Only Sweeter, 2/5
Part 1.
Of course, the very next day Sam found a hunt not two hundred miles away. Dean came out of the shower to find Sam with the story circled in the paper on the table in front of him, running the standard searches. Dean wouldn’t let up until Sam admitted that it was probably a poltergeist killing workers at the construction site.
“What are you waiting for?” Dean asked, grabbing at his towel with one hand as he gestured with the other. “Let’s go waste it. Or whatever you do with ghosts.”
“That’s exactly the problem!” Sam pointed out. “This is my job, not yours. We still don’t know who you are-”
“Or how to find out,” Dean rejoined, practically bouncing on his heels. He was as eager as he’d been when they were kids, when the worst thing that had happened to them was Mom’s death and a new knife was cause for Dean to celebrate. He hadn’t shaved and his beard was coming in heavy. Sam was going to have to show him Dean’s straight razor and hope he remembered enough to avoid cutting his own throat.
Dean sighed at Sam’s lack of response. “What’m I supposed to do, sit here with my thumb up my ass while you go off and keep saving people? You’re the only one who even understands what the hell happened to me.”
“Someone might come looking for you if you stay here!” No, that was bad, because no one would come, and it wouldn’t get Dean moving into a new life. Sam flicked his hair out of his eyes, annoyed at himself. “Anyway, you don’t know what you’re doing. This isn’t for amateurs.”
“You get paid?” Dean was entirely too interested.
Sam shook his head, half convinced Dean was being deliberately obtuse. “It’s dangerous.”
“Talkin’ to a guy with fairy-induced amnesia here. I kinda get that it’s not a vacation cruise. And everybody’s gotta learn sometime, right? I mean, you must’ve had a first hunt.”
Sam closed his eyes. The first time he’d done more than research and organize the supplies on a hunt, he’d been sixteen. Dean had been ten times prouder than Dad when it was over. Nothing big, just a basic salt-and-burn, Dean hovering by his shoulder through the entire process. Sam had already been deep in disgust for their lives, so he’d pretended that he hated every part of it, even though Dean had looked at him with confused hurt when he’d shrugged off the one-armed victory squeeze Dean used instead of a hug. Sam had just recently grown as tall as Dean, much to Dean’s dismay, and Dean had lacked his later bulk, so it had been easy enough to push Dean away. Sam had stalked upstairs-they’d been living in an actual house, for once-slammed his door and thrown himself on his bed. He remembered the sound of Dean’s voice, higher back then, and Dad’s weary rumble, discussing what a numbnuts Sam was for wanting a normal life.
When he hadn’t been looking at either of them, he could admit to himself that the part where the ghost flickered and then popped out of existence like a switched-off television had been kind of cool. Nothing worth what he’d had to give up for Dad’s crazy quest, but not awful in itself.
Sam shook off the memory. It was hunting that had gotten them to the point where amnesia was a blessing.
“This isn’t a good life,” he said, quiet and sure, not meeting Dean’s eyes.
“How about you let me decide that for myself,” Dean suggested, and maybe Sam was too stuck on the hunt-drunk brother in his head, the rowdy unscarred boy who could do anything he set his mind to, but he nodded, even though he knew it was a bad idea.
****
Dean whooped again, leaning his head out of the passenger-side window like an enthusiastic dog. “Told you!” he yelled, bringing himself just far enough in that Sam could hear him over the roar of the wind.
Sam couldn’t suppress his grin. Dean’s happiness bubbled through the car-she even seemed to travel smoother with him so joyful inside-and Dean deserved the opportunity to crow.
Dean had approached the site warily, hanging back behind Sam’s shoulder. He hadn’t ever let Sam cross his line of fire, though. Once the supernatural action had started, every instinct had been spot-on. Sam’s research had proved insufficient and they’d had to deal with three sets of bones instead of the one Sam had expected. Sam had watched Dean put two shells dead center into two of the ghosts while running, then reload while jumping a zig-zagged path up the half-constructed walls of the office building.
Now, Dean turned away from the window, reaching over and putting his hand on Sam’s shoulder, warm and solid, just long enough for Sam to remember Dean’s years of playful and congratulatory shoves. When Dean pulled back, he gave Sam an almost bashful smile. “This gig seems easier with two,” he said.
Sam remembered telling Dean that he could look for Dad alone, and he had to stare hard at the road ahead, asphalt bleached out by the glare of the headlights. He tried to formulate the right sentence, the magic words that would convince Dean that they could both quit. Dean might listen to a stranger; God knew he’d never paid heed to Sam when Sam was his little brother.
“Lone hunters don’t last long,” he said when he had his voice under control. “Look what happened to you.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “So maybe we oughta stick together for a while.”
Sam started, because it was the exact opposite of what he’d meant. He couldn’t tell Dean so, not now.
He could leave once Dean had found a place to settle. Dean had his new life; Sam’s could wait a while. Quitting outright, when Dean still had the taste for it-the idea felt oddly disrespectful to Sam. Doing some more hunts, even nice easy ones, might be a good way to illustrate the downsides of the life to Dean, and then he’d be willing to walk away of his own volition.
In any event, it wasn’t like Sam had a positive agenda for alternatives. Continuing would mean a lot of extra work for Sam, but he could deal with that. Aside from Bobby, most of the hunters they knew had died fighting Lilith, so it might not be much harder to cover Dean’s tracks.
****
They should have gotten two rooms at the next motel, but Sam took a double by force of habit, and anyway money was tight. As long as he dressed in the bathroom, there shouldn’t be a problem.
It didn’t occur to him that Dean might find the instant closeness a little weird until over two weeks, and five different rooms, later. And by then Dean was already accommodating Sam’s peculiarities, like the way Sam always took over the tables for his files and his computer, leaving the beds (for weapons check and cleaning) and the bathroom counters (for product) for Dean.
Except that Dean had totally switched his self-care regimen: new toothpaste, new facial soap (which Sam was pretty sure hadn’t been part of the ritual before), new shampoo, new styling gels, even a new comb, all bought with money that Dean accepted sheepishly but without overt resistance.
For over a week, Dean’s hair looked like a hedgehog had mistaken it for a mate and attempted to mount, until Dean figured out how to get that casually ruffled look that only took ten minutes staring in the mirror to achieve. This time around, Dean used something that called itself ‘wax,’ though Sam doubted that actual wax was involved. Once Dean had settled on the wax, Sam couldn’t tell the difference in the hair. Dean had always been a little bitch about finding just the right brands, and Sam several times had to stop himself from commenting on how the results were the same even without spending $50 on a tube of goo.
Sam wondered why Dean didn’t just use the stuff in Dean’s old kit, which of course had worked well, but then he figured out that Dean probably felt uncomfortable using a dead man’s hair gel.
****
“Whoa,” Dean said when Sam gave him his present. “This is-” He looked as happy as he’d been when Dad had given him his first full-sized shotgun, bright-eyed and wondering. “Thanks.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, a real ten-thousand-watt Dean special that made the casual smirk he’d put on for the camera seem more plastic than the smiley face at Wal-Mart. Sam hadn’t seen that look on Dean’s face in what seemed like forever.
He grinned back helplessly and watched Dean’s hands sort through the IDs. “Thought you could use them.” A lot of them were worn from use, but he figured that Dean would chalk that up to careful forgery.
“That was what the picture was for, hunh? You’re really some sort of Photoshop wizard.” The pictures in the IDs had multiple different backgrounds, and Dean was older or younger by a couple of years in different ones, but there were definitely computer programs that could achieve those effects, so Sam wasn’t worried.
Dean finished examining the badges and licenses-Sam had omitted the Bikini Inspector one, because, seriously-and grinned up at him. “We could get in a lot of trouble for these.”
“We could get into a lot of trouble without them,” Sam pointed out.
“I wonder what I used to do,” Dean mused. “I mean, I didn’t have anything on me when I got mindwiped. Shouldn’t there’ve been something, even a fake ID?”
“Maybe you had a cache somewhere,” Sam said, trying for indifference.
“We should’ve checked to see about cars that got towed in the area in the next couple of weeks,” Dean said. “Maybe gone around to the local hotels and motels, seen if anyone recognized me.”
Sam liked the first idea a lot better than the second. “I can hack into the Ashton databases and see about the cars. Even if your car was in a motel parking lot, they have to report it before they can treat it as abandoned property. Those records should all be in the system by now.”
Dean nodded. “Sounds good. Shit, I wish we’d thought about the hotels before we left.”
Sam didn’t let himself take a deeper-than-usual breath. “We can go back and try now. Someone might remember.” There’d be no harm in checking places Dean had never been, after all. As for what had really happened, Sam had rented the room in Ashton the first time around. Dean had been too surly even to get out of the car, already half-drunk. And they always kept housekeeping out, because it was too much trouble to put all the weapons away, so the maids wouldn’t have seen them. Even if someone had seen Sam and Dean together, they’d been together after the fairy, and there’d be no reason for Dean to suspect that the timeline was off.
Dean tilted his head, considering. His eyes were dark and distant. “Maybe you could check and see if anybody’s filed a missing persons report or something like that. Just in case someone’s looking.”
“Of course,” Sam agreed. And he did, even though his negative results made Dean go silent and glum for hours. Sam could barely look at him. Even if this suffering was nothing compared to forty years in Hell, Sam was directly responsible for stripping Dean of any certainty. He’d ignored his prophetic dreams about Jess and gotten her killed, but this was a different guilt, because he could tell Dean the truth even now, as long as he was willing to explain all the horrors behind his choice.
No. Dean might always wonder about the past, and Sam would always miss their shared history, but Sam had bought Dean a future, and it was worth the price. It wasn’t like he’d sold his soul.
Sam found them a steakhouse and insisted that Dean get the biggest piece of meat on the menu. By the time he finished it and started in on the chocolate cake, Dean was smiling again.
****
“I got you something,” Dean said before Sam closed the door. He was already on his feet, bouncing like a kid, his hands behind his back.
“What?” Sam wondered if he’d misheard. Random gifts were not a Dean thing.
Dean quickly stuck his hand out, like he was worried he was going to lose his nerve if he didn’t do it fast, and at least the plastic bag wrapping was familiar enough that Sam could smile. He accepted the bag gingerly.
“You’ve been pretty awesome, taking me in, and I just-” Dean was already bright red under his tan, probably running ten degrees hotter than normal.
Sam decided to put Dean out of his misery. “It’s my pleasure. Really, I-I could use the company. I mean, thanks.” Apparently he wasn’t putting Dean out of his misery so much as pushing Dean off of his misery and stepping onto it for him. Sam fumbled to untangle the bag while Dean shifted impatiently on his feet.
Inside the bag was a box containing a 3G modem for his laptop. “Means you can surf lots more places,” Dean said, staring at Sam’s shoulder.
“Thanks,” Sam repeated, still reeling. “It’s perfect.” Puzzling, because Dean would no sooner give his little brother an appropriate present than he’d put on a tutu. But then, how was Dean supposed to know that? Sam’s stomach twisted.
Dean ducked his head. “Well, you know. Wouldn’t want to get caught out on a hunt with no way to look stuff up.”
“Where’d you get the money for this?” Sam asked, a little suspicious. Dean had never been all that good at shoplifting-attracted too much attention just by existing, in Sam’s opinion.
“You let me worry about that,” Dean said, and Sam almost staggered backwards with the echo of it. Dean had said the same thing a hundred times when they were kids, when Sam had gotten old enough to wonder just how Dean always managed to keep them fed, housed and clothed when Dad was away. Hearing it now, after so many years, filled him with warmth, even as he remembered how angry and guilty that line had made him by the end.
Dean was still taking care of Sam, even if the methods had changed along with the memories. It wasn’t like there was much to miss about Dean’s calculated inconsiderateness. Not exactly. And-it was a really cool piece of equipment.
“Come on,” Sam suggested. “Let’s take it to the car and try it out.”
Dean followed, and waited patiently for an hour of configuration difficulties, and when Sam finally got it to work, he was as smug as Sam.
****
“So it’s a given we don’t know how I got into this gig,” Dean said as they painted the runes on the walls of the haunted house. “But what about you?”
Sam swallowed. He’d spent a while thinking about the story, and it would be perfectly natural for him to do so even if Dean had really been a total unknown, so it didn’t matter if it sounded rehearsed. “Hand me the blue?” he asked, because he still needed a pause to work up to this.
The protective ritual they were doing was usually a last resort because of how conspicuous the runes were. But they’d come up with zip on the identity of the malicious spirit and the owners were hippy-dippy types who’d been pretty thrilled to hear there was a decorative way to solve their near-deadly haunted dining room problem, so, whatever worked.
Dean shoved the can over with his foot, and Sam got a couple more strokes in before he began. “When I was six months old, a demon killed my mother.” He gave Dean almost everything at the core of the Winchester saga, from the demon blood to the visions, Jessica’s death, and the Colt. Everything except his death and Dean’s deal: his entire existence, with the one event he most needed to change fixed, and all its consequences erased. Instead, Azazel had held Sam’s brother hostage to force him to open the Devil’s Gate, until they’d turned the tables, shot Azazel, and spent the next couple of years chasing down the demons they’d released.
Dean seemed surprised by the whole angel-demon war for the seals thing, but then Sam wasn’t sure what an appropriate reaction would be. Sam’s brother was the hero of that story, saving the world at the last possible minute.
“And then, everything went back to normal. At least as normal as it ever is for us.” Sam winced at the present tense, but Dean was concentrating on a tricky spiral and didn’t seem to have noticed. “Like it never happened. So, we got back on the road and kept doing what we do. I expected some sort of, I don’t know, supernatural hiatus because of kicking Lilith’s ass, but no such luck.” He stopped and took a deep breath, working himself up. “Two months before I met you, he. It was just a regular, ordinary-”
It was okay that he had to stop. Dean was nodding in sympathy, refusing to pry.
Sam concentrated on his breathing, on the even blue lines he was creating, waves representing the endlessness of existence. The smell of paint filled his lungs, not the harsh chemicals Sam had expected but milky and almost sweet. Maybe the hippies were on to something (as well as, Dean would have said, on something).
“That sucks,” Dean said at last, and it was so much like the wit and wisdom of Dean from years past that Sam couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Really, really fucking unfair.” God had thrown Dean away like a used kleenex, not strong enough to hold together after all that had passed, and sure Sam knew that it was the basic problem of evil: why God lets bad things happen to good people. But that it wasn’t a new question didn’t make his suffering any less, didn’t make Dean’s pain smaller.
Sometimes, Sam empathized pretty heavily with Lucifer’s disillusionment.
“You think he’s in heaven?” Dean asked. “I mean, angels and demons, hell, kind of implies there’s a heaven too, just for balance.”
Sam closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It would be nice-but I think maybe, the reward you get is to be gone. We’ve met a few ghosts that weren’t twisted. Some of them had missions, and when they finished they just-disappeared. I think if there is a heaven it has to be a place where a soul kind of dissolves, all the earthly cares gone. Otherwise, if you remembered, if you were who you were while you were alive, how could you be happy, watching all this pain continue here on earth?”
Dean grunted consideringly at that, and then Sam had to hold an extremely rickety ladder stable while Dean painted stars on the ceiling, so the conversation ended there.
****
“Samuel,” Dean drawled teasingly, and Sam snapped his head around hard enough to hurt, instantly forgetting the details of the multiple murders in the 1950s laid out on the microfiche reader in front of him.
“What is it?” he managed after a few seconds of gawking up at Dean. Dean was looking at him like his head had just spun full circle.
“Nothing,” Dean said, a little worried now. “I just-it’s lunchtime, and you didn’t answer when I called.”
Sam squirmed on his seat and pulled the phone out of his pocket. Sure enough, the message light was on.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I got caught up.”
Dean shook his head. “No problem. Gonna tell me whose spirit decided to recreate Joshua Harding’s killing spree?”
Sam smirked up at him. “I’ve got a theory. But you said something about food?”
Sam used to hate watching Dean eat, back when Dean’s lack of manners embarrassed him so much. Dean now was a lot quieter and neater, which meant that most of that had been a put-on to annoy Sam. Half the time he missed it, knowing that Dean had put so much effort into riling Sam. Half the time he was just grateful that Dean was still present, still so in love with life that even a crappy diner sandwich was an opportunity to enjoy himself.
****
Sam had expected that, without the weight of Hell on him, Dean would go back to swaggering into every new place like he expected every girl to drop to her knees and every guy to slap him on the back, the way he’d been when Sam had been eighteen and resentful and Dean had been convinced of his own invincibility.
He hadn’t figured on the amnesia making Dean hang back. Dean checked out every new situation as if he were looking for the one thing that might jolt his memory and make his entire history fall back into place. Not that he ever told Sam that was what he was doing, but Sam knew Dean’s speculative, hunting expression. Sam just wasn’t used to seeing it applied uniformly, rather than just let loose on gravesites or piles of research.
If Sam left him now, he’d wear that look twenty-four seven, not even the familiarity of Sam’s presence to keep him grounded.
Constant vigilance aside, Dean was still orders of magnitude better than he’d been. Once he’d gotten the lay of the land, Dean relaxed and brightened up. When he smiled, even just politely, people fell over themselves helping him out. He was better at the fake identities than he had been before; no more grinning too wide or overclaiming his expertise.
“You were really smooth,” Sam told him after the third bluff in as many hours. “I totally would have believed you were an EPA inspector.”
Dean shrugged, relaxed and a little self-satisfied. “Hey, I’m as much an EPA inspector as I am anything else. If it could be true, might as well act as if it is. I can be whatever they want me to be.” Sam glanced over, but Dean’s lashes were lowered, his expression pleasant and unreadable.
Without the nightmares, the circles under his eyes had faded and he’d put on a couple of sorely needed pounds. He drank, but only the way Sam drank, a beer or two at the end of the day. Occasionally Sam would catch him examining his angel-marked shoulder in the mirror, touching the raised welts as if sense memory might kick in, but Dean never mentioned the scar directly.
****
“Fuck!” Dean spat, staring up at Sam, who’d just put him on his ass for the fourth time in a row. Dean was pissed at himself more than at Sam, and for the first time in as long as Sam could remember Sam was okay with that, because it was only superficial anger.
Sam was kind of cheating, because he knew every one of Dean’s tells, but it wouldn’t hurt to have Dean convinced that Sam was just that good. “You drop your shoulder right before you swing,” Sam told him. “Makes you easy to predict.” He held out his hand, and Dean grabbed it solidly, letting Sam pull him up, his fingers dirty and warm against Sam’s.
The weather in Florida was glorious and the grass was green and soft in the little clearing behind the motel. It was a perfect place to spar, invisible from the road, and they could have been the only people in the world. There was beer and chicken waiting when they finished, and the slime monster (seriously) had been blown to pieces, and all was right with the world.
For the first time ever, Sam understood why Dean loved hunting, in itself and not just because it filled a hole inside of him. Even with the scratchy motel sheets and tiny motel towels waiting for them back in the room, this had been a pretty good day.
Dean backed away and got into a crouch. “C’mon,” he said, his amulet swinging on his chest, catching the light from the peach-and-pink sunset. “One more time.”
Sam nodded, smiling and then smiling wider as Dean fake-sneered and advanced.
****
It should have been harder to remember that Dean was brand new. Sam should have slipped up a thousand times, unthinkingly referenced events from childhood or hunts they’d done together. But, after he’d told Dean all but the worst of it, the master planner living in the back of Sam’s brain prodded him to give Dean a near-complete history of the Winchester Adventures, so that Dean would have the necessary background. He left out most of their worst failures, especially the ones tangled up with Dean’s deal, though he made sure to emphasize just how dangerous and treacherous demons were.
Dean was so hungry for hunting stories that he swallowed every detail. Sam just had to remember to say “my brother” instead of “you,” which wasn’t as hard as he would have thought because Dean himself served as the reminder.
It wasn’t the same as being able to reminisce with Dean, but it was enough like that he could cope, especially since the payoff was Dean himself.
In return, Dean talked constantly about who he might have been, speculating wildly and adapting movie plots into his own made-up history.
“Secret agent,” Dean said as Sam took the ramp to 80 West. “Part of a secret government project to catalog and control the supernatural.”
Sam laughed, rolling the window up to minimize drag as they hit the highway. “Man, you’ve obviously watched too much Buffy.”
“Hey, it could happen,” Dean said, pretending to be wounded. The smile lines around his eyes gave him away.
“Yeah, you found dogtags, or a chip implanted in your shoulder?” Sam teased, but Dean didn’t say anything back.
After a minute, Sam looked over. Dean was staring out the window, watching the traffic go by.
“Hunters tend to be solitary,” Sam said, conciliatory. “We’re distrustful, misanthropic bastards. Which kind of begs the question why we go around saving people.”
“Don’t think of it as saving people,” Dean suggested. “Think of it as killing things.”
Sam blinked through his relief. “Yeah, that’s much better.”
****
They stared in dismay at the pile of junk behind the haunted house, which emitted a distinct garbage-dump smell. The EMF meter had gone off the charts around the pile, and they were pretty sure there was a chunk or two of Harvey Dorf under all the other stinking mess, but neither of them stepped forward to start the search.
“Rock-paper-scissors?” Dean suggested at last.
Sam nodded and they turned towards each other, pounding their fists in unison.
Sam threw rock-and stared when Dean held up his flat palm in triumph, then wrapped it around Sam’s fist and squeezed, smiling fondly.
“Two out of three?” Sam managed. Dean considered a moment, then shrugged.
Sam went for scissors this time. Dean grinned again and did a mini-fist bump, not bashing the tips of Sam’s fingers the way he would have done when they were kids (if he’d ever managed to win a single round of rock-paper-scissors after Sam turned eight, that was), more of a gentle tap.
Sam surrendered and turned towards the garbage, leaving Dean to stand guard while Sam sifted through the muck. It didn’t make sense: every move Dean made, whether fighting or just walking along the street, was utterly familiar, so how had Dean become unpredictable at a kid’s game?
****
Dean’s notes were scattered throughout Dad’s journal, in his terrible unchanged handwriting, which meant that it had to live in the secret compartment. Sometimes, though, when Dean was safely away on some errand, Sam would take it out and look for scraps of his brother’s past. Mostly they were familiar, but some of the notes had to have been made during Sam’s years at Stanford, because he didn’t remember the relevant hunts.
‘Charm to ward off spirits who died of starvation,’ he read, and rubbed his fingers over the page, even though the pen Dean used hadn’t marred the smoothness of the thick acid-free paper. Five pages later, in a little pyramid at the upper left corner of a page otherwise about the dangers of voodoo, a recipe involving ladyslippers and cobwebs: ‘possible aphrodesiac?’ Dean had written. Sam could imagine the leer on his face as he’d scribbled, his tongue between his teeth.
If Dean had ever tried the spell, he surely would have told Sam about it, one way or another. Dean rarely tried to disguise his romantic misadventures, since they were so much less frequent than the adventures.
He would have shared the story, if there’d been a story. Sam was certain of it.
****
“Pueblo Indians used handprints on their rock art so that supernatural entities would know who was praying,” Dean said as Sam pulled away from the library. “Handprints could also represent the act of obtaining power or transferring energy from humans to the rock, or maybe the other way around.”
Sam put on his best listening expression and mentally reviewed the directions to get out of town. The next job on their list was two hundred miles away, and if they wanted to get there before every takeout joint in town closed he’d have to drive fast.
“The red handprint was a symbol of a war god.”
“Sorry,” Sam interrupted, because Dean was clearly gearing up to go on, with all the verve of a fifth-grade book report, “but what does this have to do with Pukwudgies?”
“Jack,” Dean said. “But it might have something to do with my shoulder.”
Sam balanced the harmlessness of the pursuit with the demoralization costs to Dean of failing to find anything, and came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter: Dean was still stubborn all the way through, so Sam was just going to have to deal with hands in folklore until Dean himself decided he was done looking. “So, what do we do with that?” Bobby was still coming up with zero in terms of reversing the amnesia. Sam would have to check with him about possible Native American solutions, because no way were they consulting some shaman who might see through to Dean’s past.
Fortunately, Dean hadn’t shown any inclination to talk to psychics or the like, and he didn’t suggest starting now. “Keep looking,” he said. “What I found’s all about rock art, nothing about putting marks on people.”
Sam had imagined Dean’s journey from Hell a thousand times, the angel’s hand so tight on Dean’s soul that it seared his resurrected body. None of it made physical sense, but Sam could accept a bodily manifestation of angelic favor. If only Dean had been able to recognize what Castiel had: his worthiness, his desert.
“Fair enough,” Sam said, checking the rear-view mirror and seeing nothing worth note. “In the meantime, what can you tell me about Pukwudgies?”
****
Sam got off both barrels, then dropped the shotgun and pulled his handguns, no time to reload with the pack of wyverns closing in. None of the books mentioned how they screamed when they were wounded, like teakettles. In the night-vision goggles, they were cool purple, just barely distinguishable from the background air, shadows that could be made to bleed.
Dean pressed up behind him, back to back in the center of the cave. Sam could feel his muscles flexing as he aimed and fired, not a shot wasted, but there were a lot of wyverns and they didn’t go down with the first bullet.
“Down!” Sam yelled and they ducked together, Sam on one knee and still firing as the biggest one yet swept over them, its claws outstretched and making an eerie yodeling sound.
They shuffled towards the pocket in the rock wall that offered the best protection, Dean going forwards and Sam backwards as Dean unrolled the wire. Sam ran out of ammo and dumped his magazines, and like clockwork Dean held out his hand for Sam to slap the empty gun in and provided a fresh one. Dean kept interrupting his work on the explosives to resupply Sam, who was keeping the pack away from the both of them.
The shots were deafening in the enclosed space even without the terrible screaming, and Sam was getting disoriented. The wyverns looked ever more like afterimages, hard to track.
He felt Dean’s hand clutch hard around his arm, squeezing once: one minute. They’d planned on being out of the cave when the charges went, but then they’d planned on being alone. Having to liberate the two lost Boy Scouts and the three Search and Rescue folks who’d found them, then been trapped in the wyverns’ food pen, had put them significantly behind.
Sam pressed himself hard against Dean, shoving him as close against the wall as possible. He wasn’t sure how much extra protection two hundred pounds of blood and bone would be against the C4 Dean had laid down, but it couldn’t hurt, and if the whole cave collapsed on them it wouldn’t matter. Dean struggled, but he was outweighed and hampered by his dependence on Sam to keep shooting until the last moment.
The explosion, when it came, felt like an earthquake. He was shoved into the wall, crushed against Dean so hard he’d have bruises in the shape of Dean’s shoulderblades. Sam’s nose and mouth filled with dirt, and for a moment he thought the cave really had collapsed.
Then he choked and spat, and was able to spit, so there was air, even if it was gritty and metallic. The screams peaked and then slowly began to taper off.
Dean shoved back, weakly at first and then with more enthusiasm. Sam stood, almost blind from the flare transmitted through the goggles-stupid, Dean had warned him but he’d forgotten-and the returning darkness.
They made sure that the eggs were all shattered and finished off the few half-crushed wyverns remaining alive, then struggled their way out of the now much smaller cave mouth. One of the Search & Rescue team members was still there, waiting to see if they’d come out. Sam guessed the others must have gone back with the Boy Scouts. He wondered what story they’d make up for popular consumption. Lost in the woods, most likely. There were two other Boy Scouts who were never coming home, and Sam tried not to think too hard about them, because focusing on what you’d lost was a royal road to losing more.
Sam pushed his goggles onto his head as the Search & Rescue woman approached. She was saying something, her mouth visibly moving in the bright moonlight, but his ears were ringing too hard to hear it.
“I said, are you all right?” he managed to read off her lips.
Sam turned to look at Dean. He was filthy, so covered with chunks of dirt and rock and stray wyvern parts that he might as well have been a tulpa as a man, but he was standing straight and moving easily, no worse off than Sam himself.
“We’re fine,” he told her, probably louder than he should have spoken.
Later, when they’d seen the woman back to the Search & Rescue base camp and had hiked back to the Impala, Dean whacked him on the back of the head.
“What was that for?” Sam complained.
“You’re a hunter, not a freakin’ human shield,” Dean snapped. “Don’t ever pull that again. You’re not expendable.”
“Neither are you,” Sam pointed out, opening the door and sliding into the driver’s seat. Belatedly, he realized that he should have cleaned himself off a bit further first, but of course Dean didn’t snap at him for abusing his baby.
Instead, Dean put his hands on the top of the car, preventing Sam from closing the door as he leaned down. “Yeah, I got that, but it goes both ways. Partners, Sam. We protect each other.”
Sam swallowed down the heaviness filling his throat. It was good and fair and right, but it wasn’t what his brother would have said, and he was a selfish bastard to want the Dean who would have insisted that it was his job and his job alone to protect Sam, no vice versa allowed. Sam had hated that part of Dean when it had existed, so he was being irrational as well as self-centered. Dean had been on-target, all those years ago, when he’d claimed that there was no pleasing Sam.
Sam’s own freakish codependency wasn’t Dean’s problem, not any more.
“Okay,” Sam said, and waited for Dean to get around to the other side before he turned on the headlights.
****
Dean stuck the bills in his back pocket, tilted his head goodbye, and headed out of the bar. Sam waited long enough to be sure that none of the good ol’ boys were going to follow, then made his own retreat.
He found Dean grinning like a jack-o’-lantern in the car, counting the money again for good measure. “I am awesome!” he declared.
“I don’t even-” Sam began, then shook his head. “I left you playing pool, Dean. Pool, like we planned. How the-?”
Dean shrugged, unashamed. “Guy said it was a silly game, all physical and nothin’ mental, which I coulda told him was stupid five ways. But he had to be all, ‘Oh, chess is so much better, I’d destroy you at chess,’ and I had a feeling that he was just as wrong about that. The barkeep had a board, so after they reminded me which one was the queen-”
Sam closed his eyes. It was no more rash than any of Dean’s standard moves. But he had to struggle to keep still, to refrain from grabbing Dean and demanding to know where he’d learned to play chess. All those years, and Sam had never heard a word of it, so now it was gone completely, with only Dean’s shit-eating grin and a couple of hundred dollars as a marker of what had been.
“Hey,” Dean said, his tone worried. He put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know you like your plans, but, Sam-”
God only knew what Dean was thinking right now. Sam breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, careful, careful, until he had wound up all the threads that were loosening in him. “I’m okay,” he said, still staring at the darkness behind his eyelids. “I just-it surprised me.”
“If you don’t like surprises, you picked the wrong career,” Dean said, but he said it gently and Sam managed a smile for him.
Dean should have known better than to pretend that Sam had ever been given a choice. On the other hand, Sam should have known about the chess.
Part 3
Of course, the very next day Sam found a hunt not two hundred miles away. Dean came out of the shower to find Sam with the story circled in the paper on the table in front of him, running the standard searches. Dean wouldn’t let up until Sam admitted that it was probably a poltergeist killing workers at the construction site.
“What are you waiting for?” Dean asked, grabbing at his towel with one hand as he gestured with the other. “Let’s go waste it. Or whatever you do with ghosts.”
“That’s exactly the problem!” Sam pointed out. “This is my job, not yours. We still don’t know who you are-”
“Or how to find out,” Dean rejoined, practically bouncing on his heels. He was as eager as he’d been when they were kids, when the worst thing that had happened to them was Mom’s death and a new knife was cause for Dean to celebrate. He hadn’t shaved and his beard was coming in heavy. Sam was going to have to show him Dean’s straight razor and hope he remembered enough to avoid cutting his own throat.
Dean sighed at Sam’s lack of response. “What’m I supposed to do, sit here with my thumb up my ass while you go off and keep saving people? You’re the only one who even understands what the hell happened to me.”
“Someone might come looking for you if you stay here!” No, that was bad, because no one would come, and it wouldn’t get Dean moving into a new life. Sam flicked his hair out of his eyes, annoyed at himself. “Anyway, you don’t know what you’re doing. This isn’t for amateurs.”
“You get paid?” Dean was entirely too interested.
Sam shook his head, half convinced Dean was being deliberately obtuse. “It’s dangerous.”
“Talkin’ to a guy with fairy-induced amnesia here. I kinda get that it’s not a vacation cruise. And everybody’s gotta learn sometime, right? I mean, you must’ve had a first hunt.”
Sam closed his eyes. The first time he’d done more than research and organize the supplies on a hunt, he’d been sixteen. Dean had been ten times prouder than Dad when it was over. Nothing big, just a basic salt-and-burn, Dean hovering by his shoulder through the entire process. Sam had already been deep in disgust for their lives, so he’d pretended that he hated every part of it, even though Dean had looked at him with confused hurt when he’d shrugged off the one-armed victory squeeze Dean used instead of a hug. Sam had just recently grown as tall as Dean, much to Dean’s dismay, and Dean had lacked his later bulk, so it had been easy enough to push Dean away. Sam had stalked upstairs-they’d been living in an actual house, for once-slammed his door and thrown himself on his bed. He remembered the sound of Dean’s voice, higher back then, and Dad’s weary rumble, discussing what a numbnuts Sam was for wanting a normal life.
When he hadn’t been looking at either of them, he could admit to himself that the part where the ghost flickered and then popped out of existence like a switched-off television had been kind of cool. Nothing worth what he’d had to give up for Dad’s crazy quest, but not awful in itself.
Sam shook off the memory. It was hunting that had gotten them to the point where amnesia was a blessing.
“This isn’t a good life,” he said, quiet and sure, not meeting Dean’s eyes.
“How about you let me decide that for myself,” Dean suggested, and maybe Sam was too stuck on the hunt-drunk brother in his head, the rowdy unscarred boy who could do anything he set his mind to, but he nodded, even though he knew it was a bad idea.
****
Dean whooped again, leaning his head out of the passenger-side window like an enthusiastic dog. “Told you!” he yelled, bringing himself just far enough in that Sam could hear him over the roar of the wind.
Sam couldn’t suppress his grin. Dean’s happiness bubbled through the car-she even seemed to travel smoother with him so joyful inside-and Dean deserved the opportunity to crow.
Dean had approached the site warily, hanging back behind Sam’s shoulder. He hadn’t ever let Sam cross his line of fire, though. Once the supernatural action had started, every instinct had been spot-on. Sam’s research had proved insufficient and they’d had to deal with three sets of bones instead of the one Sam had expected. Sam had watched Dean put two shells dead center into two of the ghosts while running, then reload while jumping a zig-zagged path up the half-constructed walls of the office building.
Now, Dean turned away from the window, reaching over and putting his hand on Sam’s shoulder, warm and solid, just long enough for Sam to remember Dean’s years of playful and congratulatory shoves. When Dean pulled back, he gave Sam an almost bashful smile. “This gig seems easier with two,” he said.
Sam remembered telling Dean that he could look for Dad alone, and he had to stare hard at the road ahead, asphalt bleached out by the glare of the headlights. He tried to formulate the right sentence, the magic words that would convince Dean that they could both quit. Dean might listen to a stranger; God knew he’d never paid heed to Sam when Sam was his little brother.
“Lone hunters don’t last long,” he said when he had his voice under control. “Look what happened to you.”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “So maybe we oughta stick together for a while.”
Sam started, because it was the exact opposite of what he’d meant. He couldn’t tell Dean so, not now.
He could leave once Dean had found a place to settle. Dean had his new life; Sam’s could wait a while. Quitting outright, when Dean still had the taste for it-the idea felt oddly disrespectful to Sam. Doing some more hunts, even nice easy ones, might be a good way to illustrate the downsides of the life to Dean, and then he’d be willing to walk away of his own volition.
In any event, it wasn’t like Sam had a positive agenda for alternatives. Continuing would mean a lot of extra work for Sam, but he could deal with that. Aside from Bobby, most of the hunters they knew had died fighting Lilith, so it might not be much harder to cover Dean’s tracks.
****
They should have gotten two rooms at the next motel, but Sam took a double by force of habit, and anyway money was tight. As long as he dressed in the bathroom, there shouldn’t be a problem.
It didn’t occur to him that Dean might find the instant closeness a little weird until over two weeks, and five different rooms, later. And by then Dean was already accommodating Sam’s peculiarities, like the way Sam always took over the tables for his files and his computer, leaving the beds (for weapons check and cleaning) and the bathroom counters (for product) for Dean.
Except that Dean had totally switched his self-care regimen: new toothpaste, new facial soap (which Sam was pretty sure hadn’t been part of the ritual before), new shampoo, new styling gels, even a new comb, all bought with money that Dean accepted sheepishly but without overt resistance.
For over a week, Dean’s hair looked like a hedgehog had mistaken it for a mate and attempted to mount, until Dean figured out how to get that casually ruffled look that only took ten minutes staring in the mirror to achieve. This time around, Dean used something that called itself ‘wax,’ though Sam doubted that actual wax was involved. Once Dean had settled on the wax, Sam couldn’t tell the difference in the hair. Dean had always been a little bitch about finding just the right brands, and Sam several times had to stop himself from commenting on how the results were the same even without spending $50 on a tube of goo.
Sam wondered why Dean didn’t just use the stuff in Dean’s old kit, which of course had worked well, but then he figured out that Dean probably felt uncomfortable using a dead man’s hair gel.
****
“Whoa,” Dean said when Sam gave him his present. “This is-” He looked as happy as he’d been when Dad had given him his first full-sized shotgun, bright-eyed and wondering. “Thanks.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, a real ten-thousand-watt Dean special that made the casual smirk he’d put on for the camera seem more plastic than the smiley face at Wal-Mart. Sam hadn’t seen that look on Dean’s face in what seemed like forever.
He grinned back helplessly and watched Dean’s hands sort through the IDs. “Thought you could use them.” A lot of them were worn from use, but he figured that Dean would chalk that up to careful forgery.
“That was what the picture was for, hunh? You’re really some sort of Photoshop wizard.” The pictures in the IDs had multiple different backgrounds, and Dean was older or younger by a couple of years in different ones, but there were definitely computer programs that could achieve those effects, so Sam wasn’t worried.
Dean finished examining the badges and licenses-Sam had omitted the Bikini Inspector one, because, seriously-and grinned up at him. “We could get in a lot of trouble for these.”
“We could get into a lot of trouble without them,” Sam pointed out.
“I wonder what I used to do,” Dean mused. “I mean, I didn’t have anything on me when I got mindwiped. Shouldn’t there’ve been something, even a fake ID?”
“Maybe you had a cache somewhere,” Sam said, trying for indifference.
“We should’ve checked to see about cars that got towed in the area in the next couple of weeks,” Dean said. “Maybe gone around to the local hotels and motels, seen if anyone recognized me.”
Sam liked the first idea a lot better than the second. “I can hack into the Ashton databases and see about the cars. Even if your car was in a motel parking lot, they have to report it before they can treat it as abandoned property. Those records should all be in the system by now.”
Dean nodded. “Sounds good. Shit, I wish we’d thought about the hotels before we left.”
Sam didn’t let himself take a deeper-than-usual breath. “We can go back and try now. Someone might remember.” There’d be no harm in checking places Dean had never been, after all. As for what had really happened, Sam had rented the room in Ashton the first time around. Dean had been too surly even to get out of the car, already half-drunk. And they always kept housekeeping out, because it was too much trouble to put all the weapons away, so the maids wouldn’t have seen them. Even if someone had seen Sam and Dean together, they’d been together after the fairy, and there’d be no reason for Dean to suspect that the timeline was off.
Dean tilted his head, considering. His eyes were dark and distant. “Maybe you could check and see if anybody’s filed a missing persons report or something like that. Just in case someone’s looking.”
“Of course,” Sam agreed. And he did, even though his negative results made Dean go silent and glum for hours. Sam could barely look at him. Even if this suffering was nothing compared to forty years in Hell, Sam was directly responsible for stripping Dean of any certainty. He’d ignored his prophetic dreams about Jess and gotten her killed, but this was a different guilt, because he could tell Dean the truth even now, as long as he was willing to explain all the horrors behind his choice.
No. Dean might always wonder about the past, and Sam would always miss their shared history, but Sam had bought Dean a future, and it was worth the price. It wasn’t like he’d sold his soul.
Sam found them a steakhouse and insisted that Dean get the biggest piece of meat on the menu. By the time he finished it and started in on the chocolate cake, Dean was smiling again.
****
“I got you something,” Dean said before Sam closed the door. He was already on his feet, bouncing like a kid, his hands behind his back.
“What?” Sam wondered if he’d misheard. Random gifts were not a Dean thing.
Dean quickly stuck his hand out, like he was worried he was going to lose his nerve if he didn’t do it fast, and at least the plastic bag wrapping was familiar enough that Sam could smile. He accepted the bag gingerly.
“You’ve been pretty awesome, taking me in, and I just-” Dean was already bright red under his tan, probably running ten degrees hotter than normal.
Sam decided to put Dean out of his misery. “It’s my pleasure. Really, I-I could use the company. I mean, thanks.” Apparently he wasn’t putting Dean out of his misery so much as pushing Dean off of his misery and stepping onto it for him. Sam fumbled to untangle the bag while Dean shifted impatiently on his feet.
Inside the bag was a box containing a 3G modem for his laptop. “Means you can surf lots more places,” Dean said, staring at Sam’s shoulder.
“Thanks,” Sam repeated, still reeling. “It’s perfect.” Puzzling, because Dean would no sooner give his little brother an appropriate present than he’d put on a tutu. But then, how was Dean supposed to know that? Sam’s stomach twisted.
Dean ducked his head. “Well, you know. Wouldn’t want to get caught out on a hunt with no way to look stuff up.”
“Where’d you get the money for this?” Sam asked, a little suspicious. Dean had never been all that good at shoplifting-attracted too much attention just by existing, in Sam’s opinion.
“You let me worry about that,” Dean said, and Sam almost staggered backwards with the echo of it. Dean had said the same thing a hundred times when they were kids, when Sam had gotten old enough to wonder just how Dean always managed to keep them fed, housed and clothed when Dad was away. Hearing it now, after so many years, filled him with warmth, even as he remembered how angry and guilty that line had made him by the end.
Dean was still taking care of Sam, even if the methods had changed along with the memories. It wasn’t like there was much to miss about Dean’s calculated inconsiderateness. Not exactly. And-it was a really cool piece of equipment.
“Come on,” Sam suggested. “Let’s take it to the car and try it out.”
Dean followed, and waited patiently for an hour of configuration difficulties, and when Sam finally got it to work, he was as smug as Sam.
****
“So it’s a given we don’t know how I got into this gig,” Dean said as they painted the runes on the walls of the haunted house. “But what about you?”
Sam swallowed. He’d spent a while thinking about the story, and it would be perfectly natural for him to do so even if Dean had really been a total unknown, so it didn’t matter if it sounded rehearsed. “Hand me the blue?” he asked, because he still needed a pause to work up to this.
The protective ritual they were doing was usually a last resort because of how conspicuous the runes were. But they’d come up with zip on the identity of the malicious spirit and the owners were hippy-dippy types who’d been pretty thrilled to hear there was a decorative way to solve their near-deadly haunted dining room problem, so, whatever worked.
Dean shoved the can over with his foot, and Sam got a couple more strokes in before he began. “When I was six months old, a demon killed my mother.” He gave Dean almost everything at the core of the Winchester saga, from the demon blood to the visions, Jessica’s death, and the Colt. Everything except his death and Dean’s deal: his entire existence, with the one event he most needed to change fixed, and all its consequences erased. Instead, Azazel had held Sam’s brother hostage to force him to open the Devil’s Gate, until they’d turned the tables, shot Azazel, and spent the next couple of years chasing down the demons they’d released.
Dean seemed surprised by the whole angel-demon war for the seals thing, but then Sam wasn’t sure what an appropriate reaction would be. Sam’s brother was the hero of that story, saving the world at the last possible minute.
“And then, everything went back to normal. At least as normal as it ever is for us.” Sam winced at the present tense, but Dean was concentrating on a tricky spiral and didn’t seem to have noticed. “Like it never happened. So, we got back on the road and kept doing what we do. I expected some sort of, I don’t know, supernatural hiatus because of kicking Lilith’s ass, but no such luck.” He stopped and took a deep breath, working himself up. “Two months before I met you, he. It was just a regular, ordinary-”
It was okay that he had to stop. Dean was nodding in sympathy, refusing to pry.
Sam concentrated on his breathing, on the even blue lines he was creating, waves representing the endlessness of existence. The smell of paint filled his lungs, not the harsh chemicals Sam had expected but milky and almost sweet. Maybe the hippies were on to something (as well as, Dean would have said, on something).
“That sucks,” Dean said at last, and it was so much like the wit and wisdom of Dean from years past that Sam couldn’t help but laugh.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Really, really fucking unfair.” God had thrown Dean away like a used kleenex, not strong enough to hold together after all that had passed, and sure Sam knew that it was the basic problem of evil: why God lets bad things happen to good people. But that it wasn’t a new question didn’t make his suffering any less, didn’t make Dean’s pain smaller.
Sometimes, Sam empathized pretty heavily with Lucifer’s disillusionment.
“You think he’s in heaven?” Dean asked. “I mean, angels and demons, hell, kind of implies there’s a heaven too, just for balance.”
Sam closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It would be nice-but I think maybe, the reward you get is to be gone. We’ve met a few ghosts that weren’t twisted. Some of them had missions, and when they finished they just-disappeared. I think if there is a heaven it has to be a place where a soul kind of dissolves, all the earthly cares gone. Otherwise, if you remembered, if you were who you were while you were alive, how could you be happy, watching all this pain continue here on earth?”
Dean grunted consideringly at that, and then Sam had to hold an extremely rickety ladder stable while Dean painted stars on the ceiling, so the conversation ended there.
****
“Samuel,” Dean drawled teasingly, and Sam snapped his head around hard enough to hurt, instantly forgetting the details of the multiple murders in the 1950s laid out on the microfiche reader in front of him.
“What is it?” he managed after a few seconds of gawking up at Dean. Dean was looking at him like his head had just spun full circle.
“Nothing,” Dean said, a little worried now. “I just-it’s lunchtime, and you didn’t answer when I called.”
Sam squirmed on his seat and pulled the phone out of his pocket. Sure enough, the message light was on.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I got caught up.”
Dean shook his head. “No problem. Gonna tell me whose spirit decided to recreate Joshua Harding’s killing spree?”
Sam smirked up at him. “I’ve got a theory. But you said something about food?”
Sam used to hate watching Dean eat, back when Dean’s lack of manners embarrassed him so much. Dean now was a lot quieter and neater, which meant that most of that had been a put-on to annoy Sam. Half the time he missed it, knowing that Dean had put so much effort into riling Sam. Half the time he was just grateful that Dean was still present, still so in love with life that even a crappy diner sandwich was an opportunity to enjoy himself.
****
Sam had expected that, without the weight of Hell on him, Dean would go back to swaggering into every new place like he expected every girl to drop to her knees and every guy to slap him on the back, the way he’d been when Sam had been eighteen and resentful and Dean had been convinced of his own invincibility.
He hadn’t figured on the amnesia making Dean hang back. Dean checked out every new situation as if he were looking for the one thing that might jolt his memory and make his entire history fall back into place. Not that he ever told Sam that was what he was doing, but Sam knew Dean’s speculative, hunting expression. Sam just wasn’t used to seeing it applied uniformly, rather than just let loose on gravesites or piles of research.
If Sam left him now, he’d wear that look twenty-four seven, not even the familiarity of Sam’s presence to keep him grounded.
Constant vigilance aside, Dean was still orders of magnitude better than he’d been. Once he’d gotten the lay of the land, Dean relaxed and brightened up. When he smiled, even just politely, people fell over themselves helping him out. He was better at the fake identities than he had been before; no more grinning too wide or overclaiming his expertise.
“You were really smooth,” Sam told him after the third bluff in as many hours. “I totally would have believed you were an EPA inspector.”
Dean shrugged, relaxed and a little self-satisfied. “Hey, I’m as much an EPA inspector as I am anything else. If it could be true, might as well act as if it is. I can be whatever they want me to be.” Sam glanced over, but Dean’s lashes were lowered, his expression pleasant and unreadable.
Without the nightmares, the circles under his eyes had faded and he’d put on a couple of sorely needed pounds. He drank, but only the way Sam drank, a beer or two at the end of the day. Occasionally Sam would catch him examining his angel-marked shoulder in the mirror, touching the raised welts as if sense memory might kick in, but Dean never mentioned the scar directly.
****
“Fuck!” Dean spat, staring up at Sam, who’d just put him on his ass for the fourth time in a row. Dean was pissed at himself more than at Sam, and for the first time in as long as Sam could remember Sam was okay with that, because it was only superficial anger.
Sam was kind of cheating, because he knew every one of Dean’s tells, but it wouldn’t hurt to have Dean convinced that Sam was just that good. “You drop your shoulder right before you swing,” Sam told him. “Makes you easy to predict.” He held out his hand, and Dean grabbed it solidly, letting Sam pull him up, his fingers dirty and warm against Sam’s.
The weather in Florida was glorious and the grass was green and soft in the little clearing behind the motel. It was a perfect place to spar, invisible from the road, and they could have been the only people in the world. There was beer and chicken waiting when they finished, and the slime monster (seriously) had been blown to pieces, and all was right with the world.
For the first time ever, Sam understood why Dean loved hunting, in itself and not just because it filled a hole inside of him. Even with the scratchy motel sheets and tiny motel towels waiting for them back in the room, this had been a pretty good day.
Dean backed away and got into a crouch. “C’mon,” he said, his amulet swinging on his chest, catching the light from the peach-and-pink sunset. “One more time.”
Sam nodded, smiling and then smiling wider as Dean fake-sneered and advanced.
****
It should have been harder to remember that Dean was brand new. Sam should have slipped up a thousand times, unthinkingly referenced events from childhood or hunts they’d done together. But, after he’d told Dean all but the worst of it, the master planner living in the back of Sam’s brain prodded him to give Dean a near-complete history of the Winchester Adventures, so that Dean would have the necessary background. He left out most of their worst failures, especially the ones tangled up with Dean’s deal, though he made sure to emphasize just how dangerous and treacherous demons were.
Dean was so hungry for hunting stories that he swallowed every detail. Sam just had to remember to say “my brother” instead of “you,” which wasn’t as hard as he would have thought because Dean himself served as the reminder.
It wasn’t the same as being able to reminisce with Dean, but it was enough like that he could cope, especially since the payoff was Dean himself.
In return, Dean talked constantly about who he might have been, speculating wildly and adapting movie plots into his own made-up history.
“Secret agent,” Dean said as Sam took the ramp to 80 West. “Part of a secret government project to catalog and control the supernatural.”
Sam laughed, rolling the window up to minimize drag as they hit the highway. “Man, you’ve obviously watched too much Buffy.”
“Hey, it could happen,” Dean said, pretending to be wounded. The smile lines around his eyes gave him away.
“Yeah, you found dogtags, or a chip implanted in your shoulder?” Sam teased, but Dean didn’t say anything back.
After a minute, Sam looked over. Dean was staring out the window, watching the traffic go by.
“Hunters tend to be solitary,” Sam said, conciliatory. “We’re distrustful, misanthropic bastards. Which kind of begs the question why we go around saving people.”
“Don’t think of it as saving people,” Dean suggested. “Think of it as killing things.”
Sam blinked through his relief. “Yeah, that’s much better.”
****
They stared in dismay at the pile of junk behind the haunted house, which emitted a distinct garbage-dump smell. The EMF meter had gone off the charts around the pile, and they were pretty sure there was a chunk or two of Harvey Dorf under all the other stinking mess, but neither of them stepped forward to start the search.
“Rock-paper-scissors?” Dean suggested at last.
Sam nodded and they turned towards each other, pounding their fists in unison.
Sam threw rock-and stared when Dean held up his flat palm in triumph, then wrapped it around Sam’s fist and squeezed, smiling fondly.
“Two out of three?” Sam managed. Dean considered a moment, then shrugged.
Sam went for scissors this time. Dean grinned again and did a mini-fist bump, not bashing the tips of Sam’s fingers the way he would have done when they were kids (if he’d ever managed to win a single round of rock-paper-scissors after Sam turned eight, that was), more of a gentle tap.
Sam surrendered and turned towards the garbage, leaving Dean to stand guard while Sam sifted through the muck. It didn’t make sense: every move Dean made, whether fighting or just walking along the street, was utterly familiar, so how had Dean become unpredictable at a kid’s game?
****
Dean’s notes were scattered throughout Dad’s journal, in his terrible unchanged handwriting, which meant that it had to live in the secret compartment. Sometimes, though, when Dean was safely away on some errand, Sam would take it out and look for scraps of his brother’s past. Mostly they were familiar, but some of the notes had to have been made during Sam’s years at Stanford, because he didn’t remember the relevant hunts.
‘Charm to ward off spirits who died of starvation,’ he read, and rubbed his fingers over the page, even though the pen Dean used hadn’t marred the smoothness of the thick acid-free paper. Five pages later, in a little pyramid at the upper left corner of a page otherwise about the dangers of voodoo, a recipe involving ladyslippers and cobwebs: ‘possible aphrodesiac?’ Dean had written. Sam could imagine the leer on his face as he’d scribbled, his tongue between his teeth.
If Dean had ever tried the spell, he surely would have told Sam about it, one way or another. Dean rarely tried to disguise his romantic misadventures, since they were so much less frequent than the adventures.
He would have shared the story, if there’d been a story. Sam was certain of it.
****
“Pueblo Indians used handprints on their rock art so that supernatural entities would know who was praying,” Dean said as Sam pulled away from the library. “Handprints could also represent the act of obtaining power or transferring energy from humans to the rock, or maybe the other way around.”
Sam put on his best listening expression and mentally reviewed the directions to get out of town. The next job on their list was two hundred miles away, and if they wanted to get there before every takeout joint in town closed he’d have to drive fast.
“The red handprint was a symbol of a war god.”
“Sorry,” Sam interrupted, because Dean was clearly gearing up to go on, with all the verve of a fifth-grade book report, “but what does this have to do with Pukwudgies?”
“Jack,” Dean said. “But it might have something to do with my shoulder.”
Sam balanced the harmlessness of the pursuit with the demoralization costs to Dean of failing to find anything, and came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter: Dean was still stubborn all the way through, so Sam was just going to have to deal with hands in folklore until Dean himself decided he was done looking. “So, what do we do with that?” Bobby was still coming up with zero in terms of reversing the amnesia. Sam would have to check with him about possible Native American solutions, because no way were they consulting some shaman who might see through to Dean’s past.
Fortunately, Dean hadn’t shown any inclination to talk to psychics or the like, and he didn’t suggest starting now. “Keep looking,” he said. “What I found’s all about rock art, nothing about putting marks on people.”
Sam had imagined Dean’s journey from Hell a thousand times, the angel’s hand so tight on Dean’s soul that it seared his resurrected body. None of it made physical sense, but Sam could accept a bodily manifestation of angelic favor. If only Dean had been able to recognize what Castiel had: his worthiness, his desert.
“Fair enough,” Sam said, checking the rear-view mirror and seeing nothing worth note. “In the meantime, what can you tell me about Pukwudgies?”
****
Sam got off both barrels, then dropped the shotgun and pulled his handguns, no time to reload with the pack of wyverns closing in. None of the books mentioned how they screamed when they were wounded, like teakettles. In the night-vision goggles, they were cool purple, just barely distinguishable from the background air, shadows that could be made to bleed.
Dean pressed up behind him, back to back in the center of the cave. Sam could feel his muscles flexing as he aimed and fired, not a shot wasted, but there were a lot of wyverns and they didn’t go down with the first bullet.
“Down!” Sam yelled and they ducked together, Sam on one knee and still firing as the biggest one yet swept over them, its claws outstretched and making an eerie yodeling sound.
They shuffled towards the pocket in the rock wall that offered the best protection, Dean going forwards and Sam backwards as Dean unrolled the wire. Sam ran out of ammo and dumped his magazines, and like clockwork Dean held out his hand for Sam to slap the empty gun in and provided a fresh one. Dean kept interrupting his work on the explosives to resupply Sam, who was keeping the pack away from the both of them.
The shots were deafening in the enclosed space even without the terrible screaming, and Sam was getting disoriented. The wyverns looked ever more like afterimages, hard to track.
He felt Dean’s hand clutch hard around his arm, squeezing once: one minute. They’d planned on being out of the cave when the charges went, but then they’d planned on being alone. Having to liberate the two lost Boy Scouts and the three Search and Rescue folks who’d found them, then been trapped in the wyverns’ food pen, had put them significantly behind.
Sam pressed himself hard against Dean, shoving him as close against the wall as possible. He wasn’t sure how much extra protection two hundred pounds of blood and bone would be against the C4 Dean had laid down, but it couldn’t hurt, and if the whole cave collapsed on them it wouldn’t matter. Dean struggled, but he was outweighed and hampered by his dependence on Sam to keep shooting until the last moment.
The explosion, when it came, felt like an earthquake. He was shoved into the wall, crushed against Dean so hard he’d have bruises in the shape of Dean’s shoulderblades. Sam’s nose and mouth filled with dirt, and for a moment he thought the cave really had collapsed.
Then he choked and spat, and was able to spit, so there was air, even if it was gritty and metallic. The screams peaked and then slowly began to taper off.
Dean shoved back, weakly at first and then with more enthusiasm. Sam stood, almost blind from the flare transmitted through the goggles-stupid, Dean had warned him but he’d forgotten-and the returning darkness.
They made sure that the eggs were all shattered and finished off the few half-crushed wyverns remaining alive, then struggled their way out of the now much smaller cave mouth. One of the Search & Rescue team members was still there, waiting to see if they’d come out. Sam guessed the others must have gone back with the Boy Scouts. He wondered what story they’d make up for popular consumption. Lost in the woods, most likely. There were two other Boy Scouts who were never coming home, and Sam tried not to think too hard about them, because focusing on what you’d lost was a royal road to losing more.
Sam pushed his goggles onto his head as the Search & Rescue woman approached. She was saying something, her mouth visibly moving in the bright moonlight, but his ears were ringing too hard to hear it.
“I said, are you all right?” he managed to read off her lips.
Sam turned to look at Dean. He was filthy, so covered with chunks of dirt and rock and stray wyvern parts that he might as well have been a tulpa as a man, but he was standing straight and moving easily, no worse off than Sam himself.
“We’re fine,” he told her, probably louder than he should have spoken.
Later, when they’d seen the woman back to the Search & Rescue base camp and had hiked back to the Impala, Dean whacked him on the back of the head.
“What was that for?” Sam complained.
“You’re a hunter, not a freakin’ human shield,” Dean snapped. “Don’t ever pull that again. You’re not expendable.”
“Neither are you,” Sam pointed out, opening the door and sliding into the driver’s seat. Belatedly, he realized that he should have cleaned himself off a bit further first, but of course Dean didn’t snap at him for abusing his baby.
Instead, Dean put his hands on the top of the car, preventing Sam from closing the door as he leaned down. “Yeah, I got that, but it goes both ways. Partners, Sam. We protect each other.”
Sam swallowed down the heaviness filling his throat. It was good and fair and right, but it wasn’t what his brother would have said, and he was a selfish bastard to want the Dean who would have insisted that it was his job and his job alone to protect Sam, no vice versa allowed. Sam had hated that part of Dean when it had existed, so he was being irrational as well as self-centered. Dean had been on-target, all those years ago, when he’d claimed that there was no pleasing Sam.
Sam’s own freakish codependency wasn’t Dean’s problem, not any more.
“Okay,” Sam said, and waited for Dean to get around to the other side before he turned on the headlights.
****
Dean stuck the bills in his back pocket, tilted his head goodbye, and headed out of the bar. Sam waited long enough to be sure that none of the good ol’ boys were going to follow, then made his own retreat.
He found Dean grinning like a jack-o’-lantern in the car, counting the money again for good measure. “I am awesome!” he declared.
“I don’t even-” Sam began, then shook his head. “I left you playing pool, Dean. Pool, like we planned. How the-?”
Dean shrugged, unashamed. “Guy said it was a silly game, all physical and nothin’ mental, which I coulda told him was stupid five ways. But he had to be all, ‘Oh, chess is so much better, I’d destroy you at chess,’ and I had a feeling that he was just as wrong about that. The barkeep had a board, so after they reminded me which one was the queen-”
Sam closed his eyes. It was no more rash than any of Dean’s standard moves. But he had to struggle to keep still, to refrain from grabbing Dean and demanding to know where he’d learned to play chess. All those years, and Sam had never heard a word of it, so now it was gone completely, with only Dean’s shit-eating grin and a couple of hundred dollars as a marker of what had been.
“Hey,” Dean said, his tone worried. He put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know you like your plans, but, Sam-”
God only knew what Dean was thinking right now. Sam breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, careful, careful, until he had wound up all the threads that were loosening in him. “I’m okay,” he said, still staring at the darkness behind his eyelids. “I just-it surprised me.”
“If you don’t like surprises, you picked the wrong career,” Dean said, but he said it gently and Sam managed a smile for him.
Dean should have known better than to pretend that Sam had ever been given a choice. On the other hand, Sam should have known about the chess.
Part 3