FIC: La Oscura Mansion de la Vida (1/1) COMPLETE
Title: La Oscura Mansion de la Vida
Author: kimonkey7
Rating: R for language, implied sexual situations
Pairing: gen, Dean and Sam, Bobby, implied OFC
Disclaimer: Not mine. Damn it.
SPOILERS: Takes place late season two, non-specific.
Summary: Death, dear to my heart, don't abandon me, protect me, and don't let Dean have one moment of peace; keep him restless and bothered with the thought of me always.
A/N: Written for shakespearebint who default-won my ass in the last Sweet Charity auction. The prompt she gave me was “Dean sings karaoke.” I got there how I could, my dear. Hope you enjoy the ride. I’ve relied on the bullfuckery of mapquest.com for geographical logistics, so I apologize for the likely existence of holes in the SD to TX time-space continuum. Many thanks and gift baskets of sea salt caramels for my beta, pdragon76.
Early Sunday
Dean trundles in around four a.m., trying desperately for quiet and failing like drunks so often do. He reeks of smoke and booze and sex, and Sam scrunches his nose, turns his head toward the rough pillow case.
They’d split up at the bar around eleven when the bouncy, all-hands brunette couldn’t keep herself off Dean’s lap, and Dean couldn’t keep his leer in check any longer. He’d tossed Sam the keys and told him not to wait up. Sam hadn’t.
It’s not the first time Dean’d sought comfort and release in the anonymous arms of a willing woman, and Sam knows it won’t be the last. He tries not to judge, coping skills being relative.
A few hours later, they wake within fifteen minutes of each other, tag-team the bathroom, Dean moving sluggishly through the muggy wake of Sam’s hot shower. Sam’s seen his brother with worse hangovers, but it’s been a while. When they pass each other by the mini-fridge, a grumbled ‘mornin’’ dropping from Dean’s bruised-looking mouth, Sam notices a bolo of scarlet hickies strung round his brother’s neck and across his throat.
The a/c is already cranking away, doing its best against the Texas sun leeching the energy out of the just-begun day. After Sam’s dressed, he heads out to the parking lot. Loads their stuff in the trunk and unrolls the Impala’s windows. It’s only seven a.m. and it’s got to be close to a hundred degrees already. They’re set to head north to Bobby’s for a few days; snag a little down-time and re-up on ammo and other supplies. There’s a lead on a Spring-heeled Jack in Wisconsin, but it’s nothing that won’t wait.
When Sam comes back into the room, the shower’s still going. He plops onto the bed and gets the pillows up behind his back. Figures he can catch a morning news broadcast while Dean finishes getting ready. He fishes the remote off the nightstand and spots the message light blinking on the phone.
They hadn’t arranged for a wake-up call, and no one knows where they’re staying. Anybody who needs to get a hold of them would call their cells. Probably someone calling their room by mistake. He ignores the red light and flips on the TV. Surfs the channels and settles on a local news show.
Five minutes later, the shower’s still running, and Sam’s yawning through a feature about a dog that saved its owners from a house fire by waking them with its barking. The story’s interrupted by the old-fashioned jangle of the phone on the nightstand. Sam stares at it curiously through two rings before he picks up.
“Hello?”
“Dean?”
“Uh…”
“It’s Yulisa.”
Sam vaguely connects the name with the woman from the bar last night. “Um, Dean’s… This is his brother.”
There’s a second of silence, then an exasperated sigh.
“Did he get my message? I left a message.”
Sam’s eyes flick to the flashing red light on the phone. “No, he, uh… Dean’s in the shower.”
Yulisa giggles through the phone, and something about the laugh lifts the small hairs on the back of Sam’s neck.
“Well, make sure he gets my message, Dean’s brother. Okay?”
“Uh, sure. No problem.”
The line goes dead the same time as the shower.
“Hey, Dean?”
“Chill, dude! I’ll be out in two minutes.”
Sam squints at the bathroom door, then down at the phone. Presses the message button and listens:
Hi, Dean. It’s Yulisa. I had a really great time last night. Really great. I need to see you again. Let’s have breakfast. Or lunch. I could cook you dinner, put some meat on those beautiful bones of yours…
The way she says ‘beautiful’, long and drawn out - BYOO-teee-full - tugs down the corners of Sam’s mouth.
…Call me, Dean. I mean it. 555-6397.
“Creepy,” Sam utters as he waits for the automated voice to tell him how to save the message. After he hangs up, he wipes his hand across the thigh of his jeans, as if it’s dirty.
The bathroom door swings open, and Dean steps out from a solid bank of steam; hair still dripping, towel clutched around his waist.
“You gotta take a shit or somethin’?”
“You had a phone call.”
Dean gives him an eye roll and snatches his cell off the low dresser. “It’s called voicemail, Sammy. Welcome to the twentieth century.”
“Twenty-first. And not on that phone, on this one,” Sam says, pointing from the one in Dean’s hand to the one on the nightstand.
“Whatever. Who called?”
“Yulisa.”
“Who?” Dean asks, face pinched as he drops down onto the bed.
“Yulisa? The woman you had sex with last night?”
Dean finger snaps and points at him, half a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. “Yulisa. Right.” He pulls his duffle toward him across the bedspread, begins a sniff-test selection for the day’s wardrobe. “What’d she say? Did she say I was awesome? I bet she said I was awesome.”
Sam returns the eye roll. “She said to call her.”
The laugh is loud; the bleat of a boat horn. Dean’s brows hop. “That’s gonna happen.”
Sam’s face squinches in disgust. “Dude, you’re a pig.”
“Yes, I am. I am indeed,” Dean says matter-of-factly, slipping on a pair of boxers that have passed muster under his towel. “Jealous?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sam says, eyes wide with sarcasm, “her message really made me wish I was you.”
“You listened to it?”
“Whatever. Here,” he says, and passes Dean the handset. Presses the appropriate button. His arms slip across his chest as he watches his brother listen, waiting for his face to confirm the uneasy feeling Sam had got when he heard the message.
After a few seconds, Dean shrugs and drops the handset back on the cradle. Sam waits for a reaction, but all Dean does is sniff a pair of balled-up tube socks.
“You don’t think that was creepy?”
“Creepy how?”
“Like, kind of…stalkery?”
“What can I say, Sammy? The ladies can’t get enough of me.” He pulls a t-shirt over his head, slips his socked feet into his boots. “You got the car packed up?”
“You’re not gonna call her back?”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know, common courtesy?”
“Jesus,” Dean sneered, tugging his laces into double knots, “you got a lot to learn about chicks.”
“Dude--”
“Come on,” Dean says. He buckles his watchband, shoves his dirty clothes back into his duffle, and slips his coat off the chair in the kitchenette. He gives Sam’s belly a double pat as he passes him, steers him toward the door. “Let’s put this place in the rearview, grab some breakfast. I’m starved.”
Sam’s one step over the threshold when the phone on the nightstand rings again. He stops and turns, and Dean gives him a little shove toward the Impala. Swings the door closed behind them.
“Let it go, Romeo.”
*******************************************************************
Sunday - 11:55 p.m.
The string is tacky, makes a slithery sound as it uncoils from the Zip-Loc bag she’d put it in last night. She’s never done this before, but she doesn’t feel silly about it. She’s been waiting for the right guy for a long time, and she’d known right away he was it. Maybe he doesn’t know it yet, but she does.
Before she’d sucked his cock, she’d slipped into the bathroom. Snugged the little bundle of string in the gully between her cheek and back teeth. After he’d come - when he’d still been breathing hard and watching the light show behind his lids - she’d slipped the drenched string from her mouth and into the baggie tucked in her underwear. Slid it under the bed by her knees before he even opened his eyes.
She holds it like a bait worm - finger and thumb, finger and thumb - as she ties the seven knots in its length. She lays the string on the table next to the amber-colored statuette of Santisima Muerte, wipes her fingers on the kitchen towel, and unfolds the paper the old woman at the herbaria gave her. She speaks the Ejaculatory Prayer as she winds the string around the effigy’s grooved base:
“Death, dear to my heart, don't abandon me, protect me, and don't let Dean have one moment of peace; keep him restless and bothered with the thought of me always.”
She says the three Our Fathers as she sets down the figurine - robed grim reaper balancing a pair of scales, one foot resting on a skull - and lights the candle the woman at the shop had instructed her to smear with rosemary oil. She focuses on the flame, conjures Dean’s face in her mind. After a moment, she recites the First Day prayer; lilting and reverent through the tiny smile she wears.
“Most Holy Death, the favors that you have to grant me: make me overcome all difficulties so that for me nothing is impossible, no obstacles, barriers, no enemies, that no one does me any harm, that everyone is my friend and that I am victorious in all my dealings and things I do; may my house be filled with all the good virtues of your protection.”
Three more Our Fathers and she’s done. For tonight.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 3:30 a.m.
“What?” Sam calls, exasperated, across the dark room.
“What?”
“Dude, you’re tossing around like you’re on a trampoline.”
They’d driven pretty much straight through, close to seventeen hours, and Sam just wants to sleep.
“Sorry.”
“And what’s all the sighing?”
“Sorry.”
Sam blows out his own sigh; Dean sounds oddly sad. Pensive.
“What, Dean?” He sits up in the narrow twin bed, eyes tracing the brother shape in the one a few feet away.
The room’s small but comfortable, the one they always share when they stay with Bobby.
“Dean?”
“I keep thinkin’ about her.”
“Who?”
“Yulisa.”
Sam’s confused, because he’s pretty sure his brother’d forgotten her name the minute they crossed the Texas border, had put her behind them with the flat desert scenery.
“The girl from last night?”
“Yeah,” Dean says, followed by another weighted breath.
“Dude, you’re not thinking of her and--”
“No! Jesus, Sam. Gimme a fuckin’ break.”
“Sorry. I just--” He adjusts the pillow and lays back down. “Sorry. But you were all-- This morning, you were--”
“Yeah, I know. But now…”
“Well…let it go, Romeo.”
“Oh, you’re hilarious.”
“I know. Go to sleep, Dean.”
“Trust me, I’m tryin’.”
Sam watches him settle.
Shake loose.
Still.
“Hands above the blankets, Spanky,” he says with a dopey half-grin.
“Fuck you,” Dean answers, echoing back the joke.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 9:13 a.m.
Bobby wakes them up earlier than they’d like, tells them he can’t stand listening to their buzz-saw snores any longer. There’re coffee and eggs and bacon and toast when they come down to the kitchen.
“What kept you boys up so late? Heard ya jabberin’ till almost four.”
Sam snorts around a forkful of scrambled egg. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” He shoots a look at his brother, but Dean just folds a strip of bacon into his mouth. Keeps his head down.
“Well, one of ya better tell me,” Bobby says, blowing across his coffee.
“Dean’s in love,” says Sam mockingly.
“Shut up.”
Bobby’s brows lift the brim of his cap. “Yer kiddin’ me.”
“Nope.”
“Yes, he is,” says Dean, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“Okay,” Sam says with a dismissive shrug.
“Dean?” Bobby asks.
The eye contact comes with a blush and a head shake. “It’s nothin’. Sam’s just bein’ a little bitch.”
Bobby lifts his chin and gives Dean the once over from under his bill. “Well, you look like crap.”
“Thanks,” Dean says dryly.
“I mean, worn out.”
“Yeah, well, we just drove seventeen hours, and then you woke us up after five hours sleep. I think I got a right to look a little rode hard, okay?” Dean thunks down his fork and pushes away his plate.
“Dude, relax.”
“I am relaxed,” Dean barks back at Sam.
The chair squeaks when Bobby shifts his weight against the ladderback. “Maybe you should go back to bed, Dean. Try to get a little more shut-eye,” he suggests, gaze traveling between the boys tight-pinched faces.
Dean makes his own noise; huffs a breath as he pushes away from the table. “I got a diagnostic and a tune-up to run. I’ll be in the yard.”
He snatches up his coffee mug and is nothing but back and shoulders when Sam calls after him.
“What the hell was that all about?” Bobby asks when the screen door stops banging.
“I have no idea,” Sam says. He slides half a triangle of toast into his mouth. Chews and shakes his head. “Night before last, we had our usual leaving-town hurrah: dinner and drinks at the local. Dean hustled some gas money at the tables, hustled some girl out of her pants.”
“Nothin’ unusual yet,” Bobby tics, offering Sam a refill from the pot.
Sam slides his mug forward. “No. Not at all. He didn’t even remember her name when she called the next morning. But then last night, he tells me he can’t sleep because he can’t stop thinking about her.”
“That’s pretty weird.”
“Yeah.”
“And you think that’s--” Bobby waves his hand at Dean’s deserted place setting, “that’s what all this’s about?”
“You gotta admit, it’d be weird for anybody to go from ‘I don’t remember her’ to ‘I can’t forget her’ in one day.”
“Especially Dean,” Bobby says with a tug at his beard. “You think she…jiggled somethin’ with him?” he asks, and pairs the question with a jab of the mal occio.
“I don’t know yet,” Sam says after a sip of his coffee, “but I’m keeping my eyes open.”
Bobby cocks his head. Gives a nod. “Fair enough.”
*******************************************************************
Monday - 3:09 p.m.
Dean stomps back inside, covered with sweat and engine grease and a film of general frustration. Sam looks up from the laptop and gives him a ‘hey,’ but Dean just grumbles and heads for the bathroom.
A few minutes later, he pops out - shirtless, face fresh-scrubbed - and flops down on the couch. Doesn’t even bother to take off his boots.
“Wake me up for dinner,” he tells Sam, then slings one arm over his face, tip of his nose peeking out from the crook of his elbow.
Sam turns back to the research on the computer, makes a few notes about Spring-heeled Jacks. Tries not to be bothered when Dean’s light sleep is peppered with Yulisa’s name, whispered over and again.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 6:40 p.m.
Despite the rest he’d gotten, Dean’s cranky and short when Sam wakes him. Full of jittery energy that puts his brother and Bobby on alert. He twirls a hundred forkfuls of spaghetti during dinner, but not a single one reaches his mouth. By the time Sam and Bobby are sponging meat sauce off their plates with heels of bread, they’re also tossing loaded looks at one another over Dean’s cold pile of pasta.
“Dude, what’s going on with you?”
Dean looks up at Sam, a distant, pained expression shellacking his features. “I can’t… I just… Nothin’.”
“Somethin’ botherin’ you, Dean?” Bobby asks. “You feelin’ sick?”
“No. I’m fine, I just--” He fists his paper-towel napkin in his left hand, bops it back and forth off the right. “Can’t a guy-- Man!” he says, and the balled napkin hits his plate.
He pushes back from the table, rises, and grabs his jacket off the back of the chair. Kneads it in his hands like he had the paper toweling. “I need a drink.”
Bobby’s and Sam’s heads are north and south polarities; swing toward each other like fine-oiled hinges.
“I got plentya whisky here, Dean,” Bobby suggests, eyes still on Sam.
“Yeah, no offense, Bobby, but you’re not my type. Look, I need to get this chick outta my head, okay?” He tips his temple to the side, brings up a defensive hand. “Call me a pig, I don’t care. Fine. I’m a pig. But I gotta go to a bar, get drunk, get over her, all right? Now.”
Sam and Bobby are up like springs; Keystone Kops of ‘Yeah, sure!’ and ‘Excellent! Sounds great!’ The both know whatever’s up with Dean is one of two things: It’s either completely organic - and if that’s the case, a trip to the local and a tumble in the hay will steady the Dean course; or there’s some serious hoodoo going down and they need to find out. Like, yesterday.
“Cool. Let’s go,” says Dean, and slips his arms into his jacket.
“Yeah, absolutely,” says Sam, hands fumbling down the front of his shirt, then through his hair. “We just, uh--” His finger flicks back and forth between himself and Bobby.
“We need a minute to freshen up,” Bobby says.
“You’re fine,” Dean says impatiently. “Come on.”
“Just-- One minute,” Sam says, and makes a show of sniffing his armpit and pulling a face.
“Whatever, dude,” Dean says and waves him off. Heads down the hall toward the front door and calls over his shoulder. “I’m in the car.”
Bobby and Sam lift brows at the creak of Dean’s boots on the front porch.
“If you guys aren’t out in two minutes, I’m leavin’ your asses,” he calls from outside.
Bobby points at Sam, eyes sharp and hard. “We don’t let him out of our sight.”
*******************************************************************
Monday - 10:45 p.m.
Sam feels a little sick to his stomach. He’s only had two beers, the second one still half full and lukewarm on the table in front of him. He’s worked off most of the label, and he’s making grouped piles of the shredded foil paper.
“And she’s just really pretty,” Dean says with a shake of his head, “you know? She’s just…pretty.”
“Yeah, you told us,” says Bobby, who’s had four beers and a shot.
“Did I?” asks Dean wistfully.
They’d sat through almost four hours of Dean telling them about the five hours in which Yulisa had changed his life. It doesn’t help that it’s karaoke night. And not a good weekend karaoke night, when there’re usually a couple of people who can hit the right key. Sam and Bobby’d got their hopes up about ten minutes ago when Dean had spent a bit of time with the pretty karaoke hostess. But he’d come back without a date or a phone number.
Sam’s hand twitches on the tabletop and he has to fight smacking his brother across the face. He’s nearly losing the battle when the microphone pops and the hostess announces the next performer will be Dean Wormer. His brother pops up with a grin, and Sam’s and Bobby’s jaws drop simultaneously.
“Holy shit. This has gotta be hoodoo. How many beers’d he have?” Bobby says, hand grating through his beard, while his eyes follow Dean to the small stage at the other end of the room.
“Bobby, this isn’t good. There’s not a single girl in this bar that’s gonna go home with Dean after she hears him screaming some Asia song.”
“Christ on fire,” Bobby curses when the music starts, “that’s Pat Benatar.”
The drums, bass, and synthesizer of “Love is a Battlefield” vibrate through the barroom, and Sam thinks he might throw up in his mouth.
“We are young,” Dean speak-sings from the stage. “Heartache to heartache we stand…”
“Oh, God, no,” Sam whispers.
“No promises, no demands. Love is a battlefield.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This can’t happen,” says Sam, rising. “Bobby, please.”
It takes both of them to get him off the stage.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 11:40 p.m.
“Not possible?” Dean asks, seven different kinds of indignation marching through the query.
“Yes. I’m saying it’s not possible for you to suddenly realize you’re in love with a woman whose name you couldn’t even remember the next morning! That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“And you and Bobby think I’m under some kinda love hoodoo.”
“Yes. That’s what we think,” Sam says.
Dean’s glance racks from Sam to Bobby. “That what you think?”
Bobby’s face twists under his cap and beard. “Hell, son. You were singin’ 80s synth-pop.”
“Well, you guys are wrong,” Dean says, and stomps upstairs.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 11:58 p.m.
He hadn’t called, but he will. She knows it. Feels it in her heart. She lights the candle and holds the statuette in her hand.
“Death Saint, my great treasure,” she recites, “never go away from me at any time. You ate bread and gave me bread, and as you are the powerful owner of the dark mansion of life and Empress of darkness, I want you to grant me the favor that Dean is at my feet, humiliated and repentant, and that he never leaves my side when I need him, and that you make me get what was promised to me.”
She brings the figurine to her lips, kisses each knot in the string run round the groove, runs her tongue about the smooth circumference of the base. She sets it on the table next to the flickering flame, folds her hands in prayer, and whispers three Our Fathers.
*******************************************************************
Tuesday - 5:27 a.m.
At first he thinks he’s dreaming - Dean’s standing over him, shaking and crying - but when he can’t wake up from waking up, he knows he’s not. He sits up in bed, hits his eyes with his knuckles, and squints through the dark at his brother.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Dude, we-- I gotta go, Sammy…”
“What? Go where? Dean, it’s five-thirty in the morning.”
“I gotta go back to Yulisa’s.”
And that gets Sam’s feet on the floor. As his eyes adjust, he notices Dean is fully dressed, jacket on, duffle slung over his shoulder.
“Dude. What the hell?”
“I just-- I feel so bad.” Dean runs his forearm under his leaking nose and sniffs deep. “I treated her like shit, Sammy. I shoulda called her.”
Sam’s up. Drops his hands on Dean’s shoulders and steers him toward the other bed. Gives a miserable nothing of a push, and Dean’s ass hits the mattress, a tiny choked cry squeaking out from his lungs.
It’s hoodoo or it’s a complete breakdown. Maybe Dad’s death finally catching up and dropping its weight. Sam squats in front of Dean, links them by a hand on his brother’s knee. He teases up the eye contact, gets him looking and listening.
“Dean, something’s going on. You’re kinda flippin’ out on me.” The panic in his brother’s eyes sends a sparking chill up Sam’s spine. “You know that, right? This isn’t normal.”
“I don’t know what to do, Sam. I just…I love her so much and I don’t know why. And I feel so bad, Sammy. For how I treated her.” Dean’s brows are high; pupils wide, stealing light from the room. “I promised her.”
The chill’s joined by a deep freeze, and Sam pivots on his heels. “Promised her what?”
Dean just stares, anguish splashed over with reluctance.
“You promised her what, Dean?” Sam punctuates the sentence with a squeeze on Dean’s knee. “Focus for me.”
Dean brings up a hand and works it across his scalp. Down his face. He wipes snot against his jeans and takes in a quivery breath. Brings an ear to his shoulder; a coy embarrassed shrug.
“I’m a positive guy. I tend to be…” he rolls a hand in front of his chest, “encouraging.”
“Dean.”
“I say stuff, okay? In the heat of the moment, if you know what I mean.”
“Stuff like what?” Sam can’t believe he’s asking.
Both Dean’s hands come up and cover his face, and his voice sounds tinny and hollow when it pushes past his palms.
“Stuff like ‘yeah, baby.’ And ‘yes, yes, yes…’ Sometimes ‘oh, my fucking God, yes!’”
“I get the picture!” Sam barks, tipping back. “Jesus.”
“You asked,” says Dean.
“Not because I wanted to,” Sam says. He purses his lips, tips his jaw to the side. “I’m guessing while you’re… You’re not really listening to what it is you’re being so affirmative about.”
Dean smirks. “I’m not a fuckin’ rocket scientist, dude. I get in there and I focus. Once I’m in, I get in the zone.”
“Dude.”
“Dude,” Dean shows Sam his palms, “you keep askin’.”
“Whatever. Just-- What do you think you promised her?”
When Dean rises, Sam scoots across the floor till his back meets the other bed. Watches his brother click fingernails against his bottom teeth, lips wrapped round his fingertips. It’s a nervous habit from childhood, and Sam winces at its sudden reappearance.
“I been thinkin’ about that,” Dean says, taking up sentry on the narrow strip of carpet that runs between the beds. “I been playin’ the whole thing over in my head. You know how you do that? Have that jumpy, hand-held, main-character POV?”
“Dude, I didn’t ask,” Sam says, hands flapping like bird’s wings on his drawn-up knees.
“Okay. I kinda remember her…maybe sayin’ something about…”
“Spit it out.”
“Dude,” Dean says with a leer that cuts clean through the dark. “Nobody said that.”
Sam’s face pinches like an apple-head doll. “Dude, I’m gonna throw up.”
“Fine. Whatever. Okay…” Dean’s hands come up to massage the back of his neck. “She mighta, maybe said…”
“What?”
“Look, man,” Dean says, dropping to the mattress opposite Sam. He leans forward like he’s making a locker room confessional, “It’s amazing I remember anything at all. I mean, Sam. This girl…she’s a hell cat. I mean--”
“Dude! I didn’t ask! Now, what do you think you remember her asking, you ass?”
“She maybe asked if I loved her.”
Yeah, baby…
“And?”
“And…possibly asked if I promised to always stay by her side.”
Yes, yes, yes…
“Oh, God…”
“Maybe sorta asked if I vowed my eternal fidelity only to her.”
Oh, my fucking God, yes!
“Christ,” Sam hisses, rolling to the side. He scrambles up from his knees, muttering words like ‘manwhore’ and ‘dick-brained’ and ‘stupid fucking idiot. Dean starts to follow him across the room, but Sam points him back down on the bed. “Stay there.”
“Where are you goin’?”
“To wake up Bobby,” Sam says, halfway into the dark hall.
*******************************************************************
Tuesday - 11:31 p.m.
“Boy, I’m gonna tie you down like a dog if you don’t stop pacin’ through here.”
Sam looks up from the laptop, across the table to Bobby. His cap is pushed back on his head, eyes ringed with red; weary, but shooting lasers at Dean. Sam feels a flare of guilt. It’s been a while since Bobby’d had to operate on a sleep schedule like the one they’d been inflicting since their arrival two nights ago.
“Any luck?” Sam asks over the stack of books.
“I’d work faster if your brother’d sit the hell down.” Bobby’s volume rises on the last four words, and Dean looks up from the living room.
“Hey, Dean,” Sam calls, “Why don’t you go make a sandwich. Get some food on top of all that coffee you’ve had.”
“Not hungry,” Dean calls back around the fingers at his mouth.
“Why don’t you make a couple for me and Bobby, then.”
Dean paces over to the dining room, stands at the edge of the long table where all the research is spread out. “Whatta you want?”
“I dunno, man. Surprise us.”
“Dude, don’t make me think right now. I can’t think right now,” Dean says, sounding pitiful.
“Coupla pieces of bread with some stuff in between ‘em. You’ll figure it out,” says Bobby, chin aiming Dean into the kitchen under threat of grievous harm.
Sam blows out a breath and runs his hands through his hair, two front legs of his chair rising off the ground with his lean. “This is crazy, Bobby.” He pulls the ball point from behind his ear and tosses it on the table. “Why can’t we just do some kind of… Isn’t there a protection spell we can do or something? Until we figure this out?”
“Like I told ya before, Sam, you can’t mess around with serious spell work unless you know the exact spell that’s bein’ worked. We try to reverse the wrong thing, Dean could end up…blowin’ his head off in some suicide-murder pact.”
“Jesus, Bobby,” Sam chides with a glance toward the kitchen.
“I’m just tellin’ it like it is, kid.”
“You know, he’s already tossed the house twice trying to find where I hid the keys to the Impala.”
“At least he’s not desperate enough yet to hot-wire her.”
“He told me earlier he was thinking about hot-wiring the Chevelle.”
Bobby’s head snaps up from his book. “I’d fill his backside fulla buckshot.”
Sam chuckles lightly. “Yeah, he told me that, too.”
The front legs of his chair knock back against the hardwood. They attend to the research in silence, while Dean makes noise in the kitchen.
After a minute, Sam says, “Shit, Bobby. We gotta find this spell. Maybe I should head back to El Paso, try to locate Yulisa.”
“You ain’t leavin’ me here alone with Casanova in there,” says Bobby, hooking a thumb toward the kitchen. “Besides, we don’t know if we’re dealing with a powerful spell or a powerful witch. I don’t like the idea of you bein’ so far away without back-up.”
“So, all three of us go, then.”
“Nuh-uh. No way. We do find her, and she’s got Dean right there?” Bobby shakes his head. “If we can’t break the spell, she’s got him whammied. Maybe for good. If she can make him this crazy from Texas, I don’t wanna see him when he’s up-close and personal.”
Sam blows out a long breath through his nose. “So, you think this woman, Yulisa…you really think she might be a witch?”
“Either that or a novice, in over her head.”
“I saw her, Bobby. I mean, she looked perfectly normal.”
“Most witches do. Hell, the lady ringin’ up groceries at the local Food Mart could be practicin’ black magic. It doesn’t go hand-in-hand with pointy hats and warts, Sam.”
“I know, it’s just--”
Dean stalks back into the dining room. Sets a plate with a couple of meaty Dagwoods on the table between Sam and Bobby. “Here.”
Bobby’s fingers and jaw are clamped around one of the sandwiches in a flash. Sam watches Dean shove his hands in his pockets, stare at nothing on the other side of the room.
“Thanks, man. These look great,” Sam says with a supportive smile.
“Probably not as good as Yulisa could make,” Dean says with a sigh. He swivels his gaze to Sam. “She wants to cook for me. How awesome is that? I bet she’s an awesome cook.”
Sam just stares, Bobby stops mid-chew, and Dean fairly winces when the words tumble out of his mouth. There are two kinds of desperate hung on the curtain rod of Dean’s comment, blowing in the breeze for all of them to see:
He’s feeling it. Whether the emotions are genuinely his or not, he’s aching to be with Yulisa. And he truly feels horrible for how he’d treated her. That’s clear.
What’s also painfully apparent is that Dean is battling the emotions. Fighting against feeling them and, either way you slice it, that nicks at Sam’s heart. Because he can’t tell which situation is causing Dean the most anxiety; the self-preservation in the face of a supernatural attack, or running away full-tilt from an epic emotional experience.
*******************************************************************
Tuesday - 11:59 p.m.
She fingers the knotted thread made moist with her kisses. Smiles as she slicks the candle, her hands, the figurine with rosemary oil. She focuses on Dean and recites the Third Day prayer:
“Jesus Christ Conqueror who on the cross was conquered, conquer Dean that he is overcome by me. In the name of God, you are a ferocious animal; you will come back to me as a tame sheep, mild as the rosemary flower. Adored Death, I implore you earnestly that with this titanic force that God gave you, instill in Dean’s heart
that he has eyes for no one but me, and that I am his everything, that you grant me this which I ask, having great faith in this Novena, and I light a candle every Tuesday of every week at twelve midnight.”
He isn’t hers yet, but he will be. The bond is strengthening. She can feel him. Almost smell him. She makes the sign of the cross and offers up three Our Fathers.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 12:18 a.m.
“What is that smell? Do you smell that? What is that?”
Dean’s snapping his head around the room like an agitated ferret, looking for the source of the mystery scent Sam can’t smell. Neither can Bobby, if the pointed glance and slight head shake are any indication.
“I smelled it in the kitchen earlier, and now it’s out here, too.”
“What, like, gas or something?” Sam asks after a second deep inhale. “I don’t smell anything.”
Dean rises, walks into the kitchen, back into the dining room, hand pulling wafts of air toward his nose.
“Seriously, you guys don’t smell that?”
“Smell what?” Sam and Bobby chime in unionized exasperation.
“It’s…herb-y. Not like herb. Like spice. A plant or something. I don’t know. But I know it…”
Bobby flicks another quick look at Sam.
“What is it, Dean? Think.”
“I don’t know. I can’t think. Gimme some names. I got nothin’ here.”
“Cinnamon, cloves, garlic, uh…basil…” lists Sam, mentally picturing a spice rack.
“No, none of those.” Dean’s face scrunches in concentration. “Shit. What is it?”
“Marjoram? Oregano?” Bobby offers.
“Chervil?” Sam asks.
Bobby and Dean both give him a what-the-fuck?
“It’s a spice. Screw you,” Sam says defensively.
“Evergreen? Sandlewood? Rosemary?”
“Rosemary!” Dean says with a snap and a point in Bobby’s direction. “That’s it.”
“Ah, shit.” Bobby rises and heads into the living room.
“What?” ask Sam and Dean, following.
“I think I know what we might be dealin’ with.”
He digs through a teetering stack of books by the fireplace, pulling out a worn leather-bound tome titled Secret Catholic Worship. He flips past dog-eared, sticky-noted pages, skims through printed text and hand-scrawled notes. Stops and jabs his finger at the book.
“Yeah, damn it. Right here. La Santisima Muerte.”
“Come again?” says Dean.
“La Santisima Muerte. Most Holy Death, roughly.” Bobby brings the book over to Sam and Dean. Flips it so they can see the illustration. “Every religion has ‘em… Leftovers from pagan days, or at least pre-mainstream religion days. Catholics especially, with all the missionary conversions. Lots of Roman Catholic cultures still maintain an underground of prayed-to rebel saints. Cautionary figures connected with long-lost practices. The Church bans ‘em on the books, but otherwise, looks the other way.”
“This some kind of reaper?” Dean asks, muscles tense, eyeing the woodcut illustration of the robed skeleton figure.
“No, no,” Bobby says, lifting a shoulder and turning back the book to face him, “It’s-- She based on an ancient Aztec goddess named Mictlantecuhtli, a death goddess. Co-ruler of the underworld. Her sister was Tonantzin, who’s the Aztec version of the Virgin Mary.”
“I’m still not getting the connection,” says Sam. “What does this…Santisima Muerte have to do with love?”
“Well, like most adaptations, there’s plentya footnotes. Santisima Muerte’s also linked to La Llorona - the Weeping Woman--”
“Like the Mexican version of the Woman in White,” Sam says.
“Right. Except, instead of killin’ her kids, Santisima Muerte killed herself after her husband was unfaithful.”
“So, she’s like a fidelity touchstone. An understanding ear to women whose men are unfaithful.”
“Exactly,” nods Bobby.
“But why would Yulisa put a spell on me? I love her so much already,” Dean says, dropping onto the couch.
Sam and Bobby ignore him. Huddle around the book under the lamp on the end table.
“So, what? We talking gree-gree bag? Nation sack?” Sam asks as he skims the text in Bobby’s hands.
“Could be. But more likely the spell uses an effigy. I remember readin’ somewhere about a seven-knot spell, like the nine-knot for a nation bag, but it gets wound around the base of a statuette of the saint, after it’s…”
“After it’s what?”
Bobby squints one eye. Scratches at the back of his head under his cap. “After the string gets anointed with the man’s semen.”
They both look over at Dean, who meets their eyes with a blush.
“The rosemary smell’s probably an oil. A kind of play on words: the Rose of the Virgin Mary. This woman’s likely mixin’ the seven-knot spell with candle magic.”
“I’m screwed, aren’t I?” Dean near-whimpers, fingers rubbing at his eyes.
“So, we find the spell and then throw it in reverse?” asks Sam, looking back at Bobby.
“That’d be the plan. If I remember right, it’s a week-long ritual. New prayer every night, each one making the love bond tighter.” He hands the book to Sam. “You get started trawlin’ online, see what you can dig up on sex magic, love rituals. I’ll see if I can find that spell.”
“What are you talkin’ about, research? Let’s go,” Dean says, rising from the couch.
“Dean…”
“I need to go to her, Sam. Let her know she doesn’t need to do this. I love her already.” Dean’s face tightens likes he’s slammed on the mental brakes. “I mean, we gotta stop her. What the fuck?”
Dean’s fingers are back at his eyes, rubbing over closed lids, and Sam shoots a look into the dining room at Bobby.
“What’d you guys do to the lights?”
Dean sways a little on his feet, and Sam steps over, book tucked under his arm.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I just…the rosemary smell is--”
Dean brushes away Sam’s hand from his elbow, takes a tottering step toward the door, and folds up like an accordion.
He’s out cold before he hits the floor.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 2:03 a.m.
“He’s fine, Sam,” Bobby says without looking up from his notes.
Sam’d found the spell online ten minutes ago, and Bobby’d been scribbling furiously through the Spanish translation since.
“You don’t think we should worry that he hasn’t woken up yet?”
“We’re probably better off with him asleep. At least we don’t have to fight him tryin’ to take off for Texas.”
“How serious is this, Bobby?” Sam asks with a glance at Dean, stretched unconscious on the couch. “I mean, we can stop this, right?”
“Should be able to. Just gotta find the woman, find her mojo, and get back whatever of Dean’s was left behind.”
Sam’s face pinches with the dawning.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. We’re gonna have to go in with UV lights and latex gloves. You can thank your brother and his downstairs brain for that. He mention anything else to you? Missing clothes or jewelry? Anything she coulda kept as a charm?”
Before Sam can answer, there’s a grunt from the couch. Dean fidgets, pulls a stretch, whispers ‘Yulisa…’
Sam’s at his side in an instant, a calm restraining hand on Dean’s shoulder when he tries to sit up.
“Hey, whoa. Hang on. Not so fast.”
Dean opens his eyes, looks around, disoriented.
“Sam?”
“Yeah, man. You okay? How you feelin’?”
Dean groans, pinches his eyes shut, then opens them wide. “What--? How did I--?”
“You passed out, kid,” Bobby says from where he’s joined Sam.
Under Sam’s hand, Dean jumps - startles just a fraction - at the sound of Bobby’s voice.
“Bobby?”
Sam casts looks between the two, tries to fish out of his memory the date and severity of his brother’s last concussion. Dean’s pupils are completely dilated; black glass aggies glinting sun in summer grass.
“Where is she?” Dean asks, and his hand makes a blind scrabble up Sam’s shirtfront. “Hit the lights, Sammy.”
Bobby looks as confused as Sam feels.
“You want the lights off? She’s-- You’re safe, Dean. We’re safe.”
Dean looks at Sam like he’s an imbecile. “Of course we’re safe. What the fuck does--? Would ya just turn on the lights so I can get up and piss?”
And it’s a different kind of crackle under Sam’s skin now. It’s not from the brown, pithy panic he suffers over Dean’s safety day-to-day. This sputter and spark is urgent. Pointed.
Sam raises his hand, holds it three inches from Dean’s temple, and Dean doesn’t do a thing but breathe. His eyes don’t track the movement, he doesn’t turn to catch the motion.
“Somebody? One of you two wanna get the goddamned lights, please?
When Sam snaps his fingers, Dean flinches and drops his head. His shoulders come up, and so does one hand - meant to bat away the threat, and missing Sam’s hand by half an inch.
“Dean,” Sam says, pulled like taffy, “the lights are on.”
“Holy shit,” Bobby says, breathy and stoned cold. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Dean asks, but it’s more of an order; an urging toward confession.
Bobby stomps over to the dining room table, grabs his notepad and the pages Sam’d printed from half a dozen websites.
“Sammy?”
“Hang on, Dean. Hang on. It’s gonna be okay. Bobby?”
“Son of a bitch,” Bobby says, stalking back into the living room. “Third Day prayer. Listen to this: ‘… instill in his heart that he has eyes for no one but me, and that I am his everything…’”
“Are you saying he’s blind?” Sam gapes.
“I’m blind?” Dean echoes with a wild edge.
“I’m sayin’ Tuesday night, which last night was, is a high night. Like a maintenance night for spell up-keep.”
“What?”
“Look, after the week of ritual prayer is done, every Tuesday night a short prayer of offering gets repeated, reinforcing the hold of the spell. It’s like…lightin’ a devotional candle in church every week.”
“So, what? I’m blind now?” Dean asks.
“You’re saying this ritual, this spell, is literal?”
“‘…Eyes for no one but me…’” Bobby repeats with an earnest tone. “I’m sayin’ after last night, it’s possible. We gotta find this woman and stop her. Now.”
Sam feels Dean jerk against the fist of shirt he’s been holding onto. His brother’s struggling to get up, muttering curses under his breath.
“Dude, just-- Stay there,” Sam says with a thump against Dean’s shoulder.
Dean’s hands fly up violently, knocking Sam’s away.
“Get off me, you fucker! This is your fault. Yours and Bobby’s. I’m fuckin’ blind, man! If you’da just let me go to her--”
“Sit down, Dean,” Bobby growls, and Dean bucks against the couch.
He kicks out with one leg and sweeps Sam to the floor. The hand latched on to Dean’s t-shirt pulls him forward, and his arms shoot out defensively. He jabs a palm against Sam’s neck and pushes off. Gets to his feet before Bobby can make a move. He spins wildly, lungs pumping, arms out as feelers against attack.
Sam considers hating himself, but the scorch in his throat on his first inhale tells him not to bother. He rolls into a stand. Dean doesn’t even see it coming.
Dean doesn’t see anything.
Sam’s arm cocks back till his thumb tags his shoulder, and he aims a mountain range of knuckle at his brother’s planed jaw. For the second time in two hours, Dean’s face makes the acquaintance of living room hardwood.
“‘ In the name of God, you are a ferocious animal…’” Bobby says, quoting the prayer from his notes.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 4:53 a.m.
Sam swivels to check on him again.
Forty-five minutes, and Dean hasn’t woken up. Not when they’d handcuffed him. Hadn’t roused when they’d stuffed him into the backseat. Bobby’d eaten up close to fifty miles of road behind the Impala’s wheel, and Dean hadn’t moved an inch.
“He still breathin’?” Bobby jokes, pulling Sam back toward the glow from the dash.
“Yeah, he’s fine, I guess. I didn’t think I hit him that hard.”
“Kid, you looked like Reggie Jackson on that swing. I’m surprised we didn’t hear something snap. How’s your hand, by the way?”
Sam flexes it, and his fingers are stiff and sore on the curl into his palm. His knuckles feel tight, stretched and swollen against his skin.
“I’ll grab some ice when we stop for gas. Should probably get some on his jaw,” Sam says, tilting his head at Dean.
“Well, he’s under control for now, at least. Ours insteada hers. Even if it means we knock him out and hog-tie him.”
Sam shakes his head. Snorts in disbelief. Only Dean…
“We probably should hog-tie him. He’s gonna be even more pissed when he comes to.”
“Those are SWAT-issued ASP’s, Sam. Stainless steel eyelet, TIG welded stainless links, ball bearing rotation. Every single swivel’s protected by a steel reinforcing collar. No way he’s gettin’ outta those.”
“Shit, Bobby,” Sam laughs, head shaking, “the year we’ve had? Dean can get out of a set of cuffs with a piece of lint and a kitten whisker. He practiced every day for two solid months after Baltimore.”
“Well, the one thing we got goin’ for us is we’re headed to El Paso. We make sure he knows that’s true, and maybe he’ll be cooperative.”
Sam’s fingers play at his lower lip, plucking a tune of contemplation.
“When we find her, break the spell… You think--? I mean, the loss of vision. That’s temporary, right, Bobby?”
It isn’t so much a shrug as a straightening of his arms. Bobby’s elbows lock, and both hands grip the wheel a little tighter.
“Should be,” he says.
And Sam knows they’re flying as blind as Dean.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 6:49 a.m.
Her tiny house is thick with the scent of brewing coffee and rosemary. The air nearly shimmers around her. She doesn’t have to be at work for hours, but she can’t sleep. There’s a vibration running through everything, like a low rolling tremor just below the surface of the earth.
She’s making this happen. She’s drawing him back.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 8:17 a.m.
Dean wakes up in the parking lot of a rest area on 25 South. Bobby’s in the head, and Sam’s trying to call information to get the number of the bar where they’d met Yulisa. He figures by the time they stop for lunch, he can call and give a general description, see if anyone there knows who she is and where she lives.
Sam’s squinting in the yellow sun, ass against the front corner panel when he hears the muffled - yet glaringly indignant - ‘What the fuck?’ drift out from the backseat. He disconnects 411, shoves the phone into the pocket of his hoodie, and leans into the car through the open window.
“Hey, Dean? It’s me. Sam.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean barks and slams his boots against the door panel.
“Dean--”
“Tell me I’m not fucking handcuffed, Sam. That I’m not handcuffed and layin’ across the backseat of my own fuckin’ car with a Sam-fist shaped bruise on my jaw!”
“I, uh…”
“You ever sucker punch me like that again? I’ll squeeze the breath outta your lungs with my bare hands.”
“Dude!” Sam says, and clunks his head on the window frame when he involuntarily jerks back from the vitriol.
“Uncuff me, Sam.”
“Dean, you were out of control.”
“Well, I’m in control now,” Dean grits out through clamped-down teeth.
“You were attacking me, you were trying to leave--”
“Sam!” Dean barks, and throws another kick at the door. “Uncuff me.”
“Hey, Dean. You’re up,” Bobby says from the driver’s side window, startling both boys.
“Bobby, tell Sam to uncuff me.”
“Well,” Bobby drawls with an Elvis twist on his lip, “I think it might be a good idea you stay trussed up for a few more miles. Till we get closer to El Paso.”
Dean’s whole demeanor shifts, like a slick of balm’s been smoothed over his whole body.
“We’re goin’ to El Paso?”
“Yup,” says Bobby, and creaks open the door. Slips in behind the wheel. “We’re goin’ to find your girl, Dean. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 12:44 p.m.
Outside Trinidad, Colorado, Dean leans over the seatback and casually dangles his hands between Sam and Bobby. Hanging from one wrist is the bracelet of Bobby’s precious SWAT-issue cuffs, and on Dean’s lips hangs a self-satisfied smirk. Sam’s so thrilled the move and the manner is such classic Dean Winchester, he barely cares that his brother is loose.
“You fellas hungry? I’m starved.”
“Son of a bitch,” mutters Bobby.
Nothing else is said until Bobby leaves the interstate, following the billboards to Lee’s Bar-B-Q. The colorful ads tout burgers, slow-cooked beef, and a family-recipe chili that’s been served since 1938. The signs also say TAKE-OUT, and that’s the real draw.
Dean’s a hundred shades of understanding when Bobby and Sam assure him the reason they’re not getting a table is because they want to keep making good time to El Paso.
“We’re getting close,” Dean says, nodding, eyes focused on some dead spot outside the back window. “I can tell.”
He sniffs at the air, reminding Sam of a bloodhound.
“Yeah. Let’s keep goin’. Grab some grub and go.”
Dean listens attentively as Sam rattles off the menu, then requests the Meat Lover’s Sampler with chops, ribs, and chicken. Chili fries on the side. Sam can’t believe his brother’s going to allow that potential for mess in his backseat. He asks for an extra stack of napkins when their order’s brought out.
Sam balances the Styrofoam clamshell on Dean’s lap. Gets him oriented with what’s where, and then snatches away his hands as his brother dive-bombs the food. Within seconds, there’s half a roast chicken snared in Dean’s jaw, and he’s tearing and chewing like a days-hungry pit bull.
When they stop later to switch drivers and stretch, Sam walks his brother over to the dog run along the side of the rest area. Lets him pace and gambol. Dean had been sniffing the air on the road, hanging his head past the window frame, jiggling in his seat. At first Sam’d thought it was the chili; the pit-stop is allowing for a necessary breeze-out after lunch in Trinidad. But as he watches Dean bounce on the balls of his feet and shift his face to catch the wind, the goose bumps on Sam’s arms whisper something beneath the bustle.
Dean’s tracking Yulisa’s scent.
Maybe not her scent, but her energy. Maybe the vibrations of the spell. Sam doesn’t know, but he knows he doesn’t like it. It doesn’t sit right, seeing his brother under someone else’s power.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 6:23 p.m.
She arrives home from work, tired but somehow energized. The quaking of the ground is less subtle now. She can hear the faint skitter of dust fall in the farthest corners of the house.
During first break, that whore, Claire Wright, had run her red little mouth about how some women didn’t know how to get a man. About how some women didn’t know what to do with them when they got them. Yulisa had wanted to grab her by her thick slutty neck and whisper in her filthy ear that she knew how to get just the man she wanted. Instead, she’d covertly spit onto her first two fingers, then wiped the mess across the inside of Claire’s dry-turkey-on-wholegrain when the bitch left to use the bathroom.
Yulisa has dinner delivered. Doesn’t want to overpower Dean’s smell with cooking. She calls the local Bar-B-Q joint and orders chicken and ribs. Can’t get saliva to stop filling her cheeks when she thinks about closing her mouth over Dean.
She checks the clock when she drops the pile of clean bones in the garbage next to the stove: three minutes past eight. She has time to take a nice hot bath. He’s really close.
He’s ticking inside her.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 8:39 p.m.
Sam hadn’t been able to get anything from the bartender at Chico’s Lounge. She’d told him to call back at ten when the barbacks switched shift. Said they were the ones who got the most pussy. Sam had blushed and awkwardly thanked her. Reported his lack of findings to Dean and Bobby, and kept driving US 10. Half an hour outside of El Paso, Bobby dozing in the passenger seat, Sam realizes they won’t need outside assistance at all. In the rearview mirror, he watches Dean straighten, suddenly alert and anxious.
“Close, Sammy. We’re gettin’ close,” his brother pants, blank eyes aimed at the passing scenery.
There’s nothing but navy shadows against indigo sky, lace of dying orange sunlight around the edges closest to the horizon. Sam can barely make out the shapes off the highway himself. His eyes hop from mirror to road, then back again when Dean leans forward over the seat.
“You’re gonna wanna take the next exit, Sammy. Go left off that until you hit…” Dean cocks his head, takes in a deep breath, “…Haverson Road.”
Another deep breath and he’s retreating from Sam’s shoulder, leaning back contentedly, one hand resting on his chest.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 9:23 p.m.
She doesn’t actually scream when Sam kicks in her door. It’s more of a yelp. She ignores the guns in Sam’s and Bobby’s hands and tracks her sights straight to Dean. He pops between the two men, brushing past their shoulders like they’re a saloon door.
“Yulisa.”
He goes right to her, not a falter or pause in his step.
…Eyes for no one but me…
“Where is it?” Sam barks, and Yulisa smiles at him around Dean’s shoulder.
“Where’s what, Dean’s brother?”
Dean’s hands move to turn Yulisa’s face to his, fingers sueding over her cheeks. He leans down, moves his mouth over hers, and Sam hasn’t seen so much tongue since Dean made him watch that Kiss concert footage on Youtube.
“Where is it,” he demands, “where’s your sick little altar?”
“You got them?” Bobby asks from Sam’s left.
He looks over, watches Bobby motion toward the rest of the house.
“Yeah. I got ‘em. Go.”
Bobby snaps a nod and heads for the hallway off the living room. Sam makes a slow arc around the heaving sex-magic lust that’s playing out between Dean and Yulisa. Keeps his gun up and his Bar-B-Q lunch down, despite feeling scarred for life. There’s moaning and thrusting and the wet pop of saliva. Hands, hands, hands, and breaths that sound desperate with both intake and release.
“God, baby, I’m so sorry. So sorry I left you,” Dean repents into the confessional of Yulisa’s ear.
The genuineness of the regret, the plain ache for absolution, tightens the muscles in Sam’s gut.
“This isn’t right. What you’re doing to him,” he says, loud enough above the other noise for the woman to hear.
She bends her neck around Dean’s nuzzle, shows Sam a face that’s more challenge than worry; cocky victory he wants to smack away with his fist.
“He’s mine,” she says. “He came back to me. His choice, not yours.”
“You tricked him. It’s not his choice,” Sam says, lip curling back from his teeth.
“Tell your brother to fuck off, Dean.”
Dean doesn’t, though. Just whispers against Yulisa’s neck, “I was so lost without you. Blind. You’re everything to me.” He kisses across her collarbone, follows it like a compass; south, down her chest. Drops to his knees when he reaches her belly, then wraps his arms around her thighs. Rests his cheek against her hip like a shameless puppy.
“Dean,” she prompts again, but is ignored.
“Bit of a catch twenty-two, isn’t it?” Sam says, smirking over the sight of the shotgun. “The spell’s kind of literal. Nice for you in the psychotic devotion department, but not so much when it comes to the details. ‘…In the name of God, you are a ferocious animal; you will come back to me as a tame sheep…’”
“I found it!” Bobby calls from down the hall.
Sam and Yulisa’s heads snap toward the shout. Bobby steps into the living room a minute later, shotgun resting in the crook of one elbow, devotional candle, rosemary, and what Sam guesses is a statuette of La Santisima Muerte cradled against his chest.
“Looks like you lose,” Sam says, smiling down Yulisa’s glare.
She surprises him and Bobby both by throwing back her head and barking out a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Sam asks, fingers flexing around his shotgun.
She stares at him, shakes her head. “Do you even know your brother? We fucked from one end of this house to the other. Floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall. There’s enough Dean smeared around here for ‘till death do us part.’ You’re not getting him back.”
Sam’s nostrils flare with a quick inhale, stock of the gun pulled hard against his shoulder. “You’re crazy,” he says.
She smirks and cards her fingers through the hairs on the back of Dean’s skull.
“Sam.”
His eyes snap to Bobby.
“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” he asks him.
Sam’s thinking he is. If what Yulisa says is true - and, goddamnit, knowing his brother it probably is - they have no choice. Sam’s shoulders hop with a dismissive shrug, more for Yulisa than anyone else.
“All’s fair in love and total war, right, Bobby?”
It’s Yulisa’s turn to look off-balance, and she does. For the span of an eye-blink. And then Sam’s fist collides with her jaw. Much to his surprise, he feels guiltier taking out Dean for a second time than he does for cold-cocking a woman.
*******************************************************************
Thursday - 12:09 a.m.
Total war is a tactic most notably put to use during the Civil War in 1864. The Germans had painted a version of it under the Blitzkrieg in ’43, and Roosevelt had declared it - in theory - in Casablanca during World War II. But no act of military aggression had been so utterly complete and devastating to an enemy as the blackened swath cut through Georgia on Sherman’s March to the Sea. His scorched earth policy - kill live stock, burn crops, destroy anything and everything that keeps people fighting - decisively disarmed the South, soldier and spirit in one. It’s cruel but effective in its brutality, and the only way Sam and Bobby can conceive of saving Dean.
Once Dean’d had been safely stretched once more across the backseat of the Impala, Bobby’d stripped Yulisa down to her birthday suit in the side yard and tossed her clothes - covered with Dean’s sweat and spit and hair and God knew what else - back into the house. Had turned the garden hose on her while she laid unconscious in the grass.
They’re lucky her closest neighbor is nearly a mile away.
By the time Bobby finishes, Sam’s made a complete circuit around the inside of the house with two gas cans. Bobby binds Yulisa’s hands and feet and drags her a safe distance. Rests her under the coverage of a tree far enough away it’s in no danger of going up with the house.
As Sam’s walking over to check in, Bobby leans toward her sleeping form, voice carrying across the still night to Sam.
“You ever touch Dean again - either one of these boys, for that matter - and I’ll make all this look like a goddamned ice cream social.”
Sam pretends he doesn’t hear. Bobby straightens and dries his hands against his vest. Adjusts his cap so the bill covers his eyes.
“We’re doin’ the right thing here, aren’t we, Bobby?” Sam asks through a blind of bangs.
Even covering Yulisa with a blanket from the trunk or one of their extra shirts might expose Dean to more danger. Sam knows it, he just wants Bobby to reassure him they’re being cautious, not cruel.
“You don’t mess with people’s free will,” Bobby says matter-of-factly. “She’s a witch or she’s an idiot, either way, you oughtta know: you do black, black comes back. Threefold.”
Sam nods beside him. Shuffles open the book of matches from Chico’s Lounge.
“You dance with the Devil, you suffer the burns.”
Just before the house goes up, there’s a call from the Impala.
“Sam! Goddamnit! Have you been eatin’ Bar-B-Q in the backseat of my car?”
Author: kimonkey7
Rating: R for language, implied sexual situations
Pairing: gen, Dean and Sam, Bobby, implied OFC
Disclaimer: Not mine. Damn it.
SPOILERS: Takes place late season two, non-specific.
Summary: Death, dear to my heart, don't abandon me, protect me, and don't let Dean have one moment of peace; keep him restless and bothered with the thought of me always.
A/N: Written for shakespearebint who default-won my ass in the last Sweet Charity auction. The prompt she gave me was “Dean sings karaoke.” I got there how I could, my dear. Hope you enjoy the ride. I’ve relied on the bullfuckery of mapquest.com for geographical logistics, so I apologize for the likely existence of holes in the SD to TX time-space continuum. Many thanks and gift baskets of sea salt caramels for my beta, pdragon76.
Early Sunday
Dean trundles in around four a.m., trying desperately for quiet and failing like drunks so often do. He reeks of smoke and booze and sex, and Sam scrunches his nose, turns his head toward the rough pillow case.
They’d split up at the bar around eleven when the bouncy, all-hands brunette couldn’t keep herself off Dean’s lap, and Dean couldn’t keep his leer in check any longer. He’d tossed Sam the keys and told him not to wait up. Sam hadn’t.
It’s not the first time Dean’d sought comfort and release in the anonymous arms of a willing woman, and Sam knows it won’t be the last. He tries not to judge, coping skills being relative.
A few hours later, they wake within fifteen minutes of each other, tag-team the bathroom, Dean moving sluggishly through the muggy wake of Sam’s hot shower. Sam’s seen his brother with worse hangovers, but it’s been a while. When they pass each other by the mini-fridge, a grumbled ‘mornin’’ dropping from Dean’s bruised-looking mouth, Sam notices a bolo of scarlet hickies strung round his brother’s neck and across his throat.
The a/c is already cranking away, doing its best against the Texas sun leeching the energy out of the just-begun day. After Sam’s dressed, he heads out to the parking lot. Loads their stuff in the trunk and unrolls the Impala’s windows. It’s only seven a.m. and it’s got to be close to a hundred degrees already. They’re set to head north to Bobby’s for a few days; snag a little down-time and re-up on ammo and other supplies. There’s a lead on a Spring-heeled Jack in Wisconsin, but it’s nothing that won’t wait.
When Sam comes back into the room, the shower’s still going. He plops onto the bed and gets the pillows up behind his back. Figures he can catch a morning news broadcast while Dean finishes getting ready. He fishes the remote off the nightstand and spots the message light blinking on the phone.
They hadn’t arranged for a wake-up call, and no one knows where they’re staying. Anybody who needs to get a hold of them would call their cells. Probably someone calling their room by mistake. He ignores the red light and flips on the TV. Surfs the channels and settles on a local news show.
Five minutes later, the shower’s still running, and Sam’s yawning through a feature about a dog that saved its owners from a house fire by waking them with its barking. The story’s interrupted by the old-fashioned jangle of the phone on the nightstand. Sam stares at it curiously through two rings before he picks up.
“Hello?”
“Dean?”
“Uh…”
“It’s Yulisa.”
Sam vaguely connects the name with the woman from the bar last night. “Um, Dean’s… This is his brother.”
There’s a second of silence, then an exasperated sigh.
“Did he get my message? I left a message.”
Sam’s eyes flick to the flashing red light on the phone. “No, he, uh… Dean’s in the shower.”
Yulisa giggles through the phone, and something about the laugh lifts the small hairs on the back of Sam’s neck.
“Well, make sure he gets my message, Dean’s brother. Okay?”
“Uh, sure. No problem.”
The line goes dead the same time as the shower.
“Hey, Dean?”
“Chill, dude! I’ll be out in two minutes.”
Sam squints at the bathroom door, then down at the phone. Presses the message button and listens:
Hi, Dean. It’s Yulisa. I had a really great time last night. Really great. I need to see you again. Let’s have breakfast. Or lunch. I could cook you dinner, put some meat on those beautiful bones of yours…
The way she says ‘beautiful’, long and drawn out - BYOO-teee-full - tugs down the corners of Sam’s mouth.
…Call me, Dean. I mean it. 555-6397.
“Creepy,” Sam utters as he waits for the automated voice to tell him how to save the message. After he hangs up, he wipes his hand across the thigh of his jeans, as if it’s dirty.
The bathroom door swings open, and Dean steps out from a solid bank of steam; hair still dripping, towel clutched around his waist.
“You gotta take a shit or somethin’?”
“You had a phone call.”
Dean gives him an eye roll and snatches his cell off the low dresser. “It’s called voicemail, Sammy. Welcome to the twentieth century.”
“Twenty-first. And not on that phone, on this one,” Sam says, pointing from the one in Dean’s hand to the one on the nightstand.
“Whatever. Who called?”
“Yulisa.”
“Who?” Dean asks, face pinched as he drops down onto the bed.
“Yulisa? The woman you had sex with last night?”
Dean finger snaps and points at him, half a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. “Yulisa. Right.” He pulls his duffle toward him across the bedspread, begins a sniff-test selection for the day’s wardrobe. “What’d she say? Did she say I was awesome? I bet she said I was awesome.”
Sam returns the eye roll. “She said to call her.”
The laugh is loud; the bleat of a boat horn. Dean’s brows hop. “That’s gonna happen.”
Sam’s face squinches in disgust. “Dude, you’re a pig.”
“Yes, I am. I am indeed,” Dean says matter-of-factly, slipping on a pair of boxers that have passed muster under his towel. “Jealous?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sam says, eyes wide with sarcasm, “her message really made me wish I was you.”
“You listened to it?”
“Whatever. Here,” he says, and passes Dean the handset. Presses the appropriate button. His arms slip across his chest as he watches his brother listen, waiting for his face to confirm the uneasy feeling Sam had got when he heard the message.
After a few seconds, Dean shrugs and drops the handset back on the cradle. Sam waits for a reaction, but all Dean does is sniff a pair of balled-up tube socks.
“You don’t think that was creepy?”
“Creepy how?”
“Like, kind of…stalkery?”
“What can I say, Sammy? The ladies can’t get enough of me.” He pulls a t-shirt over his head, slips his socked feet into his boots. “You got the car packed up?”
“You’re not gonna call her back?”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know, common courtesy?”
“Jesus,” Dean sneered, tugging his laces into double knots, “you got a lot to learn about chicks.”
“Dude--”
“Come on,” Dean says. He buckles his watchband, shoves his dirty clothes back into his duffle, and slips his coat off the chair in the kitchenette. He gives Sam’s belly a double pat as he passes him, steers him toward the door. “Let’s put this place in the rearview, grab some breakfast. I’m starved.”
Sam’s one step over the threshold when the phone on the nightstand rings again. He stops and turns, and Dean gives him a little shove toward the Impala. Swings the door closed behind them.
“Let it go, Romeo.”
*******************************************************************
Sunday - 11:55 p.m.
The string is tacky, makes a slithery sound as it uncoils from the Zip-Loc bag she’d put it in last night. She’s never done this before, but she doesn’t feel silly about it. She’s been waiting for the right guy for a long time, and she’d known right away he was it. Maybe he doesn’t know it yet, but she does.
Before she’d sucked his cock, she’d slipped into the bathroom. Snugged the little bundle of string in the gully between her cheek and back teeth. After he’d come - when he’d still been breathing hard and watching the light show behind his lids - she’d slipped the drenched string from her mouth and into the baggie tucked in her underwear. Slid it under the bed by her knees before he even opened his eyes.
She holds it like a bait worm - finger and thumb, finger and thumb - as she ties the seven knots in its length. She lays the string on the table next to the amber-colored statuette of Santisima Muerte, wipes her fingers on the kitchen towel, and unfolds the paper the old woman at the herbaria gave her. She speaks the Ejaculatory Prayer as she winds the string around the effigy’s grooved base:
“Death, dear to my heart, don't abandon me, protect me, and don't let Dean have one moment of peace; keep him restless and bothered with the thought of me always.”
She says the three Our Fathers as she sets down the figurine - robed grim reaper balancing a pair of scales, one foot resting on a skull - and lights the candle the woman at the shop had instructed her to smear with rosemary oil. She focuses on the flame, conjures Dean’s face in her mind. After a moment, she recites the First Day prayer; lilting and reverent through the tiny smile she wears.
“Most Holy Death, the favors that you have to grant me: make me overcome all difficulties so that for me nothing is impossible, no obstacles, barriers, no enemies, that no one does me any harm, that everyone is my friend and that I am victorious in all my dealings and things I do; may my house be filled with all the good virtues of your protection.”
Three more Our Fathers and she’s done. For tonight.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 3:30 a.m.
“What?” Sam calls, exasperated, across the dark room.
“What?”
“Dude, you’re tossing around like you’re on a trampoline.”
They’d driven pretty much straight through, close to seventeen hours, and Sam just wants to sleep.
“Sorry.”
“And what’s all the sighing?”
“Sorry.”
Sam blows out his own sigh; Dean sounds oddly sad. Pensive.
“What, Dean?” He sits up in the narrow twin bed, eyes tracing the brother shape in the one a few feet away.
The room’s small but comfortable, the one they always share when they stay with Bobby.
“Dean?”
“I keep thinkin’ about her.”
“Who?”
“Yulisa.”
Sam’s confused, because he’s pretty sure his brother’d forgotten her name the minute they crossed the Texas border, had put her behind them with the flat desert scenery.
“The girl from last night?”
“Yeah,” Dean says, followed by another weighted breath.
“Dude, you’re not thinking of her and--”
“No! Jesus, Sam. Gimme a fuckin’ break.”
“Sorry. I just--” He adjusts the pillow and lays back down. “Sorry. But you were all-- This morning, you were--”
“Yeah, I know. But now…”
“Well…let it go, Romeo.”
“Oh, you’re hilarious.”
“I know. Go to sleep, Dean.”
“Trust me, I’m tryin’.”
Sam watches him settle.
Shake loose.
Still.
“Hands above the blankets, Spanky,” he says with a dopey half-grin.
“Fuck you,” Dean answers, echoing back the joke.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 9:13 a.m.
Bobby wakes them up earlier than they’d like, tells them he can’t stand listening to their buzz-saw snores any longer. There’re coffee and eggs and bacon and toast when they come down to the kitchen.
“What kept you boys up so late? Heard ya jabberin’ till almost four.”
Sam snorts around a forkful of scrambled egg. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” He shoots a look at his brother, but Dean just folds a strip of bacon into his mouth. Keeps his head down.
“Well, one of ya better tell me,” Bobby says, blowing across his coffee.
“Dean’s in love,” says Sam mockingly.
“Shut up.”
Bobby’s brows lift the brim of his cap. “Yer kiddin’ me.”
“Nope.”
“Yes, he is,” says Dean, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“Okay,” Sam says with a dismissive shrug.
“Dean?” Bobby asks.
The eye contact comes with a blush and a head shake. “It’s nothin’. Sam’s just bein’ a little bitch.”
Bobby lifts his chin and gives Dean the once over from under his bill. “Well, you look like crap.”
“Thanks,” Dean says dryly.
“I mean, worn out.”
“Yeah, well, we just drove seventeen hours, and then you woke us up after five hours sleep. I think I got a right to look a little rode hard, okay?” Dean thunks down his fork and pushes away his plate.
“Dude, relax.”
“I am relaxed,” Dean barks back at Sam.
The chair squeaks when Bobby shifts his weight against the ladderback. “Maybe you should go back to bed, Dean. Try to get a little more shut-eye,” he suggests, gaze traveling between the boys tight-pinched faces.
Dean makes his own noise; huffs a breath as he pushes away from the table. “I got a diagnostic and a tune-up to run. I’ll be in the yard.”
He snatches up his coffee mug and is nothing but back and shoulders when Sam calls after him.
“What the hell was that all about?” Bobby asks when the screen door stops banging.
“I have no idea,” Sam says. He slides half a triangle of toast into his mouth. Chews and shakes his head. “Night before last, we had our usual leaving-town hurrah: dinner and drinks at the local. Dean hustled some gas money at the tables, hustled some girl out of her pants.”
“Nothin’ unusual yet,” Bobby tics, offering Sam a refill from the pot.
Sam slides his mug forward. “No. Not at all. He didn’t even remember her name when she called the next morning. But then last night, he tells me he can’t sleep because he can’t stop thinking about her.”
“That’s pretty weird.”
“Yeah.”
“And you think that’s--” Bobby waves his hand at Dean’s deserted place setting, “that’s what all this’s about?”
“You gotta admit, it’d be weird for anybody to go from ‘I don’t remember her’ to ‘I can’t forget her’ in one day.”
“Especially Dean,” Bobby says with a tug at his beard. “You think she…jiggled somethin’ with him?” he asks, and pairs the question with a jab of the mal occio.
“I don’t know yet,” Sam says after a sip of his coffee, “but I’m keeping my eyes open.”
Bobby cocks his head. Gives a nod. “Fair enough.”
*******************************************************************
Monday - 3:09 p.m.
Dean stomps back inside, covered with sweat and engine grease and a film of general frustration. Sam looks up from the laptop and gives him a ‘hey,’ but Dean just grumbles and heads for the bathroom.
A few minutes later, he pops out - shirtless, face fresh-scrubbed - and flops down on the couch. Doesn’t even bother to take off his boots.
“Wake me up for dinner,” he tells Sam, then slings one arm over his face, tip of his nose peeking out from the crook of his elbow.
Sam turns back to the research on the computer, makes a few notes about Spring-heeled Jacks. Tries not to be bothered when Dean’s light sleep is peppered with Yulisa’s name, whispered over and again.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 6:40 p.m.
Despite the rest he’d gotten, Dean’s cranky and short when Sam wakes him. Full of jittery energy that puts his brother and Bobby on alert. He twirls a hundred forkfuls of spaghetti during dinner, but not a single one reaches his mouth. By the time Sam and Bobby are sponging meat sauce off their plates with heels of bread, they’re also tossing loaded looks at one another over Dean’s cold pile of pasta.
“Dude, what’s going on with you?”
Dean looks up at Sam, a distant, pained expression shellacking his features. “I can’t… I just… Nothin’.”
“Somethin’ botherin’ you, Dean?” Bobby asks. “You feelin’ sick?”
“No. I’m fine, I just--” He fists his paper-towel napkin in his left hand, bops it back and forth off the right. “Can’t a guy-- Man!” he says, and the balled napkin hits his plate.
He pushes back from the table, rises, and grabs his jacket off the back of the chair. Kneads it in his hands like he had the paper toweling. “I need a drink.”
Bobby’s and Sam’s heads are north and south polarities; swing toward each other like fine-oiled hinges.
“I got plentya whisky here, Dean,” Bobby suggests, eyes still on Sam.
“Yeah, no offense, Bobby, but you’re not my type. Look, I need to get this chick outta my head, okay?” He tips his temple to the side, brings up a defensive hand. “Call me a pig, I don’t care. Fine. I’m a pig. But I gotta go to a bar, get drunk, get over her, all right? Now.”
Sam and Bobby are up like springs; Keystone Kops of ‘Yeah, sure!’ and ‘Excellent! Sounds great!’ The both know whatever’s up with Dean is one of two things: It’s either completely organic - and if that’s the case, a trip to the local and a tumble in the hay will steady the Dean course; or there’s some serious hoodoo going down and they need to find out. Like, yesterday.
“Cool. Let’s go,” says Dean, and slips his arms into his jacket.
“Yeah, absolutely,” says Sam, hands fumbling down the front of his shirt, then through his hair. “We just, uh--” His finger flicks back and forth between himself and Bobby.
“We need a minute to freshen up,” Bobby says.
“You’re fine,” Dean says impatiently. “Come on.”
“Just-- One minute,” Sam says, and makes a show of sniffing his armpit and pulling a face.
“Whatever, dude,” Dean says and waves him off. Heads down the hall toward the front door and calls over his shoulder. “I’m in the car.”
Bobby and Sam lift brows at the creak of Dean’s boots on the front porch.
“If you guys aren’t out in two minutes, I’m leavin’ your asses,” he calls from outside.
Bobby points at Sam, eyes sharp and hard. “We don’t let him out of our sight.”
*******************************************************************
Monday - 10:45 p.m.
Sam feels a little sick to his stomach. He’s only had two beers, the second one still half full and lukewarm on the table in front of him. He’s worked off most of the label, and he’s making grouped piles of the shredded foil paper.
“And she’s just really pretty,” Dean says with a shake of his head, “you know? She’s just…pretty.”
“Yeah, you told us,” says Bobby, who’s had four beers and a shot.
“Did I?” asks Dean wistfully.
They’d sat through almost four hours of Dean telling them about the five hours in which Yulisa had changed his life. It doesn’t help that it’s karaoke night. And not a good weekend karaoke night, when there’re usually a couple of people who can hit the right key. Sam and Bobby’d got their hopes up about ten minutes ago when Dean had spent a bit of time with the pretty karaoke hostess. But he’d come back without a date or a phone number.
Sam’s hand twitches on the tabletop and he has to fight smacking his brother across the face. He’s nearly losing the battle when the microphone pops and the hostess announces the next performer will be Dean Wormer. His brother pops up with a grin, and Sam’s and Bobby’s jaws drop simultaneously.
“Holy shit. This has gotta be hoodoo. How many beers’d he have?” Bobby says, hand grating through his beard, while his eyes follow Dean to the small stage at the other end of the room.
“Bobby, this isn’t good. There’s not a single girl in this bar that’s gonna go home with Dean after she hears him screaming some Asia song.”
“Christ on fire,” Bobby curses when the music starts, “that’s Pat Benatar.”
The drums, bass, and synthesizer of “Love is a Battlefield” vibrate through the barroom, and Sam thinks he might throw up in his mouth.
“We are young,” Dean speak-sings from the stage. “Heartache to heartache we stand…”
“Oh, God, no,” Sam whispers.
“No promises, no demands. Love is a battlefield.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This can’t happen,” says Sam, rising. “Bobby, please.”
It takes both of them to get him off the stage.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 11:40 p.m.
“Not possible?” Dean asks, seven different kinds of indignation marching through the query.
“Yes. I’m saying it’s not possible for you to suddenly realize you’re in love with a woman whose name you couldn’t even remember the next morning! That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“And you and Bobby think I’m under some kinda love hoodoo.”
“Yes. That’s what we think,” Sam says.
Dean’s glance racks from Sam to Bobby. “That what you think?”
Bobby’s face twists under his cap and beard. “Hell, son. You were singin’ 80s synth-pop.”
“Well, you guys are wrong,” Dean says, and stomps upstairs.
*******************************************************************
Monday - 11:58 p.m.
He hadn’t called, but he will. She knows it. Feels it in her heart. She lights the candle and holds the statuette in her hand.
“Death Saint, my great treasure,” she recites, “never go away from me at any time. You ate bread and gave me bread, and as you are the powerful owner of the dark mansion of life and Empress of darkness, I want you to grant me the favor that Dean is at my feet, humiliated and repentant, and that he never leaves my side when I need him, and that you make me get what was promised to me.”
She brings the figurine to her lips, kisses each knot in the string run round the groove, runs her tongue about the smooth circumference of the base. She sets it on the table next to the flickering flame, folds her hands in prayer, and whispers three Our Fathers.
*******************************************************************
Tuesday - 5:27 a.m.
At first he thinks he’s dreaming - Dean’s standing over him, shaking and crying - but when he can’t wake up from waking up, he knows he’s not. He sits up in bed, hits his eyes with his knuckles, and squints through the dark at his brother.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Dude, we-- I gotta go, Sammy…”
“What? Go where? Dean, it’s five-thirty in the morning.”
“I gotta go back to Yulisa’s.”
And that gets Sam’s feet on the floor. As his eyes adjust, he notices Dean is fully dressed, jacket on, duffle slung over his shoulder.
“Dude. What the hell?”
“I just-- I feel so bad.” Dean runs his forearm under his leaking nose and sniffs deep. “I treated her like shit, Sammy. I shoulda called her.”
Sam’s up. Drops his hands on Dean’s shoulders and steers him toward the other bed. Gives a miserable nothing of a push, and Dean’s ass hits the mattress, a tiny choked cry squeaking out from his lungs.
It’s hoodoo or it’s a complete breakdown. Maybe Dad’s death finally catching up and dropping its weight. Sam squats in front of Dean, links them by a hand on his brother’s knee. He teases up the eye contact, gets him looking and listening.
“Dean, something’s going on. You’re kinda flippin’ out on me.” The panic in his brother’s eyes sends a sparking chill up Sam’s spine. “You know that, right? This isn’t normal.”
“I don’t know what to do, Sam. I just…I love her so much and I don’t know why. And I feel so bad, Sammy. For how I treated her.” Dean’s brows are high; pupils wide, stealing light from the room. “I promised her.”
The chill’s joined by a deep freeze, and Sam pivots on his heels. “Promised her what?”
Dean just stares, anguish splashed over with reluctance.
“You promised her what, Dean?” Sam punctuates the sentence with a squeeze on Dean’s knee. “Focus for me.”
Dean brings up a hand and works it across his scalp. Down his face. He wipes snot against his jeans and takes in a quivery breath. Brings an ear to his shoulder; a coy embarrassed shrug.
“I’m a positive guy. I tend to be…” he rolls a hand in front of his chest, “encouraging.”
“Dean.”
“I say stuff, okay? In the heat of the moment, if you know what I mean.”
“Stuff like what?” Sam can’t believe he’s asking.
Both Dean’s hands come up and cover his face, and his voice sounds tinny and hollow when it pushes past his palms.
“Stuff like ‘yeah, baby.’ And ‘yes, yes, yes…’ Sometimes ‘oh, my fucking God, yes!’”
“I get the picture!” Sam barks, tipping back. “Jesus.”
“You asked,” says Dean.
“Not because I wanted to,” Sam says. He purses his lips, tips his jaw to the side. “I’m guessing while you’re… You’re not really listening to what it is you’re being so affirmative about.”
Dean smirks. “I’m not a fuckin’ rocket scientist, dude. I get in there and I focus. Once I’m in, I get in the zone.”
“Dude.”
“Dude,” Dean shows Sam his palms, “you keep askin’.”
“Whatever. Just-- What do you think you promised her?”
When Dean rises, Sam scoots across the floor till his back meets the other bed. Watches his brother click fingernails against his bottom teeth, lips wrapped round his fingertips. It’s a nervous habit from childhood, and Sam winces at its sudden reappearance.
“I been thinkin’ about that,” Dean says, taking up sentry on the narrow strip of carpet that runs between the beds. “I been playin’ the whole thing over in my head. You know how you do that? Have that jumpy, hand-held, main-character POV?”
“Dude, I didn’t ask,” Sam says, hands flapping like bird’s wings on his drawn-up knees.
“Okay. I kinda remember her…maybe sayin’ something about…”
“Spit it out.”
“Dude,” Dean says with a leer that cuts clean through the dark. “Nobody said that.”
Sam’s face pinches like an apple-head doll. “Dude, I’m gonna throw up.”
“Fine. Whatever. Okay…” Dean’s hands come up to massage the back of his neck. “She mighta, maybe said…”
“What?”
“Look, man,” Dean says, dropping to the mattress opposite Sam. He leans forward like he’s making a locker room confessional, “It’s amazing I remember anything at all. I mean, Sam. This girl…she’s a hell cat. I mean--”
“Dude! I didn’t ask! Now, what do you think you remember her asking, you ass?”
“She maybe asked if I loved her.”
Yeah, baby…
“And?”
“And…possibly asked if I promised to always stay by her side.”
Yes, yes, yes…
“Oh, God…”
“Maybe sorta asked if I vowed my eternal fidelity only to her.”
Oh, my fucking God, yes!
“Christ,” Sam hisses, rolling to the side. He scrambles up from his knees, muttering words like ‘manwhore’ and ‘dick-brained’ and ‘stupid fucking idiot. Dean starts to follow him across the room, but Sam points him back down on the bed. “Stay there.”
“Where are you goin’?”
“To wake up Bobby,” Sam says, halfway into the dark hall.
*******************************************************************
Tuesday - 11:31 p.m.
“Boy, I’m gonna tie you down like a dog if you don’t stop pacin’ through here.”
Sam looks up from the laptop, across the table to Bobby. His cap is pushed back on his head, eyes ringed with red; weary, but shooting lasers at Dean. Sam feels a flare of guilt. It’s been a while since Bobby’d had to operate on a sleep schedule like the one they’d been inflicting since their arrival two nights ago.
“Any luck?” Sam asks over the stack of books.
“I’d work faster if your brother’d sit the hell down.” Bobby’s volume rises on the last four words, and Dean looks up from the living room.
“Hey, Dean,” Sam calls, “Why don’t you go make a sandwich. Get some food on top of all that coffee you’ve had.”
“Not hungry,” Dean calls back around the fingers at his mouth.
“Why don’t you make a couple for me and Bobby, then.”
Dean paces over to the dining room, stands at the edge of the long table where all the research is spread out. “Whatta you want?”
“I dunno, man. Surprise us.”
“Dude, don’t make me think right now. I can’t think right now,” Dean says, sounding pitiful.
“Coupla pieces of bread with some stuff in between ‘em. You’ll figure it out,” says Bobby, chin aiming Dean into the kitchen under threat of grievous harm.
Sam blows out a breath and runs his hands through his hair, two front legs of his chair rising off the ground with his lean. “This is crazy, Bobby.” He pulls the ball point from behind his ear and tosses it on the table. “Why can’t we just do some kind of… Isn’t there a protection spell we can do or something? Until we figure this out?”
“Like I told ya before, Sam, you can’t mess around with serious spell work unless you know the exact spell that’s bein’ worked. We try to reverse the wrong thing, Dean could end up…blowin’ his head off in some suicide-murder pact.”
“Jesus, Bobby,” Sam chides with a glance toward the kitchen.
“I’m just tellin’ it like it is, kid.”
“You know, he’s already tossed the house twice trying to find where I hid the keys to the Impala.”
“At least he’s not desperate enough yet to hot-wire her.”
“He told me earlier he was thinking about hot-wiring the Chevelle.”
Bobby’s head snaps up from his book. “I’d fill his backside fulla buckshot.”
Sam chuckles lightly. “Yeah, he told me that, too.”
The front legs of his chair knock back against the hardwood. They attend to the research in silence, while Dean makes noise in the kitchen.
After a minute, Sam says, “Shit, Bobby. We gotta find this spell. Maybe I should head back to El Paso, try to locate Yulisa.”
“You ain’t leavin’ me here alone with Casanova in there,” says Bobby, hooking a thumb toward the kitchen. “Besides, we don’t know if we’re dealing with a powerful spell or a powerful witch. I don’t like the idea of you bein’ so far away without back-up.”
“So, all three of us go, then.”
“Nuh-uh. No way. We do find her, and she’s got Dean right there?” Bobby shakes his head. “If we can’t break the spell, she’s got him whammied. Maybe for good. If she can make him this crazy from Texas, I don’t wanna see him when he’s up-close and personal.”
Sam blows out a long breath through his nose. “So, you think this woman, Yulisa…you really think she might be a witch?”
“Either that or a novice, in over her head.”
“I saw her, Bobby. I mean, she looked perfectly normal.”
“Most witches do. Hell, the lady ringin’ up groceries at the local Food Mart could be practicin’ black magic. It doesn’t go hand-in-hand with pointy hats and warts, Sam.”
“I know, it’s just--”
Dean stalks back into the dining room. Sets a plate with a couple of meaty Dagwoods on the table between Sam and Bobby. “Here.”
Bobby’s fingers and jaw are clamped around one of the sandwiches in a flash. Sam watches Dean shove his hands in his pockets, stare at nothing on the other side of the room.
“Thanks, man. These look great,” Sam says with a supportive smile.
“Probably not as good as Yulisa could make,” Dean says with a sigh. He swivels his gaze to Sam. “She wants to cook for me. How awesome is that? I bet she’s an awesome cook.”
Sam just stares, Bobby stops mid-chew, and Dean fairly winces when the words tumble out of his mouth. There are two kinds of desperate hung on the curtain rod of Dean’s comment, blowing in the breeze for all of them to see:
He’s feeling it. Whether the emotions are genuinely his or not, he’s aching to be with Yulisa. And he truly feels horrible for how he’d treated her. That’s clear.
What’s also painfully apparent is that Dean is battling the emotions. Fighting against feeling them and, either way you slice it, that nicks at Sam’s heart. Because he can’t tell which situation is causing Dean the most anxiety; the self-preservation in the face of a supernatural attack, or running away full-tilt from an epic emotional experience.
*******************************************************************
Tuesday - 11:59 p.m.
She fingers the knotted thread made moist with her kisses. Smiles as she slicks the candle, her hands, the figurine with rosemary oil. She focuses on Dean and recites the Third Day prayer:
“Jesus Christ Conqueror who on the cross was conquered, conquer Dean that he is overcome by me. In the name of God, you are a ferocious animal; you will come back to me as a tame sheep, mild as the rosemary flower. Adored Death, I implore you earnestly that with this titanic force that God gave you, instill in Dean’s heart
that he has eyes for no one but me, and that I am his everything, that you grant me this which I ask, having great faith in this Novena, and I light a candle every Tuesday of every week at twelve midnight.”
He isn’t hers yet, but he will be. The bond is strengthening. She can feel him. Almost smell him. She makes the sign of the cross and offers up three Our Fathers.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 12:18 a.m.
“What is that smell? Do you smell that? What is that?”
Dean’s snapping his head around the room like an agitated ferret, looking for the source of the mystery scent Sam can’t smell. Neither can Bobby, if the pointed glance and slight head shake are any indication.
“I smelled it in the kitchen earlier, and now it’s out here, too.”
“What, like, gas or something?” Sam asks after a second deep inhale. “I don’t smell anything.”
Dean rises, walks into the kitchen, back into the dining room, hand pulling wafts of air toward his nose.
“Seriously, you guys don’t smell that?”
“Smell what?” Sam and Bobby chime in unionized exasperation.
“It’s…herb-y. Not like herb. Like spice. A plant or something. I don’t know. But I know it…”
Bobby flicks another quick look at Sam.
“What is it, Dean? Think.”
“I don’t know. I can’t think. Gimme some names. I got nothin’ here.”
“Cinnamon, cloves, garlic, uh…basil…” lists Sam, mentally picturing a spice rack.
“No, none of those.” Dean’s face scrunches in concentration. “Shit. What is it?”
“Marjoram? Oregano?” Bobby offers.
“Chervil?” Sam asks.
Bobby and Dean both give him a what-the-fuck?
“It’s a spice. Screw you,” Sam says defensively.
“Evergreen? Sandlewood? Rosemary?”
“Rosemary!” Dean says with a snap and a point in Bobby’s direction. “That’s it.”
“Ah, shit.” Bobby rises and heads into the living room.
“What?” ask Sam and Dean, following.
“I think I know what we might be dealin’ with.”
He digs through a teetering stack of books by the fireplace, pulling out a worn leather-bound tome titled Secret Catholic Worship. He flips past dog-eared, sticky-noted pages, skims through printed text and hand-scrawled notes. Stops and jabs his finger at the book.
“Yeah, damn it. Right here. La Santisima Muerte.”
“Come again?” says Dean.
“La Santisima Muerte. Most Holy Death, roughly.” Bobby brings the book over to Sam and Dean. Flips it so they can see the illustration. “Every religion has ‘em… Leftovers from pagan days, or at least pre-mainstream religion days. Catholics especially, with all the missionary conversions. Lots of Roman Catholic cultures still maintain an underground of prayed-to rebel saints. Cautionary figures connected with long-lost practices. The Church bans ‘em on the books, but otherwise, looks the other way.”
“This some kind of reaper?” Dean asks, muscles tense, eyeing the woodcut illustration of the robed skeleton figure.
“No, no,” Bobby says, lifting a shoulder and turning back the book to face him, “It’s-- She based on an ancient Aztec goddess named Mictlantecuhtli, a death goddess. Co-ruler of the underworld. Her sister was Tonantzin, who’s the Aztec version of the Virgin Mary.”
“I’m still not getting the connection,” says Sam. “What does this…Santisima Muerte have to do with love?”
“Well, like most adaptations, there’s plentya footnotes. Santisima Muerte’s also linked to La Llorona - the Weeping Woman--”
“Like the Mexican version of the Woman in White,” Sam says.
“Right. Except, instead of killin’ her kids, Santisima Muerte killed herself after her husband was unfaithful.”
“So, she’s like a fidelity touchstone. An understanding ear to women whose men are unfaithful.”
“Exactly,” nods Bobby.
“But why would Yulisa put a spell on me? I love her so much already,” Dean says, dropping onto the couch.
Sam and Bobby ignore him. Huddle around the book under the lamp on the end table.
“So, what? We talking gree-gree bag? Nation sack?” Sam asks as he skims the text in Bobby’s hands.
“Could be. But more likely the spell uses an effigy. I remember readin’ somewhere about a seven-knot spell, like the nine-knot for a nation bag, but it gets wound around the base of a statuette of the saint, after it’s…”
“After it’s what?”
Bobby squints one eye. Scratches at the back of his head under his cap. “After the string gets anointed with the man’s semen.”
They both look over at Dean, who meets their eyes with a blush.
“The rosemary smell’s probably an oil. A kind of play on words: the Rose of the Virgin Mary. This woman’s likely mixin’ the seven-knot spell with candle magic.”
“I’m screwed, aren’t I?” Dean near-whimpers, fingers rubbing at his eyes.
“So, we find the spell and then throw it in reverse?” asks Sam, looking back at Bobby.
“That’d be the plan. If I remember right, it’s a week-long ritual. New prayer every night, each one making the love bond tighter.” He hands the book to Sam. “You get started trawlin’ online, see what you can dig up on sex magic, love rituals. I’ll see if I can find that spell.”
“What are you talkin’ about, research? Let’s go,” Dean says, rising from the couch.
“Dean…”
“I need to go to her, Sam. Let her know she doesn’t need to do this. I love her already.” Dean’s face tightens likes he’s slammed on the mental brakes. “I mean, we gotta stop her. What the fuck?”
Dean’s fingers are back at his eyes, rubbing over closed lids, and Sam shoots a look into the dining room at Bobby.
“What’d you guys do to the lights?”
Dean sways a little on his feet, and Sam steps over, book tucked under his arm.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I just…the rosemary smell is--”
Dean brushes away Sam’s hand from his elbow, takes a tottering step toward the door, and folds up like an accordion.
He’s out cold before he hits the floor.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 2:03 a.m.
“He’s fine, Sam,” Bobby says without looking up from his notes.
Sam’d found the spell online ten minutes ago, and Bobby’d been scribbling furiously through the Spanish translation since.
“You don’t think we should worry that he hasn’t woken up yet?”
“We’re probably better off with him asleep. At least we don’t have to fight him tryin’ to take off for Texas.”
“How serious is this, Bobby?” Sam asks with a glance at Dean, stretched unconscious on the couch. “I mean, we can stop this, right?”
“Should be able to. Just gotta find the woman, find her mojo, and get back whatever of Dean’s was left behind.”
Sam’s face pinches with the dawning.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. We’re gonna have to go in with UV lights and latex gloves. You can thank your brother and his downstairs brain for that. He mention anything else to you? Missing clothes or jewelry? Anything she coulda kept as a charm?”
Before Sam can answer, there’s a grunt from the couch. Dean fidgets, pulls a stretch, whispers ‘Yulisa…’
Sam’s at his side in an instant, a calm restraining hand on Dean’s shoulder when he tries to sit up.
“Hey, whoa. Hang on. Not so fast.”
Dean opens his eyes, looks around, disoriented.
“Sam?”
“Yeah, man. You okay? How you feelin’?”
Dean groans, pinches his eyes shut, then opens them wide. “What--? How did I--?”
“You passed out, kid,” Bobby says from where he’s joined Sam.
Under Sam’s hand, Dean jumps - startles just a fraction - at the sound of Bobby’s voice.
“Bobby?”
Sam casts looks between the two, tries to fish out of his memory the date and severity of his brother’s last concussion. Dean’s pupils are completely dilated; black glass aggies glinting sun in summer grass.
“Where is she?” Dean asks, and his hand makes a blind scrabble up Sam’s shirtfront. “Hit the lights, Sammy.”
Bobby looks as confused as Sam feels.
“You want the lights off? She’s-- You’re safe, Dean. We’re safe.”
Dean looks at Sam like he’s an imbecile. “Of course we’re safe. What the fuck does--? Would ya just turn on the lights so I can get up and piss?”
And it’s a different kind of crackle under Sam’s skin now. It’s not from the brown, pithy panic he suffers over Dean’s safety day-to-day. This sputter and spark is urgent. Pointed.
Sam raises his hand, holds it three inches from Dean’s temple, and Dean doesn’t do a thing but breathe. His eyes don’t track the movement, he doesn’t turn to catch the motion.
“Somebody? One of you two wanna get the goddamned lights, please?
When Sam snaps his fingers, Dean flinches and drops his head. His shoulders come up, and so does one hand - meant to bat away the threat, and missing Sam’s hand by half an inch.
“Dean,” Sam says, pulled like taffy, “the lights are on.”
“Holy shit,” Bobby says, breathy and stoned cold. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Dean asks, but it’s more of an order; an urging toward confession.
Bobby stomps over to the dining room table, grabs his notepad and the pages Sam’d printed from half a dozen websites.
“Sammy?”
“Hang on, Dean. Hang on. It’s gonna be okay. Bobby?”
“Son of a bitch,” Bobby says, stalking back into the living room. “Third Day prayer. Listen to this: ‘… instill in his heart that he has eyes for no one but me, and that I am his everything…’”
“Are you saying he’s blind?” Sam gapes.
“I’m blind?” Dean echoes with a wild edge.
“I’m sayin’ Tuesday night, which last night was, is a high night. Like a maintenance night for spell up-keep.”
“What?”
“Look, after the week of ritual prayer is done, every Tuesday night a short prayer of offering gets repeated, reinforcing the hold of the spell. It’s like…lightin’ a devotional candle in church every week.”
“So, what? I’m blind now?” Dean asks.
“You’re saying this ritual, this spell, is literal?”
“‘…Eyes for no one but me…’” Bobby repeats with an earnest tone. “I’m sayin’ after last night, it’s possible. We gotta find this woman and stop her. Now.”
Sam feels Dean jerk against the fist of shirt he’s been holding onto. His brother’s struggling to get up, muttering curses under his breath.
“Dude, just-- Stay there,” Sam says with a thump against Dean’s shoulder.
Dean’s hands fly up violently, knocking Sam’s away.
“Get off me, you fucker! This is your fault. Yours and Bobby’s. I’m fuckin’ blind, man! If you’da just let me go to her--”
“Sit down, Dean,” Bobby growls, and Dean bucks against the couch.
He kicks out with one leg and sweeps Sam to the floor. The hand latched on to Dean’s t-shirt pulls him forward, and his arms shoot out defensively. He jabs a palm against Sam’s neck and pushes off. Gets to his feet before Bobby can make a move. He spins wildly, lungs pumping, arms out as feelers against attack.
Sam considers hating himself, but the scorch in his throat on his first inhale tells him not to bother. He rolls into a stand. Dean doesn’t even see it coming.
Dean doesn’t see anything.
Sam’s arm cocks back till his thumb tags his shoulder, and he aims a mountain range of knuckle at his brother’s planed jaw. For the second time in two hours, Dean’s face makes the acquaintance of living room hardwood.
“‘ In the name of God, you are a ferocious animal…’” Bobby says, quoting the prayer from his notes.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 4:53 a.m.
Sam swivels to check on him again.
Forty-five minutes, and Dean hasn’t woken up. Not when they’d handcuffed him. Hadn’t roused when they’d stuffed him into the backseat. Bobby’d eaten up close to fifty miles of road behind the Impala’s wheel, and Dean hadn’t moved an inch.
“He still breathin’?” Bobby jokes, pulling Sam back toward the glow from the dash.
“Yeah, he’s fine, I guess. I didn’t think I hit him that hard.”
“Kid, you looked like Reggie Jackson on that swing. I’m surprised we didn’t hear something snap. How’s your hand, by the way?”
Sam flexes it, and his fingers are stiff and sore on the curl into his palm. His knuckles feel tight, stretched and swollen against his skin.
“I’ll grab some ice when we stop for gas. Should probably get some on his jaw,” Sam says, tilting his head at Dean.
“Well, he’s under control for now, at least. Ours insteada hers. Even if it means we knock him out and hog-tie him.”
Sam shakes his head. Snorts in disbelief. Only Dean…
“We probably should hog-tie him. He’s gonna be even more pissed when he comes to.”
“Those are SWAT-issued ASP’s, Sam. Stainless steel eyelet, TIG welded stainless links, ball bearing rotation. Every single swivel’s protected by a steel reinforcing collar. No way he’s gettin’ outta those.”
“Shit, Bobby,” Sam laughs, head shaking, “the year we’ve had? Dean can get out of a set of cuffs with a piece of lint and a kitten whisker. He practiced every day for two solid months after Baltimore.”
“Well, the one thing we got goin’ for us is we’re headed to El Paso. We make sure he knows that’s true, and maybe he’ll be cooperative.”
Sam’s fingers play at his lower lip, plucking a tune of contemplation.
“When we find her, break the spell… You think--? I mean, the loss of vision. That’s temporary, right, Bobby?”
It isn’t so much a shrug as a straightening of his arms. Bobby’s elbows lock, and both hands grip the wheel a little tighter.
“Should be,” he says.
And Sam knows they’re flying as blind as Dean.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 6:49 a.m.
Her tiny house is thick with the scent of brewing coffee and rosemary. The air nearly shimmers around her. She doesn’t have to be at work for hours, but she can’t sleep. There’s a vibration running through everything, like a low rolling tremor just below the surface of the earth.
She’s making this happen. She’s drawing him back.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 8:17 a.m.
Dean wakes up in the parking lot of a rest area on 25 South. Bobby’s in the head, and Sam’s trying to call information to get the number of the bar where they’d met Yulisa. He figures by the time they stop for lunch, he can call and give a general description, see if anyone there knows who she is and where she lives.
Sam’s squinting in the yellow sun, ass against the front corner panel when he hears the muffled - yet glaringly indignant - ‘What the fuck?’ drift out from the backseat. He disconnects 411, shoves the phone into the pocket of his hoodie, and leans into the car through the open window.
“Hey, Dean? It’s me. Sam.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean barks and slams his boots against the door panel.
“Dean--”
“Tell me I’m not fucking handcuffed, Sam. That I’m not handcuffed and layin’ across the backseat of my own fuckin’ car with a Sam-fist shaped bruise on my jaw!”
“I, uh…”
“You ever sucker punch me like that again? I’ll squeeze the breath outta your lungs with my bare hands.”
“Dude!” Sam says, and clunks his head on the window frame when he involuntarily jerks back from the vitriol.
“Uncuff me, Sam.”
“Dean, you were out of control.”
“Well, I’m in control now,” Dean grits out through clamped-down teeth.
“You were attacking me, you were trying to leave--”
“Sam!” Dean barks, and throws another kick at the door. “Uncuff me.”
“Hey, Dean. You’re up,” Bobby says from the driver’s side window, startling both boys.
“Bobby, tell Sam to uncuff me.”
“Well,” Bobby drawls with an Elvis twist on his lip, “I think it might be a good idea you stay trussed up for a few more miles. Till we get closer to El Paso.”
Dean’s whole demeanor shifts, like a slick of balm’s been smoothed over his whole body.
“We’re goin’ to El Paso?”
“Yup,” says Bobby, and creaks open the door. Slips in behind the wheel. “We’re goin’ to find your girl, Dean. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 12:44 p.m.
Outside Trinidad, Colorado, Dean leans over the seatback and casually dangles his hands between Sam and Bobby. Hanging from one wrist is the bracelet of Bobby’s precious SWAT-issue cuffs, and on Dean’s lips hangs a self-satisfied smirk. Sam’s so thrilled the move and the manner is such classic Dean Winchester, he barely cares that his brother is loose.
“You fellas hungry? I’m starved.”
“Son of a bitch,” mutters Bobby.
Nothing else is said until Bobby leaves the interstate, following the billboards to Lee’s Bar-B-Q. The colorful ads tout burgers, slow-cooked beef, and a family-recipe chili that’s been served since 1938. The signs also say TAKE-OUT, and that’s the real draw.
Dean’s a hundred shades of understanding when Bobby and Sam assure him the reason they’re not getting a table is because they want to keep making good time to El Paso.
“We’re getting close,” Dean says, nodding, eyes focused on some dead spot outside the back window. “I can tell.”
He sniffs at the air, reminding Sam of a bloodhound.
“Yeah. Let’s keep goin’. Grab some grub and go.”
Dean listens attentively as Sam rattles off the menu, then requests the Meat Lover’s Sampler with chops, ribs, and chicken. Chili fries on the side. Sam can’t believe his brother’s going to allow that potential for mess in his backseat. He asks for an extra stack of napkins when their order’s brought out.
Sam balances the Styrofoam clamshell on Dean’s lap. Gets him oriented with what’s where, and then snatches away his hands as his brother dive-bombs the food. Within seconds, there’s half a roast chicken snared in Dean’s jaw, and he’s tearing and chewing like a days-hungry pit bull.
When they stop later to switch drivers and stretch, Sam walks his brother over to the dog run along the side of the rest area. Lets him pace and gambol. Dean had been sniffing the air on the road, hanging his head past the window frame, jiggling in his seat. At first Sam’d thought it was the chili; the pit-stop is allowing for a necessary breeze-out after lunch in Trinidad. But as he watches Dean bounce on the balls of his feet and shift his face to catch the wind, the goose bumps on Sam’s arms whisper something beneath the bustle.
Dean’s tracking Yulisa’s scent.
Maybe not her scent, but her energy. Maybe the vibrations of the spell. Sam doesn’t know, but he knows he doesn’t like it. It doesn’t sit right, seeing his brother under someone else’s power.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 6:23 p.m.
She arrives home from work, tired but somehow energized. The quaking of the ground is less subtle now. She can hear the faint skitter of dust fall in the farthest corners of the house.
During first break, that whore, Claire Wright, had run her red little mouth about how some women didn’t know how to get a man. About how some women didn’t know what to do with them when they got them. Yulisa had wanted to grab her by her thick slutty neck and whisper in her filthy ear that she knew how to get just the man she wanted. Instead, she’d covertly spit onto her first two fingers, then wiped the mess across the inside of Claire’s dry-turkey-on-wholegrain when the bitch left to use the bathroom.
Yulisa has dinner delivered. Doesn’t want to overpower Dean’s smell with cooking. She calls the local Bar-B-Q joint and orders chicken and ribs. Can’t get saliva to stop filling her cheeks when she thinks about closing her mouth over Dean.
She checks the clock when she drops the pile of clean bones in the garbage next to the stove: three minutes past eight. She has time to take a nice hot bath. He’s really close.
He’s ticking inside her.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 8:39 p.m.
Sam hadn’t been able to get anything from the bartender at Chico’s Lounge. She’d told him to call back at ten when the barbacks switched shift. Said they were the ones who got the most pussy. Sam had blushed and awkwardly thanked her. Reported his lack of findings to Dean and Bobby, and kept driving US 10. Half an hour outside of El Paso, Bobby dozing in the passenger seat, Sam realizes they won’t need outside assistance at all. In the rearview mirror, he watches Dean straighten, suddenly alert and anxious.
“Close, Sammy. We’re gettin’ close,” his brother pants, blank eyes aimed at the passing scenery.
There’s nothing but navy shadows against indigo sky, lace of dying orange sunlight around the edges closest to the horizon. Sam can barely make out the shapes off the highway himself. His eyes hop from mirror to road, then back again when Dean leans forward over the seat.
“You’re gonna wanna take the next exit, Sammy. Go left off that until you hit…” Dean cocks his head, takes in a deep breath, “…Haverson Road.”
Another deep breath and he’s retreating from Sam’s shoulder, leaning back contentedly, one hand resting on his chest.
*******************************************************************
Wednesday - 9:23 p.m.
She doesn’t actually scream when Sam kicks in her door. It’s more of a yelp. She ignores the guns in Sam’s and Bobby’s hands and tracks her sights straight to Dean. He pops between the two men, brushing past their shoulders like they’re a saloon door.
“Yulisa.”
He goes right to her, not a falter or pause in his step.
…Eyes for no one but me…
“Where is it?” Sam barks, and Yulisa smiles at him around Dean’s shoulder.
“Where’s what, Dean’s brother?”
Dean’s hands move to turn Yulisa’s face to his, fingers sueding over her cheeks. He leans down, moves his mouth over hers, and Sam hasn’t seen so much tongue since Dean made him watch that Kiss concert footage on Youtube.
“Where is it,” he demands, “where’s your sick little altar?”
“You got them?” Bobby asks from Sam’s left.
He looks over, watches Bobby motion toward the rest of the house.
“Yeah. I got ‘em. Go.”
Bobby snaps a nod and heads for the hallway off the living room. Sam makes a slow arc around the heaving sex-magic lust that’s playing out between Dean and Yulisa. Keeps his gun up and his Bar-B-Q lunch down, despite feeling scarred for life. There’s moaning and thrusting and the wet pop of saliva. Hands, hands, hands, and breaths that sound desperate with both intake and release.
“God, baby, I’m so sorry. So sorry I left you,” Dean repents into the confessional of Yulisa’s ear.
The genuineness of the regret, the plain ache for absolution, tightens the muscles in Sam’s gut.
“This isn’t right. What you’re doing to him,” he says, loud enough above the other noise for the woman to hear.
She bends her neck around Dean’s nuzzle, shows Sam a face that’s more challenge than worry; cocky victory he wants to smack away with his fist.
“He’s mine,” she says. “He came back to me. His choice, not yours.”
“You tricked him. It’s not his choice,” Sam says, lip curling back from his teeth.
“Tell your brother to fuck off, Dean.”
Dean doesn’t, though. Just whispers against Yulisa’s neck, “I was so lost without you. Blind. You’re everything to me.” He kisses across her collarbone, follows it like a compass; south, down her chest. Drops to his knees when he reaches her belly, then wraps his arms around her thighs. Rests his cheek against her hip like a shameless puppy.
“Dean,” she prompts again, but is ignored.
“Bit of a catch twenty-two, isn’t it?” Sam says, smirking over the sight of the shotgun. “The spell’s kind of literal. Nice for you in the psychotic devotion department, but not so much when it comes to the details. ‘…In the name of God, you are a ferocious animal; you will come back to me as a tame sheep…’”
“I found it!” Bobby calls from down the hall.
Sam and Yulisa’s heads snap toward the shout. Bobby steps into the living room a minute later, shotgun resting in the crook of one elbow, devotional candle, rosemary, and what Sam guesses is a statuette of La Santisima Muerte cradled against his chest.
“Looks like you lose,” Sam says, smiling down Yulisa’s glare.
She surprises him and Bobby both by throwing back her head and barking out a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Sam asks, fingers flexing around his shotgun.
She stares at him, shakes her head. “Do you even know your brother? We fucked from one end of this house to the other. Floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall. There’s enough Dean smeared around here for ‘till death do us part.’ You’re not getting him back.”
Sam’s nostrils flare with a quick inhale, stock of the gun pulled hard against his shoulder. “You’re crazy,” he says.
She smirks and cards her fingers through the hairs on the back of Dean’s skull.
“Sam.”
His eyes snap to Bobby.
“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” he asks him.
Sam’s thinking he is. If what Yulisa says is true - and, goddamnit, knowing his brother it probably is - they have no choice. Sam’s shoulders hop with a dismissive shrug, more for Yulisa than anyone else.
“All’s fair in love and total war, right, Bobby?”
It’s Yulisa’s turn to look off-balance, and she does. For the span of an eye-blink. And then Sam’s fist collides with her jaw. Much to his surprise, he feels guiltier taking out Dean for a second time than he does for cold-cocking a woman.
*******************************************************************
Thursday - 12:09 a.m.
Total war is a tactic most notably put to use during the Civil War in 1864. The Germans had painted a version of it under the Blitzkrieg in ’43, and Roosevelt had declared it - in theory - in Casablanca during World War II. But no act of military aggression had been so utterly complete and devastating to an enemy as the blackened swath cut through Georgia on Sherman’s March to the Sea. His scorched earth policy - kill live stock, burn crops, destroy anything and everything that keeps people fighting - decisively disarmed the South, soldier and spirit in one. It’s cruel but effective in its brutality, and the only way Sam and Bobby can conceive of saving Dean.
Once Dean’d had been safely stretched once more across the backseat of the Impala, Bobby’d stripped Yulisa down to her birthday suit in the side yard and tossed her clothes - covered with Dean’s sweat and spit and hair and God knew what else - back into the house. Had turned the garden hose on her while she laid unconscious in the grass.
They’re lucky her closest neighbor is nearly a mile away.
By the time Bobby finishes, Sam’s made a complete circuit around the inside of the house with two gas cans. Bobby binds Yulisa’s hands and feet and drags her a safe distance. Rests her under the coverage of a tree far enough away it’s in no danger of going up with the house.
As Sam’s walking over to check in, Bobby leans toward her sleeping form, voice carrying across the still night to Sam.
“You ever touch Dean again - either one of these boys, for that matter - and I’ll make all this look like a goddamned ice cream social.”
Sam pretends he doesn’t hear. Bobby straightens and dries his hands against his vest. Adjusts his cap so the bill covers his eyes.
“We’re doin’ the right thing here, aren’t we, Bobby?” Sam asks through a blind of bangs.
Even covering Yulisa with a blanket from the trunk or one of their extra shirts might expose Dean to more danger. Sam knows it, he just wants Bobby to reassure him they’re being cautious, not cruel.
“You don’t mess with people’s free will,” Bobby says matter-of-factly. “She’s a witch or she’s an idiot, either way, you oughtta know: you do black, black comes back. Threefold.”
Sam nods beside him. Shuffles open the book of matches from Chico’s Lounge.
“You dance with the Devil, you suffer the burns.”
Just before the house goes up, there’s a call from the Impala.
“Sam! Goddamnit! Have you been eatin’ Bar-B-Q in the backseat of my car?”