted his head from the headrest, finding Dean already looking at him, his expression uncomfortable, like there wasn’t enough space on his face to fit what he was feeling. “Did the shape shifter say anything to you when he was me?”
Sam flinched back in surprise, had to school his expression to disinterest.
“Nah,” Sam lied. A car on the other side of the road turned their headlights on, and Dean returned his focus to the road, leaving Sam to contemplate the side of his head. It had been months since St. Louis, and they’d never gone beyond the basics when they talked about what had gone on there. Sam had never even tried to.
“I mean, you said he was downloading me and stuff, so I thought I’d ask.”
“He didn’t,” Sam said dryly. “Your deep dark secrets are safe from me.”
“Cool,” Dean said, with a pale smile, and Sam turned his gaze out the window, where he could see his own face overlaying the far away line of trees. Hazily, he remembered coming to and finding the shape shifter had shed Rebecca, and was slipping into Dean’s clothes, zipping the pants and grinning dark light at Sam when Sam lifted his head off the floor, unable to mute a pained groan.
“Sleeping beauty awakes,” it had said, with Dean’s voice, as it pulled rope from within a black canvas bag, then crouched before Sam. “Gosh, you’re pretty with these eyes.”
Dean’s secrets. When Dean shifted gears, his knuckles brushed Sam’s kneecap, lingered for a single flex of Sam’s lungs, before Sam moved his knee away sharply enough that he felt Dean’s eyes on him again. Dean turned on the headlights a moment later, leaving them on high until the driver in front of them was annoyed enough to go faster.
*
Rainbow sprinkles. Jessica was dead, and he was asking for rainbow sprinkles. How was that even possible? He stared at the girl in the green apron through the lifted window, trying to make sense of the insensible.
“Is that all?” she asked, strands of hair sticking damply to the side of her neck.
“Yeah, thanks,” Sam said. “Two even, right?”
He handed her the two wrinkled bills he’d found buried in the corner of his travel bag, stained orange in spots by a crushed cheeto, and she wrapped the ice cream cone in a napkin before passing it through the opening, smiling at him. The smile was wide and open, and it made Sam’s stomach hurt. He just nodded his thanks and stepped out of line. He’d gone off blondes for good.
Around the side of the building, Dean had parked his ass on top of a picnic table, boots planted on the bench seat. He was the perfect image of sprawled indifference, with the laces from one boot dangling through the crack, the ankles of his jeans riding up enough to show Sam that, like usual, Dean hadn’t bothered with socks.
Sam walked toward him, leaving a wide slab of cement between him and a long-haired woman pushing a stroller. Dean didn’t acknowledge his approach, eyes focused some distance away, on a fenced-off area in the field, where some kids in bright yellow shorts were kicking a soccer ball around on the grass. As kids, they’d kicked a few balls around themselves when Dean wasn’t being a prick, and on good days, days when Dad was mostly content or feeling guilty enough, he had joined them, playing referee. Sam sat on the bench next to Dean’s feet, facing the opposite way, and licked at his ice cream leisurely, catching the drips with the tip of his tongue as he watched the cars on the road.
His brief moment of peace was interrupted when something cold and wet landed on Sam’s arm. Hoping against hope that it wasn’t what he thought it was, because he’d just taken his first shower in a week, he wasn’t surprised to find a blob of chocolate ice cream was dripping toward his elbow. Dean’s forgotten sundae cup was tilted almost completely on its side while he followed the scrimmage, jaw drooping.
Sam socked him in the side.
“Oof!” Dean jumped sideways on the table, a protective arm shielding his ribs. His scowl held shades of their father’s, an imperfect copy but close enough that Sam had to fight to keep his satisfied grin squinting at Dean, fight to keep the longing hollow of the bewildered child inside him where it was supposed to be-inside him. And then the clouds changed, or Sam’s eyes cleared, or Dean moved just right, and Dad was gone. Again. “What the fuck was that for, you freak?”
“You dribbled on me,” Sam accused, lifting his arm to show the evidence now dripping richly past the crease of his elbow.
“Which called for physical violence?”
“Yep.”
“Okay,” Dean said, then punched Sam in the shoulder. Sam had been expecting it, and leaned to the side to soften the blow, but he still groaned after, cupping the spot where Dean’s knuckles had dug in. Dean never pulled his punches.
Dean, content now that they were even, went back to eating his sundae, slurping at the melting parts and completely disregarding the usefulness commonly associated with a white, plastic spoon. Sam wiped at the sticky ice cream with a napkin, and his eye snagged on his wrist, locked there. The bracelet of irritated skin had long since faded, but the flesh itself was a memory.
The sound of the children playing their game faded to the background, along with the customers ordering their ice creams (“no, mom, I want chocolate sprinkles!”), the motors of passing vehicles. His wrist hazed before him as his gaze turned inward until he was there again, being pulled away from the couch, the shape shifter dragging Sam using borrowed hands.
“What the hell do you eat?” it demanded, a puff of air stirring the hair above Sam’s ear as he put every effort into becoming a dead weight. The hands under his armpits carted him another few feet, the creature huffing dramatically with every step, and Sam let the soles of his shoes drag the carpet, buying time while he scanned for a makeshift weapon. In the corner, there was an unlit mermaid-shaped lamp made out of some kind of heavy metal, and on the wall, a pair of boxing shorts had been framed in glass. If he could get free long enough, he could break it, and...
Dean’s nose touched the notch behind his ear, inhaling.
What?
It-Dean, no, but YES, Dean-stilled, twitching once like it had taken a jolt of electricity. Sam felt it shudder as it downloaded more of Dean into its brain, and wondered how long it would have to wear Dean’s skin before it didn’t want to kill him anymore. If that would make a difference at all.
“Well, well,” it hummed, sounding amused.
The hands that were but were not Dean’s slipped down Sam’s sides firmly enough not to tickle, but also gentle, as if they were simply feeling. When Sam bowed his back to avoid them, lifting his butt from the floor, the hands lunged roughly at his ass, grabbing it through Sam’s jeans, digging in. Sam’s head slammed back reflexively, but the ancient bone that met his skull was as solid as a steel rafter, and sent his head ringing forward, the room phasing in and out of focus. It laughed at him then, the hands becoming gentle where they squeezed and separated the cheeks.
“Nice ass,” it said, with Dean’s twang.
“Fuck you,” Sam slurred, and tried to swing his bound hands around to knock it in its Dean-shaped head, but it moved out of range too quickly. Sam landed on his back on the carpet, the wind knocked out of him.
“Is that any way to treat your brother?”
Sam stayed quiet, glaring at the ceiling. The shape shifter appeared above him, crocodile smile upside down, standing on Sam’s hair. When Sam’s eyes started to water, he blinked, and in that millisecond, it was crouched over him, pinning him down with a knee in his gut, and one hand on his shoulder. Sam twisted, but couldn’t knock it off, couldn’t lock his ankles around its neck and flip it, and after a long struggle, he could only pant furiously up at Dean’s face hanging over him like a red moon.
“You’re such a bitch,” it said, veins popping in its neck as it held him down.
Sam turned his face to the side when it ran a finger over his cheekbone, sickness crinkling in Sam’s stomach, and its irises clicked with light like the lense of a camera.
“Your brother really is a freak. His own one man circus act.”
The finger slid under his chin, tilting it up. Sam’s nostrils flared, but he stared straight at it with all the hate turning his chest to gruel, the sick crinkle expanding like a balloon filled with hot water. The finger jabbed Sam’s jugular with the pointed precision of someone used to wielding a knife, and Dean’s face transformed above him, rippling and twisting with fierce emotion.
“You little fucker, I just want to...”
It lunged at him. Sam flinched, squeezing his eyes shut. The bite never came. Sam kept his eyes closed, feeling the push-pull of breath on his chin, the threat of teeth an instant away from his mouth. The finger drifted lazily over Sam’s neck, stopping at the collar of his shirt, then the shape shifter chuckled, and the finger lifted away.
Sam opened his eyes, watched as it borrowed Dean’s rueful grin, and scrubbed over the brief spikes of Dean’s hair with an equally rueful hand.
“Hell,” it said, “I need a drink.”
At Sam’s shoulder, the real Dean made an obscene sucking sound, and Sam started guiltily, the vanilla ice cream drooping to the side of the cone. Sam numbly watched it drip random patterns on the wood, wishing Dean hadn’t mentioned St. Louis last night. He had learned long ago, during his first hunting jobs, that people weighed what they knew against what they wanted to know. Usually it was just easier not knowing.
Two sets of extremely gifted legs scissored through his line of sight, and two women in their twenties, a blonde and a brunette, sat down at a picnic table three spots over. They looked exactly like Dean’s idea of an opportunity, so Sam nudged Dean with his elbow, not examining too closely the desire for Dean to try and pick them up. When that earned only an annoyed grunt as a response, he nudged Dean again, a little harder this time.
“Wha... oh.” A long pause followed, and then Dean breathed out. “Whoa.”
“I thought you’d want to see that.”
“You’re not stupid,” Dean said, wearing the glaze he sometimes got when they’d gone without a real meal for a few days. Dean *liked* women.
A tense fist flattened inside Sam, and he licked melted ice cream from the bridge of his thumb, waiting for Dean to start up his wounded, but hopeful hero act. Sam half hoped Dean would be successful this time. Sam could probably make himself scarce for a few hours.
“How are you holding up?”
The hushed, concerned tone from the blonde instantly drew him, and Sam’s tongue hesitated on his thumb. The brunette was using a tissue to rub off a streak of mascara that had smeared under her eye. A dark smudge was left behind, but it had a faintly greenish tint.
Sam straightened at the same time as Dean, and knew his brother had noticed the bruise as well. Dean climbed down onto the bench seat beside Sam to face the women. He made a show out of swirling his spoon through the hardening fudge, but Dean had never been very good at inconspicious, and not just because he used enough cologne to ignite a forest fire if a match was lit near him; Dean had been born with a face so pretty that no one believed it could be sincere, and people had always been a little startled by the first sight of him, flinching at his rodeo clown grin.
“Not so-” the brunette began, but a car horn honked, obscuring some of what was said next, and Sam turned his ear toward them, trying to hear.
“Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” the brunette said, in a lowered voice, but Sam could hear the hint of rasp. She’d been screaming recently. “But I know what I saw.”
Aw, Hell.
Not an angry boyfriend, then.
Sam still ached from their last job, when he’d been thrown against a tree by the werewolf. If he could have remembered how, he would have closed his ears, and turned himself off, so that after they finished their ice creams, he and Dean could leave this small, off-the-map town behind, keep going until they found their father. But since Jess had, since she’d been gone, his ears had been open to everything, hearing the pins drop around the whole fucking world. Everything was too loud.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yeah, absolutely,” the blonde said, nodding. Lie, Sam decided, as her mouth twitched down with coy suspicion, the doubt glossed over with peach lipstick. Jess had liked shades of pink, shades of red; blatant, unsuspicious colors. When the blonde patted the brunette’s hand, it was a brief, functional motion quickly withdrawn, and she looked around the tables to see if anyone had noticed.
Dean had already leaned toward Sam, mouth close to Sam’s ear.
“Blah, blah, blah,” he whispered, his hand landing between Sam’s shoulder blades, cold breath polished with cherry juice. The blonde’s eyes paused on Dean, but she didn’t look suspicious, she looked stunned. After having a little trouble dragging her eyes away, she turned back to her friend, who was too wrapped up in her own misery to notice the blonde’s embarrassment. The brunette toyed with her ice cream, cutting a banana slice in half with her spoon, then took a bite, chewing mechanically, taking a long time to swallow.
“Someone beat her up?” Dean whispered.
“Don’t think so,” Sam said, and the brunette rubbed her forehead roughly.
“Why does everyone think I’d make something like that up?”
“Well, you said it was dark, Stacey,” the blonde offered hopefully. “It could have been some guy dressed up in a mask.”
Stacey stood suddenly, her cheeks blazing. Her friend leaned backwards, shrinking.
“I know what I saw. And it wasn’t a person that killed Jason.”
With that, she stalked away rapidly, amazing legs blurring. Eyes followed her, faces frowning, lips pulled down. In a philosophy class, Sam had read a story called The Lottery, where a woman had been stoned to death by her entire town, the same people she had called her friends. A man standing in line jerked his toddler closer when Stacey walked around them. She slammed her car door behind her, and gunned the engine, tires shrieking as she pulled out of the lot. Heads reared toward the blonde, and found her absorbed with her soda, sucking intently on the straw.
Dean’s stare was waiting for Sam to meet it. Forearms crossed on the table, his face was devoid of expression, but on Dean that was an expression itself; it was Sam’s turn to choose what they did next. The blonde slurped noisily at her soda. The customers returned to their conversations. Out in the field, a ball was kicked. These were the noises of a quiet town, located between two swamps, where someone named Jason had died.
“I’ll get the salt,” Sam said, slumping.
Dean smiled widely, and stood. “I’ll get the mystery van.”
In the trash, Sam’s ice cream continued to melt, and on the road, somewhere, their father was driving over the speed limit.
*
Small towns meant small libraries. Small. Dusty. Libraries.
And a complaining Dean.
“Stop sneezing,” Sam said. “It’s not that bad.”
Dean made a loud honking sound behind wadded toilet paper. It took more energy than usual to roll his eyes, so Sam didn’t bother, moving down another row while Dean stayed behind, blowing his nose. Sam trailed his fingers along the bindings of the books on the shelves, reading the print on the sides. Dust came off on his skin, and he rubbed his thumb and index finger together, struck suddenly by the distance between himself and his dreams.
“Hey, dude, a book on dragons!”
Sam glanced over his shoulder. Dean was at the start of the aisle, holding up a large book. On the front, there was a picture of a dragon and a knight engaged in a duel, the knight’s shield held high against the fire bursting from the dragon’s gaping jaws.
“Very good, Dean,” Sam said, exaggerating his syllables. “Are there a lot of pretty pictures?”
“Maybe. I don’t...” Dean trailed off, his smile faltering when he realized Sam was making fun of him. “Funny. You know, Mom used to read me something with dragons.”
Sam dropped his hand from the shelf, cheek tugged by a flinch. “Dean. Man, I-”
Dean waved him off. He looked down at the book, the flat of his hand moving over the cover, and Sam wondered what it had been like, being read to by their mother. Had it been a routine every night at bedtime? Had Dean lain in bed, years later, missing when his mother had sat beside him as he fell asleep, her voice filling the space between his cheek and the pillow? Dean tucked the book back onto the shelf, and Sam tried to picture him as a little boy being tucked in at night, but couldn’t. He could only picture Dean as he was now, all swagger and teeth, his body weighed down by the same weapons Sam hid under his own clothes.
“I always thought of myself as the knight in shining armor,” Dean said.
Sam laughed, not completely forced, and turned down another row. “You? Really?”
“The chicks love me.”
“Yeah, but one day you won’t have that pretty face.”
Dean stopped. “You think I’m pretty?”
Sam was already reading titles again. “Can we please get to work here?”
The library was inside a two-level house that had been built in the late eighteen hundreds. A thin man with a thin tie had led them up creaking stairs to the second level, narrower than the first because of the peaked roof, where the nonfiction section was. Red and blue glass windows sent colorful beams arcing across the rows of book shelves, early afternoon sunlight spinning with dust particles. A dim, useless lightbulb had swayed when the caretaker turned it on, and Sam had been forced to duck to the side when he passed by it.
After a half an hour of searching every shelf, and Sam seriously considering selling his soul for some organization, Dean made a sound Sam had only ever heard right before “cum-shots” in those movies his brother had given him for this fifteenth birthday. Sam returned the book on the mating habits of the tree squirrel to its slot just as Dean came jogging around the corner, waving a thin book at him.
“Opac is seriously my love slave,” his brother said gleefully.
Sam took the book when Dean handed it to him. It was short, and had a thin, magazine-like cover, a photograph of a fog-laden field on the front. The title was printed in some kind of swirly, calligraphy font; Sam read it out loud.
“The Myths and Magics of Deep South.” Sam moved to slap Dean’s waiting palm with his own, before stopping abruptly, hand hanging mid-air. “Wait a second. They have an Opac here?”
“In the corner, over there. I’ve been there for the past ten minutes.” Dean smirked. “What kind of genius are you anyway?”
“If I didn’t care so much for the sanctity of libraries, I would beat you to death with this book.”
“Geek.”
“Jock.”
“I did *not* play sports. Just because I scored with cheerleaders...”
They sat side by side at a lone wooden table they found behind the shelves. It had been pushed against the wall under the stained-glass windows, and diamonds of bloody light cut across Sam’s hands when he turned a page in the book, coloring the black and white sketches of screaming faces and hulking shapes. Dean was at Sam’s shoulder, picking at the black bands wrapped around his wrist. His elbow hit Sam in the side whenever he shifted. He shifted often.
“Find anything yet?” Dean asked. Again.
Sam very carefully did not throw the book at Dean’s head.
“No. I did have a great idea though. You could, maybe, help?”
Dean shrugged. “I helped last time.”
“Yeah,” Sam snorted. “Just like you helped do the laundry last time.”
“Dude, I am not washing your underwear.”
Something not quite honest in Dean’s voice made Sam’s fingers curl around the side of the book. Dean stretched one of the black bands out, then let it go, snapping it against his wrist. When he did it a second time, Sam calmly laid his hand over Dean’s, feeling the antsy knuckles stop shifting the instant of contact. Sam met Dean’s eyes, finding them wide and close to his own. The swaying lightbulb made the shadow of Dean’s eyelashes look like long grass across his cheekbones. Waiting had always been the hardest part for Dean. Sam squeezed the hand under his, lending patience, and shifted away.
“What are we looking for again?” he asked.
“E.T.”
“No, what did she say exactly?”
Dean grumbled and dug the article out of his shirt pocket, unfolding it across the table next to Sam’s open book. It was the entire front page of the local newspaper. Death in a small town.
“‘They came to us in a beam of light,’ the victim recounts to the police,” Dean read, voice going a pitch higher to imitate the woman’s. “‘They were tall and their heads were huge. I couldn’t move. I sat there and watched them take him away. And then it was dark, and I could hear him screaming.’”
Sam shifted closer, peering down at the article. Two black and white photos interrupted the blocks of text. The first was a blurry side-shot of a body bag being lifted into an ambulance by two officers, their faces turned away from the camera. The second was of Stacey, the woman they had overheard earlier. She was standing between two police officers, hair tangled around her face, a blanket across her shoulders. The tallest officer had his hat lowered to his hip, one hand wiping his face.
“‘And then they came back for me,’ the victim continued, her voice beginning to shake.” Dean imitated this as well. Dean was kind of an ass. “‘One of them hovered over me and looked at me with its huge, black eyes, and then it touched my neck. I don’t remember much else.’” He sat back then, throwing an arm over both of their chairs, clearly no longer in character, unless the victim sat like she had a two ton cock between her legs, as Dean liked to. “Huh. You ever meet an alien, Sam?”
“You think she’s lying.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things,” Dean said, casually. He tapped the photo with the body bag. “It’s never been an alien doing this.”
Sam shook his head, and returned to flipping through the pages.
“You’re a skeptic about the weirdest things.”
“What? You *want* little green men out there probing people?”
Sam ignored him. The pages of the book were fragile, and some of them were stuck together at the corners. Sam carefully peeled the pages apart, looking for the tall, large-eyed creature the woman had described. On page 28, there was a graphic description of slug-like monster that attached to the brains of sleeping men and poisoned the goodness in them. In one instance, the man had butchered his entire family on Thanksgiving Day, and then sat down to eat the meal he and his wife had prepared. After, he’d slit his wrists. In his myths and legends class, Sam had learned most myths were born out of the fear of human imperfection-that the man had just snapped, all by himself, was more horrifying than the idea that he had been taken over by an unseen force.
“I can’t believe she actually told the police this crap,” Dean sneered.
Sam said, turning a page, “She could be telling the-” then stopped.
“What?”
Sam angled the book so Dean could see it. Huge, dark eyes stared up from the page, and below them, slitted nostrils flexed open. The wide, lipless mouth was unsmiling.
“What does that look like to you?” Sam asked.
Dean didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he lifted his head, moving into Sam’s space. His eyes were as serious as Sam had ever seen them. Sam sat straighter in response, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling at the possibility of danger.
“It looks like the truth is out there, Scully,” Dean said, in a slow, intense voice.
If someone is murdered in a quiet library, and there is no librarian around to hear it, does the victim make a sound?
Sam considered finding out.
*
TBC.
Feedback is always wonderful.