Fic: When In Lebanon (Sam/Dean) Part 1 of 3
Title: When In Lebanon
Author: smalltrolven
Artist: stargazingchola
Pairing: Sam/Dean, established
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 9,594
Warnings: Spoilers for episode 14.13
Author’s Note: Not my characters, only my words. Coda to episode 14.13 “Lebanon”. Written for 2019 spncanonbigbang The words in the spell ontziaren odola mean ‘blood of the vessel’ in Basque. Thank you winchesterchola for your beautiful artwork, I loved getting to work with you again!
Summary: Sam has some unfinished business with the teddy bear from the Lebanon pawn shop. Since the pearl didn’t work on getting Michael out of Dean, maybe the bear can get the job done.
Be sure to check out the amazing art from winchesterchola on the art masterpost: tumblr livejournal: dreamwidth
Read it over on AO3 right here.
**!!**
Sam knew he wasn’t going to be getting much rest tonight. Which wasn’t much of a big surprise after all that had gone down in the last twenty-four hours; hey dad, bye dad. It had all been a confusing whirl of emotions and it had been too much. He tried not to focus on what he couldn’t change, tried to be grateful for what he’d gotten to straighten out with his father. It meant a whole lot to him but he needed some time to process it all.
Sam had tried to talk with Dean right after Mom had left, to get a conversation going about the whole thing, but Dean had mumbled something about needing some time alone to get himself together enough to be able to deal with Sam’s issues too. Which, okay was a little harsh, but that was just Dean these days. Sam gave him a big pass, because he’d ‘been there done that’ with trying to stay himself while an archangel was along for the ride.
Sam lay there alone, in the quiet of his dark room, staring at the light patterns that the grate at the bottom of his door cast onto the floor. The patterns were so familiar to him now, but not terribly comforting to him tonight even though they usually were. They weren’t enough tonight, because there was something else that would be better. Sam realized with a pang in his heart that what he wanted most right then was that teddy bear. He knew all the rational reasons why he shouldn’t go anywhere near the thing, but god how he wanted to feel the worn fur and the plush give of its soft belly again. He could feel his hands kneading his pillow as if he was holding the thing.
God, he’d had it right there in his hands back in that pawn shop and he wanted to feel that thrilling rush of ultimate possibility again. He’d almost pulled the string on the back of the teddy bear, right then and there in the pawn shop. He’d even had his finger tucked inside the ring; just beginning to tug at it; all the possible futures opening up before him; unfurling like a complicated pattern of falling dominoes. He just couldn’t stop thinking about what the bear might have said or done if he’d pulled the ring, and what it might have caused to happen.
He knew he should know better, be better, do better…whatever. But screw all that, Sam really really wanted that teddy bear.
Sure the thing that had stopped him from pulling the string had been the creepy pawn shop dude saying, “I wouldn’t do that” without even turning around, that had been weird. Like the guy knew one of them would be grabbing the bear. For sure, super weird, but he had probably known how irresistible the adorable bear was. Sam wondered how the dude had managed to resist its allure and let it stay on the shelf.
He remembered that Dean had made that face at him, the one Sam could never ignore. Just that expression of big-brother disapproval from Dean had pretty much made him put the bear down even though he really hadn’t wanted to. Why had he listened, out of all the times to listen to and obey Dean’s commands, why that one time? He could still feel that feeling, his finger in the plastic ring, the resistance of the string beginning to pull taut. What would have happened, what could still happen?
The teddy bear was down the hall in one of the bunker’s storerooms, all alone, waiting its turn to be catalogued along with all the other stuff they’d hauled out of that place. All except for one thing, he’d already hidden the dragon’s breath gizmo so that Dean would stop playing with it and possibly burn the bunker down or hurt himself. He also knew that Dean had managed to snag that sword and already hung it on his weapons wall in his room before he’d had a chance to make any objections. So that was actually two things that weren’t with the others where they should be, what would one more hurt?
It was only fair that he could choose to have one of his own. The bear was the one that he could keep, like Dean got to have the sword. Fair was fair, right? No one would really know except for him, because Dean wasn’t paying attention to the details, too busy struggling to keep Michael caged up. And his brother certainly wasn’t going to be helping to do any of the cataloguing of the pawn shop haul. It just wasn’t Dean’s thing to do that sort of paperwork, and Sam had never minded. Sometimes it was good to be able to lose himself in the mundanity of record-keeping.
Sam swore to himself that he would put it right back where it came from. He solemnly promised himself, of course he would. He rolled over and hugged his pillow tightly. Sam knew that promise was full of shit, so he made himself stay in bed.
It was two in the morning now, according to the red numbers on his clock, and he really should be sleeping. He kept trying to get to sleep, but he couldn’t because of his worry about Mom and Dean’s reaction to Dad’s appearance and disappearance. But it wasn’t just about their reactions, the thing that was bothering him the most was his own part in their devastation.
The crunching noise of that damn pearl still vibrated through his right arm and it felt like a brand of responsibility that kept squawking at him:
You did that,
you chose that,
you made him go away,
You made the two people you love most in the world sadder than should be possible.
Mom had left that night, after briefly letting them both hug her together, like they had just done with their Dad. But she was clearly trying to not break down completely in front of them, like she thought a parent was supposed to, he guessed. It would have made more sense for the three of them to hang out and talk the whole thing through. But they were Winchesters, so Mom left with tear-filled eyes and promised to call them when she got where she was going, and Dean had disappeared into his room. His brother’s door was closed, Sam had checked several times. Their unspoken agreement was that if their doors were closed in the bunker, that meant they wanted to be alone. And knocking first was an absolute requirement to break that rule, and only if it was an emergency.
“Is this that kind of emergency?” he asked himself out loud, his voice sounding strangely high-pitched, like someone else’s. Maybe that should have been a sign he should have noticed.
It wasn’t like Dean was in charge of all of his feelings, and the fact that he felt a strong compulsion to go get the teddy bear out of the storage room wasn’t up to his brother. It just wasn’t. This was between him and the bear. The poor furry thing was in there all alone in that cold storage room, just as lonely as he was. He needed to fix that-he could fix that. Maybe it would make him feel better.
He found himself in the storeroom, the ledger from the pawn shop open before him to the page that had the information about the bear.
He found himself reading the ledger for the details. It had it listed as “blood bag teddy bear used in human sacrifice.”
Sam looked at the bear more closely before touching it. Both the mouth and the eyes had been stitched entirely closed with thick black thread in rough haphazard stitching. Like it had been done in a panic or a rush. The thread looked just like the stuff used in some voodoo spells he’d seen over the years. Most of the gris-gris bags he’d seen had been sewn up with it, he’d even used that kind of thread himself in making some of the bags that Ruby had taught him about. But that had been ages ago. This was now, and the thread wasn’t anything special-but the bear was.
“Used in human sacrifice” probably meant it could be used in place of sacrificing a human. But how? You’d have to put something in it or on it that was from a human, blood, flesh, bone, etc. He picked up a pair of gloves that he had en-spelled to be magic-resistant and held the bear for the second time. Its back had a buttoned-up opening, he hadn’t noticed the first time he’d held it. Sam carefully undid the buttons and found there was indeed a cavity inside the bear, lined with something that seemed water-resistant, but it couldn’t be plastic, the bear was much too old for that. He didn’t want to think too hard about what it might be (Oh god, it was skin, oh god, it was probably someone’s stomach) flitted unbidden across his mind. He hoped he wasn’t right, but obviously it was already way too late for that person. It couldn’t be helped really, but it might be that it could be used.
The interior container was likely how it worked as a stand-in for a human, you could fill the cavity with human blood or whatever. Presumably then it would work in the place of any black magic spell where you needed human sacrifice. The poor bear just had to take it, be that human stand-in.
No wonder the sweet thing was so beat up.
Sam caressed the worn fur on its belly, thrilling at the feeling of its softness. “I wonder if you would mind if you got used one more time, little guy?”
He set the bear down next to him on his bed, snuggled with him into and under the covers. Sam was only mildly surprised to find himself back in his room, and without the special gloves. Maybe he should have worried about that a little bit more than he was, but it felt good to have the bear’s company, to feel the worn fur under his fingers, to have it next to him all snuggly and warm in his bed.
He grabbed his phone out of his pocket with the hand that wasn’t holding the bear and texted Rowena.
Sam: I have something that works as a stand-in for human sacrifice. Is there a spell in that book that would work on Michael?
She didn’t answer right away. Sam bet it was because she was horrified, shocked, amazed, all of the above that Sam Winchester was inquiring about the darkest of the black magic spells in the book they kept arguing about who really owned. But this might be the answer they had been looking for. Maybe that was why he’d been drawn to the thing in the pawn shop in the first place. The Pick Me Pick Me he’d felt from the object that might end up being the solution he needed, just offering itself up. Maybe that should have made him suspicious in and of itself, but Sam was already onto the next thing.
The next thing was trying to imagine how he was going to convince Dean to actually go through with that kind of magic. Because he’d likely have to let Michael out of the cage in his mind for a spell to be able to have a chance to work on the archangel. And then there was the whole human sacrifice element of using the thing, even if it was symbolic. Honestly, the whole endeavor was going to be an enormous risk. But that was his life right? Their life! It had always been chock full o’ risks. He snuggled down next to the bear, pulling the covers up over both of them. He buried his face in the soft fur, breathing in the scent of possibility, he ached and ached with the wanting to save his brother.
He came out of his daze when Rowena finally answered him.
Rowena: Welcome to the dark-side, Giant. I have several options, we should discuss.
Sam: I’ll meet you, where are you?
Rowena: So we’re hiding this from your brother, eh? Not a surprise, really. I can be in Chicago tomorrow. I’ll be at The Savoy.
Sam: Under your name or…?
Rowena: Oh yes, Rowena MacLeod is the name, and magic is my game
Sam: Just bring The Book, okay?
Rowena: Will do, my tidy bampot, and if you bring me The Codex I may be sweeter.
Sam: I’ll think about it, see you tomorrow.
Rowena: Ta, Sam. Think hard about how far you’re actually willing to go.
Sam didn’t answer, he already was, he certainly didn’t need Rowena’s advice out of all people. She had no use for limits herself, and she’d seen how far he’d gone to get the Mark off of his brother.
He quickly made a plane reservation online and set an alarm for 5:30 AM. He’d be taking off before Dean was even up in the morning. That meant he’d just have to leave him a note instead of lying to his brother’s face. He knew he was absolute shit at that, so it would probably work out better that way. He snuggled back in under the covers with the soft comfort of the bear next to him and tried his best to get back to sleep.
~*~*~
“What the fuck is that thing doing in bed with you?” Dean demanded, in a near-shout.
It was a traumatic way to wake up. Sam scrambled to cover the bear up under his pillow and jumped out of bed. He turned on his bedside lamp while asking himself why the hell Dean was even awake at this hour, and yelling at him in his room?
“What’s up, you need something?” Sam asked in a sleepy mumble, hoping he wasn’t radiating too much guilt.
“I was just checking in on you, it was a pretty traumatic thing that went down yesterday,” Dean said, leaning up against Sam’s dresser, crossing his arms.
Sam sank back to sit on the bed. “Yeah that’s kind of an understatement, but I’m doing okay, I guess, all things considered. How about you? You kind of disappeared on me.”
“Sorry about that, last night…I was overwhelmed. I wouldn’t have been much help,” Dean said.
“Like Bobby always said, put your own oxygen mask on first, right?”
Dean laughed, a harsh scoff that only made Sam cringe at expressing that sentiment, no matter how true it was for the situation.
“I’m really okay, it was uh…good I guess, seeing him. Seeing us all together, you were so right about that,” Sam said, immensely grateful they were skipping the topic of the thing hidden under his pillow.
“You’re so okay that you’ve got the creepiest bear in the universe in bed with you, sure thing, tough guy.” Dean stepped towards the bed and made a move to grab the bear out from under Sam’s pillow.
“Don’t-I need it,” Sam said, grabbing Dean’s arm to stop him from uncovering the bear.
“You need an obviously cursed-to-hell-and-back bear?” Dean asked with the one-raised eyebrow expressing all the skepticism Dean wasn’t voicing.
“I needed something to hold, to get to sleep last night,” Sam said, admitting a bit of the truth in the hopes that the rest of the larger truth could stay hidden for now.
Dean didn’t say anything, he just walked around to the left side of Sam’s bed, the driver’s side as Sam always thought of it, where his brother always belonged. He shrugged off his robe, pulled the mussed-up covers back and climbed in.
Sam took the bear out from under his pillow and jammed it into one of the dresser drawers, slamming it shut before he became too weak to be able to let go of the thing. He climbed into bed and curled himself into Dean’s arms, trying and failing not to think about the possibilities of using the bear, about what he’d set in motion by arranging to meet with Rowena on the sly. Sam was out of that train of thought in an instant when Dean interrupted the silence.
“He told me he was disappointed in me still being a hunter, he said he thought I’d be out of hunting and have a family of my own by now,” Dean said in a quiet voice that barely held the raw shock from coming through.
“What the fuck?” Sam asked, all the muscles in his body tightening up in a sudden rage to protect, to defend his brother. Even after all these years, and how great it had been to see him, he still wanted to deck his dad, just once.
“Yeah, I told him I already had one. Just left it at that,” Dean said, tightening his arms around Sam even more obviously. ‘You.Are.My.Family,’ Dean’s hug communicated in the sub-rosa bodily code they’d worked out over the years.
Sam chewed on that for a bit, finding the fact that his brother had stood up to their dad like that fairly impressive. But then he wondered if Dad had reacted to that answer, somehow made Dean feel even worse about their life together. “You think he knew? About us?”
“Don’t they all? It’s not like we can really hide it when we’re risking the world for each other all the freaking time.”
“I guess, we’ve never really had to talk about it, straight out with anyone. Jody came pretty close to asking me once. But what about Mom, do you think she knows?” Sam asked, wondering if Dean had even thought about this much at all. His brother was so used to assuming he was successfully hiding everything from everyone all the time.
Dean sighed and didn’t answer, his hold on Sam fading away to just the bare weight of his arms, like he was about to let go and leave. “Oh you bet she does, why do you think she doesn’t stick around much these days?”
“You know that for sure…has she said anything?” Sam asked, suddenly panicked that he’d missed something this huge. Why hadn’t Dean said anything, so they could fix it, or change or talk to her or something?
“It’s nothing specific that happened, I just know that she knows. Let’s leave it at that,” Dean said. “And by the way, I don’t care that she does know, just so you and me are clear, okay?”
“Okay, got it, same here,” Sam said, running all the possibilities of where and when Dean had figured this out. He wondered why Dean hadn’t ever said anything to him. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to fight about it, or be pushed to change anything. And that should make him happy, it really really should. And it did, of course it did. Because it meant Dean had chosen him-again.
“It’s not like we had any real options, right? That’s why I didn’t bring it up with you, didn’t seem like there was much of a point,” Dean said, answering Sam’s unasked question with unerring perception.
Sam was glad the bear was hidden away in his dresser, because he would have been grabbing it for comfort at this point, the sadness in his brother’s voice was nearly unbearable, no pun intended his brain unhelpfully joked. “I get it, why you didn’t tell me. I feel like an idiot that I didn’t figure it out myself. Guess I’ve been in research mode for a while now.”
Dean didn’t say anything, just squeezed Sam briefly in a full-body hug.
“Thank you, for choosing me again. I mean not just with Mom, but with the whole thing with Dad last night, too.” Sam thought about that, how Dean could have chosen to take them down that strange path permanently. Him wearing turtlenecks and glasses, spouting nonsensical shit on the internet, Dean being hunted down by the FBI. But their Dad alive, and basically a do-over for the last fourteen shitty years.
“Like I said, not even another viable option there. I’m always choosing you, you get that by now, right?”
“I do, yeah, and same goes for me too, you know that right?” Sam asked, knowing that he sounded exactly like the pathetic little brother that he’d always be.
“Go back to sleep, Sammy,” Dean answered, tucking his face into the back of Sam’s neck, and slowing down his breathing.
Sam relaxed into Dean’s hold, enjoying the warmth of Dean’s breath, and of his embrace. They didn’t usually sleep like this, unless something drastic had recently happened. Last night had been the definition of drastic. He guessed Dean coming in to his room like this meant that Dean knew that they both needed this. And they did.
***
To Part Two