The Other Son: Chapter Nineteen
Title: The Other Son
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Nineteen: SOMERSAULT
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter nineteen | SOMERSAULT
Five miles out of Ashtonville and the sun had set and Sam wanted nothing more than to find a place to stop before it got any later, where he and Dean could put their last grizzly hunt behind them and relax. “There’s a place up ahead,” Dean pointed out, his voice ruff with lack of sleep. Sam scanned the road for the sign, pulling the impala into the small parking lot out front of the motel with no small sense of relief; outside of a beat-up Volvo, the impala was the only vehicle occupying the lot.
“I’ll get us a room,” Sam said, slipping out of the car and jogging up to the main building where an older man with greying hair and a thick moustache was waiting expectantly behind the counter. Sam returned to the car with a room key and together they grabbed the bags and headed for the door. Sam twisted the key in the lock and nudged the door open with his foot, pushed his way inside and gratefully dropped his bag down onto the bed. “What?” he asked, when he noticed Dean standing just inside the door and eyeing the beds warily.
“We should get another room,” he said.
Sam knew better than to ask the obvious question of ‘what’s wrong with this one?’. He might have been exhausted enough for the thought to flicker through his mind, but he was nowhere near so fatigued that he’d be idiot enough to voice it. The reason was plain to see, written in the crease between Dean’s brow and the set of his chin and the tenseness in his body. “Are you okay?” he asked instead.
“I’ll exchange the key,” Dean said, which was answer enough. Sam wondered what Dean could sense, what bad thing had happened there to leave a trace of horror strong enough to make Dean uncomfortable.
“Hey, no,” Sam said. “I don’t mind.” By which he meant, ‘it’s okay’ and ‘it doesn’t bother me’ and ‘I get it’. Dean rolled his eyes and shook his, snatched the keys from the bed where Sam had casually tossed them, which Sam understood to be Dean’s way of saying ‘I know’.
………………………………………….
Dean was sprawled across the bed, his limbs loose and one foot and his left hand hanging off the bed. Sam watched as his lover’s bare toes flexed and scrunched as he spoke low and quiet into his cell. Every once and a while, Dean laughed soft and fond and Sam would smile because laughter was something he was hearing from Dean with less frequency.
“What’s wrong with my toes?” Dean’s voice broke Sam’s reverie, and he lifted his eyes to meet the other’s with a quirk in his lips - caught and guilty but far from remorseful.
“Nothing.”
“Are you doing any work or just having naughty thoughts?”
“Naughty thoughts,” Sam admitted with a grin. “How’s Sophia?”
“Good. Hasn’t blown-up, burned down, shattered, smashed or broken anything so far.”
“If she keeps that up you might actually have a functioning bar to return to,” Sam retorted before he could bite the comment back, trying to keep his expression clear as he watched Dean’s eyes slide away from his own. “I don’t think there’s anything going on right now,” his gesture included the table on which were scattered newspapers and also his laptop, and the comment held an offer unspoken.
“I’m thinking I could just sleep right here for forever,” Dean said, sprawling back onto the bed, his feet arched as he stretched and Sam forced his gaze away, fidgeted with the papers and then ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “If you keep huffing and puffing like that you might blow the whole motel down.”
Sam rolled his eyes but stood and made his way over until his legs were pressed to the edge of the bed, looking down at Dean’s sprawled form but not touching. “We need to talk.”
“Oh Christ.” Dean twisted his body until he rolled off the other side of the bed. “Not this again.”
“I’m serious.”
“You usually are, that’s pretty much always the problem.”
Sam caught Dean’s arm as he passed. “Dean.” The other man tugged his arm free but settled into the chair Sam had just vacated. Sam could easily understand the distance that Dean was putting between them and had no wish to push it if that was what Dean needed. Sam shook his head when Dean avoided his eyes. “I wouldn’t have to keep pushing so hard if you’d give a little.”
Silence stretched before Dean’s gaze dropped to the carpet, marred with stains and matted with overuse. “She summoned them,” he said after a moment, and Sam was taken off-guard, not expecting Dean to actually speak, not expecting to hear about Janice Hikida. “Those people that died - she saw them as having screwed her over at work and because of that …” Dean shook his head.
Sam frowned. It hadn’t occurred to him how he had gotten used to hearing that sort of thing, had become accustomed to seeing how people who learned about the supernatural sometimes employed ghosts and ghouls and reapers and the like to do their dirty work for them; he’d forgotten that Dean hadn’t hunted for so very long and wasn’t used to that side of people - wasn’t used to the logic or lack-thereof that made being kept from a coveted position at work a good excuse for summoning something that would rip a body to shreds and consume it. “Were you thinking about that at the graveyard the other day?” A minor hunt just outside of town with a ghost who had been tame and boring by comparison. A simple salt and burn, but after digging-up the grave and salting the remains Sam had struck a match and watched as Dean doubled-over.
“No,” Dean said. “That was nothing.”
“You threw-up, Dean. I don’t call that nothing.”
Dean scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. “Well, I don’t know what that was.”
“Dean.”
“I’m serious, Sammy! I just - I got that smell in my nose and that was it, okay? I don’t know why, it just happened.” Sam liked to think that he knew his lover well enough to spot a lie, and Dean’s eyes met his only briefly before sliding away, but Sam didn’t call him on it. “Look,” Dean said, fishing in a pocket and withdrawing a small leather-bound book. “Hikida gave me this.”
Sam accepted the book and flipped it open, scanned the pages and his eyebrows rose. “She gave it to you?” he asked doubtfully, but was answered by only a shrug. “This stuff is pretty intense.” The contents of the book were hand-written spells and summoning, ancient and obscure, mentioning some things that Sam had never in his life heard of, had never even imagined possible. “Where did she get this?”
“She didn’t say.”
“And she just gave it to you?”
“That’s what I said.” Dean rose from his chair and looked around, grabbed the keys from the top of the TV where Sam had left them. “Look, I’m gonna go get something to eat. You want something?”
“I’ll come.”
“It’s fine.” Sam watched the door swing closed and thought it sounded final.
…………………………………..
Dean’s eyes flickered open and he stared blankly into the dark. Sam’s body was pressed against his back and there was a heavy arm slung around his waist, Sam’s breath warming the back of his neck and however effective Sam usually was at giving Dean calm and restful sleep, it hadn’t worked. He twisted a little to look at Sam’s lax features and then slid slowly from the bed, careful not to wake the other man.
Outside there was a sliver of moon in the sky and Dean watched it, watched the black clouds light up and turn grey in its wane light. Sam kept the curtains closed at night, with a line of salt on the sill, but Dean could still remember his mother tucking him into bed at night and kissing his head - the moonlight on his face like a nightlight. He wondered if there was a time when he had never feared the dark and thought that there must be, but that he couldn’t remember it. Thoughts were racing into his head the longer he stood there - the man at the motel desk who wanted to go to sleep and close the doors because he doubted anyone else was coming, but that he’d lose his job if he did. The couple in the other room were worrying about a relative whom they were on their way to see. Dean raised his hand to his temple and closed his eyes tight, tried to block it out but it didn’t stop. It rarely did. Dean had learned at a young age that he was more often than not too emotional to keep his gift in check.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Sam asked groggily.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Dean said, picked-up his quilt on his way back to the cramped double bed he was sharing and then hid himself away under the blanket, under Sam’s warmth and tried to pretend that the only thing in the world was dark and quiet and Sam’s sleepy snores in his ear.
……………………………………..
Nothing to hunt meant that Sam drove steady and with no particular destination in mind. They stopped when they felt like it and checked the papers and scanned the net for something that might spark their interest. Dean would take the wheel because he wanted to drive, or because Sam wanted to relax, but never because they had to get somewhere fast and one or the other of them was falling asleep. When Sam was driving, Dean would flip through Hikida’s book and read it aloud like a bedtime story, and he and Sam would shudder over spells or summons.
“Hey,” Dean said as he looked down at one particular page. “This is what you did, isn’t it?”
Sam glanced nervously at him and then focussed back on the road. “Part of it,” he admitted.
“That’s pretty dark,” Dean said, looking at the sigil that he remembered seeing at the Roadhouse when Sam had set the trap to lure him back.
“Surprisingly, not so much,” Sam said. “I didn’t have to kill anyone to make it work.”
“Point,” Dean admitted. “Why’d you do it?”
“Desperation, it was the only way I could think of to get you back.” They hadn’t talked about it, hadn’t talked about Fred and how Dean was a weapon. Sam hadn’t pried into anything - or at least, had given-up when Dean had made it clear he just wanted to forget everything.
Dean watched the lines on the road, stuttering stripes of white and yellow. “What’s this one, then?” he asked after a while, described the marking that so closely resembled what he had seen at the Roadhouse.
“What?” Sam asked. Dean repeated it again, looked to Sam and noticed white knuckles and a bland expression. “It’s a summoning for demons. More specific that the one I cast.”
“How so?”
“Can call a demon by name,” Sam said, his voice rough and low in that way it got.
“Why’d you want to do that?”
“Exactly,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t.”
……………………………….
Five miles outside of Pueblo, Colorado Sam ducked into a truck stop restaurant to gather take-out and Dean opened the passenger door, sat on the hood of the impala and took-in the sun and tried to ignore the shouts and worries and wants racing through his head - so many that he could barely feel himself amidst it all. He tilted his head back and thought about quiet and how he rarely experienced it and especially not lately. He thought about his dreams and the warnings whispered with glee when he sleeps and how he felt that something was building and he had no way to fight it, no way to help Sam, no way to ensure that he was on the right side when it all came down. There’s a freshly re-inked mark on the small of his back and Sam’s lips have left bruising, claiming kisses on his skin but he still can’t shake the sensation of previous ownership - and more than anything, Dean hated feeling like he didn’t belong to himself.
He let the thoughts go and focussed in, tried to pinpoint Sam amidst it all and found that he couldn’t. There was a whirlwind sweeping through and not in any part of it could Dean find Sam. If he opened his eyes, he was certain he could see the man, was certain that the hunter would be at the counter waiting for lunch to be placed in Styrofoam containers to go but however much he tried Dean couldn’t bridge the distance between them, couldn’t feel him like he always could and couldn’t make his eyes open. “Shit,” he thought and maybe spoke the words aloud but he knew what was building and he hated it.
The world dipped and twisted and blurred as he squinted his eyes open and then his body went hot and then cold and he came into himself enough to be thinking that it would be incredibly awkward to just collapse in the parking lot of a truck stop, and that he should really call for some kind of help - at least to alert Sam because Dean couldn’t stand being defenceless. He slid off the hood of the car and onto the cement but barely felt the drop, felt only the coolness of the shade embracing him and he was shivering and trying for steady breath but there was nothing solid to hold onto. He hoped that whoever found him would know not to lay a damned hand on him because it was bad enough as it was, and then his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body jerked and there was the sound of racing wind in his ears though the day had been calm and he had nowhere to fall to, and then nothing.
…………………………………….
He was running through a field. Through wheat. Dean thought that was a bit of a cliché, or creepy, or just random because he could see ahead that there was a swamp and a knotted tree with reaching twisting branches like gnarled fingers scratching at the sky and even if he was running through sunlight, up ahead there was nothing but dark. He slows his pace and comes to a stop at the edge of the swamp, thinks that there is absolutely no reason why he would want to take a step forward but even as he turns around the scene fills-in, takes the step for him, because behind him is more swamp and dark and there’s no sign of the field anywhere.
“This isn’t real,” he states with conviction, even as he sees the flames start-up. He’s sick of fire, he’s tired of water, he wants dry stable ground and a warm-cool summer breeze and to never have to know what burning feels like.
“Run run run, as fast as you can,” a voice echoes through the scene. The water is rising, filling the small stream and overflowing to lap at his feet, lick at his knees. “You can’t get away.”
“Sure I can!” he says. He’s never himself in these dreams, not really. His voice is thin and high and he’s less than half his size. He’s a kid, but he can’t tell how old he is. Young enough, because his favourite threat is: ‘My dad’s gonna kill you!” and he wonders if he ever had such a conviction. He can’t remember. He knows Paul would have done anything for him, but there was no situation that he can think of where Paul would have killed anything, or where Dean would have thought he would. Then again, Dean knows it’s a demon that stalks his dreams, and thinks that if he were a kid being stalked by a demon, he’d probably be certain that his dad would save him from it.
“You can’t run forever.” And that came much closer to him, whispered across the back of his neck, but when he turns there’s nothing behind him. The water is up to his chest and Dean climbs through the much to find higher ground. Higher ground is the knobby tree and the safety of its branches. He perches in the split of its trunk and feels doomed and defiant.
“I’ll run forever!” he announces. His grip on the branches slips and he falls only to be caught before his feet touch the water - there’s something around his neck. Dean thinks he’s getting tired of being strung-up to trees but there’s nothing he can do about it except hang there and squirm. “I’m just a kid,” he thinks. “I’m just a stupid kid.”
“You’re one of two,” the voice says but it’s Sam’s voice, and Dean frowns, wriggles and realizes that he’s himself again, he’s grown-up and dangling with his feet skimming the receding water.
“Sam?” he asks, relieved to hear a familiar voice and worried too, because Sam has never been in his nightmares before, and Dean has counted on that - the reassurance of opening his eyes to see his lover who never once had a place in the horrors his own dreams inflicted on him.
“Dean?” Dean blinked his eyes open and he was back in the parking lot, his head in Sam’s lap and a few people gathered around but standing away. Dean realized that Sam had found him and kept the people back. “You got overwhelmed. If you’re up to it, I think we should get out of here, find some place quiet.”
“Sounds good,” Dean said, blinking groggily, adjusting to the bright dry sun and the warmth. Sam helped him up, and fussed as Dean settled back into the passenger seat. Dean was certain Sam was saying something to the hovering crowd but he didn’t care what it was.
When they were on the road again, far enough away from the truck stop, Dean dropped his hand to Sam’s wrist and Sam pulled the car to the side. “What?”
“Just a second,” Dean said, slid across the bench seat and dropped his forehead to rest against Sam’s neck. “Just … give me a sec.” Sam didn’t say anything, but he brought his large hand up to wrap around the back of Dean’s neck, skin to skin and nothing but soothing comfort. Dean could feel Sam again, in his head, could feel that strange connection they shared and he focussed all of his attention onto it.
“There should be a motel not to far from here,” Sam said after a while.
“Yeah,” Dean said. They sat in silence, watching as, periodically, a car would whiz passed. The next thing Dean knew he was being prodded gently into wakefulness by an apologetic Sam who was attempting to slide him out of the car and in the direction of an open door. “We’re here?”
“Yeah.”
“I can walk,” Dean said, sliding the rest of the way from the car and standing up outside, not fully awake and muscles aching in that way they did after he collapsed like he had.
“Okay,” Sam said, and Dean ended up leaning on him anyway, but he thought maybe that was okay.
……………………………………………..
They hunt down a chupacabra in Oregon and there seemed to be no end to the words Dean had to describe the utter ridiculousness of the thing’s appearance. Sam endured cheap humour and wide smiles and settled in, promised himself that this was normal that things were calming down, getting back into a rhythm that both he and Dean could deal with.
In Lewiston Dean picked-up their room keys as Sam went to get dinner and gas for the car. He tromped into room 412 thinking that it was good because those numbers added to seven and that’s a lucky number, but Dean’s nowhere inside the room. Sam swallowed thick and remained calm and followed the noises to the small door that marked off the bathroom, pushed it open because it hadn’t been closed properly. Dean was on his knees, slumped over the toilet and when he looked-up his eyes were glassy.
Sam put their dinner on the counter and pulled back the sheets, kicked off his shoes and settled onto the bed, lowering the volume on the TV just enough and keeping his body still because Dean had settled-in, rested his ear over Sam’s heart and had let his eyes drift close. Sam dropped his arm around Dean to keep him close, let his fingers drift back and forth over the inked design and thought about how Dean had been split open - wondered how to put him together again.
……………………………………………..
“Hey, where’s that freaky book?” Dean asked, like an afterthought as he guided the car down I84.
“Why’d you want it?”
Dean shrugged. The truth was he’d gotten in the habit of reading portions of it, aloud or to himself, because he was still trying to connect the fact that Janice had summoned something so dark and twisted and killed four people simply because she felt she was being undervalued at work. Reading her book made it feel real, made everything he’d been through since Sam had stumbled into his life feel more real. It was something tangible to hold onto, a reminder, almost, of what could happen if a person fell too deep into the mysteries that Sam had organized his life around. “Something to do while driving down a long and boring stretch of road,” he said.
“I threw it out,” Sam said.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Dean said. “Just thought it was the kinda thing you’d add to your freaky trunk library.”
Sam shook his head and bit back a half-hearted smile. “Well, it wasn’t.” Dean shrugged again and let it go.
……………………………………………..
Dean was a boneless sprawl across the bed and for once he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Sam turned the TV off, slid-out from beneath Dean and grabbed his phone from the nightstand. Missouri didn’t seem all that surprised to hear from him.
“Least you could have done was let me know that you got to that boy!” she scolded. “I had to hear it from your father.”
“I’m sorry, things were hectic after that.” She didn’t point out that there was always a moment to make a phone call, however brief, like Ellen did when she would scold him.
“Out with it then,” she said instead. “What can I do for you, Sam Winchester?”
Dean was a difficult person to summarize, and Dean’s gift was nigh impossible to describe. Sam wondered sometimes if he even really knew about all of it. Missouri listened and in the end, had nothing really that she could recommend. “He knows already to clear his head, to try to centre himself,” Sam said. “I’m worried that he’s been thrown-off by something the demons did, something that he doesn’t remember.” He’d left the door to their room open so he could keep on eye on Dean, but he paced back and forth outside of it.
“That well could be.”
Sam let out a breath. “I was really hoping that you’d tell me that was impossible.”
“I know,” she said. “I think you just need to do what you’ve been doing. Ultimately, he has to come to terms with his gift, I think maybe he just has too much on his mind to focus properly, so you keep him calm and relaxed and most importantly, you keep his mind off what’s been happening.”
“Easier said than done.”
“It usually is.”
…………………………………….
Sam watched with amusement as Dean bit into his club sandwich, his eyes rolling into his head and closing and a groan, that Sam had thus far only heard in the bedroom or during a particularly good meal, erupt from his throat. He snickered a little as Dean sat back in the booth and chewed with obvious appreciation. “What?” Dean asked defensively when he opened his eyes to find Sam’s amused expression.
“Nothing,” Sam said. “Hungry?” he teased, unable to resist.
“You should try this, it’s incredible.”
“It’s a sandwich.”
“Well, it’s an awesome sandwich.” Dean took another bite, groaned again and then glanced toward the glass display counter. “You think she’d give us free pie?”
“I could buy us some pie.” But Dean was already flirting with the waitress and Sam - based on previous experience - was pretty sure they’d end up with a good portion of pie at no cost.
…………………………………………….
The motel they’d settled in for what Sam insisted would be the entire weekend, was a plain but clean looking little place that had no more than fifteen rooms total. Despite Sam’s claim that they had earned a weekend of rest, he had gone out to gather newspapers to check for anything suspicious that might give them a destination once Monday rolled around. Dean had lost a bet at the bar the previous night and so he had been left to do the laundry.
“Evil cheating sonofabitch,” Dean muttered as he grabbed threw his duffel onto the bed having removed the few clean items and left only the dirty in it. He snatched-up Sam’s bag and unzipped it, immediately stumbling on a pair of old socks that wreaked like nothing Dean had ever experienced before in his life. “Ugh!” he gagged and wretched, and then tossed them into his duffel cum laundry bag. “Bastard, bet you did that on purpose.” He sorted through Sam’s things, leaving the clean items on the bed and filling his duffel with the rest.
“What the?” he wondered as his fingers struck something hard and he snatched the offending item up and frowned. Sam had claimed to have thrown Janice Hikida’s book of spells out, had said it baldly and without the slightest flinch; and yet Dean was holding that book in his hands, staring down at the leather cover with an uneasy feeling. There was no reason as far as Dean could tell why Sam would have needed to lie.
Dean pushed the duffel aside and sat down on the bed, flipping the book open like he had to confirm that it really was the same book and he wasn’t just jumping to conclusions. He wasn’t mad, but it niggled in the back of his mind, that sense he got sometimes, as if Sam were keeping something from him.
A folded paper napkin was shoved between the pages and when Dean let the book sit in his hands it flipped open to the marked page, revealing the modification of the summoning spell Sam had performed. Dean frowned and put the napkin aside, looking closer at the spell that he had only skimmed previously. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that there was a hierarchy in hell; there had to be a reason why someone had thought it was necessary to summon a specific demon, had to be a reason why Sam had flagged the page. The spell itself was nothing special - no elaborate necessities outside of a lit candle and chalk drawing and a few spoken words in Latin - which Dean was quickly picking-up. He supposed that the spell would be entirely shaped by the one blank space in the incantation - the place for the demon’s name. And Sam had lied and hid the book and flagged the pages.
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
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Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Nineteen: SOMERSAULT
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter nineteen | SOMERSAULT
Five miles out of Ashtonville and the sun had set and Sam wanted nothing more than to find a place to stop before it got any later, where he and Dean could put their last grizzly hunt behind them and relax. “There’s a place up ahead,” Dean pointed out, his voice ruff with lack of sleep. Sam scanned the road for the sign, pulling the impala into the small parking lot out front of the motel with no small sense of relief; outside of a beat-up Volvo, the impala was the only vehicle occupying the lot.
“I’ll get us a room,” Sam said, slipping out of the car and jogging up to the main building where an older man with greying hair and a thick moustache was waiting expectantly behind the counter. Sam returned to the car with a room key and together they grabbed the bags and headed for the door. Sam twisted the key in the lock and nudged the door open with his foot, pushed his way inside and gratefully dropped his bag down onto the bed. “What?” he asked, when he noticed Dean standing just inside the door and eyeing the beds warily.
“We should get another room,” he said.
Sam knew better than to ask the obvious question of ‘what’s wrong with this one?’. He might have been exhausted enough for the thought to flicker through his mind, but he was nowhere near so fatigued that he’d be idiot enough to voice it. The reason was plain to see, written in the crease between Dean’s brow and the set of his chin and the tenseness in his body. “Are you okay?” he asked instead.
“I’ll exchange the key,” Dean said, which was answer enough. Sam wondered what Dean could sense, what bad thing had happened there to leave a trace of horror strong enough to make Dean uncomfortable.
“Hey, no,” Sam said. “I don’t mind.” By which he meant, ‘it’s okay’ and ‘it doesn’t bother me’ and ‘I get it’. Dean rolled his eyes and shook his, snatched the keys from the bed where Sam had casually tossed them, which Sam understood to be Dean’s way of saying ‘I know’.
………………………………………….
Dean was sprawled across the bed, his limbs loose and one foot and his left hand hanging off the bed. Sam watched as his lover’s bare toes flexed and scrunched as he spoke low and quiet into his cell. Every once and a while, Dean laughed soft and fond and Sam would smile because laughter was something he was hearing from Dean with less frequency.
“What’s wrong with my toes?” Dean’s voice broke Sam’s reverie, and he lifted his eyes to meet the other’s with a quirk in his lips - caught and guilty but far from remorseful.
“Nothing.”
“Are you doing any work or just having naughty thoughts?”
“Naughty thoughts,” Sam admitted with a grin. “How’s Sophia?”
“Good. Hasn’t blown-up, burned down, shattered, smashed or broken anything so far.”
“If she keeps that up you might actually have a functioning bar to return to,” Sam retorted before he could bite the comment back, trying to keep his expression clear as he watched Dean’s eyes slide away from his own. “I don’t think there’s anything going on right now,” his gesture included the table on which were scattered newspapers and also his laptop, and the comment held an offer unspoken.
“I’m thinking I could just sleep right here for forever,” Dean said, sprawling back onto the bed, his feet arched as he stretched and Sam forced his gaze away, fidgeted with the papers and then ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “If you keep huffing and puffing like that you might blow the whole motel down.”
Sam rolled his eyes but stood and made his way over until his legs were pressed to the edge of the bed, looking down at Dean’s sprawled form but not touching. “We need to talk.”
“Oh Christ.” Dean twisted his body until he rolled off the other side of the bed. “Not this again.”
“I’m serious.”
“You usually are, that’s pretty much always the problem.”
Sam caught Dean’s arm as he passed. “Dean.” The other man tugged his arm free but settled into the chair Sam had just vacated. Sam could easily understand the distance that Dean was putting between them and had no wish to push it if that was what Dean needed. Sam shook his head when Dean avoided his eyes. “I wouldn’t have to keep pushing so hard if you’d give a little.”
Silence stretched before Dean’s gaze dropped to the carpet, marred with stains and matted with overuse. “She summoned them,” he said after a moment, and Sam was taken off-guard, not expecting Dean to actually speak, not expecting to hear about Janice Hikida. “Those people that died - she saw them as having screwed her over at work and because of that …” Dean shook his head.
Sam frowned. It hadn’t occurred to him how he had gotten used to hearing that sort of thing, had become accustomed to seeing how people who learned about the supernatural sometimes employed ghosts and ghouls and reapers and the like to do their dirty work for them; he’d forgotten that Dean hadn’t hunted for so very long and wasn’t used to that side of people - wasn’t used to the logic or lack-thereof that made being kept from a coveted position at work a good excuse for summoning something that would rip a body to shreds and consume it. “Were you thinking about that at the graveyard the other day?” A minor hunt just outside of town with a ghost who had been tame and boring by comparison. A simple salt and burn, but after digging-up the grave and salting the remains Sam had struck a match and watched as Dean doubled-over.
“No,” Dean said. “That was nothing.”
“You threw-up, Dean. I don’t call that nothing.”
Dean scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. “Well, I don’t know what that was.”
“Dean.”
“I’m serious, Sammy! I just - I got that smell in my nose and that was it, okay? I don’t know why, it just happened.” Sam liked to think that he knew his lover well enough to spot a lie, and Dean’s eyes met his only briefly before sliding away, but Sam didn’t call him on it. “Look,” Dean said, fishing in a pocket and withdrawing a small leather-bound book. “Hikida gave me this.”
Sam accepted the book and flipped it open, scanned the pages and his eyebrows rose. “She gave it to you?” he asked doubtfully, but was answered by only a shrug. “This stuff is pretty intense.” The contents of the book were hand-written spells and summoning, ancient and obscure, mentioning some things that Sam had never in his life heard of, had never even imagined possible. “Where did she get this?”
“She didn’t say.”
“And she just gave it to you?”
“That’s what I said.” Dean rose from his chair and looked around, grabbed the keys from the top of the TV where Sam had left them. “Look, I’m gonna go get something to eat. You want something?”
“I’ll come.”
“It’s fine.” Sam watched the door swing closed and thought it sounded final.
…………………………………..
Dean’s eyes flickered open and he stared blankly into the dark. Sam’s body was pressed against his back and there was a heavy arm slung around his waist, Sam’s breath warming the back of his neck and however effective Sam usually was at giving Dean calm and restful sleep, it hadn’t worked. He twisted a little to look at Sam’s lax features and then slid slowly from the bed, careful not to wake the other man.
Outside there was a sliver of moon in the sky and Dean watched it, watched the black clouds light up and turn grey in its wane light. Sam kept the curtains closed at night, with a line of salt on the sill, but Dean could still remember his mother tucking him into bed at night and kissing his head - the moonlight on his face like a nightlight. He wondered if there was a time when he had never feared the dark and thought that there must be, but that he couldn’t remember it. Thoughts were racing into his head the longer he stood there - the man at the motel desk who wanted to go to sleep and close the doors because he doubted anyone else was coming, but that he’d lose his job if he did. The couple in the other room were worrying about a relative whom they were on their way to see. Dean raised his hand to his temple and closed his eyes tight, tried to block it out but it didn’t stop. It rarely did. Dean had learned at a young age that he was more often than not too emotional to keep his gift in check.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Sam asked groggily.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Dean said, picked-up his quilt on his way back to the cramped double bed he was sharing and then hid himself away under the blanket, under Sam’s warmth and tried to pretend that the only thing in the world was dark and quiet and Sam’s sleepy snores in his ear.
……………………………………..
Nothing to hunt meant that Sam drove steady and with no particular destination in mind. They stopped when they felt like it and checked the papers and scanned the net for something that might spark their interest. Dean would take the wheel because he wanted to drive, or because Sam wanted to relax, but never because they had to get somewhere fast and one or the other of them was falling asleep. When Sam was driving, Dean would flip through Hikida’s book and read it aloud like a bedtime story, and he and Sam would shudder over spells or summons.
“Hey,” Dean said as he looked down at one particular page. “This is what you did, isn’t it?”
Sam glanced nervously at him and then focussed back on the road. “Part of it,” he admitted.
“That’s pretty dark,” Dean said, looking at the sigil that he remembered seeing at the Roadhouse when Sam had set the trap to lure him back.
“Surprisingly, not so much,” Sam said. “I didn’t have to kill anyone to make it work.”
“Point,” Dean admitted. “Why’d you do it?”
“Desperation, it was the only way I could think of to get you back.” They hadn’t talked about it, hadn’t talked about Fred and how Dean was a weapon. Sam hadn’t pried into anything - or at least, had given-up when Dean had made it clear he just wanted to forget everything.
Dean watched the lines on the road, stuttering stripes of white and yellow. “What’s this one, then?” he asked after a while, described the marking that so closely resembled what he had seen at the Roadhouse.
“What?” Sam asked. Dean repeated it again, looked to Sam and noticed white knuckles and a bland expression. “It’s a summoning for demons. More specific that the one I cast.”
“How so?”
“Can call a demon by name,” Sam said, his voice rough and low in that way it got.
“Why’d you want to do that?”
“Exactly,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t.”
……………………………….
Five miles outside of Pueblo, Colorado Sam ducked into a truck stop restaurant to gather take-out and Dean opened the passenger door, sat on the hood of the impala and took-in the sun and tried to ignore the shouts and worries and wants racing through his head - so many that he could barely feel himself amidst it all. He tilted his head back and thought about quiet and how he rarely experienced it and especially not lately. He thought about his dreams and the warnings whispered with glee when he sleeps and how he felt that something was building and he had no way to fight it, no way to help Sam, no way to ensure that he was on the right side when it all came down. There’s a freshly re-inked mark on the small of his back and Sam’s lips have left bruising, claiming kisses on his skin but he still can’t shake the sensation of previous ownership - and more than anything, Dean hated feeling like he didn’t belong to himself.
He let the thoughts go and focussed in, tried to pinpoint Sam amidst it all and found that he couldn’t. There was a whirlwind sweeping through and not in any part of it could Dean find Sam. If he opened his eyes, he was certain he could see the man, was certain that the hunter would be at the counter waiting for lunch to be placed in Styrofoam containers to go but however much he tried Dean couldn’t bridge the distance between them, couldn’t feel him like he always could and couldn’t make his eyes open. “Shit,” he thought and maybe spoke the words aloud but he knew what was building and he hated it.
The world dipped and twisted and blurred as he squinted his eyes open and then his body went hot and then cold and he came into himself enough to be thinking that it would be incredibly awkward to just collapse in the parking lot of a truck stop, and that he should really call for some kind of help - at least to alert Sam because Dean couldn’t stand being defenceless. He slid off the hood of the car and onto the cement but barely felt the drop, felt only the coolness of the shade embracing him and he was shivering and trying for steady breath but there was nothing solid to hold onto. He hoped that whoever found him would know not to lay a damned hand on him because it was bad enough as it was, and then his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body jerked and there was the sound of racing wind in his ears though the day had been calm and he had nowhere to fall to, and then nothing.
…………………………………….
He was running through a field. Through wheat. Dean thought that was a bit of a cliché, or creepy, or just random because he could see ahead that there was a swamp and a knotted tree with reaching twisting branches like gnarled fingers scratching at the sky and even if he was running through sunlight, up ahead there was nothing but dark. He slows his pace and comes to a stop at the edge of the swamp, thinks that there is absolutely no reason why he would want to take a step forward but even as he turns around the scene fills-in, takes the step for him, because behind him is more swamp and dark and there’s no sign of the field anywhere.
“This isn’t real,” he states with conviction, even as he sees the flames start-up. He’s sick of fire, he’s tired of water, he wants dry stable ground and a warm-cool summer breeze and to never have to know what burning feels like.
“Run run run, as fast as you can,” a voice echoes through the scene. The water is rising, filling the small stream and overflowing to lap at his feet, lick at his knees. “You can’t get away.”
“Sure I can!” he says. He’s never himself in these dreams, not really. His voice is thin and high and he’s less than half his size. He’s a kid, but he can’t tell how old he is. Young enough, because his favourite threat is: ‘My dad’s gonna kill you!” and he wonders if he ever had such a conviction. He can’t remember. He knows Paul would have done anything for him, but there was no situation that he can think of where Paul would have killed anything, or where Dean would have thought he would. Then again, Dean knows it’s a demon that stalks his dreams, and thinks that if he were a kid being stalked by a demon, he’d probably be certain that his dad would save him from it.
“You can’t run forever.” And that came much closer to him, whispered across the back of his neck, but when he turns there’s nothing behind him. The water is up to his chest and Dean climbs through the much to find higher ground. Higher ground is the knobby tree and the safety of its branches. He perches in the split of its trunk and feels doomed and defiant.
“I’ll run forever!” he announces. His grip on the branches slips and he falls only to be caught before his feet touch the water - there’s something around his neck. Dean thinks he’s getting tired of being strung-up to trees but there’s nothing he can do about it except hang there and squirm. “I’m just a kid,” he thinks. “I’m just a stupid kid.”
“You’re one of two,” the voice says but it’s Sam’s voice, and Dean frowns, wriggles and realizes that he’s himself again, he’s grown-up and dangling with his feet skimming the receding water.
“Sam?” he asks, relieved to hear a familiar voice and worried too, because Sam has never been in his nightmares before, and Dean has counted on that - the reassurance of opening his eyes to see his lover who never once had a place in the horrors his own dreams inflicted on him.
“Dean?” Dean blinked his eyes open and he was back in the parking lot, his head in Sam’s lap and a few people gathered around but standing away. Dean realized that Sam had found him and kept the people back. “You got overwhelmed. If you’re up to it, I think we should get out of here, find some place quiet.”
“Sounds good,” Dean said, blinking groggily, adjusting to the bright dry sun and the warmth. Sam helped him up, and fussed as Dean settled back into the passenger seat. Dean was certain Sam was saying something to the hovering crowd but he didn’t care what it was.
When they were on the road again, far enough away from the truck stop, Dean dropped his hand to Sam’s wrist and Sam pulled the car to the side. “What?”
“Just a second,” Dean said, slid across the bench seat and dropped his forehead to rest against Sam’s neck. “Just … give me a sec.” Sam didn’t say anything, but he brought his large hand up to wrap around the back of Dean’s neck, skin to skin and nothing but soothing comfort. Dean could feel Sam again, in his head, could feel that strange connection they shared and he focussed all of his attention onto it.
“There should be a motel not to far from here,” Sam said after a while.
“Yeah,” Dean said. They sat in silence, watching as, periodically, a car would whiz passed. The next thing Dean knew he was being prodded gently into wakefulness by an apologetic Sam who was attempting to slide him out of the car and in the direction of an open door. “We’re here?”
“Yeah.”
“I can walk,” Dean said, sliding the rest of the way from the car and standing up outside, not fully awake and muscles aching in that way they did after he collapsed like he had.
“Okay,” Sam said, and Dean ended up leaning on him anyway, but he thought maybe that was okay.
……………………………………………..
They hunt down a chupacabra in Oregon and there seemed to be no end to the words Dean had to describe the utter ridiculousness of the thing’s appearance. Sam endured cheap humour and wide smiles and settled in, promised himself that this was normal that things were calming down, getting back into a rhythm that both he and Dean could deal with.
In Lewiston Dean picked-up their room keys as Sam went to get dinner and gas for the car. He tromped into room 412 thinking that it was good because those numbers added to seven and that’s a lucky number, but Dean’s nowhere inside the room. Sam swallowed thick and remained calm and followed the noises to the small door that marked off the bathroom, pushed it open because it hadn’t been closed properly. Dean was on his knees, slumped over the toilet and when he looked-up his eyes were glassy.
Sam put their dinner on the counter and pulled back the sheets, kicked off his shoes and settled onto the bed, lowering the volume on the TV just enough and keeping his body still because Dean had settled-in, rested his ear over Sam’s heart and had let his eyes drift close. Sam dropped his arm around Dean to keep him close, let his fingers drift back and forth over the inked design and thought about how Dean had been split open - wondered how to put him together again.
……………………………………………..
“Hey, where’s that freaky book?” Dean asked, like an afterthought as he guided the car down I84.
“Why’d you want it?”
Dean shrugged. The truth was he’d gotten in the habit of reading portions of it, aloud or to himself, because he was still trying to connect the fact that Janice had summoned something so dark and twisted and killed four people simply because she felt she was being undervalued at work. Reading her book made it feel real, made everything he’d been through since Sam had stumbled into his life feel more real. It was something tangible to hold onto, a reminder, almost, of what could happen if a person fell too deep into the mysteries that Sam had organized his life around. “Something to do while driving down a long and boring stretch of road,” he said.
“I threw it out,” Sam said.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Dean said. “Just thought it was the kinda thing you’d add to your freaky trunk library.”
Sam shook his head and bit back a half-hearted smile. “Well, it wasn’t.” Dean shrugged again and let it go.
……………………………………………..
Dean was a boneless sprawl across the bed and for once he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Sam turned the TV off, slid-out from beneath Dean and grabbed his phone from the nightstand. Missouri didn’t seem all that surprised to hear from him.
“Least you could have done was let me know that you got to that boy!” she scolded. “I had to hear it from your father.”
“I’m sorry, things were hectic after that.” She didn’t point out that there was always a moment to make a phone call, however brief, like Ellen did when she would scold him.
“Out with it then,” she said instead. “What can I do for you, Sam Winchester?”
Dean was a difficult person to summarize, and Dean’s gift was nigh impossible to describe. Sam wondered sometimes if he even really knew about all of it. Missouri listened and in the end, had nothing really that she could recommend. “He knows already to clear his head, to try to centre himself,” Sam said. “I’m worried that he’s been thrown-off by something the demons did, something that he doesn’t remember.” He’d left the door to their room open so he could keep on eye on Dean, but he paced back and forth outside of it.
“That well could be.”
Sam let out a breath. “I was really hoping that you’d tell me that was impossible.”
“I know,” she said. “I think you just need to do what you’ve been doing. Ultimately, he has to come to terms with his gift, I think maybe he just has too much on his mind to focus properly, so you keep him calm and relaxed and most importantly, you keep his mind off what’s been happening.”
“Easier said than done.”
“It usually is.”
…………………………………….
Sam watched with amusement as Dean bit into his club sandwich, his eyes rolling into his head and closing and a groan, that Sam had thus far only heard in the bedroom or during a particularly good meal, erupt from his throat. He snickered a little as Dean sat back in the booth and chewed with obvious appreciation. “What?” Dean asked defensively when he opened his eyes to find Sam’s amused expression.
“Nothing,” Sam said. “Hungry?” he teased, unable to resist.
“You should try this, it’s incredible.”
“It’s a sandwich.”
“Well, it’s an awesome sandwich.” Dean took another bite, groaned again and then glanced toward the glass display counter. “You think she’d give us free pie?”
“I could buy us some pie.” But Dean was already flirting with the waitress and Sam - based on previous experience - was pretty sure they’d end up with a good portion of pie at no cost.
…………………………………………….
The motel they’d settled in for what Sam insisted would be the entire weekend, was a plain but clean looking little place that had no more than fifteen rooms total. Despite Sam’s claim that they had earned a weekend of rest, he had gone out to gather newspapers to check for anything suspicious that might give them a destination once Monday rolled around. Dean had lost a bet at the bar the previous night and so he had been left to do the laundry.
“Evil cheating sonofabitch,” Dean muttered as he grabbed threw his duffel onto the bed having removed the few clean items and left only the dirty in it. He snatched-up Sam’s bag and unzipped it, immediately stumbling on a pair of old socks that wreaked like nothing Dean had ever experienced before in his life. “Ugh!” he gagged and wretched, and then tossed them into his duffel cum laundry bag. “Bastard, bet you did that on purpose.” He sorted through Sam’s things, leaving the clean items on the bed and filling his duffel with the rest.
“What the?” he wondered as his fingers struck something hard and he snatched the offending item up and frowned. Sam had claimed to have thrown Janice Hikida’s book of spells out, had said it baldly and without the slightest flinch; and yet Dean was holding that book in his hands, staring down at the leather cover with an uneasy feeling. There was no reason as far as Dean could tell why Sam would have needed to lie.
Dean pushed the duffel aside and sat down on the bed, flipping the book open like he had to confirm that it really was the same book and he wasn’t just jumping to conclusions. He wasn’t mad, but it niggled in the back of his mind, that sense he got sometimes, as if Sam were keeping something from him.
A folded paper napkin was shoved between the pages and when Dean let the book sit in his hands it flipped open to the marked page, revealing the modification of the summoning spell Sam had performed. Dean frowned and put the napkin aside, looking closer at the spell that he had only skimmed previously. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that there was a hierarchy in hell; there had to be a reason why someone had thought it was necessary to summon a specific demon, had to be a reason why Sam had flagged the page. The spell itself was nothing special - no elaborate necessities outside of a lit candle and chalk drawing and a few spoken words in Latin - which Dean was quickly picking-up. He supposed that the spell would be entirely shaped by the one blank space in the incantation - the place for the demon’s name. And Sam had lied and hid the book and flagged the pages.
<< END CHAPTER >>
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