FIC: - Blind Spot - 9/14
Title: - Blind Spot - Chapter 9/14
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapters post Saturdays Dragons Mean Time (DMT). Some liberties have been taken with locations. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say?
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Nine
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll.
On the way to Jo’s place, Dean unraveled. By the time Sam killed the engine, Dean had an elbow against the door, thumbnail between his teeth, and he was blinking a silent, steady stream of tears down his face.
Sam didn’t know if he should be relieved the dam had burst, or afraid of a tidal flood. People weren’t designed to withstand the kind of stress to which Dean had been subjected. The inside of that apartment was no straw on the camel’s back. It was a fucking anvil, dropped from atop a cliff.
“It’s not your fault.” It sounded lame. Hollow. How many times did he tell you that about Jess?
Dean didn’t look at him. He cleared his throat, sent the back of his hand across each cheek in turn. Then he cracked his door and got out.
Sam popped the trunk and gathered up some supplies. A couple of fresh clips, the salt canister and the twelve gauge. He slid them inside his duffel from the backseat, swung it over his shoulder.
Dean’s hand caught the lid as he went to shut it. “Hang on a second.”
Sam let it go, looked cautiously up and down the darkened causeway while Dean rummaged in the trunk. “What are you looking for?”
Dean held up their dad’s journal in silent response, slammed the trunk shut. Then he brushed past Sam toward Jo’s building.
Sam felt it happen while they waited for the elevator. Whatever it was about Dean that had felt loose and unhinged since they left Shelley’s building began to ratchet back up. He got very, very still, stared intently at the base of the elevator doors. Sam could hear the deep, even flow of air in and out of him. Knew Dean was struggling with the kind of explosive rage that had always kept its lee side where Sam stood. But standing there beside his brother in the foyer, Sam realized with a spark of unease he had no clue how far over the edge Dean had just blinked and found himself.
“Dean,” he said, and it was a question, and a warning, and Please, don’t all rolled into one.
His brother blinked, turned cold, flat eyes on him as the elevator dinged and the doors pulled open.
“What?” he replied thickly, and Sam got the Fuck you, loud and clear.
Jo was waiting in her open doorway when they came out of the elevator on the third floor. She took one look at Dean, and her anxious face fell. Sam shook his head minutely, told her all she needed to know.
In the living room, Sam dropped the duffel on the couch and held out the salt canister to Jo. “You need to salt your doors and windows. Right now.”
Jo took it, eyes on Dean. “What’s going on?”
“Just do it, Jo. Please.” Sam took her by the shoulders and pushed her in the direction of the door. Ran a hand through his hair and turned to Dean. “Alright, you need to sit down.”
“They’ll have footage.”
“I know. I’ll go back. But you gotta sit down, Dean. Think for a second.”
“Don’t tell me to sit down, Sam.”
“Fine, then stand. But you need to calm down.”
“Calm do-” Dean turned a frustrated quarter circle, threw Sam a sideways double take. “I’m sorry, did I see somethin’ in that apartment you didn’t?”
“Oh, I got the grand tour, don’t worry,” Sam snapped. He pointed at the door. “Now, you’re right. They’ll have cameras. I’m gonna go back and see if I can lift the tape or clear the drive or whatever. But you gotta stay here.” He looked around, turned to Jo. “Where’s Marcus?”
“He went home.”
“He what? Call him, tell him to salt up, sit tight. I’ll pick him up on the way back. He can’t be alone right now. None of us can be alone. Okay? New rule. I need his address.” Sam barked it all like a drill sergeant.
Jo put down the salt canister, crossed to the kitchen counter.
“I need to borrow your car,” Sam said, while she wrote it down. “I can’t take the Impala back there.”
She handed him the address. “It’s off Lafayette.” She pointed to her keys on the counter. “Go ahead. Take them. Be careful.”
“I’m comin’ with you.” Dean made a move towards the door, and Sam came sideways across the room - three long-legged steps - to cut him off.
“No way, Dean.”
It was quick, the explosive flurry of movement that got Sam’s back against the wall, and Dean’s forearm pressed into this throat. The physicality of it should have cost Dean more, and Sam didn’t like the ease with which his brother got him there. It meant he was operating outside his pain threshold, and that was a level of angry that didn’t pit stop for rational debate.
Jo was right behind them as they hit the wall, hand gripping Dean’s collar. She hauled backwards. “Dean, what’re you doing? Stop it!”
“Back off, Jo.” Dean shrugged her loose, leaned forward against Sam, and planted his feet.
“Jo, it’s okay.” Sam’s hand shot around Dean’s hip. “Let him go. He’s okay.” He nodded at Dean. “We’re okay, right?”
“She was in pieces, Sam.” Dean said it through his teeth, voice raw.
“Yeah, she was. And I’m sorry, Dean. I really am. But what exactly is your plan? We got no clue where Meg is, and even less clue what to do about it if we did know. You’re angry and God, I don’t blame you. What she did to Shelley is unfair and it’s fucking awful. But you need to ease off the gas ‘til we figure out our next move.”
Dean shoved him back against the wall in frustration, used the momentum to send himself stalking to the other side of the room. He paced a wolfish arc from one wall to the other.
“I’m gettin’ real sick of this sit and stay bullshit.”
Sam came off the wall, straightened his shirt. Regarded his brother with a full appreciation of how precarious any containment was going to be.
“Dean, whether we like it or not, she’s five steps ahead of our game right now. You step outside that door, you’re vulnerable.”
“And you’re not, huh? Why is that, Sam?”
“What the…? She’s trying to break you, Dean, and it’s working. Look at you. You’re flipping out. You go after her half-cocked like this and you’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“She doesn’t want me dead. The warehouse? Shelley? It only matters if I’m alive. She’s not gonna kill me, Sam. She doesn’t have to. I already got my ticket, remember?”
“Do I remember?” Sam clamped his mouth shut, before the tide of his own rage spilled up out of him. It was a few long seconds before he trusted himself to speak. He raised his eyebrows. “You’re upset, so I’m gonna go ahead and forget you just said that. She can still hurt you, Dean.”
“Yeah. She can.” He stared at Sam hard. “So, why are you still alive?”
“What?”
“What am I missing, Sam?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You sure about that?”
“Dean, I swear. If I knew what happened back at River Grove, I’d tell you. You’d be the first to know.”
“I’m not talkin’ about River Grove, Sam.”
The frown tightened Sam’s features, drew his brows together and scrunched his nose. “Dean, you’re exhausted, and you’re angry, and you’re not thinking straight. That fire is gonna slow them down, but they’re gonna figure out what happened back there. I gotta go back and deal with the security footage before they plaster it all over the news. Buy us some time. And then I’m gonna pick up Marcus. So I’m gonna go now, and you’re gonna stay here. And we’re gonna talk about this when I get back. Okay?”
Dean narrowed his eyes, gave Sam a wary up and down. He jutted his chin towards the door. “Go.”
“I mean it, Dean. You gotta st-”
“I said, go, Sam.”
Dean’s voice was clipped and angry, did nothing to put Sam’s mind at ease. He motioned Jo to the door, dropped his voice when she met him there. “If he tries to leave, you stop him. I mean it, Jo. If you gotta hurt him to do it, then you stop him. You understand what I’m saying?” Sam stared at her intently, willed her to comprehend.
She returned his gaze, nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got it. Go. Hurry back.”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean stared at the door for a while after Sam had pulled it shut behind him.
You didn’t answer the question, Sammy.
“What the hell was that about?”
He snatched the salt canister from the floor. “Nothin’. Call Marcus.”
“Dean, what’s going on?”
Dean whirled on her. “Jo, can you please just call Marcus. I’m not losin’ anyone else tonight.”
He finished salting the doors and windows while Jo made the call. By the time he was done, it was throbbing inside him like a fresh wound: Why the fuck are you lyin’ to me, Sam?
He stood near the kitchen counter, fingered the cool steel in his pocket, waited for Jo to get off the phone.
“Okay. Marcus is fine. Salt’s down on all the windows and doors. He’s gonna wait for Sam.” She threw the phone onto the counter beside him, leaned on the edge.
“Do I need to handcuff you to something?” she asked. Dean was already pulling the cuffs out his pocket, and he faltered; a Jesus on his lips at the smack bang coincidence of it.
She almost got her arm away in time, but Dean snapped the first link around her right wrist as she pulled back, and he was ready to catch the left she threw at him. They scuffled briefly, long enough for Dean to realize he was physically coasting on fumes, and Jo was a lot stronger than she looked. She put up a decent fight, sent them across the kitchen in a clumsy, uncontrolled waltz that bounced Dean off the fridge, lit his shoulder up enough that he grunted and nearly lost hold of her. Jo snapped her fist up, caught him across the cheek, and backed him up a step. He blocked the second punch as she stepped forward, had to stamp down hard on the automatic and retaliatory urge that closed the fingers of his own hand.
Her boot connected with his shin before he twisted her cuffed hand, got it up behind her back and body-checked her into the kitchen counter. Dean hooked his thumb into the cuff around her wrist, leaned down through his hand, and pinned her against the laminate while he chased her other arm.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m not tryin’ to hurt you, Jo.”
“The fuck you’re not.”
Her voice was wild and scared, made his gut clench. Not your finest hour, Winchester. He closed the second cuff around her left wrist, leaned down against her.
“I know you got no reason to trust me right now, but I’m not tryin’ to hurt you.”
“Then let me go.”
“I can’t. Now, we’re goin’ into the living room. You make it hard, I’m gonna make it hard back, and I don’t wanna do that. Okay?”
“Fuck you, Dean.”
She made it hard. He was out of breath, had a fistful of her hair and an arm around her waist by the time he wrestled her over to the coffee table. She dug her heels in, got a merciless purchase on his side with her fingernails. She was squirming enough that he couldn’t spare the hand to pry her loose, had to ride out the assault to his traumatized ribs with a stream of expletives straight into her ear. By the time she let go, he was feeling a little light-headed from the pain, finding it hard to regret any of the things he’d called her.
Dean caught his breath, tightened his grip in her hair when she turned her head towards him.
“Dean, let me go.”
She sounded calm, and Dean might have believed it if he could think of a single thing that had happened between the kitchen and here that might account for anything other than the opposite effect. He ignored the appeal.
“’Kay, on the ground.”
Jo made no move, and Dean waited her out a little before he tried again. “Get on the ground, or I put you on the ground.” He was a little breathless, and he was glad it kept the frustration out of his voice. “Please, Jo.”
“What is it about fucking over the Harvelles, huh? Gettin’ to be a real Winchester family tradition.” Jo spat it over her shoulder, and she sounded so angry and bitter and wounded that Dean closed his eyes for a beat, dipped his chin.
Jesus Christ. I’m goin’ to hell. More. More than I already am.
She made the trip to the floor complicated enough that she hit it a lot faster and harder than Dean meant her to. He didn’t apologize. Figured sorry didn’t get you very far on the back end of treason. Dean fished the keys to the cuffs out of his pocket, put a knee against her shoulder while he released her right wrist. He threaded the handcuffs through the closed steel rail that ran the length of the coffee table frame, then he snapped the link back around her arm, got up and out of her way. But Jo was done moving. She stayed exactly where she was, quietly seething.
Dean felt his cheek, sent a couple of exploratory fingers across his ribs under his shirt, pulled them away bloody. Christ. He wiped them against the thigh of his jeans. “Okay, so that didn’t go as smooth as I wanted it to. You alright?”
She didn’t answer. He watched her wrists twisting, fingers exploring the mechanism of the shackles. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. Dean knew he hadn’t bought himself much time. Jo had been raised in the company of hunters, same as he and Sam. He had no doubt she knew a few ways around a pair of handcuffs.
“When you get those off, stay here. Call Sam, do whatever you’re gonna do. But stay in this apartment.”
“Where are you going?” Jo’s voice was molasses thick.
This was going to get in the way for a while. Dean could hear it in her voice. Why or where wasn’t going to change that. So he left the question unanswered, picked the duffel up off the couch and crossed one last line at the door; stepped neatly over the salt into the hallway.
**********************************************************************************************
Sam had taken the keys to the Impala. Dean doubted it had been an intentional foil, because - key or no key - he could get in and have her running pretty quick. Sam knew that.
Any other night it would have bugged Dean, fucking with the ignition, stripping wires; it usually felt like sacrilege. But tonight he didn’t have the headspace to be cheesed about it. He popped the lock on the trunk, dug out the wire-cutters, a hammer and the slim jim. A minute later he was behind the wheel, tumbler violated, and fingers twisting the ignition wires beneath the steering column. He rested his cheek against the top of the wheel, leaned a little further for the starter wires and felt his right boot heel sidle up against something hard on the floor of the car.
He dropped a hand back beneath the seat, fingers closing on the stiff corner of something thin and long.
A book.
He tugged it loose, brought it up into his lap, and turned his attention back to the wires.
Dean didn’t give the book another thought until he caught his first red heading towards Sunset Highway. While he waited on the traffic, he flicked up the black, hardbound cover. Frowned when he saw the author.
Tristan Bradley. It took him a second to place why the name sounded familiar, for it to click. Then it came back to him, leaning on the Impala roof down Little Barrack Street, reading the name off a piece of paper to Sam.
Huh. Dean wondered if Bobby had even given it a second thought since that night.
He flicked through a few pages. Standard translations, what looked like a few rituals, some diagrams. It seemed like a pretty non-descript text, given the circumstances surrounding its procurement.
The light changed, and Dean tossed the book onto the passenger seat as he hit the gas. For all it had cost him, he felt like maybe it should have been a little thicker.
He had the cell in his lap for a while before he made the call. Punched up Bobby’s number twice, and then thumbed back out before he finally let it ring, brought it up to his ear.
“Dean?”
Bobby’s voice was all business, managed to squeeze both What do you need? and Are you okay? into that monosyllabic bark. Dean bypassed both questions, got straight to the point.
“What happened at the warehouse, Bobby?”
“Dean? You alright?”
“I need to know what happened at the warehouse.”
“Kid, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Where’s Sam?”
“He’s lyin’ to me, Bobby. Somethin’ happened at that warehouse and I wanna know what. Right now.”
“Dean, put Sam on.”
“He’s not here. I asked you a question.” There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Dean used it to pull over to the shoulder. He threw the car into park, waited. When Bobby didn’t say anything, Dean hit him with option number two. “Fine. I’ll ask her.”
Dean slapped the phone shut, dropped it into his lap. He sat there for a second, wiped a hand across his mouth and blinked at the windshield. When his cell rang, he stared down at it. Knew the minute he picked it up, things were going to start shifting. Evaporating. Spiraling. He didn’t feel ready.
“Dean, where are you?”
“Start talkin’, Bobby.”
“Tell me where are you.”
“About twenty miles off doin’ somethin’ really stupid or really smart. I dunno which.”
“Dean, she’ll kill you. Are you hearing me? This seal is increasing their power. Do you understand? You front her alone, and she’ll snap you like a twig. You need to stop, Dean. Turn around.”
“Bobby, I just left Jo Harvelle face down on the floor and handcuffed to a coffee table. I’m not in the mood to talk about this. You tell me what you know, or I swear to God, I’ll squeeze it outta her with my bare fucking hands.”
“Dean, please-”
“Last chance, Bobby.”
“Don’t hang up. Somethin’ happened in the warehouse. Yes. I don’t know what exactly. I don’t think he knows either.”
Dean felt like he was going to crush the phone in his hand. “Bobby,” he ground out, “just tell me what happened.”
“She tossed us both pretty good. When I came to, Sam was talking to Meg.”
“Talking?”
“Yeah. Talking.”
“Talkin’ about what?”
“Sam asked her where you were, and she said you were dead. Sam lost it, got her up against the wall. He was shoutin’ at her.”
“He what?”
“She was just smiling at him. And then Sam said somethin’ to her and she…”
“She what, Bobby?”
“She kissed him.”
Dean’s eyes fluttered. “She what?”
“She kissed him. I mean, there was tongue. And he was kissing her back, Dean. Then he broke it off and he shoved her against the wall and told her to get the fuck out of there. And she did.”
Dean was stuck a few sentences back. “Sam was kissin’ her? Like, sealin’-a- crossroads-deal kissin’ her, or I-wanna-fuck-you kissin’ her?”
“Dean, I’m just tellin’ you what I saw. But somethin’ happened, because he told her to go and she left. Walked outta there. She barely got out the door and Sam just keeled over, hit the deck.”
“What?”
“He was out for maybe a minute or so. When he came to, he didn’t remember any of it. I got him up, and he was a little shaky but he was okay, so we split up and got lookin’. ‘Bout two minutes later he found you, started screamin’ his head off. I’ll be honest, Dean, I took one look at you and Sam kissin’ Meg kinda got put on the backburner.”
“How could you not have told me this?”
“I tried to talk to him about it and he clammed up. I don’t think he knows any more than I just told you.”
“Bobby, I’ve brought him right to her.”
“Dean, it coulda been anything. Some demon mind control… I dunno. Yeah, it’s a little unnerving, but that’s a big ole leap you’re makin’ there.”
“Sam’s immune to the virus.”
“What?”
“Back in River Grove. He got infected. Nothin’ happened. Now you’re tellin’ me he’s blackin’ out, getting’ up close with Meg? Yellow Eyed Demon told me, Bobby. I didn’t wanna hear it, but he told me.”
“Dean, what are you-”
“I gotta go. Call you later.”
“Dean, wait-”
Dean turned the phone off before he threw it on the seat next to him. He ran a hand through his hair, gripped the back of his neck.
Fuck. What the fuck is goin’ on?
He left the car running, threw open the door and got out. In the trunk, he dug around in the duffel, found his dad’s journal. He flicked through it in the dim glow of the trunk light until he found what he was after. Stood there working his lips around the words until they became rote. He kept the recitation going in his head as he threw the journal back into the trunk. He checked the flask of holy water, slid it into his jacket. Then he slammed the lid, words still on silent replay in his head as he slipped back behind the wheel.
How certain are you that what you brought back is 100% pure Sam?
Dean left the gravel fast, spun the tires getting back onto the blacktop.
*********************************************************************************************
Meg was on the porch of the farmhouse, perched neatly on the railing as if she’d been waiting there all night.
“Now, you look like a man on a mission,” she told him, as he marched up the stairs.
Dean ignored her, kept his eyes on the front door as he passed.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“In a minute, bitch.” Dean turned the door handle, twisted to shoulder it open as he went through.
He found the light switch inside the door, flipped it as he pulled the lighter fluid out of his jacket pocket. Dean knew he wasn’t getting as far as the body in the bedroom, started squirting the accelerant around as soon as he hit the hall. When Meg stepped impossibly out of the shadows in front of him, Dean pulled up, hooked his arm back and pitched the whole damn bottle through the doorway into the back bedroom. She turned her head with interest, followed the curve of its flight past her shoulder.
“What are you doing, Dean?”
“I told you: in a minute, bitch.” He brought the flask of holy water up out of his jacket in an arc, sent a spray into her face that hissed across her flesh. She stumbled backwards, and Dean lunged forward, shot out his right fist, and hit her in the face so hard he felt the jarring shock of the impact at his elbow. His hand was still tingling, numb, when he snapped back his arm and belted her a second time; sent her crashing to the hallway floor.
Meg landed squarely on her back, face still bubbling and smoking like a witch’s cauldron. She laughed - a ridiculous, school-girl laugh - and it tripped Dean past his boiling rage into territory as base and primal as the sound that left him. He dropped, straddled her on the ground, and got his fingers around her jaw. She struggled, and Dean leaned on her throat, tipped the flask to her lips and poured the holy water into her mouth.
“Taste good? Huh?” Dean’s voice was shaking. Beneath him, Meg gurgled and coughed and choked and - Goddamn, you fucking bitch - laughed against the river at her lips. When the flask emptied, Dean threw it blindly, sent a wild hand to his back pocket and clasped the cable ties he’d shoved there.
Meg was still chuckling, laughter frothing up out of her burning throat, while he rolled her and bound her wrists behind her back. He pulled the cable ties tight, then got a knee between her shoulders and hauled on the ends until the plastic bit the skin at her carpal joints. She gasped and he leaned down, yanked roughly on the ties.
“How’s that feel, you fuckin’ bitch?”
“Ow,” she spluttered, still laughing, and Dean grabbed a handful of her hair and smacked her face hard off the hallway floor.
“Yeah. Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“It’s actually kind of a turn on,” she chuckled, and Dean ground his knee into her back, used it to lever up onto his feet.
“You’re a sick fucking bitch, you know that?” He knotted his fingers in the back of her hair, dragged her down the hallway to the foyer. They were almost there when she hooked her foot at the entrance to the hall. Dean didn’t let go of her hair, just pivoted around and booted her in the knee hard enough to bounce her shin off the opposite side of the doorframe with a crack.
“Ow,” Meg said again, and this time she sounded annoyed.
Dean heard the cable ties snapping as the first of the Latin left her bloodied lips.
Oh, shit.
He hit the floorboards hard beside the front door, smacked up against the wall in an awkward round-robin of knee, hip, shoulder. His cheek cracked off the skirting board, tipped everything into a loud, buzzing void for a second until his vision came back in double. He grappled for purchase on the wall, gripped the door handle above him and hauled upwards. Meg was picking the cable ties away from her wrists, almost upon him, when he slipped his fingers down the front pocket of his jeans, felt the small metal seal there, and choked the words out on a choppy, winded breath.
“Ego redimio vos per vox illae signum.” He paused, and when the exact translation of the next escaped him, he went with English instead: “On your fuckin’ ass.”
It actually worked, and Dean was about as surprised as Meg when she hit the floor ten feet back, nearly went ass over tit. He steadied himself against the wall, blinked a little.
“Holy shit.”
Meg’s mouth fell open. Then her lips twisted, and a fresh peal of laughter spilled up out of her. “Oh. Old dog’s learned a new trick.” She palmed the floor beside her hip, started to rise up onto her feet.
“Subsisto.”
It knocked her back onto her ass, and Meg’s expression morphed into irritation. “You’re really starting getting on my nerves, Dean.”
“I am so not sorry about that.” He felt in his pocket for the matches, struck three at once. He inched towards the hallway, kept his eyes on Meg. “Stay there.”
“Oh, please.” Meg sounded bored. “You think a little lighter fluid’s gonna put a stop to all of this?”
“Oh, I got no clue. But I got a feelin’ burning this body’s gonna piss you off, and right now? That’s good enough for me.” He tossed the lit matches onto the carpet in the hall, waited while the flames caught and streaked down the corridor.
When the fire began to lick at the walls, darken and bubble the paint, Dean dragged Meg out onto the porch. He shoved her hard at the top of the stairs, sent her roughly to the foot of them. He sat on the top step, pulled the seal out of his pocket, flipped it in his fingers and showed it to her.
“I saw my Dad use this once on a demon in Tallahassee. Son of a bitch found a way around it pretty quick, so… I’m not gonna waste any time here. I know about the seal, and the virus. And I got a feelin’ this is where you tell me my brother’s goin’ darkside, nothin’ I can do to stop it, blah blah blah.”
“Your friend Shelley had a pretty little mouth, didn’t she? You think it looked as pretty on your dick as it did when she screamed?”
Dean felt the twitch below his eye, squinted at her. For a second there was only the dull roar of the growing fire in the house, the crack and pop of the wood going up. He was starting to feel the heat at his back. “If we’re supposed to be on a guilt trip, you got the wrong brother, Meg. I didn’t kill those girls. You did.”
“Oh, that’s right. Sam’s the anguished soul. Or he used to be. Back when he had one.”
Dean narrowed his eyes at her. “Speaking of Sam. You know, I had a pretty interesting phone call on the way out here. And if I was the jealous type? I’m guessin’ I’d be feelin’ a little cut right now.”
Meg licked her lips, tilted her chin up. Dean sniffed, raised both eyebrows. He slipped the seal between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, pointed it at her.
“For someone who doesn’t buy Winchester, you sure have been doin’ a lot of product tasting lately.” He dropped his eyes and kicked at the stairs with the heel of his boot. Glanced back up at her. “You piece of shit.”
Meg bit her lip, shrugged. “I’m a sucker for a hot demon.”
Dean kept his eyes on Meg. He waggled the seal at her. “This thing ain’t doin’ squat anymore, is it?”
She shook her head slowly, blinked roiling black pits at him. Dean cocked an eyebrow, sniffed off a laugh. Behind him he heard a crash amidst the increasing roar of the fire. Figured they only had a few minutes before the porch started going up too. He saw movement in the flickering shadows to the left, kept his eyes on Meg.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Hey. You okay?” Sam inched out of darkness from the direction of the paddock. Dean saw the glint of the shotgun out of the corner of his eye and had a fleeting, unsettling moment of uncertainty about where it was pointed. He fought the urge to turn his head and find out.
“I’ve been better, Sam.” He pointed at Meg. “Just havin’ a little chat with your girlfriend, here.”
Sam froze, and Dean turned look at him, saw the Oh, God on his lips as his eyes closed. “Bobby said you called.”
“Yeah. We talked briefly.” Dean scratched at his ear. “You know, I dunno why we never talked about this before, but just…moving forward? I think frenchin’ demons? We’re gonna call mandatory disclosure on that. For future reference.”
Meg placed two splayed hands in the dirt behind her, leaned back and crossed her ankles. “I’m getting bored,” she announced.
The threat behind it got Dean to his feet, just as Sam depressed both triggers of the shotgun and tried to blow Meg’s head off. Dean didn’t see her move. She was on the ground at the foot of the stairs one second, and then his boots were tapping on air three inches above the porch boards, her hand around his throat. She squeezed, and he lost what was left of the oxygen flow to his lungs, clamped both hands uselessly around the preternatural steel of her forearm.
Sam shouted his name, and Dean heard his brother banging up the porch stairs. He hoped Sam had brought an exit strategy with him. An exit strategy seemed like a handy thing to have. Then Meg threw him against the hot front of the crackling house and knocked him cold.
*********************************************************************************************
Sam edged along the porch towards his brother, kept Meg in his sights. The entire inside of the house was whistling, thumping and groaning, the flames licking up the underside of the porch rafters like flickering fingers. In the periphery of his vision he saw Dean’s boot jerk.
He’s moving. He’s okay. He’s moving.
“Dean?” He had to raise his voice above the sound of the fire.
When his brother didn’t respond, Sam risked a glance his way. Dean sent a fluttering hand up the wall beside him, brought his knee up as he rolled onto his back. Sam could tell from the lethargy of his movements Dean was a long way from Planet Clue.
“I wouldn’t worry. He’ll be fine. He’s a cockroach. I keep scraping him off my shoe but every time I turn around, there he is again.” Meg shuddered. “There could be a nuclear fucking holocaust and it’d just be the roaches, rats, and Dean Winchester. Only things left standing.”
Sam kept moving until he felt his shoe nudge against Dean’s arm.
“Things must be a little rough in Winchester Town if Dean’s flipping for the answers in the demon section of the paper, Sam.” She pouted. “What’s wrong? You boys not getting along?”
“Shut up.” Sam kept the scorching wall at his back, slid down until he was squatting on his heels. He felt blindly at Dean’s face, slapped lightly at his cheek. “Hey, Dean.”
“You honestly think it was all just gonna go away if you didn’t tell him?”
“You honestly think we’re just gonna stand around and let you unleash a plague, Meg?”
“Oh, you’re gonna do more than that, Sam.” Meg got wide-eyed, took a step towards them.
Sam closed a fist around the front of Dean’s shirt, hopped a little on his haunches. He was acutely aware of the fifteen feet of air between them. His complete lack of protection. Every fiber of his being wanted to haul on Dean’s shirt, drag him off this porch and back to the Impala, get them the hell out of Oregon. But he knew he wasn’t making it to those stairs unless Meg allowed it. Dean was shifting slowly beneath his hand, still punch-drunk and stunned.
“You think for one second I’m going to have any part in this-”
“You are a part of this, Sam. Whether you like it or not. You think you have a choice here? That it was free will, got your stupid ass to this little backwater bird? These wheels have been turning over the dead bones of your ancestors’ ancestors.” She screwed up her nose. “You’re all so pathetic. You pick left instead of right and think you’ve determined an outcome. And here’s the thing, Sam. You can only go left. There is no fucking right turn. ”
“I don’t believe you.”
“This is it, Sam. Wakey wakey.” Her smile was lazy, her blink long. “You’re gonna turn on him so fast his head’ll still be spinning in Hell.”
He felt it then, like a roaring above the fire, a pounding in his ears. The cha-clack cha-clack cha-clack of some internal freight line. A sensation rising inside, like being filled with thick cement. The cold, heavy pressure growing in his skull until it felt as though it were leaking out of his eyes.
Sam dropped back against the porch wall on his ass, let go of Dean, and brought his hands up to his face. He was shaking violently.
“Stop trying to fight it, Sam.” Meg sounded bored, and very, very close.
“Get away from me!” he shouted.
When he looked up into the ensuing silence, she was gone. Sam blinked at the floor, summoned his belligerent recall for the Latin he had used time and time again to dispel demons. Stumbled over the first few words until he found the rhythm.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, the words tumbling on a loop from his lips until the roaring subsided enough that he could hear his thoughts again.
“Sam. Sammy.” Dean’s voice was thin, unsteady. Sam felt a palm against his cheek, fingers coiling in his hair. Dean shook him a little. “Sammy, can you hear me?”
Sam opened his eyes. “Uh-huh.”
Dean’s expression was a mix of washed-out exhaustion and intense concern. Sam lifted a hand instinctively to the bloody track down the side of his brother’s face. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and Dean smacked away his reaching hand.
“You’re shakin’ like a leaf, man. What happened?”
Sam looked around. Dean dipped his chin, followed Sam’s gaze. “S’okay, she’s gone. What’d she do to you?”
His tone was blatantly protective, and Sam caved beneath the umbrella of it, the shelter of the promise behind it.
“I think something’s happening to me.”
*********************************************************************************************
They left Jo’s car on the roadside, popped the hood and left a note on the windshield claiming a breakdown to avert any undue attention until they came back for it. At the Impala there was an animated and ridiculous argument over who was going to drive. Dean had a hard time accepting that demonic possession trumped a possible concussion when it came to reliability behind the wheel.
Sam dug his heels in. “You’ve barely slept in two days. You’re dead on your feet.”
And he really was. There wasn’t a lot of arguing Dean could do with that. When Sam fished for the keys in his pocket Dean flapped a hand at him.
“Forget those, you gotta boost her. Ignition’s fucked.”
Sam sighed, head bent beneath the steering column. “I hate doing this. I always get a boot.”
Dean resisted the urge to lean over and help. “That’s ‘cause you can’t keep your fingers out of the way and you don’t drop the starter wire when she fires up.”
He threw a hand up, eyebrows raised - See? - when the engine turned over and Sam jolted and swore.
“Every fuckin’ time,” Sam muttered as he dropped the car into gear.
They drove in silence for a while. Dean wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to his first question. When he finally cleared his throat and came out with it, Sam actually seemed to relax. Dean didn’t know why it bugged him, but it did.
“So, when were you planning’ on tellin’ me about this?”
“I wasn’t keeping it from you.”
“Actually, you were. In that, I didn’t know about it. I mean, technically? You would need to tell me about it, if you weren’t keepin’ it from me.”
“Well, you weren’t in any shape to hear it. I was going to tell you when we got here, and then you spring Jo on me and this virus thing and…” Sam bit his thumbnail, shrugged. “I got angry and scared and…I don’t know. I just didn’t.”
Dean studied him carefully, narrowed his eyes. “That’s it, huh?”
Sam shot him a confused look. “What?”
“You got angry and scared and you failed to mention that you might be periodically possessed by a demon.” He tilted his chin a little, cocked an eyebrow. “Those your college problem solving skills comin’ to the fore there?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Dean. Maybe I was afraid you were going to react exactly like this.”
“I’m reacting like this because you lied to me, Sam.”
“You haven’t exactly been the Shining Light of Truth and Honestly lately yourself, Dean. I was gonna talk to you -”
“Doesn’t sound like you were. I mean, I’m just tryin’ to ascertain: You have that scheduled in before or after this little demon apocalypse we’re smack in the middle of?”
“Dean-”
“Or no, wait. I get it. Maybe you just figured, you wait long enough, you don’t have to tell me at all. Just set up a Thursday night poker game with your new demon friends while I burn in Hell.”
Sam hit the brakes so hard Dean had to palm the dash. He swerved onto the shoulder, sent a spray of gravel into the brush-filled ditch as he jammed the car into park.
“You fucking asshole.”
“Yeah, right. I’m the fuckin’ asshole.” And he was. He knew that. It was a sucker punch and a double tap. But Dean was tired and angry and off-balance. There was a visceral, destructive jolt of satisfaction in Sam’s reaction, and he knew it was counter-productive. Whether he liked where it was going or not, they still needed to have this conversation.
Sam was sitting perfectly still, staring at the windshield. “I can’t fight with you about this.”
“No? ‘Cause from here? Bang up job, man. S’like you’re fuckin’ purpose-built.” Guns blazing was messy, but it was still the quickest way Dean knew out of a tight corner.
“God, will you just listen to me for one second?”
Dean shut up. Felt the situation spiraling back out of his control. He lifted his fingers to the matted section of hair around the cut near his temple. “Okay,” he said quietly, and at the same time, Sam said: “I’m scared.”
Dean closed his eyes, frowned. He couldn’t hear that that right now. Wasn’t equipped to deal with it. But it didn’t matter if he was or he wasn’t, because Sam was saying it again, louder this time.
“I’m really scared, Dean.”
“Okay.” Dean picked at the drying blood in his hair, sniffed and nodded. Then he dropped his hand into his lap, took a deep breath. Lock and load, Winchester. He hoped there was something other than tired in the look he tossed Sam. “Okay,” he said again.
They didn’t say much else to each other until they got back into the city. Sam hung a right off Sunset Highway, headed back towards the motel. When Dean queried the destination, Sam did a double-take.
“You’re joking, right?”
“We just gonna leave ‘em there by themselves?”
“Yeah. We are.”
“I dunno how I feel about that.”
“Well, it didn’t seem to bother you a couple of hours ago when you cuffed Jo to her coffee table. Trust me, you don’t wanna go back there tonight.”
“Scale of one to ten?”
“Solid eight. You’re not her favorite person right now.”
Sam pulled up in the lot, leaned beneath the steering column and shut the engine off. Dean felt like he had a mouthful of something unpleasant.
“Look, it’s gonna take her some time, but she’ll cool off.”
“She was scared, Sam. I scared her.”
Sam cracked his door. “Not just her. No one’s arguing that thinking’s been your strong suit tonight, Dean. How’s your head? You alright to walk?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
Inside the room, Dean made it as far as his bed. He stretched out on the top of the covers, closed his eyes.
“What a fuckin’ mess.”
Sam dumped their gear at the foot of his bed. “This is gonna look better when you’ve had some rest.”
“Yeah. We’ve got a plague on our hands and my brother’s experiencing spontaneous demonic possession. I can see how a good night’s sleep’s gonna fix that right up.”
“Dean.”
“No, really. How many of those Vicodin you think I gotta take before I don’t wake up?”
“This isn’t funny, Dean.”
“Sam, I don’t think I’m joking.” He was utterly spent, was having trouble trying to peg his priorities. He knew there were a lot of questions he needed to be asking, but his thoughts were scrambled. He didn’t know where to start. “So when this is happening, are you, like…aware of what’s going on?”
“Like, do I know what’s happening? The first time, back at the warehouse? No. But just then, yeah. I knew.”
“Sam, I’m asking if you’re in control of it. Am I gonna wake up in the middle of the night with someone other than you on my hands? ‘Cause if that’s a possibility, I think I want the Bowie back.” He shook his head against the pillow. “Dude, I gotta tell you, if I’m the most stable person in this room right now? That’s a little terrifying to me.”
He could hear Sam in the bathroom, taps running, then the smell of antiseptic. When he heard the first aid kit hit the bedside table, he didn’t bother opening his eyes.
“You come near me with a needle and thread, I’m gonna smack you in the mouth.”
Sam dragged a chair over from the table, dropped a gauze pad into the bowl of water next to the kit. “Just let me clean it up. You got blood all over.”
Dean sighed, but he tilted his head obligingly as Sam sat down. The first pass of gauze over cut pulled a little, the blood half-dried and stubborn. Dean winced, lifted a hand off his chest, and Sam froze.
“Sorry.” He pressed the wet gauze against the length of the cut, held it there until the soak loosened the matte of Dean’s hair. “Dude, this really could use a stitch or two.”
Dean cracked eyes that felt like sandpaper, gave the ceiling a couple of painful blinks. “I don’t care.”
Sam was quiet for a while, and Dean let his eyes dip shut.
“I don’t know.”
“Dunno what?” Dean grunted.
“If I’m in control of it.”
Dean didn’t open his eyes. He sighed. “Sleep light,” he mumbled. “Got it.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When Jo sent you those pictures of Meg? What did you think you were going to do? When you got here?”
Dean swallowed, didn’t say anything.
“I mean, I get that you want to even the score but…I don’t know. I keep thinking about it and then after tonight? It just occurs to me on the way out to Timber. You know? What’s enough? When is enough?”
Dean shifted, sniffed. He curled the fingers of his right hand, felt the tightness across his swelling knuckles. It had felt insatiable, that dark undertow that had gripped him in the farmhouse. Like looking up mid-stroke and suddenly finding yourself a very long way from shore. “I’ll let you know.”
*********************************************************************************************
Sleeping light didn’t seem to be a choice at Dean’s disposal. He was out before Sam was done with the cut in his head, more an indication of his exhaustion than Sam’s finesse.
He called Jo while Dean slept.
“You got him?”
“Yeah, I got him. He burned down the farmhouse.”
“Holy shit. The body?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure it went up, too. Meg was there.”
“You guys okay?”
“Yeah, we’re okay. Dean’s a little banged up, and he really needs some sleep. We’re gonna hole up at the motel tonight. I left your car out there. Sorry. I’ll take you out there tomorrow.”
“No problem.”
“How are you two doing?”
Jo paused. “We’re fine.”
Sam sighed. “I know you’re angry, Jo, and you’ve got every right to be. But for what it’s worth, he’s feeling pretty shitty about what he did.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Well, you guys sit tight. Keep your eyes open. See you tomorrow.”
“You, too.”
After he hung up, Sam salted the doors and windows. Laid on his bed, and stared at the ceiling. Sleep wouldn’t come. In the end, he dragged his pillow and a blanket into the bathroom. He snagged the salt canister from the kitchenette table, and ran a thick line between himself and the room before he closed the door.
Sam laid on the cold tiles, blinking in the darkness for a long time before he fell asleep.
Chapter Ten
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapters post Saturdays Dragons Mean Time (DMT). Some liberties have been taken with locations. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say?
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Nine
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
~ Robert G. Ingersoll.
On the way to Jo’s place, Dean unraveled. By the time Sam killed the engine, Dean had an elbow against the door, thumbnail between his teeth, and he was blinking a silent, steady stream of tears down his face.
Sam didn’t know if he should be relieved the dam had burst, or afraid of a tidal flood. People weren’t designed to withstand the kind of stress to which Dean had been subjected. The inside of that apartment was no straw on the camel’s back. It was a fucking anvil, dropped from atop a cliff.
“It’s not your fault.” It sounded lame. Hollow. How many times did he tell you that about Jess?
Dean didn’t look at him. He cleared his throat, sent the back of his hand across each cheek in turn. Then he cracked his door and got out.
Sam popped the trunk and gathered up some supplies. A couple of fresh clips, the salt canister and the twelve gauge. He slid them inside his duffel from the backseat, swung it over his shoulder.
Dean’s hand caught the lid as he went to shut it. “Hang on a second.”
Sam let it go, looked cautiously up and down the darkened causeway while Dean rummaged in the trunk. “What are you looking for?”
Dean held up their dad’s journal in silent response, slammed the trunk shut. Then he brushed past Sam toward Jo’s building.
Sam felt it happen while they waited for the elevator. Whatever it was about Dean that had felt loose and unhinged since they left Shelley’s building began to ratchet back up. He got very, very still, stared intently at the base of the elevator doors. Sam could hear the deep, even flow of air in and out of him. Knew Dean was struggling with the kind of explosive rage that had always kept its lee side where Sam stood. But standing there beside his brother in the foyer, Sam realized with a spark of unease he had no clue how far over the edge Dean had just blinked and found himself.
“Dean,” he said, and it was a question, and a warning, and Please, don’t all rolled into one.
His brother blinked, turned cold, flat eyes on him as the elevator dinged and the doors pulled open.
“What?” he replied thickly, and Sam got the Fuck you, loud and clear.
Jo was waiting in her open doorway when they came out of the elevator on the third floor. She took one look at Dean, and her anxious face fell. Sam shook his head minutely, told her all she needed to know.
In the living room, Sam dropped the duffel on the couch and held out the salt canister to Jo. “You need to salt your doors and windows. Right now.”
Jo took it, eyes on Dean. “What’s going on?”
“Just do it, Jo. Please.” Sam took her by the shoulders and pushed her in the direction of the door. Ran a hand through his hair and turned to Dean. “Alright, you need to sit down.”
“They’ll have footage.”
“I know. I’ll go back. But you gotta sit down, Dean. Think for a second.”
“Don’t tell me to sit down, Sam.”
“Fine, then stand. But you need to calm down.”
“Calm do-” Dean turned a frustrated quarter circle, threw Sam a sideways double take. “I’m sorry, did I see somethin’ in that apartment you didn’t?”
“Oh, I got the grand tour, don’t worry,” Sam snapped. He pointed at the door. “Now, you’re right. They’ll have cameras. I’m gonna go back and see if I can lift the tape or clear the drive or whatever. But you gotta stay here.” He looked around, turned to Jo. “Where’s Marcus?”
“He went home.”
“He what? Call him, tell him to salt up, sit tight. I’ll pick him up on the way back. He can’t be alone right now. None of us can be alone. Okay? New rule. I need his address.” Sam barked it all like a drill sergeant.
Jo put down the salt canister, crossed to the kitchen counter.
“I need to borrow your car,” Sam said, while she wrote it down. “I can’t take the Impala back there.”
She handed him the address. “It’s off Lafayette.” She pointed to her keys on the counter. “Go ahead. Take them. Be careful.”
“I’m comin’ with you.” Dean made a move towards the door, and Sam came sideways across the room - three long-legged steps - to cut him off.
“No way, Dean.”
It was quick, the explosive flurry of movement that got Sam’s back against the wall, and Dean’s forearm pressed into this throat. The physicality of it should have cost Dean more, and Sam didn’t like the ease with which his brother got him there. It meant he was operating outside his pain threshold, and that was a level of angry that didn’t pit stop for rational debate.
Jo was right behind them as they hit the wall, hand gripping Dean’s collar. She hauled backwards. “Dean, what’re you doing? Stop it!”
“Back off, Jo.” Dean shrugged her loose, leaned forward against Sam, and planted his feet.
“Jo, it’s okay.” Sam’s hand shot around Dean’s hip. “Let him go. He’s okay.” He nodded at Dean. “We’re okay, right?”
“She was in pieces, Sam.” Dean said it through his teeth, voice raw.
“Yeah, she was. And I’m sorry, Dean. I really am. But what exactly is your plan? We got no clue where Meg is, and even less clue what to do about it if we did know. You’re angry and God, I don’t blame you. What she did to Shelley is unfair and it’s fucking awful. But you need to ease off the gas ‘til we figure out our next move.”
Dean shoved him back against the wall in frustration, used the momentum to send himself stalking to the other side of the room. He paced a wolfish arc from one wall to the other.
“I’m gettin’ real sick of this sit and stay bullshit.”
Sam came off the wall, straightened his shirt. Regarded his brother with a full appreciation of how precarious any containment was going to be.
“Dean, whether we like it or not, she’s five steps ahead of our game right now. You step outside that door, you’re vulnerable.”
“And you’re not, huh? Why is that, Sam?”
“What the…? She’s trying to break you, Dean, and it’s working. Look at you. You’re flipping out. You go after her half-cocked like this and you’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“She doesn’t want me dead. The warehouse? Shelley? It only matters if I’m alive. She’s not gonna kill me, Sam. She doesn’t have to. I already got my ticket, remember?”
“Do I remember?” Sam clamped his mouth shut, before the tide of his own rage spilled up out of him. It was a few long seconds before he trusted himself to speak. He raised his eyebrows. “You’re upset, so I’m gonna go ahead and forget you just said that. She can still hurt you, Dean.”
“Yeah. She can.” He stared at Sam hard. “So, why are you still alive?”
“What?”
“What am I missing, Sam?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You sure about that?”
“Dean, I swear. If I knew what happened back at River Grove, I’d tell you. You’d be the first to know.”
“I’m not talkin’ about River Grove, Sam.”
The frown tightened Sam’s features, drew his brows together and scrunched his nose. “Dean, you’re exhausted, and you’re angry, and you’re not thinking straight. That fire is gonna slow them down, but they’re gonna figure out what happened back there. I gotta go back and deal with the security footage before they plaster it all over the news. Buy us some time. And then I’m gonna pick up Marcus. So I’m gonna go now, and you’re gonna stay here. And we’re gonna talk about this when I get back. Okay?”
Dean narrowed his eyes, gave Sam a wary up and down. He jutted his chin towards the door. “Go.”
“I mean it, Dean. You gotta st-”
“I said, go, Sam.”
Dean’s voice was clipped and angry, did nothing to put Sam’s mind at ease. He motioned Jo to the door, dropped his voice when she met him there. “If he tries to leave, you stop him. I mean it, Jo. If you gotta hurt him to do it, then you stop him. You understand what I’m saying?” Sam stared at her intently, willed her to comprehend.
She returned his gaze, nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got it. Go. Hurry back.”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean stared at the door for a while after Sam had pulled it shut behind him.
You didn’t answer the question, Sammy.
“What the hell was that about?”
He snatched the salt canister from the floor. “Nothin’. Call Marcus.”
“Dean, what’s going on?”
Dean whirled on her. “Jo, can you please just call Marcus. I’m not losin’ anyone else tonight.”
He finished salting the doors and windows while Jo made the call. By the time he was done, it was throbbing inside him like a fresh wound: Why the fuck are you lyin’ to me, Sam?
He stood near the kitchen counter, fingered the cool steel in his pocket, waited for Jo to get off the phone.
“Okay. Marcus is fine. Salt’s down on all the windows and doors. He’s gonna wait for Sam.” She threw the phone onto the counter beside him, leaned on the edge.
“Do I need to handcuff you to something?” she asked. Dean was already pulling the cuffs out his pocket, and he faltered; a Jesus on his lips at the smack bang coincidence of it.
She almost got her arm away in time, but Dean snapped the first link around her right wrist as she pulled back, and he was ready to catch the left she threw at him. They scuffled briefly, long enough for Dean to realize he was physically coasting on fumes, and Jo was a lot stronger than she looked. She put up a decent fight, sent them across the kitchen in a clumsy, uncontrolled waltz that bounced Dean off the fridge, lit his shoulder up enough that he grunted and nearly lost hold of her. Jo snapped her fist up, caught him across the cheek, and backed him up a step. He blocked the second punch as she stepped forward, had to stamp down hard on the automatic and retaliatory urge that closed the fingers of his own hand.
Her boot connected with his shin before he twisted her cuffed hand, got it up behind her back and body-checked her into the kitchen counter. Dean hooked his thumb into the cuff around her wrist, leaned down through his hand, and pinned her against the laminate while he chased her other arm.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m not tryin’ to hurt you, Jo.”
“The fuck you’re not.”
Her voice was wild and scared, made his gut clench. Not your finest hour, Winchester. He closed the second cuff around her left wrist, leaned down against her.
“I know you got no reason to trust me right now, but I’m not tryin’ to hurt you.”
“Then let me go.”
“I can’t. Now, we’re goin’ into the living room. You make it hard, I’m gonna make it hard back, and I don’t wanna do that. Okay?”
“Fuck you, Dean.”
She made it hard. He was out of breath, had a fistful of her hair and an arm around her waist by the time he wrestled her over to the coffee table. She dug her heels in, got a merciless purchase on his side with her fingernails. She was squirming enough that he couldn’t spare the hand to pry her loose, had to ride out the assault to his traumatized ribs with a stream of expletives straight into her ear. By the time she let go, he was feeling a little light-headed from the pain, finding it hard to regret any of the things he’d called her.
Dean caught his breath, tightened his grip in her hair when she turned her head towards him.
“Dean, let me go.”
She sounded calm, and Dean might have believed it if he could think of a single thing that had happened between the kitchen and here that might account for anything other than the opposite effect. He ignored the appeal.
“’Kay, on the ground.”
Jo made no move, and Dean waited her out a little before he tried again. “Get on the ground, or I put you on the ground.” He was a little breathless, and he was glad it kept the frustration out of his voice. “Please, Jo.”
“What is it about fucking over the Harvelles, huh? Gettin’ to be a real Winchester family tradition.” Jo spat it over her shoulder, and she sounded so angry and bitter and wounded that Dean closed his eyes for a beat, dipped his chin.
Jesus Christ. I’m goin’ to hell. More. More than I already am.
She made the trip to the floor complicated enough that she hit it a lot faster and harder than Dean meant her to. He didn’t apologize. Figured sorry didn’t get you very far on the back end of treason. Dean fished the keys to the cuffs out of his pocket, put a knee against her shoulder while he released her right wrist. He threaded the handcuffs through the closed steel rail that ran the length of the coffee table frame, then he snapped the link back around her arm, got up and out of her way. But Jo was done moving. She stayed exactly where she was, quietly seething.
Dean felt his cheek, sent a couple of exploratory fingers across his ribs under his shirt, pulled them away bloody. Christ. He wiped them against the thigh of his jeans. “Okay, so that didn’t go as smooth as I wanted it to. You alright?”
She didn’t answer. He watched her wrists twisting, fingers exploring the mechanism of the shackles. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. Dean knew he hadn’t bought himself much time. Jo had been raised in the company of hunters, same as he and Sam. He had no doubt she knew a few ways around a pair of handcuffs.
“When you get those off, stay here. Call Sam, do whatever you’re gonna do. But stay in this apartment.”
“Where are you going?” Jo’s voice was molasses thick.
This was going to get in the way for a while. Dean could hear it in her voice. Why or where wasn’t going to change that. So he left the question unanswered, picked the duffel up off the couch and crossed one last line at the door; stepped neatly over the salt into the hallway.
**********************************************************************************************
Sam had taken the keys to the Impala. Dean doubted it had been an intentional foil, because - key or no key - he could get in and have her running pretty quick. Sam knew that.
Any other night it would have bugged Dean, fucking with the ignition, stripping wires; it usually felt like sacrilege. But tonight he didn’t have the headspace to be cheesed about it. He popped the lock on the trunk, dug out the wire-cutters, a hammer and the slim jim. A minute later he was behind the wheel, tumbler violated, and fingers twisting the ignition wires beneath the steering column. He rested his cheek against the top of the wheel, leaned a little further for the starter wires and felt his right boot heel sidle up against something hard on the floor of the car.
He dropped a hand back beneath the seat, fingers closing on the stiff corner of something thin and long.
A book.
He tugged it loose, brought it up into his lap, and turned his attention back to the wires.
Dean didn’t give the book another thought until he caught his first red heading towards Sunset Highway. While he waited on the traffic, he flicked up the black, hardbound cover. Frowned when he saw the author.
Tristan Bradley. It took him a second to place why the name sounded familiar, for it to click. Then it came back to him, leaning on the Impala roof down Little Barrack Street, reading the name off a piece of paper to Sam.
Huh. Dean wondered if Bobby had even given it a second thought since that night.
He flicked through a few pages. Standard translations, what looked like a few rituals, some diagrams. It seemed like a pretty non-descript text, given the circumstances surrounding its procurement.
The light changed, and Dean tossed the book onto the passenger seat as he hit the gas. For all it had cost him, he felt like maybe it should have been a little thicker.
He had the cell in his lap for a while before he made the call. Punched up Bobby’s number twice, and then thumbed back out before he finally let it ring, brought it up to his ear.
“Dean?”
Bobby’s voice was all business, managed to squeeze both What do you need? and Are you okay? into that monosyllabic bark. Dean bypassed both questions, got straight to the point.
“What happened at the warehouse, Bobby?”
“Dean? You alright?”
“I need to know what happened at the warehouse.”
“Kid, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Where’s Sam?”
“He’s lyin’ to me, Bobby. Somethin’ happened at that warehouse and I wanna know what. Right now.”
“Dean, put Sam on.”
“He’s not here. I asked you a question.” There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Dean used it to pull over to the shoulder. He threw the car into park, waited. When Bobby didn’t say anything, Dean hit him with option number two. “Fine. I’ll ask her.”
Dean slapped the phone shut, dropped it into his lap. He sat there for a second, wiped a hand across his mouth and blinked at the windshield. When his cell rang, he stared down at it. Knew the minute he picked it up, things were going to start shifting. Evaporating. Spiraling. He didn’t feel ready.
“Dean, where are you?”
“Start talkin’, Bobby.”
“Tell me where are you.”
“About twenty miles off doin’ somethin’ really stupid or really smart. I dunno which.”
“Dean, she’ll kill you. Are you hearing me? This seal is increasing their power. Do you understand? You front her alone, and she’ll snap you like a twig. You need to stop, Dean. Turn around.”
“Bobby, I just left Jo Harvelle face down on the floor and handcuffed to a coffee table. I’m not in the mood to talk about this. You tell me what you know, or I swear to God, I’ll squeeze it outta her with my bare fucking hands.”
“Dean, please-”
“Last chance, Bobby.”
“Don’t hang up. Somethin’ happened in the warehouse. Yes. I don’t know what exactly. I don’t think he knows either.”
Dean felt like he was going to crush the phone in his hand. “Bobby,” he ground out, “just tell me what happened.”
“She tossed us both pretty good. When I came to, Sam was talking to Meg.”
“Talking?”
“Yeah. Talking.”
“Talkin’ about what?”
“Sam asked her where you were, and she said you were dead. Sam lost it, got her up against the wall. He was shoutin’ at her.”
“He what?”
“She was just smiling at him. And then Sam said somethin’ to her and she…”
“She what, Bobby?”
“She kissed him.”
Dean’s eyes fluttered. “She what?”
“She kissed him. I mean, there was tongue. And he was kissing her back, Dean. Then he broke it off and he shoved her against the wall and told her to get the fuck out of there. And she did.”
Dean was stuck a few sentences back. “Sam was kissin’ her? Like, sealin’-a- crossroads-deal kissin’ her, or I-wanna-fuck-you kissin’ her?”
“Dean, I’m just tellin’ you what I saw. But somethin’ happened, because he told her to go and she left. Walked outta there. She barely got out the door and Sam just keeled over, hit the deck.”
“What?”
“He was out for maybe a minute or so. When he came to, he didn’t remember any of it. I got him up, and he was a little shaky but he was okay, so we split up and got lookin’. ‘Bout two minutes later he found you, started screamin’ his head off. I’ll be honest, Dean, I took one look at you and Sam kissin’ Meg kinda got put on the backburner.”
“How could you not have told me this?”
“I tried to talk to him about it and he clammed up. I don’t think he knows any more than I just told you.”
“Bobby, I’ve brought him right to her.”
“Dean, it coulda been anything. Some demon mind control… I dunno. Yeah, it’s a little unnerving, but that’s a big ole leap you’re makin’ there.”
“Sam’s immune to the virus.”
“What?”
“Back in River Grove. He got infected. Nothin’ happened. Now you’re tellin’ me he’s blackin’ out, getting’ up close with Meg? Yellow Eyed Demon told me, Bobby. I didn’t wanna hear it, but he told me.”
“Dean, what are you-”
“I gotta go. Call you later.”
“Dean, wait-”
Dean turned the phone off before he threw it on the seat next to him. He ran a hand through his hair, gripped the back of his neck.
Fuck. What the fuck is goin’ on?
He left the car running, threw open the door and got out. In the trunk, he dug around in the duffel, found his dad’s journal. He flicked through it in the dim glow of the trunk light until he found what he was after. Stood there working his lips around the words until they became rote. He kept the recitation going in his head as he threw the journal back into the trunk. He checked the flask of holy water, slid it into his jacket. Then he slammed the lid, words still on silent replay in his head as he slipped back behind the wheel.
How certain are you that what you brought back is 100% pure Sam?
Dean left the gravel fast, spun the tires getting back onto the blacktop.
*********************************************************************************************
Meg was on the porch of the farmhouse, perched neatly on the railing as if she’d been waiting there all night.
“Now, you look like a man on a mission,” she told him, as he marched up the stairs.
Dean ignored her, kept his eyes on the front door as he passed.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“In a minute, bitch.” Dean turned the door handle, twisted to shoulder it open as he went through.
He found the light switch inside the door, flipped it as he pulled the lighter fluid out of his jacket pocket. Dean knew he wasn’t getting as far as the body in the bedroom, started squirting the accelerant around as soon as he hit the hall. When Meg stepped impossibly out of the shadows in front of him, Dean pulled up, hooked his arm back and pitched the whole damn bottle through the doorway into the back bedroom. She turned her head with interest, followed the curve of its flight past her shoulder.
“What are you doing, Dean?”
“I told you: in a minute, bitch.” He brought the flask of holy water up out of his jacket in an arc, sent a spray into her face that hissed across her flesh. She stumbled backwards, and Dean lunged forward, shot out his right fist, and hit her in the face so hard he felt the jarring shock of the impact at his elbow. His hand was still tingling, numb, when he snapped back his arm and belted her a second time; sent her crashing to the hallway floor.
Meg landed squarely on her back, face still bubbling and smoking like a witch’s cauldron. She laughed - a ridiculous, school-girl laugh - and it tripped Dean past his boiling rage into territory as base and primal as the sound that left him. He dropped, straddled her on the ground, and got his fingers around her jaw. She struggled, and Dean leaned on her throat, tipped the flask to her lips and poured the holy water into her mouth.
“Taste good? Huh?” Dean’s voice was shaking. Beneath him, Meg gurgled and coughed and choked and - Goddamn, you fucking bitch - laughed against the river at her lips. When the flask emptied, Dean threw it blindly, sent a wild hand to his back pocket and clasped the cable ties he’d shoved there.
Meg was still chuckling, laughter frothing up out of her burning throat, while he rolled her and bound her wrists behind her back. He pulled the cable ties tight, then got a knee between her shoulders and hauled on the ends until the plastic bit the skin at her carpal joints. She gasped and he leaned down, yanked roughly on the ties.
“How’s that feel, you fuckin’ bitch?”
“Ow,” she spluttered, still laughing, and Dean grabbed a handful of her hair and smacked her face hard off the hallway floor.
“Yeah. Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“It’s actually kind of a turn on,” she chuckled, and Dean ground his knee into her back, used it to lever up onto his feet.
“You’re a sick fucking bitch, you know that?” He knotted his fingers in the back of her hair, dragged her down the hallway to the foyer. They were almost there when she hooked her foot at the entrance to the hall. Dean didn’t let go of her hair, just pivoted around and booted her in the knee hard enough to bounce her shin off the opposite side of the doorframe with a crack.
“Ow,” Meg said again, and this time she sounded annoyed.
Dean heard the cable ties snapping as the first of the Latin left her bloodied lips.
Oh, shit.
He hit the floorboards hard beside the front door, smacked up against the wall in an awkward round-robin of knee, hip, shoulder. His cheek cracked off the skirting board, tipped everything into a loud, buzzing void for a second until his vision came back in double. He grappled for purchase on the wall, gripped the door handle above him and hauled upwards. Meg was picking the cable ties away from her wrists, almost upon him, when he slipped his fingers down the front pocket of his jeans, felt the small metal seal there, and choked the words out on a choppy, winded breath.
“Ego redimio vos per vox illae signum.” He paused, and when the exact translation of the next escaped him, he went with English instead: “On your fuckin’ ass.”
It actually worked, and Dean was about as surprised as Meg when she hit the floor ten feet back, nearly went ass over tit. He steadied himself against the wall, blinked a little.
“Holy shit.”
Meg’s mouth fell open. Then her lips twisted, and a fresh peal of laughter spilled up out of her. “Oh. Old dog’s learned a new trick.” She palmed the floor beside her hip, started to rise up onto her feet.
“Subsisto.”
It knocked her back onto her ass, and Meg’s expression morphed into irritation. “You’re really starting getting on my nerves, Dean.”
“I am so not sorry about that.” He felt in his pocket for the matches, struck three at once. He inched towards the hallway, kept his eyes on Meg. “Stay there.”
“Oh, please.” Meg sounded bored. “You think a little lighter fluid’s gonna put a stop to all of this?”
“Oh, I got no clue. But I got a feelin’ burning this body’s gonna piss you off, and right now? That’s good enough for me.” He tossed the lit matches onto the carpet in the hall, waited while the flames caught and streaked down the corridor.
When the fire began to lick at the walls, darken and bubble the paint, Dean dragged Meg out onto the porch. He shoved her hard at the top of the stairs, sent her roughly to the foot of them. He sat on the top step, pulled the seal out of his pocket, flipped it in his fingers and showed it to her.
“I saw my Dad use this once on a demon in Tallahassee. Son of a bitch found a way around it pretty quick, so… I’m not gonna waste any time here. I know about the seal, and the virus. And I got a feelin’ this is where you tell me my brother’s goin’ darkside, nothin’ I can do to stop it, blah blah blah.”
“Your friend Shelley had a pretty little mouth, didn’t she? You think it looked as pretty on your dick as it did when she screamed?”
Dean felt the twitch below his eye, squinted at her. For a second there was only the dull roar of the growing fire in the house, the crack and pop of the wood going up. He was starting to feel the heat at his back. “If we’re supposed to be on a guilt trip, you got the wrong brother, Meg. I didn’t kill those girls. You did.”
“Oh, that’s right. Sam’s the anguished soul. Or he used to be. Back when he had one.”
Dean narrowed his eyes at her. “Speaking of Sam. You know, I had a pretty interesting phone call on the way out here. And if I was the jealous type? I’m guessin’ I’d be feelin’ a little cut right now.”
Meg licked her lips, tilted her chin up. Dean sniffed, raised both eyebrows. He slipped the seal between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, pointed it at her.
“For someone who doesn’t buy Winchester, you sure have been doin’ a lot of product tasting lately.” He dropped his eyes and kicked at the stairs with the heel of his boot. Glanced back up at her. “You piece of shit.”
Meg bit her lip, shrugged. “I’m a sucker for a hot demon.”
Dean kept his eyes on Meg. He waggled the seal at her. “This thing ain’t doin’ squat anymore, is it?”
She shook her head slowly, blinked roiling black pits at him. Dean cocked an eyebrow, sniffed off a laugh. Behind him he heard a crash amidst the increasing roar of the fire. Figured they only had a few minutes before the porch started going up too. He saw movement in the flickering shadows to the left, kept his eyes on Meg.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Hey. You okay?” Sam inched out of darkness from the direction of the paddock. Dean saw the glint of the shotgun out of the corner of his eye and had a fleeting, unsettling moment of uncertainty about where it was pointed. He fought the urge to turn his head and find out.
“I’ve been better, Sam.” He pointed at Meg. “Just havin’ a little chat with your girlfriend, here.”
Sam froze, and Dean turned look at him, saw the Oh, God on his lips as his eyes closed. “Bobby said you called.”
“Yeah. We talked briefly.” Dean scratched at his ear. “You know, I dunno why we never talked about this before, but just…moving forward? I think frenchin’ demons? We’re gonna call mandatory disclosure on that. For future reference.”
Meg placed two splayed hands in the dirt behind her, leaned back and crossed her ankles. “I’m getting bored,” she announced.
The threat behind it got Dean to his feet, just as Sam depressed both triggers of the shotgun and tried to blow Meg’s head off. Dean didn’t see her move. She was on the ground at the foot of the stairs one second, and then his boots were tapping on air three inches above the porch boards, her hand around his throat. She squeezed, and he lost what was left of the oxygen flow to his lungs, clamped both hands uselessly around the preternatural steel of her forearm.
Sam shouted his name, and Dean heard his brother banging up the porch stairs. He hoped Sam had brought an exit strategy with him. An exit strategy seemed like a handy thing to have. Then Meg threw him against the hot front of the crackling house and knocked him cold.
*********************************************************************************************
Sam edged along the porch towards his brother, kept Meg in his sights. The entire inside of the house was whistling, thumping and groaning, the flames licking up the underside of the porch rafters like flickering fingers. In the periphery of his vision he saw Dean’s boot jerk.
He’s moving. He’s okay. He’s moving.
“Dean?” He had to raise his voice above the sound of the fire.
When his brother didn’t respond, Sam risked a glance his way. Dean sent a fluttering hand up the wall beside him, brought his knee up as he rolled onto his back. Sam could tell from the lethargy of his movements Dean was a long way from Planet Clue.
“I wouldn’t worry. He’ll be fine. He’s a cockroach. I keep scraping him off my shoe but every time I turn around, there he is again.” Meg shuddered. “There could be a nuclear fucking holocaust and it’d just be the roaches, rats, and Dean Winchester. Only things left standing.”
Sam kept moving until he felt his shoe nudge against Dean’s arm.
“Things must be a little rough in Winchester Town if Dean’s flipping for the answers in the demon section of the paper, Sam.” She pouted. “What’s wrong? You boys not getting along?”
“Shut up.” Sam kept the scorching wall at his back, slid down until he was squatting on his heels. He felt blindly at Dean’s face, slapped lightly at his cheek. “Hey, Dean.”
“You honestly think it was all just gonna go away if you didn’t tell him?”
“You honestly think we’re just gonna stand around and let you unleash a plague, Meg?”
“Oh, you’re gonna do more than that, Sam.” Meg got wide-eyed, took a step towards them.
Sam closed a fist around the front of Dean’s shirt, hopped a little on his haunches. He was acutely aware of the fifteen feet of air between them. His complete lack of protection. Every fiber of his being wanted to haul on Dean’s shirt, drag him off this porch and back to the Impala, get them the hell out of Oregon. But he knew he wasn’t making it to those stairs unless Meg allowed it. Dean was shifting slowly beneath his hand, still punch-drunk and stunned.
“You think for one second I’m going to have any part in this-”
“You are a part of this, Sam. Whether you like it or not. You think you have a choice here? That it was free will, got your stupid ass to this little backwater bird? These wheels have been turning over the dead bones of your ancestors’ ancestors.” She screwed up her nose. “You’re all so pathetic. You pick left instead of right and think you’ve determined an outcome. And here’s the thing, Sam. You can only go left. There is no fucking right turn. ”
“I don’t believe you.”
“This is it, Sam. Wakey wakey.” Her smile was lazy, her blink long. “You’re gonna turn on him so fast his head’ll still be spinning in Hell.”
He felt it then, like a roaring above the fire, a pounding in his ears. The cha-clack cha-clack cha-clack of some internal freight line. A sensation rising inside, like being filled with thick cement. The cold, heavy pressure growing in his skull until it felt as though it were leaking out of his eyes.
Sam dropped back against the porch wall on his ass, let go of Dean, and brought his hands up to his face. He was shaking violently.
“Stop trying to fight it, Sam.” Meg sounded bored, and very, very close.
“Get away from me!” he shouted.
When he looked up into the ensuing silence, she was gone. Sam blinked at the floor, summoned his belligerent recall for the Latin he had used time and time again to dispel demons. Stumbled over the first few words until he found the rhythm.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, the words tumbling on a loop from his lips until the roaring subsided enough that he could hear his thoughts again.
“Sam. Sammy.” Dean’s voice was thin, unsteady. Sam felt a palm against his cheek, fingers coiling in his hair. Dean shook him a little. “Sammy, can you hear me?”
Sam opened his eyes. “Uh-huh.”
Dean’s expression was a mix of washed-out exhaustion and intense concern. Sam lifted a hand instinctively to the bloody track down the side of his brother’s face. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and Dean smacked away his reaching hand.
“You’re shakin’ like a leaf, man. What happened?”
Sam looked around. Dean dipped his chin, followed Sam’s gaze. “S’okay, she’s gone. What’d she do to you?”
His tone was blatantly protective, and Sam caved beneath the umbrella of it, the shelter of the promise behind it.
“I think something’s happening to me.”
*********************************************************************************************
They left Jo’s car on the roadside, popped the hood and left a note on the windshield claiming a breakdown to avert any undue attention until they came back for it. At the Impala there was an animated and ridiculous argument over who was going to drive. Dean had a hard time accepting that demonic possession trumped a possible concussion when it came to reliability behind the wheel.
Sam dug his heels in. “You’ve barely slept in two days. You’re dead on your feet.”
And he really was. There wasn’t a lot of arguing Dean could do with that. When Sam fished for the keys in his pocket Dean flapped a hand at him.
“Forget those, you gotta boost her. Ignition’s fucked.”
Sam sighed, head bent beneath the steering column. “I hate doing this. I always get a boot.”
Dean resisted the urge to lean over and help. “That’s ‘cause you can’t keep your fingers out of the way and you don’t drop the starter wire when she fires up.”
He threw a hand up, eyebrows raised - See? - when the engine turned over and Sam jolted and swore.
“Every fuckin’ time,” Sam muttered as he dropped the car into gear.
They drove in silence for a while. Dean wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to his first question. When he finally cleared his throat and came out with it, Sam actually seemed to relax. Dean didn’t know why it bugged him, but it did.
“So, when were you planning’ on tellin’ me about this?”
“I wasn’t keeping it from you.”
“Actually, you were. In that, I didn’t know about it. I mean, technically? You would need to tell me about it, if you weren’t keepin’ it from me.”
“Well, you weren’t in any shape to hear it. I was going to tell you when we got here, and then you spring Jo on me and this virus thing and…” Sam bit his thumbnail, shrugged. “I got angry and scared and…I don’t know. I just didn’t.”
Dean studied him carefully, narrowed his eyes. “That’s it, huh?”
Sam shot him a confused look. “What?”
“You got angry and scared and you failed to mention that you might be periodically possessed by a demon.” He tilted his chin a little, cocked an eyebrow. “Those your college problem solving skills comin’ to the fore there?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Dean. Maybe I was afraid you were going to react exactly like this.”
“I’m reacting like this because you lied to me, Sam.”
“You haven’t exactly been the Shining Light of Truth and Honestly lately yourself, Dean. I was gonna talk to you -”
“Doesn’t sound like you were. I mean, I’m just tryin’ to ascertain: You have that scheduled in before or after this little demon apocalypse we’re smack in the middle of?”
“Dean-”
“Or no, wait. I get it. Maybe you just figured, you wait long enough, you don’t have to tell me at all. Just set up a Thursday night poker game with your new demon friends while I burn in Hell.”
Sam hit the brakes so hard Dean had to palm the dash. He swerved onto the shoulder, sent a spray of gravel into the brush-filled ditch as he jammed the car into park.
“You fucking asshole.”
“Yeah, right. I’m the fuckin’ asshole.” And he was. He knew that. It was a sucker punch and a double tap. But Dean was tired and angry and off-balance. There was a visceral, destructive jolt of satisfaction in Sam’s reaction, and he knew it was counter-productive. Whether he liked where it was going or not, they still needed to have this conversation.
Sam was sitting perfectly still, staring at the windshield. “I can’t fight with you about this.”
“No? ‘Cause from here? Bang up job, man. S’like you’re fuckin’ purpose-built.” Guns blazing was messy, but it was still the quickest way Dean knew out of a tight corner.
“God, will you just listen to me for one second?”
Dean shut up. Felt the situation spiraling back out of his control. He lifted his fingers to the matted section of hair around the cut near his temple. “Okay,” he said quietly, and at the same time, Sam said: “I’m scared.”
Dean closed his eyes, frowned. He couldn’t hear that that right now. Wasn’t equipped to deal with it. But it didn’t matter if he was or he wasn’t, because Sam was saying it again, louder this time.
“I’m really scared, Dean.”
“Okay.” Dean picked at the drying blood in his hair, sniffed and nodded. Then he dropped his hand into his lap, took a deep breath. Lock and load, Winchester. He hoped there was something other than tired in the look he tossed Sam. “Okay,” he said again.
They didn’t say much else to each other until they got back into the city. Sam hung a right off Sunset Highway, headed back towards the motel. When Dean queried the destination, Sam did a double-take.
“You’re joking, right?”
“We just gonna leave ‘em there by themselves?”
“Yeah. We are.”
“I dunno how I feel about that.”
“Well, it didn’t seem to bother you a couple of hours ago when you cuffed Jo to her coffee table. Trust me, you don’t wanna go back there tonight.”
“Scale of one to ten?”
“Solid eight. You’re not her favorite person right now.”
Sam pulled up in the lot, leaned beneath the steering column and shut the engine off. Dean felt like he had a mouthful of something unpleasant.
“Look, it’s gonna take her some time, but she’ll cool off.”
“She was scared, Sam. I scared her.”
Sam cracked his door. “Not just her. No one’s arguing that thinking’s been your strong suit tonight, Dean. How’s your head? You alright to walk?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
Inside the room, Dean made it as far as his bed. He stretched out on the top of the covers, closed his eyes.
“What a fuckin’ mess.”
Sam dumped their gear at the foot of his bed. “This is gonna look better when you’ve had some rest.”
“Yeah. We’ve got a plague on our hands and my brother’s experiencing spontaneous demonic possession. I can see how a good night’s sleep’s gonna fix that right up.”
“Dean.”
“No, really. How many of those Vicodin you think I gotta take before I don’t wake up?”
“This isn’t funny, Dean.”
“Sam, I don’t think I’m joking.” He was utterly spent, was having trouble trying to peg his priorities. He knew there were a lot of questions he needed to be asking, but his thoughts were scrambled. He didn’t know where to start. “So when this is happening, are you, like…aware of what’s going on?”
“Like, do I know what’s happening? The first time, back at the warehouse? No. But just then, yeah. I knew.”
“Sam, I’m asking if you’re in control of it. Am I gonna wake up in the middle of the night with someone other than you on my hands? ‘Cause if that’s a possibility, I think I want the Bowie back.” He shook his head against the pillow. “Dude, I gotta tell you, if I’m the most stable person in this room right now? That’s a little terrifying to me.”
He could hear Sam in the bathroom, taps running, then the smell of antiseptic. When he heard the first aid kit hit the bedside table, he didn’t bother opening his eyes.
“You come near me with a needle and thread, I’m gonna smack you in the mouth.”
Sam dragged a chair over from the table, dropped a gauze pad into the bowl of water next to the kit. “Just let me clean it up. You got blood all over.”
Dean sighed, but he tilted his head obligingly as Sam sat down. The first pass of gauze over cut pulled a little, the blood half-dried and stubborn. Dean winced, lifted a hand off his chest, and Sam froze.
“Sorry.” He pressed the wet gauze against the length of the cut, held it there until the soak loosened the matte of Dean’s hair. “Dude, this really could use a stitch or two.”
Dean cracked eyes that felt like sandpaper, gave the ceiling a couple of painful blinks. “I don’t care.”
Sam was quiet for a while, and Dean let his eyes dip shut.
“I don’t know.”
“Dunno what?” Dean grunted.
“If I’m in control of it.”
Dean didn’t open his eyes. He sighed. “Sleep light,” he mumbled. “Got it.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When Jo sent you those pictures of Meg? What did you think you were going to do? When you got here?”
Dean swallowed, didn’t say anything.
“I mean, I get that you want to even the score but…I don’t know. I keep thinking about it and then after tonight? It just occurs to me on the way out to Timber. You know? What’s enough? When is enough?”
Dean shifted, sniffed. He curled the fingers of his right hand, felt the tightness across his swelling knuckles. It had felt insatiable, that dark undertow that had gripped him in the farmhouse. Like looking up mid-stroke and suddenly finding yourself a very long way from shore. “I’ll let you know.”
*********************************************************************************************
Sleeping light didn’t seem to be a choice at Dean’s disposal. He was out before Sam was done with the cut in his head, more an indication of his exhaustion than Sam’s finesse.
He called Jo while Dean slept.
“You got him?”
“Yeah, I got him. He burned down the farmhouse.”
“Holy shit. The body?”
“Yeah. Pretty sure it went up, too. Meg was there.”
“You guys okay?”
“Yeah, we’re okay. Dean’s a little banged up, and he really needs some sleep. We’re gonna hole up at the motel tonight. I left your car out there. Sorry. I’ll take you out there tomorrow.”
“No problem.”
“How are you two doing?”
Jo paused. “We’re fine.”
Sam sighed. “I know you’re angry, Jo, and you’ve got every right to be. But for what it’s worth, he’s feeling pretty shitty about what he did.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay. Well, you guys sit tight. Keep your eyes open. See you tomorrow.”
“You, too.”
After he hung up, Sam salted the doors and windows. Laid on his bed, and stared at the ceiling. Sleep wouldn’t come. In the end, he dragged his pillow and a blanket into the bathroom. He snagged the salt canister from the kitchenette table, and ran a thick line between himself and the room before he closed the door.
Sam laid on the cold tiles, blinking in the darkness for a long time before he fell asleep.
Chapter Ten