[spn] Vacancy (Sam/Dean, pre-slash, secret santa fic)
Title: Vacancy
Pairing: Sam/Dean, pre-slash (vague reference to past relationship)
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 5k
Summary: When the world finally stopped crashing down around them, they bought a motel.
Spoilers: General spoilers through all seasons.
To Giftee: Merry Christmas, alakewood! For your "life after hunting" prompt. Dean's not a mechanic (not professionally, anyway) and there's no kid, but I hope it works for you!
General notes: the places in this fic are both real and fictional, some are a combination of both. If you recognize some of them, don't be surprised if some aspects are unfamiliar.
"It's awesome," Dean said to the woman with white hair and pink shoes that matched her pants that matched her shirt that matched her lipstick. Her brow was creased with concern. Sam could tell she wasn't so keen on selling even this lakeside dump to a guy with a leather jacket and a fading black eye. The jacket wasn't dad's (Sam didn't actually know what had happened to dad's), and the black eye was from a bronze bust of Teddy Roosevelt, courtesy of a poltergeist in Kissimmee.
"You sure about this, Dean?" Sam asked because he wasn't sure at all, not about any of it, the busted motel, the dark, choppy lake, the town trapped circa 1950 and inhabited by retirees and the descendants of migrant workers. He wasn't sure if he could have a life at all, less certain if he could have one with Dean, and in this place of all places.
Dean breathed deeply, the air so thick with humidity you practically drank it, and nodded. "This is it, Sammy."
____
They didn't close the door to hell.
Well, they closed one of them. Turns out there were a lot of doors and they were easy enough to re-open anyway. Seems ancient tablets weren't any more certain to be free of typos and omissions than anything else. Winchester luck.
They found Kevin. They killed Crowley. They bought a motel.
It happened in that order but there was a lot of stuff in between. There was a lot of fighting, with the bad guys and each other. Especially each other. There was the hell-door, closing it, hearing that it had re-opened soon after. There was losing Benny, who'd helped kill Crowley (who never saw that coming). And losing Cas, who'd helped with everything. He just went back to heaven, of course, but he never came around anymore so it was the same thing, really.
They nearly lost each other. Not to death. They knew how to cheat death--he was a pretty good sport about it nowadays--but they almost lost each other in the ways that normal people do, bickering and arguing and trying and failing to either stay together or go separate ways. But after the doors and after Kevin and after Crowley and Cas but before the motel, Dean had asked Sam if he really wanted a normal life, and if he did, why not live it with Dean?
Sam could think of plenty of reasons why not.
____
Dean liked wet places. He had ever since Hell. It took Sam a while to figure that out. At first he thought it was the heat drawing his brother to the southern states whenever they had a choice in where to hunt and weren't just being strung along on crusades to save the whole fucking world rather than one unlucky family in Baton Rouge. He figured maybe it was some result of Hell and it had bothered him to think that maybe Dean had grown accustomed to the temperature. But Dean, who'd always preferred winter before his trip below, still hated Nevada, West Texas, New Mexico, the arid places that wick the body and the spirit. It wasn't the girls in bikinis, either, who favorited the Gulf Coast, the Keys, the Islands (the one time they followed a hoodoo curse that way). Sam hadn't seen the Dean who would have chased bikini-clad girls down sun-bleached beaches for a long time.
So they had been in Florida, humid and sticky, when Dean had asked, "why not with me, Sammy?" Sam hadn't answered at first and Dean hadn't pushed, and they had burned the body of a boy who'd died long before either of them had been born. It had taken all night to dig up the grave, busting through the roots of a nearby tree, maybe planted there as a gravemarker, and it was the sort of sledgehammer metaphor that Sam hated but it occurred to him that even in life he'd never had roots like that.
"So what does this normal life of yours involve?" he'd asked Dean in the car, both of them stinking of smoke and earth, the bottoms of their pantslegs covered in sand spurs.
Dean shrugged. "Well it'd be ours, not mine. So, you know," he shrugged again, fading moonlight on his shoulders, "something we both know."
Sam laughed. "We know killing, Dean. Chasing ghosts. Both real and imagined."
"C'mon, man, that's not all we are."
"It's all we have in common."
Dean pulled off a sandspur, cursed when it pricked his fingers. "We're brothers, dude. We've got our whole lives in common."
"Yeah, well none of that's been exactly normal, Dean."
Dean had shrugged, raising his hands in defeat, a quicker surrender than Sam would have gotten years, months, weeks before. Then they had slept under a canopy of oak trees off highway 17 between one nowhere town and the next. In the morning Sam woke to the Impala's engine turning over and they headed north, past empty railroad stations and pack houses, the long, black lines of hot houses overgrown with fern, and in Putnam County Dean pulled into the parking lot of a battered motel and the restaurant next door, both closed, not for the season but for good. He drifted past them both, out onto a dock that Sam wouldn't have trusted to hold him and he watched the water for a long time while Sam waited in the car.
"Is there something here?" Sam had asked when Dean returned and Dean had said that there might be, but it was weeks before Sam understood what he meant.
____
They knew monsters and they knew killing and they knew death. They had those in common. But they had the road in common, too, and with it, that sacred haven to the two-lane traveler.
"We can do this, Sammy."
"I didn't say we couldn't, Dean, I just asked how."
Dean squared his shoulders, leaning against the kitchenette in a motel the next town over. "I've got, you know, private investors."
"You can't credit card scam your way into real estate."
"We're square now, dude. Cas set us up. No records, clean slates, a bank account..."
Sam narrowed his eyes. "Did you make an angel holy-magic you some cash?"
Dean shifted, the table complaining beneath his weight. "Why not? Like we don't deserve it?"
"Because he's not a genie in a bottle."
"No, he's a friggin' angel and we saved the goddamn world. A couple of times. Or didn't you notice from way up on that high horse of yours?"
"Okay, but... we don't know anything about running a business."
"Then you'll take some classes."
"Me? Why me?"
"You're the one who wanted normal, Sammy. How much more normal and boring does it get than business classes?"
"So what will you do?" Sam asked and Dean just threw his hands into the air like the answer should be obvious.
"I'll run the place, you know, check in customers, check out customers, wash the sheets. We could make it great, keep it clean, comfortable, just like we like. Maybe we can buy the restaurant eventually. I could learn to fish... I don't know, Sammy, I don't have it all figured out. I thought we'd figure this out together. Don't you want--"
And then the fight left him, just like that. Sam saw it go. Just like it had weeks before in the car outside the cemetery. Just like it had when they heard that the doors to Hell had reopened and all their trouble, all their losses had been for nothing, and to all that Dean had said, "yeah, well, whatever."
"Yeah," he said this time, pushing off of the table to stand by the window, "you're right, Sammy."
"Dean, I'm not saying--"
"It was a stupid idea. I mean, us? Stay in one place? Put down roots? I'd probably go stir-crazy, man. I wouldn't know what I was doing anyway."
"Listen, Dean--"
But Dean was crossing the room, reaching for his coat. "I'm gonna grab a burger, you want something?"
"Just, wait a minute, Dean."
Sam's grip was hard. He could feel the pulse in Dean's wrist and it took a few seconds but Dean stopped pulling eventually. The room was hot and the air was damp and so was Dean's skin. 'Why not with me, Sammy?' he heard again in the back of his mind and he could think of a lot of reasons why this would never work.
"So what do we call the place?" he asked.
______
The people in that small corner of Putnam County did not, at first, know what to make of the two young gentlemen who'd set up camp in the old Tangerine Cove Fishing Lodge. There were rumors that they were squatters, but Martine Harris told Charlene Banfield at Buster Banfield's wake that she'd arranged the sale of the motel to the two Singer boys outright, and that she wouldn't hear any evil spoke about such nice boys. They were good people once you got past the leather jacket and all that hair. Charlene made sure to pass this news on to the women's Auxiliary who felt it their duty to inform the Shriners who weren't at all surprised because the one in the leather jacket had come into Guy Carter's auto shop and Guy had said the young man knew his way around an engine for sure.
Still, the town watched the boys for any sign of mischief, but nothing presented itself to the contrary of Martine or Guy's estimation of their characters. The boys spent their days quietly, renovating the motel or the dock, and spent a lot of money at Harold Agee's Hardware and the K-Mart up in Palatka (and Angel's Diner on their way to it). They were never loud or troublesome, and they stuck close to their new home, with the exception of the tall one, who drove south most days, but Pastor Bill said it was due to the young man taking classes down in DeLand and the Sunday afternoon crowd at Dunkin' Donuts nodded with approval.
It was Pastor Bill, too, who said the boys were brothers, but Martine said behind her hand, and once the pastor's back was turned, that of course they'd tell that to a preacher.
_____
There was a lot involved in getting a motel running again, and not just the renovations and repairs, but permits and licenses and inspections and regulations. Between that and classwork, Sam stayed too busy to really wonder just why he was doing what he was doing. He'd done a lot of things because he was told, because he was supposed to, because someone expected him to. He wasn't sure yet which category this one fell into.
They shared the room behind the office and it wasn't any different than sharing any of the other rooms he'd shared with Dean since they were kids, except that when Dean threw his socks into a corner they tended to stay there until Sam picked them up or Dean became desperate for socks. They were going on three months and it was already the longest they'd stayed in one place together since Sam went off to Stanford.
They shared a bed, too, which wasn't awkward except when Sam thought a little too much about it, or remembered too much. Dean kept saying they could get another bed, even though there was no room for one and Sam never mentioned it. All of the money was going to the guest rooms anyway, so that the space they shared still smelled a little musty and the kitchenette featured a gas stove older than either of them and a porcelain sink bigger than the bath tub, but the bed was new and the TV was new and the two of them might as well have been new for as much as they were re-adjusting to staying put.
"Tell me again why we're replacing shag carpeting with more shag carpeting?" Sam asked on a warm October afternoon.
"It's not shag, Sam, it's 'plush'."
"It's green."
"It's olive."
"Alright, Martha, but why'd you buy it?"
They hoisted the first of several carpet rolls from the back of the rented truck and onto their shoulders. Dean shrugged his just before the weight settled heavy onto him. They were shoulders that had carried things much heavier, the fate of the world for one, and here they were, hauling carpet.
"'Cause it was sorta like the original, y'know? Keep it authentic."
"Your authenticity's making me a little queasy."
Sam couldn't see Dean roll his eyes but he didn't have to.
"Shaddup, you'll like it. We had carpet like this in the old house, remember?"
"No."
"Yeah, I guess you wouldn't."
They dropped the roll outside of Room 1 and Dean wiped his forehead, sweating even though the weather was cooling with fall starting.
"You think we'll be done by Christmas?" Sam asked, even though he knew that was the plan.
"Maybe," Dean said, looking around as if it was the first time he'd seen the place. He knocked on the door jamb of Room 1. He and Sam had re-hung all the doors and replaced the locks. First thing they did. "Yeah, Sammy, she'll be done by then."
"She?" Sam laughed. "Has she got a name yet?"
Dean shrugged again, swatting at a gnat. "Workin' on it.... Hey, speaking of working on something, you gonna fix that ice machine or have I got to buy a new one? I had a look under her hood but Chevy she ain't."
"I said I would, Dean."
"Six weeks ago."
"I've been busy."
"If you don't know how to fix it just say so."
"I know how!"
"Alright, then."
"Okay."
"Good. How 'bout we finish unloading the truck? If I keep it past five they'll charge me overnight."
______
Amelia once asked Sam about Dean. Nothing specific, just a quiet "tell me about your brother" in the late evening dark of their room. It had been one of the hardest questions Sam had ever tried to answer. 'He liked pie and played a fierce game of pool' was easy enough, 'he loved classic rock and he taught me to drive' was a little harder to say out loud but not otherwise difficult. The trouble for Sam with talking about Dean was that it was almost impossible to do without giving up a lot about himself too. What they did, who they were. Who they were to each other. How sometimes Dean was more of a father than a brother, sometimes more of a friend. That they would die for each other and had, a few times. How most of the time they made a great team, and sometimes the worst enemies. And that sometimes, in the dark, a brother was all either of them had.
For all that Sam wasn't sure if he could have a life with Dean, he'd already built his life around him.
Dean never asked about Amelia and Sam never offered. Sam and Amelia still kept in touch, mostly through email and texts. Mostly about Riot. Sam had thought about bringing the dog with him when he left, but Riot was better off with Amelia and Don, staying in one place and being part of a family.
Sam told this to Dean once and Dean had said that Sam already had a family. And then, in rare Dean form, admitted that that had been a pretty fucking stupid thing to say.
It took Sam a lot longer to forgive Dean for not understanding why Sam never looked for him than it did for Sam to forgive himself. Or even for Dean to forgive him.
Sam never told Dean that he'd spent almost as much of that year fixing the Impala as he had with Amelia.
_____
The year and renovations progressed. They had Thanksgiving dinner with Pastor Bill, who'd stopped by the motel a week before and insisted. Bill's wife had passed a decade ago, but he had a son and a daughter and a grandson who all lived out of state, but Bill said they had called him that morning and were doing well. Among those gathered at Bill's was the church pianist, Shirley, who never gave a last name but said her husband was two years passed and that they never did have any children though she'd always wanted them. She said that she'd stayed in the motel when she was a little girl, back before it was even a fishing lodge. Crescent Hideaway, it was called then, when her daddy had moved them down from Darien, Georgia and they had stayed in the motel for two weeks on account of the house not being finished. She was glad to see the motel being brought back into service and she wondered what they'd call it, and she asked if they were single because she had a few nieces in Seville and one in Interlachen, though that was quite a drive anyhow.
Dean told her they were really concentrating on getting the place up and running, and that maybe they'd call it The Roadhouse or The Singer Lodge but they hadn't really decided, and then he told her that she made the best pecan pie he'd ever tasted, and she told him how to make it, down to the teaspoon.
____
The second week of December, they got wind of a hunt. A college student had died in an abandoned two-story a few miles east of town. The police ruled it accidental, a fall down an old flight of stairs, but Guy Carter knew better and told Dean so.
"Said she was down there takin' pictures of the place. What she'd want pictures of that old rat trap for I don't know. Been boarded up since after I was married back in seventy-eight. That was my third wife, she was a brunette. Good lookin' thing. Skinny little legs. Anyhow, there was a family that nearly bought it in eighty-six but the feller they sent to inspect it fell off the roof and that was that. He wasn't the first, neither. The earliest I'd heard of was Charlie Bradley. No. Brady. Charlie Brady. Took his own life on account of being fired from the packin' house out off Union Avenue. I don't know any packin' job worth takin' a life over unless it was the boss's. Now my second wife..."
Guy's current wife had another story, one about a girl. "Jumped straight off the roof pretty as you please. Still in highschool. Imagine that, bein' her momma and having to live in that house after that. All over some boy that wouldn't have her. Charles, I think his name was. That was before my time, of course, but you hear stories. We wouldn't go near there when I was a little girl. Still wouldn't, truth be told. Say... have you asked Guy? He might know more about it. He's got as many stories as ex-wives."
They heard several other stories, including one from a deputy about a drifter who'd died there last Christmas, though not many folks had kicked up much fuss about that.
"It's practically our back yard, Dean," Sam said one evening after dinner while washing dishes. They'd finished most of the rooms and had beds to spare, but Sam still shared the little space with his brother.
"Yeah, so we have to be careful," Dean said, sliding his plate into the basin for Sam to wash.
"We're not always the best at careful."
Dean leaned against the counter, shrugged innocently. "C'mon, my middle name is careful."
"If we get caught digging up a grave, it won't be as easy as outrunning a few cops and leaving the state. We could lose this, Dean."
"So we won't get caught, Sammy."
Dean looked certain. He looked like something else, too.
"You're excited about this!" Sam said, poking a wet finger into Dean's chest.
Dean looked shocked. "A girl is dead, Sam."
"Yeah. You look real broken up about it."
"Alright, I mean, am I happy a young woman was cut down in the prime of her life by what is probably a vengeful spirit? No, of course not. Am I stoked we get to pump Casper with a faceful of rock salt? Yes. Yes, I am."
Sam sighed, but it was mostly because he knew Dean expected it. He hadn't seen Dean this excited since they'd signed papers on the motel, and he couldn't remember how long before then.
"Alright, so we do the job like any other."
"Yep."
"I get the courthouse, you get the library."
"But--"
"And if you're just going to stand there you can rinse."
_____
At the courthouse, Sam found a name, and at the library Dean found a story in the news archives that seemed to drain his enthusiasm for the hunt. Sam couldn't blame him.
In 1957, Phillip Brady shot and killed his wife, Charlene Brady, in their home of fourteen years, then took his own life. All nine of their children had been upstairs at the time. What would have been their tenth died with Charlene.
Two weeks before Christmas, Dean and Sam loaded the Impala with shovels and shotguns and flashlights and gasoline, and a little after midnight they salted and burned both Mr. and Mrs. Brady, the fires side-by-side in the earth, fitfully illuminating their faded headstones. After a while they back-filled the graves, putting out the last of the fire and taking care to scatter leaves over the freshly disturbed dirt, covering their tracks better than they ever had before.
They spent the rest of the night in the old house, Dean squatting in the dust at the foot of the stairs where Mrs. Brady had been found fifty-six years earlier, and Sam upstairs, careful of old floorboards, wandering into each room, trying not to remember the faces of the children from the photo in the paper.
They didn't find anything but spiders and graffiti, and never heard a sound that wasn't normal for such a place or such a night, until just before dawn when there was a thud and footsteps and a flashlight in the foyer.
"I thought I recognized you boys," Pastor Bill said after Sam came thundering down the stairs, hiding the pistol behind his back as soon as he saw that Dean had done the same. "Aren't you all cold? Come on out and sit in the car with me."
_____
Carol's diner, by Dean's estimation, served the best breakfast in the whole of the contiguous 48 states, no exception, and the morning after they burned the Bradys he asked if Sam wanted pancakes.
"Weird night." Sam said over coffee and Dean widened his eyes in recognition of such an obvious statement, but nodded with his mouth full, more syrup than flapjack.
"What I don't get," Dean said when he could, "is if dad was here all those years ago, why were the Bradys still in business?"
Sam shrugged, warming his fingers around his mug. The place smelled like bacon and coffee and cinnamon this early in the morning, with the pies baking for the day. "I don't know. Maybe they were quiet at the time. Maybe he had bigger problems. Pastor Bill said dad came to him to bless an old axe. That sounds more monster than spirit."
"Yeah," Dean said.
After a while, Sam said "Hey, you think we stayed at the motel?"
Dean shrugged. "Only place in town apart from the B&B."
"You don't remember anything?"
"I was seven, Sam. Tops." Dean seemed annoyed, just for a moment, then his voice was soft. "No, I don't remember. I actually think it's nuts that Pastor Bill remembered us."
"Meeting a hunter for the first time... that's pretty memorable. And he said his wife looked after us for a few days. I'm sure that doesn't happen often."
"Yeah," Dean nodded. "Hunters do come through, though. Hell, we've driven through a half dozen times over the years even if we didn't stop, but we might have if there'd been a decent motel." He smiled. "Maybe we should have a Hunter's Special for room rates. Continental Breakfast and gun repair."
"Yeah," Sam snorted, "advertise that."
"Hot showers and rock salt rounds."
"Sounds like home sweet home," Sam said, smiling, and Dean was laughing, and the pie, when it came, was still warm from the oven.
______
On Christmas eve they went to Martine's Christmas party and Sam suspected that Dean's eagerness to go was due mostly to the promise of baked goods. Sam had to buy a new shirt for the evening, a nice button-up that wasn't covered in monster goo or paint, and Dean wore a sweater with Santa's face and a jolly "HO HO HO" thanks to a bet he lost to Sam, that Sam wouldn't get the ice machine working again.
Martine lived outside of the town proper, across the railroad tracks, along back roads with no lights, crowded by oaks and palms, making the dark darker. Past the Brady house and the cemetery, past Lake Stella and abandoned ferneries, past empty packing houses and small, patched-up homes that seemed empty at first, but dim lights in windows or twinkling Christmas lights around doorways said otherwise. They were homes too broken, walls too thin to survive a winter up north, but here they sufficed, shabbily flourishing amongst the palmettos.
"Have we ever been to a Christmas party?" Sam asked over the Pogues and 'Fairytale of New York'.
Dean smirked.
"I don't mean that kind of party, Dean. Strippers dressed as elves don't count."
Dean shrugged. The lights from the dash illuminating his face, catching on the glitter of his tacky sweater. Sam still couldn't believe he was actually wearing it. "We made our own parties, Sammy."
"Yeah," Sam said with a laugh. "We didn't always have much to celebrate,."
"A lot of people don't. That doesn't make us too different." Dean pulled at his collar, scratched at his neck, then turned down the heat and the familiar rattle of it went a little quieter. He hated the way it dried out the air. "Anyway, speak for yourself, dude. I didn't need much. I usually got what I wanted."
"Ammo and a new Zippo?" Sam said.
Dean gave another shrug but he didn't clarify or correct Sam.
"Alright," Sam said, "what's your best Christmas ever?"
Dean smirked again.
"Once again, not that kind of 'best'."
Dean laughed and after a while it faded to a smile and then he said, "Okay, well... that year that dad had the flu."
"You mean the year we called him Scrooge until March?"
"Yep, that one. We all went to Bobby's and dad barely left the couch--"
"And Bobby had just stopped smoking."
"--and I wanted to make a fruit cake even though I had no idea what one even was--"
"You used canned fruit cocktail and brownie mix and nearly burned down Bobby's house."
"--and you wanted to sleep in the car 'cause you thought it was the only place Santa would find you."
"Then we found that stray puppy in Bobby's yard and gave it to dad for Christmas."
"And he was allergic."
"So Bobby kept it--
"--and named him Rumsfeld," they said at the same time.
The music was drowned out by their laughter and after a while Dean coughed and sniffed and said, "I wonder what the hell ever happened to that dog."
Sam shook his head and laughed again. "Man, I think I'd forgotten about all of that until just now. I remember thinking it was a pretty horrible Christmas at the time."
Dean sniffed again, watching the road. "Yeah... we were all together, though. You know?"
"Yeah," Sam said. "I guess we were."
Dean's sweater was a hit at Martine's party and so was Sam's cheek, which got a kiss from every elderly woman in the room. There were "children" their age, most of them married, and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Dean found the one single woman even remotely in their age range, a pretty brunette, Guy Carter's step-daughter, but when Sam wandered over they were talking about her 1969 Oldsmobile 442 and as far as Sam could tell those were the only numbers they discussed.
______
"That it?"
"That's her, Sammy! Get your ass out here!"
Sam could only just hear Dean shouting from the parking lot, but the smile was audible even that far. He closed the electrical panel, picked up two Solo cups of eggnog and shouldered his way out of the office, into the cool Florida Christmas night air. Dean was standing in the parking lot, looking up, hands shoved deep into his pockets.
"She's a beauty, Sammy," Dean said, beaming almost as bright as their sign. 'THE IMPALA MOTEL', it read, and below it 'VACANCY'.
"It's a good name," Sam said, handing his brother a glass.
"Damn good."
"Maybe a little too classy for the place."
"No way, Sammy. We got class comin' outta our asses."
Sam laughed. "My point exactly."
"Yeah, well," Dean said, then lifted his cup toward Sam. "To all this."
Sam lifted his and the plastic clicked dully together. "To all this."
They drank and Dean nodded appreciatively. The wind off of the lake blew colder and Dean drifted closer, using Sammy as a windbreak, and Sam turned a little to shield his brother, their breath mingling white in the air.
"Hey, Sam, I want to, uh... you know... I want you to know--"
But whatever Dean was going to say was interrupted by headlights on the highway pulling into the lot and the woman that climbed out of the minivan, stretching and yawning and looking tired and with a story about traffic and bad timing, three kids, one husband, and a dog all asleep in the car packed with gifts and she knew it was late but was there any way she could maybe get a room?
"Whaddya say, Sammy? First customer?" Dean asked, but he was already leading the woman into the office and explaining the rates.
Sam looked up at the sign one more time. 'Vacancy' it read, bright against the clear, dark sky, winking down at him with neon enthusiasm.
"Yeah," he said. "Why not?"
