SPN Fic: Dream A Little Dream (NC17, Sassy) Part One
Fic title: Dream A Little Dream, Part One
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: Sam/Castiel
Rating: NC17
Warnings: spoilers for late season 5 and early season 6 (slim)
Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters don't belong to me and I'm not making any profit from this.
Author's note: Written for the Sassy fanworks exchange.
Word count: about 13,600 over 3 parts
Summary: Sam still isn't out of the woods yet, still he has Castiel. But a series of suicides draw them into a situation where even Cas might not be enough to keep Sam safe.
Ben was watching them from the living room window. When Castiel turned to look at him, he did a fair attempt of pretending he was wiping a smudge from the glass.
Sam tried not to grin. “Wow. Sneaky, already. You’re rubbing off on him fast.”
It didn’t help that Dean looked absurdly proud over that. They were standing on the sidewalk, drawing out their goodbyes after their usual Sunday lunch, and he nudged Castiel’s elbow. “He still thinks if he’s quick enough, he’ll catch a glimpse of your halo or something. Maybe see you and Sam flying off into the sunset together.”
“I still don’t believe you should have told him,” Castiel said.
Sam cringed. Dean’s face darkened, and he glared at the two of them like Sam was agreeing with Castiel just by being there.
“I got fed up of secrets, and lies,” he said. “New start, and all that.”
None of them said anything for a minute or two. Sam wasn’t sure what to say. There was a time when secrets and lies were the way they lived and there were some pretty good reasons for that. Dean had lived that life too, and he had kept some huge secrets and told some lies himself that Sam still wasn’t sure he could forgive him for.
Not truly, not deeply.
None of them were spotless in this, not even Cas, but reminding Dean of that wasn’t likely to bridge the gap that had sprung up between them. So fast and sudden, that Sam couldn’t understand it. Shouldn’t there have been a crack at first, gradually widening, giving him a chance to stop it?
Probably, he admitted to himself. But he wasn’t around to see it, and neither was Castiel, and while that wasn’t their fault, it wasn’t Dean’s either. Sam had gone to Hell, Castiel to Heaven, and all Dean had left was a woman he’d slept with a couple of times and the closest thing he had to a son. It was better than motels and Jack Daniels, but Sam knew it was separate beds for Dean and Lisa. They were friends now, not lovers, and somehow Sam felt like life was taunting Dean all over again. With Lisa. With him and Cas. Look what you almost had. Almost but not quite. Here, let me rub your nose in it for a bit.
“So,” he ventured, finally. “You still coming to Bobby’s next week?”
“Oh, the annual Singer Hunters’ Barbecue? Dunno, might have to paint a fence or something.”
“Bobby’ll paint your ass. Don’t think he won’t come down here and drag you.”
Dean grinned, and Sam knew that his older brother would probably be waiting on Bobby’s porch drinking beer by the time he and Cas arrived. The brief tension between them broke - not gone for good, it would take a long time for things to get back to anything resembling what they were - and Dean pulled him into a tight hug. Castiel got the same treatment, and managed to hug back.
Dean nodded approvingly when he released the angel. “You’re getting better at this whole human stuff, Cas,” he teased, and promptly reached up to ruffle the angel’s hair. Castiel was still the sneakiest angel on the block, and vanished before Dean managed it.
“I still hate it when he does that,” Dean said, but he was smiling.
“Think how I feel,” Sam said. He nudged Dean’s shoulder and walked out to where their SUV was parked. Castiel was sitting in the passenger’s seat, waiting patiently. Sam got in, started the engine and reversed enough to have room to pull away from the kerb.
Dean waved to them as they moved off, and Sam split his attention between the road ahead, and the brother he was again leaving behind. Or maybe it was the other way around - maybe Dean was the one who’d moved on, and Sam and Cas the ones left standing at the side of the road.
“You worry,” Cas said, suddenly.
Sam glanced at him, then back ahead. “Put your seatbelt on.”
Castiel did so, and turned to watch him. “You think he will try to follow us. Back into your old life.”
“It’s kind of your old life too, Cas. Once a hunter.”
Cas chuffed a little, and Sam couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. “Not exactly. He needs this time with you, Sam. Cutting him off again would likely encourage him to fall back into his old ways.”
They left town, taking a back road shortcut that eventually would lead them onto the freeway. Sam felt a buzz of irritation at Castiel’s words. He didn’t need a lecture on how to handle his own brother. And old ways? “You make it sound like we lived a life of crime, Cas.” Well, they were probably wanted by the police in several states. But as far as Sam was concerned, in that respect the ends justified the means. The police and FBI would never see it that way though.
“That isn’t what I meant. Sam, look at me.”
There was a give way sign up ahead, and Sam put his foot down. The SUV shot out, but there was nothing coming. No honk to mark a close call. That annoyed him as well, and he couldn’t figure out the sudden anger that was burning painfully in his chest. What the hell was going on?
He still had his foot on the gas.
“Sam.”
“What? What the fuck do you want? God, Dean was right, we got the clingiest most annoying, useless angel in the garrison. I can’t look at you and drive.”
Castiel solved that problem. He tapped the dashboard and the car began to slow. Sam cursed and pumped the gas, but finally the SUV drifted to a stop, as far off the road as they get could without actually getting wedged between the trees. The car went dead, and even though he turned the key it didn’t matter.
“Alright, what?”
“Look in the mirror. Look at your eyes.”
Sam didn’t. He looked at his hands instead. Fingers locked tight around the steering wheel but even that wasn’t enough to hide the shaking. He felt fiercely hot, suddenly, like the car was on fire. Like he was someplace he thought he’d escaped from. “No.”
Castiel grabbed Sam’s jaw in one hand, grip firm but not painful, and the rear view mirror in the other. He moved both, and stopped Sam looking away from the yellow eyes staring back at him.
“Fuck, Cas, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Castiel touched his shoulder, and then they were standing in the woods. The air had turned heavy, promising rain. Sam sagged, almost going to his knees, but Castiel caught him and pushed him against a tree. “Hold on for me, Sam.”
Sam watched, mind lost in the heat, and the pain, and the fear as Castiel took off his coat and spread it down on the grass. He returned to Sam and took him by the arms, guiding him over and down.
Sam could only keep watching as Castiel took off his suit jacket, and rolled up his shirt sleeve. He slipped his blade out of the sheath at his back, and drew it sharply across his inner arm.
“No,” Sam protested, but his body overrode him. He caught Castiel’s arm, pulling until the angel was sitting in his lap. Castiel braced himself with an arm around Sam’s shoulders, and Sam licked and supped at the wound, aware how different this was to before. Except for the hate. The hate was the same. Burning away at him, and he knew he’d never be free of it.
When he was done, he turned them, lowering Castiel gently onto his back. He undid the buttons on Castiel’s shirt slowly, and tugged down his pants. Castiel moaned beneath him, as Sam worked him with mouth and fingers, stopping only long enough to shuck his own clothes. He covered Castiel with his body then, slipping his tongue into the angel’s mouth and continuing the kiss even as the rain started. It hammered down on him, cold and relentless, and when he shivered now it was for a different reason than before.
Castiel’s hand came up to cup the back of his neck and just like that he was warm again. He stayed that way even when the rain was finally done, and he was spooned around Castiel, one arm around the angel’s waist, the other serving as a pillow beneath his head.
“I used to pray a lot,” he said, quietly. Everything was so still now, the world clean again. “Dean didn’t. I guess what he’d seen made him think it was pointless, but for me it made it all the more important.”
“You don’t have to justify your faith, Sam,” Castiel murmured. He was always low key after helping him fight the taint. Sometimes, Sam worried that this was going to have a long term effect but Cas always assured him he’d be fine. Maybe more secrets and lies. “Just as Dean doesn’t have to justify his. You believed in us. He believed in you and John. And guns, and rock salt and the Impala.”
Sam snorted against his shoulder, but it felt empty. “When Dad came home drunk, sometimes Dean would put him to bed. And once he climbed in beside me, and he sounded like he was crying, but he said he had a cold. Next morning, I saw his nose and his mouth were split. And then once Dad had to carry him home - I was maybe eight - and he made me go sit in the bathroom and all I could hear was Dean. Trying real hard not to cry, because he knew I was there. And then Dad came and got me and said it was okay.
“I used to pray for a guardian angel. I thought maybe these things were done with lists, and our name had gotten missed. We didn’t even need one apiece, just one between the three of us, especially to keep Dad and Dean safe. That was all. Just one.”
Castiel turned over, face so close his breath touched Sam’s skin. “Humans don’t understand the concept of guardian angels.” He wasn’t disdainful - if anything he sounded like he wished it was as people believed it to be.
“My prayers got answered, eventually,” Sam continued. He took hold of Castiel’s forearm, turned it over to study the red weal that was fading before his eyes. “I finally got my angel. And this is what I do with him.”
Castiel tucked Sam’s head under his chin, and pulled him in close.
~~
The next day, they arrived in Hardley Falls. They’d taken a motel room the town before, to change, but as the SUV pulled into a parking space outside the Sheriff’s office, Sam noticed that Castiel’s collar wasn’t done up. He smirked, a little, and put a hand on Castiel’s arm as the angel started to get out.
“Cas?”
Cas turned back around, and Sam quickly did up his collar and straightened his tie. Cas sat until he was done and then got out of the car. Sometimes - and he knew Cas would either deny it or disappear in a fluttering of wings - he was sure Castiel left the top two buttons undone deliberately. By now he knew how to dress. Although the undressing part was definitely more fun.
He joined Cas on the sidewalk and they went inside, and a few moments later Agents Mason and Drake were sitting in the sheriff’s office with two cups of stewed coffee on the desk in front of them.
“Didn’t think this would be of much interest to the feds,” Sherriff Whittaker said. “Look, I know. Eight suicides in three weeks. That’s got to flag up somewhere as a ‘statistical anomaly’. But when you know what’s happening here? You’ll see it for exactly what it is.”
“Which is?” Sam leaned forward, wondering how Whittaker could be quite so calm about his town’s little suicide spree.
“Hard times. Damn hard times, if you’ll pardon my French. The paper mill shut down six months ago. Then the power plant, up by Blakesville? Mothballed. Lot of the people here commuted to and from. About half of the townsfolk worked in one or the other, and nothing’s opened up to take their place. Social security only pays for so much.”
He opened up a cardboard box and passed Castiel the first file.
Castiel said little, but he was never very vocal during these interrogations. Occasionally he would comment on something, hint at something he’d sensed or picked up on that Sam had missed, but this time Sam could feel his unease. He supposed Heaven had strict views on suicide. Well, according to the Church. He was too soon out of Hell to start drawing Castiel into theological debates.
So he was a little surprised when, seconds later, Cas looked up from the closed file and said, “I believe few people choose to kill themselves using a cake slicer.”
Not as surprised as Whittaker though.
There was little else to say after that. Whittaker gave them the cardboard box, and Cas held it while Sam unlocked the SUV. He was glad he’d chosen that as their car. Killer on the gas, but most of the time they were pretending to be federal this or federal that, and it fitted a little better than the Impala.
As they got in, Sam shoving the box into the back, Castiel shifted uneasily in his seat. “He didn’t believe I read the file so quickly.”
Sam paused then fastened his seat belt. “No, probably not.” He’d considered telling Whittaker Cas was a speed reader, but a thirty page file in maybe five seconds? That was out of world record territory and into the realm of the Outer Limits. But LEOs always expected the feds to be ... different, and with them? Not going to be a problem.
“Interesting,” Cas said, fastening his seat belt after Sam nudged him. “If he believes there is nothing unusual in these deaths....” The angel glanced at the oversized box on the back seat.
Sam nodded. “Then why are the files so large? And why do I get the feeling that Sheriff Whittaker isn’t being entirely honest with us?”
~~
Next stop had to be the victims’ - and despite what Whittaker had said, Sam was sure they were victims - houses. There wouldn’t be time to check all eight and at any rate, some of the deceased had been living with family and it was hard to do the kind of searching they needed to do with devastated spouses and children looking over their shoulders and getting underfoot.
So they picked the three who’d been living alone, and figured to start with the closest.
As luck would have it that was the suicide by cake slicer, Sally Ann Miller. Her house was an old brick fronted two storey place on the edge of town. It looked like it needed some serious work, but how much did a waitress earn? Tips probably got a lot less when about half the town became unemployed, and maybe her parents didn’t have enough to live in Florida and keep their old house reasonably liveable.
Sam knelt down and slipped his lock picks out of his pocket, but Cas rested his hand on the door, and it clicked and swung inward. He got back up with a sigh, sure that Cas had always had a sense of humour but now aware it was flavoured with a little of Dean’s sense of humour. Staring at the guileless expression on the angel’s face, Sam was sure that could only end up being a bad thing.
“Thanks,” he said, sarcastically, and followed Castiel inside. The house looked much like Sam had expected it to from the outside. It was tidy, a little sparse, and the furniture all looked straight out of the 1950s. Castiel stood in the middle of the room, eyes closed, and Sam left him to it. He went from room to room, flitting through any correspondence he found, quickly checking drawers and wardrobes, under beds, his gloved hands meaning there’d be no fingerprints to worry about if the sheriff - or maybe the real FBI - decided this place was worth a look.
By the time he reached the bathroom, Castiel was at his back. “There aren’t any wards here. No sigils or invocations. No demons have been here. It’s just a house.”
Sam opened the bathroom cabinet. Toothpaste, some aspirin, a tube of anti-histamine cream. And there, at the back, an orange pill bottle. He picked it up, turned it over.
“Benzodiazepine.”
Castiel stared at him. “Medicine?”
“Well, they’re for a few things, but mainly - sleeping pills. Pretty strong too.” He put the pill bottle back, noting the name of the prescribing doctor just in case. All the same he doubted that the pills had anything to do with anything. Anyway...the bottle was still about half full.
With a shrug, he turned to Cas. “Did you clear your prints off?” Try as he might, he’d never been able to get Castiel to wear a pair of gloves, and he didn’t want anyone turning up at Amelia Novak’s door asking why her missing husband had been in some dead woman’s house in Hardley Falls.
Castiel raised an eyebrow at him, and Sam looked away, abashed. “Yeah, sorry.”
They went to Nick Thorn’s apartment next. Although it sat on a busy street, it had a back entrance and that meant they were able to get in without too much attention. He doubted Whittaker would give them a hard time over being there, but the less time they gave him to find them memorable, the better. And he didn’t think the sheriff would be surprised to find them doing their own thing without running to him for permission. They were FBI, after all.
Thorn’s home showed that Sally Ann wasn’t the only one to fall on hard times. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned in a while, so the tell tale dust free square on the TV stand suggested the set was now in at the local pawn shop. What clothes he had were stitched and patched, and there was a stack of unopened letters on the table, all stamped ‘URGENT’ or ‘FINAL DEMAND’.
Sam stood quietly staring at them. Unless something happened to change its luck, Hardley Falls was a dying town. People would leave, going where there was work, and eventually the town would just dry up and blow away like dust.
That was presuming that whatever had caused eight people to kill themselves - and some in such a bizarre way that Sam was sure it was more than financial pressures to blame - was done and didn’t plan on reducing the town’s population to zero. Somehow, he didn’t think it was finished.
Castiel didn’t find anything peculiar there either, and Sam’s search didn’t turn up anything until he reached the kitchen. There, lying open on the counter next to an empty glass, was another pill bottle. He picked it up, shook the contents out into his hand and did a rough check. “Thirty five. Prescription mostly full.” He glanced at the date on the bottle and then shoved the pills back in. “Only filled two days ago. Did you read his file?”
Castiel held out his hand, and Thorn’s file was there suddenly. Sam picked it up. At least Thorn’s death was a little more ‘normal’. He’d got in his truck, with a pipe running from the exhaust to the cab, and just sat there to die.
“If you had an easy way out, wouldn’t you take it?” Sam glanced at Cas, and then realised he was probably asking the wrong person. “I mean - the waitress. She stabbed herself in the chest with a cake slicer. This guy, gases himself in his truck. Both of them had enough prescription sleeping pills to down and just slip away. Why wouldn’t they just go that way?”
He glanced at his watch. It was getting late, and he didn’t think FBI agents would be tossing someone’s house after dark. But another glance at the orange pill bottle gave him one more lead. “Come on, Cas. Let’s see if we can get an emergency appointment with the town doctor.”
~~
Dr. Heart had probably been some kind of student activist in the sixties. As soon as she saw the suits and the SUV, she acted like they were there to rubber hose her. Sam figured if she didn’t have at least one violation of her civil liberties by the time they’d left, her day would be just about ruined.
“Sorry, gents,” she said, in a tone suggesting she was anything but. “As far as I’m concerned, the federal government sticks its nose into people’s affairs enough already. Unless you have a court order, you don’t get to see my patients’ records.”
Sam stared at her, trying desperately to think of a way to get around her stubbornness. He and Dean had often had difficult people to question, but he was sure the Spanish Inquisition would have collapsed if it had had Dr. Heart to deal with.
“Doctor, our concern is that eight people killing themselves in such a small town, so close together, may have some underlying cause that could result in more deaths.”
“I’m sure that’s your concern.”
Sam felt like throwing his hands up in the air. Even if they had really been FBI agents, what did she think they wanted here? God, she was starting to sound like the worst conspiracy theorist ever.
“We need to find out if there are any other links between these eight people,” Castiel intervened, clearing sensing Sam’s frustration. “Perhaps you could just tell us.”
Heart glared at him. “Perhaps you could brush up on your state and federal law. Unless you have that court order, or their executor allows it, I’m under obligation not to release those records to you.” She grinned coldly at them.
“And you’re loving that obligation,” Sam muttered under his breath.
He was surprised when Castiel put a hand on his arm, and gave him that look. He didn’t argue - Dean might have stomped and huffed and wanted to know what was going on - but these days at least, Sam knew Cas better. He went along, ahead of Castiel, and sure enough Dr. Heart followed. Probably eager to feel like she was throwing two representatives of the federal government out on their asses.
There was almost to the outer office when Sam heard Dr. Heart say, “I won’t change my-“ and then she didn‘t say anything at all.
Sam turned sharply, and Castiel was lowering her into a chair. Her face was slack, and Sam rolled his head back, staring skyward. “Cas.”
The angel straightened. “How else were we going to get the answers we need? She wasn’t going to co-operate.”
Fair point. Sam looked down at the unconscious doctor, and suddenly remembered something that made him feel a little put out. “You know you didn’t catch me that time you put the whammy on me.”
Castiel was leaning over the computer in the corner. He prodded a few of the buttons and muttered when it beeped at him. He looked over at Sam, distracted. “When? Oh. Are you jealous?”
“Am I....” Sam bit his tongue as he realised Cas was teasing him. “Funny. Move over.”
He sat down in front of the computer, and saw they’d caught a break. Heart had been in the middle of using the computer when they’d come in, he guessed, because nothing was password locked. He could probably have broken it if he had to, but the last thing they needed was to be caught hacking into medical records while the town GP was passed out behind them.
“Ok, grab the prints,” he said, and Cas quickly picked up the files that Sam had run off. Sam grabbed a large envelope from the desk and shoved the papers inside. “Are you going to wake her up?”
Sam slid the envelope inside his jacket, and poured a cup of water from the cooler. Castiel waited until he was ready, and then pressed his fingers to the doctor’s forehead. She came to groggily, and sat up with their help.
“Here, ma’am,” Sam said. He pressed the cup of water into her hand. “You fainted. Can we call anyone?”
She sipped the water, and looked at him. “I’m a doctor.”
“Well, if you’re sure it’s okay to leave you here alone....”
She shooed them away with a wave of her hand, so Sam took Castiel’s arm and hurried him to the door. He’d already cleaned up any evidence of what he was looking at so with any luck Dr. Heart would never know that despite her they’d got what they came for.
link to Part Two
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: Sam/Castiel
Rating: NC17
Warnings: spoilers for late season 5 and early season 6 (slim)
Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters don't belong to me and I'm not making any profit from this.
Author's note: Written for the Sassy fanworks exchange.
Word count: about 13,600 over 3 parts
Summary: Sam still isn't out of the woods yet, still he has Castiel. But a series of suicides draw them into a situation where even Cas might not be enough to keep Sam safe.
Ben was watching them from the living room window. When Castiel turned to look at him, he did a fair attempt of pretending he was wiping a smudge from the glass.
Sam tried not to grin. “Wow. Sneaky, already. You’re rubbing off on him fast.”
It didn’t help that Dean looked absurdly proud over that. They were standing on the sidewalk, drawing out their goodbyes after their usual Sunday lunch, and he nudged Castiel’s elbow. “He still thinks if he’s quick enough, he’ll catch a glimpse of your halo or something. Maybe see you and Sam flying off into the sunset together.”
“I still don’t believe you should have told him,” Castiel said.
Sam cringed. Dean’s face darkened, and he glared at the two of them like Sam was agreeing with Castiel just by being there.
“I got fed up of secrets, and lies,” he said. “New start, and all that.”
None of them said anything for a minute or two. Sam wasn’t sure what to say. There was a time when secrets and lies were the way they lived and there were some pretty good reasons for that. Dean had lived that life too, and he had kept some huge secrets and told some lies himself that Sam still wasn’t sure he could forgive him for.
Not truly, not deeply.
None of them were spotless in this, not even Cas, but reminding Dean of that wasn’t likely to bridge the gap that had sprung up between them. So fast and sudden, that Sam couldn’t understand it. Shouldn’t there have been a crack at first, gradually widening, giving him a chance to stop it?
Probably, he admitted to himself. But he wasn’t around to see it, and neither was Castiel, and while that wasn’t their fault, it wasn’t Dean’s either. Sam had gone to Hell, Castiel to Heaven, and all Dean had left was a woman he’d slept with a couple of times and the closest thing he had to a son. It was better than motels and Jack Daniels, but Sam knew it was separate beds for Dean and Lisa. They were friends now, not lovers, and somehow Sam felt like life was taunting Dean all over again. With Lisa. With him and Cas. Look what you almost had. Almost but not quite. Here, let me rub your nose in it for a bit.
“So,” he ventured, finally. “You still coming to Bobby’s next week?”
“Oh, the annual Singer Hunters’ Barbecue? Dunno, might have to paint a fence or something.”
“Bobby’ll paint your ass. Don’t think he won’t come down here and drag you.”
Dean grinned, and Sam knew that his older brother would probably be waiting on Bobby’s porch drinking beer by the time he and Cas arrived. The brief tension between them broke - not gone for good, it would take a long time for things to get back to anything resembling what they were - and Dean pulled him into a tight hug. Castiel got the same treatment, and managed to hug back.
Dean nodded approvingly when he released the angel. “You’re getting better at this whole human stuff, Cas,” he teased, and promptly reached up to ruffle the angel’s hair. Castiel was still the sneakiest angel on the block, and vanished before Dean managed it.
“I still hate it when he does that,” Dean said, but he was smiling.
“Think how I feel,” Sam said. He nudged Dean’s shoulder and walked out to where their SUV was parked. Castiel was sitting in the passenger’s seat, waiting patiently. Sam got in, started the engine and reversed enough to have room to pull away from the kerb.
Dean waved to them as they moved off, and Sam split his attention between the road ahead, and the brother he was again leaving behind. Or maybe it was the other way around - maybe Dean was the one who’d moved on, and Sam and Cas the ones left standing at the side of the road.
“You worry,” Cas said, suddenly.
Sam glanced at him, then back ahead. “Put your seatbelt on.”
Castiel did so, and turned to watch him. “You think he will try to follow us. Back into your old life.”
“It’s kind of your old life too, Cas. Once a hunter.”
Cas chuffed a little, and Sam couldn’t tell if he was amused or annoyed. “Not exactly. He needs this time with you, Sam. Cutting him off again would likely encourage him to fall back into his old ways.”
They left town, taking a back road shortcut that eventually would lead them onto the freeway. Sam felt a buzz of irritation at Castiel’s words. He didn’t need a lecture on how to handle his own brother. And old ways? “You make it sound like we lived a life of crime, Cas.” Well, they were probably wanted by the police in several states. But as far as Sam was concerned, in that respect the ends justified the means. The police and FBI would never see it that way though.
“That isn’t what I meant. Sam, look at me.”
There was a give way sign up ahead, and Sam put his foot down. The SUV shot out, but there was nothing coming. No honk to mark a close call. That annoyed him as well, and he couldn’t figure out the sudden anger that was burning painfully in his chest. What the hell was going on?
He still had his foot on the gas.
“Sam.”
“What? What the fuck do you want? God, Dean was right, we got the clingiest most annoying, useless angel in the garrison. I can’t look at you and drive.”
Castiel solved that problem. He tapped the dashboard and the car began to slow. Sam cursed and pumped the gas, but finally the SUV drifted to a stop, as far off the road as they get could without actually getting wedged between the trees. The car went dead, and even though he turned the key it didn’t matter.
“Alright, what?”
“Look in the mirror. Look at your eyes.”
Sam didn’t. He looked at his hands instead. Fingers locked tight around the steering wheel but even that wasn’t enough to hide the shaking. He felt fiercely hot, suddenly, like the car was on fire. Like he was someplace he thought he’d escaped from. “No.”
Castiel grabbed Sam’s jaw in one hand, grip firm but not painful, and the rear view mirror in the other. He moved both, and stopped Sam looking away from the yellow eyes staring back at him.
“Fuck, Cas, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Castiel touched his shoulder, and then they were standing in the woods. The air had turned heavy, promising rain. Sam sagged, almost going to his knees, but Castiel caught him and pushed him against a tree. “Hold on for me, Sam.”
Sam watched, mind lost in the heat, and the pain, and the fear as Castiel took off his coat and spread it down on the grass. He returned to Sam and took him by the arms, guiding him over and down.
Sam could only keep watching as Castiel took off his suit jacket, and rolled up his shirt sleeve. He slipped his blade out of the sheath at his back, and drew it sharply across his inner arm.
“No,” Sam protested, but his body overrode him. He caught Castiel’s arm, pulling until the angel was sitting in his lap. Castiel braced himself with an arm around Sam’s shoulders, and Sam licked and supped at the wound, aware how different this was to before. Except for the hate. The hate was the same. Burning away at him, and he knew he’d never be free of it.
When he was done, he turned them, lowering Castiel gently onto his back. He undid the buttons on Castiel’s shirt slowly, and tugged down his pants. Castiel moaned beneath him, as Sam worked him with mouth and fingers, stopping only long enough to shuck his own clothes. He covered Castiel with his body then, slipping his tongue into the angel’s mouth and continuing the kiss even as the rain started. It hammered down on him, cold and relentless, and when he shivered now it was for a different reason than before.
Castiel’s hand came up to cup the back of his neck and just like that he was warm again. He stayed that way even when the rain was finally done, and he was spooned around Castiel, one arm around the angel’s waist, the other serving as a pillow beneath his head.
“I used to pray a lot,” he said, quietly. Everything was so still now, the world clean again. “Dean didn’t. I guess what he’d seen made him think it was pointless, but for me it made it all the more important.”
“You don’t have to justify your faith, Sam,” Castiel murmured. He was always low key after helping him fight the taint. Sometimes, Sam worried that this was going to have a long term effect but Cas always assured him he’d be fine. Maybe more secrets and lies. “Just as Dean doesn’t have to justify his. You believed in us. He believed in you and John. And guns, and rock salt and the Impala.”
Sam snorted against his shoulder, but it felt empty. “When Dad came home drunk, sometimes Dean would put him to bed. And once he climbed in beside me, and he sounded like he was crying, but he said he had a cold. Next morning, I saw his nose and his mouth were split. And then once Dad had to carry him home - I was maybe eight - and he made me go sit in the bathroom and all I could hear was Dean. Trying real hard not to cry, because he knew I was there. And then Dad came and got me and said it was okay.
“I used to pray for a guardian angel. I thought maybe these things were done with lists, and our name had gotten missed. We didn’t even need one apiece, just one between the three of us, especially to keep Dad and Dean safe. That was all. Just one.”
Castiel turned over, face so close his breath touched Sam’s skin. “Humans don’t understand the concept of guardian angels.” He wasn’t disdainful - if anything he sounded like he wished it was as people believed it to be.
“My prayers got answered, eventually,” Sam continued. He took hold of Castiel’s forearm, turned it over to study the red weal that was fading before his eyes. “I finally got my angel. And this is what I do with him.”
Castiel tucked Sam’s head under his chin, and pulled him in close.
~~
The next day, they arrived in Hardley Falls. They’d taken a motel room the town before, to change, but as the SUV pulled into a parking space outside the Sheriff’s office, Sam noticed that Castiel’s collar wasn’t done up. He smirked, a little, and put a hand on Castiel’s arm as the angel started to get out.
“Cas?”
Cas turned back around, and Sam quickly did up his collar and straightened his tie. Cas sat until he was done and then got out of the car. Sometimes - and he knew Cas would either deny it or disappear in a fluttering of wings - he was sure Castiel left the top two buttons undone deliberately. By now he knew how to dress. Although the undressing part was definitely more fun.
He joined Cas on the sidewalk and they went inside, and a few moments later Agents Mason and Drake were sitting in the sheriff’s office with two cups of stewed coffee on the desk in front of them.
“Didn’t think this would be of much interest to the feds,” Sherriff Whittaker said. “Look, I know. Eight suicides in three weeks. That’s got to flag up somewhere as a ‘statistical anomaly’. But when you know what’s happening here? You’ll see it for exactly what it is.”
“Which is?” Sam leaned forward, wondering how Whittaker could be quite so calm about his town’s little suicide spree.
“Hard times. Damn hard times, if you’ll pardon my French. The paper mill shut down six months ago. Then the power plant, up by Blakesville? Mothballed. Lot of the people here commuted to and from. About half of the townsfolk worked in one or the other, and nothing’s opened up to take their place. Social security only pays for so much.”
He opened up a cardboard box and passed Castiel the first file.
Castiel said little, but he was never very vocal during these interrogations. Occasionally he would comment on something, hint at something he’d sensed or picked up on that Sam had missed, but this time Sam could feel his unease. He supposed Heaven had strict views on suicide. Well, according to the Church. He was too soon out of Hell to start drawing Castiel into theological debates.
So he was a little surprised when, seconds later, Cas looked up from the closed file and said, “I believe few people choose to kill themselves using a cake slicer.”
Not as surprised as Whittaker though.
There was little else to say after that. Whittaker gave them the cardboard box, and Cas held it while Sam unlocked the SUV. He was glad he’d chosen that as their car. Killer on the gas, but most of the time they were pretending to be federal this or federal that, and it fitted a little better than the Impala.
As they got in, Sam shoving the box into the back, Castiel shifted uneasily in his seat. “He didn’t believe I read the file so quickly.”
Sam paused then fastened his seat belt. “No, probably not.” He’d considered telling Whittaker Cas was a speed reader, but a thirty page file in maybe five seconds? That was out of world record territory and into the realm of the Outer Limits. But LEOs always expected the feds to be ... different, and with them? Not going to be a problem.
“Interesting,” Cas said, fastening his seat belt after Sam nudged him. “If he believes there is nothing unusual in these deaths....” The angel glanced at the oversized box on the back seat.
Sam nodded. “Then why are the files so large? And why do I get the feeling that Sheriff Whittaker isn’t being entirely honest with us?”
~~
Next stop had to be the victims’ - and despite what Whittaker had said, Sam was sure they were victims - houses. There wouldn’t be time to check all eight and at any rate, some of the deceased had been living with family and it was hard to do the kind of searching they needed to do with devastated spouses and children looking over their shoulders and getting underfoot.
So they picked the three who’d been living alone, and figured to start with the closest.
As luck would have it that was the suicide by cake slicer, Sally Ann Miller. Her house was an old brick fronted two storey place on the edge of town. It looked like it needed some serious work, but how much did a waitress earn? Tips probably got a lot less when about half the town became unemployed, and maybe her parents didn’t have enough to live in Florida and keep their old house reasonably liveable.
Sam knelt down and slipped his lock picks out of his pocket, but Cas rested his hand on the door, and it clicked and swung inward. He got back up with a sigh, sure that Cas had always had a sense of humour but now aware it was flavoured with a little of Dean’s sense of humour. Staring at the guileless expression on the angel’s face, Sam was sure that could only end up being a bad thing.
“Thanks,” he said, sarcastically, and followed Castiel inside. The house looked much like Sam had expected it to from the outside. It was tidy, a little sparse, and the furniture all looked straight out of the 1950s. Castiel stood in the middle of the room, eyes closed, and Sam left him to it. He went from room to room, flitting through any correspondence he found, quickly checking drawers and wardrobes, under beds, his gloved hands meaning there’d be no fingerprints to worry about if the sheriff - or maybe the real FBI - decided this place was worth a look.
By the time he reached the bathroom, Castiel was at his back. “There aren’t any wards here. No sigils or invocations. No demons have been here. It’s just a house.”
Sam opened the bathroom cabinet. Toothpaste, some aspirin, a tube of anti-histamine cream. And there, at the back, an orange pill bottle. He picked it up, turned it over.
“Benzodiazepine.”
Castiel stared at him. “Medicine?”
“Well, they’re for a few things, but mainly - sleeping pills. Pretty strong too.” He put the pill bottle back, noting the name of the prescribing doctor just in case. All the same he doubted that the pills had anything to do with anything. Anyway...the bottle was still about half full.
With a shrug, he turned to Cas. “Did you clear your prints off?” Try as he might, he’d never been able to get Castiel to wear a pair of gloves, and he didn’t want anyone turning up at Amelia Novak’s door asking why her missing husband had been in some dead woman’s house in Hardley Falls.
Castiel raised an eyebrow at him, and Sam looked away, abashed. “Yeah, sorry.”
They went to Nick Thorn’s apartment next. Although it sat on a busy street, it had a back entrance and that meant they were able to get in without too much attention. He doubted Whittaker would give them a hard time over being there, but the less time they gave him to find them memorable, the better. And he didn’t think the sheriff would be surprised to find them doing their own thing without running to him for permission. They were FBI, after all.
Thorn’s home showed that Sally Ann wasn’t the only one to fall on hard times. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned in a while, so the tell tale dust free square on the TV stand suggested the set was now in at the local pawn shop. What clothes he had were stitched and patched, and there was a stack of unopened letters on the table, all stamped ‘URGENT’ or ‘FINAL DEMAND’.
Sam stood quietly staring at them. Unless something happened to change its luck, Hardley Falls was a dying town. People would leave, going where there was work, and eventually the town would just dry up and blow away like dust.
That was presuming that whatever had caused eight people to kill themselves - and some in such a bizarre way that Sam was sure it was more than financial pressures to blame - was done and didn’t plan on reducing the town’s population to zero. Somehow, he didn’t think it was finished.
Castiel didn’t find anything peculiar there either, and Sam’s search didn’t turn up anything until he reached the kitchen. There, lying open on the counter next to an empty glass, was another pill bottle. He picked it up, shook the contents out into his hand and did a rough check. “Thirty five. Prescription mostly full.” He glanced at the date on the bottle and then shoved the pills back in. “Only filled two days ago. Did you read his file?”
Castiel held out his hand, and Thorn’s file was there suddenly. Sam picked it up. At least Thorn’s death was a little more ‘normal’. He’d got in his truck, with a pipe running from the exhaust to the cab, and just sat there to die.
“If you had an easy way out, wouldn’t you take it?” Sam glanced at Cas, and then realised he was probably asking the wrong person. “I mean - the waitress. She stabbed herself in the chest with a cake slicer. This guy, gases himself in his truck. Both of them had enough prescription sleeping pills to down and just slip away. Why wouldn’t they just go that way?”
He glanced at his watch. It was getting late, and he didn’t think FBI agents would be tossing someone’s house after dark. But another glance at the orange pill bottle gave him one more lead. “Come on, Cas. Let’s see if we can get an emergency appointment with the town doctor.”
~~
Dr. Heart had probably been some kind of student activist in the sixties. As soon as she saw the suits and the SUV, she acted like they were there to rubber hose her. Sam figured if she didn’t have at least one violation of her civil liberties by the time they’d left, her day would be just about ruined.
“Sorry, gents,” she said, in a tone suggesting she was anything but. “As far as I’m concerned, the federal government sticks its nose into people’s affairs enough already. Unless you have a court order, you don’t get to see my patients’ records.”
Sam stared at her, trying desperately to think of a way to get around her stubbornness. He and Dean had often had difficult people to question, but he was sure the Spanish Inquisition would have collapsed if it had had Dr. Heart to deal with.
“Doctor, our concern is that eight people killing themselves in such a small town, so close together, may have some underlying cause that could result in more deaths.”
“I’m sure that’s your concern.”
Sam felt like throwing his hands up in the air. Even if they had really been FBI agents, what did she think they wanted here? God, she was starting to sound like the worst conspiracy theorist ever.
“We need to find out if there are any other links between these eight people,” Castiel intervened, clearing sensing Sam’s frustration. “Perhaps you could just tell us.”
Heart glared at him. “Perhaps you could brush up on your state and federal law. Unless you have that court order, or their executor allows it, I’m under obligation not to release those records to you.” She grinned coldly at them.
“And you’re loving that obligation,” Sam muttered under his breath.
He was surprised when Castiel put a hand on his arm, and gave him that look. He didn’t argue - Dean might have stomped and huffed and wanted to know what was going on - but these days at least, Sam knew Cas better. He went along, ahead of Castiel, and sure enough Dr. Heart followed. Probably eager to feel like she was throwing two representatives of the federal government out on their asses.
There was almost to the outer office when Sam heard Dr. Heart say, “I won’t change my-“ and then she didn‘t say anything at all.
Sam turned sharply, and Castiel was lowering her into a chair. Her face was slack, and Sam rolled his head back, staring skyward. “Cas.”
The angel straightened. “How else were we going to get the answers we need? She wasn’t going to co-operate.”
Fair point. Sam looked down at the unconscious doctor, and suddenly remembered something that made him feel a little put out. “You know you didn’t catch me that time you put the whammy on me.”
Castiel was leaning over the computer in the corner. He prodded a few of the buttons and muttered when it beeped at him. He looked over at Sam, distracted. “When? Oh. Are you jealous?”
“Am I....” Sam bit his tongue as he realised Cas was teasing him. “Funny. Move over.”
He sat down in front of the computer, and saw they’d caught a break. Heart had been in the middle of using the computer when they’d come in, he guessed, because nothing was password locked. He could probably have broken it if he had to, but the last thing they needed was to be caught hacking into medical records while the town GP was passed out behind them.
“Ok, grab the prints,” he said, and Cas quickly picked up the files that Sam had run off. Sam grabbed a large envelope from the desk and shoved the papers inside. “Are you going to wake her up?”
Sam slid the envelope inside his jacket, and poured a cup of water from the cooler. Castiel waited until he was ready, and then pressed his fingers to the doctor’s forehead. She came to groggily, and sat up with their help.
“Here, ma’am,” Sam said. He pressed the cup of water into her hand. “You fainted. Can we call anyone?”
She sipped the water, and looked at him. “I’m a doctor.”
“Well, if you’re sure it’s okay to leave you here alone....”
She shooed them away with a wave of her hand, so Sam took Castiel’s arm and hurried him to the door. He’d already cleaned up any evidence of what he was looking at so with any luck Dr. Heart would never know that despite her they’d got what they came for.
link to Part Two