[FIC] The Hitch-Hunter's Guide to Apple Country (4/?)
Title: The Hitch-Hunter's Guide to Apple Country (or Why Abandoning Your Back-Up at a Dairy Queen and Setting Off to Prove Some Macho Point is a TERRIBLE Idea) [Brother's Blood 'Verse]
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Gen, Wincest in future parts
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: vindictive couple fighting, massive angst (as should be expected from us)
Summary: Things aren't alright after Roosevelt, and Dad's call takes them from "Manfully Ignoring the Problem" to "Screaming at Each Other on the Side of the Road." Sam wishes he could say he was surprised.
Previous Chapter | Brother's Blood Masterpost
Sam tries to steer her to the hotel they passed on the way out of Burkittsville, but he just can't find a reason to turn around that doesn't start and end with 'I'm afraid my brother's gonna need backup to fight a Norse god and I'm not gonna be able to get there in time.' There's less chance, too, of them getting snatched up as replacement sacrifices the further they are from the town proper, so it makes sense, in an awful, stomach-sinking that-much-further-from-Dean way.
He digs his heels in, though, when the clerk asks if they need a king or two queens.
"Separate rooms," he coughs, feeling the flush heat his cheeks as he hurriedly shoves his latest scammed credit card across the desk at the clerk, hoping to god that in the wake of the all-encompassing awkward of the King-or-Two-Queens Question, Meg doesn't ask why he's signing for plastic that's sporting the name of a thirty-seven year old Armenian businessman. "Please."
"Sam," Meg interrupts with a look Sam's too busy averting his eyes and willing the red out of his cheeks to decipher.
At least it sounds embarrassed, squabbling-over-the-check grateful, not why-are-you-committing-credit-fraud shocked.
"It's the least I can do," he dismisses, snagging their keys hurriedly and striding out of the office before anything else awkward or humiliating happens, Meg darting along at his heels, "for you taking time off your trip to play family counselor and everything."
"Don't worry about it," Meg shrugs, taking her key from him as they reach their rooms. "No offense, but it's kind of nice, being wrapped up in someone else's family drama for a change."
"No kidding," Sam laughs lightly, heat chased from his cheeks by the crisp night air.
"Better than cable," Meg grins. "At least let me bring you breakfast before check-out tomorrow. A little ‘Thanks for Putting Me Up for the Night' treat."
"Deal," Sam nods, giving Meg an absent goodbye as he tallies in his head how long it's been since Dean's call, how long it should take to find the tree, kill the Vanir, cover up everything, get clear, and check in, and should he be worried yet? It feels like he should be worried.
Then again, he's always worried these days.
He throws himself into the rickety laminate desk chair, trying not to roll his eyes at the anonymous beige of the walls, the furniture, the carpets, the instantly forgettable nothing all around him.
He'll say one thing about Dean's weird-ass taste in motels: at least they're distinct.
Distinct, for all that it may mean cowboy hats and cuckoo clocks, is better than beige any day.
Of course, it's not like Meg, bouncing experimentally on her bed and channel-surfing if the sounds filtering through the paper-thin walls are anything to judge by, would have stayed in enough crappy motels to build that preference, would know that living out of crappy holes-in-the-wall is a little more bearable if they don't blend into an endless march of off-white walls and not-quite-taupe carpets.
And if your neighbors don't insist on watching cut-down showings of teen movies on basic cable.
Bring it On, Meg? Really?!
Sam clicks on CSPAN to drown out the thumping bass and cheesy dialogue, tearing off a few sheets of motel stationary to sketch out a timeline of Dean's hunt for the Vanir. Considering the population, the average closing time of the businesses, and the number places there could conceivably be to hide a tree in a town sustained by apple orchards, Dean's got his work cut out for him.
There are a hell of a lot of places to look and even more townies idle between the hours of seven p.m. and ten a.m., and if the ritual cycle is as precise as the evidence suggests, every single one of them should be getting pretty anxious right about now.
But that doesn't mean anything.
So a few small town yahoos are a little worried about getting their sacrifice on time. That doesn't meant that Sam should worry. After all, Dean is a world-class bad ass who's been running circles around their equivalent of idiot NPCs for as long as Sam can remember.
He can handle a few Vanir-worshipping hicks.
He can.
But then, literally the whole town's in on it this time...
That means everyone, everyone around Dean is in on it, and does Dean even realize that? Does he even get how not-safe he is there? How he needs someone watching his back now more than ever?
And yeah, maybe that's not fair to Dean, maybe it's just Sam fucking freaking out over nothing here, but this is everyone in the whole damn town. What if they gang up on him? Is Dean gonna blast through every one of them to get out? Even if he tried, even if he was okay with that, he'd run out of bullets eventually. Someone would get a lucky shot in.
All it takes is one.
And then where would Sam be? Where would he be when he drives by that stretch of blacktop the disappearances led them to and-
And that's it.
The blacktop. That stretch of highway.
He and Dean, they're both so incredibly stupid, because it doesn't matter how many goddamn orchards and how many goddamn trees are in Burkittsville when there's only one that matters, only one orchard with one cursed scarecrow god. And where do you stick your kill-happy holy effigy?
Near the magic fucking tree it's getting its juice from.
Sam's slamming out of his room and down the motel breezeway before he consciously registers getting up, storming into the office and flinging himself down in front of the single, ancient computer at the motel's so-called "Business Center", if a wheezing, outdated PC and a single, out-of-service printer even counts. He calls up the names Dad gave Dean this morning from memory, confirms that they all disappeared at the same stretch of highway bordering the same orchard. It's the only orchard in town that dates back to the founding of Burkittsville and, according to their website, was started by immigrants and prides itself on their Åkerös - all cultivated from the same stock tree, brought over from Sweden by the town's founding families over two hundred and fifty years ago.
This is the orchard. This is where the tree is and where the Vanir is and where Dean is and Sam knows now, he knows, so what's he supposed to do?
Is he supposed to let Dean do this alone? Supposed to let him prove whatever it is he needs to prove by fighting this thing solo?
Or is he supposed to go with his gut here?
Supposed to burn rubber and haul ass back to that fucked-up little town, set their sacred fucking tree on fire, and read Dean the "Don't You Ever Ditch Me Like That Again" Riot Act.
And yeah, Sam’d like that. He'd feel a hell of a lot better doing something, anything, that'll get him that much closer to knowing Dean's okay, to having this whole Solo Hunting Nightmare over and done with and just another one of those things that the Never Mention or Fucking Allude to Again.
Like that case with the bugs. Or the Racist Truck.
But if Dean is okay? If he's got this case under control and everything's fine and Sam's just flipping out over nothing here, then Sam's gonna show up in Burkittsville and Dean is gonna be pissed, beyond pissed, and this mess is gonna go from Sam-Doesn't-Give-Me-Space to Sam-Doesn't-Trust-Me-To-Burn-Down-One-Fucking-Tree to Sam-Thinks-I'm-An-Idiot in the blink of an eye, and then they're not going to be back at square one; they're going be fifteen squares south of square one, screaming their lungs out over the burning corpse of a minor Norse deity, and Sam's not sure there's any coming back from that.
Not with the way things have been lately.
He'll wait, he decides, slamming the door to his room shut behind him and flinging himself down on the bed, scrubbing a hand across his eyes.
He'll do what Dean wants and wait for him to check in, and if he doesn't then Sam can ride out hell for leather to that crappy apple town and set it on fucking fire, but until then, if Dean says wait, so he'll fucking wait.
It'll kill him, watching the clock, the minutes burning up and flickering away and stacking one on top of another, each awful, damnable second screaming in his head, the 'what-if's stacking up and closing in and weighing him down, stone by stone, tick by tick.
Tick. Dean should have called by now.
Tick. Is he okay?
Tick. Why the hell hasn't he called?
Tick. He could be hurt.
Tick. He could be dying.
Tick. Just like Louisiana.
Tick. Dean, gone forever.
Tick. Dean, dying alone.
Tick. Dean's doing all this-
Tick. -because you screwed up, Sam.
Tick. You'll get him killed, Sam.
Tick. Just like Mom.
Tick. Just like Jess.
Tick-
The shrill clanging of the motel phone breaks his train of thought, and Sam's first, insane, irrational thought is 'Dean' which is wrong and impossible because Dean has no idea that he's staying here, much less which room he's in. But apparently that means nothing, nothing at all, because it's still Dean's name on his lips when Sam picks up the phone, his brother's voice he expects to hear when he rasps out some hoarse answer to whoever's on the other end of the line.
"Can't sleep?" Meg's chipper voice chirps in his ear.
Sam thinks, bizarrely, of Jess turning to him the night before a big exam. She’d been as soft and pliant with sleep as Sam was stiff and straining with every fact and figure that raced through his head, all neurons and electrons, his central nervous system on fire with everything he'd studied, everything they'd covered in class, every possible answer to every possible question on every possible permutation of the test, and was it enough? Would it be enough? Would it ever be enough?
"Sam," she'd whispered, turning to him in the dark, voice thick and fogged with sleep, their bodies tangled close in the soft, sleepy intimacy of shared blankets and twisted covers that married heat and breath, braiding ‘you’ and ‘I’ into ‘our’ and ‘we.’ "Relax. You're gonna be fine. You've got this."
And she'd tugged him closer, her fingers sure and strong for all that they'd never fired a gun or flung a knife as they carded through his hair, dragged him up and out of himself and somewhere deeper, hotter, where the furious, anxious pulse of his thoughts couldn't reach him. Somewhere that the constant, quaking questions of the waking world couldn't catch him, where he burned right through analytical and quantitative and verbal and into a white, hot questionless oblivion. He’d fallen back to earth damp and dizzy, heart pounding and hands clinging and legs shaking with her hair tangled around him, the scent of warm vanilla sugar and soft, girly shampoo washing over him as he drifted, carried away by the smooth, steady thump of her heart against his chest and the sweet, secret curve of her smile against his neck.
The memory centers him. Sears him. Heals and hurts, all at the same time, like forcing a dislocated joint back into place.
"That offer for Truth or Dare's still open," Meg hums on the other end of the line, "if you're lonely over there."
It’s like being doused in cold water. The voice is all wrong, the offer nothing but a sharp slap and an icy rush that brings him back to the present. Back to himself.
"I'm fine," Sam shakes his head, clearing it. "I was- Sorry. Another time."
He makes his excuses, mumbles his goodbyes, and drops the phone back in the cradle before standing up and making for the motel's business center once again, this time snatching up the old-fashioned analog alarm clock from the bedside table and dropping it in a trashcan just outside of the motel office.
He might be going crazy with worry, but hell if he lets that clock drive him insane.
~
A few hours later, Dean still hasn't called.
The first weak flickers of dawn are already licking at the horizon, but Sam's ready. He knows more about the hardware stores of Clinton County than he'd ever need to in order make a supply run and start tearing Burkittsville apart at the seams until it gives him back his fucking brother.
And Sam hopes- No, they’d better hope that Dean is just taking his sweet ass time escorting the not-sacrifices out of town. That his brother's cell died, that his attention wandered, that he's in a dive a state or two over giving some brunette bartender the kiss-off or searching for a greasy hole-in-the-wall to snag breakfast in, completely oblivious to Sam totally losing it over here. Because if Dean isn't safe? If his brother is anything other than-?
No. He's safe.
He's safe, and Sam's going to find him, or by the time he's done, there won't be a Burkittsville.
Sam darts back into the motel room for coffee, to scrub a brush over his teeth and splash a quick rush of cold water over his face to jolt himself awake.
He's opening the door, mind already on the nondescript Accord he saw on the other side of the building when he sees Meg, one hand poised to knock and a pair of coffees precariously on a Dunkin' Donuts box in the other.
"Leaving so soon?" she asks, surprise traded quickly for a sharp grin. "I got doughnuts."
"Sorry," Sam dismisses, ducking around her. "I gotta go."
And then it's breezeways and breaking into sedans. He checks absently to make sure Meg didn't follow him, but he can’t really bring himself to care, because all he can think about is the Vanir and Dean, and if everything is fine then why didn't his brother call him? Dean wouldn't do this. He wouldn't just not call to prove a point. The fight, the asylum, Dad, none of it matters now. Not at all. Not until Sam knows that his brother is safe.
Sam hits the hardware store first, slipping in through the listing backdoor like an afterthought. He snags accelerant and a fistful of kitchen knives, and he burns for his Taurus, aches for hunting knives, and the cache in the trunk of the Impala, and Dean, safe and warm and sound. By the time the Accord is tearing towards Burkittsville, Sam feels nothing, sees nothing, hears nothing but the thought the fact that Dean is okay, has to be okay because if not-
No.
Dean is o-fucking-kay.
He is o-fucking-kay, because if not, Sam killed him. Killed him by being a stupid, selfish pain-in-the-ass who shot off his mouth and pissed Dean the fuck off, and hell, Sam would’ve left himself on the side of the highway and taken off alone ages ago if it were fucking possible. But Dean is out there, has to be out there somewhere, or-
Before Sam knows it, before he can let himself go there, go anywhere but "Dean is okay, Dean is okay, Dean is okay,” he's pulling up to the orchard, and there's the goddamn scarecrow hanging on its fucking cross. It's wearing a battered, leather jacket, and in an instant, Sam’s out of the car. He’s already dragged the ladder over and climbed halfway up there before he realizes that it's too long, too smooth, too worn in places and not worn enough in others to be Dean’s. But that doesn't mean- It could still be-
His breath just won't come as his eyes tear across the messy stitches, across the tanned, battered skin of the thing's face, searching for freckles, for the hint of a messy tan or a cocky grin. He has to find something, anything that'll get his heart beating, that'll get rid of the sick, sinking feeling that Dean is here, could have never left here, and Sam's hands are shaking as he pulls aside the thing’s goddamn collar. He can't look, doesn't want to see Dean's smooth, silvery bite-scars ripped apart and reapplied as this thing's fucking mask.
(Sam swears he can taste them, is hurled back to half a hundred hazy mornings, waking up to find Dean’s fingers in his hair, the half-moon arcs of scars beneath his lips.)
But the Scarecrow's neck is made of clear, dried, stolen skin and ragged stitches overlaying rotting straw and crumbling cotton, and when Sam leans over and twitches the jacket sleeves away from the thing's filthy, fraying gloves, he finds that the skin on its wrists is wrecked, ruined, but not his brother’s. The valleys and rips and ridges are sharp and distinct and definitely, definitely not Dean's. These are not Dean's scars, not Dean's wrists. He's not here, this isn't him, it isn’t too late, and Sam?
Sam can breathe again.
He's feels light and free with relief, a thousand miles from his body as he snatches the scythe from the scarecrow’s hand and douses the damn thing in kerosene. He lights a match and takes off for the center of the orchard as the scarecrow catches and burns, sending the acrid scent of singed cotton and sizzling skin across the orchard.
God, he'd burn it all down if he could. Just coat the whole damn field in kerosene and light it up and never look back, because they took Dean from him. They did something to him; they must have him somewhere, and wherever Dean is, it's not with Sam. He's not with Sam so everything's wrong. Someone, somewhere has to pay for that.
But burning down this goddamn orchard won't get him Dean. It won't pay that debt or right that wrong, and no matter how much he wants to just set every tree in this place ablaze, he won’t. Not this time.
Not yet.
He caps the kerosene with an ugly twist, sets out to find the fucking magic tree with a hard set to his shoulders and steel in his spine.
Maybe it's how the orchard is laid out, maybe it's what he knows about pagan ritual or some scrap of research or a hunch or just blind luck, but he stalks through the field without a doubt in his mind as to where he's going. He follows a path between the trees that’s too wide to be accidental straight to a gnarled, ancient apple tree.
He doesn't need to see the bubbling, scrawled runes on the thing's trunk to confirm that this is the one. He already knows that this is it. This is the goddamn tree at the center of all of this, and in seconds, with a gurgle of kerosene, with a flick of his fingers and the snick of a match, there’s a quick burst of sting and sulfur, and it’s going up in flames.
Sam stalks away with the heat of unravelling magic and burning apple-wood at his back, hot and crisp in the fall air, and hell if Sam gives a damn about any of it. There's a farmhouse on the edge of the orchard, and if Sam were some lunatic pagan villager, he'd sure as hell have someone watching over his goddamn sacred scarecrow. Even if whoever lives there doesn't know everything, they’ll know something.
And they don't know this yet, but they're fucking telling Sam.
Chapter 5
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Gen, Wincest in future parts
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: vindictive couple fighting, massive angst (as should be expected from us)
Summary: Things aren't alright after Roosevelt, and Dad's call takes them from "Manfully Ignoring the Problem" to "Screaming at Each Other on the Side of the Road." Sam wishes he could say he was surprised.
Previous Chapter | Brother's Blood Masterpost
Sam tries to steer her to the hotel they passed on the way out of Burkittsville, but he just can't find a reason to turn around that doesn't start and end with 'I'm afraid my brother's gonna need backup to fight a Norse god and I'm not gonna be able to get there in time.' There's less chance, too, of them getting snatched up as replacement sacrifices the further they are from the town proper, so it makes sense, in an awful, stomach-sinking that-much-further-from-Dean way.
He digs his heels in, though, when the clerk asks if they need a king or two queens.
"Separate rooms," he coughs, feeling the flush heat his cheeks as he hurriedly shoves his latest scammed credit card across the desk at the clerk, hoping to god that in the wake of the all-encompassing awkward of the King-or-Two-Queens Question, Meg doesn't ask why he's signing for plastic that's sporting the name of a thirty-seven year old Armenian businessman. "Please."
"Sam," Meg interrupts with a look Sam's too busy averting his eyes and willing the red out of his cheeks to decipher.
At least it sounds embarrassed, squabbling-over-the-check grateful, not why-are-you-committing-credit-fraud shocked.
"It's the least I can do," he dismisses, snagging their keys hurriedly and striding out of the office before anything else awkward or humiliating happens, Meg darting along at his heels, "for you taking time off your trip to play family counselor and everything."
"Don't worry about it," Meg shrugs, taking her key from him as they reach their rooms. "No offense, but it's kind of nice, being wrapped up in someone else's family drama for a change."
"No kidding," Sam laughs lightly, heat chased from his cheeks by the crisp night air.
"Better than cable," Meg grins. "At least let me bring you breakfast before check-out tomorrow. A little ‘Thanks for Putting Me Up for the Night' treat."
"Deal," Sam nods, giving Meg an absent goodbye as he tallies in his head how long it's been since Dean's call, how long it should take to find the tree, kill the Vanir, cover up everything, get clear, and check in, and should he be worried yet? It feels like he should be worried.
Then again, he's always worried these days.
He throws himself into the rickety laminate desk chair, trying not to roll his eyes at the anonymous beige of the walls, the furniture, the carpets, the instantly forgettable nothing all around him.
He'll say one thing about Dean's weird-ass taste in motels: at least they're distinct.
Distinct, for all that it may mean cowboy hats and cuckoo clocks, is better than beige any day.
Of course, it's not like Meg, bouncing experimentally on her bed and channel-surfing if the sounds filtering through the paper-thin walls are anything to judge by, would have stayed in enough crappy motels to build that preference, would know that living out of crappy holes-in-the-wall is a little more bearable if they don't blend into an endless march of off-white walls and not-quite-taupe carpets.
And if your neighbors don't insist on watching cut-down showings of teen movies on basic cable.
Bring it On, Meg? Really?!
Sam clicks on CSPAN to drown out the thumping bass and cheesy dialogue, tearing off a few sheets of motel stationary to sketch out a timeline of Dean's hunt for the Vanir. Considering the population, the average closing time of the businesses, and the number places there could conceivably be to hide a tree in a town sustained by apple orchards, Dean's got his work cut out for him.
There are a hell of a lot of places to look and even more townies idle between the hours of seven p.m. and ten a.m., and if the ritual cycle is as precise as the evidence suggests, every single one of them should be getting pretty anxious right about now.
But that doesn't mean anything.
So a few small town yahoos are a little worried about getting their sacrifice on time. That doesn't meant that Sam should worry. After all, Dean is a world-class bad ass who's been running circles around their equivalent of idiot NPCs for as long as Sam can remember.
He can handle a few Vanir-worshipping hicks.
He can.
But then, literally the whole town's in on it this time...
That means everyone, everyone around Dean is in on it, and does Dean even realize that? Does he even get how not-safe he is there? How he needs someone watching his back now more than ever?
And yeah, maybe that's not fair to Dean, maybe it's just Sam fucking freaking out over nothing here, but this is everyone in the whole damn town. What if they gang up on him? Is Dean gonna blast through every one of them to get out? Even if he tried, even if he was okay with that, he'd run out of bullets eventually. Someone would get a lucky shot in.
All it takes is one.
And then where would Sam be? Where would he be when he drives by that stretch of blacktop the disappearances led them to and-
And that's it.
The blacktop. That stretch of highway.
He and Dean, they're both so incredibly stupid, because it doesn't matter how many goddamn orchards and how many goddamn trees are in Burkittsville when there's only one that matters, only one orchard with one cursed scarecrow god. And where do you stick your kill-happy holy effigy?
Near the magic fucking tree it's getting its juice from.
Sam's slamming out of his room and down the motel breezeway before he consciously registers getting up, storming into the office and flinging himself down in front of the single, ancient computer at the motel's so-called "Business Center", if a wheezing, outdated PC and a single, out-of-service printer even counts. He calls up the names Dad gave Dean this morning from memory, confirms that they all disappeared at the same stretch of highway bordering the same orchard. It's the only orchard in town that dates back to the founding of Burkittsville and, according to their website, was started by immigrants and prides itself on their Åkerös - all cultivated from the same stock tree, brought over from Sweden by the town's founding families over two hundred and fifty years ago.
This is the orchard. This is where the tree is and where the Vanir is and where Dean is and Sam knows now, he knows, so what's he supposed to do?
Is he supposed to let Dean do this alone? Supposed to let him prove whatever it is he needs to prove by fighting this thing solo?
Or is he supposed to go with his gut here?
Supposed to burn rubber and haul ass back to that fucked-up little town, set their sacred fucking tree on fire, and read Dean the "Don't You Ever Ditch Me Like That Again" Riot Act.
And yeah, Sam’d like that. He'd feel a hell of a lot better doing something, anything, that'll get him that much closer to knowing Dean's okay, to having this whole Solo Hunting Nightmare over and done with and just another one of those things that the Never Mention or Fucking Allude to Again.
Like that case with the bugs. Or the Racist Truck.
But if Dean is okay? If he's got this case under control and everything's fine and Sam's just flipping out over nothing here, then Sam's gonna show up in Burkittsville and Dean is gonna be pissed, beyond pissed, and this mess is gonna go from Sam-Doesn't-Give-Me-Space to Sam-Doesn't-Trust-Me-To-Burn-Down-One-Fucking-Tree to Sam-Thinks-I'm-An-Idiot in the blink of an eye, and then they're not going to be back at square one; they're going be fifteen squares south of square one, screaming their lungs out over the burning corpse of a minor Norse deity, and Sam's not sure there's any coming back from that.
Not with the way things have been lately.
He'll wait, he decides, slamming the door to his room shut behind him and flinging himself down on the bed, scrubbing a hand across his eyes.
He'll do what Dean wants and wait for him to check in, and if he doesn't then Sam can ride out hell for leather to that crappy apple town and set it on fucking fire, but until then, if Dean says wait, so he'll fucking wait.
It'll kill him, watching the clock, the minutes burning up and flickering away and stacking one on top of another, each awful, damnable second screaming in his head, the 'what-if's stacking up and closing in and weighing him down, stone by stone, tick by tick.
Tick. Dean should have called by now.
Tick. Is he okay?
Tick. Why the hell hasn't he called?
Tick. He could be hurt.
Tick. He could be dying.
Tick. Just like Louisiana.
Tick. Dean, gone forever.
Tick. Dean, dying alone.
Tick. Dean's doing all this-
Tick. -because you screwed up, Sam.
Tick. You'll get him killed, Sam.
Tick. Just like Mom.
Tick. Just like Jess.
Tick-
The shrill clanging of the motel phone breaks his train of thought, and Sam's first, insane, irrational thought is 'Dean' which is wrong and impossible because Dean has no idea that he's staying here, much less which room he's in. But apparently that means nothing, nothing at all, because it's still Dean's name on his lips when Sam picks up the phone, his brother's voice he expects to hear when he rasps out some hoarse answer to whoever's on the other end of the line.
"Can't sleep?" Meg's chipper voice chirps in his ear.
Sam thinks, bizarrely, of Jess turning to him the night before a big exam. She’d been as soft and pliant with sleep as Sam was stiff and straining with every fact and figure that raced through his head, all neurons and electrons, his central nervous system on fire with everything he'd studied, everything they'd covered in class, every possible answer to every possible question on every possible permutation of the test, and was it enough? Would it be enough? Would it ever be enough?
"Sam," she'd whispered, turning to him in the dark, voice thick and fogged with sleep, their bodies tangled close in the soft, sleepy intimacy of shared blankets and twisted covers that married heat and breath, braiding ‘you’ and ‘I’ into ‘our’ and ‘we.’ "Relax. You're gonna be fine. You've got this."
And she'd tugged him closer, her fingers sure and strong for all that they'd never fired a gun or flung a knife as they carded through his hair, dragged him up and out of himself and somewhere deeper, hotter, where the furious, anxious pulse of his thoughts couldn't reach him. Somewhere that the constant, quaking questions of the waking world couldn't catch him, where he burned right through analytical and quantitative and verbal and into a white, hot questionless oblivion. He’d fallen back to earth damp and dizzy, heart pounding and hands clinging and legs shaking with her hair tangled around him, the scent of warm vanilla sugar and soft, girly shampoo washing over him as he drifted, carried away by the smooth, steady thump of her heart against his chest and the sweet, secret curve of her smile against his neck.
The memory centers him. Sears him. Heals and hurts, all at the same time, like forcing a dislocated joint back into place.
"That offer for Truth or Dare's still open," Meg hums on the other end of the line, "if you're lonely over there."
It’s like being doused in cold water. The voice is all wrong, the offer nothing but a sharp slap and an icy rush that brings him back to the present. Back to himself.
"I'm fine," Sam shakes his head, clearing it. "I was- Sorry. Another time."
He makes his excuses, mumbles his goodbyes, and drops the phone back in the cradle before standing up and making for the motel's business center once again, this time snatching up the old-fashioned analog alarm clock from the bedside table and dropping it in a trashcan just outside of the motel office.
He might be going crazy with worry, but hell if he lets that clock drive him insane.
~
A few hours later, Dean still hasn't called.
The first weak flickers of dawn are already licking at the horizon, but Sam's ready. He knows more about the hardware stores of Clinton County than he'd ever need to in order make a supply run and start tearing Burkittsville apart at the seams until it gives him back his fucking brother.
And Sam hopes- No, they’d better hope that Dean is just taking his sweet ass time escorting the not-sacrifices out of town. That his brother's cell died, that his attention wandered, that he's in a dive a state or two over giving some brunette bartender the kiss-off or searching for a greasy hole-in-the-wall to snag breakfast in, completely oblivious to Sam totally losing it over here. Because if Dean isn't safe? If his brother is anything other than-?
No. He's safe.
He's safe, and Sam's going to find him, or by the time he's done, there won't be a Burkittsville.
Sam darts back into the motel room for coffee, to scrub a brush over his teeth and splash a quick rush of cold water over his face to jolt himself awake.
He's opening the door, mind already on the nondescript Accord he saw on the other side of the building when he sees Meg, one hand poised to knock and a pair of coffees precariously on a Dunkin' Donuts box in the other.
"Leaving so soon?" she asks, surprise traded quickly for a sharp grin. "I got doughnuts."
"Sorry," Sam dismisses, ducking around her. "I gotta go."
And then it's breezeways and breaking into sedans. He checks absently to make sure Meg didn't follow him, but he can’t really bring himself to care, because all he can think about is the Vanir and Dean, and if everything is fine then why didn't his brother call him? Dean wouldn't do this. He wouldn't just not call to prove a point. The fight, the asylum, Dad, none of it matters now. Not at all. Not until Sam knows that his brother is safe.
Sam hits the hardware store first, slipping in through the listing backdoor like an afterthought. He snags accelerant and a fistful of kitchen knives, and he burns for his Taurus, aches for hunting knives, and the cache in the trunk of the Impala, and Dean, safe and warm and sound. By the time the Accord is tearing towards Burkittsville, Sam feels nothing, sees nothing, hears nothing but the thought the fact that Dean is okay, has to be okay because if not-
No.
Dean is o-fucking-kay.
He is o-fucking-kay, because if not, Sam killed him. Killed him by being a stupid, selfish pain-in-the-ass who shot off his mouth and pissed Dean the fuck off, and hell, Sam would’ve left himself on the side of the highway and taken off alone ages ago if it were fucking possible. But Dean is out there, has to be out there somewhere, or-
Before Sam knows it, before he can let himself go there, go anywhere but "Dean is okay, Dean is okay, Dean is okay,” he's pulling up to the orchard, and there's the goddamn scarecrow hanging on its fucking cross. It's wearing a battered, leather jacket, and in an instant, Sam’s out of the car. He’s already dragged the ladder over and climbed halfway up there before he realizes that it's too long, too smooth, too worn in places and not worn enough in others to be Dean’s. But that doesn't mean- It could still be-
His breath just won't come as his eyes tear across the messy stitches, across the tanned, battered skin of the thing's face, searching for freckles, for the hint of a messy tan or a cocky grin. He has to find something, anything that'll get his heart beating, that'll get rid of the sick, sinking feeling that Dean is here, could have never left here, and Sam's hands are shaking as he pulls aside the thing’s goddamn collar. He can't look, doesn't want to see Dean's smooth, silvery bite-scars ripped apart and reapplied as this thing's fucking mask.
(Sam swears he can taste them, is hurled back to half a hundred hazy mornings, waking up to find Dean’s fingers in his hair, the half-moon arcs of scars beneath his lips.)
But the Scarecrow's neck is made of clear, dried, stolen skin and ragged stitches overlaying rotting straw and crumbling cotton, and when Sam leans over and twitches the jacket sleeves away from the thing's filthy, fraying gloves, he finds that the skin on its wrists is wrecked, ruined, but not his brother’s. The valleys and rips and ridges are sharp and distinct and definitely, definitely not Dean's. These are not Dean's scars, not Dean's wrists. He's not here, this isn't him, it isn’t too late, and Sam?
Sam can breathe again.
He's feels light and free with relief, a thousand miles from his body as he snatches the scythe from the scarecrow’s hand and douses the damn thing in kerosene. He lights a match and takes off for the center of the orchard as the scarecrow catches and burns, sending the acrid scent of singed cotton and sizzling skin across the orchard.
God, he'd burn it all down if he could. Just coat the whole damn field in kerosene and light it up and never look back, because they took Dean from him. They did something to him; they must have him somewhere, and wherever Dean is, it's not with Sam. He's not with Sam so everything's wrong. Someone, somewhere has to pay for that.
But burning down this goddamn orchard won't get him Dean. It won't pay that debt or right that wrong, and no matter how much he wants to just set every tree in this place ablaze, he won’t. Not this time.
Not yet.
He caps the kerosene with an ugly twist, sets out to find the fucking magic tree with a hard set to his shoulders and steel in his spine.
Maybe it's how the orchard is laid out, maybe it's what he knows about pagan ritual or some scrap of research or a hunch or just blind luck, but he stalks through the field without a doubt in his mind as to where he's going. He follows a path between the trees that’s too wide to be accidental straight to a gnarled, ancient apple tree.
He doesn't need to see the bubbling, scrawled runes on the thing's trunk to confirm that this is the one. He already knows that this is it. This is the goddamn tree at the center of all of this, and in seconds, with a gurgle of kerosene, with a flick of his fingers and the snick of a match, there’s a quick burst of sting and sulfur, and it’s going up in flames.
Sam stalks away with the heat of unravelling magic and burning apple-wood at his back, hot and crisp in the fall air, and hell if Sam gives a damn about any of it. There's a farmhouse on the edge of the orchard, and if Sam were some lunatic pagan villager, he'd sure as hell have someone watching over his goddamn sacred scarecrow. Even if whoever lives there doesn't know everything, they’ll know something.
And they don't know this yet, but they're fucking telling Sam.
Chapter 5