Bend the Bracket 10
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
-- -- --
It was three days before Sam finally, finally felt that Dean was well on the road to recovery, and even then, blood loss like that was going to take more than a month to be a thing of the past. The sun was pouring in the motel window, cold and bright, and Dean had managed to get all prepared to go without even waking him, though there were still bruises under his eyes and a paleness to his face that was not going away. He'd learned how to use his right hand a little, without tearing the cast apart. That was progress, too.
The sun glinted off the gun Dean was cleaning, his favorite one, likely not even needing the attention. It was something to pass the time, Sam knew. Because Dean was still gnashing at the bit trying to get them out of the city and Nichole hadn't said ten words to them in two and a half days.
There were more Leviathans showing up, mostly in groups of three or four, all of them hunting for whatever was killing their kin. She'd told them to lie low while she worked something out that might help them get out and gone without becoming fish food, first. So they'd stayed cooped up in the motel, trying to track the situations of the other cities sprinkled across the country experiencing similar weather conditions.
Dick Roman planned to stop in most of them on his campaign trail. Sam just had to wonder if he'd planned that before or after his minions had started dying.
"Nichole tells me she's got something," Dean greeted him, and put the gun on the table next to the computer, the better to type on the keyboard. When he had what he wanted on the screen, he turned it toward Sam like he could read it from the bed, which he couldn't. "A weapon. That we have to find."
"Where?"
Dean's face turned somehow amused. "I'll give you three guesses. Here's a hint, it's in one of two places we've already been."
Sam frowned. He wasn't awake enough for guessing games. "Dean, we've been everywhere. I'm not awake enough for this."
"Heaven or Hell, Sammy. Poseidon's trident is either in Heaven or Hell." Dean told him, and lifted his hands like that fact had made his morning. "Because we haven't spent enough time in either of those places for two guys that are still alive."
"I'm not sure still is the word."
Dean shook his head. "Whatever. In any case, we're going to need to die again to find it."
Sam winced. There weren't many people that could say something like that, and the fact that they could did not make him feel happy, or even special. It made him wonder about their lives, more than anything. Every time one of them was stabbed or shot or thrown into a wall, they worried. It seemed fairly ridiculous, considering how often death was not eternal, and yet they still did, still fought tooth and nail to stay breathing. And now they'd have to stop to find the weapon they needed to fight the creatures slowly taking over the world.
"But...uh... that aside, I was thinking," Dean stopped looking at him and started paying attention to the gun again, distracting himself. His voice lost volume. He withdrew a bit into himself, not far, just far enough that he could erect a wall between what he was feeling and what he was saying, like he did so often when hunting. He didn't want to say what he was going to say. Sam knew him well enough to tell. "I kinda want to hit up Heaven first, if we can. Need to pick up something while I'm there." He started cleaning the barrel again, even though he'd done that already.
Sam pushed himself up and swung his feet off the edge of the bed. "Besides a weapon that can kill Leviathan?"
"Yes," Dean didn't look at him.
"What, exactly?"
"Just something I lost."
Sam frowned, not understanding. "You dropped something the last time we were in Heaven?"
Dean's shoulders fell and he stopped pretending to care about the gun, his eyes focusing on nothing, his fingers still. He pursed his lips before he spoke. "No, Sam, I didn't drop something in Heaven. It's... Cas. I don't know if he's there or not, but some Angel will know if he's dead or not."
"I thought he was dead."
"You aren't the only one with a 'profound bond,' Devil-worshiper."
Sam felt his face turn unamused the same as Dean's morphed into an awkward, unapologetic smile. "I don't have a-"
"Tenuous homosexual relationship with Satan?"
"Profound bond with Lucifer, thanks." Sam corrected, and pretended that his brother had not just used the word tenuous. He stood up, socks catching on the carpet, and moved toward the bathroom, scratching his stomach under his shirt. It was kind of a lie, of the little white variety. He did have something with Lucifer, but he didn't want to label it. If he labeled it, he'd have to decide what to do about it. It was too much, too soon. "And then what? We go find your angel and the two of you consecrate the car and everything goes back to sunshine and daisies and killing ghosts on Fridays?" He said to the mirror, which showed that the bruises from the night before were purpling against his skin.
"It was never sunshine and daisies," Dean called back at him. "But you've got the right idea."
Sam could deal with that. It was odd, but if Dean wanted to cut himself a piece of angel food cake, Sam wasn't going to stop him. There were worse things in the world for Dean. A lot worse. And if Cas was up to the challenge of keeping him reined in and alive if they found him, Sam wasn't going to try to talk him out of it, either.
At least Cas would know what he was getting into. That was more than most of the people Dean slept with.
"If you don't find it in Heaven, you should drop by and say hi," Lucifer said from the bathtub, which he had taken to sitting on the edge of some heartbeats ago. He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled, easy. His blue eyes were shining. "I won't ask you to open the door - just... walk by. I'll wave, if Michael gives me a moment." His expression was almost unreadable, his lips drawn into a neutral line.
Sam didn't answer him - too soon, again - and instead pulled out his toothbrush and started to dress it with paste, thinking.
Would he let Lucifer out, given the opportunity? He didn't know. He wanted to think that he was smarter than that, and Lucifer wouldn't ask, but he didn't know.
"Don't worry so much about it, Sam, because when you worry, you get angry, and that makes me think all sorts of things you don't want me thinking about." Lucifer didn't imply much with the warning, but he did wink afterward, his lips quirking in a grin.
As soon as he'd spit his mouthful of foam into the sink, Sam narrowed his eyes at the Devil in the mirror, trapped between amusement and uncomfortable confusion.
"You know... about how much people suck, and stuff," Lucifer went on. "Lots of other stuff."
"Sam?" Dean called in after him, maybe because Sam hadn't been shuffling around, he'd just stopped, still looking in the mirror. Dean picked up on that sort of thing and assumed the worst sometimes, even if it was just the bathroom.
Sam rinsed the toothbrush and put it back in its case. "What?" The question was directed equally at Dean and Lucifer, though he doubted they'd both answer at once.
Lucifer cocked his head to the side and lifted his eyebrows, all suggestion now that he'd covered his thoughts on humanity in passing. He opened his mouth to give details, but Dean got there first.
"You don't think Nichole eats people to keep up her mojo like Kali and Odin and those other guys, right?" Dean didn't sound too concerned but the question filled up the silence.
"We could ask."
Sam came back out into the room to find Dean frowning at the laptop screen. "Whatever, at this point. We can worry about it after we worry about who's going to kill us and bring us back when we're done and how many Leviathans we need to gank and where the world is going to be when we're done." Dean grumbled, almost complained. He'd had a hard couple of days. He wasn't in the mood to fight battles he knew they shouldn't be fighting, especially if fighting them meant they'd be down a force in the war. "You think Missouri could do it? No, never mind. That would be one Hell of a drive."
"You're really ready to drop everything and march on Heaven looking for a trident because Nichole says it'll work?"
"Hell yes, I am. Been looking for an excuse since..." Dean didn't finish. "Hey! There's a psychic in town, maybe a palm reader. No name, though, just a big purple sign. Might be worth a shot." He shrugged a little to himself. "Worst case, it doesn't pan out." He looked at Sam like there might be something that could change his mind.
"You really wanna do this?"
"It's a shot in the dark, but most of the shooting we do is in the dark."
Sam sighed, turned to his luggage and started to dig for clothes, maybe something incredibly inoffensive, just in case he died in it. Not that that was a risk everyday. He settled on a blue, striped thing that he also had in orange. It wasn't ugly, at least. He took that, a pair of jeans, some boxers, and his last pair of clean socks out of the bag and turned back toward the bathroom. A shower was in order; he was pretty sure some part of him still had dried blood stuck to it from days ago.
"Alright," Sam said, standing in front of Lucifer once more, who had not moved from his perch on the side of the bathtub. He left the door open behind him while he piled his things on the off-white counter-top. "But I really think we should think about Hell versus Heaven more seriously before we just go straight to Heaven. I think..." He tried not to look at Satan while he started the water and adjusted the temperature. "I think it might be a better idea to go to the less pleasant place first, you know?" He had is hand under the stream when Lucifer stood up and cocked an eyebrow at the empty space inside the shower, like maybe he wanted an invitation that he was not going to get.
"And? If Cas is in Heaven, we get a blade against the pile of demons we're going to find in Hell." Dean yelled over the sound of the water.
"And if we don't find Cas, we just go to Hell empty handed anyway," Sam countered.
Dean said something, but the Devil's face had turned sour.
"What am I?" Lucifer asked. "Chopped liver? You want a map through Hell to find the weapon stocks, I can give it to you. Crowley likely hasn't remodeled anything important. Just the general assembly room and the torture chambers."
Sam couldn't help but lift an eyebrow at that.
The Devil looked mildly flustered. "Yes, there were chambers for torture. A lot of them. You can stop looking at me like you're surprised, you know as well as I do what demons are."
It was fairly clear that Lucifer was uncomfortable admitting that, though Sam was not immediately willing to call him on it. He wanted until he had toed the door shut to whisper, "I'm guessing you're not regretting corrupting those souls into monsters, are you?"
"I regret nothing." Came the reply, and the Devil vanished as if to give him some semblance of privacy.
While Sam showered he tried not to think about how much Lucifer had seen of him naked, or how often the Devil stuck around when he was invisible, or how little of his shampoo was still in the bottle despite how little he'd been trying to use, or any of the other things that came to mind that had to do with either Lucifer or his brother. He tired to push it all away and focus on other things - like how likely it was that he'd be seeing the sunrise again, and what he planned to do if they came out alive after their whole insane plan was done. Those thoughts, somehow, were comforting, maybe because of how often he'd had them. Their line of work did not lend itself to low insurance rates and early retirement. He'd always known that.
But it felt entirely too final all of a sudden, what with planning to take a trip to the afterlife on purpose. They'd never done that. Become ghosts? Sure, they'd tried that once or twice, but Heaven and Hell? Most of the time, he'd found himself in Heaven accidentally, likely at the behest of some stranger's shotgun, or worse.
Still, making plans to die felt heavy. The thought made him a tiny bit nervous.
In the middle of rinsing the soap from his hair it struck him like an alien idea that Lucifer would not allow him to die that easily, that the Devil would pull every favor he had to keep him breathing, rattle the Cage until it broke if he could find a way, find a loyal demon to slaughter some nuns just to whisper through the door. The thought was there and then it was gone. But there was still a sort of anger, a protective kind, welled up in his chest.
At first the emotion felt cold, disconnected. He felt like a kid that had had his favorite toy threatened. And then the feeling changed, grew hot. The rage was almost impossible to put down.
By the time he was out of the shower he did not feel even remotely refreshed. Just angry. And wet. And a little like he didn't deserve to be put in a foul mood because Lucifer was in a foul mood thinking about his one-time-vessel dying for good.
Sam tucked a towel around his waist and whispered, "We're just going to feed off each other like this, aren't we? Get out of my head for ten seconds and stop being so mad about everything."
"I'm not mad," Lucifer grinned up at him from the edge of the tub once more, and his icy eyes raked over Sam's body in a fashion that left no mystery as to his thoughts. "If I was mad, you'd feel it. Your anger is hot and mine is cold, right? That burning up inside is all... well... you."
"You started it."
"Maybe," the Devil shrugged.
Sam glared at him. For whatever reason, when Lucifer smirked at him it didn't make him violent, it sent cool amusement slipping through his mind, like a vaguely remembered joke that didn't have a punchline, but had been awesome when he'd first heard it. The rage faltered. It reminded him, somehow, of what Satan had told him once, just before they'd derailed the Apocalypse.
He pushed the thought away before Lucifer could get a hold of it.
"Get out." He said, instead, and put a firm hand on the towel hanging low on his hips.
Lucifer rolled his eyes. "Because you know I'm real now everything has to be a great big mystery..." The Devil waved his hands mockingly. "You know, in the Cage-"
"I know what you did. There aren't details, though, and I don't want to be reminded. Get..." Sam was talking to an empty bathtub. That was aggravating, but it didn't piss him off. With a sigh he turned back to the things he had stacked on the counter and shook his head. "We were not made for each other."
- - -
Sam was quiet in the car, which seemed a little odd to Dean, what with how they were going to ask a woman if she could kill them and bring them back to life. Normally, Sam got chatty when they knew it wasn't likely they were going to live through something, like the kid wanted to have his last words a couple of times over, just in case. But now he was brooding, arms tucked around his chest, mouth pouting, his eyebrows doing that knitting thing again. It made the rain on the windshield just that much more depressing.
It also meant that Dean was going to need to break the ice, unless he was going to put all of his eggs in the basket for later. The later where they came out of this alive.
While he drove them down E Street he tried to think of things to say, last requests, anything that might need saying, anything he might have done to put Sam in a bitchy mood. He got a whole lot of nothing for his effort. By the time he was parking in front of the little yellow house with the purple awnings and the Psychic sign, he knew he should let Sam know that he had eaten the last of the snack food just before they'd left even though it wasn't going to matter for a while at least, if ever.
"Hey, Dean," Sam finally, finally broke through the sound of the rain splattering on the car, just as the engine died. "You know that... that if Cas is in Heaven, he's probably on lock down, right?"
Those weren't last words. Not the variety Dean had been expecting.
"Well, good. That'll make finding him easier."
"No, that's not what I-"
"Then I better damn well get a conjugal visit, shouldn't I? C'mon, we're not talking about what ifs until we know we can even get there." Dean opened his door and shot one last, lingering look of annoyance at his brother before he stepped out into the rain.
There was a silver H2 Hummer parked out front, and a couple of lights on inside the house, all of it perfectly matched to the withered state of the front lawn and the haphazard plants growing by the windows. A series of oversized tarot cards decorated one window, complete with the magician, the hanged man, and a third that was mostly lost behind a mess of cobwebs. All together the place looked more like a haunted house than a place for readings. It was a run down craphole, but for maybe the expensive SUV.
Sam closed his door before he looked back at Dean over the top of the car and lifted his eyebrows. "Do we have a plan if this is a cooky lady living in a house with a ton of cats?"
"We've got guns?" Dean did not actually mean it, but it was worth the face Sam pulled to say it.
They walked up the driveway together and slipped by the Hummer to the white front door, the middle of which sported a wreath of dying flowers. The whole place felt accidentally eerie. The patio furniture by one of the other windows was off-white, rusted, and covered in rainwater, paint peeling from sun damage rather than overuse. Dean half expected that no one would answer the door when they rang the bell.
Sam pressed the little button and they waited.
"We don't have a cover for this, do we?" Sam asked, just out of the side of his mouth, just in a whisper.
"Nope," Dean managed to get out.
The door creaked open and a short, medium framed bearded man poked his face out and frowned from under a faded red baseball cap. His eyes said that he wasn't impressed, but his mouth twitched like he might have been. He kept the door mostly closed, like he was worried someone might catch a glance of the inside of the little house. "Is there something I can do for you boys?" His voice was gravelly like a smoker's, low like he wanted to keep their conversation a secret. Paranoia clung to him like a wet blanket.
"We're, uh..." Sam looked at Dean before he just went with whatever lie he'd come up with. "Is the... psychic in?"
The man looked between the two of them as if judging his answer. "She's got an appointment ahead of you, if you're willing to wait."
Dean shrugged, "We've got time."
-- -- --
It was three days before Sam finally, finally felt that Dean was well on the road to recovery, and even then, blood loss like that was going to take more than a month to be a thing of the past. The sun was pouring in the motel window, cold and bright, and Dean had managed to get all prepared to go without even waking him, though there were still bruises under his eyes and a paleness to his face that was not going away. He'd learned how to use his right hand a little, without tearing the cast apart. That was progress, too.
The sun glinted off the gun Dean was cleaning, his favorite one, likely not even needing the attention. It was something to pass the time, Sam knew. Because Dean was still gnashing at the bit trying to get them out of the city and Nichole hadn't said ten words to them in two and a half days.
There were more Leviathans showing up, mostly in groups of three or four, all of them hunting for whatever was killing their kin. She'd told them to lie low while she worked something out that might help them get out and gone without becoming fish food, first. So they'd stayed cooped up in the motel, trying to track the situations of the other cities sprinkled across the country experiencing similar weather conditions.
Dick Roman planned to stop in most of them on his campaign trail. Sam just had to wonder if he'd planned that before or after his minions had started dying.
"Nichole tells me she's got something," Dean greeted him, and put the gun on the table next to the computer, the better to type on the keyboard. When he had what he wanted on the screen, he turned it toward Sam like he could read it from the bed, which he couldn't. "A weapon. That we have to find."
"Where?"
Dean's face turned somehow amused. "I'll give you three guesses. Here's a hint, it's in one of two places we've already been."
Sam frowned. He wasn't awake enough for guessing games. "Dean, we've been everywhere. I'm not awake enough for this."
"Heaven or Hell, Sammy. Poseidon's trident is either in Heaven or Hell." Dean told him, and lifted his hands like that fact had made his morning. "Because we haven't spent enough time in either of those places for two guys that are still alive."
"I'm not sure still is the word."
Dean shook his head. "Whatever. In any case, we're going to need to die again to find it."
Sam winced. There weren't many people that could say something like that, and the fact that they could did not make him feel happy, or even special. It made him wonder about their lives, more than anything. Every time one of them was stabbed or shot or thrown into a wall, they worried. It seemed fairly ridiculous, considering how often death was not eternal, and yet they still did, still fought tooth and nail to stay breathing. And now they'd have to stop to find the weapon they needed to fight the creatures slowly taking over the world.
"But...uh... that aside, I was thinking," Dean stopped looking at him and started paying attention to the gun again, distracting himself. His voice lost volume. He withdrew a bit into himself, not far, just far enough that he could erect a wall between what he was feeling and what he was saying, like he did so often when hunting. He didn't want to say what he was going to say. Sam knew him well enough to tell. "I kinda want to hit up Heaven first, if we can. Need to pick up something while I'm there." He started cleaning the barrel again, even though he'd done that already.
Sam pushed himself up and swung his feet off the edge of the bed. "Besides a weapon that can kill Leviathan?"
"Yes," Dean didn't look at him.
"What, exactly?"
"Just something I lost."
Sam frowned, not understanding. "You dropped something the last time we were in Heaven?"
Dean's shoulders fell and he stopped pretending to care about the gun, his eyes focusing on nothing, his fingers still. He pursed his lips before he spoke. "No, Sam, I didn't drop something in Heaven. It's... Cas. I don't know if he's there or not, but some Angel will know if he's dead or not."
"I thought he was dead."
"You aren't the only one with a 'profound bond,' Devil-worshiper."
Sam felt his face turn unamused the same as Dean's morphed into an awkward, unapologetic smile. "I don't have a-"
"Tenuous homosexual relationship with Satan?"
"Profound bond with Lucifer, thanks." Sam corrected, and pretended that his brother had not just used the word tenuous. He stood up, socks catching on the carpet, and moved toward the bathroom, scratching his stomach under his shirt. It was kind of a lie, of the little white variety. He did have something with Lucifer, but he didn't want to label it. If he labeled it, he'd have to decide what to do about it. It was too much, too soon. "And then what? We go find your angel and the two of you consecrate the car and everything goes back to sunshine and daisies and killing ghosts on Fridays?" He said to the mirror, which showed that the bruises from the night before were purpling against his skin.
"It was never sunshine and daisies," Dean called back at him. "But you've got the right idea."
Sam could deal with that. It was odd, but if Dean wanted to cut himself a piece of angel food cake, Sam wasn't going to stop him. There were worse things in the world for Dean. A lot worse. And if Cas was up to the challenge of keeping him reined in and alive if they found him, Sam wasn't going to try to talk him out of it, either.
At least Cas would know what he was getting into. That was more than most of the people Dean slept with.
"If you don't find it in Heaven, you should drop by and say hi," Lucifer said from the bathtub, which he had taken to sitting on the edge of some heartbeats ago. He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled, easy. His blue eyes were shining. "I won't ask you to open the door - just... walk by. I'll wave, if Michael gives me a moment." His expression was almost unreadable, his lips drawn into a neutral line.
Sam didn't answer him - too soon, again - and instead pulled out his toothbrush and started to dress it with paste, thinking.
Would he let Lucifer out, given the opportunity? He didn't know. He wanted to think that he was smarter than that, and Lucifer wouldn't ask, but he didn't know.
"Don't worry so much about it, Sam, because when you worry, you get angry, and that makes me think all sorts of things you don't want me thinking about." Lucifer didn't imply much with the warning, but he did wink afterward, his lips quirking in a grin.
As soon as he'd spit his mouthful of foam into the sink, Sam narrowed his eyes at the Devil in the mirror, trapped between amusement and uncomfortable confusion.
"You know... about how much people suck, and stuff," Lucifer went on. "Lots of other stuff."
"Sam?" Dean called in after him, maybe because Sam hadn't been shuffling around, he'd just stopped, still looking in the mirror. Dean picked up on that sort of thing and assumed the worst sometimes, even if it was just the bathroom.
Sam rinsed the toothbrush and put it back in its case. "What?" The question was directed equally at Dean and Lucifer, though he doubted they'd both answer at once.
Lucifer cocked his head to the side and lifted his eyebrows, all suggestion now that he'd covered his thoughts on humanity in passing. He opened his mouth to give details, but Dean got there first.
"You don't think Nichole eats people to keep up her mojo like Kali and Odin and those other guys, right?" Dean didn't sound too concerned but the question filled up the silence.
"We could ask."
Sam came back out into the room to find Dean frowning at the laptop screen. "Whatever, at this point. We can worry about it after we worry about who's going to kill us and bring us back when we're done and how many Leviathans we need to gank and where the world is going to be when we're done." Dean grumbled, almost complained. He'd had a hard couple of days. He wasn't in the mood to fight battles he knew they shouldn't be fighting, especially if fighting them meant they'd be down a force in the war. "You think Missouri could do it? No, never mind. That would be one Hell of a drive."
"You're really ready to drop everything and march on Heaven looking for a trident because Nichole says it'll work?"
"Hell yes, I am. Been looking for an excuse since..." Dean didn't finish. "Hey! There's a psychic in town, maybe a palm reader. No name, though, just a big purple sign. Might be worth a shot." He shrugged a little to himself. "Worst case, it doesn't pan out." He looked at Sam like there might be something that could change his mind.
"You really wanna do this?"
"It's a shot in the dark, but most of the shooting we do is in the dark."
Sam sighed, turned to his luggage and started to dig for clothes, maybe something incredibly inoffensive, just in case he died in it. Not that that was a risk everyday. He settled on a blue, striped thing that he also had in orange. It wasn't ugly, at least. He took that, a pair of jeans, some boxers, and his last pair of clean socks out of the bag and turned back toward the bathroom. A shower was in order; he was pretty sure some part of him still had dried blood stuck to it from days ago.
"Alright," Sam said, standing in front of Lucifer once more, who had not moved from his perch on the side of the bathtub. He left the door open behind him while he piled his things on the off-white counter-top. "But I really think we should think about Hell versus Heaven more seriously before we just go straight to Heaven. I think..." He tried not to look at Satan while he started the water and adjusted the temperature. "I think it might be a better idea to go to the less pleasant place first, you know?" He had is hand under the stream when Lucifer stood up and cocked an eyebrow at the empty space inside the shower, like maybe he wanted an invitation that he was not going to get.
"And? If Cas is in Heaven, we get a blade against the pile of demons we're going to find in Hell." Dean yelled over the sound of the water.
"And if we don't find Cas, we just go to Hell empty handed anyway," Sam countered.
Dean said something, but the Devil's face had turned sour.
"What am I?" Lucifer asked. "Chopped liver? You want a map through Hell to find the weapon stocks, I can give it to you. Crowley likely hasn't remodeled anything important. Just the general assembly room and the torture chambers."
Sam couldn't help but lift an eyebrow at that.
The Devil looked mildly flustered. "Yes, there were chambers for torture. A lot of them. You can stop looking at me like you're surprised, you know as well as I do what demons are."
It was fairly clear that Lucifer was uncomfortable admitting that, though Sam was not immediately willing to call him on it. He wanted until he had toed the door shut to whisper, "I'm guessing you're not regretting corrupting those souls into monsters, are you?"
"I regret nothing." Came the reply, and the Devil vanished as if to give him some semblance of privacy.
While Sam showered he tried not to think about how much Lucifer had seen of him naked, or how often the Devil stuck around when he was invisible, or how little of his shampoo was still in the bottle despite how little he'd been trying to use, or any of the other things that came to mind that had to do with either Lucifer or his brother. He tired to push it all away and focus on other things - like how likely it was that he'd be seeing the sunrise again, and what he planned to do if they came out alive after their whole insane plan was done. Those thoughts, somehow, were comforting, maybe because of how often he'd had them. Their line of work did not lend itself to low insurance rates and early retirement. He'd always known that.
But it felt entirely too final all of a sudden, what with planning to take a trip to the afterlife on purpose. They'd never done that. Become ghosts? Sure, they'd tried that once or twice, but Heaven and Hell? Most of the time, he'd found himself in Heaven accidentally, likely at the behest of some stranger's shotgun, or worse.
Still, making plans to die felt heavy. The thought made him a tiny bit nervous.
In the middle of rinsing the soap from his hair it struck him like an alien idea that Lucifer would not allow him to die that easily, that the Devil would pull every favor he had to keep him breathing, rattle the Cage until it broke if he could find a way, find a loyal demon to slaughter some nuns just to whisper through the door. The thought was there and then it was gone. But there was still a sort of anger, a protective kind, welled up in his chest.
At first the emotion felt cold, disconnected. He felt like a kid that had had his favorite toy threatened. And then the feeling changed, grew hot. The rage was almost impossible to put down.
By the time he was out of the shower he did not feel even remotely refreshed. Just angry. And wet. And a little like he didn't deserve to be put in a foul mood because Lucifer was in a foul mood thinking about his one-time-vessel dying for good.
Sam tucked a towel around his waist and whispered, "We're just going to feed off each other like this, aren't we? Get out of my head for ten seconds and stop being so mad about everything."
"I'm not mad," Lucifer grinned up at him from the edge of the tub once more, and his icy eyes raked over Sam's body in a fashion that left no mystery as to his thoughts. "If I was mad, you'd feel it. Your anger is hot and mine is cold, right? That burning up inside is all... well... you."
"You started it."
"Maybe," the Devil shrugged.
Sam glared at him. For whatever reason, when Lucifer smirked at him it didn't make him violent, it sent cool amusement slipping through his mind, like a vaguely remembered joke that didn't have a punchline, but had been awesome when he'd first heard it. The rage faltered. It reminded him, somehow, of what Satan had told him once, just before they'd derailed the Apocalypse.
He pushed the thought away before Lucifer could get a hold of it.
"Get out." He said, instead, and put a firm hand on the towel hanging low on his hips.
Lucifer rolled his eyes. "Because you know I'm real now everything has to be a great big mystery..." The Devil waved his hands mockingly. "You know, in the Cage-"
"I know what you did. There aren't details, though, and I don't want to be reminded. Get..." Sam was talking to an empty bathtub. That was aggravating, but it didn't piss him off. With a sigh he turned back to the things he had stacked on the counter and shook his head. "We were not made for each other."
- - -
Sam was quiet in the car, which seemed a little odd to Dean, what with how they were going to ask a woman if she could kill them and bring them back to life. Normally, Sam got chatty when they knew it wasn't likely they were going to live through something, like the kid wanted to have his last words a couple of times over, just in case. But now he was brooding, arms tucked around his chest, mouth pouting, his eyebrows doing that knitting thing again. It made the rain on the windshield just that much more depressing.
It also meant that Dean was going to need to break the ice, unless he was going to put all of his eggs in the basket for later. The later where they came out of this alive.
While he drove them down E Street he tried to think of things to say, last requests, anything that might need saying, anything he might have done to put Sam in a bitchy mood. He got a whole lot of nothing for his effort. By the time he was parking in front of the little yellow house with the purple awnings and the Psychic sign, he knew he should let Sam know that he had eaten the last of the snack food just before they'd left even though it wasn't going to matter for a while at least, if ever.
"Hey, Dean," Sam finally, finally broke through the sound of the rain splattering on the car, just as the engine died. "You know that... that if Cas is in Heaven, he's probably on lock down, right?"
Those weren't last words. Not the variety Dean had been expecting.
"Well, good. That'll make finding him easier."
"No, that's not what I-"
"Then I better damn well get a conjugal visit, shouldn't I? C'mon, we're not talking about what ifs until we know we can even get there." Dean opened his door and shot one last, lingering look of annoyance at his brother before he stepped out into the rain.
There was a silver H2 Hummer parked out front, and a couple of lights on inside the house, all of it perfectly matched to the withered state of the front lawn and the haphazard plants growing by the windows. A series of oversized tarot cards decorated one window, complete with the magician, the hanged man, and a third that was mostly lost behind a mess of cobwebs. All together the place looked more like a haunted house than a place for readings. It was a run down craphole, but for maybe the expensive SUV.
Sam closed his door before he looked back at Dean over the top of the car and lifted his eyebrows. "Do we have a plan if this is a cooky lady living in a house with a ton of cats?"
"We've got guns?" Dean did not actually mean it, but it was worth the face Sam pulled to say it.
They walked up the driveway together and slipped by the Hummer to the white front door, the middle of which sported a wreath of dying flowers. The whole place felt accidentally eerie. The patio furniture by one of the other windows was off-white, rusted, and covered in rainwater, paint peeling from sun damage rather than overuse. Dean half expected that no one would answer the door when they rang the bell.
Sam pressed the little button and they waited.
"We don't have a cover for this, do we?" Sam asked, just out of the side of his mouth, just in a whisper.
"Nope," Dean managed to get out.
The door creaked open and a short, medium framed bearded man poked his face out and frowned from under a faded red baseball cap. His eyes said that he wasn't impressed, but his mouth twitched like he might have been. He kept the door mostly closed, like he was worried someone might catch a glance of the inside of the little house. "Is there something I can do for you boys?" His voice was gravelly like a smoker's, low like he wanted to keep their conversation a secret. Paranoia clung to him like a wet blanket.
"We're, uh..." Sam looked at Dean before he just went with whatever lie he'd come up with. "Is the... psychic in?"
The man looked between the two of them as if judging his answer. "She's got an appointment ahead of you, if you're willing to wait."
Dean shrugged, "We've got time."