Bobby doesn’t take Dean having a hellhound companion well. In fact, Dean hasn’t seen Bobby this angry and flustered in his life. He paces the length of the kitchen, his eyes darting around the room like he expects the hellhound to jump out at him.
“Go over it again,” Bobby says, and Dean sighs.
“I’ve already talked you through it twice. What else do you want me to say, Bobby?”
“How about you talk more about the damned hellhound that took a chunk out of your side?” he snaps. “Jesus, Dean, I’ve never seen anything like that, except for…”
When he trails off, Dean swallows tightly, looking down at the table top. He runs his fingers lightly over the surface, feeling all the nicks and dents “You mean except for when I was dragged down to hell?”
Bobby finally stops pacing and leans back against the counters, crossing his arms. “You were torn up like ribbons. When Sam carried you out, you were practically falling apart in his arms and I-” He stops, unable to continue. “We put you in the ground as best we could, but both of us knew what took you down. And it was one of those.”
Dean takes a deep breath, trying to explain. “I know, Bobby, but if it was going to take me back, it had plenty of opportunities to do so. Hell, I even slept next to the thing on my way here, and it didn’t do anything to me.”
“That you know of,” Bobby replies darkly.
“It’s not going to hurt me, Bobby,” he says, standing in a huff. “It’s just sitting outside, listening to us talk. It’s not out there looking for souls to drag to hell.”
“How the hell do you know that, Dean?” he exclaims, grabbing books off the shelves. “How do you know that - that thing didn’t let you escape?”
“Why the hell would it go through the trouble of getting me out of hell and keeping me alive, just to drag me back?”
“You tell me,” Bobby mutters darkly.
Dean swipes a hand over his eyes. He doesn’t want to think about all of the what-ifs. The circumstances behind his resurrection are sketchy at best, but he’s back. The rest could wait, at least for a while.
“Can’t it be enough that I’m not in the pit anymore?” he asks, sounding tired even to his own ears. “I know that there are a million ways this could go wrong, trust me, but Bobby, I…I just want to take a second to breathe. If I get dragged back to hell by the hellhound, then you have my permission to yell I told you so the entire way down. But I’ll deal with all of that after I find Sam.”
When Bobby’s gaze drops to the floor, Dean tenses. “He didn’t answer when I called his numbers because they were all disconnected. Bobby, where’s Sam?” he asks slowly, dreading the answer, because if Bobby is unaware of Sam’s location, then trying to find his brother is going to be damned hard.
Bobby must hear the exhaustion in his voice as well, because his hardened expression softens. “Yeah, Dean, I get it. And I’m glad you’re back, boy, but I wanna make sure you stay topside. I can’t lose you boys again, because if I lose one, I lose both.” He glances warily towards the door.
“Bobby,” Dean says harshly, “where is Sam? What do you mean you can’t lose us again? Is he-” He chokes up, his throat closing and he can’t breathe, because if Dean is alive and Sam isn’t…
Horrible scenarios race through his mind. If Sam makes a deal to switch their places, wouldn’t a hellhound bring him back? Was that why Dean’s walking and talking and unable to find Sam?
He starts to hyperventilate, his breathing erratic and his vision blurs. Just as he starts to fall, his knees giving out, his weight drops onto a heavy body and fur ripples under his fingers. The hellhound growls at Bobby while supporting Dean long enough that he can slip into a chair.
“He’s alive, Dean,” Bobby replies quickly, his hand outstretched in an aborted move to comfort him, but stops when the growling increases. “He just insists on flying under the radar. He’s gone to ground. The last I saw of him was a week after his birthday.”
Dean can suddenly breathe again, lungs filling with oxygen. The hellhound presses against his legs and he leans forward, resting a hand on its back. “You mean a week after I got dragged to hell,” he whispers, rubbing a hand over his face. The exhaustion makes his hands shake, but he can’t sleep. He has to find Sam. “I’ll find him. You know I’ll always find him.”
Bobby nods, his eyes flicking down to where the hellhound sits. “It’s still here?”
His eyebrows rise. “You can’t see it?”
Bobby shakes his head and looks at Dean dubiously. “And you can?”
Dean hesitates. “It’s like a shadow and transparent, but yeah, I can see it. It’s more visible in the shade and fades in the sun.” He nudges the hellhound and it finally walks back to the front door and the porch creaks under the weight.
“It seems rather…protective of you,” Bobby replies doubtfully. Dean doesn’t say anything.
“Just keep that thing out of my house.”
There’s a loud growl from the direction of the yard. Bobby tenses as he steps away from Dean, but Dean just rolls his eyes. It’s a start.
“Fine. The hellhound will stay outside. Now, what have you got to eat? I’m starving.”
Molten gold drips onto his skin from every angle. Dean tries to move away, screaming with every searing drop that touches his skin, but something is trapped around his legs. He can’t get away.
His body vibrates and he’s forced to turn on his back, exposing his chest. A gust of wind blows across his face just as a drop lands on his cheek and he tries to arch back, squirming away.
“You’ll be my golden boy one way or another, Dean,” Alistair says with a wide smile, fucking pouring the gold all over his chest. He tries to scream, but the pain is so intense that he can’t even breathe. The gold cools on his chest, making the skin bubble underneath.
His left side warms significantly, but not from any gold. Something scratches at his arm and another gust of wind puffs across his face. The scratches on his arm increase, almost hurting more than the gold-”
Dean tries to sit up, his body jackknifing out of habit and fear, but something is on his chest. Blood red eyes stare down at him and he thinks that Bobby was right, that the hellhound was just biding its time to take him back, before it moves off of him, sharp claws shifting off of his arm.
He inhales shakily. This made twice in two nights that the hellhound has pulled him from a horrible nightmare. These were more than nightmares, though. The memories of his time in the pit were vivid and real, and Dean doesn’t even attempt to go back to sleep, scared of what horrid vision will flash behind his closed eyelids.
The hellhound lets out another huff and tucks into his left side, its back surprisingly warm. With every breath, it presses into his side, a steady rhythm that lulls Dean to sleep. He doesn’t have another nightmare that night.
Of course, when he wakes up again in the morning, Bobby isn’t happy when he finds out that the hellhound found its way inside.
“I thought I told you that thing was supposed to stay outside?” Bobby asks in a hard voice, pointing at an area by the back door. Dean doesn’t mention that the hellhound was on the opposite side of the room.
“He’ll go,” Dean replies, making a small shooing motion. The hellhound growls loudly, and Dean glares at it. “Come on, dude, just park it outside. I said no issues!” The hellhound ignores him and sits its flanks down so hard on the floor, the walls rattle. “Come on!”
“Why is that thing in the house in the first place?” Bobby asks, and Dean resists stomping his foot.
“No reason and it’s going back outside.” Dean glares at the hound and points his finger firmly to the door, but the hellhound doesn’t move. “Damn it, come on! Go outside, boy!” he says in an idiotic voice that even a small child would recognize as mocking.
From the look Bobby gives him, it sounds even more ridiculous than he thinks. “Dean,” he says, in the tone of voice reserved for when he and Sam are obviously keeping something from him, “why did the hellhound come inside?”
Dean sighs loudly when the hellhound makes no further move to leave the house. “I had a nightmare, okay?” he responds, crossing his arms. “The same thing happened on our way here. I had a nightmare about…hell, and it sensed my fear or something and woke me up.”
Bobby looks at him incredulously. “You mean to tell me that the hellhound can tell when you’re having a nightmare and wakes you up?” Dean shrugs, and that’s obviously not the response Bobby is looking for. “It’s a hellhound! They’re supposed to inspire nightmares, not stop you from having them!”
“Oh, trust me,” Dean says sarcastically. “I know all about hellhounds inspiring nightmares.”
Suddenly, the house seems too small, and he can’t stand the way Bobby looks at him, with pity and sympathy, like he understands what he has gone through, Dean thinks sarcastically, before spinning on his heels and heads to the front door. He needs space.
“Dean-”
“I’m just getting some air,” Dean yells over his shoulder as he opens the front door. Something slips by his legs and he looks over at the hellhound, now at his side.
Alistair always liked to bring hellhounds around, borrowing from other demons so he could have an entire sled team if he liked. One particular instance sticks out, when the demon went so far as to punish a hound who wasn’t growling at Dean loud enough for his liking, commenting that just because her mistress-and female hellhounds, go figure-was topside, didn’t mean she could slouch.
Dean yelled out that Alistair should beat on someone his own size, because Dean was a fucking idiot with a martyr complex a mile wide. From the look Alistair gave him in return, he agreed with that assessment, gladly releasing the hellhound from his grasp in favor of adding on hours of torture to an already awesome day, but damn if that hellhound hadn’t looked grateful that he-
He stops his train of thought. Dean looks over at the hound, a faint shadow against the backdrop of the house siding.
“Uh, are you a girl?”
Dean swears the hellhound rolls its eyes at him. He takes that for a yes. “So you’re the hellhound that I…saved?”
The hellhound doesn’t make a motion, but that’s not a no. This put a spin on his entire situation that he was not expecting. Dean bites his lip and walks farther from the house, not wanting Bobby to overhear. “Alistair mentioned you had a master. Is that…still true?”
When nothing happens, Dean almost asks the hellhound to growl once for yes and twice for no, but the hellhound shakes its head from side to side. “You don’t have a master anymore? It-she-is gone?” Dean asks in surprise. “Well, that makes things…less complicated. So you’re not going to drag me back to hell?”
The hellhound-now a she-huffs in what Dean swears is irritation. “No dragging me back. Awesome. I’m a fan of that, thanks.”
He sighs, trying to figure out where to go from here. The hellhound doesn’t have a master, so technically, she should be free, which meant there was no reason for the hellhound to be playing nursemaid.
Dean scratches his neck as he looks down at the hellhound. He frowns down at her. “Look, I’m grateful that you dragged my ass out of the pit. But I have to find Sam. And I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do once I find him, but…”
He trails off, raking a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I don’t know. You’re a hellhound. A girl one, apparently, and it’s sort of obvious that you didn’t like the pit because you got out and you got me out. I don’t know if you’re going to be called back or what, but I’m a hunter, okay? I’m supposed to hunt things like you, even if you did save me.”
Dean paces in the dirt, kicking up dust. The hellhound just stares at him. “Not that I know the first thing about hunting hellhounds, but I know how to hunt other things. Like demons, who are probably chomping at the bit to get to me? And if they find you here with me, they’ll just drag us both back. So, I guess this is me telling you that you can leave. You got me out and I’m grateful, but I don’t have anything to give to you in return. I’m sorry for that, but I can’t protect you.”
The hellhound lays down, still staring at him, the movement pronouncing her feelings on the matter as well as any words. She didn’t care and was staying.
Dean walks over to Bobby’s front porch and sits down. “Okay,” he says, glancing over. “If you’re sure, then…okay. Just…stay outside? I don’t think Bobby can take any more of your surprise visits. If I need you, then you can come, but maybe slip out? He winces because she sounds so completely ungrateful that he’s ashamed of himself.
The hellhound lays her head down on her crossed paws and doesn’t move when he stands up to go back inside. One problem solved and many more to work through, including tracking down his brother.
Finding Sam shouldn’t be so damn hard. Dean tries calling various cell phone companies, but none of the aliases he gives them match any current records. Bobby calls other hunters to no avail. No one has seen or heard from Sam in weeks.
Dean knows that Sam is alive - he just is, damn it. Dean would know if his brother was dead, he remembers with vivid clarity the agony of knowing Sam was dead. He just isn’t sure how to find him. Bobby hangs up the phone and circles another location on a map spread out on the kitchen table. “This is his last location, best Rufus can tell last he heard from him.” Dean walks over and takes a look. “Notice anything interesting?”
He nods. “He hasn’t gone more than five hundred miles from where I was buried.” Which could only mean his idiotic, hopeful little brother was still trying to find a way to save him. “Damn it, Sammy.”
“More like three hundred miles.” Bobby points to the furthest point on the map.
Dean traces his fingers over the towns circled on the map slowly before he realizes there is a pattern. “Bobby, hold up.” He holds out his hand for a pen and when Bobby hands him the red marker, he links towns in a large circle with one area on the map at the very center.
“My grave isn’t the center. This place is.” Dean leans in and looks closely at the spot just beside the pre-inked dot on the map labeling Jackson, Missouri. “Is that even a place?”
Bobby taps his fingers on the table for a moment. “I remember that. There was a poltergeist in a house on some country road about twenty minutes outside of the city limits.” Bobby’s brow furrows, fingers tapping a faster rhythm. “But the only reason that was on the radar was because the poltergeist attacked some kids who went into the house on a dare. It had been empty for over a decade.” He frowns. “Come to think of it, that was the last time I heard from him.”
Dean nods in understanding. “And it would be the perfect place to set up shop once it’s empty. That’s where he’s staying.”
His thoughts are consumed with the burning need to lay eyes on his younger brother. He needs to get in a car and drive to Jackson to wrap his arms around Sam. He needs to be there now. Dean turns around and walks over to the cabinet where Bobby keeps keys to the cars that actually run, because that clunker he brought from Indiana probably can’t make the journey to the far eastern side of Missouri.
“Dean,” Bobby says, and his shoulders tighten as he reaches to open the cabinet, because he has heard that knowing tone before, and nothing good comes from it.
“He’s my brother, Bobby,” Dean responds through a clenched jaw. “I went to hell for him. So if the next words that come out of your mouth aren’t have a good trip, then I don’t want to hear them. I’m going to Sam.”
“Boy, last I checked, you ain’t a mind-reader, so don’t you go interruptin’ me and putting foolish words in my mouth.” Bobby sighs heavily, but Dean still doesn’t turn around. “I haven’t seen the boy since you died. I’m just as worried about him as you are. All I was going to say was the journey will take a while and you just got here. Rest, Dean, in an actual bed. We can leave early tomorrow morning and when we get to Jackson, I’ll be able to help convince Sam you are who you say you are.”
Dean finally turns around, his shoulders slumping. Bobby is just trying to help, not hold him back. He almost apologizes, but the words catch in his throat, and Bobby is waves him off before he tries again. “Let’s get a good meal in us, a decent sleep, and we can be off to find Sam bright and early tomorrow morning. Okay?”
Dean nods. “Okay.”
Dean doesn’t fall asleep that night. He waits until Bobby is sound asleep, grabs half the cash Bobby set out for their trip, steals a car from the yard, and heads out before two in the morning with the hellhound stretching out in the backseat. Unlike the last drive, having it-her-in the backseat is more calming than nerve-wracking.
Bobby calls him around seven in the morning, ranting and raving, using some truly colorful language to express his displeasure. Dean lets him finish before explaining that he needs to do this on his own. In the end, everything always comes down to him and Sam, no one else.
He promises to call when he arrives and then again after Sam stops trying to kill him, which Bobby is convinced will actually happen since he’s not coming. Dean doesn’t make a smartass comment, just agrees and tosses the phone onto the seat next to him when the call is done. He doesn’t plan on stopping until he hits Jackson. Because he’s driving to Sam.
Dean blinks as he pulls up to the house at the end of the drive, not bothering with double checking the address of the house Bobby wrote down. The sun is setting, casting an orange glow on the scene. The area around the house is an open field, with the tree line almost five hundred feet away.
The house itself looks like a typical haunted house: boarded up windows, a drooping roof, and weathered siding covered in peeling paint. There are random objects in the yard and scattered on the wrap around porch that is anything but level. Dean even spies an old children’s tricycle.
“Jesus, Sammy, you couldn’t fix it up a little?” he mutters, trying to spot his baby. There are clear ruts to the left side of the house where he can see drive marks, the grass underneath brown and dead.
Sam could still have easily hidden the car or have it stored somewhere else. The thought makes him cringe. His baby does not get stored.
He pulls the car up to the front of the house. He’s not here to sneak up on Sam. The hellhound clambers out after him and Dean double-takes when she starts sniffing around, almost like a normal dog.
He walks around the perimeter, trying to spot any obvious traps that he can get tangled in, but doesn’t find any. The house is large, two stories, with what looks to be a basement if the small windows near the ground are any indication. Even though it’s dilapidated and in obvious need of repair, the house appears solid.
The hellhound paws at the ground in a few places, sniffs, and then continues exploring. Dean scratches his head as his stomach rumbles. He didn’t stop to eat, too anxious to get to Sam, and he wonders if the kitchen is booby-trapped somehow. The hellhound walks over to him and he makes a face. “Dude, do you eat?” She doesn’t even get a chance to growl before Dean rolls his eyes. “I know, not a dude, it’s a habit, okay? So just…strike that from the record. Do you eat?”
The hellhound walks away and he rolls his eyes again. Of course he would end up with the irritable mutt. Exactly like Sam.
Dean shakes his head and walks onto the porch carefully, not because of any traps Sam might have laid, but because he’s worried the entire thing will cave if he breathes in too deeply. The door is old and covered in weathered paint the same color as the siding, but the dead bolt and door knob are shiny new silver.
“Which is pointless, Sammy, when there is a broken window two feet away,” he says out loud, shaking his head. “How do you survive without me?” He eases in through the large window that is missing half a pane, promptly stepping into a bear trap that is hidden under a tattered blanket placed beneath the window. The hellhound grips his jacket in her teeth and yanks him back quicker than he can blink and she’s the only reason his foot isn’t detached.
“Jesus Christ, Sam.” His heart is pounding so hard, he’s surprised he isn’t having a heart attack. Dean doesn’t know whether to be terrified or proud. He settles on proud.
Dean leans against the side of the house to catch his breath, ignoring the bitchface the hellhound gives him. If hellhounds could talk, he knows she would be saying you’re a moron over and over again.
When Dean walks around the house again, he glances through each window, every entry point with some sort of trap around it, some obvious and some so cleverly hidden that he feels another burst of pride. At least he knows that Sam has been taking care of himself while Dean’s been away.
He doesn’t bother picking the front door lock. If Sam took care to keep anything or anyone out of his windows, then he’s done the same to his front door. Dean sits on the steps leading to the front porch, slowly resting all his weight on the rickety wood. He startles when the hellhound leaps from the ground to the top step in one bound, the wood creaking dangerously beneath. He barely curbs the urge to encourage her off the porch because she might crash through. Animal or human, Dean knows better than to comment on a woman’s weight.
After five minutes, Dean grows restless. He spent hours driving to Sam and Sam isn’t even here. His brother could be on a job, or even moved locations for a while. If Sam didn’t show up in an hour, he would head into Jackson proper for a meal.
He amuses himself by trying to get the hellhound to fetch, which she doesn’t, and finally gives up after ten minutes. He’s actually bored and absently sweeps his hand over his side, which is no longer covered in bandages, the wounds healing quicker than normal. The skin was still tender, but closed.
Forty minutes later, the hellhound perks her head up, looking at the lane leading up to the house. Dean’s brow furrows and he follows her motion, but he can’t see anything coming. A few minutes later, he hears the sweet purr of the engine he has been waiting for. Sam’s back.
Excitement starts to bubble in him, but then he remembers that he’s been dead for almost three months. He stands up, nervously wiping his sweating palms on his jeans, and walks down the steps, stopping about ten feet from the staircase.
Dean turns to the hellhound, who is now sitting up at the top of the stairs. “Yeah, remember how you did awesome at not attacking Bobby when he thought I was a demon or a shape shifter? Can you be that awesome one more time?”
She doesn’t answer but Dean takes her silence for a yes. At least, he really hopes it’s a yes. He turns back around and the Impala rolls into sight. Dean winces when Sam doesn’t avoid a pothole on the worn, dirt road but holds his tongue. He would check the undercarriage later.
The sun has almost set now, the sky a blazing mix of pink, orange, and purple. Dean can barely see into the Impala’s interior. He squints, barely able to make out Sam’s silhouette before the headlights flick on. Dean winces and looks away, blinking the black spots from his vision and holding his hand up to block the brightness from blinding him any further. The hellhound starts to growl but just as Dean turns around to tell her to be quiet, the Impala answers as Sam pushes down on the gas, revving the engine.
There’s no question that Sam has seen him now. Dean moves his hand away from his face and closes his eyes as much as he dares. “Sam?” he calls out. The engine revs again. “Come on, Sam. It’s me. It’s Dean. I’ll let you throw holy water on me and nick me with a silver knife to prove it-hell, I’ll even swallow salt and grip iron-but if you even think about running me over with my own car, I will come back and haunt your ass until you’re eighty.”
There’s a pause before the engine revs again, louder and longer, making the body of the Impala shake.
“Sam!” he snaps, taking a step forward. “Quit hiding and get out of the damn car!”
The ignition switches off and the driver’s side door opens noisily, the metal squeaking loudly in the quiet night. Behind him, the hellhound shifts and the wooden boards on the porch creak, but she doesn’t move from her spot.
The first thought that comes to his mind when Sam gets out of the car is that his hair just gets more and more ridiculous as the years pass. When he first pulled Sam away from Stanford, the ends were barely curling and complimented his rounded face and pouting expressions. Now, the brown locks were wild and curled in different directions. Thank God Dean didn’t get the curly hair genes.
The second thought is that Sam grew even taller, damn it, and he no longer looks like his arms are too long for his body. He finally grew up and Dean instantly feels guilty that Sammy growing up into Sam happened because he was dragged to hell.
The third thought never comes because Sam cocks the shotgun and levels it at Dean’s chest.
He instantly raises his hands up in surrender. “Uh, Sam, when I said you could test me, I meant in ways that won’t kill me if I’m human. Shooting me will actually kill me, and since I just got back, I don’t want to die again.”
Sam’s jaw clenches tightly, making his temples pulse. “There’s a devil’s trap inside the front door. Walk through it and go into the kitchen. There’s a bag of salt on the counter right next to some fresh holy water. You make it past those and we’ll go from there.”
Dean sighs but he did say that he would allow himself to be tested, although eating salt was going to suck. He walks up the rickety steps, looking at the hellhound. He doesn’t want to risk talking to her just yet, and the shit is going to absolutely hit the fan when Sam finds out, but he hopes he communicates that she needs to get out of the way and move when Sam comes up behind him.
Although, when Dean arrives at the door, he turns around. “Uh, dude? You got a key? It’s locked?”
Sam shrugs. “If you’re really Dean, you can pick it.”
“And the traps on the other side? Besides the devil’s trap, which isn’t going to do a thing to little ol’ human me.”
Again, Sam shrugs, feigning indifference. “There aren’t any.”
Dean stares at him incredulously before dropping his arms. Sam’s grip on the shotgun tightens, but he’s too pissed to care about that. “Damn it, Sam, are you kidding me? You have a fucking bear trap underneath that window but get a burglar with a set of lock picks and they’ll go traipsing through the house?”
“Most idiots go for the open window rather than the front door. I’ve never had to worry about burglars.”
He absolutely does not bristle at being called an idiot. Instead, Dean turns around and looks for something he can use to pick the lock. “Uh, I don’t exactly have a kit with me. How am I supposed to open this?”
A black leather pouch hits the porch by his feet, the edges worn and frayed. Dean’s hands shake when he leans down to pick it up, clenching the pouch tightly in his fingers. This is his set, and he can still feel the lingering warmth in the fabric that came from being tucked into Sam’s jacket pocket. He swallows tightly and quickly pulls out the tools he needs, aware that Sam still has a shotgun pointed at him. His hands cramp up and he’s still not up to full strength, but Dean manages to open the door after a few minutes.
He tucks the pouch in his own jacket pocket, because the kit is his anyway, and walks through the front door, half-expecting for an arrow to come flying out of the dark and pierce his chest, but like Sam said, there were no traps on the other side of the door, except for the devil’s trap painted into the ceiling on the other side of the doorway.
Dean makes a show of walking past the borders of the devil’s trap as Sam quickly walks up the steps and onto the porch. He stays outside the front door though, shotgun still trained on Dean’s chest.
“Salt and holy water.”
He grimaces. “Aw, come on. I’ve already gotten past the devil’s trap. Do I really have to eat salt now, too?”
“Two tablespoons,” Sam says with a glare as he reaches in the doorway and flips the light switch by the door. Yellow lights flicker on in the front area, bathing the room in a faint glow. He wants to take a moment to look over Sam now that they’re relatively close, but Sam raises the shotgun an inch in warning.
Dean rolls his eyes and turns back around, walking through the living room to the back of the house. “Bitch,” he mutters.
He catches Sam’s stricken expression in the old, tarnished mirror facing the front door. The shotgun shakes in his now loose grip as his shoulders hunch over. At that moment, Sam isn’t a hardened hunter analyzing a potential threat. He’s just…Sammy. Dean almost spins around and wraps Sam in a tight hug, promising to never leave again, but Sam takes a deep breath, straightens his shoulder, and readjusts the shotgun, cold mask falling into place yet again.
Dean is the one breaking now.
He walks through the narrow hallway to the relatively large kitchen. There are modern appliances on the worn counters, a sink full of dirty dishes, and a single chair shoved up under a faded card table against a wall. Dean sees the salt and bottles of holy water on the counter next to some sort of fancy coffee machine.
Sam’s heavy footsteps follow him and another light switches on. Dean sees something glinting on the counter next to the salt bag. Picking up the shining knife, he holds it up as non-threateningly as he can, turning towards Sam.
“Silver?” he asks. Sam nods cautiously, and Dean makes a small cut, just above the one Bobby made on his forearm. Blood wells up and drips to the floor. Sam sighs, barely an audible breath of sound.
Dean wipes the blade on his jeans and opens the salt bag. Instead of rummaging through drawers for a spoon, he takes a handful of salt and makes a face, already dreading the taste. Dean knocks back the salt like it’s a shot of whiskey, already scrabbling for a bottle of holy water to wash it down. He drinks three before he can peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth.
Dean coughs, leaning against a counter. “Son of a bitch, that was disgusting.” His eyes water and he rubs at them. There has to be a better way of proving his humanity. “I’m glad Bobby stopped after the silver knife slicing. I’ll never be able to eat pretzels or crackers agai-”
In the next moment, Dean can’t breathe because Sam has tossed the shotgun onto the table, strode forward, and wrapped his arms around Dean in a tight embrace. His arms wind around Sam’s back, locking tightly. The ungodly long car ride, the bear trap scare, even the salt test are nothing compared to feeling Sam wrapped around him again.
Sam shakes against him, his breaths shallow and quick. “Breathe, Sammy, breathe.”
“Dean,” he chokes out, “how…”
“Later, Sam. Just breathe.”
Master Post | Part One |
Part Three |
Part Four |
Notes and Acknowledgements |
Story Art