Riders on the Storm 1. Pt I: Sam
"You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me." ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Their dad's investigating some haunting in a town nearby. "Sounds like there's a poltergeist for sure," he tells Sam and Dean over canned chili dinner. "Stories of a ghost train, too. If that pans out we'll have a real haunted town job on our hands."
Still, it's nothing worth them all moving up there for, not as long as the ghost train rumor stays just a story. But then John calls back from a payphone, says the sheriff department's got increased strange animal behavior and a body found in the woods. The critters are more than spooked - that's normal for a haunting, of course, which Sam knows all right, Dad doesn't need to tell them.
"Looks like chupacabras," Dad goes on. Dried up, eyes gone, the sort of mutilation they'd come to expect from cattle when the shriveled rat-dogs (as Sam describes them, or as Dean says, 'hellish chihuahuas') attack in rare packs when the game is plentiful.
"Too far north for a chupacabra," Sam says
But Dad says "What else could it be?"
"Dunno, something, but chupacabra doesn't make sense."
Dean grabs the phone. "We'll find out what it is," he says.
"Good boys," says their dad.
Sam sneers, ducking behind his bangs, hating that it still pleases him to hear it.
-
Dad makes the day's drive back and has got a place to stay lined up for all of them after a few calls. It's an old cabin on a lake right up in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not too far from Lake Tahoe actually. Sam's thinking of flashy boats and movie-star cabins half glass and half timber, but then Dad tells them the name of the place.
"Hell Hole Reservoir," he says, and Sam sees Dean pause his gun-cleaning and raise an eyebrow.
"Seriously?" Sam says.
"Well, after Jim and I got rid of the poltergeist in it, the owners suddenly didn't want the cabin any more. Not too eager to sell it, either. Superstitious, but honest folk. This was all years ago. Anyway, they say we're free to use it. They got a gasoline generator and old firewood, if it hasn't rotted, but there's running water."
Sam hates this plan. The town they're in now is tiny, but trading this for the middle of the woods? He hates being isolated, but Dean and Dad are fucking looking forward to it.
Dean gives his job two day's notice. Sam wonders at how he doesn't seem to care about his professional cred. "What if you need a recommendation from the guy?"
"Recommendation? Reference? I'm a hunter, not a mechanic. Man, the garage knew I wasn't sticking around. Mikey said he hated to see me leave and if I ever come back in town and need some work to give him a call, which is better than a recommendation. Recommendation, watchoo talkin' 'bout."
Sam rolls his eyes but laughs a little. He's glad to see the back of this town and the only thing he wants to take with him are some stolen library books.
He'd been up to his neck in the town libraries since high school ended and they'd gone on the road again. Due to his reluctance to go out on long hunting trips - after some faking sick too - Sam's spent some hours being Dad and Dean's research gofer at the local library. Shitty, but he felt free after that to read his own books. He had to catch up, was certain Stanford would be full of kids who'd already read and understood Faulkner and Donne and knew Hemingway by heart and had read at least one thing by Dostoevsky. He was working on that one.
Sam knows he won't ever be back in this town, and the county won't hunt him down to claim the books, so he takes out Lolita, more Dostoevsky, a Faulkner novel collection, This Side of Paradise which he fucking loves even though Amory is sort of an idiot. His obsession with becoming someone but achieving nothing is shallow and, as he reads, Sam swears he's going to do something fucking useful with his life. Useful in a way he wants to be useful. Hunting's not the only useful thing in the world.
-
Two days before they're supposed to leave town, Dean crashes his motorcycle. He's lucky to escape with nothing more than a few cuts and bad bruises, hell he's lucky to escape with his life, but Dean winks when the nurse tells him that, in her and Sam's general direction. Their dad is pissed as hell at Dean, didn't give a shit about the bike but can't believe Dean would drive that recklessly, and Dean smarts at the dressing-down he gets. Sam can't help but agree and his fear is replaced with the dull burn of agreeing with Dad. Dean never takes safety seriously and it's gonna end him one of these days.
Of course, to Dean, the bad news is that the bike itself is destroyed.
"Son of a bitch," Dean says when they go to the tow yard to see the wreck of it. "I fixed that thing up and was gonna make a good sale. Now it's a piece of fucking scrap." He leans on Sam now and then, elbow on his brother's shoulder, and Sam props him up when he's wobbling on his sprained ankle.
Sam almost feels bad for him then, but Sam didn't even have a way to get away from this stupid cabin out in the middle of the woods, and now Dean will suffer the same fate as him. But, hell, he'll probably like it, he'll be bagging monsters constantly and making Sam feel like he's got to pick up the slack.
Summer is monster season, the Winchesters have learned, when things come out of hibernation and the heat drives beasts wild and people into wild beasts. Morbid, but true.
Sam hopes they find nothing at all. Usually he'd count on Dean to distract him in between irritating him with his fanaticism, but Dean's ray of sunshine is a little dimmed too now.
"Man, camping" Dean groans. He's lying on his back on the bed, full of advil for his scrapes and sore spots. Sam's packing his duffel; Dean's is packed, if throwing all his newly clean clothes in mashed in a ball counts as packed.
"This cabin's better than camping. Camping is a pup tent in the rain," their dad says. Dean chuckles. They remember that.
"Sam smelled like wet dog," says Dean.
"Shut up, jerkface, that was you."
"Boys," Dad warns, which shuts them up.
But then Dad gets some statistics and weather graphs in the mail, which Sam tries to ask him about, except their dad just sweeps them away into a bag and says "Change of plans, boys, I've got some stuff to investigate."
Now and then, whatever news he got, whatever plans he was making, no questions would pry it out of him. Omens, he'd say, and Sam would ask what kind of omens, and John would say weather omens. His tone was one that said he had nothing more to tell them on the matter, and while that would never be enough for Sam, he could see Dean nodding, Dean always nodding along, though Sam knew Dean was already bitter about the loss of his bike - just that much more trapped.
Sam misses Dean's bike too, now. He's sure now he could've convinced Dean to let him borrow the thing. Now they're both gonna be stuck, together.
When they're on the road out of town, Dean leans over the back of the seat and asks him if he brought any Vonnegut.
"No," says Sam.
Dean groans.
He's gonna drive Sam crazy.
-
Dean asks if Dad needs his help more than once, which shows he's anxious to not be stuck in a cabin for weeks. Hey, Sam isn't keen on it either. Dad says, "And what, leave Sam? No, Dean."
"Then Sam can come with."
Sam glares at Dean. That's worse. "Thought I was doing important research, right, Dad?" His tone is, as always, dripping with bitter sarcasm. It's toned down a bit now that he sees the imminent possibility of getting dragged out on what he thinks of as the worst kind of hunt: the kind where you're walking all day and sleeping on cold hard ground at night - in the mountains, cold is freezing cold. And you're spending plenty of time hunting in the dark. No, no thanks.
Dad says they'll be fine here and they can cover the chupacabra stuff in the woods, they can't ditch a job they already dug up. They're not kids anymore, they can take care of this with a salted and warded cabin to stay in. There's a paved road a couple miles down, and then within a mile in either direction there's an emergency payphone.
He gives them a roll of quarters. "Don't waste these, these are for calls, understood?"
"Yeah, Dad."
Sam grumbles, "Don't know why we couldn't just find somewhere not in the middle of nowhere. Could do research there."
Dad chews him out. They should be thankful, he says. It's good luck that they've got a place to stay that he barely has to pay for, and it's done honestly, too, no breaking and entering. So no one's going to find them up here, and it'll only be as long as this case lasts, which Sam estimates will be too long, three weeks, a month, something awful and interminable. Dean and him'll be stuck tracking something through the mountain woods.
"I'll still be close by, Sam, don't know why you're complaining about time to yourself."
"That's not even close by, you're just going to call us from the road phone"
"No, Sam, you're my boys and you'll be safe up here. These signs I've found… could be big. And it's killed three, probably five people already. It'll be two, maybe three weeks."
Which, Sam glances at Dean, and Dean looks down, means more like a month.
-
They get there in the early afternoon and scope out the place before John heads off. There are wool blankets in a trunk with plenty of mothballs, and the dry mountain air has kept them in okay condition. The cabin is mostly waterproof - there's a place where the roof is a bit crumbled through, nests here and there, so Dean boosts Sam up there on his shoulders while Sam grabs the nests. They're empty but Sam's still careful as he can be. Leaving their scent, they know, probably means no birds will return to them, so they set them in a row outside the cabin.
After Dad finishes taping salt down around the windows and doors, they all go find wood to burn in the stove. They carry kindling, take turns chopping the larger logs into woodstove-sized pieces, till they've got a sizeable pile.
"Bout enough wood for a week, more if it don't get too cold at night," Dad says. They check over the rest of their supplies: a twelve-pack of D batteries for their flashlights, which have to last the whole time, so keep 'em dry and don't waste 'em. Tinned milk and a can opener, canned green beans, canned corn, canned beans with weenies, a couple jars of peanut butter, a couple loafs of Wonder Bread that'll never get moldy. A couple sub sandwiches they picked up on their way out, that's a treat that'll last them for the next couple days. Then Dad heads out, leaving them to the chirping otherwise-silent woods.
Sam sighs. Dean goes inside and says "Dibs on the bed!"
There are two cots in the cabin but they're cheap and had rusted, and by now both Sam and Dean have hit six feet, meaning their calves hang half off. The springs stab them in the back - one canvas rips just as soon as Dean opens it up, the other busts loose a couple springs and a hook on the frame when Sam sits on it.
"Seriously?" Sam whines, his ass sunk down on the side where his hips would rest, old sheet from the closet rumpled halfway over the cot frame.
Dean laughs and Sam gives him the stinkeye. "You expect me to sleep like this?"
"I dunno," Dean says. "We can't both take the bed." He looks at it sidelong, as if it too will probably collapse.
It turns out to be a really comfortable king-sized bed, which is unfortunate, because then they actually have to fight over it.
"King is big enough for two people, come on, Dean."
Dean still looks dubious, so Sam kicks the cot frame gently, hoping a spring will pop out. "Sharing a bed with your brother can't be half as bad as these things. It'll close up on you in the night."
"You mean it'll close up on you in the night."
"No way, I will fucking climb in there with you while you're sleeping. I am not sleeping in these death traps."
"Fine! Fine," Dean huffs, and flops back on the bed. "I'll dump you out if you kick me in your sleep. Hmm. Firm mattress," he muses aloud at Sam and the empty cabin. "The best kind of mattress for summer, besides a hammock."
"Sleeping in hammocks sucks too," says Sam, bouncing on the end of the bed. "At least a cot lets you lie flat. Hammocks elevate your legs and are hard to get out of and give you a crick in your neck."
"What kind of hammock are you thinking of? Cut it out, don't break this bed with your ass too."
"Shut up, I didn't break it - the stupid thing was rusted through."
Dean croons mockingly, She's a brick … howwwse! Sam does a backwards somersault at him and aims a kick at his head, growling, and Dean ducks to the side and smacks Sam's leg away.
At least it's a king. And it's summer, so they don't even spend much time sleeping at night. There's a generator and the full five-gallon gas container to give them some hours of light, though it only really gets dark near nine this time of year, and the after-sunset glow lasts outside maybe till ten if they let their eyes adjust. Plenty of firewood - for the woodstove only, John warns, and so do all the Fire Warning: EXTREME signs along the highway all the way up here.
Dean still plans on using the outdoor firepit, he tells Sam, since he and Sam are smart enough, the trees are far enough off, the ground is cleared and dusty for ten, twelve feet around. They're not going to throw a bonfire or anything. That'd be wasteful. No one will know, no one will go walking across the lake and be able to tell a firepit light from an incandescent bulb. They've got a lot of privacy. Fires are better outside. Sam agrees.
-
When they climb in that first night Sam sees Dean slip his knife under his pillow.
"No way, man."
"What?"
"Not in the bed. It's gonna slip and cut you in your sleep."
"Don't be stupid, Sam."
"YOU don't be stupid!"
"It's never happened before!"
Sam eyeballs him.
"What?"
"Oh come on, even I remember that."
"That was from shaving, shut up."
"Can you just put it under the mattress? You can still reach it quick, just, god, don't knife me in your sleep."
Dean grouches but he complies, then tumbles onto the bed, scratching his belly and yawning.
Sam crouches down to tuck his own knife under the edge of the mattress, handle-out. It's a neat sickle he really likes that Dean got him for a birthday. He's taking that one with him to Stanford as a sort of insurance policy - Dean said he'd ward it for him with some of the stuff Sam found in the Assyrian demonology books. He wants to tell Dean a lot of the time what he's planning for the future, how he got into Stanford on a full ride. He wants someone other than his guidance counselor and Pastor Jim to be proud of him. But that's a little kid feeling; he shouldn't need someone to be proud of him. They should be proud of him, and knowing that should be enough.
This secret feels like it's eaten him up sometimes, though. Like he can't appreciate his last summer all the way, he's just so anxious when he remembers he's secretly leaving and he has to keep it a secret until he breaks the news at the eleventh hour.
He's used to falling asleep with these worries on his mind, so it doesn't take him long to succumb to the peaceful darkness of sleep.
-
They wake up in the nearly cold clear dawn light. Sam rolls over and puts his head under his pillow, and feels Dean do the same. He was having a weird dream. The deer were conspiring, putting their heads together and watching him from a distance. Now it makes no sense.
He drifts off till he feels Dean jostle the bed getting out at some point, even though it's still too early to reasonably be up. Maybe he has to pee. Maybe he's making coffee. How was it you made coffee without a coffeemaker again? Sam's used to motels that come with them or have coffee in the lobby, and when they're camping there's no point in coffee, the outdoors wakes you up. This is a strange in between spot though, and he deserves the luxury of coffee. He knows Dean usually craves it.
Damn it, he's awake now. Pulling a blanket over his shoulders, he wanders to the cabin door and opens it to look outside.
There's Dean, facing the lake, jerking off into the rising sun reflected on the water. Sam thought he was pissing at first but the rhythmic jerking arm movement is unmistakable, framed by the golden morning light. It's fucking picturesque.
He thinks of Faulkner and the so-close-it's-raw intimacy of Quentin and Caddy Compson, of Darl when he knows his sister's secret pregnancy just because she doesn't say anything, how this is something Faulkner write about and pin the bizarre intimate intrusion just right. Sam's not intruding, he's just standing there, like Dean is just standing there. Sam knows he came out there to be alone, and yet Dean's standing there in broad daylight, performing for the empty world before him, the tiny house in the distance. He's a distant observer for a moment, but Faulkner has no distant observers, only interested ones, only twisted and selfish ones. He's really not a distant observer, he's Dean's brother. Of all the unwanted intimacy he thinks he's fleeing, now he wants to take advantage of this moment, just because it's here, because he's earned the right by putting up with claustrophobic family all these years.
Thinking about Faulkner haunts him. So he turns away and maybe Dean knows none the wiser.
When Dean comes in, Sam's got coffee in one hand and is rummaging through the closet. Sam keeps his back to him to give him some privacy.
"Look," he says, pointing at two boxes labeled books. "Maybe there's some Vonnegut in there."
"Thank God," Dean says. "No TV and a battery radio with no stations, but at least there's books. Hey, maybe there's sex in some of them."
Sam rolls his eyes as Dean wrestles open the box. Under a couple years' worth of National Geographics there's a stack of romance novels.
"Son of a bitch," Dean says, and Sam cracks up laughing.
"Maybe there's sex in them!" He leans against the wall to hold his stomach.
Dean picks one up. "Yeah, right. These are like PG-13, aren't they?" It's a stroke of luck that Sam's laughing too hard to correct him, which would only start a jag of teasing from Dean, that Sam's read porn for girls.
-
Sam is truly bored with this translating work Dad leaves with him. Akkadian, really? No one knows Akkadian. He spends maybe a total of an hour on it most days when Dean bugs him to by doing his workout indoors. It's gross but Dean says if he works out and Sam does the translating and transcribing, then they just have to spar and they'll be done.
Sam figures he's getting cheated though, since Dean doesn't have to do any of this research crap - "slave labor" he calls it, and Dean rolls his eyes.
After they do all that, Sam takes out his Dostoevsky, and Dean searches through the boxes of warped paperbacks till he finds, miraculously, a copy of Slaughterhouse Five. He flaps it around and the pages crinkle. "This lady had better taste than you, Sam," he says, and Sam tells him to shut up.
Unfortunately the only other non-romance novel is a Tom Clancy one that Dean's read twice and hated both times, so Dean digs through Sam's books.
"Man, there's nothing good here to jerk off to, why the hell would you steal these from the library?" he whines. "I'm serious, all the sex in here is awful. No cable, no Playboys, just National Geographic and fucking Lolita. The Trafalmagorians are my best bet around here, I swear to God," and Sam laughs but Dean still looks disappointed.
"It's literature," Sam says. "The sex scenes aren't about sex."
"That's just unhealthy," Dean says, and Sam shrugs, because it's kinda more interesting that way. More interesting than a stack of skin mags. "Anyway, I'm not gonna read that Lolita shit," Dean says.
"Then read the romance novels, I hear they're pretty raunchy."
"You think I'm some kind of housewife who reads romance novels?" but Sam ignores him, keeps at his Fitzgerald.
"You know, these things do have some good bits," Dean says, paging intently through a book with a long-haired fur-wearing Viking barbarian dipping a peasant girl on it to stare intently into her eyes. "It's better than reading Cosmo for the sex tips, but about the same as Playboy penthouse letters, in terms of the sex. Whoa - hoo, maybe better."
"Whoa there, Dean, can you just… keep that to yourself."
"Whatever, I'm basically pre-screening these for you, I know you're gonna go through them later. This one -" he waves the Viking-covered book, " - this has a pretty nice fantasy twist. I know that gets you going."
"Shut up," says Sam, his face hot now, jabbing his foot out to mock-kick Dean from a ways away.
-
After tramping out as far as they could go all afternoon, and turning back at the midway point, Sam's impressed with how truly out in the middle of nowhere they are. Sam's good with a compass and Dean's good at remembering landmarks, so they get their lay of the place, the hour it takes them to circle the lake, the couple hours it takes to go uphill to the ridge
They find normal animal tracks, some deer, plenty of possum, skunk, raccoon.
"But hardly any squirrels, did you notice?" Dean asks.
"Huh." They're sitting on some stumps near the fire pit, Sam stretching his legs after the long hike. "Not many large birds either. Maybe the population is on a down-swing."
"We're by the water, of course there would be large birds. No, it's probably some creature hunting, driving them out maybe."
"Sure," Sam says.
Dean doesn't offer up any creature ideas and Sam doesn't ask.
"You wanna light a fire here?" Dean asks, and Sam eyes their limited supply under the tiny lean-to roof.
"Let's try the old stuff, see if it'll catch. We shouldn't waste good stuff indoors. We got matches, right?"
"Yeah, and your library books for kindling."
"Fuck off," Sam says, and Dean flips him off, which is standard but annoying.
All day there's been some sound - birds, wind in the trees, background noise. When it gets to dusk, there's a bit more noise; when it gets dark, though, dead silent. Despite the relative calm and mild excitement of the night before, that second night is when Sam starts thinking of the whole situation as creepy.
Sam isn't the sort to get spooked by the woods but when the woods already contains monsters, well.
Sam's anxious about it when it gets too quiet.
The wood is old and the fire barely catches. It only burns two hours from start to finish, with a few rejuvenating attempts in the middle. By then they've had their second sub sandwiches from the cooler - Sam says goodbye to fresh greens and variety for a while - and it's too dark to read, and Sam is ready to pass out.
"I'm turning in," he says, and Dean nods, "mm," staring into the embers.
That night, Sam dreams of reflective eyes, herds of deer wandering towards him while he wants to back away, but he can't move, frozen in place. Sam thinks of deer with round beady black eyes like depthless pools, but these ones are real and the reflected glow flashing here and there comes like someone's shining a light in them. It's the headlight glow you see as you pass in your car on the highway. It's the glance right before impact, or before it leaps over your hood and crashes its hooves through your windshield.
These ones are still far away, but he keeps thinking, they're getting closer. Don't let them get closer. He doesn't know why, but when Dean climbs into bed and Sam becomes partly conscious, he's slightly afraid of them at the same time he realizes it's strange to be afraid of deer.
Dean's hand pats his shoulder briefly, like a blind man's touch in the dark, and it reassures still-mostly-asleep Sam in a way he would never let it while conscious.
-
Sam wants to spend the day reading, but Dean tries to convince him to go out with him into the woods.
Sam doesn't want to.
Dean says, "Well, what the hell are we doing here, then."
Sam snaps at him, "I don't know, so stop bugging me. If you want to go shoot some monsters then go do it."
Dean gives him a hard time - calls him a wimp, a pansy ass, a whiner. "You always have such a shitty attitude about this, Sam."
"Whatever, we've got ages, it's only the second day."
Dean says, "Well then, fight me or call it a day."
Sam looks up at him. Dean's sweating through the pits in his t-shirt. He looks restless as hell. It's a little how Sam feels after the dream last night, but Sam's dealing with his restlessness. He's ignoring it by reading and thinking about Stanford in three more weeks.
Looking at Dean and thinking about Stanford makes Sam kinda feel like shit, like he's getting away with something he's not sure he should.
Dean says, "We could go on a run if you don't wanna fight. Spar, I mean."
Sam blinks. "Yeah, a run." He looks at the lake. "Okay."
So they do, and it gets Sam's mind to shut up for a while, and he can absorb it all - sun, sweat, dry air, pine tree smell, the sound of him and Dean breathing and not much else. When they get back Dean sits down to sharpen his knives, and Sam goes back to being confused about the events of Absalom! Absalom!
Dean wanders off into the mountains by himself after that, and gets back when it starts getting dark. When Dean comes back he wants to go night swimming, but clouds have rolled in, and heat lightning flickers inside them.
"I didn't think they had weather like this in California," Sam says.
"Not that I know. Maybe it's a lake effect."
"Huh." It doesn't make sense to Sam, lake effect or anything. But he likes summer storms, and they both know swimming in a tiny lake with lightning is a terrible idea.
So they lie in bed in the cabin's heat and the strange stuffiness of the charged clouds, blankets kicked off, just in their boxers. Sam lies on his side facing away from Dean. Dean doesn't reach out to touch his shoulder tonight.
"Do you hear howling?" Sam asks. It's distant and strange, a yowling bark. Could be a dog or a wolf, though it's much deeper than a coyote's yip. Yelping.
Dean says, after a few seconds, "I don't hear anything."
"There it is again."
"Can't hear it."
Sam sighs and turns his pillow over to the cool side.
-
The next day when they're sniffing out animal tracks in the midday sun - better to find a chupacabra now than get surprised at night, Dean says; or find a den, Sam says, and Dean nods - they hear something in the woods
"Is that a dog?" Sam asks.
Dean shakes his head.
But then Sam hears it again, and a dog comes from over a hillock, walking right up to them, mouth open and panting.
Sam and Dean stare at it.
"You see any dog tracks?" Dean asks
"No," Sam says, and holds out a hand.
"Careful," Dean says, putting a hand on Sam's shoulder to keep him from approaching the dog. They are hunting, sure, but the dog walks up to Sam and sniffs his hand, then whines.
He's weird looking, red-brown ears and a red tail on a white body. Biggish, sorta like a sheepdog, the ones that are black and white, but with different coloring. He's got regular dark brown doggy eyes.
"He looks normal. And he's thirsty," Sam says, and pours a little of his water into his hand for the dog to lick up. "See, his nose is dry."
"You sure that's not rabies?"
"Come on, Dean, he's not staggering or anything. Look, there's a dent where he had a collar. I think he's lost."
Dean ducks his head to look. "You mean she."
"Oh. She, then."
"So her owners can't be anywhere near, can they? There's nobody out here, Sam. Middle of nowhere?" Dean waves his hand indicating the vast empty mountains Sam's been complaining about for days.
"Maybe she wandered around the lake, or from the road. Maybe someone's backpacking out here and she slipped her collar and ran off. Maybe something we've been hunting scared her." The dog pants serenely, despite Sam's defense.
"All right, all right. Well, shoo!" Dean waves at the dog, who is unfazed. Sam makes a face, which Dean sees and rolls his eyes at. "He's gotta go back where he came from."
"He's lost."
"What are you, the dog whisperer?" Dean sneers. "We can't track anything if we've got this pet hanging out with us."
"Then let's head back."
Dean looks at Sam. Sam makes a face.
Dean picks up a stick from the forest floor, waves it in front of the dog a bit to get her attention. The dog looks at him calmly. "You wanna fetch? Go on, fetch!" Dean throws the stick off where the dog came from.
The dog tracks it with his eyes, then looks back to Dean, then sidles up to Sam. Sam laughs and scratches her ears.
"Well it can't be anyone's dog if it doesn't know fetch," Dean complains, and the dog just looks at him.
Sam is still laughing at Dean.
-
Of course, Sam's the one she follows home.
They step inside and Dean heads to the kitchen for lunch, but the dog stops outside, standing stock still till Sam says, "Come on." Then she steps over the threshold and trots into the kitchen where Sam's holding out a piece of lunchmeat. "Come on," Sam says again, and the dog takes the meat and wolfs it down there on the kitchen floor. Of course, then the dog won't leave.
"Great," says Dean after they try to lead it back into the woods. "This sucks."
"You just don't like dogs," Sam says.
"Damn straight."
"She's not even bugging you!"
"Yeah it is, it's gonna eat all our food."
"Not if we get her dog food."
"You got money?"
"Yeah," says Sam. "I'll see if I can hitch somewhere down there… or I'll go around across the lake and see if it's their dog, or if they've seen it before. Or if they're making a grocery run."
"Yeah, yeah, sure. At least make her sleep outside."
Problem is, the dog just won't budge from in front of the woodstove, no matter how Sam cajoles or nudge it gently.
"Fine," Dean says. "It can stay here."
Sam sees him keeping an eye on the dog all night, as if he's afraid she'll walk up and use him as a fire hydrant or make a mess on the bed. Instead the dog just curls up on the tile in front of the empty woodstove.
-
Dean is already up, again, when Sam gets up. Sam's a teenager still, he gets an excuse - he remembers when Dean would sleep inordinate amounts and he'd be the one Dad had to jostle out of bed. Sam himself used to be worse when he was going through his high school growth spurt, but it seems to have basically stopped. He might have gained an inch last year, not quite another this year. He's about as tall as Dean, which rankles Dean, but Sam's still not as filled out so Dean still beats him at most sparring.
Anyway, Dean's not there in the bed when Sam wakes up, and when Sam sits up the springs squeal and the dog at the hearth lifts its head to look at Sam, alert.
Sam had almost forgotten. It's a weird thing, having the dog there. It's nice. "Hey," he says in soothing tones. The dog doesn't look bothered, though. Sam gets up, and the dog stands from its place by the fire and follows him into the kitchen. Sam grabs some Wonder bread from the bag and puts peanut butter on it, no coffee sitting in the pot today so he foregoes it, and gets himself a cup of water from the open five-gallon jug. He feeds the dog a piece of jerky, which the dog wolfs down at Sam's feet. He waits while Sam pets him as Sam eats his peanut butter sandwich.
When Sam gets up to go outside, he calls "Come on, Regina, let's find Dean." Sam's going to call her Regina, because he's always wanted to call a dog Rex, but she's a queen, not a king. But Regina goes back to the fireplace to lie down again.
"All right," Sam says, and walks outside.
Apparently Dean has a schedule, because he's right there, only a couple yards from the cabin door, with his dick in his hand. He's leaning back in one of the deck chairs in his sunglasses, a book in one hand and the other, in the middle of some intense self-loving.
"Whoa!" Sam says, but Dean just goes "What?"
"What? What do you mean, what, you're kind of out in the open here, Dean. Can you just… put that away." Sam pointedly does not look at Dean's dick.
"Why? You interrupted me."
"You're right in front of the cabin with your dick in your hand. Seriously?" Sam tries to saturate his voice with the annoyance he feels right now.
"The neighbors can't see us, Sammy."
"I can see you!"
"Then don't look at me! Jeez, I'm just over here minding my own business, and you stomp up and tell me to stop whacking it? Who's the perv?"
Sam sees the book Dean's got resting on the chair arm. "You're reading Long Hard Ride?" There's a cowgirl on the front giving the reader a come-hither look, with a stomach-baring cropped western-style shirt and some huge pushed-up breasts.
Dean gives Sam the finger. "Yeah, and you would too - though maybe you won't, I may have got something on it." Dean leers.
Sam makes a gagging noise.
"Anyway, it's not like you've never seen any of this before, hell you've touched -" Dean sort of swallows his remark, and Sam stares blankly at him, not getting it till suddenly he gets it.
Apparently Dean forgot the memo he issued himself years ago, that they did what they did and don't talk about it. Sam knew it was the sort of shame you don't think about or repeat. Touched. What a euphemism. He rolls the word on his tongue still trying to swallow it, then pinches the tip in his teeth and walks back inside.
Sure, Dean's right. But they don't fucking talk about it. It's been years. They've grown out of it, or at least Sam's been counting on that. He's had a serious girlfriend and some real experience under his belt by now. He and Dean don't need any help from each other in that department.
Sam realizes that the hot twist in his gut is more than shame at what Dean brought up. He's kind of turned on now, the thought of jerking off here in the open air where no one could see. He tries to tell himself it's not at the sight of Dean's dick, but the best he can manage is the excuse that responding to something that pornographic is basically Pavlovian in any teenage boy.
-
One day Dean finds a bottle of whiskey in a trunk in a closet, and they decide to get drunk and swim under the light of the three-quarter moon that night. It's not a full moon, they stay in on those nights, reasonably spooked by the noise of the animals and the knowledge that they're not just there for a summer vacation, but a hunt for something deadly out in those very woods. Could be any kind of were-creature out there. It's the responsible move.
They build a small fire in the pit outside and roast some weenies. Dean wishes out loud they had s'mores and Sam says he'd kill for some chocolate. They kick the fire down so the coals are open and let it cool, then Dean pisses on the logs and watches them steam. With the glowing beacon that will stay for a while, they decide to go night swimming.
Their eyes adjust to the dark once they're out on the water, kicking and splashing at each other, and they race to the island. Sam wins because one year they were in a high school with a pool and he had to take PE, so he took swimming, and he manages to do more than compensate for the fact that he sinks like a stone.
"Rematch!" Dean shouts, and Sam laughs. He'll give it to him.
But then as they're starting off on a race around the island, Sam gouges his shin on a rock. "Fuck!" he shouts, rolling over onto his back and drawing his knee up.
Dean shouts back at him, taunting till he sees Sam's stopped, then heads towards him. Sam sticks his leg up on a rock to see the cut. It's dark so the blood there is barely visible, the dark hairs on his shin standing out strong but the red washed out and streaming down his leg, diluted by the water. Sam swipes at it with his hand as Dean comes closer. He holds his hand up to the moonlight and it's clear that what's washed over his shin is blood, all right, dark and shining wet.
"How big's the cut?" Dean asks, reaching for Sam's calf easily without asking. Sam lets him out of instinct and reflex, like a million hunts they've been on where any of them got hurt, and even before that when Sam was a kid it was half the time Dean who looked at his injury and told him whether to man up or let him fix it.
"Not too bad?" Sam guesses. He hisses when Dean touches it, gently. "Hurts like a bitch."
"Yeah, I bet," says Dean, but he doesn't take his hand away or let Sam's calf go.
"Seriously, it's bruised, stop touching it."
"Eh, you've had worse. Climb out and let it dry."
Sam grunts, sighs. They're sobered but not brought down from the buzz of nighttime swimming. He crawls over the rocks up to the pebbly shore, looks for leaves that aren't stinging nettles or poison ivy to put on his shin. It hurts to press it but pressing is what you have to do.
Dean's grabby, trying to do it himself, but Sam swipes him away. "Get off, you're drunk and sloppy and you're gonna make it worse."
"'m not sloppy. Not a sloppy drunk."
Sam laughs, because Dean's face is belligerent and hilarious in this light. "Yeah you are," Sam says, because it's true. "I have seen you so messy."
Dean's face flushes - more blood seen under moonlight - and says "Shut up."
It's charming. Sam is very charmed by Dean right now, irritated and charmed and glad Dean is there to take his mind off the pain.
"Least it wasn't glass," Dean says, leaning back on his heels.
Sam thinks that he wants to see the stretch of Dean out under moonlight instead of just his chest. They're in their underwear right now, wet underwear, which happens to show a lot and cling and do things that Sam would usually be too embarrassed to look at, but they're both kind of drunk tonight and Dean was jerking off right in front of him just a day ago, so he fucking looks, all right?
Dean, heavy-lidded and lounging, more drunk and less focused, looks back.
"You know I learned how to do lifeguard stuff," Sam says. "That swim class I took. They did some lifeguard stuff in it."
"Oh yeah? Like what? How to run down the beach with your pecs jiggling?" Dean cups himself like he's got boobs and Sam groans.
"Like, unconscious tows, or how to keep someone who's struggling from grabbing onto you and pulling you down. Like if they're drowning, they're gonna climb up and force your head under trying to stay afloat."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, so you're supposed to duck down and go underwater. If you pull them down with you they'll let go because they're freaking out and they don't want to drown."
"That's a shitty thing to do."
"No, then you swim around behind them and pin their arms. Or you wait till they're too weak or unconscious and then you just pull them by the hand."
"That's still pretty shitty."
"You'd do it. Knock someone out for their own good, if you had to save them."
"Wouldn't make 'em think they were drowning."
"They're panicking! They don't even know what's going on"
"Whatever. You give any hot chicks mouth to mouth?"
"That's CPR, Dean, we didn't do that."
"That's stupid, you gotta know how to give mouth to mouth."
Dean looks at Sam and Sam feels belligerent and then realizes Dean is looking at him and glares and turns red. That would be stupid. "Gross, you're not teaching me mouth-to-mouth."
Dean smacks him lightly upside the head. Sam sees it coming and ducks. "Course not. You can figure that out on your own, you like being self-taught. You should show me those holds though, that sounds useful."
"Yeah," Sam says, so they swim out again.
Turns out Dean is really good at struggling - figures he'd give Sam a hard time. They end up wrestling a lot in the water more than having a teaching moment, and manage not to actually drown despite the alcohol. Sam can hold Dean the first couple times but eventually Dean starts breaking his holds, and then says they should switch so he can practice. Of course then Sam's too weak from swimming around all night to break Dean's holds.
"No fair," he says. "I've lost blood, I'm in a weakened state." Dean laughs.
"You feeling a little faint, Sammy? Need me to tow you to land?"
"Shut up," Sam says, and clings to Dean's back till Dean dislodges him.
-
When they get back, the dog is waiting for them on the shore. They rarely see it out at night; its eyes are strangely bright. Sam barely had the energy to notice, though. He's been wrestling in the water with Dean all night and he's fucking exhausted. Their underwear is soaked and so are they.
Sam is stumbling laughing right on Dean's heels and Dean is jostling him and they're supporting each other.
"What if I just went to bed now," Sam says.
"In your wet briefs? Gross."
"I dunno where the towels are."
Dean shoves Sam off of him and shakes his own head like he's a dog shedding water before they enter the cabin.
Sam shoves Dean in retaliation, and Dean snaps the elastic of Sam's briefs, and Sam realizes through the soreness of his muscles he's aroused, really physically turned on, half hard and he probably has been for a while now.
But it's dark now that they're inside, and nobody can really see much, just dim outlines. So Sam goes over to the bed, leaning on the foot of it with his hand, groping his way to the far side, his side, the away-from-the-door side. It's half to guide himself in the dark half because he's drunk and unsteady on his feet, but they're both nearly falling down wobbly-legged, it's nothing to be embarrassed about, is it?
He strips off his boxers and then Dean tosses him a shirt - maybe the shirt he was wearing earlier? huh, maybe, being drunk he can't recall.
"There, towel off," Dean says, and Sam snorts and dries off with it before collapsing onto the bed.
Here's his problem, though - he's still half hard and it's been ages since he's done anything about it. Sharing a bed with your brother tends to put a damper on that kind of behavior Sam really prefers to do in private, though it doesn't seem to have stopped Dean lately. Lying on his back hearing Dean shucking off his shorts, rubbing his legs and hair dry, barely able to see the movement in the corner of his eye in the dark, he moves his hand down to cup his dick. He lets it swing up against his stomach, and with his hand he holds it down, keeps it from bobbing around.
Dean grunts, flops down too on Sam's left. The mattress inclines towards the middle then, but Sam doesn't edge away. He's kind of touching himself, all right, and the jostling helps a little too much, and hell, fuck it, he needs to fucking take care of this and they're both gonna pass out in an instant anyway.
His elbow bumps Dean's as he strokes his dick.
"Dude," Dean says.
"Mmf," Sam grunts, something between faking sleep and "so what?" A guy has needs. Dean the outdoor masturbator should understand.
"I can feel your arm moving."
"Shut up," Sam says. The fact is he's exhausted and drunk, so even though this feels so very fucking necessary, and he's kind of burning white hot at any touch, even his own, he needs the pressure like he needed air when Dean was holding him underwater earlier, and with his drunken tired technique he is not exactly blowing his load in thirty seconds. And maybe that's even despite the fact that he's thinking of how Dean would do this and not give a shit who saw, how free and easy this can be, not caring if Dean sees or maybe letting him… God, and the way Dean's body felt against his, all moving muscle and skin, fuck, it's been a while.
"You're drunk," Dean says.
"So?" Sam pants.
"So you're just…"
The slip and fap of Sam fisting his dick sounds in the dead quiet where Dean pauses. Let him hear it for all Sam cares. Not giving a shit is awesome.
"You're not gonna…"
Sam makes a frustrated noise in his throat.
"Shit, come on already," Dean says, and then his hand is on top of Sam's, then sliding under towards Sam's balls to hold him at the base. He pushes Sam's hand away by sliding his own under and up, grip tight and firm, tighter than Sam's but good, wow, fuck, apparently this is what Sam needed. Sam groans and Dean's hand moves steady and hard on him, callous of his thumb rough against the crown of his dick, Dean's breath gusting hot on Sam's shoulder and his arm firm against Sam's naked stomach, shit. Dean's thumb sliding around to rub across the slit, and the squeeze and twist of his technique is more all over the place than precise and efficient, out of sleepiness and whatever it is making Dean bite his lip between his teeth, so close Sam can see it.
Dean's hands feel all over the place and Sam fucking loses it then - "Jesus fucking Christ," he says, body stiffening and arching with his come landing hot on his stomach, definitely hot, he can hear Dean hiss at its touch. Dean's arm over his stomach weighs him down to the mattress, his back damp with sweat wrinkling the sheet as Dean strokes him through it. Maybe Sam's hallucinating but through the roar in his ears he thinks he hears Dean say something mindless like "That's it, there you go."
When Sam stops arching and twitching and making embarrassing drunken noises he swears he doesn't normally make, at the exact moment when he might begin to reflect on the fact that his brother just got him off, like they're kids experimenting again except they are so not, Sam is seven fucking teen and Dean way older than that - that's when Dean takes his hand off Sam, and rolls over and away onto his stomach on his side of the bed.
Sam is still gasping, not having entirely processed what just happened, caught by surprise in a way he hasn't been in a long while. And then he hits sleep like a wall.
-
Sam dreams that night about Dean bending down over him, pinching his nose and sealing his mouth over Sam's airtight. Sam is living underwater and Dean brings him sustenance from the surface. It's not that he's ungrateful, but he'd really like to breathe right now, he's fine now, he can do this on his own.
But Dean's fingers are still hard on the bridge of his nose, his lips are still molded around Sam's lips, not like a kiss but Sam can feel it burning like a brand, wet but not too wet, warm and life-giving and painful.
Dean's not breathing into him, though. Sam's chest is heavy, it's hard to breathe, he's struggling up but the duckweed of the lake wraps around his ankles, his legs, like the lake is a monster trying to pull him down. He looks down but it's Dean, and he yells at Dean to cut it out, what does he think he's doing?
Sam wakes up hot and tangled in the sheets which he'd somehow stolen entirely off Dean's side of the bed. His legs are struggling and kicking to move, and he's ended up with his arm trapped against his chest and down against his stomach, which he's lying on, which is probably why he was struggling to breathe in that dream. He's half hard, in the way that he sometimes is waking up.
It comes back to him now - the cut on his shin throbbing, and the realization that he's sleeping nude, which he never does. The night they spent swimming, the rescue holds and Dean insisting that none of that was any good if you didn't know CPR, mouth breathing and chest compressions that can break your ribs. His gorge rises as he thinks of it, and then his hand brushes against his bare dick and he remembers that Dean jerked him off last night.
Sam untangles himself and sits up, trying to shake the dream from him by shaking his head, rolling his shoulders, like shedding water from his hair and off his back. He can hear Dean pumping water outside.
Sam's hung over and he figures so is Dean. They move about slowly and in relative quiet. The sun is really fucking bright and hot at midday, but the cabin is too stuffy, and it's all too much. Sam wants to say fuck it, and take a dip, but his leg still hurts anyway and swimming might make the queasy feeling in his stomach turn to outright nausea.
He goes and kneels by the edge of the water, trying not to press his cut shin against the ground hard, and ducks his hair just under the surface. He whips it back and gets water all over his face, but it feels good, a relief.
He does it again, and shivers at the cold drops splashing on his bare back and shoulders, dripping down his neck. He feels more awake now.
Dean's still inside or wandered off somewhere, so the deck chair is fucking his.
Sam sits and unzips his shorts, and pulls his dick out. The air on it feels cool, his hand hot, as the blood flows to it. He closes his eyes and thinks of nothing at all.
He's fully hard thinking only of the comfort of the heat, the feel of his own hand on his dick, a good rhythm, when he hears Dean's voice.
"Oh, so it's okay for you to jack off in the open," Dean says.
Sam doesn't even bother opening his eyes. "Shut up," he moans, a little too far gone to have any kind of conversation right now.
"What about the neighbors, Sam?"
Sam opens his eyes to glare at Dean. Dean glares back.
"You're serious? This bugs you?" Sam has slowed down, gone from jacking himself to fondling himself obscenely, and he can see Dean's eyes flicker down to his crotch. "After last night?"
Sam knows he's being bold as brass, that this is something that should not go acknowledged or remembered. It's rash of him but he doesn't care, he's leaving in a few weeks and then this will be a molehill transgression next to the mountain of abandoning the family. More simply, he's never shied away from pushing Dean's buttons, and they're the only two people out here, and hell, nothing's going to happen if Sam doesn't push some damn buttons.
Dean looks Sam in the eye, and Sam's expecting the anger the but he doesn't expect Dean's outright fear. It's not like they haven't done this before. It's a terrifying expression, honestly, considering the few yet drastic contexts in which Sam's seen Dean like this. Sam is frozen in it like a deer in headlights. All he can do is glare back - sardonic anger, his defense against everything now.
Dean's face is red, though it may just be sunburn. "You little…" Dean says, and rubs a hand over his eyes. "We're gonna hunt tonight, all right? So I'm gonna clean my guns and take a nap." He walks to the shore and slaps cupped handfuls of the cold water onto the sides of his head, back of his neck, then goes inside without looking back at Sam.
Sam watches his brother's broad shoulders and swagger as he leaves, and then thinks about the scene he's making, and it doesn't take long for him to finish. Stamina be damned. He hopes Dean is at the window, if only because he has that desire which lives in every little sibling, to push back harder, irritate his brother and drive him crazy.
-
Sam falls asleep in the shade.
He keeps having dreams that are so strange they must be anxiety dreams. He does feel anxious. The worst case scenarios for when he finally leaves for Stanford keep imprinting fear on his mind. The anxiety must work its way out of him sometime somehow because of this, his success at repressing it, and the general oppressive heat of the summer, the lazy wordlessness of the day. He finds himself thinking of the creatures in the forest when he wakes up, thinking of the near menace of monsters that doesn't touch them yet, the strange world of wilderness they've only barely tamed.
Sam thinks he hears thunder storms but they aren't there. He dreams it's rocks falling in the mountains, avalanches, packs of wolves falling all over each other, the lowing of buffalo trampling over the plains. The roar of the Pacific Ocean on cliffs.
The rumble and thrum keeps him sleeping poor but hard, like the dreams don't let him rest. Dreams of boredom and the undercurrent of tension riding through him, the crescendo towards final action all coming soon and to a head when he'll leave for good.
Sam wakes up with the sun moved and a burn stinging on his skin, feeling nervous about hunting that night, and then some.
No one knows about Stanford but him, his girlfriend Mandy, his guidance counselor, and Pastor Jim, who Sam confided in and who said he'd hold on to Sam's mail, every acceptance and rejection passing through his hands. Jim wished him luck and told him to keep in touch during school, and Sam will if he can, because he's afraid he'll find little help from his father.
He has no clue what Dean will say. It might be driving him more than a little crazy. Sam oscillates wildly between worrying his ass off and refusing to worry. Out here he won't deny himself anything, every moment a parting gift, and that means Dean too, anything Dean will give, though he doesn't know, though he's insisting on making it weird. It's a fucking weird thing, all right, but Sam's suddenly got what feels like a world of perspective and the thought of not having to face any consequences if he leaves.
He feels like shit when he realizes he's thinking about it that way, but then again, what happens happens. They're both going a little crazy out here in the woods.
-
next
This entry was originally posted at http://zempasuchil.dreamwidth.org/282758.html.