FIC: The Mystery Mile, 1/1
Title: The Mystery Mile
Author: pdragon76
Rating: PG-13 (normal sailor-mouth shenanigans, adult concepts)
Genre: Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam
Spoilers: set post Crossroads Deal, future!fic (assume all aired eps)
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Life’s a bitch when your brother’s gonna live.
A/N: Sweet Charity fic commissioned by the highly charitable shakespearebint , who dropped the reins and let a Dragons have her head. Hope it’s up your alley, dude, and thanks for being a share-bear. Beta’d by the stock-whip wielding kimonkey7 , whose awesomeness cannot be calculated by earthly means. Perused and poked by the ever-nosey and also awesome chocca2 . Thanks guys. The Mystery Mile is based loosely on reports of supernatural activity on the real Kelly Road in Ohioville, Pennsylvania. But loosely. Veeeeeeeeeeeeery loosely.
He is my most beloved friend and my bitterest rival, my confidant and my betrayer, my sustainer and my dependent, and scariest of all, my equal.
-- Gregg Levoy
Dean found the front quarter panel of the Impala with his ass, slid down the slippery black to the gravel. He lifted two searching fingers to where ear met jaw, waggled his chin a little to assess the damage. He shook out his fist, glanced at his freshly opened knuckles.
“I gotta get up again, or are you just about done?”
Sam dropped to his hands and knees on the roadside, dipped a shoulder and rolled onto his back. He shook his head, laid there panting up at the cloudless blue while he passed the back of his forearm under his nose. He lifted his head to peruse the smear of blood across the skin. He shifted his butt against the dirt, turned his wrecked face to Dean.
“Man,” he puffed, and his voice hitched as his chest heaved. “We are really stupid.”
Dean jacked up both knees, leaned forward and snorted back. Spat a blood-streaked slick between this boots. He gazed along the smooth line of the Impala’s frame, back down the sun-drenched stretch of Kelly Road. He whistled low into the still of the country air.
“Yeah. Next time? I’ll take the chickens.”
*********************************************************************************************
It started at a bar off I-17 near Black Canyon City. Sam was cutting through the tables on his way back from the bathroom when he realized the hiatus was over.
Dean was annoying the crap out of him.
It actually felt pretty good, to have it dawn on him. Dean’s bugging the shit outta me. It’d been a long while since he’d had that luxury. And make no mistake, Sam would’ve put his fist through the face of anyone who suggested he’d had some peace coming to him when Dean’s deal came due. It wasn’t like that. Two weeks since D-Day - Didn’t-Go-To-Hell Day, Dodge Day, Demons-Duffed-It Day, goddamn DEAN Day - and his pendulum was still swinging between a physically debilitating sense of relief and a giddy child-like jubilance.
Dean was no longer headed for the Pit. Cue butterflies.
But since he wasn’t going to Hell, Dean was back to raising it. Sam was rediscovering his brother was at his most insufferable when he was in a good mood. For the last fourteen days, Dean had been foaming up the horses on the glee-wagon in fairly consistent style.
So, it was no great shock to find Dean missing from the table where Sam had left him. When he turned a circle, brow knitting, the tattooed guy leaning behind the bar pointed a bored finger at the front doors.
Sam turned in time to see the slap of a familiar leather-jacketed back against the frosted window. A bevy of angry shouts accompanied the glass-rattling impact.
Shit. Sam’s feet stuttered. He jump-started into a leap towards the door, walked right into a solidly swung fist on the other side.
Stupid. Reckless. Jerk.
**********************************************************************************************
“Come on, there has to be something hinky going on in Tijuana.”
“Dean, we’re not going to Tijuana.”
“Why not? I could throw this beer cap and hit Tijuana from here. Right in the ass. I could cap Tijuana in the ass from here.”
“With your grasp of Spanish? We’ll end up in some Mexican jail, repeatedly asking the warden if his wife’s tits taste like beer.”
Dean’s eyes lit up, jaw dropping open a smidge. “Awesome,” he chuckled.
Sam laughed in spite of himself, picked a french fry off his plate and piffed it at Dean. “We’re not going to Mexico, you jerk.”
Dean sent the projectile skittering across the tabletop with the back of his hand, then plucked it off the laminate and threw it into his mouth. “Then where?”
“Well,” Sam pushed the laptop around so he could see. “I’m thinking Utah. We got a couple of suspicious drownings in Hobbs Hollow. Could be interesting. Or I got something at Hill Air Force Base--”
“Yeah?” Dean perked up, leaned close to the screen. “What’s that one?”
“Ah, spirit sighting. Figure wearing sandals. Couple of people have actually spoken to it.”
“Coupla people as in…” Dean raised an eyebrow, lifted his beer and waggled it.
Sam shook his head. “No. Apparently they were sober.” He made a concessionary face that suggested they’d both heard that plenty of times before.
“So, what’s this dead guy got to say for himself?” Dean frowned, tipped his beer against his lips.
“Mostly? He just says: Chonklas.”
A slew of amber ale shot out of Dean’s nose. “Speaking of Spanish,” he spluttered as he made a play for the napkins, began wiping up the mess.
Sam dragged the laptop back out of the wet zone, chuckling. “Guy clearly knows his footwear.”
“Well, you’re really doin’ Hans Holzer proud over there, Sam. You got anything besides Mexican podiatry and failure to float?”
Sam squinted at the laptop, shrugged. “Okay then, Ohioville.”
“In Pennsylvania? Didn’t someone grow a big pumpkin there last year?”
Sam blinked at him. “I have no clue. How do you remember that, and yet none of the important information I give you on a daily basis?”
“Because you’re boring. You need to work on your delivery.” Dean gestured with his hands. “Jazz it up.”
“Like the pumpkin?”
“Yeah. Like the pumpkin.” Dean drained the last of his beer, growled out a loud and lengthy belch. He gave a wink-nod to the mortified woman who swiveled in her seat at the next table.
Sam hit her with the doe-eyes, shook his head apologetically. “I’m sorry. He’s a pig.”
Dean smiled wide, dropped his empty onto the tabletop with a bang. “So, what’s in Ohioville?”
*********************************************************************************************
He’d lost him. Somewhere between the 1976 sightings and the mid-eighties manifestations, Sam had lost him.
“Dean?”
“What?”
“Repeat what I just said to you.”
“Uh, Dean?”
“Before that.”
Dean pried his attention from the nearby bookshelves, gazed at Sam blankly. “Huh?”
“Dude, you’re not even looking at this shit.”
“No, I am. I really am. Keep goin’.”
“Okay, so the locals have been reporting weird stuff happening on Kelly Road for decades, but no one really has any idea why. Up until the last couple of months, it’s been pretty low key stuff. Animals acting weird, insect infestations. Then two weeks ago, a guy’s dog turns on him while they’re out for their morning constitutional, nearly kills him. Three days later, two work buddies stop their car half a mile in, and one shoots the other in the face - point blank range. Turns the gun on himself when the cops show. No history of violence on either side. Guys were apparently best friends.”
“No shit,” mused Dean absently, eyes elsewhere.
“And it’s just that stretch. You get past that first mile marker and it’s all smooth sailing. Locals call it The Mystery Mile.” Sam paused, tapped his pen on the table and nodded at his notes. “This is definitely escalating. I mean, previous to this? It’s all hay bales getting thrown around and here, get this: one guy says he was chased by a pack of…” Sam checked the document, raised an eyebrow, “…nine angry chickens.”
That got Dean’s focus snapped well and truly back on him. He narrowed his eyes. “Chickens? Guy was chased by chickens?”
“So he says. All the way to the mile marker.”
Dean was struck momentarily po-faced. “What kind of a limp-wrist gets chased by chickens?”
Sam huffed out a laugh. “Okay, so maybe I should talk to the chicken guy.”
“And what am I doin’?”
Sam pointed at the texts and papers on the desk. “Well, why don’t you dig up what you can on previous residents, see if you can find anyone to talk to who lived there around the time this started up.”
“So, are we dealing with a curse here or what?” Dean was staring across the library again, but Sam let it go. At least he was asking questions, engaging.
“I dunno. Maybe. I mean, there’s plenty of history in the area. Some local Native American unrest, violence back in the day. There’s even some evidence of satanic occultism. But honestly? It doesn’t feel like it fits to me.”
“How so?”
“Well, it’s pretty localized. There’ve been some sightings on the properties and in the trees; orbs and white light, that kinda thing. But it’s all confined to that first mile. You ask me, this sounds like a spirit. Something happened there.”
Dean waved a distracted hand over the newspapers and books in front of them. “Okay, so what’ve we got in the way of dead people?”
Sam clasped his hands together in his lap beneath the desk, leaned forward. “Dean,” he said patiently, “that’s what you’re supposed to be looking at. Right now.”
“Oh,” Dean stared dumbly at the research. He spun in his chair again, face contorted in disgust. “Seriously, are you blind? Do you even have a dick? How can you not see that?” Dean pointed across the library. “Don’t ask me to read a newspaper when I got this goin’ on thirty feet away.”
Sam sighed. He wasn’t blind, he had a dick, and yeah, he’d seen her. About 5’7”, long dark hair. G string poking just a tad over the top of her Levis. She was crouched on her heel to read the spines of the books on a lower shelf, a long lithe leg stretched to one side for balance. It was a casual display of flexibility that broadcast the possession of further skills. She had a sort of feline sleekness about her, a classiness that was far more Sam’s style than Dean’s. So yeah, he’d seen her.
He blinked long. “If you go hit on her, will you concentrate after?”
Dean snorted. “No.” He gave the woman a lingering look, then turned his attention back to the books. He shuffled newspapers, brow creasing in concentration. He cleared his throat. “Okay, what else?”
Sam raised his eyebrows dubiously. “That’s it? You’re letting this one go?”
Dean looked affronted. “What? I’m listenin’.”
“Yeah, with your dick. You’re listening with your dick.”
Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Sammy, that over there? That takes time. You can’t do a woman like that quick.” He looked briefly shattered. “I don’t have that kind of time.”
“What happened to ecstatic I-got-all-the-time-in-the-world Dean?”
“That was last week. This week I’ve got an escalating pattern of spirit violence comin’ to a head on Kelly Road. So, okay: let’s get a list goin’ of who’s died ugly and who lived where. Then you go talk to the chicken-phobe, swing past the hospital and see what you get out of dog-boy. I’ll hit past residents, see if anyone’s got a story to tell.” He gave Sam a flash of tooth. “See? I can do two things at once.”
But he couldn’t. Two minutes later, the woman was still paying inordinate attention to the shelves in careful view of Dean’s wandering eye.
Sam snapped his fingers, whistled. “My God, will Ritalin help?”
Dean stood up, tugged unabashedly at the crotch of his jeans. “I doubt it. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Sam bounced his pen off his notebook. He pursed his lips as he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head.
Dick-brained jackass.
*********************************************************************************************
It was nearly nine by the time Dean turned up at their room, and Sam could tell from the way he came through the door he wasn’t sticking around. He lost the shirt halfway across the floor and disappeared into the bathroom with the intent of a locomotive. The door slammed, and Sam heard the taps going on, drawers banging. When Dean emerged a minute later, he had the neck of the toothpaste tube between his teeth and a can of deodorant in his hand.
“Dude, I have to use that, too.”
Dean squeezed a generous squirt of paste onto his tongue, gave the open end of the tube an exaggerated lick. He smiled obnoxiously. “Yes, you do.”
He gave both armpits a cursory blast with the deodorant can, tossed the aerosol onto his bed as he rifled through his duffle for a fresh shirt.
“Do I wanna know?”
Dean frowned at his buttons as he did them up. “What?”
“Where you’re going?”
Dean brushed behind Sam’s chair en route to the bottle of whiskey on the kitchenette counter. He hooked it off the laminate with two fingers, pointed the bottle at the motel room wall.
“Next door.”
“What?”
“Well, I’m workin’ through the list of Kelly Road home-owners this afternoon and I stumble across Emily O’Neil. Twenty-five years old, works at the music store in town. We get into this stupid argument about Ian Paice and Ginger Baker, and then I don’t really understand what the hell happened, but I end up sitting through dinner and a pretty obsessive career recap of Patsy fuckin’ Cline.” Dean paused, looked a little shell-shocked. “She’s outside.”
Sam was appalled. “Why?”
“Well, mostly because she’s hot and she has a tongue piercing, but also because ten years ago, her family moved away from Kelly Road. So, now I’ve booked the room next door, and we’re gonna have a nightcap,” he wiggled the bottle, “and then I’m gonna see if I can’t find out a little bit about life on The Mystery Mile.”
“You booked the room next door?”
“Three’s a crowd, Sammy.”
“How much did that cost?”
“Same as this one?”
“Do I need to remind you how much this trip has cost us in gas alone?”
“What are you, my bank manager? I gotta go.” He toggled his eyebrows at the door. “Don’t wait up.”
Sam’s indignant “Dean!” was lost against the slamming door.
He sighed. Drummed his fingers atop his case notes beside the laptop. He had testimonial after testimonial, and not just about angry poultry. There had been at least fifteen incidents of inexplicable violence that Sam could confidently attribute to the phenomena on Kelly Road. But it looked like it was all going to have to wait until morning.
He shut down the laptop, dug a book on Haitian rituals out of his bag, and stretched out on top of his bedspread. Cracked the spine and settled back to ascertain if the battered paperback was worth the three bucks it’d cost him. He figured he may as well make good use of the peace and quiet.
It didn’t last long. Half an hour later, Sam was ready to belt on the wall and request a change in the line of questioning. Whatever Dean was asking her, Emily seemed pretty sure the answer was yes.
*********************************************************************************************
It was actually impressive, the impromptu junk percussion Dean was capable of with a couple of pens and the Impala’s interior. But after the previous night’s drunken audio through the thin motel walls, Sam’d had about enough of listening to Dean’s performances.
“Do you have to do that?”
The drum solo came to an abrupt halt. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I annoying you?”
“It’s a little annoying. Yeah.”
Dean narrowed his eyes. “Would you say this annoys you more or less than the bug up your ass?”
“We’re supposed to be keeping an eye out.”
“Dude, anything gets within fifty feet of this car, the EMF reader’s gonna pick it up. Pressin’ your nose against the glass and lookin’ earnest isn’t gonna bring the dead running.”
“Yeah, well, neither’s you channeling Buddy Rich over there.”
Dean threw the pens onto the dash, made a surprised noise.
“What?”
“Nothin’. I’m just a little impressed you know who Buddy Rich is, that’s all.”
Sam blew out a bored breath. “I drive around in this car with you all day long, Dean.”
“And I’m sorry it’s such a chore for you.” There was a touch of wounded indignation in Dean’s rebuttal.
Sam knew he was being overly touchy. It was late, he was tired, and there was something more offensive about being jammed in the car with his brother when the vehicle was stationary. Dean’s ability to grate seemed reverse-correlated to the Impala’s speed. Although anything over ninety miles per hour, the theory failed and Dean’s jackass quotient was generally back on the climb.
Sam turned his mind to the case instead, hunkered down in the passenger seat and concentrated on keeping his mouth shut.
“So, Emily actually saw this dead kid?” he asked, when the silence between them stretched and threatened frost.
“Uh-huh. A few times. Little boy, about eight years old. Said he always looked pretty angry about somethin’. Parents never believed her, then one night her dad catches sight of the kid in the kitchen when he’s sneakin’ a midnight beer and that’s it.” Dean duck-billed his lips, blew a raspberry. “They were outta there the next week.”
“She say anything else?”
Dean blinked at the windshield, and the recall process looked to be bordering on painful. He shook his head. “I think that was it.”
“Nothing about who it might have been?”
“Dude, I don’t think so.” Dean grimaced. “To be honest, I was a little drunk. And she was… I was distracted.”
“Yeah, trust me, I heard,” Sam assured him, voice thick with disgust.
“Did I tell you about the tongue piercing?”
“Shut the fuck up.” Sam slapped both hands up over his ears. “Please, I’m begging you.”
Dean whistled through his teeth, tilted his chin. “I’m just sayin’.”
“Please, don’t.”
For a few minutes, they let the crickets and the gentle shush of the wind through the firs have the floor.
“What are you so pissy about, anyway?”
Sam straightened defensively. “What? I’m not pissy.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve been all scratchy and shit since…” He trailed off. “Oh.” He started chuckling.
“Since when? What?”
Dean rubbed his eye with the flat of his fingers, shoulders shaking. “Since that dude punched you in the head in Black Canyon City.”
“And that’s funny to you, is it?”
“I’m sorry, man, but you should have seen the look on your face. I thought you were gonna fuckin’ kill him.”
“The only person I was in danger of killing that night was you, dumbass.”
“Oh, please. Those guys were sore losers and they had it comin’.”
“Yeah, and yet I’m the one who gets punched in the face. Next time, leave me out of it.”
“Fine. Next time, stay out of it, you whiney little bitch.”
Dean’s cell rang and he fished it out of his pocket, checked the caller ID and returned the phone to his jacket unanswered.
“Who was that?”
“Think it was that chick from the library.”
Sam flailed on the seat-leather like a fish. “She’s calling you already? Christ. Whatever happened to the three day rule?”
“Sammy, your three day rule is why you never get laid.”
“Well, are you gonna call her back?”
Dean peered out the window towards the dark stand of trees past the mile marker. “Nah. I don’t think so.”
“You gave her your number and now you’re gonna ignore her calls?”
Dean waggled a finger absently at his mouth. “She had a funny lip thing goin’ on. Kinda turned me off.” He nodded out the window. “What is that?”
Sam shook his head in disgust, squinted in the direction Dean had indicated. “I dunno. A posse of outraged women?”
Dean flipped him off, eyes still trained out the window, then tossed his index finger towards the woods. “Is that something moving?”
The EMF reader whistled to life on the seat between them and Sam straightened, knee clunking against the dash. “Ah, that’s a yes.”
Dean cracked his door. “Outstanding. Let’s go.”
*********************************************************************************************
“How can you not have seen it? I was standing right next to it.”
“Maybe that’s why I didn’t see it, Dean. Besides, it was dark.” Sam nudged his chair up closer, tweezers poised between his fingers. “You want me to take this out, you’re gonna have to hold still.”
Dean shifted his ass on the seat irritably. “Lucky it didn’t stab me in the…” He trailed off, lips pursed, and made a tight wordless gesture at the back of his head.
Sam raised his eyebrows, shook his head cluelessly. “Brain stem?” he offered helpfully.
“Thank you. Yes.”
Sam moved the tweezers toward the bloody graze at the base of Dean’s skull. “It’s a splinter,” he muttered. “You fell through a fence and you have a splinter.”
His brother twisted, brought an accusatory finger up between them.
“Pushed,” he clarified. “I was pushed through a fence. Pretty hard, I might add. You should think about layin’ off the spinach.”
Sam grabbed Dean by the shoulders, forcibly angled him into the light. “He was coming right for you. I didn’t think you had time to reload.”
“It was an eight year old dead boy, Sam. With a penchant for aggravating chickens. I had it under control.”
Dean dipped his chin, and Sam turned his attention to the half-inch sliver of cedar. If it had lodged anywhere Dean could see what he was doing, it wouldn’t have warranted a conversation. But since he’d crashed through the rotting post and rail backwards, and since it was Sam’s shove that had sent him sailing through it, Dean was clearly milking the angst cow dry.
“Right. You had it under control. Like the bar in Black Canyon City?”
Dean shuffled on his chair again, and Sam gave him a none-too-gentle jab in the neck with the tweezers. “I said, stay still.”
“Ow. Fuck you. Jesus, just yank it, you toss-bag.”
“Well, since you asked so nicely.”
It wasn’t big, but the wood was wedged deep near Dean’s hairline, got a little stubborn on the extraction.
Dean bit his lip, grunted a protest. “Yeah, wiggle it more. That’s nice.”
“Shut up.”
A knock at the motel door stopped them both stock-still. Dean craned his neck first to look at Sam and then the door. Glanced at his watch. “Who the fuck is that?”
Sam shook his head.
Dean reached for his Glock on the table as he stood, and Sam pushed back his chair; started folding up the first aid kit. Heard Dean rack the slide on his weapon as he crossed to the door.
By the time Sam had bundled the kit and the guns under his bed and made it to the window, Dean was pushing back from the door and his peephole reconnaissance.
“Oh, shit,” he hissed, and Sam’s heart leapt and thumped hard in his throat.
Cops. Or worse. God, Ruby? Please, not Ruby. He retrieved his own gun from the back of his jeans, shifted the curtain with a slow, careful finger.
What the fuck…?
Sam frowned, blinked through the crack in the drapes at the distraught woman on the footpath, her knuckles raised in readiness for a second assault on the door. His mouth fell open a little as he returned his weapon to the waist of his pants.
“Is that…?” Sam’s question tapered into a startled grimace as the banging resumed, this time frantic.
Dean was frozen to the spot, ashen. He shot Sam a panicked look. “I’m not here,” he barked, and took a step back toward the bathroom. He turned to bolt and Sam sprang into action as if someone had fired a starter pistol.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” He half-scrabbled, half-vaulted over both beds and caught Dean in a side tackle five feet from the sanctuary of the tiles. Collared him roughly by the jacket and body-checked him back towards the door. “No way. You fucked her, you deal with it.”
Dean made another play past him; feigned left and dodged right, face stamped with determination.
Sam bent at the knees, collected his brother across the chest with a clothes-line arm and pushed him back; sent Dean stumbling. “Forget it, you sex addict. Reap what you sow.” Sam raised his voice, shouted loud enough for the words to reach Emily. “Dean, get the door!”
Dean’s shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes. “Oh, you sonuvabitch.”
*********************************************************************************************
Emily wasn’t crying about anything Dean had done. She said as much while she wept into his awkward and reluctant embrace. He raised a smug, reproachful eyebrow at Sam over the top of her bowed head. Sam was in no mood for humble pie. Emily shuddered through a fresh round of tears, and he rolled his eyes and made a demonstrative circular movement with his hand.
Rub her back, you jackass, he mouthed, and Dean’s brow bunched down hard on the silent fuck off he volleyed in return.
Emily was crying because she’d lied, and not just to Dean. She’d been lying to everyone since she’d found her dead father’s journal, and the confessionary entry about the boy he’d struck with his car.
Emily was crying because when pressed, she even knew where her father had buried him, all those years ago. The woods, she sobbed. Right beside that first mile stretch on Kelly Road.
*********************************************************************************************
The kid’s name was Emmit Snelling, and Sam gave Dean a slack-jawed look of disgust when he suggested that was as good a reason as any to die young.
“What is wrong with you?” Sam hoiked the duffle straps back up onto his shoulder as he trudged tetchily across the crisp morning grass.
“What? It’s sad. I get it. But it was forty years ago. Little late for eulogies and cake. Besides, the little shit’s been wreakin’ some pretty indiscriminate havoc. ‘Scuse me for not bein’ moved to tears.”
“He was just a little kid, Dean.”
“Yeah. Weren’t we all. Let’s just salt his dead ass, light him up, and get the fuck out of here.”
Sam cracked. He pulled up, dropped the duffle off his shoulder and swung it like a morning star.
Dean blocked the bag with a hastily raised forearm. It connected with a hollow THOP! and sent him hopping sideways.
“Hey!” He dropped the arm, eyes wide with disbelief. “What the fuck was that?”
Sam didn’t answer. Stood there with his mouth clamped shut and the air rattling in and out of his nose. His fist clenched around the duffle straps in his right hand.
Dean straightened up, squared off. He rolled his shoulders, arched an eyebrow that set his features somewhere near bored condescension. “Oh, here we go. Granny Winchester’s got her handbag out.”
For a couple of smart guys, they could be pretty dumb sometimes. That’s what Sam was thinking, as he dropped the bag and launched.
*********************************************************************************************
Dean figured he had some awards coming to him for staying strictly on the defensive. He blocked Sam’s first wild swing and caught him by the wrist; twisted his forearm a half-turn and shoved him back the way he came. He pointed a warning as Sam rounded on him for a second time. “Have a think before you try that again.”
“Oh, you arrogant son of a bitch.”
Dean threw a look over one shoulder and then the other. He frowned deeply. “What the fuck has gotten into you?”
Sam poked himself in the chest with an outraged finger. “What’s gotten into me?” he repeated incredulously. “Oh, that’s rich.”
“What are you talkin’ about, you crackhead?”
“I am so sick of your bullshit, Dean. I have had it up to here-” Sam nearly brained himself with the hand he bounced off his forehead, “-with your bar brawls, and your ‘Let’s-go-to-Tijuana!’ and your debauched --”
“Okay! Hold it!” Dean tapped his flattened hands together in a frantic request for time-out. He tilted his chin, assessed the situation while their general stupidity caught up with him. Then he pointed back toward Kelly Road and the mile marker east of their position. “So, you’re not thinking very clearly and we’re idiots.”
“You’re the idiot.”
“We’re both idiots, you brainiac. One of us has to go to back to the car. I vote you. Before you blow a gasket.”
“You can get fucked. I don’t have to take orders from you.”
Dean opened his mouth, shut it again. He tussled with his rising irritation. “This is the spirit, you dipshit.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You know what? I spent all of last night listening to your lame-ass, clichéd porn-act. I nearly jammed a pen in my brain. So, I don’t really care.”
“We don’t wanna do this.” Surely, they didn’t want to do this. But he found himself widening his stance, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. His fingers curled.
Sam jutted his chin. “Oh, yeah baby, you want it,” he mimicked.
Dean blinked, expressionless. “Alright. That’s it. Let’s go.” He beckoned Sam forward. “I’m gonna fuck your shi--”
It was pretty snappy, the jab he copped in the mouth mid-sentence. Breathtakingly rude, too. But Dean guessed that kind of thing might pass for fair play if you were a freakishly tall bitch with a major attitude problem. The impact rattled his teeth, put a few staggered steps between them. Dean tapped the flat of his fingers to his split lip as he caught the stumble and found his balance again.
Sonuva…
He didn’t fuck around. Sam wanted to get down to business? No problem. The left Dean threw got close enough to shave Sam’s chin as he jerked away, but the follow-up right cross was a bulls-eye wallop. Sam hit the deck with a sickening slap and a winded grunt.
Dean stood over him, tongue against the inside of his own bloody lip. He wiped his mouth, sent the hand down the thigh of his jeans.
“You alright?” It was a token courtesy; not a shred of apology behind the query.
“Yeah.”
Dean grabbed Sam’s arm as he pushed up off the grass, started to help him stand, and got an elbow to the face for his trouble. The bony crook of Sam’s arm cracked sharply off Dean’s brow, and he temporarily lost both audio and visual; went down with a skull full of white fuzz. He managed to keep a blind hold of Sam’s sleeve and yank his brother to the ground with him.
It didn’t buy much in the way of advantage. Dean was still on his hands and knees, blinking the double out of his optics when he saw Sam lurching to his feet in his periphery.
“Get up, you fucking jackass.”
The son of a bitch actually kicked him. Stepped forward and gave him a torpedo punt to the ribs, flipped Dean onto his back with a breathless yelp. He was still gasping uselessly for air when the toe of Sam’s sneaker nudged up against the underside his jaw.
“Come on, Mr. Badass. Get up.”
Sam’s foot ground down against Dean’s throat. He choked, got a hot adrenal rush that was equal parts anger and panic. He wrapped his forearm around Sam’s lower leg, tried to heave up and shift him. When he couldn’t budge his brother from beneath, Dean lifted his hips and jackknifed up with his right boot. There was a hollow thump as the kick found muscle somewhere up above Sam’s ass. It forced a stumbled step forward, and the foot dropped down off his throat to the grass near his cheek. Dean rolled and twisted, executed a half-assed and clumsy leg-sweep, brought his brother crashing down on top of him.
It got ugly fast, escalated into a messy tumbling gruntfest. They spent a couple of exhausting minutes tearing up the grass in a tangled knot of fingersgripfaceeyepokekneeballsfuckBALLS! before Dean lucked out. Sam jerked his chin right up into a sloppy hook shot that should have missed its mark entirely, and it gave Dean the space he needed to snap back and hit him with a far more premeditated haymaker. It flicked Sam’s lights out, stilled him in Dean’s hands long enough to get him secured. By the time he came round, Dean had him face-planted on the grass, one knee against his shoulder.
Sam struggled, lips kissing the dewy blades of rye.
Dean gripped a handful of his brother’s sweaty hair and leaned in. “You keep this up, I’m gonna hit you like I actually mean it,” he panted.
Sam made a frustrated noise; jolted and bucked underneath him. “Go to hell, Dean.”
Well, there you go.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Not anymore. But Dean was pretty damn sure it hadn’t passed Sam’s lips since Wyoming. He shifted a little on Sam’s back, loosened his grip a fraction. Sam’s hips twitched up beneath him and Dean lost his centre of gravity long enough to facilitate a violent swing in the balance of power.
Before he knew it, Sam was straddling his chest and Dean was playing receiver for a skull-rattling slug to the cheek. His brother’s face was pitted and gullied with exasperation and anger.
“Why do you have to--? Why can’t you just--?” Sam’s voice was ragged, desperate.
What?
Dean felt the hot sparks of his own anger sputtering out in the face of Sam’s frustration. His ire faltered, then found fresh fuel; flared for entirely different reasons.
“Alright, that’s enough.” He brought up both hands against Sam’s chest and pushed. “Get the fuck off me.”
Sam collapsed in a heap beside him.
Dean rose slowly, tottered upright. He fumbled at his brother’s jacket, started to pull him up. “Come on, let’s go.” He wiped his sleeve across the slick mess of sweat and blood at his brow. “Come on, Sammy. Up.”
When Sam made no move to rise, Dean used both hands and hauled roughly on his collar. Brought him unsteadily to his feet.
“I said, go to hell.” Sam sagged against him, chest heaving.
“Yeah.” Dean shoved him, sent his brother stumbling toward Kelly Road. “I heard you the first time.”
*********************************************************************************************
Sam sat in the Impala and waited while Dean returned the room key and settled their tab. Played the tip of his tongue along his split lip, and figured it was probably a good thing he wasn’t going to bust out smiling anytime soon. His nose was running or bleeding again - he didn’t know which - but after a tentative foray with a napkin from the glove compartment, he relegated nose-blowing to the pile marked Pipedream. His temples throbbed in time with his pulse, and there was a click in his jaw that hadn’t been there before Dean’s fist.
Dean hadn’t said a word since he’d returned from the salt and burn in the woods. He’d been pretty reluctant to make eye contact, too, which was just fine with Sam.
“Done,” he’d grunted, waving the salt canister back towards the thin plume of smoke spiraling up from the trees.
But that’d been the sum and total of their communication.
Back at the motel they’d tag-teamed on the shower, licked the wounds that wouldn’t wait, and packed the car around an albatross of loaded silence.
Dean was still moving pretty carefully when he emerged from the reception office, and Sam was acutely aware that his Hall of Fame punt might have inflicted some real damage. He desperately needed - and didn’t want - to know.
He cut eyes to the passenger window as Dean eased behind the wheel and jammed the key in the ignition. He looked down when Dean tossed the icepack into this lap.
“Get that on your face.”
Any other time, it would have earned a laugh, a pointed reference to the fact that Dean’s own dial resembled a gothic palate. But Sam was too emotionally hungover to do anything beside lift the pack obediently to his jaw. They sat in silence while the car idled and the engine warmed.
“You just about done with this silent treatment or what?” Dean dropped the car into reverse. “I’m just askin’, cause I dunno how many miles of the stony fuck-yous I’ve got in me.”
Sam frowned out the window. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Yeah, I know. But you’re doin’ an awesome impression.”
Sam dropped the icepack to his thigh, shook his head. “Dean, I am so sorry. For snapping like that. For what I said.” He closed his eyes. “God, sorry sounds so lame.”
“You were playin’ some pretty dirty pool out there, you little shit. What was with that girly eye-poke?”
Sam elbowed the doorframe, covered his eyes with one hand. “I said I was sorry. God, we are such idiots.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Did I mention I was sorry?”
“Once or twice.” Dean made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t exactly pullin’ any punches. You got as good as you gave.”
“Yeah.” Sam dropped his fingers to his bruised cheek, prodded it carefully. “I just… I want you to know I didn’t mean it.”
“S’okay, Sam.” Dean pulled out of the parking lot. “I think I get it.”
Sam frowned. “Get what?”
“I’ve been gettin’ on your nerves lately and I get it. It’s okay. It’s weird. I know.”
“What?”
“It’s a big adjust.”
Sam felt the blood drain from his face. “Oh, God. No, Dean. I don’t mean-- You don’t think --? God, tell me you don’t think--?”
Dean shook his head. “No, I know. It’s okay. I don’t think that. I just mean it’s been a helluva year. I’ve spent the last twelve months tryin’ to be ready. And then I figure out - whoa - I’m not ready.” He sniffed off an incredulous laugh. “Those last few weeks, man. That was a fuckin’ scrabble. I had no clue how that was gonna play out. I’ve woken up in my fair share of cold sweats this year.” He hit the brakes for a set of lights, blinked at Sam. “And that’s just me. I know you’ve been sittin’ on a steamin’ pile of your own bullshit over there. Any way you slice it, this year’s been a violent ass-fuck for us both.”
Sam felt his throat clamp shut and the sting of tears prickle behind his eyes. Couldn’t distinguish exactly the source. Didn’t know if it was relief or sadness or anger or joy. Wondered if maybe it was everything - every dammed rise that had sought and been denied release since that night in Wyoming a year ago.
And he was about to squash it down again. But it didn’t have to be such a tight and desperate act anymore. There was time now. Time to sort and explore and process. To be happy and sad and the billion things in between. There was time to fix things and to make mistakes again.
He nodded, wasn’t sure his voice would allow anything else.
“It’s a big adjust,” Dean repeated. “I dunno exactly where I thought I was gonna be right now, but it sure as hell wasn’t Ohioville, Pennsylvania.” Dean slowed the car, turned onto Engle Road.
Sam straightened in his seat, internal alarm bells clanging. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not stoppin’, I just wanna make sure.” Dean scrubbed his nails against the stubble beneath his jaw, huffed off a laugh. “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass the last couple of weeks.”
Sam shook his head emphatically. “Oh, no. I’ve been the ass. You’ve been happy, and that is just… Dude, it’s awesome to see you happy. It really is. Far be it from me, man. I was way outta line.”
They turned onto Kelly Road.
“I’ll try and tone it down.” Dean threw Sam a half-smile across the car’s interior, ran a hand up and down the back of his head. “I dunno what the fuck’s goin’ on lately. I either wanna hug you, or shoot somethin’, or beat the crap outta someone, and I got no clue which.”
Sam twisted a little on the leather, and Dean’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
“Dude, you try and hug me, I swear to God, I’ll make what happened here this morning seem like a couple of love-taps.”
Sam barked off a laugh, opened up his lip again. “Ow,” he winced.
Dean slowed the car to a crawl as they came up on the mile marker. He stretched an arm across the back of the seat and ducked a little, gazed out over the back of the O’Neil’s old property.
“Okay, are we good here?”
Sam looked at him. Felt the tug of a smile curl his bruised mouth. “Yeah,” he nodded. “I think so.”
Author: pdragon76
Rating: PG-13 (normal sailor-mouth shenanigans, adult concepts)
Genre: Gen
Characters: Dean, Sam
Spoilers: set post Crossroads Deal, future!fic (assume all aired eps)
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Life’s a bitch when your brother’s gonna live.
A/N: Sweet Charity fic commissioned by the highly charitable shakespearebint , who dropped the reins and let a Dragons have her head. Hope it’s up your alley, dude, and thanks for being a share-bear. Beta’d by the stock-whip wielding kimonkey7 , whose awesomeness cannot be calculated by earthly means. Perused and poked by the ever-nosey and also awesome chocca2 . Thanks guys. The Mystery Mile is based loosely on reports of supernatural activity on the real Kelly Road in Ohioville, Pennsylvania. But loosely. Veeeeeeeeeeeeery loosely.
He is my most beloved friend and my bitterest rival, my confidant and my betrayer, my sustainer and my dependent, and scariest of all, my equal.
-- Gregg Levoy
Dean found the front quarter panel of the Impala with his ass, slid down the slippery black to the gravel. He lifted two searching fingers to where ear met jaw, waggled his chin a little to assess the damage. He shook out his fist, glanced at his freshly opened knuckles.
“I gotta get up again, or are you just about done?”
Sam dropped to his hands and knees on the roadside, dipped a shoulder and rolled onto his back. He shook his head, laid there panting up at the cloudless blue while he passed the back of his forearm under his nose. He lifted his head to peruse the smear of blood across the skin. He shifted his butt against the dirt, turned his wrecked face to Dean.
“Man,” he puffed, and his voice hitched as his chest heaved. “We are really stupid.”
Dean jacked up both knees, leaned forward and snorted back. Spat a blood-streaked slick between this boots. He gazed along the smooth line of the Impala’s frame, back down the sun-drenched stretch of Kelly Road. He whistled low into the still of the country air.
“Yeah. Next time? I’ll take the chickens.”
*********************************************************************************************
It started at a bar off I-17 near Black Canyon City. Sam was cutting through the tables on his way back from the bathroom when he realized the hiatus was over.
Dean was annoying the crap out of him.
It actually felt pretty good, to have it dawn on him. Dean’s bugging the shit outta me. It’d been a long while since he’d had that luxury. And make no mistake, Sam would’ve put his fist through the face of anyone who suggested he’d had some peace coming to him when Dean’s deal came due. It wasn’t like that. Two weeks since D-Day - Didn’t-Go-To-Hell Day, Dodge Day, Demons-Duffed-It Day, goddamn DEAN Day - and his pendulum was still swinging between a physically debilitating sense of relief and a giddy child-like jubilance.
Dean was no longer headed for the Pit. Cue butterflies.
But since he wasn’t going to Hell, Dean was back to raising it. Sam was rediscovering his brother was at his most insufferable when he was in a good mood. For the last fourteen days, Dean had been foaming up the horses on the glee-wagon in fairly consistent style.
So, it was no great shock to find Dean missing from the table where Sam had left him. When he turned a circle, brow knitting, the tattooed guy leaning behind the bar pointed a bored finger at the front doors.
Sam turned in time to see the slap of a familiar leather-jacketed back against the frosted window. A bevy of angry shouts accompanied the glass-rattling impact.
Shit. Sam’s feet stuttered. He jump-started into a leap towards the door, walked right into a solidly swung fist on the other side.
Stupid. Reckless. Jerk.
**********************************************************************************************
“Come on, there has to be something hinky going on in Tijuana.”
“Dean, we’re not going to Tijuana.”
“Why not? I could throw this beer cap and hit Tijuana from here. Right in the ass. I could cap Tijuana in the ass from here.”
“With your grasp of Spanish? We’ll end up in some Mexican jail, repeatedly asking the warden if his wife’s tits taste like beer.”
Dean’s eyes lit up, jaw dropping open a smidge. “Awesome,” he chuckled.
Sam laughed in spite of himself, picked a french fry off his plate and piffed it at Dean. “We’re not going to Mexico, you jerk.”
Dean sent the projectile skittering across the tabletop with the back of his hand, then plucked it off the laminate and threw it into his mouth. “Then where?”
“Well,” Sam pushed the laptop around so he could see. “I’m thinking Utah. We got a couple of suspicious drownings in Hobbs Hollow. Could be interesting. Or I got something at Hill Air Force Base--”
“Yeah?” Dean perked up, leaned close to the screen. “What’s that one?”
“Ah, spirit sighting. Figure wearing sandals. Couple of people have actually spoken to it.”
“Coupla people as in…” Dean raised an eyebrow, lifted his beer and waggled it.
Sam shook his head. “No. Apparently they were sober.” He made a concessionary face that suggested they’d both heard that plenty of times before.
“So, what’s this dead guy got to say for himself?” Dean frowned, tipped his beer against his lips.
“Mostly? He just says: Chonklas.”
A slew of amber ale shot out of Dean’s nose. “Speaking of Spanish,” he spluttered as he made a play for the napkins, began wiping up the mess.
Sam dragged the laptop back out of the wet zone, chuckling. “Guy clearly knows his footwear.”
“Well, you’re really doin’ Hans Holzer proud over there, Sam. You got anything besides Mexican podiatry and failure to float?”
Sam squinted at the laptop, shrugged. “Okay then, Ohioville.”
“In Pennsylvania? Didn’t someone grow a big pumpkin there last year?”
Sam blinked at him. “I have no clue. How do you remember that, and yet none of the important information I give you on a daily basis?”
“Because you’re boring. You need to work on your delivery.” Dean gestured with his hands. “Jazz it up.”
“Like the pumpkin?”
“Yeah. Like the pumpkin.” Dean drained the last of his beer, growled out a loud and lengthy belch. He gave a wink-nod to the mortified woman who swiveled in her seat at the next table.
Sam hit her with the doe-eyes, shook his head apologetically. “I’m sorry. He’s a pig.”
Dean smiled wide, dropped his empty onto the tabletop with a bang. “So, what’s in Ohioville?”
*********************************************************************************************
He’d lost him. Somewhere between the 1976 sightings and the mid-eighties manifestations, Sam had lost him.
“Dean?”
“What?”
“Repeat what I just said to you.”
“Uh, Dean?”
“Before that.”
Dean pried his attention from the nearby bookshelves, gazed at Sam blankly. “Huh?”
“Dude, you’re not even looking at this shit.”
“No, I am. I really am. Keep goin’.”
“Okay, so the locals have been reporting weird stuff happening on Kelly Road for decades, but no one really has any idea why. Up until the last couple of months, it’s been pretty low key stuff. Animals acting weird, insect infestations. Then two weeks ago, a guy’s dog turns on him while they’re out for their morning constitutional, nearly kills him. Three days later, two work buddies stop their car half a mile in, and one shoots the other in the face - point blank range. Turns the gun on himself when the cops show. No history of violence on either side. Guys were apparently best friends.”
“No shit,” mused Dean absently, eyes elsewhere.
“And it’s just that stretch. You get past that first mile marker and it’s all smooth sailing. Locals call it The Mystery Mile.” Sam paused, tapped his pen on the table and nodded at his notes. “This is definitely escalating. I mean, previous to this? It’s all hay bales getting thrown around and here, get this: one guy says he was chased by a pack of…” Sam checked the document, raised an eyebrow, “…nine angry chickens.”
That got Dean’s focus snapped well and truly back on him. He narrowed his eyes. “Chickens? Guy was chased by chickens?”
“So he says. All the way to the mile marker.”
Dean was struck momentarily po-faced. “What kind of a limp-wrist gets chased by chickens?”
Sam huffed out a laugh. “Okay, so maybe I should talk to the chicken guy.”
“And what am I doin’?”
Sam pointed at the texts and papers on the desk. “Well, why don’t you dig up what you can on previous residents, see if you can find anyone to talk to who lived there around the time this started up.”
“So, are we dealing with a curse here or what?” Dean was staring across the library again, but Sam let it go. At least he was asking questions, engaging.
“I dunno. Maybe. I mean, there’s plenty of history in the area. Some local Native American unrest, violence back in the day. There’s even some evidence of satanic occultism. But honestly? It doesn’t feel like it fits to me.”
“How so?”
“Well, it’s pretty localized. There’ve been some sightings on the properties and in the trees; orbs and white light, that kinda thing. But it’s all confined to that first mile. You ask me, this sounds like a spirit. Something happened there.”
Dean waved a distracted hand over the newspapers and books in front of them. “Okay, so what’ve we got in the way of dead people?”
Sam clasped his hands together in his lap beneath the desk, leaned forward. “Dean,” he said patiently, “that’s what you’re supposed to be looking at. Right now.”
“Oh,” Dean stared dumbly at the research. He spun in his chair again, face contorted in disgust. “Seriously, are you blind? Do you even have a dick? How can you not see that?” Dean pointed across the library. “Don’t ask me to read a newspaper when I got this goin’ on thirty feet away.”
Sam sighed. He wasn’t blind, he had a dick, and yeah, he’d seen her. About 5’7”, long dark hair. G string poking just a tad over the top of her Levis. She was crouched on her heel to read the spines of the books on a lower shelf, a long lithe leg stretched to one side for balance. It was a casual display of flexibility that broadcast the possession of further skills. She had a sort of feline sleekness about her, a classiness that was far more Sam’s style than Dean’s. So yeah, he’d seen her.
He blinked long. “If you go hit on her, will you concentrate after?”
Dean snorted. “No.” He gave the woman a lingering look, then turned his attention back to the books. He shuffled newspapers, brow creasing in concentration. He cleared his throat. “Okay, what else?”
Sam raised his eyebrows dubiously. “That’s it? You’re letting this one go?”
Dean looked affronted. “What? I’m listenin’.”
“Yeah, with your dick. You’re listening with your dick.”
Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Sammy, that over there? That takes time. You can’t do a woman like that quick.” He looked briefly shattered. “I don’t have that kind of time.”
“What happened to ecstatic I-got-all-the-time-in-the-world Dean?”
“That was last week. This week I’ve got an escalating pattern of spirit violence comin’ to a head on Kelly Road. So, okay: let’s get a list goin’ of who’s died ugly and who lived where. Then you go talk to the chicken-phobe, swing past the hospital and see what you get out of dog-boy. I’ll hit past residents, see if anyone’s got a story to tell.” He gave Sam a flash of tooth. “See? I can do two things at once.”
But he couldn’t. Two minutes later, the woman was still paying inordinate attention to the shelves in careful view of Dean’s wandering eye.
Sam snapped his fingers, whistled. “My God, will Ritalin help?”
Dean stood up, tugged unabashedly at the crotch of his jeans. “I doubt it. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Sam bounced his pen off his notebook. He pursed his lips as he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head.
Dick-brained jackass.
*********************************************************************************************
It was nearly nine by the time Dean turned up at their room, and Sam could tell from the way he came through the door he wasn’t sticking around. He lost the shirt halfway across the floor and disappeared into the bathroom with the intent of a locomotive. The door slammed, and Sam heard the taps going on, drawers banging. When Dean emerged a minute later, he had the neck of the toothpaste tube between his teeth and a can of deodorant in his hand.
“Dude, I have to use that, too.”
Dean squeezed a generous squirt of paste onto his tongue, gave the open end of the tube an exaggerated lick. He smiled obnoxiously. “Yes, you do.”
He gave both armpits a cursory blast with the deodorant can, tossed the aerosol onto his bed as he rifled through his duffle for a fresh shirt.
“Do I wanna know?”
Dean frowned at his buttons as he did them up. “What?”
“Where you’re going?”
Dean brushed behind Sam’s chair en route to the bottle of whiskey on the kitchenette counter. He hooked it off the laminate with two fingers, pointed the bottle at the motel room wall.
“Next door.”
“What?”
“Well, I’m workin’ through the list of Kelly Road home-owners this afternoon and I stumble across Emily O’Neil. Twenty-five years old, works at the music store in town. We get into this stupid argument about Ian Paice and Ginger Baker, and then I don’t really understand what the hell happened, but I end up sitting through dinner and a pretty obsessive career recap of Patsy fuckin’ Cline.” Dean paused, looked a little shell-shocked. “She’s outside.”
Sam was appalled. “Why?”
“Well, mostly because she’s hot and she has a tongue piercing, but also because ten years ago, her family moved away from Kelly Road. So, now I’ve booked the room next door, and we’re gonna have a nightcap,” he wiggled the bottle, “and then I’m gonna see if I can’t find out a little bit about life on The Mystery Mile.”
“You booked the room next door?”
“Three’s a crowd, Sammy.”
“How much did that cost?”
“Same as this one?”
“Do I need to remind you how much this trip has cost us in gas alone?”
“What are you, my bank manager? I gotta go.” He toggled his eyebrows at the door. “Don’t wait up.”
Sam’s indignant “Dean!” was lost against the slamming door.
He sighed. Drummed his fingers atop his case notes beside the laptop. He had testimonial after testimonial, and not just about angry poultry. There had been at least fifteen incidents of inexplicable violence that Sam could confidently attribute to the phenomena on Kelly Road. But it looked like it was all going to have to wait until morning.
He shut down the laptop, dug a book on Haitian rituals out of his bag, and stretched out on top of his bedspread. Cracked the spine and settled back to ascertain if the battered paperback was worth the three bucks it’d cost him. He figured he may as well make good use of the peace and quiet.
It didn’t last long. Half an hour later, Sam was ready to belt on the wall and request a change in the line of questioning. Whatever Dean was asking her, Emily seemed pretty sure the answer was yes.
*********************************************************************************************
It was actually impressive, the impromptu junk percussion Dean was capable of with a couple of pens and the Impala’s interior. But after the previous night’s drunken audio through the thin motel walls, Sam’d had about enough of listening to Dean’s performances.
“Do you have to do that?”
The drum solo came to an abrupt halt. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I annoying you?”
“It’s a little annoying. Yeah.”
Dean narrowed his eyes. “Would you say this annoys you more or less than the bug up your ass?”
“We’re supposed to be keeping an eye out.”
“Dude, anything gets within fifty feet of this car, the EMF reader’s gonna pick it up. Pressin’ your nose against the glass and lookin’ earnest isn’t gonna bring the dead running.”
“Yeah, well, neither’s you channeling Buddy Rich over there.”
Dean threw the pens onto the dash, made a surprised noise.
“What?”
“Nothin’. I’m just a little impressed you know who Buddy Rich is, that’s all.”
Sam blew out a bored breath. “I drive around in this car with you all day long, Dean.”
“And I’m sorry it’s such a chore for you.” There was a touch of wounded indignation in Dean’s rebuttal.
Sam knew he was being overly touchy. It was late, he was tired, and there was something more offensive about being jammed in the car with his brother when the vehicle was stationary. Dean’s ability to grate seemed reverse-correlated to the Impala’s speed. Although anything over ninety miles per hour, the theory failed and Dean’s jackass quotient was generally back on the climb.
Sam turned his mind to the case instead, hunkered down in the passenger seat and concentrated on keeping his mouth shut.
“So, Emily actually saw this dead kid?” he asked, when the silence between them stretched and threatened frost.
“Uh-huh. A few times. Little boy, about eight years old. Said he always looked pretty angry about somethin’. Parents never believed her, then one night her dad catches sight of the kid in the kitchen when he’s sneakin’ a midnight beer and that’s it.” Dean duck-billed his lips, blew a raspberry. “They were outta there the next week.”
“She say anything else?”
Dean blinked at the windshield, and the recall process looked to be bordering on painful. He shook his head. “I think that was it.”
“Nothing about who it might have been?”
“Dude, I don’t think so.” Dean grimaced. “To be honest, I was a little drunk. And she was… I was distracted.”
“Yeah, trust me, I heard,” Sam assured him, voice thick with disgust.
“Did I tell you about the tongue piercing?”
“Shut the fuck up.” Sam slapped both hands up over his ears. “Please, I’m begging you.”
Dean whistled through his teeth, tilted his chin. “I’m just sayin’.”
“Please, don’t.”
For a few minutes, they let the crickets and the gentle shush of the wind through the firs have the floor.
“What are you so pissy about, anyway?”
Sam straightened defensively. “What? I’m not pissy.”
“Yes, you are. You’ve been all scratchy and shit since…” He trailed off. “Oh.” He started chuckling.
“Since when? What?”
Dean rubbed his eye with the flat of his fingers, shoulders shaking. “Since that dude punched you in the head in Black Canyon City.”
“And that’s funny to you, is it?”
“I’m sorry, man, but you should have seen the look on your face. I thought you were gonna fuckin’ kill him.”
“The only person I was in danger of killing that night was you, dumbass.”
“Oh, please. Those guys were sore losers and they had it comin’.”
“Yeah, and yet I’m the one who gets punched in the face. Next time, leave me out of it.”
“Fine. Next time, stay out of it, you whiney little bitch.”
Dean’s cell rang and he fished it out of his pocket, checked the caller ID and returned the phone to his jacket unanswered.
“Who was that?”
“Think it was that chick from the library.”
Sam flailed on the seat-leather like a fish. “She’s calling you already? Christ. Whatever happened to the three day rule?”
“Sammy, your three day rule is why you never get laid.”
“Well, are you gonna call her back?”
Dean peered out the window towards the dark stand of trees past the mile marker. “Nah. I don’t think so.”
“You gave her your number and now you’re gonna ignore her calls?”
Dean waggled a finger absently at his mouth. “She had a funny lip thing goin’ on. Kinda turned me off.” He nodded out the window. “What is that?”
Sam shook his head in disgust, squinted in the direction Dean had indicated. “I dunno. A posse of outraged women?”
Dean flipped him off, eyes still trained out the window, then tossed his index finger towards the woods. “Is that something moving?”
The EMF reader whistled to life on the seat between them and Sam straightened, knee clunking against the dash. “Ah, that’s a yes.”
Dean cracked his door. “Outstanding. Let’s go.”
*********************************************************************************************
“How can you not have seen it? I was standing right next to it.”
“Maybe that’s why I didn’t see it, Dean. Besides, it was dark.” Sam nudged his chair up closer, tweezers poised between his fingers. “You want me to take this out, you’re gonna have to hold still.”
Dean shifted his ass on the seat irritably. “Lucky it didn’t stab me in the…” He trailed off, lips pursed, and made a tight wordless gesture at the back of his head.
Sam raised his eyebrows, shook his head cluelessly. “Brain stem?” he offered helpfully.
“Thank you. Yes.”
Sam moved the tweezers toward the bloody graze at the base of Dean’s skull. “It’s a splinter,” he muttered. “You fell through a fence and you have a splinter.”
His brother twisted, brought an accusatory finger up between them.
“Pushed,” he clarified. “I was pushed through a fence. Pretty hard, I might add. You should think about layin’ off the spinach.”
Sam grabbed Dean by the shoulders, forcibly angled him into the light. “He was coming right for you. I didn’t think you had time to reload.”
“It was an eight year old dead boy, Sam. With a penchant for aggravating chickens. I had it under control.”
Dean dipped his chin, and Sam turned his attention to the half-inch sliver of cedar. If it had lodged anywhere Dean could see what he was doing, it wouldn’t have warranted a conversation. But since he’d crashed through the rotting post and rail backwards, and since it was Sam’s shove that had sent him sailing through it, Dean was clearly milking the angst cow dry.
“Right. You had it under control. Like the bar in Black Canyon City?”
Dean shuffled on his chair again, and Sam gave him a none-too-gentle jab in the neck with the tweezers. “I said, stay still.”
“Ow. Fuck you. Jesus, just yank it, you toss-bag.”
“Well, since you asked so nicely.”
It wasn’t big, but the wood was wedged deep near Dean’s hairline, got a little stubborn on the extraction.
Dean bit his lip, grunted a protest. “Yeah, wiggle it more. That’s nice.”
“Shut up.”
A knock at the motel door stopped them both stock-still. Dean craned his neck first to look at Sam and then the door. Glanced at his watch. “Who the fuck is that?”
Sam shook his head.
Dean reached for his Glock on the table as he stood, and Sam pushed back his chair; started folding up the first aid kit. Heard Dean rack the slide on his weapon as he crossed to the door.
By the time Sam had bundled the kit and the guns under his bed and made it to the window, Dean was pushing back from the door and his peephole reconnaissance.
“Oh, shit,” he hissed, and Sam’s heart leapt and thumped hard in his throat.
Cops. Or worse. God, Ruby? Please, not Ruby. He retrieved his own gun from the back of his jeans, shifted the curtain with a slow, careful finger.
What the fuck…?
Sam frowned, blinked through the crack in the drapes at the distraught woman on the footpath, her knuckles raised in readiness for a second assault on the door. His mouth fell open a little as he returned his weapon to the waist of his pants.
“Is that…?” Sam’s question tapered into a startled grimace as the banging resumed, this time frantic.
Dean was frozen to the spot, ashen. He shot Sam a panicked look. “I’m not here,” he barked, and took a step back toward the bathroom. He turned to bolt and Sam sprang into action as if someone had fired a starter pistol.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” He half-scrabbled, half-vaulted over both beds and caught Dean in a side tackle five feet from the sanctuary of the tiles. Collared him roughly by the jacket and body-checked him back towards the door. “No way. You fucked her, you deal with it.”
Dean made another play past him; feigned left and dodged right, face stamped with determination.
Sam bent at the knees, collected his brother across the chest with a clothes-line arm and pushed him back; sent Dean stumbling. “Forget it, you sex addict. Reap what you sow.” Sam raised his voice, shouted loud enough for the words to reach Emily. “Dean, get the door!”
Dean’s shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes. “Oh, you sonuvabitch.”
*********************************************************************************************
Emily wasn’t crying about anything Dean had done. She said as much while she wept into his awkward and reluctant embrace. He raised a smug, reproachful eyebrow at Sam over the top of her bowed head. Sam was in no mood for humble pie. Emily shuddered through a fresh round of tears, and he rolled his eyes and made a demonstrative circular movement with his hand.
Rub her back, you jackass, he mouthed, and Dean’s brow bunched down hard on the silent fuck off he volleyed in return.
Emily was crying because she’d lied, and not just to Dean. She’d been lying to everyone since she’d found her dead father’s journal, and the confessionary entry about the boy he’d struck with his car.
Emily was crying because when pressed, she even knew where her father had buried him, all those years ago. The woods, she sobbed. Right beside that first mile stretch on Kelly Road.
*********************************************************************************************
The kid’s name was Emmit Snelling, and Sam gave Dean a slack-jawed look of disgust when he suggested that was as good a reason as any to die young.
“What is wrong with you?” Sam hoiked the duffle straps back up onto his shoulder as he trudged tetchily across the crisp morning grass.
“What? It’s sad. I get it. But it was forty years ago. Little late for eulogies and cake. Besides, the little shit’s been wreakin’ some pretty indiscriminate havoc. ‘Scuse me for not bein’ moved to tears.”
“He was just a little kid, Dean.”
“Yeah. Weren’t we all. Let’s just salt his dead ass, light him up, and get the fuck out of here.”
Sam cracked. He pulled up, dropped the duffle off his shoulder and swung it like a morning star.
Dean blocked the bag with a hastily raised forearm. It connected with a hollow THOP! and sent him hopping sideways.
“Hey!” He dropped the arm, eyes wide with disbelief. “What the fuck was that?”
Sam didn’t answer. Stood there with his mouth clamped shut and the air rattling in and out of his nose. His fist clenched around the duffle straps in his right hand.
Dean straightened up, squared off. He rolled his shoulders, arched an eyebrow that set his features somewhere near bored condescension. “Oh, here we go. Granny Winchester’s got her handbag out.”
For a couple of smart guys, they could be pretty dumb sometimes. That’s what Sam was thinking, as he dropped the bag and launched.
*********************************************************************************************
Dean figured he had some awards coming to him for staying strictly on the defensive. He blocked Sam’s first wild swing and caught him by the wrist; twisted his forearm a half-turn and shoved him back the way he came. He pointed a warning as Sam rounded on him for a second time. “Have a think before you try that again.”
“Oh, you arrogant son of a bitch.”
Dean threw a look over one shoulder and then the other. He frowned deeply. “What the fuck has gotten into you?”
Sam poked himself in the chest with an outraged finger. “What’s gotten into me?” he repeated incredulously. “Oh, that’s rich.”
“What are you talkin’ about, you crackhead?”
“I am so sick of your bullshit, Dean. I have had it up to here-” Sam nearly brained himself with the hand he bounced off his forehead, “-with your bar brawls, and your ‘Let’s-go-to-Tijuana!’ and your debauched --”
“Okay! Hold it!” Dean tapped his flattened hands together in a frantic request for time-out. He tilted his chin, assessed the situation while their general stupidity caught up with him. Then he pointed back toward Kelly Road and the mile marker east of their position. “So, you’re not thinking very clearly and we’re idiots.”
“You’re the idiot.”
“We’re both idiots, you brainiac. One of us has to go to back to the car. I vote you. Before you blow a gasket.”
“You can get fucked. I don’t have to take orders from you.”
Dean opened his mouth, shut it again. He tussled with his rising irritation. “This is the spirit, you dipshit.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You know what? I spent all of last night listening to your lame-ass, clichéd porn-act. I nearly jammed a pen in my brain. So, I don’t really care.”
“We don’t wanna do this.” Surely, they didn’t want to do this. But he found himself widening his stance, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. His fingers curled.
Sam jutted his chin. “Oh, yeah baby, you want it,” he mimicked.
Dean blinked, expressionless. “Alright. That’s it. Let’s go.” He beckoned Sam forward. “I’m gonna fuck your shi--”
It was pretty snappy, the jab he copped in the mouth mid-sentence. Breathtakingly rude, too. But Dean guessed that kind of thing might pass for fair play if you were a freakishly tall bitch with a major attitude problem. The impact rattled his teeth, put a few staggered steps between them. Dean tapped the flat of his fingers to his split lip as he caught the stumble and found his balance again.
Sonuva…
He didn’t fuck around. Sam wanted to get down to business? No problem. The left Dean threw got close enough to shave Sam’s chin as he jerked away, but the follow-up right cross was a bulls-eye wallop. Sam hit the deck with a sickening slap and a winded grunt.
Dean stood over him, tongue against the inside of his own bloody lip. He wiped his mouth, sent the hand down the thigh of his jeans.
“You alright?” It was a token courtesy; not a shred of apology behind the query.
“Yeah.”
Dean grabbed Sam’s arm as he pushed up off the grass, started to help him stand, and got an elbow to the face for his trouble. The bony crook of Sam’s arm cracked sharply off Dean’s brow, and he temporarily lost both audio and visual; went down with a skull full of white fuzz. He managed to keep a blind hold of Sam’s sleeve and yank his brother to the ground with him.
It didn’t buy much in the way of advantage. Dean was still on his hands and knees, blinking the double out of his optics when he saw Sam lurching to his feet in his periphery.
“Get up, you fucking jackass.”
The son of a bitch actually kicked him. Stepped forward and gave him a torpedo punt to the ribs, flipped Dean onto his back with a breathless yelp. He was still gasping uselessly for air when the toe of Sam’s sneaker nudged up against the underside his jaw.
“Come on, Mr. Badass. Get up.”
Sam’s foot ground down against Dean’s throat. He choked, got a hot adrenal rush that was equal parts anger and panic. He wrapped his forearm around Sam’s lower leg, tried to heave up and shift him. When he couldn’t budge his brother from beneath, Dean lifted his hips and jackknifed up with his right boot. There was a hollow thump as the kick found muscle somewhere up above Sam’s ass. It forced a stumbled step forward, and the foot dropped down off his throat to the grass near his cheek. Dean rolled and twisted, executed a half-assed and clumsy leg-sweep, brought his brother crashing down on top of him.
It got ugly fast, escalated into a messy tumbling gruntfest. They spent a couple of exhausting minutes tearing up the grass in a tangled knot of fingersgripfaceeyepokekneeballsfuckBALLS! before Dean lucked out. Sam jerked his chin right up into a sloppy hook shot that should have missed its mark entirely, and it gave Dean the space he needed to snap back and hit him with a far more premeditated haymaker. It flicked Sam’s lights out, stilled him in Dean’s hands long enough to get him secured. By the time he came round, Dean had him face-planted on the grass, one knee against his shoulder.
Sam struggled, lips kissing the dewy blades of rye.
Dean gripped a handful of his brother’s sweaty hair and leaned in. “You keep this up, I’m gonna hit you like I actually mean it,” he panted.
Sam made a frustrated noise; jolted and bucked underneath him. “Go to hell, Dean.”
Well, there you go.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Not anymore. But Dean was pretty damn sure it hadn’t passed Sam’s lips since Wyoming. He shifted a little on Sam’s back, loosened his grip a fraction. Sam’s hips twitched up beneath him and Dean lost his centre of gravity long enough to facilitate a violent swing in the balance of power.
Before he knew it, Sam was straddling his chest and Dean was playing receiver for a skull-rattling slug to the cheek. His brother’s face was pitted and gullied with exasperation and anger.
“Why do you have to--? Why can’t you just--?” Sam’s voice was ragged, desperate.
What?
Dean felt the hot sparks of his own anger sputtering out in the face of Sam’s frustration. His ire faltered, then found fresh fuel; flared for entirely different reasons.
“Alright, that’s enough.” He brought up both hands against Sam’s chest and pushed. “Get the fuck off me.”
Sam collapsed in a heap beside him.
Dean rose slowly, tottered upright. He fumbled at his brother’s jacket, started to pull him up. “Come on, let’s go.” He wiped his sleeve across the slick mess of sweat and blood at his brow. “Come on, Sammy. Up.”
When Sam made no move to rise, Dean used both hands and hauled roughly on his collar. Brought him unsteadily to his feet.
“I said, go to hell.” Sam sagged against him, chest heaving.
“Yeah.” Dean shoved him, sent his brother stumbling toward Kelly Road. “I heard you the first time.”
*********************************************************************************************
Sam sat in the Impala and waited while Dean returned the room key and settled their tab. Played the tip of his tongue along his split lip, and figured it was probably a good thing he wasn’t going to bust out smiling anytime soon. His nose was running or bleeding again - he didn’t know which - but after a tentative foray with a napkin from the glove compartment, he relegated nose-blowing to the pile marked Pipedream. His temples throbbed in time with his pulse, and there was a click in his jaw that hadn’t been there before Dean’s fist.
Dean hadn’t said a word since he’d returned from the salt and burn in the woods. He’d been pretty reluctant to make eye contact, too, which was just fine with Sam.
“Done,” he’d grunted, waving the salt canister back towards the thin plume of smoke spiraling up from the trees.
But that’d been the sum and total of their communication.
Back at the motel they’d tag-teamed on the shower, licked the wounds that wouldn’t wait, and packed the car around an albatross of loaded silence.
Dean was still moving pretty carefully when he emerged from the reception office, and Sam was acutely aware that his Hall of Fame punt might have inflicted some real damage. He desperately needed - and didn’t want - to know.
He cut eyes to the passenger window as Dean eased behind the wheel and jammed the key in the ignition. He looked down when Dean tossed the icepack into this lap.
“Get that on your face.”
Any other time, it would have earned a laugh, a pointed reference to the fact that Dean’s own dial resembled a gothic palate. But Sam was too emotionally hungover to do anything beside lift the pack obediently to his jaw. They sat in silence while the car idled and the engine warmed.
“You just about done with this silent treatment or what?” Dean dropped the car into reverse. “I’m just askin’, cause I dunno how many miles of the stony fuck-yous I’ve got in me.”
Sam frowned out the window. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Yeah, I know. But you’re doin’ an awesome impression.”
Sam dropped the icepack to his thigh, shook his head. “Dean, I am so sorry. For snapping like that. For what I said.” He closed his eyes. “God, sorry sounds so lame.”
“You were playin’ some pretty dirty pool out there, you little shit. What was with that girly eye-poke?”
Sam elbowed the doorframe, covered his eyes with one hand. “I said I was sorry. God, we are such idiots.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Did I mention I was sorry?”
“Once or twice.” Dean made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t exactly pullin’ any punches. You got as good as you gave.”
“Yeah.” Sam dropped his fingers to his bruised cheek, prodded it carefully. “I just… I want you to know I didn’t mean it.”
“S’okay, Sam.” Dean pulled out of the parking lot. “I think I get it.”
Sam frowned. “Get what?”
“I’ve been gettin’ on your nerves lately and I get it. It’s okay. It’s weird. I know.”
“What?”
“It’s a big adjust.”
Sam felt the blood drain from his face. “Oh, God. No, Dean. I don’t mean-- You don’t think --? God, tell me you don’t think--?”
Dean shook his head. “No, I know. It’s okay. I don’t think that. I just mean it’s been a helluva year. I’ve spent the last twelve months tryin’ to be ready. And then I figure out - whoa - I’m not ready.” He sniffed off an incredulous laugh. “Those last few weeks, man. That was a fuckin’ scrabble. I had no clue how that was gonna play out. I’ve woken up in my fair share of cold sweats this year.” He hit the brakes for a set of lights, blinked at Sam. “And that’s just me. I know you’ve been sittin’ on a steamin’ pile of your own bullshit over there. Any way you slice it, this year’s been a violent ass-fuck for us both.”
Sam felt his throat clamp shut and the sting of tears prickle behind his eyes. Couldn’t distinguish exactly the source. Didn’t know if it was relief or sadness or anger or joy. Wondered if maybe it was everything - every dammed rise that had sought and been denied release since that night in Wyoming a year ago.
And he was about to squash it down again. But it didn’t have to be such a tight and desperate act anymore. There was time now. Time to sort and explore and process. To be happy and sad and the billion things in between. There was time to fix things and to make mistakes again.
He nodded, wasn’t sure his voice would allow anything else.
“It’s a big adjust,” Dean repeated. “I dunno exactly where I thought I was gonna be right now, but it sure as hell wasn’t Ohioville, Pennsylvania.” Dean slowed the car, turned onto Engle Road.
Sam straightened in his seat, internal alarm bells clanging. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not stoppin’, I just wanna make sure.” Dean scrubbed his nails against the stubble beneath his jaw, huffed off a laugh. “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass the last couple of weeks.”
Sam shook his head emphatically. “Oh, no. I’ve been the ass. You’ve been happy, and that is just… Dude, it’s awesome to see you happy. It really is. Far be it from me, man. I was way outta line.”
They turned onto Kelly Road.
“I’ll try and tone it down.” Dean threw Sam a half-smile across the car’s interior, ran a hand up and down the back of his head. “I dunno what the fuck’s goin’ on lately. I either wanna hug you, or shoot somethin’, or beat the crap outta someone, and I got no clue which.”
Sam twisted a little on the leather, and Dean’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
“Dude, you try and hug me, I swear to God, I’ll make what happened here this morning seem like a couple of love-taps.”
Sam barked off a laugh, opened up his lip again. “Ow,” he winced.
Dean slowed the car to a crawl as they came up on the mile marker. He stretched an arm across the back of the seat and ducked a little, gazed out over the back of the O’Neil’s old property.
“Okay, are we good here?”
Sam looked at him. Felt the tug of a smile curl his bruised mouth. “Yeah,” he nodded. “I think so.”