SPN Fic: The Winchesters Don't Care About Math (Six Things about Sam's Absence)
Title: The Winchesters Don't Care About Math (Six Things about Sam's Absence)
Pairing: None.
Rating: 14A for language, gen.
Spoilers: Pilot (pre-series)
Words: 4172-ish, beta'd by quackaddict
Disclaimer: Sure, I make tonnes of money from this. But I'm masquerading as a poor university student for cover. /sarcasm
Summary: Four years, three Winchesters and six things.
A/N: My first SPN fic! I was working on quackaddict's promptless prompt for the "leave a prompt and I'll write you a drabble" meme that I've actually written no drabbles for because ... well, I'm not really sure why but I just haven't. They're going to be fic(let)s more than likely. I've started singingrl's, too. And I have two fics for highwaymiles due on Sunday, as well. Me= slightly screwed. Oh, and the title? MotherEFF it was hard to come up with that. quackaddict and I sat there throwing titles back and forth at each other until it ended up being things like "Five Times Mari Gave Up On Titling This Story" and "Five Times the Winchesters Were Never Reunited in Four Years and the One Time Sam Almost Lost His Shit And Killed His Girlfriend Anyway." So yeah. The Winchesters don't care about math here.
1) It might have been the second day or the third day or the fourth but it was definitely within the first week that Sam had been gone that Dean packed up the car, ready to go fetch him back. He'd loaded up with extra ammo and a couple of his favourite weapons, intent on getting out some of his pent out aggression on unsuspecting monsters and gobbledygooks and whatnots along the way until he reached California and the coast and Sam.
It was hard to remember exactly how many days it was because Dean lost track of the time after Sam left, even in those first few days. They mushed together into sun and moon, training and strategizing, awake and dreaming but not at the right times. It angered Dean to even think that he relied on someone so much to keep his head straight. So he aimed to make everything right.
"Leave him be," his father's voice was hollow-sounding in the small kitchen, where he was sitting, nursing a glass of Jack the night Dean intended to leave.
"What?" Dean stopped dead, duffle slung over his shoulder, shotgun in hand.
"Leave Sam where he is," his father told him slowly but firmly.
"Are you serious? Dad, he doesn't belong there! He needs to be here, with us. You know that," Dean insisted.
John shook his head. "No, I don't," his father admitted, so quietly that Dean wasn't even sure he'd said what he heard.
"This is insane. Family needs to be together, to stick together. I'm going to hunt him down and bring him back," Dean turned on his heel toward the door.
John's chair scraped against the cheap flooring as he stood up. "We hunt monsters, demons, beasts- not family," he said roughly. He picked up his glass and disappeared into the living room to drink in the dark, alone.
Dean stood facing the door for a minute, maybe two, before his duffle slid to the floor with a soft thump. He laid the shotgun on top and shrugged out of his jacket.
Pouring himself his own glass of Jack he joined his father in the sparse living room, only two chairs now and a black and white TV, and said nothing.
2) John wasn't invincible. That fact became glaringly real to Dean after Sam hauled ass out of whatever podunk town they were in when he hopped that bus for California, when he left them behind to figure out what the hell happened.
Dean was sure that his dad had been injured before in hunts, he had to have been. Right? It wasn't until Sam left that he started noticing how after a particularly long night of staking out a haunted site his left shoulder sagged a little more from an old war wound. Or how he didn't seem bounce back as quickly from being thrown into walls or through windows by vengeful spirits like he once did. Or, hell, that he walked with an almost un-noticeable limp when it rained, from years of abuse on his body.
He suddenly realized how much more closely he'd have to watch John's back, how alert he'd have to be to make sure that nothing happened to him- either of them. Because now it was just them. Sammy wasn't there anymore to produce long, complicated chants seemingly out of nowhere to save their asses, or hand them ammo when they needed to reload, or stitch Dean's wounds because Dad had clumsy, awkward hands that could never hold the needle steady enough, even moreso now. Now that Sam was gone.
John was never one for details but now he didn't even tell Dean where he was going when he left, what he was doing, what monster he would be hunting. He gave Dean gruff orders to stay put and ward the room/apartment/rickety old house, or sent him instructions for his own hunt, something that started out of the blue about six months after Sam left with no ceremony attached to it. Dean thought he'd feel like more of a man when he got to go on his first hunt, feel a sense of accomplishment or maturity but really he just felt confused and maybe even a little nervous. But never scared, oh no. Never.
One night when they were in some backwater town in North Carolina or maybe it was South Carolina, hell- could have been South Dakota for all Dean can remember. One night John stumbled in from his hunt, after being gone for a week. Dean had sat up from his sprawled position on the bed, watching the Wheel on the shitty TV, gun cocked and aimed in three seconds flat. He had the gun hidden back away under his pillow in the same amount of time when he saw his father clutching at his side and bleeding from - well, Dean wasn't really sure where exactly the blood was coming from.
He patched him up as best as he could. Staunched the bleeding from a gash hidden in his hairline, what looked like some sort of wound from a horned animal in his arm, a large slash that ran up his entire ribcage on the right and tried to force Tylenol in him to bring down the raging fever he had, probably from shock and exposure because his toes were frostbitten but it was late July so Dean was quite confused and more than a little worried.
Dean watched him through the night. Applied cold compresses and tried to scrub some of the dirt off his face and arms and legs and everywhere while John alternated between shaking with chills and sweating like a sauna. He muttered things, unintelligible things that Dean couldn't even try to decipher even if they were loud enough to understand. Once dawn broke and the birds signalled the start to a new day Dean was worn out and wan, unable to bring his father's fever down. The wound in his arm opened back up and started to bleed steadily again. Dean applied pressure as best as he could but his father was too fidgety to sit still for the compress and Dean gave up, throwing the ruined motel towel on the floor.
He escaped to the bathroom where everything was bright and cool and as sterile as he had seen in the past few months. He leaned his forehead against the mirror and took deep, calming breaths, knowing he was going to have to face up to the fact that his father was sick. John Winchester, the toughest, bravest, gutsiest, ballsiest man he knew (aside from himself, of course) was sick and in trouble and he didn't know how to fix him, how to make him his father again.
"I can't lose you, too," he murmured against the mirror, so faint he could barely hear himself and fogging it with his breath. He breathed deeply, splashed some water on his face and stepped outside the bathroom. He watched his father shift in the bed, bathed in the yellowish light from the bedside lamp and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
He scrolled through the numbers until he reached the two for Sam- his dorm room number and his cell- that he had acquired through some fast talk and thick compliments to a Stanford admissions secretary during his first pass through that area over a year earlier. He'd never had a reason to use them before. Not an important one, anyway.
Sam knew curses. He knew spells and hexes and demons and their powers, he knew the most obscure rites and ceremonies of remote and long-thought extinct civilisations and Dean knew he could help Dad. He had to.
He keyed in the number and had his thumb on the send button when John stirred more on the bed and groaned loudly. "D'n," he mumbled from between his cracked lips. Dean dropped the phone on the table and hurried to John's side, checking his forehead and closing his eyes in relief that the fever had broken. John faded in and out of sleep for the rest of the day but he continued to improve.
John never told Dean exactly what he had been hunting and Dean never told John that he had literally thisclose to calling for Sam to help him. Most of all, though, he never admitted to himself that he was just a little disappointed that his father had recovered so he never got to make that call.
3) Dean's first solo hunt wasn't what he expected. He had been sent to Carson City, Nevada by John to rid a house there of a gremlin that was generally harmless but was making messes and keeping the family there up at nights. It was an easy job, one that he could have done in his sleep. The family was beyond grateful and treated him to a large home cooked meal, something he hadn't had since he could remember. They were nice people, he thought. He hoped the gremlin was the worst they ever encountered from the supernatural.
When Dean got in the car he couldn’t help but notice how close to California he was. Without giving it a second thought he was headed West and three hours later he was pulling into Palo Alto. He drove down the familiar streets, even though it had been a few months since he’d swung by this area, and cruised by Sam’s apartment. The lights were off, no signs of life inside, and he drove away disappointed. He realized he’d been hoping Sam would know he was there, could feel Dean’s accomplishment from his hunt because if anyone would understand it would be him. Like a punch to the gut he wished for the millionth time since Sam had left that he was still there with him but immediately quashed it back down with a shake of his head.
He found a bar, some small cubby that was packed with students out for a drink, celebrating finishing this paper or that exam. Dean needed to celebrate too, to bask in his first solo hunt, if nothing else, and maybe calm the nerves a little. He sat down at the bar and ordered three shots, downed them one after the other, and then a beer to nurse for the rest of the night. His shaking hands were too much of a reminder of how far he'd come tonight, all by himself, so he tucked one in his jacket pocket and squeezed the other around the beer bottle so tightly he worried it would shatter from his grip until the alcohol hit his system enough to ease the tremors.
He hunched over his beer, ignoring the crowd Sam had thrown himself into and feeling like this was a terrible idea, coming here and hoping for things that would never happen. He threw some bills on the bar, chugged his beer and stood up. He would walk around for awhile before finding a motel to crash in for the night and then head back to John in the morning.
He started for the door when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a mop of shaggy brown hair and a wide, infectious smile. He jerked around, focus a little unsteady from the alcohol- and collided with someone. He grabbed their elbow and apologised immediately, eyes still trying to find what they saw again.
A hand covered his on the elbow he was holding and Dean finally looked down into the big blue eyes of a petite blonde thing that was smiling up at him brightly. Dean blinked down at her.
"I’m Jenny," she told him, her smile getting impossibly bigger. Dean glanced up at the room, scanning for - probably nothing, now that he thought about it. Just a figment of his imagination, he was sure.
"Dean," he replied, smiling back. "Can I buy you a drink for being so clumsy and running into you?"
He turned her toward the bar and ended up hearing all about her life story, including the three times she changed her major, her career as a cheerleader (head cheerleader, to be exact) and the time she showed up to her anthropology exam an hour late and boy was her professor angry while he ignored the feeling like someone was watching him because he was sure it was just his imagination.
4) On a particularly chilly night in the trees and underbrush in the backwoods of Wisconsin Dean and John were tracking a hodag. They crept through the woods as quietly as possible, needing to catch the creature off guard if they had any hope of catching it, killing it.
The hodag had started attacking people in recent months, killing two, which drew John's attention after they brought down a poltergeist in Alabama the week before. Turns out that global warming and destruction of natural habitat affects even thought-to-be fictional creatures because it was searching for food and shelter, but finding campers and hunters and damned if it wasn't a nasty little beast to come into contact with.
Black as night, which made it incredibly hard to track at, well, night, with spikes on the back and large horns on the head that were sure to cause a mite bit of pain before it clamped down on a major artery and bled a victim to death. John had warned him to not get gored, handed him a shotgun loaded with silver bullets just to be sure and sent him in one direction while he went the other.
Dean tracked what he hoped was the trail of the hodag but he really couldn’t be sure in this light and he sure as hell wasn’t a wilderness man so he was just going on instinct and a good guess. There was a new moon tonight and it was hard as hell to see anything, let alone an angry black monster. He wondered how many more nights they would have to be out here if they didn’t get the damn thing tonight and counted how long the new moon would still ... wait.
He tried to remember the exact date, times blending together in his head after spending a week in the car getting here. The new moon started three nights ago, the full moon would start in less than two weeks on the... which made tomorrow- Dean stopped short and realized that tomorrow, which was actually today as it was now past midnight, was Sam’s twenty-first birthday.
And then the hodag damn near exploded from underneath some brush and rammed into him, sinking one long horn into his right calf. Dean grunted and pumped the shotgun, unloading two rounds into the creature’s head before he knew what he was doing and then collapsed to the ground under the now-dead weight. The angle was awkward and putting pressure on his leg, bent at the side but he couldn’t move because now he became aware of the pain and it hurt like a motherfucker.
He could hear John crashing through the trees and brush now, calling out his name and when he got close enough Dean grunted out in response, hand tightening on the shotgun reflexively against the pain. John grumbled at him when he found him, horn still embedded in Dean’s leg and told him to hang on when he grabbed the hodag and pulled so the horn slid out neatly. He salted and burned it quickly, taking care to stamp out any remaining embers when it was mostly charred before he hefted Dean up and all but dragged him out of the woods.
"Didn’t I tell you to watch yourself out there?" John asked gruffly once he loaded Dean into the truck.
"Got distracted," Dean gritted out, finding an old bandana in the glove compartment and tying it around his leg. John handed him a couple pills from the truck’s first aid kit and Dean took them without asking what they were.
"What’s so damn important that you lost concentration like this?" John slammed the truck into gear, clearly angry.
"Today’s Sammy’s birthday," Dean told him. John didn’t even blink, just kept driving. "Did you hear me?"
"I know what day it is, Dean. You just can’t let something like that cloud your judgement, you know that," John chastised.
Dean bit back a retort and closed his eyes, waiting for the meds to kick in. By the time they got to the motel Dean was feeling more than okay and the wound wasn’t bleeding too badly. John managed to stitch him up without inflicting much more damage and got Dean into bed while he went to take a shower. Everything felt sort of fuzzy to Dean but that was okay because his leg didn’t hurt anymore.
He grabbed his phone from the bedside table and slumped down in bed, scrolling through the numbers until he found Sam’s. He had called him exactly twice before, checking to make sure that he was okay and trying to convince himself that Sam was happy. The phone dialled the number for him and he listened to the ringing, once, twice, three times and more until Dean was sure he wasn’t home until he did answer.
"H’lo?" Sam answered groggily. Leave it to his brother to go to bed at a decent hour on his twenty-first. Dean didn’t say anything, not sure what to say exactly.
Sam cleared his throat. "Hello? Who is this?" Still no response. "Dean?"
Dean inhaled sharply, caught air in the wrong tube and let out a squeaky huff. "Hi."
"Are you okay? Is Dad-"
"We’re fine. More or less," Dean almost giggled at that and he knew the drugs had definitely gone to his head.
"Oh. Do you need help or something?" Sam asked and Dean could hear rustling on his end, perhaps crawling out of bed.
Dean opened his mouth to tell him - what? ‘Yes, come back now?’ ‘No, but I miss you and want to see you?’ ‘I got gored by a hodag and the drugs have made me loopy so come home.’
"Happy birthday," he whispered instead. He could hear Sam breathing lightly on the other end but neither of them said anything. "Okay. That’s all I wanted to say. Bye, Sammy."
And Dean ended the call. He waited for a minute, staring at the phone, half expecting a ring back but it never came. When John came out of the shower Dean was asleep and still holding the phone in his lax grip.
5) Twice a year like clockwork for four years, John dialled the number for Sam's main line. The first couple years it had been in his dorm room and the message on the machine carried the background noise of a typical boy's dorm, even though Sam's message was as serious as he could possibly be at eighteen and nineteen years. Hello, you've reached Sam Winchester. I'm unable to take your call at the moment so please leave your name, number and a brief message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.
Passing into his twenties there was a noticeable difference. The number had changed, something residential that John stopped himself from looking up. He knew Dean knew and that was enough. It had to be. The third year, Sam's first in the new place, he sounded more relaxed, Hey, this is Sam. I'm not around at the moment so leave one and I'll getcha back.
The fourth year, the last year, John was surprised when he called and the message was, Hey, you've reached Sam and Jess. We're out right now but we're happy to call you back when we get in! Leave one! He could faintly hear a girl giggling in the background and he could tell Sam was smiling while he made the greeting.
John never left a message, because he was never sure what to say or how to say it, but hearing Sam’s voice- safe, "normal" and happy- made him relieved that he’d never worked up the balls to say something.
6) Sam sat straight up in bed, gasping with his t-shirt clinging to his sweatslick back. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had one of those dreams, the ones that took his breath away and made him struggle to remember why he had to wake up. He glanced over to make sure Jess was still asleep, didn't want to worry her or involve her or bother (endanger) her with this. He slipped out of bed easily and padded to the bathroom first to splash some water on his face before continuing to the kitchen.
He turned on the soft overhead oven light and grabbed a scrap piece of paper from their grocery list pile (how domestic) from the clip on the fridge. He jotted down as many details as possible, aiming to working this out of his system, put it to rest because for all he knew it was just a regular dream and he didn't want it haunting him unnecessarily for the next week. Halloween was, after all, just a week away and it always brought up bad memories.
The next night followed much the same pattern and the dream became clearer. He was having trouble believing it was a normal dream, and not one of those dreams. Jess commented the next morning how tired he looked, did he sleep alright? (Her mouth was open to scream but she couldn’t.) Sam ducked his head away from her hand stroking through his hair and mumbled something about worrying about his upcoming torts exam. Jess frowned but let him have his mood because he’d be happier once he worked through it.
The third night was too much. He couldn’t take it anymore. He wouldn’t watch her go through that over and over because he’d seen what it did to families, been the product of it and he wouldn’t become his father. No way, shape or form. (Why did it cut her open? Did it want to watch her bleed?) So that morning, after Jess found him in the breakfast nook instead of in bed with her, he kissed her goodbye like any other morning and left the house as usual.
Instead of going to class, though, he made his way to the bus station. He’d been following the news, always had, and he had a good idea of where Dean and Dad were and what they were currently hunting. He just needed to get away.
Sam stepped up to the counter. "Can I get a one-way ticket-" His cell went off and he stepped away, apologising, to answer.
"Yeah?"
"Oh, good. I was hoping I could catch you before class. Can you pick up some milk on your way home?"
"I... guess?" Sam frowned. He couldn’t very well tell her that he couldn’t because he was fleeing the state and her.
"Oh! And some eggs too, I just noticed we were out. I want to bake some cupcakes for the party this weekend. And we have to work on your costume."
"You know how I feel about Halloween," Sam told her, smiling despite himself.
"I have ways to wear you down, Sam Winchester. I am determined to make sure you have a good time. But," she sighed. "If you don‘t I'll bake you some chocolate chip cookies. How about that?"
"The ones-"
"With the double chips and cinnamon? Yes."
"You temptress," Sam laughed.
"Of course! But I need eggs and milk to make anything. You’ll pick those up?"
"Yeah, I’ll grab them when I’m done."
"Thanks, Sam. I’ll see you later. I love you." She hung up and Sam stood in the middle of the bus station with a goofy smile on his face.
"I love you, too," he whispered, putting the phone away. He stepped back up to the counter where the clerk was waiting.
"Sorry, I won’t need that ticket after all."
He walked back toward campus to finish his classes for the day and on the way home picked up the milk and eggs, as instructed. It had been years since he’d had those dreams, after all. He was just overreacting because it was so close to Halloween and his mom’s... November 2nd.
He squashed the voice in his head that sounded so much like Dean’s, telling him De Nile wasn’t just a river in Egypt and returned home to Jess. And on November 2nd, when he returned home again, after spending the weekend with Dean, and was greeted by the sight of those famous chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen table he felt relief that he’d talked himself out of such a stupid idea (They never noticed at first, until it was too late).
And then he started to climb the stairs to find Jess...
Pairing: None.
Rating: 14A for language, gen.
Spoilers: Pilot (pre-series)
Words: 4172-ish, beta'd by quackaddict
Disclaimer: Sure, I make tonnes of money from this. But I'm masquerading as a poor university student for cover. /sarcasm
Summary: Four years, three Winchesters and six things.
A/N: My first SPN fic! I was working on quackaddict's promptless prompt for the "leave a prompt and I'll write you a drabble" meme that I've actually written no drabbles for because ... well, I'm not really sure why but I just haven't. They're going to be fic(let)s more than likely. I've started singingrl's, too. And I have two fics for highwaymiles due on Sunday, as well. Me= slightly screwed. Oh, and the title? MotherEFF it was hard to come up with that. quackaddict and I sat there throwing titles back and forth at each other until it ended up being things like "Five Times Mari Gave Up On Titling This Story" and "Five Times the Winchesters Were Never Reunited in Four Years and the One Time Sam Almost Lost His Shit And Killed His Girlfriend Anyway." So yeah. The Winchesters don't care about math here.
1) It might have been the second day or the third day or the fourth but it was definitely within the first week that Sam had been gone that Dean packed up the car, ready to go fetch him back. He'd loaded up with extra ammo and a couple of his favourite weapons, intent on getting out some of his pent out aggression on unsuspecting monsters and gobbledygooks and whatnots along the way until he reached California and the coast and Sam.
It was hard to remember exactly how many days it was because Dean lost track of the time after Sam left, even in those first few days. They mushed together into sun and moon, training and strategizing, awake and dreaming but not at the right times. It angered Dean to even think that he relied on someone so much to keep his head straight. So he aimed to make everything right.
"Leave him be," his father's voice was hollow-sounding in the small kitchen, where he was sitting, nursing a glass of Jack the night Dean intended to leave.
"What?" Dean stopped dead, duffle slung over his shoulder, shotgun in hand.
"Leave Sam where he is," his father told him slowly but firmly.
"Are you serious? Dad, he doesn't belong there! He needs to be here, with us. You know that," Dean insisted.
John shook his head. "No, I don't," his father admitted, so quietly that Dean wasn't even sure he'd said what he heard.
"This is insane. Family needs to be together, to stick together. I'm going to hunt him down and bring him back," Dean turned on his heel toward the door.
John's chair scraped against the cheap flooring as he stood up. "We hunt monsters, demons, beasts- not family," he said roughly. He picked up his glass and disappeared into the living room to drink in the dark, alone.
Dean stood facing the door for a minute, maybe two, before his duffle slid to the floor with a soft thump. He laid the shotgun on top and shrugged out of his jacket.
Pouring himself his own glass of Jack he joined his father in the sparse living room, only two chairs now and a black and white TV, and said nothing.
2) John wasn't invincible. That fact became glaringly real to Dean after Sam hauled ass out of whatever podunk town they were in when he hopped that bus for California, when he left them behind to figure out what the hell happened.
Dean was sure that his dad had been injured before in hunts, he had to have been. Right? It wasn't until Sam left that he started noticing how after a particularly long night of staking out a haunted site his left shoulder sagged a little more from an old war wound. Or how he didn't seem bounce back as quickly from being thrown into walls or through windows by vengeful spirits like he once did. Or, hell, that he walked with an almost un-noticeable limp when it rained, from years of abuse on his body.
He suddenly realized how much more closely he'd have to watch John's back, how alert he'd have to be to make sure that nothing happened to him- either of them. Because now it was just them. Sammy wasn't there anymore to produce long, complicated chants seemingly out of nowhere to save their asses, or hand them ammo when they needed to reload, or stitch Dean's wounds because Dad had clumsy, awkward hands that could never hold the needle steady enough, even moreso now. Now that Sam was gone.
John was never one for details but now he didn't even tell Dean where he was going when he left, what he was doing, what monster he would be hunting. He gave Dean gruff orders to stay put and ward the room/apartment/rickety old house, or sent him instructions for his own hunt, something that started out of the blue about six months after Sam left with no ceremony attached to it. Dean thought he'd feel like more of a man when he got to go on his first hunt, feel a sense of accomplishment or maturity but really he just felt confused and maybe even a little nervous. But never scared, oh no. Never.
One night when they were in some backwater town in North Carolina or maybe it was South Carolina, hell- could have been South Dakota for all Dean can remember. One night John stumbled in from his hunt, after being gone for a week. Dean had sat up from his sprawled position on the bed, watching the Wheel on the shitty TV, gun cocked and aimed in three seconds flat. He had the gun hidden back away under his pillow in the same amount of time when he saw his father clutching at his side and bleeding from - well, Dean wasn't really sure where exactly the blood was coming from.
He patched him up as best as he could. Staunched the bleeding from a gash hidden in his hairline, what looked like some sort of wound from a horned animal in his arm, a large slash that ran up his entire ribcage on the right and tried to force Tylenol in him to bring down the raging fever he had, probably from shock and exposure because his toes were frostbitten but it was late July so Dean was quite confused and more than a little worried.
Dean watched him through the night. Applied cold compresses and tried to scrub some of the dirt off his face and arms and legs and everywhere while John alternated between shaking with chills and sweating like a sauna. He muttered things, unintelligible things that Dean couldn't even try to decipher even if they were loud enough to understand. Once dawn broke and the birds signalled the start to a new day Dean was worn out and wan, unable to bring his father's fever down. The wound in his arm opened back up and started to bleed steadily again. Dean applied pressure as best as he could but his father was too fidgety to sit still for the compress and Dean gave up, throwing the ruined motel towel on the floor.
He escaped to the bathroom where everything was bright and cool and as sterile as he had seen in the past few months. He leaned his forehead against the mirror and took deep, calming breaths, knowing he was going to have to face up to the fact that his father was sick. John Winchester, the toughest, bravest, gutsiest, ballsiest man he knew (aside from himself, of course) was sick and in trouble and he didn't know how to fix him, how to make him his father again.
"I can't lose you, too," he murmured against the mirror, so faint he could barely hear himself and fogging it with his breath. He breathed deeply, splashed some water on his face and stepped outside the bathroom. He watched his father shift in the bed, bathed in the yellowish light from the bedside lamp and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
He scrolled through the numbers until he reached the two for Sam- his dorm room number and his cell- that he had acquired through some fast talk and thick compliments to a Stanford admissions secretary during his first pass through that area over a year earlier. He'd never had a reason to use them before. Not an important one, anyway.
Sam knew curses. He knew spells and hexes and demons and their powers, he knew the most obscure rites and ceremonies of remote and long-thought extinct civilisations and Dean knew he could help Dad. He had to.
He keyed in the number and had his thumb on the send button when John stirred more on the bed and groaned loudly. "D'n," he mumbled from between his cracked lips. Dean dropped the phone on the table and hurried to John's side, checking his forehead and closing his eyes in relief that the fever had broken. John faded in and out of sleep for the rest of the day but he continued to improve.
John never told Dean exactly what he had been hunting and Dean never told John that he had literally thisclose to calling for Sam to help him. Most of all, though, he never admitted to himself that he was just a little disappointed that his father had recovered so he never got to make that call.
3) Dean's first solo hunt wasn't what he expected. He had been sent to Carson City, Nevada by John to rid a house there of a gremlin that was generally harmless but was making messes and keeping the family there up at nights. It was an easy job, one that he could have done in his sleep. The family was beyond grateful and treated him to a large home cooked meal, something he hadn't had since he could remember. They were nice people, he thought. He hoped the gremlin was the worst they ever encountered from the supernatural.
When Dean got in the car he couldn’t help but notice how close to California he was. Without giving it a second thought he was headed West and three hours later he was pulling into Palo Alto. He drove down the familiar streets, even though it had been a few months since he’d swung by this area, and cruised by Sam’s apartment. The lights were off, no signs of life inside, and he drove away disappointed. He realized he’d been hoping Sam would know he was there, could feel Dean’s accomplishment from his hunt because if anyone would understand it would be him. Like a punch to the gut he wished for the millionth time since Sam had left that he was still there with him but immediately quashed it back down with a shake of his head.
He found a bar, some small cubby that was packed with students out for a drink, celebrating finishing this paper or that exam. Dean needed to celebrate too, to bask in his first solo hunt, if nothing else, and maybe calm the nerves a little. He sat down at the bar and ordered three shots, downed them one after the other, and then a beer to nurse for the rest of the night. His shaking hands were too much of a reminder of how far he'd come tonight, all by himself, so he tucked one in his jacket pocket and squeezed the other around the beer bottle so tightly he worried it would shatter from his grip until the alcohol hit his system enough to ease the tremors.
He hunched over his beer, ignoring the crowd Sam had thrown himself into and feeling like this was a terrible idea, coming here and hoping for things that would never happen. He threw some bills on the bar, chugged his beer and stood up. He would walk around for awhile before finding a motel to crash in for the night and then head back to John in the morning.
He started for the door when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a mop of shaggy brown hair and a wide, infectious smile. He jerked around, focus a little unsteady from the alcohol- and collided with someone. He grabbed their elbow and apologised immediately, eyes still trying to find what they saw again.
A hand covered his on the elbow he was holding and Dean finally looked down into the big blue eyes of a petite blonde thing that was smiling up at him brightly. Dean blinked down at her.
"I’m Jenny," she told him, her smile getting impossibly bigger. Dean glanced up at the room, scanning for - probably nothing, now that he thought about it. Just a figment of his imagination, he was sure.
"Dean," he replied, smiling back. "Can I buy you a drink for being so clumsy and running into you?"
He turned her toward the bar and ended up hearing all about her life story, including the three times she changed her major, her career as a cheerleader (head cheerleader, to be exact) and the time she showed up to her anthropology exam an hour late and boy was her professor angry while he ignored the feeling like someone was watching him because he was sure it was just his imagination.
4) On a particularly chilly night in the trees and underbrush in the backwoods of Wisconsin Dean and John were tracking a hodag. They crept through the woods as quietly as possible, needing to catch the creature off guard if they had any hope of catching it, killing it.
The hodag had started attacking people in recent months, killing two, which drew John's attention after they brought down a poltergeist in Alabama the week before. Turns out that global warming and destruction of natural habitat affects even thought-to-be fictional creatures because it was searching for food and shelter, but finding campers and hunters and damned if it wasn't a nasty little beast to come into contact with.
Black as night, which made it incredibly hard to track at, well, night, with spikes on the back and large horns on the head that were sure to cause a mite bit of pain before it clamped down on a major artery and bled a victim to death. John had warned him to not get gored, handed him a shotgun loaded with silver bullets just to be sure and sent him in one direction while he went the other.
Dean tracked what he hoped was the trail of the hodag but he really couldn’t be sure in this light and he sure as hell wasn’t a wilderness man so he was just going on instinct and a good guess. There was a new moon tonight and it was hard as hell to see anything, let alone an angry black monster. He wondered how many more nights they would have to be out here if they didn’t get the damn thing tonight and counted how long the new moon would still ... wait.
He tried to remember the exact date, times blending together in his head after spending a week in the car getting here. The new moon started three nights ago, the full moon would start in less than two weeks on the... which made tomorrow- Dean stopped short and realized that tomorrow, which was actually today as it was now past midnight, was Sam’s twenty-first birthday.
And then the hodag damn near exploded from underneath some brush and rammed into him, sinking one long horn into his right calf. Dean grunted and pumped the shotgun, unloading two rounds into the creature’s head before he knew what he was doing and then collapsed to the ground under the now-dead weight. The angle was awkward and putting pressure on his leg, bent at the side but he couldn’t move because now he became aware of the pain and it hurt like a motherfucker.
He could hear John crashing through the trees and brush now, calling out his name and when he got close enough Dean grunted out in response, hand tightening on the shotgun reflexively against the pain. John grumbled at him when he found him, horn still embedded in Dean’s leg and told him to hang on when he grabbed the hodag and pulled so the horn slid out neatly. He salted and burned it quickly, taking care to stamp out any remaining embers when it was mostly charred before he hefted Dean up and all but dragged him out of the woods.
"Didn’t I tell you to watch yourself out there?" John asked gruffly once he loaded Dean into the truck.
"Got distracted," Dean gritted out, finding an old bandana in the glove compartment and tying it around his leg. John handed him a couple pills from the truck’s first aid kit and Dean took them without asking what they were.
"What’s so damn important that you lost concentration like this?" John slammed the truck into gear, clearly angry.
"Today’s Sammy’s birthday," Dean told him. John didn’t even blink, just kept driving. "Did you hear me?"
"I know what day it is, Dean. You just can’t let something like that cloud your judgement, you know that," John chastised.
Dean bit back a retort and closed his eyes, waiting for the meds to kick in. By the time they got to the motel Dean was feeling more than okay and the wound wasn’t bleeding too badly. John managed to stitch him up without inflicting much more damage and got Dean into bed while he went to take a shower. Everything felt sort of fuzzy to Dean but that was okay because his leg didn’t hurt anymore.
He grabbed his phone from the bedside table and slumped down in bed, scrolling through the numbers until he found Sam’s. He had called him exactly twice before, checking to make sure that he was okay and trying to convince himself that Sam was happy. The phone dialled the number for him and he listened to the ringing, once, twice, three times and more until Dean was sure he wasn’t home until he did answer.
"H’lo?" Sam answered groggily. Leave it to his brother to go to bed at a decent hour on his twenty-first. Dean didn’t say anything, not sure what to say exactly.
Sam cleared his throat. "Hello? Who is this?" Still no response. "Dean?"
Dean inhaled sharply, caught air in the wrong tube and let out a squeaky huff. "Hi."
"Are you okay? Is Dad-"
"We’re fine. More or less," Dean almost giggled at that and he knew the drugs had definitely gone to his head.
"Oh. Do you need help or something?" Sam asked and Dean could hear rustling on his end, perhaps crawling out of bed.
Dean opened his mouth to tell him - what? ‘Yes, come back now?’ ‘No, but I miss you and want to see you?’ ‘I got gored by a hodag and the drugs have made me loopy so come home.’
"Happy birthday," he whispered instead. He could hear Sam breathing lightly on the other end but neither of them said anything. "Okay. That’s all I wanted to say. Bye, Sammy."
And Dean ended the call. He waited for a minute, staring at the phone, half expecting a ring back but it never came. When John came out of the shower Dean was asleep and still holding the phone in his lax grip.
5) Twice a year like clockwork for four years, John dialled the number for Sam's main line. The first couple years it had been in his dorm room and the message on the machine carried the background noise of a typical boy's dorm, even though Sam's message was as serious as he could possibly be at eighteen and nineteen years. Hello, you've reached Sam Winchester. I'm unable to take your call at the moment so please leave your name, number and a brief message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.
Passing into his twenties there was a noticeable difference. The number had changed, something residential that John stopped himself from looking up. He knew Dean knew and that was enough. It had to be. The third year, Sam's first in the new place, he sounded more relaxed, Hey, this is Sam. I'm not around at the moment so leave one and I'll getcha back.
The fourth year, the last year, John was surprised when he called and the message was, Hey, you've reached Sam and Jess. We're out right now but we're happy to call you back when we get in! Leave one! He could faintly hear a girl giggling in the background and he could tell Sam was smiling while he made the greeting.
John never left a message, because he was never sure what to say or how to say it, but hearing Sam’s voice- safe, "normal" and happy- made him relieved that he’d never worked up the balls to say something.
6) Sam sat straight up in bed, gasping with his t-shirt clinging to his sweatslick back. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had one of those dreams, the ones that took his breath away and made him struggle to remember why he had to wake up. He glanced over to make sure Jess was still asleep, didn't want to worry her or involve her or bother (endanger) her with this. He slipped out of bed easily and padded to the bathroom first to splash some water on his face before continuing to the kitchen.
He turned on the soft overhead oven light and grabbed a scrap piece of paper from their grocery list pile (how domestic) from the clip on the fridge. He jotted down as many details as possible, aiming to working this out of his system, put it to rest because for all he knew it was just a regular dream and he didn't want it haunting him unnecessarily for the next week. Halloween was, after all, just a week away and it always brought up bad memories.
The next night followed much the same pattern and the dream became clearer. He was having trouble believing it was a normal dream, and not one of those dreams. Jess commented the next morning how tired he looked, did he sleep alright? (Her mouth was open to scream but she couldn’t.) Sam ducked his head away from her hand stroking through his hair and mumbled something about worrying about his upcoming torts exam. Jess frowned but let him have his mood because he’d be happier once he worked through it.
The third night was too much. He couldn’t take it anymore. He wouldn’t watch her go through that over and over because he’d seen what it did to families, been the product of it and he wouldn’t become his father. No way, shape or form. (Why did it cut her open? Did it want to watch her bleed?) So that morning, after Jess found him in the breakfast nook instead of in bed with her, he kissed her goodbye like any other morning and left the house as usual.
Instead of going to class, though, he made his way to the bus station. He’d been following the news, always had, and he had a good idea of where Dean and Dad were and what they were currently hunting. He just needed to get away.
Sam stepped up to the counter. "Can I get a one-way ticket-" His cell went off and he stepped away, apologising, to answer.
"Yeah?"
"Oh, good. I was hoping I could catch you before class. Can you pick up some milk on your way home?"
"I... guess?" Sam frowned. He couldn’t very well tell her that he couldn’t because he was fleeing the state and her.
"Oh! And some eggs too, I just noticed we were out. I want to bake some cupcakes for the party this weekend. And we have to work on your costume."
"You know how I feel about Halloween," Sam told her, smiling despite himself.
"I have ways to wear you down, Sam Winchester. I am determined to make sure you have a good time. But," she sighed. "If you don‘t I'll bake you some chocolate chip cookies. How about that?"
"The ones-"
"With the double chips and cinnamon? Yes."
"You temptress," Sam laughed.
"Of course! But I need eggs and milk to make anything. You’ll pick those up?"
"Yeah, I’ll grab them when I’m done."
"Thanks, Sam. I’ll see you later. I love you." She hung up and Sam stood in the middle of the bus station with a goofy smile on his face.
"I love you, too," he whispered, putting the phone away. He stepped back up to the counter where the clerk was waiting.
"Sorry, I won’t need that ticket after all."
He walked back toward campus to finish his classes for the day and on the way home picked up the milk and eggs, as instructed. It had been years since he’d had those dreams, after all. He was just overreacting because it was so close to Halloween and his mom’s... November 2nd.
He squashed the voice in his head that sounded so much like Dean’s, telling him De Nile wasn’t just a river in Egypt and returned home to Jess. And on November 2nd, when he returned home again, after spending the weekend with Dean, and was greeted by the sight of those famous chocolate chip cookies on the kitchen table he felt relief that he’d talked himself out of such a stupid idea (They never noticed at first, until it was too late).
And then he started to climb the stairs to find Jess...