FIC: - Blind Spot - 10/14
Title: - Blind Spot - Chapter 10/14
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? Special mention this chappy to
chocca2 , who was lurking close at hand when the Dragons needed talking out of her tree. Thank you, babe.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Ten
If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.
~Pope John Paul II
“Your father’s dead, Dean. They’re all dead. Nobody’s coming for you.”
She shut him up with three rough, bloodied fingers down his throat, her thumbnail dragging hard against the hollow of his cheek. Dean choked, gagged against her hand.
He knew he’d given Sam’s name a useless workout, spent a while tossing it at the warehouse ceiling. But that had been minutessecondshoursdaysyears ago. If he’d started calling for his Dad, it was news to him. But he’d made a lot of noises, said a lot of things lately he hadn’t meant to.
He wondered vaguely when he’d missed it. How he could have missed it. He felt a sharp, inexplicable stab of relief.
Sorry, Sammy.
Meg drew back her fingers, waggled them against his tongue. “Taste.”
She traced a line down the underside of his jaw with her other hand. Tracked a path to his chest and curled two probing fingernails into the first gash there. Meg explored the wound with a kind of lazy interest that left Dean white-blind with pain, heeled to the governance of stimulus-response.
“Taste it.” This time into his mouth. A hot, tangy violation of tongue and fingers and copper.
He didn’t know how the fuck he’d missed it. But forever was just as long at the start as it was in the middle or at the end. This he knew.
When he sucked and swallowed, she cooed her victory against his lips. The defeat tasted vile, made him retch. Tasted as bloody as that first please had, all those eons ago.
********************************************************************************************
It was a post office in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Dean was leaning on the back quarter panel of the Impala when Sam came out, the opened envelope clutched in his hand. His face was a mixture of relief and excitement and fear.
“I got in. Dean, holy shit. I got in.”
Their dad was propped against the parking meter on the sidewalk, shotgun hooked over his left shoulder. “Always knew he had it in him.”
Dean glanced sideways at his father. “No one asked you.”
“Okay.” John shrugged. “You know, you should crack a book yourself sometime, kid.” He gave Dean a fond, nostalgic smile. “You never were much of a reader.”
Sam held up the envelope again, started to laugh. “I don’t believe it.”
“Where?” Dean got the word up and out around the knot in his throat.
And Sam cocked his head, looked confused. “What?”
“Where’d you get in?”
Sam opened the passenger door, leaned on the frame. He sniffed off a laugh. “Whattaya mean?” he asked, and his eyes were suddenly as black as night. “Where the hell do you think I got in?”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean woke face-planted into his pillow, cheek damp with his own drool. He sniffed, rolled, and stopped when the fabric of the pillowcase came with him. Sent two fingers up into the matted mess of hair, gritted his teeth while he carefully disengaged the crust of blood and cotton from his temple.
He levered up far enough for the brass to start up in his skull, eased back down with a groan.
“Hey,” Sam looked up from the laptop at the kitchenette table. “You’re awake.”
Dean rubbed a hand through the unruly sleep-sculpted spikes of his hair. “Oh, man. I got a headache,” he moaned.
“Gee, really? What a shock.”
“Time is it?” Dean brought his watch up to his face, squinted at it.
“Nearly ten.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, you were pretty wiped.”
Dean maneuvered his feet onto the carpet, got upright in increments while he rode out a full-body replay of the damage. Knee, hip, ribs, cheek, and… there you go - shoulder. Oh, wow. Shoulder. First step off his right, and the left knee gave, sent him hopping.
Sam popped up out of his chair like a meerkat. “Oh, hey. You in one piece?”
Dean winced, waved him off as he limped toward the bathroom. “I dunno. Lemme shower.” At the doorway he paused, one hand on the frame as he scuffed a toe through the salt line at the edge of the tiles. “What’s with the salt? We afraid of your demonic dumps?”
“Whose demonic dumps?” Sam countered, and Dean sniffed a laugh.
It felt like a fucking century since there’d been any easy slap and jab between them.
“You sleep in here, dumbass?”
Sam paused. “Yeah,” he said finally, and it sounded like a decision.
Dean felt something tight in his chest uncurl. Question, answer. He raised an eyebrow at his hand on the doorframe. Nodded. “Okay. Lemme take a shower. Then we’ll figure this out.”
He stunk. It took a brief visual reconnaissance of the bathroom, and then an exploratory sniff of his shirt, to ascertain that the acrid stench of sweat, smoke, and lighter fluid had no external source.
Jesus.
Dean peeled off the shirt, balled it up, and sent it into the corner of the bathroom floor. He couldn’t actually recall when he’d last ventured into his duffel for a change of clothes.
You had that on at Shelley’s--
Don’t.
He blinked at the wreck in the mirror instead. You couldn’t technically call it a black eye, but the whole right side of his face was definitely nudging some of the more ominous shades down the darker end of the color spectrum. Dean hooked an arm into the shower recess. Got some water running before Sam could start banging on the door, ask if anything was wrong.
He leaned back towards the mirror, angled his chin a little, and studied the cut in his head. It had felt like the Grand Canyon beneath his fingertips in the car last night, but it didn’t look so bad in the light of day. Sam was right; it could have done with a couple of stitches. But it was too late now, and it was in his hair, so who really gave a shit? After the mess Meg had made of his face in that warehouse, Dean figured it didn’t matter so much.
You only gotta look at it another five and a half months.
The jeans were tight at his knee. When he worked them down far enough to get a look, it was predictably bruised and swollen. He tested his weight on it, decided most of the damage was just the price of failing to ice it last night. With any luck it’d shower right out.
He wasn’t getting off so easy with the shoulder. His tussle with Meg and the bounce off the front of the farmhouse hadn’t been kind to the healing dislocation. Any tenuous progress made in the past two weeks had been violently undone. He tried a hesitant shrug and roll, didn’t get very far. The pulse and throb of it radiated up through his jaw, into his teeth; sent an ominous tingle from his elbow down to his fingers.
Fuck.
He stepped into the shower, adjusted the taps until the temperature was bearable. Got his right hand up against the tiles, and leaned there under the flow; let the water heat and release the tight grip and ache of his muscles. He watched the grit, blood and dirt swirl in the drain like weak coffee, didn’t bother reaching for any soap till the water ran clean.
If you can’t save him, you’re gonna have to kill him.
Thank you, John Winchester. Way to strap an albatross. But Dean had already made his choice about that. Gordon Walker had once told him that if it came to it, his Dad would have had the stones to do what was right.
What was right.
And hell, wasn’t that your arbitrary term right there. But if it had come to it, maybe his Dad would have.
Dean had been willing, too. There’d been a moment, back in River Grove - one brief peaceable moment of resignation - when Dean had turned a lock on a door that he never planned to open again. They’d been granted impossible passage through that black corridor, and if that didn’t tell you something about watching your trigger finger, Dean didn’t know what did. He’d been willing to do it, but that was then and this was now.
Sam had died back in Cold Oak, and there were suddenly a whole lot of questions Dean never had to ask himself again.
********************************************************************************************
Sam made a coffee run while his brother showered, grabbed some muffins for breakfast. Dean crammed downed an apple and cinnamon in two ambitious bites as he sat damp-haired and shirtless at the table, tossed Sam a roll of elastic wrap.
“What am I doing with this?”
Dean pointed to his shoulder. “Strappin’ that.” He flipped the plastic lid from his take-out cup, chased the muffin with a slurp of coffee. “Is it possible I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours? How is that possible?”
Sam pulled up a chair. He got in a few tentative prods at the joint, lifted the elbow far enough that Dean winced, and leaned away.
“Sorry, did I say poke it? I meant strap it.”
“Dean, this is a wreck.”
“Uh-huh.” Dean pointed a warning at the remaining muffin on the table in front of them. “Last chance, Sam.”
Sam waved a hand. “Take it. You’re gonna have to get this looked at.” He flattened a thumb against the end of the roll on Dean’s upper arm, sent the wrap around a couple of times.
“After,” Dean agreed evasively.
Sam let it slide. Five and a half months. What difference does it make? That’s what Dean’d say, if Sam pushed him. He wrapped while Dean worked on the muffin and gulped down his coffee; while the stricken, helpless feeling passed fleetingly.
The scope and magnitude of Dean’s countdown was too enormous to fully embrace. Desperation danced in and out of frame, struck out of nowhere, and the triggers were sometimes obvious, and sometimes as obscure as an empty beer bottle left on a motel sink. Dean hid it well, the vast majority of the time. But Sam caught glimpses, knew he was tackling a background terror that was escalating in direct proportion to his dwindling days.
I’m not gonna be ready. I’m never gonna be ready.
“You’re quiet.” The words sent a spray of crumbs into Dean’s lap. He brushed them off, brought his coffee to his lips.
Sam kept his eyes on the task at hand, frowned. “Well, I kinda dropped an a-bomb last night. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried about what you’re thinking.”
“Right now? I’m thinkin’ these muffins are awesome.”
“Actually, I thought they were pretty ordinary.”
“Yeah, well. You’re fussy.” Dean drained the last of his coffee, pushed the cup towards the center of the table. “Nothing’s changed, Sam.”
Sam clipped the wrap at Dean’s shoulder, leaned back. “How can you say that?”
Dean nestled the fingertips of his right hand against the strapped joint, hooked his elbow back and gingerly tested his range. He raised both eyebrows and shook his head. “’Cause nothin’ has.”
“I tell you I could be part of this demon uprising, and that’s it? You just… down a couple of muffins for breakfast and go about your day? No sweat?”
Dean jiggled his knee, narrowed his eyes. “Sam, listen to me. Back in Wyoming, the Yellow Eyed Demon tried to tell me there was something going on with you. And, okay, now we know there is. Excuse me for not dyin’ of shock over here, but this isn’t exactly news to us, right? First the visions, then the virus. I don’t think either of us really thought we finished this back in that graveyard, did we?” He didn’t pause long enough for Sam to answer. “They got plans to recruit you, the standard Dean Winchester detour still applies. We’ll figure it out.”
Sam blinked at him. After Cold Oak, he’d swept that whole mess under his internal rug. Kept what he knew about their mother and the nursery fire to himself. The Yellow Eyed Demon was dead, and the head-splitting visions had disappeared with him. It had been easy enough for Sam to bury it all somewhere deep, tell himself it was over.
But Dean was right. He hadn’t really believed that. It had preyed on his mind in the dark of motel rooms when sleep wouldn’t come, visited him in dreams when it did. A couple of times, he’d come within a hair of telling Dean what the Yellow Eyed Demon had shown him. Once, when they were drinking themselves loose of a particularly rough case in Charlotte. I gotta tell you somethin’, he’d decided, after the fifth beer. Dean had taken one look at his serious face, and slapped a drunken claw against Sam’s nose. Fuck that, he’d announced, pushed hard enough that Sam fell off his bar stool.
He’d been about to spill the beans again, five and a half feet into a grave-dig in Hastings. Dean had started some random conversation about their dad, speculating about what he’d known and when. Just makes me wonder, he’d panted as he sent a shovel-load of dirt over his shoulder, how long he kept that shit to himself. Fuckin’ asshole. Sam had pitched his shovel into the earth beside his feet, leaned on it, and said Dean… right at the same time his brother struck wood. Yahtzee, Dean’d barked, rolled a hand at Sam. Come on, Frances, let’s go. More diggin’, less leanin’.
Sam had taken the diversions as welcome excuses for his continued silence. And after a while it became less about how Dean would take the information, and more about how long Sam had sat on it. He thought about Dean crumpled on the porch of the farmhouse, how dangerous these secrets of his had become.
“Dean, back in Cold Oak? The Yellow Eyed Demon, he told me -”
“He told you what?” Dean cut him off, gave Sam a one-shouldered shrug. “What’d he tell you, Sam? You’re a demon? You’re evil? It’s your destiny? You can fuck off with that shit. I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Dean, it’s more than that. I haven’t told --”
Dean lifted his palm across his chest, got a physical block between himself and Sam’s words. “You know what? I don’t care. Unless it’s gonna help us clean this mess up, I’m not interested.”
“Dean--”
“Sam.”
Dean’s voice was a callback to last night’s exhaustion, and Sam understood. His brother was at capacity. Need-to-know only mode.
“I just don’t want any more secrets between us.”
“Okay, good. Right now? I think that’s good enough for me.” Dean stood up, crossed to his duffel at the foot of his bed, and dug out a fresh t-shirt. He slowly eased the sleeve up over his damaged shoulder, winced his way through the neck, and sped things up down the other side.
“Meg said I was gonna turn on you.” Sam felt a rush a horror at getting the words out into the open.
But Dean just nodded. “You remember that night in River Grove?” He hooked his jacket off the arm of the couch. “You wanted me to take off, leave you with your gun?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I thought I was gonna have to kill you.” Dean sat on the edge of his bed, shook his head at the carpet. “If I’d put a bullet in your head that night? I woulda eaten the next round.”
“I know.”
“This isn’t River Grove. I won’t pull a trigger on you, Sam. I can’t.”
“You would have. Back then.”
“Yeah, well, that was before you died.”
Sam knew Dean hadn’t meant it as a slap, but it felt like one.
Dean exhaled loudly. “Sam, I told you when we got here, if they’ve got any plans for you, I want ‘em over. Right now. I didn’t--” He bit his lip down on that, redirected himself carefully. “Six months from now, you’re not gonna have this shit hanging over your head.”
“Dean, I don--”
“Whatever it is, it ends here.” Dean wasn’t entertaining options. “The only thing different is, we’ve got a little more information today than we had yesterday. As far as I’m concerned, more’s a whole lot better than less.” He rubbed his eye with the flat of his hand, and Sam saw the shake of his shoulders as his brother succumbed to a slow, languid laugh that was as disturbing as the subject matter. “I tell you what, be a real waste of a Crossroads Deal if it panned out I had to kill you.”
Sam didn’t think that was very funny. But Dean was still chuckling when a knock on the motel door snapped them both to attention.
Dean waved away Sam and his Glock as he stepped back from the peephole and disengaged the chain. He threw the door open.
“Bobby. What the fuck?”
“It’s started.”
*********************************************************************************************
“Okay, so Tilford makes eight. That’s eight towns, right?” Dean shifted in the passenger seat, glanced at Sam. End of the world or no, he was fighting a deep-seated irritation over the amount of driving his brother was doing these days. Sam wasn’t driving particularly badly. He was just doing it a lot.
“Looks like.” Bobby passed the map over the seat to Dean. “We got Herbert, and Olds up across the border into Canada, Stirling City in California. Now, I got pretty much straight off the phone from you and into my car last night, but I got a call from Cameron Miller on the road. Symbol showed up in Tilford this morning.”
Dean grimaced. “Bobby, I’m sorry ‘bout that call last night, but I gotta be honest. I’m kinda glad you’re here. This is…” He waved a hand over the map.
“Yeah. It is. And I got more, don’t worry. There’s more.”
“So this is starting.” Sam flitted his attention from the road to the rear view mirror. “The virus?”
“First reports were coming through same time the symbol hit the ground.”
“What about the other towns?”
“Olds is still under quarantine. Rest of ‘em are done and dusted. Same as River Grove and Timber. Virus ran a three day course, everything disappeared. I got hunters on the ground in Alamo and Somerset, both said they found a single body left behind. One in a shed four miles from the symbol in Somerset. Alamo, they found a guy propped under a tree two miles south of the one down there. CDC and National Guard are all runnin’ around with their arms in the air. They’re starting to see there’s a pattern here and it ain’t like any infection they’ve dealt with before.”
Dean cocked an eyebrow at the map. “You can say that again.”
Sam stopped for a set of lights, twisted to look at Bobby. “How many people are we talking here?”
“All up? Thousands. On the radio, they were sayin’ thousands.”
Dean caught Sam’s stricken look, and for a moment Bobby’s reply sat thick in the air between them. Sam missed the light change and the car behind them sounded the horn.
Dean pointed his pen at the road. “Green,” he barked redundantly. Sam hit the gas, and Dean turned back to Bobby. “You said back at the motel: this has happened before?”
“Europe. Mid 1349. Dug up some scratchings by a faction of Catholic church. There’s reference to a Seal of Solomon, translation’s a little dicky but the general gist of it is that a group of four priests were dispatched to a location near Prague to disrupt an ‘undesirable event’.”
“Undesirable event?” Dean’s eyebrow arched up. “What kind of undesirable event?”
“Again, translation gets a little weird. There’s reference to the walking dead, which… well, it could mean somethin’ or it could be nothin’. Bubonic plague wiped out a third of the world’s population in the mid 1300s and the timing’s smack in the middle of that mess.”
Dean shook his head, face scrunching in disbelief. “Are we sayin’ the bubonic plague was a demonic attack?”
“No, but it’d be the perfect cover for one. You got one in three people droppin’ dead across an entire continent, and no one’s in a lab checkin’ for sulfur in the blood back then. Be a real handy time to throw a seal down and come to the party.”
“So, what happened?”
“Well, the priests recorded eight symbols in eight different locations across five countries. There’s records of coordinates, dates, times, more symbols and another reference to the undead, this time something about ‘eight ambassadors of hatred and bloodshed’.”
Sam’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
Dean’s eyes fell to the map in his lap. “Holy fuck. The bodies. Bobby, tell me those priests stopped this thing.”
“Well, they did, but it’s not exactly clear how. I got nothin’ specific. Some sort of invocation using the First Seal of Saturn, and they razed the symbol near Prague. And whatever they did, it cost, ‘cause only one of ‘em walked out of there.”
Dean gave the map an impatient tap with his pen. “Razed how? They burn it or what?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, you got anything on how they died?”
“Something about the earth cracking, and a bloody battle.”
“Oh,” Dean clipped. “That doesn’t sound apocalyptically terrifying.”
“Look, I know it’s not much, but I figure all of us on the case we got a better chance of figurin’ this out.”
“Timing?”
“Well, it’s a Seal of Saturn they’re layin’ down here…”
Dean nodded, caught Bobby’s cast line. “We can figure this out. What day is Saturn on the planetary table? We talkin’ Saturday?” He rubbed his furrowed brow, grunted a “What?” when he glanced up into Sam’s impressed smile.
“Nothing.” Sam shook his head, turned his attention back to the road.
“Hey, I may skim the text, Geekboy, but I’m all over those diagrams and tables.” Dean pointed to an empty parking space as Sam slowed the Impala past Jo’s building. “You gonna be able to keep up if I start talkin’ lunar cycles?”
Sam shut off the engine, dropped his hands to his thighs. “Me? Oh, I’m good. Bring it on.”
“Well, it’s gonna have to wait. Right now, I got a bigger problem than Saturn and the bubonic plague.” Dean kicked his door open, winced. “What the hell do I say to Jo?”
*********************************************************************************************
She was pretty angry. Dean caught her eye a couple of times while Bobby brought them up to speed, and he could see the hurt and the fury boiling away behind her impassive façade. He returned her cold stare with an expressionless front of his own. Knew the situation called for contrition, but since Dean lacked a talent for its expression face-to-face, he doubted he harbored any special skill for it across a room.
He made sure he dipped his gaze first, both times.
Bobby elected to go along for the ride out to Jo’s car in Timber, and Sam seconded the idea, turned to Dean. “We can drop you and Marcus at the university, maybe you can dig up some more info on this ritual?”
Dean gave Sam a pointed look. “I’m not real keen on us splittin’ up right now.”
“Dean, I don’t know what the chances are of us running into her out there. Another blow to the head right now, and I’m gonna be spoon-feeding you mashed vegetables for the rest of your life. You really don’t need to have your ass handed to you again.”
Jo’s cell rang, and she excused herself to take the call.
“Can I talk to you in the kitchen, please?” Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder, stood up.
Dean rubbed his jaw, shook his head as he rounded on Sam beside the stove. “I don’t like the idea of you being near that symbol right now.”
“We’re just gonna pick up the car, take a look at the paddock, come straight back.”
“Sam, this seal could be triggering you. Those symbols are generating power. You go stand in the middle of the fuckin’ thing, I think we’re askin’ for trouble.”
“Nothing happened out there the other day.”
That was true. Dean bit his thumbnail. “I don’t like it.”
“Problem?” It was Bobby in the doorway.
“Yeah.” Dean didn’t see any point mincing his words. “Sam went all anti-Christ on us again last night. I don’t want him near that symbol.”
Bobby looked briefly appalled. His gaze traveled from Dean to Sam and then back again. “You think the seal’s causing it?”
Dean scratched his ear, shook his head a little. “We dunno. Smart money says it’s not helping. Look, so far Meg’s the common denominator, but you got no guarantee you’re not gonna run into her either.”
“Dean, we got no guarantee of that anywhere right now.” Sam turned to Bobby. “Anything starts to happen, trust me, you’ll be the first to know. We need to get the lay of the land. Plan this out.” He turned back to Dean. “I’ll have two hunters with me.”
Sam’s face seemed to be selling this as a safety feature, and it made Dean’s nose scrunch.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, you dipshit.” Dean pointed at Sam, addressed Bobby. “He starts battin’ the demon eyes around, someone’s liable to freak out and blow his fuckin’ head off, and if that happens, I’m gonna start shootin’ people. I don’t need that kind of messy on the eve of a demonic plague.”
“I got him, Dean.” Bobby gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
Dean returned it with a hard stare. “I mean it, Bobby.”
“Dean,” Bobby repeated, slowly and deliberately, “I got him.”
You better have him. Dean didn’t know if the assurance was there in Bobby’s face, or if he just wanted it to be. In five and a half months, you’re all he’s got. So, you better have him, you son of a bitch.
“Okay.” Dean nodded. He lifted a finger at Sam. “You so much as sneeze funny and he’s got my full permission to drop you any way he sees fit. You got that? Are we clear on that?”
Sam nodded, one eyebrow arching. “Absolutely.”
“We tellin’ them?” Bobby moved a vague hand in the direction of the living room, and Dean shook his head emphatically.
“No.”
“Dean--”
“Bobby, I know. I do. Just, not now. Please. Let me see if I can dig up anything on how to stop it.”
Bobby frowned reluctantly. “We’re all huntin’ the same bear, Dean. Make it a lot easier if we’re all in the same park.”
“Just give me a couple of hours to see what I can find. You guys get back, we’ll gear up, and I’ll tell ‘em everything.”
“Tell us what?” Jo clipped from the doorway, hands on her hips.
“Nothin’. I’m just sayin’, Marcus and I’ll do some research, we’ll regroup when you get back.” Dean cut eyes to the countertop. “You guys just need to be careful, okay?”
He could feel Jo’s eyes boring into him. “Well, Careful’s my middle name.”
It came out as a vicious sing-song, made Dean blink long.
“Okay, so we should get going.” Sam clapped his hands, grimaced at Dean over Jo’s head as he backed into the living room. “Guys?”
Dean called her back when Jo made a move out of the room. “Jo, can I talk to you for a minute?”
She stopped, turned, and came across the kitchen floor. Rapped her knuckles on the counter beside him. The raised eyebrows may have invited discourse, but the tightness in her smile was pure vitriol.
Dean felt a brief catch of helpless certainty in the pit of his stomach. He was about to fuck this up. “Listen, about last night--”
It was as far as he got. Jo stepped forward and brought a knee up hard into his groin, doubled him over with a strangled grunt beside the kitchen cupboard.
“Yeah. About that.” She bent to get her lips close to his ear. “That’s for starters. You ever pull a stunt like that with me again, you’ll be begging me for a knee to the balls. Are we clear?”
Dean’s discomfort peaked right about the time she finished speaking, and if his life had depended on the repetition of any word, he’d have been on the express elevator to Hell right there. He took his cue off her raised inflection, closed his eyes and nodded compliantly to whatever it was she had asked. Then he devoted his full attention to not puking or putting a tooth through his lip.
Holyjesusgodfuck.
“I’m on your side, you asshole.” Jo straightened. “Marcus’s got some information for you. So be nice to him, or next time it’ll actually feel like I meant it.”
She left him in the kitchen, hip against the cupboard. He leaned there, folded in half, with one hand over his thumping testicles, and the other on his knee.
A couple of minutes later, he saw Sam’s sneakers out of the corner of his eye. They shuffled on the tiles as he leaned against the fridge and crossed his arms.
“Oh.” His brother drew a sympathetic breath in through his teeth. “You okay?”
Dean shook his head, no. He hummed a groan to that effect down through his nose.
“Need a hand?”
Dean straightened a little, braced his right hand against the stove. “No, thank you . I got it.” He tilted a strained, incredulous face up at his brother. “Do I need a hand? What are you, a fuckin’ idiot?”
Sam held up two acquiescent palms. “Sorry, man. I’m just tryin’ to help.”
“Yeah, well, you can help by stayin’ over there.”
He winced, got a rhythm going with the air in through his nose, out through his lips until the nausea passed, and the throbbing in his balls stopped pulsing up through his pelvis. God.
“Son of a bitch.” Dean pushed off from the stove, left hand still gripping the denim at his crotch. “Well, that had Ellen Harvelle all over it.” He cocked his head. “Straight for the balls, Joanna-Beth.”
Sam clapped him on the back as he limped towards the living room. “Dude, you know what…?”
Dean nodded. “I got off easy.”
********************************************************************************************
Sam kept the Impala idling on the street until Dean and Marcus reached the entrance to the history building. Dean leaned on the swinging door, held it open while a couple of giggling students passed through, clinging to each other.
They flashed him bright smiles. “Thank you,” said the blonde, and her flirtatious stress on the you turned Dean’s stomach.
“You’re welcome.” Courtesy called for a smile, but he avoided eye contact, instead lifted a hand towards the Impala. It sent the car peeling away from the curb with a rumble.
Marcus’s desk looked like he alphabetized the branding of his stationery. Dean had spent enough time in university offices over the years to know; History Professors, in general, weren’t big on dusting. Their offices were frequently as overlooked and musty as the eras in which they specialized. And for the most part, this shared office space fit the bill. The two other desks in the room were overflowing with teetering mounds of paperwork and books. The chaos ended abruptly two feet from Marcus’s desk in all directions.
Dean couldn’t help the grimace as he eased into a chair. “Dude, you really need to loosen up a little.”
“Well, I’m not the guy handcuffing his friends to the furniture, so…” Marcus dumped the pile of books Bobby had given him on the desk.
Dean realized the guy was angry, had to chew back the impressed creep of amusement that tugged at his mouth. He started to rise out of his chair. “Oh, I’m sorry. You want me to stand up, or can you kick me in the jewels from there?”
“Look, Jo’s a grown woman, and she sure as hell doesn’t need me to fight her battles for her. You guys want to throw down like a couple of chimpanzees, then fine. But let’s just get it on the record that I think what you did last night was pretty fucking poor.” He slapped the texts one at a time on the desk, spread them out. “Hell of a way to treat a friend.”
Dean bit back the half-dozen variants of Fuck you, buddy that sprang immediately to mind. He’d neatly dodged this conversation with Jo, and he had no intention of explaining himself to a guy whose primary interaction with salt was at the dinner table.
“All due respect, Marcus, but you don’t know shit about shit, so…”
“Dean, I’m not blind. I can see your face, and those wrists are…” He pointed, shook his head.
Dean glanced down, saw the jagged red rings around his healing wrists and resisted the urge to tug on his jacket cuffs. He felt a flush of annoyance at the sudden compulsion to cover them up. Instead, he tilted his chin up, narrowed his eyes at Marcus. Are what?
“I know you’re coming off the back of something pretty awful, it’s just… you got a lot of people tripping over themselves to back you up right now. I don’t get why you’re so desperate to keep them at arm’s length.”
There was absolutely no reason why Dean should have felt any inclination to throw Marcus a bone. But the guy was so far off base it lit up a flare of anger that sparked Dean’s tongue before he could extinguish the flame.
“Arm’s length? I’m tryin’ to keep your sorry fuckin’ asses alive. I got a demon out there, and she is merciless, and relentless and anyone I give a shit about is fair game to her. She gets half a chance, she’ll spread the lot of you thin enough to cover this entire fucking city.”
“Well, those are some mighty broad shoulders you got there, Atlas. And forgive me for noticing, but if you think this solo act is working for you, you should go down the hall to the bathroom and take a look at your face.”
Well, fuck me. Look who grew some balls overnight. But Dean was in no mood to start revising his opinion of anyone. “This’s a dangerous job, Marcus. If you really care about her as much as you seem to, then you should be thinkin’ long and hard before you slap her on the ass and send her out huntin’ with your blessing.”
“Jo’s going to do this job whether I want her to or not. This isn’t some game to her, Dean. This is who she is. And I don’t know where you got this impression that she needs your protection, but she’s been doing just fine taking care of herself up until this week. Yeah, you’re right. This is a dangerous job. The way I see it, you’re either good at it or you’re dead. And she’s not dead. So I’d say she’s earned a bit of trust. Mine and yours.”
Dean bristled. “Trust? This’s got nothin’ to do with trust, Marcus. I’ve had Jo an inch deep in my shoulder with a pair of tweezers, chasin’ a bullet. So don’t talk to me about trust. I trust her just fine.”
Marcus gave him a tight shake of the head. “No, you don’t. You’re on some pretty thin ground if trust is about who’s got your back when the shit hits the fan. Must be a lonely fucking walk out there if you’ve got no faith in the people around you to make the right choices.”
Dean jiggled his knee. He wanted to stand up and lean across the desk, smack the guy in the mouth. Marcus stared him down until the anger fuelling his courage dissipated, left him looking a little nervous. Dean returned his gaze with am appraising squint, let him stew in the possibility of an imminent ass-kicking for a half-minute. Then he cleared his throat, and leaned forward. “Marcus, I tell you what. I’m gonna take a walk down this hall of yours to the bathroom. And when I get in there, I’m gonna take a piss. Hell, I might even look at my face. But when I get back here? You and I are gonna be having a conversation about somethin’ else. Okay?”
Marcus blinked. “Okay.”
Dean nodded, stood up. “Good. Now, Jo said you had some information for me. That might be your ice-breaker.”
It sent Marcus rifling through the papers in front of him, and Dean had almost made it to the door when he said: “Yeah. I thought you guys said you couldn’t kill these demons.”
Dean caught the doorframe with his right hand, turned back. “We can’t. Exorcise, yes. Kill, no.”
“Well, I think you might be wrong about that.”
The walk down the hall suddenly didn’t seem so imperative. Dean took a step back into the room. “How do you figure?”
Marcus slapped an eight by ten glossy on the desk and pointed at it. “Because the owner of that pawn shop says four years ago she killed a demon right here in Portland.”
*********************************************************************************************
The trip to Timber proved disconcertingly uneventful. Sam waited until they were alone in the car, following Jo’s beat up old sedan back to Portland, and then brought Bobby up to speed on the last forty-eight hours.
Bobby shifted a little uncomfortably when Sam wound up.
“Well, shit. You Winchester boys’ve sure got your own brand of messy.”
“Not arguing.”
“How worried are we about Dean?”
Sam exhaled loudly, chewed on his answer too long.
Bobby tilted his temple, cocked an eyebrow. “Okay, let’s call that very.”
“Look, he snapped last night. No question. He marched into that farmhouse virtually unarmed and completely without backup. So yeah, he’s not thinking very clearly right now. But he went to a lot of trouble to keep Jo out of harm’s way. I mean, not his finest hour by any stretch but… those girls in that apartment? That was a blow. He was rattled.”
“How worried are we about you?”
On a scale of one to ten? What comes after a gazillion? A gazillion and one. Sam stared at the back of Jo’s car on the road ahead of them, didn’t answer.
“We’re gonna fix this, Sam.”
Sam let the reassurance hang in the air until they passed through Staley’s Junction.
“He can’t do it, Bobby. If it comes down to it. He won’t stop me.”
“No.” It was a quiet utterance of agreement.
“We’re friends, right, Bobby?”
Bobby met his gaze when Sam glanced over, but dropped his eyes to the seat between them when he spoke, voice thick with disgust. “Yeah, Sam. I’m your friend.”
“I mean, I can rely on you. Right?”
Bobby was staring at his hands in his lap as if there was some alternative to be found there. “Yeah,” he said finally.
It was a dual barb, the stab of gratitude and betrayal the response elicited. Sam blinked furiously against the sudden threat of tears. He clenched his teeth together until the wash of emotion passed.
“He’ll try to stop you.” Sam kept his eyes on the road. “Have a plan.”
Chapter Eleven
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? Special mention this chappy to
chocca2 , who was lurking close at hand when the Dragons needed talking out of her tree. Thank you, babe.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Ten
If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.
~Pope John Paul II
“Your father’s dead, Dean. They’re all dead. Nobody’s coming for you.”
She shut him up with three rough, bloodied fingers down his throat, her thumbnail dragging hard against the hollow of his cheek. Dean choked, gagged against her hand.
He knew he’d given Sam’s name a useless workout, spent a while tossing it at the warehouse ceiling. But that had been minutessecondshoursdaysyears ago. If he’d started calling for his Dad, it was news to him. But he’d made a lot of noises, said a lot of things lately he hadn’t meant to.
He wondered vaguely when he’d missed it. How he could have missed it. He felt a sharp, inexplicable stab of relief.
Sorry, Sammy.
Meg drew back her fingers, waggled them against his tongue. “Taste.”
She traced a line down the underside of his jaw with her other hand. Tracked a path to his chest and curled two probing fingernails into the first gash there. Meg explored the wound with a kind of lazy interest that left Dean white-blind with pain, heeled to the governance of stimulus-response.
“Taste it.” This time into his mouth. A hot, tangy violation of tongue and fingers and copper.
He didn’t know how the fuck he’d missed it. But forever was just as long at the start as it was in the middle or at the end. This he knew.
When he sucked and swallowed, she cooed her victory against his lips. The defeat tasted vile, made him retch. Tasted as bloody as that first please had, all those eons ago.
********************************************************************************************
It was a post office in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Dean was leaning on the back quarter panel of the Impala when Sam came out, the opened envelope clutched in his hand. His face was a mixture of relief and excitement and fear.
“I got in. Dean, holy shit. I got in.”
Their dad was propped against the parking meter on the sidewalk, shotgun hooked over his left shoulder. “Always knew he had it in him.”
Dean glanced sideways at his father. “No one asked you.”
“Okay.” John shrugged. “You know, you should crack a book yourself sometime, kid.” He gave Dean a fond, nostalgic smile. “You never were much of a reader.”
Sam held up the envelope again, started to laugh. “I don’t believe it.”
“Where?” Dean got the word up and out around the knot in his throat.
And Sam cocked his head, looked confused. “What?”
“Where’d you get in?”
Sam opened the passenger door, leaned on the frame. He sniffed off a laugh. “Whattaya mean?” he asked, and his eyes were suddenly as black as night. “Where the hell do you think I got in?”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean woke face-planted into his pillow, cheek damp with his own drool. He sniffed, rolled, and stopped when the fabric of the pillowcase came with him. Sent two fingers up into the matted mess of hair, gritted his teeth while he carefully disengaged the crust of blood and cotton from his temple.
He levered up far enough for the brass to start up in his skull, eased back down with a groan.
“Hey,” Sam looked up from the laptop at the kitchenette table. “You’re awake.”
Dean rubbed a hand through the unruly sleep-sculpted spikes of his hair. “Oh, man. I got a headache,” he moaned.
“Gee, really? What a shock.”
“Time is it?” Dean brought his watch up to his face, squinted at it.
“Nearly ten.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, you were pretty wiped.”
Dean maneuvered his feet onto the carpet, got upright in increments while he rode out a full-body replay of the damage. Knee, hip, ribs, cheek, and… there you go - shoulder. Oh, wow. Shoulder. First step off his right, and the left knee gave, sent him hopping.
Sam popped up out of his chair like a meerkat. “Oh, hey. You in one piece?”
Dean winced, waved him off as he limped toward the bathroom. “I dunno. Lemme shower.” At the doorway he paused, one hand on the frame as he scuffed a toe through the salt line at the edge of the tiles. “What’s with the salt? We afraid of your demonic dumps?”
“Whose demonic dumps?” Sam countered, and Dean sniffed a laugh.
It felt like a fucking century since there’d been any easy slap and jab between them.
“You sleep in here, dumbass?”
Sam paused. “Yeah,” he said finally, and it sounded like a decision.
Dean felt something tight in his chest uncurl. Question, answer. He raised an eyebrow at his hand on the doorframe. Nodded. “Okay. Lemme take a shower. Then we’ll figure this out.”
He stunk. It took a brief visual reconnaissance of the bathroom, and then an exploratory sniff of his shirt, to ascertain that the acrid stench of sweat, smoke, and lighter fluid had no external source.
Jesus.
Dean peeled off the shirt, balled it up, and sent it into the corner of the bathroom floor. He couldn’t actually recall when he’d last ventured into his duffel for a change of clothes.
You had that on at Shelley’s--
Don’t.
He blinked at the wreck in the mirror instead. You couldn’t technically call it a black eye, but the whole right side of his face was definitely nudging some of the more ominous shades down the darker end of the color spectrum. Dean hooked an arm into the shower recess. Got some water running before Sam could start banging on the door, ask if anything was wrong.
He leaned back towards the mirror, angled his chin a little, and studied the cut in his head. It had felt like the Grand Canyon beneath his fingertips in the car last night, but it didn’t look so bad in the light of day. Sam was right; it could have done with a couple of stitches. But it was too late now, and it was in his hair, so who really gave a shit? After the mess Meg had made of his face in that warehouse, Dean figured it didn’t matter so much.
You only gotta look at it another five and a half months.
The jeans were tight at his knee. When he worked them down far enough to get a look, it was predictably bruised and swollen. He tested his weight on it, decided most of the damage was just the price of failing to ice it last night. With any luck it’d shower right out.
He wasn’t getting off so easy with the shoulder. His tussle with Meg and the bounce off the front of the farmhouse hadn’t been kind to the healing dislocation. Any tenuous progress made in the past two weeks had been violently undone. He tried a hesitant shrug and roll, didn’t get very far. The pulse and throb of it radiated up through his jaw, into his teeth; sent an ominous tingle from his elbow down to his fingers.
Fuck.
He stepped into the shower, adjusted the taps until the temperature was bearable. Got his right hand up against the tiles, and leaned there under the flow; let the water heat and release the tight grip and ache of his muscles. He watched the grit, blood and dirt swirl in the drain like weak coffee, didn’t bother reaching for any soap till the water ran clean.
If you can’t save him, you’re gonna have to kill him.
Thank you, John Winchester. Way to strap an albatross. But Dean had already made his choice about that. Gordon Walker had once told him that if it came to it, his Dad would have had the stones to do what was right.
What was right.
And hell, wasn’t that your arbitrary term right there. But if it had come to it, maybe his Dad would have.
Dean had been willing, too. There’d been a moment, back in River Grove - one brief peaceable moment of resignation - when Dean had turned a lock on a door that he never planned to open again. They’d been granted impossible passage through that black corridor, and if that didn’t tell you something about watching your trigger finger, Dean didn’t know what did. He’d been willing to do it, but that was then and this was now.
Sam had died back in Cold Oak, and there were suddenly a whole lot of questions Dean never had to ask himself again.
********************************************************************************************
Sam made a coffee run while his brother showered, grabbed some muffins for breakfast. Dean crammed downed an apple and cinnamon in two ambitious bites as he sat damp-haired and shirtless at the table, tossed Sam a roll of elastic wrap.
“What am I doing with this?”
Dean pointed to his shoulder. “Strappin’ that.” He flipped the plastic lid from his take-out cup, chased the muffin with a slurp of coffee. “Is it possible I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours? How is that possible?”
Sam pulled up a chair. He got in a few tentative prods at the joint, lifted the elbow far enough that Dean winced, and leaned away.
“Sorry, did I say poke it? I meant strap it.”
“Dean, this is a wreck.”
“Uh-huh.” Dean pointed a warning at the remaining muffin on the table in front of them. “Last chance, Sam.”
Sam waved a hand. “Take it. You’re gonna have to get this looked at.” He flattened a thumb against the end of the roll on Dean’s upper arm, sent the wrap around a couple of times.
“After,” Dean agreed evasively.
Sam let it slide. Five and a half months. What difference does it make? That’s what Dean’d say, if Sam pushed him. He wrapped while Dean worked on the muffin and gulped down his coffee; while the stricken, helpless feeling passed fleetingly.
The scope and magnitude of Dean’s countdown was too enormous to fully embrace. Desperation danced in and out of frame, struck out of nowhere, and the triggers were sometimes obvious, and sometimes as obscure as an empty beer bottle left on a motel sink. Dean hid it well, the vast majority of the time. But Sam caught glimpses, knew he was tackling a background terror that was escalating in direct proportion to his dwindling days.
I’m not gonna be ready. I’m never gonna be ready.
“You’re quiet.” The words sent a spray of crumbs into Dean’s lap. He brushed them off, brought his coffee to his lips.
Sam kept his eyes on the task at hand, frowned. “Well, I kinda dropped an a-bomb last night. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried about what you’re thinking.”
“Right now? I’m thinkin’ these muffins are awesome.”
“Actually, I thought they were pretty ordinary.”
“Yeah, well. You’re fussy.” Dean drained the last of his coffee, pushed the cup towards the center of the table. “Nothing’s changed, Sam.”
Sam clipped the wrap at Dean’s shoulder, leaned back. “How can you say that?”
Dean nestled the fingertips of his right hand against the strapped joint, hooked his elbow back and gingerly tested his range. He raised both eyebrows and shook his head. “’Cause nothin’ has.”
“I tell you I could be part of this demon uprising, and that’s it? You just… down a couple of muffins for breakfast and go about your day? No sweat?”
Dean jiggled his knee, narrowed his eyes. “Sam, listen to me. Back in Wyoming, the Yellow Eyed Demon tried to tell me there was something going on with you. And, okay, now we know there is. Excuse me for not dyin’ of shock over here, but this isn’t exactly news to us, right? First the visions, then the virus. I don’t think either of us really thought we finished this back in that graveyard, did we?” He didn’t pause long enough for Sam to answer. “They got plans to recruit you, the standard Dean Winchester detour still applies. We’ll figure it out.”
Sam blinked at him. After Cold Oak, he’d swept that whole mess under his internal rug. Kept what he knew about their mother and the nursery fire to himself. The Yellow Eyed Demon was dead, and the head-splitting visions had disappeared with him. It had been easy enough for Sam to bury it all somewhere deep, tell himself it was over.
But Dean was right. He hadn’t really believed that. It had preyed on his mind in the dark of motel rooms when sleep wouldn’t come, visited him in dreams when it did. A couple of times, he’d come within a hair of telling Dean what the Yellow Eyed Demon had shown him. Once, when they were drinking themselves loose of a particularly rough case in Charlotte. I gotta tell you somethin’, he’d decided, after the fifth beer. Dean had taken one look at his serious face, and slapped a drunken claw against Sam’s nose. Fuck that, he’d announced, pushed hard enough that Sam fell off his bar stool.
He’d been about to spill the beans again, five and a half feet into a grave-dig in Hastings. Dean had started some random conversation about their dad, speculating about what he’d known and when. Just makes me wonder, he’d panted as he sent a shovel-load of dirt over his shoulder, how long he kept that shit to himself. Fuckin’ asshole. Sam had pitched his shovel into the earth beside his feet, leaned on it, and said Dean… right at the same time his brother struck wood. Yahtzee, Dean’d barked, rolled a hand at Sam. Come on, Frances, let’s go. More diggin’, less leanin’.
Sam had taken the diversions as welcome excuses for his continued silence. And after a while it became less about how Dean would take the information, and more about how long Sam had sat on it. He thought about Dean crumpled on the porch of the farmhouse, how dangerous these secrets of his had become.
“Dean, back in Cold Oak? The Yellow Eyed Demon, he told me -”
“He told you what?” Dean cut him off, gave Sam a one-shouldered shrug. “What’d he tell you, Sam? You’re a demon? You’re evil? It’s your destiny? You can fuck off with that shit. I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Dean, it’s more than that. I haven’t told --”
Dean lifted his palm across his chest, got a physical block between himself and Sam’s words. “You know what? I don’t care. Unless it’s gonna help us clean this mess up, I’m not interested.”
“Dean--”
“Sam.”
Dean’s voice was a callback to last night’s exhaustion, and Sam understood. His brother was at capacity. Need-to-know only mode.
“I just don’t want any more secrets between us.”
“Okay, good. Right now? I think that’s good enough for me.” Dean stood up, crossed to his duffel at the foot of his bed, and dug out a fresh t-shirt. He slowly eased the sleeve up over his damaged shoulder, winced his way through the neck, and sped things up down the other side.
“Meg said I was gonna turn on you.” Sam felt a rush a horror at getting the words out into the open.
But Dean just nodded. “You remember that night in River Grove?” He hooked his jacket off the arm of the couch. “You wanted me to take off, leave you with your gun?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I thought I was gonna have to kill you.” Dean sat on the edge of his bed, shook his head at the carpet. “If I’d put a bullet in your head that night? I woulda eaten the next round.”
“I know.”
“This isn’t River Grove. I won’t pull a trigger on you, Sam. I can’t.”
“You would have. Back then.”
“Yeah, well, that was before you died.”
Sam knew Dean hadn’t meant it as a slap, but it felt like one.
Dean exhaled loudly. “Sam, I told you when we got here, if they’ve got any plans for you, I want ‘em over. Right now. I didn’t--” He bit his lip down on that, redirected himself carefully. “Six months from now, you’re not gonna have this shit hanging over your head.”
“Dean, I don--”
“Whatever it is, it ends here.” Dean wasn’t entertaining options. “The only thing different is, we’ve got a little more information today than we had yesterday. As far as I’m concerned, more’s a whole lot better than less.” He rubbed his eye with the flat of his hand, and Sam saw the shake of his shoulders as his brother succumbed to a slow, languid laugh that was as disturbing as the subject matter. “I tell you what, be a real waste of a Crossroads Deal if it panned out I had to kill you.”
Sam didn’t think that was very funny. But Dean was still chuckling when a knock on the motel door snapped them both to attention.
Dean waved away Sam and his Glock as he stepped back from the peephole and disengaged the chain. He threw the door open.
“Bobby. What the fuck?”
“It’s started.”
*********************************************************************************************
“Okay, so Tilford makes eight. That’s eight towns, right?” Dean shifted in the passenger seat, glanced at Sam. End of the world or no, he was fighting a deep-seated irritation over the amount of driving his brother was doing these days. Sam wasn’t driving particularly badly. He was just doing it a lot.
“Looks like.” Bobby passed the map over the seat to Dean. “We got Herbert, and Olds up across the border into Canada, Stirling City in California. Now, I got pretty much straight off the phone from you and into my car last night, but I got a call from Cameron Miller on the road. Symbol showed up in Tilford this morning.”
Dean grimaced. “Bobby, I’m sorry ‘bout that call last night, but I gotta be honest. I’m kinda glad you’re here. This is…” He waved a hand over the map.
“Yeah. It is. And I got more, don’t worry. There’s more.”
“So this is starting.” Sam flitted his attention from the road to the rear view mirror. “The virus?”
“First reports were coming through same time the symbol hit the ground.”
“What about the other towns?”
“Olds is still under quarantine. Rest of ‘em are done and dusted. Same as River Grove and Timber. Virus ran a three day course, everything disappeared. I got hunters on the ground in Alamo and Somerset, both said they found a single body left behind. One in a shed four miles from the symbol in Somerset. Alamo, they found a guy propped under a tree two miles south of the one down there. CDC and National Guard are all runnin’ around with their arms in the air. They’re starting to see there’s a pattern here and it ain’t like any infection they’ve dealt with before.”
Dean cocked an eyebrow at the map. “You can say that again.”
Sam stopped for a set of lights, twisted to look at Bobby. “How many people are we talking here?”
“All up? Thousands. On the radio, they were sayin’ thousands.”
Dean caught Sam’s stricken look, and for a moment Bobby’s reply sat thick in the air between them. Sam missed the light change and the car behind them sounded the horn.
Dean pointed his pen at the road. “Green,” he barked redundantly. Sam hit the gas, and Dean turned back to Bobby. “You said back at the motel: this has happened before?”
“Europe. Mid 1349. Dug up some scratchings by a faction of Catholic church. There’s reference to a Seal of Solomon, translation’s a little dicky but the general gist of it is that a group of four priests were dispatched to a location near Prague to disrupt an ‘undesirable event’.”
“Undesirable event?” Dean’s eyebrow arched up. “What kind of undesirable event?”
“Again, translation gets a little weird. There’s reference to the walking dead, which… well, it could mean somethin’ or it could be nothin’. Bubonic plague wiped out a third of the world’s population in the mid 1300s and the timing’s smack in the middle of that mess.”
Dean shook his head, face scrunching in disbelief. “Are we sayin’ the bubonic plague was a demonic attack?”
“No, but it’d be the perfect cover for one. You got one in three people droppin’ dead across an entire continent, and no one’s in a lab checkin’ for sulfur in the blood back then. Be a real handy time to throw a seal down and come to the party.”
“So, what happened?”
“Well, the priests recorded eight symbols in eight different locations across five countries. There’s records of coordinates, dates, times, more symbols and another reference to the undead, this time something about ‘eight ambassadors of hatred and bloodshed’.”
Sam’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
Dean’s eyes fell to the map in his lap. “Holy fuck. The bodies. Bobby, tell me those priests stopped this thing.”
“Well, they did, but it’s not exactly clear how. I got nothin’ specific. Some sort of invocation using the First Seal of Saturn, and they razed the symbol near Prague. And whatever they did, it cost, ‘cause only one of ‘em walked out of there.”
Dean gave the map an impatient tap with his pen. “Razed how? They burn it or what?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, you got anything on how they died?”
“Something about the earth cracking, and a bloody battle.”
“Oh,” Dean clipped. “That doesn’t sound apocalyptically terrifying.”
“Look, I know it’s not much, but I figure all of us on the case we got a better chance of figurin’ this out.”
“Timing?”
“Well, it’s a Seal of Saturn they’re layin’ down here…”
Dean nodded, caught Bobby’s cast line. “We can figure this out. What day is Saturn on the planetary table? We talkin’ Saturday?” He rubbed his furrowed brow, grunted a “What?” when he glanced up into Sam’s impressed smile.
“Nothing.” Sam shook his head, turned his attention back to the road.
“Hey, I may skim the text, Geekboy, but I’m all over those diagrams and tables.” Dean pointed to an empty parking space as Sam slowed the Impala past Jo’s building. “You gonna be able to keep up if I start talkin’ lunar cycles?”
Sam shut off the engine, dropped his hands to his thighs. “Me? Oh, I’m good. Bring it on.”
“Well, it’s gonna have to wait. Right now, I got a bigger problem than Saturn and the bubonic plague.” Dean kicked his door open, winced. “What the hell do I say to Jo?”
*********************************************************************************************
She was pretty angry. Dean caught her eye a couple of times while Bobby brought them up to speed, and he could see the hurt and the fury boiling away behind her impassive façade. He returned her cold stare with an expressionless front of his own. Knew the situation called for contrition, but since Dean lacked a talent for its expression face-to-face, he doubted he harbored any special skill for it across a room.
He made sure he dipped his gaze first, both times.
Bobby elected to go along for the ride out to Jo’s car in Timber, and Sam seconded the idea, turned to Dean. “We can drop you and Marcus at the university, maybe you can dig up some more info on this ritual?”
Dean gave Sam a pointed look. “I’m not real keen on us splittin’ up right now.”
“Dean, I don’t know what the chances are of us running into her out there. Another blow to the head right now, and I’m gonna be spoon-feeding you mashed vegetables for the rest of your life. You really don’t need to have your ass handed to you again.”
Jo’s cell rang, and she excused herself to take the call.
“Can I talk to you in the kitchen, please?” Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder, stood up.
Dean rubbed his jaw, shook his head as he rounded on Sam beside the stove. “I don’t like the idea of you being near that symbol right now.”
“We’re just gonna pick up the car, take a look at the paddock, come straight back.”
“Sam, this seal could be triggering you. Those symbols are generating power. You go stand in the middle of the fuckin’ thing, I think we’re askin’ for trouble.”
“Nothing happened out there the other day.”
That was true. Dean bit his thumbnail. “I don’t like it.”
“Problem?” It was Bobby in the doorway.
“Yeah.” Dean didn’t see any point mincing his words. “Sam went all anti-Christ on us again last night. I don’t want him near that symbol.”
Bobby looked briefly appalled. His gaze traveled from Dean to Sam and then back again. “You think the seal’s causing it?”
Dean scratched his ear, shook his head a little. “We dunno. Smart money says it’s not helping. Look, so far Meg’s the common denominator, but you got no guarantee you’re not gonna run into her either.”
“Dean, we got no guarantee of that anywhere right now.” Sam turned to Bobby. “Anything starts to happen, trust me, you’ll be the first to know. We need to get the lay of the land. Plan this out.” He turned back to Dean. “I’ll have two hunters with me.”
Sam’s face seemed to be selling this as a safety feature, and it made Dean’s nose scrunch.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, you dipshit.” Dean pointed at Sam, addressed Bobby. “He starts battin’ the demon eyes around, someone’s liable to freak out and blow his fuckin’ head off, and if that happens, I’m gonna start shootin’ people. I don’t need that kind of messy on the eve of a demonic plague.”
“I got him, Dean.” Bobby gave him an almost imperceptible nod.
Dean returned it with a hard stare. “I mean it, Bobby.”
“Dean,” Bobby repeated, slowly and deliberately, “I got him.”
You better have him. Dean didn’t know if the assurance was there in Bobby’s face, or if he just wanted it to be. In five and a half months, you’re all he’s got. So, you better have him, you son of a bitch.
“Okay.” Dean nodded. He lifted a finger at Sam. “You so much as sneeze funny and he’s got my full permission to drop you any way he sees fit. You got that? Are we clear on that?”
Sam nodded, one eyebrow arching. “Absolutely.”
“We tellin’ them?” Bobby moved a vague hand in the direction of the living room, and Dean shook his head emphatically.
“No.”
“Dean--”
“Bobby, I know. I do. Just, not now. Please. Let me see if I can dig up anything on how to stop it.”
Bobby frowned reluctantly. “We’re all huntin’ the same bear, Dean. Make it a lot easier if we’re all in the same park.”
“Just give me a couple of hours to see what I can find. You guys get back, we’ll gear up, and I’ll tell ‘em everything.”
“Tell us what?” Jo clipped from the doorway, hands on her hips.
“Nothin’. I’m just sayin’, Marcus and I’ll do some research, we’ll regroup when you get back.” Dean cut eyes to the countertop. “You guys just need to be careful, okay?”
He could feel Jo’s eyes boring into him. “Well, Careful’s my middle name.”
It came out as a vicious sing-song, made Dean blink long.
“Okay, so we should get going.” Sam clapped his hands, grimaced at Dean over Jo’s head as he backed into the living room. “Guys?”
Dean called her back when Jo made a move out of the room. “Jo, can I talk to you for a minute?”
She stopped, turned, and came across the kitchen floor. Rapped her knuckles on the counter beside him. The raised eyebrows may have invited discourse, but the tightness in her smile was pure vitriol.
Dean felt a brief catch of helpless certainty in the pit of his stomach. He was about to fuck this up. “Listen, about last night--”
It was as far as he got. Jo stepped forward and brought a knee up hard into his groin, doubled him over with a strangled grunt beside the kitchen cupboard.
“Yeah. About that.” She bent to get her lips close to his ear. “That’s for starters. You ever pull a stunt like that with me again, you’ll be begging me for a knee to the balls. Are we clear?”
Dean’s discomfort peaked right about the time she finished speaking, and if his life had depended on the repetition of any word, he’d have been on the express elevator to Hell right there. He took his cue off her raised inflection, closed his eyes and nodded compliantly to whatever it was she had asked. Then he devoted his full attention to not puking or putting a tooth through his lip.
Holyjesusgodfuck.
“I’m on your side, you asshole.” Jo straightened. “Marcus’s got some information for you. So be nice to him, or next time it’ll actually feel like I meant it.”
She left him in the kitchen, hip against the cupboard. He leaned there, folded in half, with one hand over his thumping testicles, and the other on his knee.
A couple of minutes later, he saw Sam’s sneakers out of the corner of his eye. They shuffled on the tiles as he leaned against the fridge and crossed his arms.
“Oh.” His brother drew a sympathetic breath in through his teeth. “You okay?”
Dean shook his head, no. He hummed a groan to that effect down through his nose.
“Need a hand?”
Dean straightened a little, braced his right hand against the stove. “No, thank you . I got it.” He tilted a strained, incredulous face up at his brother. “Do I need a hand? What are you, a fuckin’ idiot?”
Sam held up two acquiescent palms. “Sorry, man. I’m just tryin’ to help.”
“Yeah, well, you can help by stayin’ over there.”
He winced, got a rhythm going with the air in through his nose, out through his lips until the nausea passed, and the throbbing in his balls stopped pulsing up through his pelvis. God.
“Son of a bitch.” Dean pushed off from the stove, left hand still gripping the denim at his crotch. “Well, that had Ellen Harvelle all over it.” He cocked his head. “Straight for the balls, Joanna-Beth.”
Sam clapped him on the back as he limped towards the living room. “Dude, you know what…?”
Dean nodded. “I got off easy.”
********************************************************************************************
Sam kept the Impala idling on the street until Dean and Marcus reached the entrance to the history building. Dean leaned on the swinging door, held it open while a couple of giggling students passed through, clinging to each other.
They flashed him bright smiles. “Thank you,” said the blonde, and her flirtatious stress on the you turned Dean’s stomach.
“You’re welcome.” Courtesy called for a smile, but he avoided eye contact, instead lifted a hand towards the Impala. It sent the car peeling away from the curb with a rumble.
Marcus’s desk looked like he alphabetized the branding of his stationery. Dean had spent enough time in university offices over the years to know; History Professors, in general, weren’t big on dusting. Their offices were frequently as overlooked and musty as the eras in which they specialized. And for the most part, this shared office space fit the bill. The two other desks in the room were overflowing with teetering mounds of paperwork and books. The chaos ended abruptly two feet from Marcus’s desk in all directions.
Dean couldn’t help the grimace as he eased into a chair. “Dude, you really need to loosen up a little.”
“Well, I’m not the guy handcuffing his friends to the furniture, so…” Marcus dumped the pile of books Bobby had given him on the desk.
Dean realized the guy was angry, had to chew back the impressed creep of amusement that tugged at his mouth. He started to rise out of his chair. “Oh, I’m sorry. You want me to stand up, or can you kick me in the jewels from there?”
“Look, Jo’s a grown woman, and she sure as hell doesn’t need me to fight her battles for her. You guys want to throw down like a couple of chimpanzees, then fine. But let’s just get it on the record that I think what you did last night was pretty fucking poor.” He slapped the texts one at a time on the desk, spread them out. “Hell of a way to treat a friend.”
Dean bit back the half-dozen variants of Fuck you, buddy that sprang immediately to mind. He’d neatly dodged this conversation with Jo, and he had no intention of explaining himself to a guy whose primary interaction with salt was at the dinner table.
“All due respect, Marcus, but you don’t know shit about shit, so…”
“Dean, I’m not blind. I can see your face, and those wrists are…” He pointed, shook his head.
Dean glanced down, saw the jagged red rings around his healing wrists and resisted the urge to tug on his jacket cuffs. He felt a flush of annoyance at the sudden compulsion to cover them up. Instead, he tilted his chin up, narrowed his eyes at Marcus. Are what?
“I know you’re coming off the back of something pretty awful, it’s just… you got a lot of people tripping over themselves to back you up right now. I don’t get why you’re so desperate to keep them at arm’s length.”
There was absolutely no reason why Dean should have felt any inclination to throw Marcus a bone. But the guy was so far off base it lit up a flare of anger that sparked Dean’s tongue before he could extinguish the flame.
“Arm’s length? I’m tryin’ to keep your sorry fuckin’ asses alive. I got a demon out there, and she is merciless, and relentless and anyone I give a shit about is fair game to her. She gets half a chance, she’ll spread the lot of you thin enough to cover this entire fucking city.”
“Well, those are some mighty broad shoulders you got there, Atlas. And forgive me for noticing, but if you think this solo act is working for you, you should go down the hall to the bathroom and take a look at your face.”
Well, fuck me. Look who grew some balls overnight. But Dean was in no mood to start revising his opinion of anyone. “This’s a dangerous job, Marcus. If you really care about her as much as you seem to, then you should be thinkin’ long and hard before you slap her on the ass and send her out huntin’ with your blessing.”
“Jo’s going to do this job whether I want her to or not. This isn’t some game to her, Dean. This is who she is. And I don’t know where you got this impression that she needs your protection, but she’s been doing just fine taking care of herself up until this week. Yeah, you’re right. This is a dangerous job. The way I see it, you’re either good at it or you’re dead. And she’s not dead. So I’d say she’s earned a bit of trust. Mine and yours.”
Dean bristled. “Trust? This’s got nothin’ to do with trust, Marcus. I’ve had Jo an inch deep in my shoulder with a pair of tweezers, chasin’ a bullet. So don’t talk to me about trust. I trust her just fine.”
Marcus gave him a tight shake of the head. “No, you don’t. You’re on some pretty thin ground if trust is about who’s got your back when the shit hits the fan. Must be a lonely fucking walk out there if you’ve got no faith in the people around you to make the right choices.”
Dean jiggled his knee. He wanted to stand up and lean across the desk, smack the guy in the mouth. Marcus stared him down until the anger fuelling his courage dissipated, left him looking a little nervous. Dean returned his gaze with am appraising squint, let him stew in the possibility of an imminent ass-kicking for a half-minute. Then he cleared his throat, and leaned forward. “Marcus, I tell you what. I’m gonna take a walk down this hall of yours to the bathroom. And when I get in there, I’m gonna take a piss. Hell, I might even look at my face. But when I get back here? You and I are gonna be having a conversation about somethin’ else. Okay?”
Marcus blinked. “Okay.”
Dean nodded, stood up. “Good. Now, Jo said you had some information for me. That might be your ice-breaker.”
It sent Marcus rifling through the papers in front of him, and Dean had almost made it to the door when he said: “Yeah. I thought you guys said you couldn’t kill these demons.”
Dean caught the doorframe with his right hand, turned back. “We can’t. Exorcise, yes. Kill, no.”
“Well, I think you might be wrong about that.”
The walk down the hall suddenly didn’t seem so imperative. Dean took a step back into the room. “How do you figure?”
Marcus slapped an eight by ten glossy on the desk and pointed at it. “Because the owner of that pawn shop says four years ago she killed a demon right here in Portland.”
*********************************************************************************************
The trip to Timber proved disconcertingly uneventful. Sam waited until they were alone in the car, following Jo’s beat up old sedan back to Portland, and then brought Bobby up to speed on the last forty-eight hours.
Bobby shifted a little uncomfortably when Sam wound up.
“Well, shit. You Winchester boys’ve sure got your own brand of messy.”
“Not arguing.”
“How worried are we about Dean?”
Sam exhaled loudly, chewed on his answer too long.
Bobby tilted his temple, cocked an eyebrow. “Okay, let’s call that very.”
“Look, he snapped last night. No question. He marched into that farmhouse virtually unarmed and completely without backup. So yeah, he’s not thinking very clearly right now. But he went to a lot of trouble to keep Jo out of harm’s way. I mean, not his finest hour by any stretch but… those girls in that apartment? That was a blow. He was rattled.”
“How worried are we about you?”
On a scale of one to ten? What comes after a gazillion? A gazillion and one. Sam stared at the back of Jo’s car on the road ahead of them, didn’t answer.
“We’re gonna fix this, Sam.”
Sam let the reassurance hang in the air until they passed through Staley’s Junction.
“He can’t do it, Bobby. If it comes down to it. He won’t stop me.”
“No.” It was a quiet utterance of agreement.
“We’re friends, right, Bobby?”
Bobby met his gaze when Sam glanced over, but dropped his eyes to the seat between them when he spoke, voice thick with disgust. “Yeah, Sam. I’m your friend.”
“I mean, I can rely on you. Right?”
Bobby was staring at his hands in his lap as if there was some alternative to be found there. “Yeah,” he said finally.
It was a dual barb, the stab of gratitude and betrayal the response elicited. Sam blinked furiously against the sudden threat of tears. He clenched his teeth together until the wash of emotion passed.
“He’ll try to stop you.” Sam kept his eyes on the road. “Have a plan.”
Chapter Eleven