through early morning fog i see
one two three four
Earl and Burt take the pick-up, leaving Mindy to ride in the backseat of the Impala. Sam looks pissed off at this development, but what else is new?
Narrow canyon road coming out of the valley, and Dean asks Mindy, "What do you remember about the graboids from last time?"
Mindy's face catches the rearview for a second before she ducks out of the way. "My mom being real scared, and hugging me all the time. The ground shaking, like the whole world shaking. And getting tackled by Val."
"Why'd he tackle you?"
"I had my Walkman on and I didn't hear them shouting for me. There was one right near me, it was gonna eat me for sure, but then Val saved me."
"It's starting to sound like Val is the hero of this story," Dean says. "Of course it would be the one guy who's not here anymore."
"It wasn't just Val," Mindy protests. "I had a huge crush on him at the time, so I probably remember his parts better, but Earl and Burt and Heather and Miguel, they were all great too, really brave. Earl's always saying, it took all of us to get all of us out of there."
"Seems to be the way it goes," Dean says, and Mindy says, "Yeah," and then the conversation flags.
It's probably only Dean's perception (somewhere in the back of his mind a neon clock is keeping count of how many hours he's been awake, up above thirty now), but Sam is terribly conspicuous in his silence. He's watching the flood of the scenery, pushing his thumb at the outside seam of his jeans. Dean isn't careful, frayed at his peripherals, and he gives himself away, looking at Sam too often, expecting something. They've got a couple hours of featureless highways ahead of them; Sam can't keep his mouth shut all that way.
Mindy coughs pointedly, and Dean flicks his eyes to her in the rearview. "Y'all sure are taking the gigantic man-eating worm monster thing well. Most people are kinda thrown at first."
"Aw, you know." Half a smile, just to soften the ground, and Dean leans back, driving with his wrist. "There's some crazy shit that happens, never wanna rule anything out. And Burt's not much for bullshit, so if he says he's killed 'em before, I believe him."
"Oh, he's definitely killed them before. I swear he musta told me the story of the one that came through the rec room wall about fifty times," Mindy says, casual off-hand laugh. "Each time more elaborate than the last, more guns, more rounds fired. We're lucky Heather was there too, otherwise we'd never know what really happened."
Dean spots the obvious opening, lets a considered moment pass before saying, "Yeah, about Heather . . ."
He watches in the rearview as Mindy's face draws sad, eyes squinting down and making her look bizarrely old.
"He don't talk about it much, does he?" Mindy says, and Dean shakes his head. Mindy continues, "She's been in the hospital down in Bixby for about two weeks now. Ovarian cancer, just a terrible thing. Burt never says boo to any of us either, it's not just you fellas."
"Damn, that's rough," Dean says, means it. He always liked Heather, friendly grandma type with orangey hair, awesome cookies and the best homemade fireworks ever. Lots of time spent blowing stuff up in the canyon with her hands holding the earmuffs onto his head, and later drinking warm lemonade out of a thermos, perched on the rocks.
"She taught me how to make dynamite," Sam says, following close along the line of Dean's thoughts and catching everyone off-guard.
Dean looks over, and Sam is still staring out the window, one-quarter profile, shaggy hair almost entirely hiding his ear.
"The baby bombs, right?" Mindy says. "In old juice bottles?"
"Yeah, that was it. I think--I'm trying to think if I can still remember the recipe."
Sam's voice gets strangely wistful, kinda trailing away. There's a magnet or something, some curse making Dean's eyes stick to Sam with such persistence.
"Burt could tell you," Mindy says.
"Yeah," Sam answers, makes it sound like a conclusion.
There is another span of silence, but it's more comfortable, various unspoken currents subsiding to a tolerable level. Just Sam, all they needed was Sam to say something, stop being such a stone fucking idol, and Dean experiences a burst of frustrated irritation--he hates that Sam can change his mood so easily.
"So," Mindy says with the infernal pep of a small-town girl who never saw reason to leave. "Are y'all survivalists too, or do you just really like guns?"
Immediate glance at Sam and Sam is glancing right back, customary smirk curling his mouth and it hits Dean like a pellet to the heart, how very much like himself Sam looks at this moment. Dean feels like he hasn't seen it in months.
He shoots a grin at his brother, feeling reckless, brainless, all screwed up inside.
"Little bit of both," Dean says. "Can never be too careful, these days."
"Oh, for sure," Mindy says as if agreeing that puppies are good. "I remember people used to laugh at how Burt and Heather live, but once everybody got all het up about Y2K, guess whose bomb shelter was jam-packed with the whole damn town?" She sighs happily. "That was the best New Year's ever."
Dean hears a muffled snort next to him, looks to find Sam hiding a smile with his hand. Quick back to the highway, Dean blinks fast and rubs at his chest with a loose fist, weird shivery warmish thing happening and he doesn't like it, he doesn't know what it means.
"All right, c'mon," Dean says, wanting a new subject. "Tell us more about the graboids, everything you can remember."
"Well, it's kinda tough," Mindy says, a defensive slant. "I spent most of it with my mom's hand over my eyes, and her saying, 'don't look, honey, don't look,' right in my ear."
"That's just what you want to hear from the witness," Sam says, and it could be mean but he curbs it somehow, makes it kinda teasing instead.
"I was ten years old, excuuuse me," Mindy says, stretching it out and Dean is startled into a laugh because he hasn't heard anyone do that Steve Martin line in about a decade. Of course pop culture gets out to the sticks pretty late.
"But I can tell you most of Val's stories," she goes on. "Earl and Burt never wanted to give me any of the real gory details, but Val said since I lived through it I oughta at least know what it was like."
"If this thing pans out, you're definitely gonna know what it was like," Dean tells her via the rearview. "Tell us whatever you know anyway, any info is good info at this point."
Mindy pauses to think and then launches into it, describing the horrorshow sixteen years ago with all the flamboyantly romantic detail of a child's perspective. Cornered like rats in the valley, on the roofs of their houses, thunder underground that rattled windows, the gruesome stub of a snake tongue that Walter Chang had put on display in his store just a day before he died. Valentine McKee races through the desert, leaps and tumbles and smokes cool slow cigarettes while his injuries are taped up. Valentine McKee saves everyone's life at least a dozen times. Dean and Sam trade a few dubious glances, but don't interrupt.
It's interesting, Dean catches himself thinking as Mindy comes to the part where all the surviving townspeople were stranded on bare rock and looking slow death square in the eye. Interesting to come into a story that already has its hero; even if Val's not around anymore, it still feels like the role's been taken in everybody's mind.
Dean brushes it aside. He reminds himself that this trip isn't gonna turn up shit, anyway, just Sam's whacked-out imagination getting everybody riled up because he can't stand downtime, because he's so sick of Dean. Being the hero or not is hardly gonna be relevant.
They come down into another valley. Mindy talks on and on, and that'll probably get annoying after awhile but Dean's okay with it for now. Background music. The road is a perfect straight line all the way to the horizon, requiring no effort at all. The engine sings off-key, eerie whine like a tone-deaf choir, and someday, someday soon Dean is sure it'll stop sounding so entirely wrong to him.
*
As it turns out, Burt's friend Pete Weskoe is literally insane.
Burt goes in first, leaving Earl outside to flag down the Impala, though the misshapen tarp-covered Howitzer cannon in the truck bed is rather more of a clue. Dean pulls up alongside the pick-up, and the four of them stand around for better than fifteen minutes waiting for the high sign.
Earl smokes a pair of Lucky Strikes down to the filters, yellowish fingers pinched against the stubbly gray of his beard. Mindy keeps the conversation ticking along, teasing Earl about some lady sheriff in Bixby that he's apparently been seeing. Sam and Dean mostly just play audience, Earl's gruff embarrassment being pretty amusing in and of itself.
Burt comes loping back down the long drive, at least three hundred yards to where they've parked, but there's no padlocked chainlink to get around, so Dean's not gonna complain.
"Got a hit," Burt says as he joins their loose group. "They've been experiencing freak quakes all over the basin, but none of them have been serious enough to cause much damage, so people aren't too concerned."
"Great, that's great," Sam says, coming alive. "Listen, you have that map that pinpoints the sheep mutilations, right? We gotta have this guy to tell us exactly where the tremors are being reported, see if we can nail down a pattern of movement."
"Hold your horses, kid," Burt tells him. "Weskoe's not much for entertaining, if you catch my drift."
Sam opens his hands, indicating that he has caught nothing, and Dean supplies for him, "Guy's a crazy old hermit, Sammy."
Burt tries to glare in admonishment, but his mustache twitches and it doesn't really take.
"Yeah, that's roughly accurate," Burt says with a sigh. "We can't all go tromping in there, we'll scare him off."
"At least two of us, though," Sam says. "It's always better when you have two people hearing the information, like for confirmation."
"That's true." Burt executes a cap move, and something about the bend of his wrist as he rubs over his scalp makes Dean think that Burt's running some minor con here. "Well, lemme get that map."
Sam shoots a look at Dean, something pointed and urging in it, god only knows what Sam's getting at. Dean lifts his eyes, inquiring, but Sam's already turned back to Burt, saying, "I'll go in with you, Burt."
"Well all right then," Burt says, rummaging for the map in the pick-up's glove box, and then like it's just occurred to him, "Whyn't you come along too, Dean? Weskoe's got one of those samurai swords you were so crazy about when you were a kid."
Dean blinks, and tries to remember any time in his life when he was remotely interested in samurai swords beyond the baseline cool a samurai sword reaction that's pre-programmed into most American boys.
"Uh, yeah, sure. Awesome." Dean checks with Sam and gets the slightest nod in response. It's momentarily reassuring to think that at least one of them knows what the fuck is going on.
"Aw, don't leave me out here alone with her," Earl complains. Mindy beams, triumphant, and hooks her arm through his.
"It'll give us a chance to catch up good and proper," Mindy says. "Good old Uncle Earl."
"Ain't old and I ain't your damn uncle," Earl grumbles.
"Best of luck to you, brother," Burt says with a modicum of sympathy, and then leads Sam and Dean back up towards the house.
Once they're out of earshot of the others, Burt says, "Weskoe's a hunter, I don't know if you'd worked that out."
"I did," Sam says. "Dean probably didn't."
"Shut your face," Dean says in toneless reflex.
"He is a bit eccentric, though, that wasn't a lie." Burt eyes the two of them. "Just step lightly, don't get him riled up. Let me do most of the talking."
So prepared, Dean and Sam follow Burt silently across the wheezing porch and into the ranch house, which smells of must and rot and sick. There are about a million National Geographics stacked up against the walls, almost waist-high in places.
Weskoe is rooted at the kitchen table, a lump grown out of the chair. Dean's first thought is that he looks like an evil toad, dreary green cardigan and fat head with a squashed distrustful face. There's a cup of coffee at his hand, and the remains of a poisonous-looking tuna fish sandwich on a shoved-aside plate.
"Gummer, you sumbitch," Weskoe mutters, and he sounds like his insides are made of rusting iron. "Take off that goddamn ballcap in my house, show some respect."
Burt obliges him, rolled eyes to show that it's not worth the effort to fight about. Without the cap, his bald head shines, crow's feet at the corners of his eyes showing clearly with the shadow finally off his face. He doesn't look much like the guy in all of Dean's memories of him.
"This is Sam and Dean Winchester, they're in the business too."
Weskoe skewers them with a searching look, limpid gray eyes like oysters floating in milk, a disquieting looseness about his mouth. Dean tries not to fidget, tries not to glance at Sam, but he is largely unsuccessful.
"John Winchester's sons."
It's not a question, but Dean still pastes on an idiot grin and nods his head. "That's us."
"Hmmph. I met your father once."
Dean waits, but that seems to be as much as Weskoe is willing to reveal about the matter. Weskoe keeps staring at them, and Dean shifts his weight, resists the urge to rub at the back of his neck.
"Here, Pete, take a look at this." Burt unfurls the map into the uncomfortable silence, colonizing the expanse of the table, fluttering over the half-finished tuna fish. "These Xs are where the sheep've been killed, and this circle is the truckstop where these boys felt a quake."
"The sheep were eaten when they were still alive," Weskoe says in his graveyard voice, and then, "Torn apart still warm and moving."
"Yeah, awful thing," Burt says without taking his eyes off the map, brushing past the macabre semi-sequitur. "You think you can tell us the places where people have been reporting tremors?"
Weskoe scowls down at the map, features pummeled and slack, lips smacking as he chews over nothing. His hand scratches restlessly, hoary yellow nails like talons, and Dean is pretty creeped out by him, all things considered.
"Here," Weskoe says, stabbing his finger. "The Lazy T. And here, that's McConnell's spread, he's been bitching about the broken bottles in his precious wine cellar to anybody who'll listen."
"That's good, that's great." Burt marks up the map, lightning bolts for the new information, and even from this bad angle Dean can tell that a cluster is forming.
"You're going to destroy these things, isn't that right?" Weskoe asks, waiting only for a nod. "Tell me how you plan to do it."
Burt hesitates, hands spread out on the map like conquering armies closing in. He doesn't want to get into it with Weskoe, Dean can tell. Dean can fully sympathize.
"Blow 'em up, most likely. They'll swallow a bomb if you disguise it right."
"You'll make it rain the blood of monsters from the sky," Weskoe says, tremulous with his eyes aglow.
Insincere smile from Burt, really just pulls his lips back, bares his teeth. He glances back at Sam and Dean, and Dean tries to angle his chin, trying to indicate his conviction to have Burt's back if this fucking fruitcake decides to go off the deep end.
"We, uh, we're just hoping nobody gets hurt." Burt starts to fold up the map, clearly itching to make a break out of the nuthouse.
Dean's right there with him, but Sam is contrary and aggravating, and he stops Burt, saying, "Hang on, just a sec with that."
Weskoe's wet eyes latch on to Sam. Sam swallows, suppressing a shiver by biting his lip (old technique, something Dean taught him along with seven-card stud), before asking, "Is there any active construction going on in the area? Blasting or road work or anything?"
"What're you talking about, Sam?" Burt cuts in before Weskoe can answer.
"Just, I've been thinking that there had to be a reason these things came out of the desert in the first place, right?"
Sam glances at Dean, and without thought Dean says, "Right," and then is faintly aghast. Sam rolls right on.
"Mindy said two of the early victims last time around were a road crew working on the highway. So isn't it plausible that the intense vibrations caused by their equipment could have brought the graboids into an inhabited area?"
"Graboids," Weskoe says with a gnarled look of distaste. "Godawful name."
"Yeah, but that's not bad, Sam," Burt says, wagging his finger at Sam in approval. "I always did wonder what the hell made us so special. What do you say, Pete, any road work being done up here?"
"Drills and dynamite for the Diablo Pass," Weskoe says, and for no discernible reason spreads his lips in a pitted blackened grin. Dean winces, turns his face away. He's totally over this place, this creepy fuckin' guy.
"What's that?" Burt asks. "What, through the mountains?"
"They'll have a tunnel there instead," Weskoe replies, sucking on his teeth. "A hole cut through to the demon's heart, dug out still beating."
"Can you, uh, can you point it out for me on the map?" Burt says, patience tattering even as Dean watches.
Weskoe looks down, blinks, and the amorphous cast of delusional malice on his face melts away to something more practical, his mouth sealing shut. He taps the right spot.
"Route 47 going out of town. Right after the old Cooper farm."
Burt marks the map, then straightens to get a look at the whole picture. "Anybody living on that farm?"
"Some wetback family's tryin' to make a go of it," Weskoe says dismissively. "They won't give you any trouble, be too scared of getting shipped out of here."
"Nice," Dean mutters under his breath, and Sam fires a brief look of strained amusement his way, can you fuckin' believe this guy?
"Well, thanks Pete, thank you very much sir." Burt's shoulder twitches like he'd intended to stick out his hand for Weskoe to shake, but thought better of it at the last moment. He busies himself refolding the map instead. "Think we got enough to work with, enough to get started at the least."
Dean affixes a phony smile, little phony wave, edging towards the hallway. Sam is backing up right next to him, their arms bumping.
They're almost out of the room when Weskoe says, "John Winchester swore to kill me if he ever set eyes on me again."
Sam and Dean go still. Dean hears the catch in Sam's breathing, this inverted feeling like Sam's body is reacting to the cues from Dean's eyes and ears. Backwards and inside-out, and really it's just the same for the both of them, it feels the same.
Dean turns back around, aware of his brother doing the same. His gaze skims past Burt, who stands tense and buzzing with uncertainty, a man who may have found himself smack dab in the middle of a blood feud. Weskoe stares back from the table, impermeable amphibian's face, drifting eyes prodding dully for a reaction. He has moth holes in the elbows of his cardigan, Dean notices.
"Pretty lucky for you that he's dead then, isn't it?" Dean says, proud to hear almost no inflection in his voice at all.
"And neither of you will take up his cause against me?" Weskoe almost sounds disappointed. "Is this loyalty? Is this what a man is owed?"
Dean is more or less totally lost. He looks to his brother helplessly, finds Sam staring at Weskoe with sick fascination on his face.
"I don't know, dude," Dean says, doesn't even care anymore. "We gotta go hunt these snake things now, we'll see ya."
He grabs Sam's arm as he goes, unaccountably relieved when Sam stumbles after him without resistence. Making it out into the bleached sunlight feels like a mammoth accomplishment, as if they've climbed out of the world's deepest cave hand-over-hand. Dean shakes himself like a dog in the front yard, releasing fifteen minutes worth of pent-up shudders.
"Okay, that guy's a little more than kinda crazy," Dean says. They back away from the house as if it's sentient.
"Why do you think Dad said he'd kill him?" Sam asks.
"I--what? I don't know, I, I, I don't even know if Dad ever said that, maybe that was just more of that guy being a fuckin' lunatic."
"Maybe," Sam says, but he doesn't believe that and Dean knows he doesn't believe that. So goddamn transparent.
Burt comes out of the ranch house, immediately snugging his cap back on his head, and the three of them set off for the vehicles.
"That was productive," Burt says, smacking the folded map on the palm of his hand.
"It was fucking creepy as hell," Dean corrects.
"To be fair, it was both," Sam lays down like judgment.
Burt gives them the side-eye, cautious. "He shouldn't have said that stuff about your dad, but I guess you already know that."
"Yeah," Sam says, and Dean can tell that Sam is looking at him (he can feel it), but the sun is in his eyes and he doesn't quite trust himself to look back.
*
Everybody's pretty hungry, so they caravan to a roadhouse that's had billboards up all over the highway, looming picture of a thirty-foot-long T-bone steak ringed by golden fries as big as twin mattresses. Loose slots, too.
The five of them get a table in back near the pinball machines, and Dean is disconcerted to have so many faces to look at. He and Sam have traveled within an entirely self-contained world for so long now, this sudden variety is like meteors crashing in, perilously distracting.
Burt says, "One beer apiece, we gotta be sharp once we go up to the Diablo Pass."
Earl narrows his eyes, cocks his chin at the waitress and says, "Second thought, honey, bring me a Jack and Coke."
"Earl, what the hell-"
"I'm sixty-two years old, Gummer, and my mother's been dead for the last twenty of 'em. I ain't looking for a replacement, you get me?"
Burt snorts and shakes his head, raising his hands with a broad expression of affront. "Hell, ain't my job to keep you from being a damn fool. Drink on up, cowboy."
Earl makes a show of saluting Burt with his Jack and Coke, but then only sips intermittently, letting the ice melt. Probably just ordered it to prove the point, Dean thinks, and he can respect that.
The burger he orders is good but a mess, the soft bun kind of disintegrating at the end, leaving Dean to lick cheese and grease off his fingertips. Mindy watches him for a minute and then comments, "Like a five year old," and Dean pretends to grab at her with his dirty fingers as she yelps and lunges away, laughing.
Dean gets up to wash his hands, not thinking about anything in particular as he observes himself in the spidery mirror, just a humming appreciation for that burger and a diffuse awareness of the exhaustion encroaching from his edges.
He comes out of the men's and there's Mindy, smiling as Dean appears, stepping forward.
"Hiya."
"Uh, hi." Dean flashes a default grin. "What's up?"
Mindy smiles back, uneven feel to it, twiddling the hem of her shirt between her fingers. "Did you, um, did you get my number on that map I drew?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah, I got that. Ah. Thanks."
"You're welcome," Mindy says, and then kinda laughs at the weird formality of it. Dean keeps a dumb smile on his face, trying to match her reactions.
"So, um," and she's blushing, actually honest-to-god blushing as she asks, "Can I buy you a drink?"
"Oh man," Dean says, and he didn't mean to sound that despairing, doesn't know what to do with the sinking feeling in his stomach. "Uh, it's kinda. Kinda bad timing for me, actually?"
Mindy's brave little smile flickers, and she blinks, tucks a bit of sandy hair behind her ear. "Seriously?"
Dean feels his expression becoming increasingly desperate, reassuring no one. "Yeah, uh, I'm all. Fucked up and stuff. Bad news."
Dean gestures weakly at the air around his head, indicating overall disrepair. All the while it's like he's outside his own body, watching. Mindy's face softens, and she nods.
"It's your dad?" she says sympathetically. "I know that can be real hard-"
"No," Dean interrupts. His throat feels crushed. "Um, I mean, maybe a little, but no, it, it's other stuff too. And anyway, I got a, a, a rule about hooking up during a hunt."
"A hunt?" Mindy says, wrinkling her nose as Dean's blood goes ice-cold in his veins, smile withering away.
"For the. The graboids," Dean stammers, a huge roar of disbelief in his ears. "I mean. The rule, my rule is for when we, we're deer-hunting, me and my brother. The rule is for deer hunts, and this just, it feels like the same kinda thing, I guess?"
Dean manages to stop himself, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. His eyes feel like they're gaping out of his head, pulse visibly throbbing in his throat. He's never slipped up like that around a civilian before, never once before.
Mindy gives him a strange look, and Dean throws her a last-ditch grin, whatever he can scrape off the floor of his psyche, and tells her hurriedly:
"You're really awesome, though, and I hope we kill lots of graboids together," before sticking out his hand because he can't for the life of him think of anything better.
Mindy rolls her eyes. She takes Dean's hand in a firm grip, shaking her head in amused exasperation.
"Only interested in the snake monsters, I shoulda known," she says, and Dean's laugh is not as entirely fraudulent as he expects it to be.
Back at the table, Dean slides into his seat next to Sam, immediately catching his brother sneaking looks from under his eyelashes. Scalpel looks, brusque slices beneath the skin.
"Help you with something?" Dean asks shortly, feeling raw.
Sam twists a fork between his fingers and shrugs. "You and Mindy have a good talk?"
Muttered under his breath, meant only for his brother's ears, and a pulse of anger throbs through Dean, incredulous and overpowering. He's not entirely certain why he turned Mindy down (the rule is real, though more of a guideline that keeps Dean from actively hitting on anybody during a hunt; it's never extended as far as girls who hit on him), but he is pretty goddamn sure that he doesn't want Sam talking shit about it.
"Yeah we did," Dean says, letting a wickedly suggestive smile curve across his lips. "Always good to get to know the co-workers, huh?"
Sam makes a harsh impatient noise, eyes flicking from Dean to where Mindy is sat on Dean's other side, engaged in an in-depth conversation about college football with Earl and Burt.
"Pretty stupid move," Sam says in that muted unreadable voice. "We're on a fuckin' job, here."
"Bullshit job," Dean mumbles, but that's only reflex, a former piece of faith that he's starting to doubt and disbelieve the longer they stay in Elko County.
Flashing eyes, and Sam saying, "Just keep your priorities straight, Dean."
Dean's hands are in fists under the table and he presses forward, letting the hard wooden edge dig into his arms. Breathless, almost giddy with indignation, the sheer goddamn injustice of Sam lecturing him like this, like he has a fucking right.
He's very close to snapping, just taking a swing at his brother right here in front of everybody, the whole damn restaurant, imagining the flattening of Sam's mouth under his knuckles, the white surprise in his eyes.
"All right, fellas," Burt says, and inclines his head self-referentially. "And Mindy. Daylight's wasting, let's get a move on."
Sam shoves back from the table, rattling the silverware, and Dean's concentration breaks. The tension falls out of his back and shoulders, his hands opening. He's left feeling splintered, unfinished, anger and sorrow kinda simmering in the background.
Dean takes one last long straw-sucking drink of his Coke, and then gets up, walking with his head down like a condemned man out to the Impala where his brother is waiting.
*
The ride up to the Diablo Pass with Sam and Mindy is intensely uncomfortable, but Dean's pretty sure it's just him.
Mindy is largely unfazed about having being turned down by Dean, which carries an irritating sting, but Dean knows that's a selfish shoddy reaction, and so he does his best to ignore it. Mindy gets them on a knock-knock joke tangent and they trade all the ones they know back and forth, snickering and groaning at the lame puns, reciting in unison, "Orange you glad I didn't say banana!" Sam stares out the window and gives the general impression of a deaf-mute.
It's approaching dusk. The sun clings like a bit of gold debris to the ridge of the mountains, overstretched purple clouds streaked across the sky.
In front of them, the pick-up truck pulls off the road, a spray of dust and grit. Dean pulls in behind, looking around to get a sense of place. There's a farmhouse and decrepit barn about a quarter-mile away, down the long shallow plain of the foothills. The grade of the road increases sharply just up ahead, climbing into the mountains proper.
Earl and Burt are standing shoulder to shoulder, squinting down into the plain. Burt has a sawed-off shotgun in hand, aimed at the ground.
"What's going on?" Dean says as he comes up alongside them. "I thought we were going up to the pass."
Earl points. "You see that? That dark spot on the plain?"
Dean peers and squints, and yeah, he sees it, like a cherry stain on the yellowing grass. "What is it?"
"Here, I got a pair of field glasses in the bag," Burt says, and retreats to the pick-up. Earl lights a cigarette while they wait.
Burt looks through the binocs and says, "Shit," before passing them off to Earl. Earl swears as well.
"Looks like a mountain lion," Earl says. Burt is loading his shotgun, sure click of shells chocking into place, and Earl hands Dean the binocs before joining him.
Dead mountain lion on the plain, Dean sees through the glasses. A wide circle of blood soaking into the ground, the animal has been ripped apart.
"Get strapped," Burt orders. "All of you."
Dean turns to find that Sam is already ahead of the game, shouldering one of the assault rifles and stuffing magazines into his satchel. Mindy looks a bit wide-eyed at the sudden militaristic feel, but she stays in it, picking out an assault rifle and packing magazines into her purse.
It's a long walk down the plain to where the carcass is, and with each stride their multitude of weapons clanks together like tin cans on a string. Burt walks backwards, keeping an eye on the rear.
And there's this taste in the air, this metallic undercoating. Dean is aware of his heart beating, each breath echoing inside his skull. Sam's eyes never stop, scanning the horizon and the mountains and the farmhouse with its soft-glowing gold windows, the idyllic curl of smoke from the chimney. The threat could come from any side.
The suspense works on them all, building like an approaching storm, and even Mindy keeps quiet for once. They come upon the carcass, sure enough a mountain lion. It's been ripped open and all its insides cleaned out, leaving a scrappy gory hide with the head still intact, brassy marble eyes staring up. It looks like something an Indian might wear to camouflage himself while hunting, a bygone age kinda thing.
Mindy makes a sound like she might throw up, and Dean looks over to see her staring straight up at the sky. He starts to say, "You all-" but she beats him to it, "Fine, I'm fine thanks," fast and pinched through her nose.
Sam steps lightly on Dean's foot, drawing his gaze. "You still think it's a bullshit job?"
As if Dean would give him the satisfaction of an answer. He steps forward, away from Sam and closer to Burt, who has knelt beside the carcass and is inspecting one of its paws, which hang limply like rabbit's feet on a chain.
"Lookit this, Earl," Burt says, prying one of the big cat's retractable claws out with his knife. There are bright orange smears the color of brand-new rust.
"Son of a bitch," Earl breathes out.
"What? What?" Sam asks, elbowing in.
"That's what color the graboids are on the inside. Their blood." Burt lets the claw fold back into the paw. "This cat fought back, at least. If we're lucky, he sliced an artery and the graboid left a trail for us to follow."
He gets to his feet, looks around at everyone else staring dumbly at the dead mountain lion, varying degrees of pale and wide-eyed.
Burt claps his hands together, camp counselor kinda move, and says, "Hey, c'mon people. All this is is confirmation of the theory, we still got a ways to go. Now spread out, look for a blood trail. C'mon, the light's gonna be gone soon-"
and there's probably more but none of them hear it, because at that moment the ground starts shaking.
Dean thinks it's him for a second, weak legs from the length of the day, just a personal failing, but then Mindy is grabbing onto Sam to keep her balance and Burt is swearing and reaching back for the elephant gun that's slung around his back.
Three seconds, maybe four, everybody naturally closing ranks in a back-to-back cluster, and then the tremors fade, diminished but still barely perceptible through the soles of their shoes.
"It's close by," Burt says in a hushed whisper. "Nobody move, don't scream."
"Is that the best you can come up with?" Earl asks at a similar volume.
Dean presses back against Sam's shoulder, shotgun raised with the stock pressing hard and flat to his forearm, sweeping across the patch of field that he's facing. Adrenaline pours through him, his mouth going dry. It feels like he's got a bird's heart in his chest right now.
"Me and Earl got enough firepower on us to get to the truck," Burt whispers. "Somebody's gotta get those people out of that farmhouse."
"Where're we supposed to tell them to go?" Sam asks.
"Just up on the roof for now. We'll get the truck and come pick you guys up."
"This plan seems kinda slapped-together," Sam says. Dean is glad no one can see his face, because he's smirking plainly in agreement.
"Earl, are you with me?" Burt asks, ignoring Sam.
Earl's voice rises from Dean's left. "How many grenades do you have on you?"
"Six."
A pause, as for mental calculation. "Yeah, I'm with you."
"All right then. Mindy, you're coming with us, I'll need the cover fire from that Browning."
"Okay," Mindy says, tight high-pitched voice but pretty steady too.
"Sam, Dean. The farmhouse," Burt says in a tone that brooks no arguments. Dean doesn't like following orders from people who aren't family, but he feels Sam sigh against his back and figures they better just work with it.
"Throwing a grenade in five, four, three, two," and Burt whips his arm, hurls the grenade far and long in the opposite direction of everything. "Wait for it!" he shouts, and then the deafening slam of the explosion, erupting black smoke and dirt and Burt yelling, "GO, GO!" and everybody takes off running.
Sprinting for the farmhouse, the smoking crater left by the grenade is in Dean's peripheral vision, and Sam grabs at his shoulder, stabs a pointing finger across his face, "Look, look there it is!"
Dean keeps running, turns his head and he can see it, massive scale-backed worm diving through the top level of dirt like a dolphin through waves, and it's so goddamn big. A clattering report from an assault rifle, Mindy covering for Burt, and the ground riddles around the graboid, puffed and churned, and the monster is still moving so fast, going through dirt like it's water, like air.
"Holy shit," Dean pants, and kicks it up to a higher gear, pushing his body to its limits.
The worm creature reaches the crater, ghastly alien head poking up to explore, and then there's another explosion, another distracting grenade, and the graboid dives low beneath the earth, completely vanishing as the world begins to shake once more.
Sam reaches the farmhouse first, thundering across the porch and slamming into the door, pounding at it. Dean is right on his heels, each breath thick and sticking in his lungs.
"Hey, hello in there!" Sam shouts, still banging on the door. Dean stands at his brother's back, shotgun raised but aimed at the dirt, aimed at nothing. The second grenade site is too far for him to see, he doesn't have any idea where the graboid is now.
"¡Váyase!" Dean hears yelled from inside the house. "¡Fuera de aquí, no tenemos nada!"
"Awesome," Sam mutters with a familiar bitter edge to it, and then raises his voice again, "Soy aquÍ para, um, para ayuda!"
"Do you even know what you're saying?" Dean asks.
"Kinda!" Sam fires back defensively, and then, "Do you see it? The graboid?"
"Not, not really--oh fuck."
Dean spots it, just for a second like a heat shimmer in the desert making the ground go wavy. The graboid breaks through the dirt for a split second, a whale coming up for a breath and then under again.
"Yeah, it's headed in this direction," Dean reports, and pumps a shell into the chamber of his shotgun.
"What, are you fucking serious?"
"As if I would fuckin' joke, here move," and Dean shoves Sam out of the way, shouts through the front door, "Yo, stand back in there, get the hell back," even though it's probably useless, and then Dean kicks in the door, once, twice, third time's a charm.
The splinters fly, and Dean bursts in to see a middle-aged Latino guy with thick black-framed glasses and a baseball bat cocked back ready to swing. Dean holds up his hands, meaning to show no threat, but the shotgun doesn't really help with that, and the man drops the bat immediately, unmitigated terror crashing hugely across his face as his hands clap on to the top of his head.
"No, no nos hacen daño," the man says, stuttering. "Por favor, no daño a mi familia."
"Está bien, está bien," Sam says, trying to project calm and failing miserably. "We, no quieremos nada, and, y, y solo aquí para ayudar, goddamn it."
The floor begins to shake violently, the whole house creaking and groaning, and the man staggers, almost falls. He hangs onto the wall and looks around in a panicked daze, bafflement and terror twisting his face.
"We don't have time, Sam, you gotta get him on the roof," Dean says.
"Monstro," Sam says desperately to the man, shaking his head and grimacing, "that's not it, what is it, what, um, monstruo, monstruo."
And like that's its fucking cue, the graboid surges up through the floorboards and into their lives.
A plank of flying wood slams into Dean's shoulder, knocks him back a step. He comes up already firing his shotgun into the cloud of dust and debris, unable to pick apart the chaos for a moment.
Then: he can see it. Worse than they said, worse than he could have known. Its huge maw thrust up through the hole in the floor, drill-like pincers gaping open to allow three writhing snake tongues to slither thickly across the floor, hissing and gnashing their teeth and trailing viscous slime.
The Latino guy is screaming wildly, familiar what the fuck is happening innocent bystander screaming that apparently sounds the same in every language, and it only adds to the madness of the scene. One of the snake tongues bolts towards Sam's legs, fangs catching the light, and Dean pumps a shell into it, knocking it aside.
"Get out, Sam, get him out of here," Dean shouts, and leaps on top of the couch to avoid another inhumanly strong snake tongue. The worm can't find him for a moment, and Dean registers that the tongues and the creature itself all seem to be stone blind as he reloads his shotgun.
In the corner of his eye, Dean can see Sam helping the Latino guy climb out a window and up the side of the house, his shoes dangling and pulling up out of sight. Dean expects Sam to follow right after, but instead Sam turns and runs out of the room.
"Sam!" Dean hollers in dismay, because what the hell, either get on the roof or help with the goddamn fire fight, and then the graboid lunges forward, the house shuddering as new ground is broken through the floorboards, and everywhere, always this unholy roaring, hideous snarling slobbering pincer-head peeled open and bellowing like the end of the world. A wave of rank breath assaults him, and Dean swallows back his gorge, scrambles off the couch, shoving it forward as a bulwark against the monster.
A black moment, just a few seconds later, when Dean looks behind to realize that he has backed himself into the one corner in the room without a window, when he fumbles for more shotgun shells and his hand closes in the empty pocket of his jacket, when a single grotesque snake tongue slithers over the cushions of the couch and he has to club it back, which only lets the other two know where he is, and Dean throws a gasping look towards the open window, lavender night sky, and thinks, fuck gonna die. It's fleeting, almost amazing in how simple the prospect sounds. Thirty more seconds is how long Dean's life is going to last.
He clubs one snake tongue and another darts around and latches onto Dean's shoulder, long glassine fangs sinking deep into his flesh, squealing against bone. Dean grunts, winded by pain, blinded by it. The tongue is a solid curl of muscle that jerks him forward with impossible power, into and over the couch, and what can Dean do now, not even standing anymore--odd resonating thrum of sorrow at that thought, because Dean has always assumed that he would at the very least die on his feet.
Then Sam is back, and he has a small child wrapped around his chest and shoulders but it doesn't seem to hinder him as he pumps two quick shotgun blasts into the snake tongue that has Dean by the shoulder, blowing it clean in half. Dean can feel the moment it becomes a dead amputated limb, shuddering and going still, slick heavy knotty thing. The clench of its jaw relaxes. Tearing the snake's vampiric fangs out of his shoulder is one of the single grossest things Dean has ever had to do, but he's alive and he can move, gets his legs under him on the couch and then he's jumping clear of the one remaining tongue.
The graboid is bleeding from a dozen different places, wrenching its huge bulk around as it tries to turn on Sam, but its movements are slow and sluggish. Sam dodges it easily, kid cargo and all, and looks back to say, "C'mon, rapído," which is when Dean notices the tall dark lady wrapped in a second small child, who sticks close to the wall as she follows Sam to the window her husband went through earlier. Dean flanks them, taking out his Glock and plugging a few more holes into the graboid, which wails with fury and pain as it lashes back and forth, sinking reluctantly back into the hole in the floor.
"Up we go, okay," Sam murmurs thoughtlessly as he passes first one child and then the second up to their father on the roof. Sam helps the mom up next, and then hands Dean his shotgun and follows the family.
Dean inches forward, angles Sam's shotgun into the hole and takes another chunk off the graboid, another agonized howl, and then the ground rumbles and cabinets fall over two rooms away and the pictures comes crashing down from the walls, and the worm is gone.
Dean passes both shotguns up to Sam before climbing up the window frame himself, lets Sam pull him onto the roof. The family clings together near the chimney, the little kids not much more than toddlers and bawling with their parents' hands pressed flat to their faces. Sam stands at the edge of the roof, shotgun in hand, watching Earl's truck speed towards them, headlights blaring like salvation itself.
Sam looks over as Dean comes to stand next to him, says, "Your shoulder?"
Dean presses his hand to the puncture wounds in his jacket, sticky blood but not as much as he'd feared.
"Deep but it's not leaking too bad. Flesh wound."
Sam nods, and a few quiet moments pass before Sam visibly realizes that he's just kind of staring at his brother, and drops his eyes. Strange creaking feeling in Dean, like something pressing outwards against his weakest ribs, watching Sam lick his lips and scratch furtively behind his ear and sneak a glance at Dean like it's not something he has full control over. Dean is struck by that thought alone, that maybe unwilling hyperawareness of the other is one of those things that they hold in common.
He doesn't get a chance to wonder about it much, as Sam turns away to explain to the family in the limited vocab and flubbed conjugations of his second-year Spanish that they'll all need to be getting down onto the truck in order to make their escape and not be eaten.
The trust gap between the dad of the family and Sam has been pretty efficiently bridged by Sam handing the man his kids from out of the room with the monster in it, and he nods fervently when Sam points out the truck, "Sí, okay, okay," his eyes magnified behind his Buddy Holly glasses.
Earl's truck skids to a stop in front of the porch, Mindy hanging onto the covered cannon for dear life, and Burt sticks his head out of the passenger side window.
"C'mon, we can't stay still for long! Is that graboid still around?"
"I don't think so, we fucked it up pretty good. We got four civilians up here, two little kids."
"All right, them first, let's go."
Sam hustles the family out onto the porch overhang, and down go the kids, one then the other passed into Mindy's outstretched hands in the truck bed, and then their mom and dad climbing after.
Sam looks back up the roof to where Dean is standing with one hand jammed against his bloody shoulder, his mind in a dampening swoon. He blinks and Sam is at his side, serious dark Sam eyes seeking across his face.
"Are you okay, are you gonna pass out?"
"Anythin' could happen," Dean says, and Sam grabs him as he pitches forward, sudden slide of arms around him, his face mashed against his brother's chest and Sam's surprised oof of breath warm against Dean's forehead.
"Jesus, Dean," Sam says, and he's laughing, it sounds like he's laughing, but that can't be right.
Dean tries to get a look at him, wants to see it, dying to, but he's all weirdly twisted up and Sam is manhandling him down the slanted overhang and the throb in his shoulder feels rooted in his goddamn soul. Dean can't manage anything more complicated than staying on his feet just now, and he tells himself it's okay, it's all right. Nobody's dead and so it doesn't matter if Sam laughed and he missed it.
There are more important things, after all.
*
Earl drives hellbent to the nearest town of any consequence, almost twenty miles before finding a convenience store parking lot illuminated by reassuringly intense sodium lights. There are people inside, moving around like silent movie theatre through the glass walls. There are teenagers smoking cigarettes on the stone benches.
The whole scene is disconcerting and incongruously normal after the past half-hour of their lives. Dean and Sam climb down out of the cramped bed of the truck. The civilian family stays where they are, shell-shocked and staring at the Winchesters as if they have sprouted wings.
Thankfully, Earl steps in at that moment, and Earl, as it turns out, speaks Spanish.
"Live in Nevada for half a century, you'll pick it up too," he says when Dean lets surprise hike his eyebrows. Earl doesn't bother much with any accent other than his own, so the words come out flat and square instead of roundish at the edges, but Dean can tell from the sharpening looks on the mom and dad's faces that it's close enough to understand.
"His name is Josué and she's Amaya," Earl says after shaking both their hands. He introduces the Winchesters and Mindy, who's already making friends with the couple's two little boys, and points out Burt picking up bandages and water inside the store.
Josué says something to Earl in Spanish, and then looks to Sam and Dean, taking off his smudgy glasses to reveal grave brown eyes, saying, "Thank you very much. My family. Thank you very much."
Dean and Sam both nod fast and shrug their shoulders, trying to act like it was nothing. Amaya's eyes are glittery with tears, but Dean doesn't think she's going to allow them to fall, something about the carved set of her mouth, the tension in the line of her jaw.
"What is it?" Josué asks carefully. "¿Es una serpiente gigante, o, o, ah, un dinosaurio?"
"We don't know," Sam says, and then, "No sé, or I mean, no sabemos."
"Dude, could you guys pick a language and stick to it, please," Dean says, and is rewarded with a quick shut-it-shortbus look from his brother, which is such a spectacularly regular look for Sam to give him. Dean grins all woozy from blood loss and relief, humming thickness in his mind, trying to keep his balance.
Earl and Josué converse in Spanish for a minute with Sam listening intently, probably picking up every fourth word or so. Earl asks a few questions of Amaya, too, rubbing his beard thoughtfully and nodding as if their responses fall perfectly into line with his extant theories.
"They've been feeling the tremors pretty regularly but reckoned it was the road crew up in the pass," Earl reports. "They don't keep sheep, but their family dog went missing a couple days ago."
"They can't go back to their house," Sam says. "Not even to pick stuff up or anything. Make sure they know they can't go back there until we're positive all the graboids are dead."
Earl tells them. Josué listens carefully, head tipped towards Earl, and then he glances quickly at his wife, and asks something gravelly and serious. Earl huffs, looking unpleasantly startled as he crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head.
"No, no se puede," Earl says, and Josué's mouth takes on a stubborn shape. He says something fast and emphatic, and Earl responds back in kind, and they argue for a second before Sam stops them, "Hey, slow down, c'mon, cállate. What are you guys even talking about?"
Earl jerks his head, scowling at Josué, who has his wife's hand in a death grip, and glares right back. "He wants to come with us when we kill the things."
"But that's crazy." Sam looks at Josué doubtfully. "He doesn't look crazy."
"Oh, he says it's his land and his family and his home and whatever else, he's got to defend it." Earl blows out an exasperated breath, having exactly no luck in staring down the other man. "I thought boneheaded machismo was an American thing."
"Still is, you just don't have to be born into it," Dean says, and Sam makes an amused sound of agreement at his side.
Burt comes back from the convenience store with a brown paper bag sagging in his hands. There are three big bottles of water, iodine and bandages and aspirin, candy for the kids. The smaller of the two boys climbs into his mother's lap, brandishing a pack of M&Ms for her to open.
"How we doing?" Burt asks at large, taking a swig of water and passing the bottle to Earl. Burt touches the brim of his cap, nodding at Amaya. "Ma'am."
"This damn fool wants to get in on the fun," Earl says, and Josué fires back, catching the gist if not the literal words, and the debate begins anew. Dean yawns, distantly amused.
Sam digs out the bandages and iodine, says, "C'mon Dean, let's get your shoulder dealt with," and the two of them walk around the side of the store to where the bathroom is, next to the propane tank.
Just one little room, dingy gray overlay on everything, deep ochre ring around the sink drain. There isn't a window, just more graffiti on the walls.
Dean's shoulder feels huge, swollen to twice its size, and the ache is unbelievable, goes down so deep. He removes the blood-soaked T-shirt he'd wadded against the wound, and needs Sam's help to get his leather coat off, his arm wooden and immobilized by pain.
Sam comes around to Dean's front, his gaze clinical and intent, thin nervous mouth. Dean gazes dopily at his brother's face, noticing the things that require close proximity, the near-invisible freckles and tiny scar like a bit of white ash just at the point of Sam's eyebrow. Strange surfacing thoughts in Dean's mind, bodies rising from the lake floor, and he flinches minutely as Sam ghosts fingertips over his throbbing shoulder.
"You can't lift your arm," Sam says, not a question. "Gonna have to cut your shirt off, sorry."
Better judgment flickers weakly in Dean, and he nods, blinking fast and trying to get his mind back in order. He remembers the switchblade in his pocket and hands it to Sam. Quick smile from Sam and then the snick of the blade, and it does something to Dean, shocking twist of heat in his stomach, his skin breaking out in goosebumps.
"Hold still," Sam says, crumpling the hem of Dean's T-shirt between his fingers and tugging it away from his body.
Dean holds still, holds his breath, watches in a disarmed fog as Sam carefully slices through the thin black fabric, blade sliding up the line of Dean's sternum so neat and clean, Sam's knuckles brushing the bare skin of his chest as he pulls the rend in the shirt up and apart.
"Oh dude, gross," Sam says, his forehead knotting as he gingerly peels the shirt away from Dean's injured shoulder.
Glance down to see the extent of the damage, and Dean winces, gross being a tremendous understatement. Four crimson puncture marks, ragged at the edges where he had to rip the snake stub off, and the bruising that has already begun is lurid-dark, skin stretched and shiny. The whole arm down to his elbow is sticky and marooned by blood.
It hurts a lot more now that Dean has looked at it. He turns his eyes up to the ceiling, fighting a roil of nausea.
"Just get it done, man," he says, an impression of Sam nodding in the lowermost corner of his vision.
Sam washes the tacky blood away with water from the sink, pats it dry with a paper towel and then warns, "Iodine. Deep breath."
Hard suck of air between Dean's teeth, and Sam presses a damp piece of gauze to the puncture marks, and it's like fire, it's like being branded.
"Fuuuuuck," Dean groans through gritted teeth, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Hang on, you're okay," Sam mumbles, standard quit-whining tone to his voice, and his free hand closes warmly on Dean's side, holding him steady. He swabs the iodine-soaked gauze across the other puncture wounds, swift and efficient and painful as all hell. Dean trembles, doesn't make any noise.
"All right, almost done," and Sam presses a blessedly clean piece of gauze to Dean's shoulder, tapes it down. Dean breathes through his mouth as Sam lifts his arm far enough to be able to wrap a bandage around it, his torn muscles lancing with agony at the movement.
"There, that should do it," Sam says, lowering Dean's arm back to his side.
"Ow," Dean says belatedly.
"You're welcome."
Sam hasn't moved back, and Dean flicks a look at his face, find Sam staring with hooded eyes at the place where the bruising fades into the clean skin of Dean's shoulder.
"What?" Dean says, and clumsily brings his fingers to the spot Sam's looking at, checking for blood but there's nothing. His head is spinning, leaving him shaky on his feet.
"Dean, listen," Sam says, and then stops there. Dean watches Sam's throat move as he swallows.
"What, what's going on with you lately?" Dean hears himself asking, hears the hitch in his voice and wonders what Sam is gonna make of it.
Sam shakes his head, looking down with his eyebrows hunched, but he doesn't move back; his feet are six inches from Dean's and he's still not moving back.
"I can't keep this up much longer," Sam says, hoarse and apologetic.
"What?" and Dean has gone cold inside, echoes clamoring for space (just fucking sick of you Dean), his vision tunneling down. "What are you talking about?"
Sam makes a distant falling sound, and with his eyes still turned away he reaches out and places his open hand on Dean's bare chest.
Dean looks down at it, and then up at his brother, asks again in perfect confusion, "What?"
Lips parting slightly, Sam doesn't answer, just drags his fingertips lightly down Dean's chest, just a few inches and not reason enough for the flood of heat that goes through him, the skittering rush up his spine. Dean jerks, his eyes going wide.
"Sam," he breathes out, and he means stop but he doesn't say it, he means what are you doing but the words won't come.
Sam's face is on fire, breath coming short through his mouth. Half-closed eyes and his hand feels heavier than iron, big and spreading out, fingers itching across Dean's skin.
"You make it impossible," Sam says, broken moan at the end of it, and then something breaks in his face, and his palm presses down hard.
He steps forward, crowding Dean against the wall and the cool rough against his bare back makes Dean gasp. Sam is standing on one of his shoes, so close they're in the same place, and he curls long fingers around Dean's ribs, slides his other hand down to Dean's fly.
"Oh god what're you," Dean manages, bitten off with a curse as Sam shapes fingers around his dick through his jeans, and Dean's hips jerk into the touch, instantly starting to go hard and what is this, what the fuck is happening right now?
"Be quiet Dean," Sam says in a pleading whisper, and presses his forehead against Dean's, down to his cheek.
Dean is coming apart, pinned to this wall and twisting and shivering against his brother. Sam's hand is perfect, working his cock all the way hard through denim and cotton, and Dean's body bows, striving forward. His fingers scrabble at Sam's shoulders, insanely not pushing him away, hanging on.
And Sam is mumbling almost unintelligibly, hot scraps of breath against Dean's throat, "lemme just, please, just once let me," and Dean can't listen to it, it's wrecking him, and so he curls a hand in Sam's hair and pulls his head down, Sam's searing open mouth immediately latching on to the battering thud of Dean's pulse, and everything goes briefly white and that's gonna be it for Dean, that's gonna be basically all he needs to get there--
and then--
A fist hammering against the locked door, rough voice hollering, "Hey, you guys all right in there?"
Sam rips himself away from Dean. It takes a fraction of a second, less than a thought, and then he's standing in the middle of the little room, an expression of pure terror slamming down across his face.
Dean might as well be nailed to the wall. Gaping eyes and stunned mouth, flush staining his skin, still shirtless and rock hard and just staring at Sam, who's just staring back.
"What the hell, don't make me break down this door!" comes from outside, and it's Earl, just Earl come to check on them because they've been taking so long, and with that realization a string snaps. The moment breaks.
Dean falls against the sink, wrenching the tap on and hunching to throw cold water on his face. He's panicking, he can feel it. Disbelieving arousal still buzzes under his skin, crippling him from the inside. Behind him, Sam unbolts the door and says in a respectable imitation of mildly annoyed exasperation, "We're coming, man, settle your ass down."
Whole face mostly numb, Dean opens his eyes into the frozen splash of water, thinking in desperation that it might be better for all concerned if he accidentally blinds himself and never has to look at Sam again.
*
further!