Crush, Chapter 9
Chapter 9
May 2013
I went to work on Monday, terrified, the entire time, that Dean would call me into the office and fire me. But he didn’t. Instead, we all talked about the party, Dean telling gruesome stories and ripping into Tim for throwing up on the bathroom floor after Lucinda and I had left.
“Weak, dude, so weak,” Dean said, grinning wickedly, the lines at the corners of his eyes going deeper as he laughed at Tim’s embarrassment. I stared at him and felt sick to the pit of my stomach, my donut tasting like sawdust.
We were pretty quiet that week; it was sometimes like that, some weeks crazy and others just not. One afternoon, Dean decided to close up early and took us all to the bar down the block.
“So, I’d always, like, wanted to know how you got into huntin’?” asked Tim.
Dean looked surprised, shrugged. “My dad taught me, he was ex-military, marines.” He smiled thoughtfully, then thumbed at his mouth, swiping his thumb over his lower lip in a gesture I’d seen him do when he was uncomfortable. “Yeah.”
“And he taught you how to shoot?” pursued Tim, “Cause we all thought you were in the army.”
“The army?” Dean snorted. “Fuck, no. I’ve never been in the army. No, it was… my dad. I guess he used to ride us pretty hard. He’d wake us up at the ass crack of dawn, and make us go on a six mile run before breakfast, then it was thrusts and crunches, sparring and hand to hand. And shooting practice, coupla times a week. And the huntin’, he’d take us out, make us run drills. He was, uh, he was kinda a one-off, my old man.”
“Who’s us?” asked Tim.
Dean hesitated for a tiny moment, then said quickly, “Oh, my, uh, my kid brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Gabe.
Dean nodded abruptly, thumb going up to trace over his bottom lip as he faked a casual sort of shrug, “Yeah, he, uh. Not anymore, he died.”
Huh. I’m sure no one else had noticed anything, but Dean was… Dean was spooked. He was still thumbing at his lip and clutching his beer pretty hard in his other hand - both of those dead Dean giveaways.
“Oh, sorry, sorry, man, I shouldn’t’ve said anything. S’cuse me and my big mouth.”
“S’alright,” said Dean, shrugging again and carefully not looking at anyone. “My dad too, and hey, my mom. But, whatever, it was a long time ago. You get over it.”
Fuck, so Dean had lost his entire family? I thought about all those people who had said to me, over and over again, it’ll get easier… It hadn’t. Not really. And Dean had lost his dad and his mom and his brother… his entire fucking family. I didn’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to my Mom… the thought made my throat feel heavy as if I was about to cry, I pushed the feelings away and took a long pull on my beer, talk about the worst fucking timing.
“At least you have Sam,” said Gabe, aiming for a soothing sort of tone of voice, and seriously, was he auditioning for fucking grief counseling, because what was with that?
Dean looked like he was about to laugh for a moment, before giving Gabe a bland smile, “Oh, yeah, least I have Sam.”
“So, what was so incredibly important that you couldn’t tell me on the phone?” I hissed when Lucinda answered the door to me and dragged me inside.
“Shush, shut up. C’mon,” she said, directing me up the stairs to her room.
It hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d been there, which was probably back when we were dating. But she still had most of the same posters on her walls, all the same crap on her cork board, except for the color-coded schedule and a couple of photographs of friends I didn’t recognize, obviously college people.
“I found out something, and I’ve gotta show you.”
I glanced at her; she seemed really agitated, practically fucking vibrating as she shut the door behind her.
“What?”
“Here, sit down.”
She pushed me onto the bed, amongst the mountain of throw pillows. I unzipped my hoodie, might as well get comfortable while I waited for her to indulge her drama queen streak.
She picked a bunch of papers up off her desk and perched on the edge of her desk chair, staring at me and biting her lip.
“You are so gonna freak about this.”
“What are you talking about? And what’s with all the fuckin’ secrecy shit?”
“Okay. But, uh, I think this might be kinda illegal,” she wrinkled her nose, “but I don’t really know, I just. Look, you gotta promise you’re not going to tell my Dad.”
“Why the hell would I tell your Dad anything?”
Seriously, this was getting weird. What the fuck did her father have anything to do with anything? Lucinda’s father and I had never been exactly best pals. I was pretty sure he’d thought I’d been totally wrong for his daughter when we were going out, which, yeah… maybe he’d had a point, and then there was the whole deal with him being the local sheriff, and well, I’d always tried hard to keep out of his way in the past.
“Well, I kinda used his login and password at work to get some information off the police database.”
“You did what?”
She sighed and gave me one of her stern, librarian looks.
“Derek, calm down. It’s fine, he won’t find out. Anyway, he lets me use his computer all the time at work, and that’s totally not supposed to be allowed, so really, when you think about it, it’s his fault.” She spread her hands, all what can you do? and I remembered Evan’s theory about Lucinda being the secret, love child of Hermione Granger and Lex Luthor, (if they were, like, actually real people and not fictional characters). “Anyway, this is not the point; this is not what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to tell you about was what I found out.”
I sighed and dropped my head into my hands. I had the very real feeling that I didn’t want to hear any of this, and whatever it was, it was really not going to be good.
“You remember the other weekend, when we went to that barbecue party and that old guy nearly busted us for going through your boss’s stuff?”
Did I remember? Jesus, I hadn’t stopped angsting about it for the past couple of weeks, course I fucking remembered. I was still half expecting to get fired, panicking that Bobby had told Dean and that Dean was playing me with some sort of long game, letting me sweat for ages while he kept thinking up a long term revenge strategy that ended up with me being fired and never being able to show my face around town, ever again.
“Well, I didn’t tell you this at the time, because we didn’t have time, and I just didn’t think about it, but when I was going through his wallet, I noticed that he had two drivers licenses and one was for Dean Cooper and one was for Dean Winchester and they both had his picture.”
“So? Loads of people have fake ID’s. You have a fake ID.”
“Yeah, I know, but with everything else that was going on, with what you said about him lying about how he and Sam met, I thought it was kinda weird, so I looked up both names on the police database.”
“What did you find out?” I blurted out, trying to keep my voice steady because this… this had to be some big deal. Yeah, okay, I know what she was doing was totally illegal and an invasion of privacy and I shouldn’t be enabling her like this, but, fuck, I had to know.
She looked conflicted for a moment, then said quickly, “Yeah, there was. And I - I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you, because this is some serious shit, Derek.”
“Oh my God, what? Spit it out already!”
“Well, for a start: Dean Cooper doesn’t exist, neither does Sam Truman. But Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester - they exist. They’re their real names.”
“What - they’re, like, married?”
“They’re brothers.”
“What?”
“Here.” She turned around and flicked open the paper folder, sliding out two photocopies of pages that looked like the mugshots you saw pinned up at the station, ones you’d see in cop shows on TV.
“But - they -“
“I know.” She nodded furiously, biting her lip.
“They can’t be -“
“They are, I’m sure of it. Look.”
She thrust the pages at me, and I was right, they were mugshots, FBI mugshots, fucking FB-fucking-I mugshots. That was Dean and that was Sam, and yeah, they were obviously taken a few years ago because they looked younger, but it was them. No mistake.
“According to their records, Dean and Sam Winchester are dead. They died in FBI custody five years ago. They were being held for multiple counts of murder, kidnap, bank robbery, grave desecration, credit card fraud… God, loads of shit! But there was a big explosion at the station and they died on the scene, along with some deputies, the sheriff and a couple of FBI agents.”
“No, just, no fuckin’ way, Lucinda.” I thrust the pages away, they slipped off my lap and fell, scattering across the floor, landing on the thick blue carpet, inches from our feet.
“Derek, listen,” she said, leaning forward, her hair falling across her face as her voice got more intense. “It’s all there: they were on the FBI’s most wanted list for a couple of years. They even escaped from prison. But the weird thing is, after all this, after they supposedly died, they were posthumously acquitted of all the charges. And that's weird, that doesn’t happen very often.”
“They were innocent?”
“I don’t know.” I stared at her, at the small crease between her eyebrows, at her usually comforting face, and I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to make her stop telling me this, because I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to know what crimes Dean had been guilty of, (murder) what he’d done and whether he’d actually done it or not, (murder) and whether - oh God - Sam was really his brother.
I didn’t know what to think. Where the fuck did you start with this?
“It’s all so… strange,” she said softly, her voice trailing off.
I bent over to pick up the mugshots again, the sheets of text that she’d printed off. Considered armed and extremely dangerous. They kept a huge-ass revolver on the nightstand in their bedroom. I’d seen it myself. That wasn’t normal behavior. Dean wasn’t a saint, I knew he wasn’t. Those things about him, the weird shit: the guns and the scars, the hunting and the look he’d sometimes get on his face, he was always… He was different. Dangerous, mysterious, and him and Sam together, they were…
Armed and extremely dangerous.
No way. This couldn’t be real. This was like a soap opera, a bad movie… Not real.
Fuck, they’d fascinated me, for months, all I’d been able to think about was Dean, and when I wasn’t thinking about him, or hell, about him and Sam, remembering that time I’d seen them making out (brothers), I’d be thinking about them, together, jerking off to the pictures and the memories in my head. And when I wasn’t jerking off thinking about Dean, I was thinking about the endless fucking mysteries: the matching scars on their hands, the weird, touch-phobic thing… And hell, just them, just the two of them, everything about them - so different, so strange, this relationship that was nothing like any I’d seen before amongst the other adults in my life, so freakishly intense, so wrapped up in one another.
Jesus Christ, they were brothers. Brothers who fucked each other, brothers who kissed and touched and were madly in love with each other, and I’d seen, I’d seen it with my own eyes, I’d seen the way they acted with each other, the way they kissed, I’d fucking fantasized about it. I’d put myself in Sam’s place, imagined Dean looking at me the way he looked at Sam, and then imagined myself between them, a Dean/Sam sandwich. An incest sandwich.
Was this why they fascinated me so much? Cause they were brothers, cause they were like that…
I wanted to laugh, this couldn’t be real.
Lucinda was talking again, soft and quiet and thoughtful, and I wasn’t really hearing her, (…if they’re brothers then naturally Dean would lie about how they met and the photo would therefore make sense because of course they would’ve known each other when Sam was a teenager…) just her voice going on and on, as if she was presenting a case in Debate class and not talking about my boss - the guy I had a fucking epic gay crush on - the same one that had been responsible for my sexual identity crisis, and just why he’d been fucking his brother for fucking years. Oh yeah, and how he used to be wanted by the FBI for murder.
“God, Lucinda! Please, just… shut up!”
She shut up, her mouth snapping closed immediately and eyes narrowing in on me.
“I’m gonna puke,” I said hopelessly, because I was… my stomach and guts churning and trying to make sense of -
“Tch, please, you’re not going to puke.”
“Lucinda -“
“People always do that on TV, but in real life, it doesn’t happen very often. You’ve got to be seriously in shock to puke.” Her voice was so calm, so matter of fact and scornful. “Just - get it together, Derek. We need to decide what to do about this.”
Why was she so fucking calm? Why wasn’t she freaking the hell out? I plucked at my t-shirt, I felt gross, rank beads of sweat collecting under my armpits, and it was all reminding me of that night in the bar, the night when I’d realized that the fuzzy, tingling feelings I’d been having every time I looked at my boss were because I was actually queer and had a ginormous gay crush on him.
But I couldn’t think about that now, because this made me just like those sad, lonely freaks who write to death row murderers and then go get married to them without ever knowing anything about them, because I obviously knew nothing about Dean because he’d been on the FBI’s Most Wanted and was crazy in love with his brother.
“What do you mean, do about this?”
“Well… We should go to the police. We should tell someone.”
“Why do we need to tell anyone?”
She gaped at me for a while, stammering out, “Derek, Sam is - he’s one of my teachers. He’s in a position of responsibility; he must’ve lied to get the job, because if the college knew about any of this, then there’s no way he’d ever have gotten the job. So he must’ve got it under false pretences.”
“So? You gonna inform on him? He’ll lose his job, he’ll get run out of town, hell, he might even get arrested. They both might… You’d ruin his fucking life.”
And then it struck me, what I was saying: they might get arrested; they might get run out of town… They’d leave. Dean would leave, and I wouldn’t work for him every day and I wouldn’t see him every day and that would be it… the end of this - end of all of it, my job, everything -
Whatever the fuck Dean had done, whether it was all true, or he was or wasn’t guilty, and he’d been pardoned, right? All those charges were dropped. And okay, yeah, so he and Sam weren’t dead and were living under assumed names but… whatever, it all didn’t matter because I still wanted him. I didn’t want him to leave, or fuck, get put in prison, no… I couldn’t. No. Just. No.
“Lucinda -“
“What?” she snapped. She was worrying her lip between her teeth, a classic Lucinda sign of inner conflict. Good. This meant she hadn’t decided anything yet, there was still time to save this, to figure things out…
“I thought you liked Sam. You told me he was, like, the best professor ever. If you did this, then you’d ruin his life, you’d get him sent to jail. Do you really want to do that? You’d really want to ruin his life?”
“I do like him,” she bit back. “Don’t look at me like that! He’s the best professor I have. He’s, like, miles better than the others, just really damn good, and I just - I don’t know, okay? I’ve been thinking about this ever since I got all this stuff and I… I haven’t decided what to do. I thought you might be able to help, but of course you’re no fucking use!” She gave me a dirty look which I returned with interest.
“I don’t think we should tell the police or the authorities,” I said forcefully. “Anyway, if we do, they’re gonna want to know how you got the information in the first place, hacking into the police database like that - that’s a crime too.”
“I know that, Jesus, I know that!” She looked pale and anxious, smoothing those fucking pages over as she replaced them in that folder.
“Fuck’s sake, Lucinda, why’d you have to look in the first place? Why’d you always do this?”
I felt so mad at her, she’d ruined everything. Why’d she have to do it? So what if Dean had made up some bullshit story about how he and Sam first met each other? So what if he couldn’t touch people and Sam spoke weird languages and they had tattoos that moved and so fucking what about all of it…
What did it even matter when they were gonna have to leave? When I wasn’t gonna see him anymore and I’d forget everything: I’d forget how he looked when he was pleased with himself and I’d forget how he’d sing along to those dumb records he liked and how he flirted with all the fucking women under forty, and hell, over forty, who came around. I’d forget. And that would be it. Over. And what would I do then? I’d go back to lying in bed at night remembering how my Dad looked when he’d gone into that coma for the last time, and I’d be thinking about that again instead of thinking how Dean had winked at me over lunch, and it would be all her fault.
“Maybe you should go now, Derek.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice and I could see her shoulders tense up at it, but I didn’t care. This was all her fault.
I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t. No way. The only thing I could think about was Dean. Dean and Sam. While that was totally not a new thing for me, (I was used to being kept awake with thoughts of Dean and various parts of his body and his voice, and Jesus Christ, his face), I wasn’t used to being kept up with thoughts like these.
I kept seeing Dean and Sam in my head. That time I’d seen them make out, the looks on their faces, the way Sam had smashed Dean up against the desk, the way he’d buried his face into Dean’s neck like he was inhaling him… The countless times I’d seen them exchange quick touches, long, lingering looks, groping each other as if they couldn’t help themselves. And all the time…
Brothers?
I’d never had a brother. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to want to fuck your brother. I had a Dad though - I’d had a Dad, and the thought of ever wanting to -
Christ, no, the thought made me so sick, like I was really gonna puke this time, fuck you, Lucinda.
Dean had mentioned a brother. In the bar the other night: I didn’t know you had a brother… and Dean’s hesitation, his quick answer, which, of course, had been a lie: uh, yeah, he died a long time ago… He was talking about Sam. Sam, his brother. And his Dad, the shit he’d said about his Dad - his and Sam’s Dad, because they had the same Dad, because they were brothers.
Jesus.
I guess my Dad used to ride us pretty hard… Cause that - now - that conjured up entirely new images, new thoughts, he was a one-off my old man… Had Dean’s Dad… had Dean and Sam’s Dad…
Fuck. It was well known that kids who went on to be abusers or sexual deviants were often victims of abuse in their childhoods. Lucinda would know, would probably be able to quote some fucking statistics on it. Had Dean and Sam learned that from their father? Had he been the one who’d started it all?
Or maybe it was just them? Just Dean and Sam and the fact they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, that was the reality I was used to seeing.
I got to work early the next day. I’d been driving myself crazy at home, unable to sleep at all, getting up early to try and watch early morning TV. In the end, I gave in. I had to face Dean at some point, might as well get it over and done with.
The only thing was, I’d gotten to work so early, the place was still shut up. I’d never been there that early, usually Dean or Gabe opened up. This morning, I was forced to sit on the back stoop with a lukewarm bottle of water. I got up to pace around, I was in the middle of staring at the pock marks on the back wall of the lot, when I heard the familiar rumble of the Impala’s engine and the sound of Dean and Sam’s voices.
I froze immediately, my skin popping gooseflesh, despite the warm weather, my stomach starting to churn with the gross-ass water I’d been forcing down. They were getting out their cars, Dean in the Impala, Sam in his car, voices going up and down, teasing each other about something. Brothers, they were brothers. I stared at them as they walked over, trying to see it: the resemblance between them. But I couldn’t see it; it was just the two of them, same as always.
“What you doin’ here so early, kiddo?”
I didn’t know what I said in response, it was as if I wasn’t really there, my ears and eyes and head, groggy and detached, the lack of sleep probably didn’t help. I watched them unlock the back door, Sam coming up behind Dean and resting his hand on the small of Dean’s back, fingers creeping under Dean’s waistband, so normal and possessive and something I’d seen him do a thousand times.
Dean said something to me when we got inside, Sam stomping off to get the coffee machine started.
I nodded blankly and said, “I need to talk to you.”
Dean stopped half way through whatever he was saying and frowned. “Huh?”
“I need to talk to you about something.” I tried to make my voice sound stronger; it was too watery in my ears, too weak. “It’s personal.”
“Well, you can talk to me anytime, dude,” said Dean with a reassuring look. I felt sick to my stomach, and gulped, nodding and trying to look away from him.
“It’s about you. Uh, you and, uh, Sam. I, uh, I know.”
The change on Dean’s face was startling, the reassuring look vanishing like a snap of fingers, replaced by nasty suspicion, his eyes hardening as he gazed at me. He didn’t blink as he opened his mouth to call out: “Sam, get your ass out here!”
“What?” Sam sounded surprised, giving me a half-smile as he came out the kitchen.
When Dean spoke to me, his voice was icy: “Tell me. What do you think you know, Derek?”
I didn’t mean for it to go down like this. I was gonna think about it, plan it, try to make a proper decision. But I should’ve known better, I’d never been able to make a proper decision in my life. So when I’d seen Dean and Sam crossing the parking lot, something cracked, and now, I was here with two pissed off, possibly murderous, wanted felons.
I took a deep breath and spoke quickly, stammering, “I, uh, I know that your real names are Sam and Dean Winchester and that you’re, uh, you’re brothers.”
Sam took a step towards me, his face icy, a matching expression like Dean’s. I wished overwhelmingly that I’d waited, that I’d at least waited for it to just be Dean, because Dean… I could deal with him, but Sam… he was fucking scary.
“That’s a bunch of crap,” he said, voice frighteningly calm.
I flinched and took a step backwards, away from him. Dean stuck out a hand, as if he was calling Sam off, keeping him away from me, and I felt a sudden burst of gratitude to him.
“It’s not just me,” I blurted out, “I’m not the only one who knows, so if you think you can do something to me -“
Dean interrupted me with his usual bark of a laugh, exchanging an incredulous look with Sam.
“Dude, you think we’re gonna do something to you?”
I hesitated, glancing between them, “I, uh, you have police records, you’ve both, uh, you’ve done some stuff.”
Dean blinked then gave a shaky laugh. “Whatever you think you’ve found out - it’s bullshit, Derek. It’s not true.”
Beside him, Sam was nodding, coming forward again until he was level with Dean. I watched his long fingers curl around Dean’s bicep, saw Dean relax into the touch, it was almost imperceptible, but I was used to watching Dean… I knew Dean and I knew then that they were lying. Dean was freaked out and Sam was reassuring him. He was lying and he wasn’t making a good job of it. I steeled myself, slowly raising my head until I was looking Sam in the face.
“You’re Sam Winchester, Sam Truman’s a fake name, and Dean is your brother, Dean Cooper - that’s another fake name. You were both wanted criminals, and then you died and for some reason, all the charges against you were dropped.”
Sam eyes narrowed on me, face blank and devoid of any tells. With Dean - I knew his tells, I’d learned them - with Sam - a whole other matter. I gulped and forced myself to continue.
“We did some diggin' and found it all out. It’s useless denying it. We have pictures, mugshots of the both of you.”
“We?” interrupted Sam, gaze piercing into me. “And who might be your partner in crime?”
“It, uh, it doesn’t matter,” I answered hastily.
Sam looked at me again then shook his head. “It’s Lucinda, isn’t it?”
“His little girlfriend?” said Dean, “Fuck, I knew that girl had a thing for you, Sammy.”
Sam laughed humorlessly. “Never mind that. Her father’s the town sheriff.”
“What?” Dean twisted to look at him. “Ah, great. Just fucking. Peachy.”
He wrenched his arm out of Sam’s grasp and stalked across the room, fist coming out to thump against the wall. I flinched and Sam bored his eyes into mine.
“So, the question is: what’re you gonna do about it?”
*******************************************************
There’s probably some sort of karma involved in the fact that one of his own students, someone he’s encouraged in good research habits, has found out about him and Dean. Lucinda Croupland is a good student, definitely one of the best in his current freshman class. She’s eager and dedicated, and has one of those minds that just doesn’t quit, insistent on finding out every last detail possible, a true researcher in the making.
Dean’s freaked. He locks up the shop and calls the rest of the guys, saying, “Shop’s closed today,” and, “Yeah, you’ll get paid”. He turns to the kid after he’s done, holds out the receiver and says, “Call your girlfriend.”
The kid - Derek - looks scared. He’s pale and trembling and not bothering to hide it. He sounds terrified on the phone, and who can blame him? The shit he must’ve dug up on them… Sam can well imagine what the FBI reports say, the list of their crimes, their previous Most Wanted status. He should’ve known. Things were too good to be true. It couldn’t continue this well, he and Dean never could catch a fucking break. It was always gonna end up like this.
They have to leave. There really isn’t any other way of getting around this. They have to leave: the house, the garage, his job… Fuck, he doesn’t want to leave his job, he loves his job. For the first time in God knows - fuck, for the first time ever, they’re happy. And okay, things aren’t perfect- with Dean’s situation, what he did to his brother - things can’t be perfect, but everything else…
“She comin’ over?” Dean asks, when the kid puts down the receiver.
He nods nervously, swallowing and shaking and looking as if he’s about to lose that huge mug of coffee he’s just gulped down.
Dean nods tightly and turns to Sam, “Shoulda known this was all too good to be true. Shoulda known it’ll all come back to bite us in the ass.” He sounds bitter, that resigned, fatalistic look back on his face, the one that makes Sam’s chest ache.
“Hey,” he lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder, squeezes gently, “it’ll be okay. We’ll be alright.”
Dean pulls away from him with a soft snort and stomps off back to the kitchen - to the kid - who’s watching Dean, that half-awestruck, half-infatuated look on his face, as usual. Sam’s caught him staring once too often to not know what’s really going under that dumb, teenage exterior, lips slightly parted and eyes glazed, locked on the spot where Dean might be caressing the nape of Sam’s neck or the spot where he’d placed his hand on Dean’s hip.
It was flattering, seeing this kid and his hopeless pining for Dean, Dean who was Sam’s, utterly and completely, and who would never be anyone else’s. He used to feel sorry for him, it can't be easy being nineteen years old and realizing you like dick, having an impossible crush on your boss. And in a way, it was pretty cool, imagining how he and Dean might appear to outsiders, to messed-up, sexually confused kids like these. Hell, they could even be something of an inspiration, giving them hope and showing them that you didn’t have to conform to some sitcom stereotype to be gay, that you could like cars and rock music and hunting and guns, all that ”real man” bullshit, and still like cock…
…But it’s his fault - this kid and his stupid obsession with Dean - his fault that they’re here right now, and Sam’s not feeling sympathetic towards him now, not feeling like an inspiration now... He watches Dean take a seat at the kitchen table and motion to the kid to do the same, which he does, clumsily, practically falling into it in his haste to obey Dean. Dean leans forward and starts talking, slowly, seriously, the kid lowers his head, nodding, listening closely to whatever Dean’s saying, fingers twisting anxiously in the too-long sleeves of his hoodie.
Dean’s not giving up, Dean doesn’t give up, and neither does he. Maybe they can salvage something from this, maybe things will be alright, maybe they won’t have to leave after all.
Dean looks up, catches his eye and cocks his head. Sam walks over and looms over the table, staring down at the kid, from this angle, all he can make out is the top of his head, his messy, dark-blond hair, his pale neck and the strip of vulnerable skin under his hairline. How fragile he looks from up above, how easy it would be to just -
He could do it. Do it to keep him and Dean safe… and he would do it. Do anything to keep Dean safe.
But Dean would never forgive him. Sam’s willing to do anything to save Dean, always has been, and Dean’s just as bad, holds his own life so cheap when it comes to Sam, but murdering innocent boys - Dean would never even consider that. The scary thing is, though, that he’s not even sure that he wouldn’t be capable of it, that he could do it, dispassionate and clinical, do it to keep Dean safe. How far would he go to keep his brother safe? The answer to that is easy; it’s branded into both of their hands, written into his blood. He remembers Dean saying the same thing to him years ago, what I wouldn’t do to protect this family, it scares me sometimes… But Sam’s not scared; he knows he could do it, if he had to.
“Derek and I have been having a little talk,” says Dean. He doesn’t look at Sam, eyes instead fixed on the top of the kid’s head. “He says he’s willing to keep our secret.”
The kid lifts his head up and nods furiously, his eyes look red, watery, the kid’s been fucking crying. Jesus.
Sam swallows down the tidal wave of revulsion, coarse and acidic in his throat. Was he really thinking… Yes, he was thinking… of killing him, and he would’ve, he could’ve. But fuck, this is a kid - this is a fucking kid, a kid called Derek with a stupid crush, and he was seriously considering…
“I won’t tell anyone,” Derek pleads. “Believe me, please. I didn’t want - all this - I didn’t want to find it all out. Lucinda is just,” he breaks off and gives a huge sigh that seems to dwarf his skinny body. “When she gets an idea in her head, she never lets it go. And all this research stuff, she loves it.”
Dean snorts at that, raises his eyes to Sam with an accusing look, “You know this is kinda your fault, dude.”
He snaps back at Dean, absurdly angry, because this - this isn’t a fucking joke. None of this is a joke.
“Christ, Dean, I was just doing my fuckin’ job!”
“Oh Lucinda thinks you’re awesome, she’ll kill me for saying this but she’s got this huge crush on you,” says Derek.
“I knew that chick was hot for you,” grunts Dean.
He presses his lips together, willing himself forcibly back to calmness, patience.
“Yeah, okay, Dean, because that’s what’s important here, some girl wantin’ to jump my bones.” He turns to Derek, “Derek. Listen. What you’re agreeing here - you’re agreeing to say nothing. To tell no one about what you and Lucinda have found out. Is that right?”
Derek widens his eyes and nods furiously some more; it makes him look even younger somehow. “Yeah, yeah, I didn’t want to - it wasn’t really me. I didn’t want to know. I don’t want… you shouldn’t leave. There’s no reason for you to leave.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” snaps Dean.
Derek flinches and darts him a look, Sam glares at Dean over the kid’s head, signaling: shut up.
“And Lucinda, will you able to convince her to keep quiet too?”
“I don’t know. She’s uh, with her dad, she can be kinda moral sometimes.”
Dean sighs loudly and slams his fist down on the stained worktop, “Fuck!” He grips the edge, his back to them, as if he’s steeling himself, as if he’s trying to learn how to breathe again. Sam watches him, feels his heart miss a beat as Dean slowly turns around. He looks defeated, painful, bitter amusement written into the lines around his eyes and mouth.
“Okay. So. We need to go. We should leave here, cause, I don’t know about you, Sam, but I’m not takin’ a chance on this chick keepin’ her mouth shut. You and me’ve been through way too much shit to spend the rest of our lives in freakin’ jail. I’m just - that’s not happening.”
“No, wait!” interrupts the kid suddenly. He looks distraught, tugging at the sleeves of his hoodie, every possible tick or gesture that signals distraught, lovesick teenager, “Don’t, don’t think about leavin’ just yet. I can talk to her, we can work this out.” He stares up at Dean with a clear, blazing look in his eyes that’s almost reverent. “Dean, I don’t want - please, you shouldn’t think about goin’. We can keep secrets. Lucinda, she’s, uh, she’s kinda been keepin’ a secret for me for a while. She’s pretty good at it.”
Sam narrows his gaze on him, the kid blushes, blinks and ducks his head.
“Derek, listen. We appreciate it, really -“
“Would’ve appreciated it a damn site more if he’d kept his nose outta our fuckin’ business, in the first place,” bites out Dean. Derek flinches again and Sam represses the urge to sigh out loud in frustration, instead glaring at his brother.
“Derek, we do appreciate your willingness to lie for us. But this is gonna get out. People are going to know, they’ll find out, they always do. And think about what you found out, not just the criminal charges, which, believe me, are not true, but the other stuff,” he pauses, swallows, sets his shoulders, meeting the kid’s eyes: “Yeah, all that is true. Dean is my older brother.”
The kid gapes at the two of them, face red and flushed, his mouth opens and closes silently for a moment, then he licks his lips, fingers twisting together. “But you - I, I’ve seen you together…”
Sam flushes and coughs, looking away, not wanting to meet Dean’s eye, but he can hear his brother’s uncomfortable laugh, see him walking out of the room and disappearing into the shop from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s a long story,” he says at last. “There are reasons, personal good reasons, that Dean and I - that we are what we are, and we’re not, we’re not proud of it. But it is what it is and I’m not going to explain any of it right now.” He sighs and sits down at the table, facing the kid. Derek stiffens, frozen in his chair; his hands white knuckled as he grips the table. “We are not the bad guys. What we do together, it’s nobody’s business but ours.”
“I know,” he stutters, “I know that, Sam, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, too late now.” He leans back in his chair, feeling a sudden burst of vindication when the kid’s face pales.
“Hey, look who I found outside.”
He looks up as Dean strolls back in, grim-faced and grim-voiced, a terrified looking Lucinda trailing after him. She glances at him, face flushing a brilliant red when he meets her eyes. He shakes his head and huffs out a breath.
“Okay, let’s talk.”
Dean goes missing after Lucinda arrives, gets into the car and drives off, leaving it all to him. He talks to the two kids for a while, they both swear, eyes shining and red stains on their cheeks, apologies on their lips and full of ardent promises, they won’t spill, swear to God, they won’t say a word.
Lucinda’s less guarded than Derek, asks him questions, like she’s interviewing him for a thesis, he’s half impressed, hell, normally he would be, gotta admire that kind of academic discipline. But it’s too late now.
He takes his car, Dougal in the backseat and the kid in shotgun with a look of pure terror on his face as he buckles up. But Sam offered and the kid was already too apologetic and shit-scared to turn him down. They pull up at the kid’s house and Sam kills the engine. He slowly removes his seatbelt and turns to look at him with a conflicted expression.
“Sam, is it, uh, can I ask you something?”
It’s only just after eleven by the time he gets home. The morning isn’t over yet, and already, their world has been turned upside down. He’s been too occupied to call the department, let them know why he hasn’t shown for the 10am Freshman Introduction to American Folklore study group, and he only remembers as he’s bumping his car up their driveway.
He pulls up at the front and heads around the side of the house. Dean’s out the back, sitting on the grass, arms spread out behind him to take his weight, face upturned towards the sun. Dougal perks up from his spot by Dean and runs up to greet Sam. He bends over and pets him distractedly, eyes only for his brother, for the way the sun dapples his body, for the sweaty gleam of his skin and the blond tinge of his hair. Dean, he thinks, my Dean.
He walks over to join him, drops down to the grass. The ground is prickly through the thin seat of his dress pants, grass sparse and dry.
Dean turns his head, squints at him, there’s a pink tinge to his nose, the sun’s pretty high, gotta be heading towards 90 degrees already, and Dean, the stupid idiot, is already burning.
“Dude, you’re burning up. Put some damn sunscreen on.”
Dean shrugs, ignores the advice. “Nah, s’just a healthy glow.”
Sam snorts, starts to loosen the tie around his neck, undo the top button of his dress shirt, it’s hot out here, he can feel the sweat begin to pool in the dip of his lower back, his armpits and behind his knees.
He watches Dean run his hands over Dougal’s fur; the dog nestled up against Dean’s side, there’s genuine affection in the way Dean’s fingers idle through his ruff, the comforting way he ruffles at Dougal’s ears. Sam thinks of how they first got him: about a year after the ritual, during a hunt in Arkansas. The family he belonged to had been eviscerated by a local coven, their bodies laid out across the kitchen floor in a hideous mockery of a bloody tableau, Dougal left cowering and whimpering in the corner when Sam and Dean burst in, too late to save anybody except the family pet. “We should take him just for the night, Sam, we’ll drop him off at a kennel tomorrow,” Dean said, and Sam didn't have the heart to gainsay him. Four years later, he still doesn't.
“You know he can come with us, Dean. There’s room in the backseat. Be all wrong without him.”
“Damn straight,” says Dean.
He turns his head to look at Sam; he’s squinting still, eyes moss green slits. “How long do you reckon they’ll keep quiet?”
“I don’t know. A week, tops. Probably less.”
“Fuckin’ teenagers.”
He sighs, “Yeah, fuckin’ teenagers.”
“Guess we should blow this joint then, Sammy.”
“Guess so.”
It’s their cue to move, but neither of them does. Dean twists his head around, peers up at the roof. “I was gonna finish that up this weekend,” he says. “Thinkin’ about starting work on the garden afterwards, hedges need cutting back, pretty fuckin’ desperately.”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees.
“Guess I don’t need to worry about that anymore.”
Sam turns his head to look at him; Dean looks wistful, lips pursed in that way that means he’s thinking things over, lines in his face more prominent than usual in the harsh sunlight. He was thinking himself of starting a herb garden: belladonna, rosemary, sage, wolfsbane, chamomile, real juicy shit, honestly, he can’t believe he didn’t think of it sooner, it seems like such a glaring oversight now. He catches Dean’s eye and feels his heart start to break.
“Dean, I don’t want to leave.” In his own head, he sounds like he’s fourteen again, that same tone of voice he used to try with Dad, Dad, please, I don’t want to leave, not this time. Can’t we stay till the end of the year? Just this time? Please, Dad…
“Sammy, we’ve got no choice.”
He chokes out a laugh, nods his head, hair flying into his eyes. “Right, yeah, yeah. You’re right.”
Neither of them says anything for a moment, then Sam speaks, not bothering to hide the yearning in his voice, the hope: “Do you think we’ll ever find somewhere like this again? That we’ll ever… be able to be, just, in one place? Do you think we’ll ever have that?”
Dean shrugs, when he turns to Sam, he’s looking hopeful, every emotion clear and present on his face, there for Sam to see, nothing hidden, and Sam loves him so, so much. “We can try.”
************************************************
Sam told me not to come into work until he or Dean called, said that the shop would be closed for the rest of the day, but they’d probably be open again tomorrow, said that it would take a couple of days for things to go back to normal. He’d been surprisingly calm in the car, and it made me feel bad for ever thinking of him as some sort of Satan worshipping nutjob, not that being on the run from the FBI and fucking your brother didn’t make you into a nutjob, because yeah, it did.
“Sam, is it, uh, can I ask you something?” I asked, after we’d pulled up outside my house. He looked surprised, then nodded okay.
“It’s… the scars on your hands, you and Dean, you have matching scars and I’ve always wondered, if they - if they mean anything?”
He looked at me for a long moment, as if thinking deeply about something, before he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, and said tightly, “Believe me, Derek, you do not want to know about that.”
“Oh, right,” I said lamely. “Uh, sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I should’ve gotten out of the car right then. The silence was seriously uncomfortable, and he was acting as if he was only just managing to hold himself in check, or hold himself together. I don’t know, it was hard to explain, but it was like there was something broken in my head too, because I didn’t move either. I had this feeling, this gut, deep-down feeling, that this was the last chance I’d have to ever talk to either Sam or Dean, and there was so much, so many things about them that I’d been thinking about and obsessing about for so long.
And today… today had just been so much. When I’d got up this morning, I hadn’t even thought about telling Dean what we’d discovered, still trying to process it all, and now I’d gone and done it, and Sam knew, and Lucinda had been dragged into it, though seriously, whole thing was her fucking fault, and now... ,
…Now what exactly? What was going to happen next?
“I, I’m sorry. We shouldn’t, you know, we shouldn’t have gone, like, snooping into your backgrounds like that. It was… not right.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” he said tiredly. “Anyway, if you hadn’t, someone else would’ve. We should’ve thought - nothing stays buried forever.”
We were silent for what felt like a long moment, though it probably wasn’t that long at all. I stared at his hands, still on the wheel, still at ten to two, the twisted purple scar. I was never going to know.
“Well, uh, thanks for the ride,” I said at last. “I’ll, uh, see you around.”
I waited at home for the phone call, but none came, and really, I wasn’t surprised. Eventually, Uncle Lou called, sounding gruff and pissed, telling me that they’d left, “Fuckin’ gone for good. I knew there was something wrong with those two faggots.”
I wasn’t surprised about that either.
Bobby Singer turned up a few days later, told us that the business was for sale, that Dean and Sam wouldn’t be back and that whoever bought it would decide whether or not we kept our jobs. In the end, it was bought by Tom Phelan who ran the rival garage at the other end of town, he’d apparently wanted to get a hold of the place back before, when Old Man McGregor had owned it, except Dean and Sam had gotten in first.
I borrowed my Mom’s car and drove to their house on one of the days I knew Bobby’d be there, and sure enough, he was, helping a couple of guys pack their stuff into the back of a truck. The place looked deserted, though it was kinda hard to tell the difference, it had never looked particularly well-looked after.
Bobby saw me and raised his hand in greeting as I pulled up. He was pretty friendly, so either Dean and Sam hadn’t told him about my part in their sudden departure or he just didn’t give a shit.
“So, when are you leaving?” I asked.
He shrugged and adjusted his hat. “Soon as I’m done. Tomorrow most likely.”
I nodded, feeling my stomach twist, chest screwing up and getting tight. “And that’s - that’s it. They’re gone? For good?”
Bobby nodded, “That’s right.”
I could feel the tears threatening, my eyes were all hot and damp and burning and I had a huge-ass lump in the back of my throat. I sort of nodded and waved goodbye and got the hell out of there.
After about a mile, I pulled over to search through the box of CD’s in the glove compartment until I found the one I was looking for: Neil Young’s Harvest. We’d played it at my Dad’s funeral, it was his favorite album, he’d loved Neil Young. I hadn’t been able to listen to it since then, but today felt like the right time to start again.
Epilogue
May 2013
I went to work on Monday, terrified, the entire time, that Dean would call me into the office and fire me. But he didn’t. Instead, we all talked about the party, Dean telling gruesome stories and ripping into Tim for throwing up on the bathroom floor after Lucinda and I had left.
“Weak, dude, so weak,” Dean said, grinning wickedly, the lines at the corners of his eyes going deeper as he laughed at Tim’s embarrassment. I stared at him and felt sick to the pit of my stomach, my donut tasting like sawdust.
We were pretty quiet that week; it was sometimes like that, some weeks crazy and others just not. One afternoon, Dean decided to close up early and took us all to the bar down the block.
“So, I’d always, like, wanted to know how you got into huntin’?” asked Tim.
Dean looked surprised, shrugged. “My dad taught me, he was ex-military, marines.” He smiled thoughtfully, then thumbed at his mouth, swiping his thumb over his lower lip in a gesture I’d seen him do when he was uncomfortable. “Yeah.”
“And he taught you how to shoot?” pursued Tim, “Cause we all thought you were in the army.”
“The army?” Dean snorted. “Fuck, no. I’ve never been in the army. No, it was… my dad. I guess he used to ride us pretty hard. He’d wake us up at the ass crack of dawn, and make us go on a six mile run before breakfast, then it was thrusts and crunches, sparring and hand to hand. And shooting practice, coupla times a week. And the huntin’, he’d take us out, make us run drills. He was, uh, he was kinda a one-off, my old man.”
“Who’s us?” asked Tim.
Dean hesitated for a tiny moment, then said quickly, “Oh, my, uh, my kid brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Gabe.
Dean nodded abruptly, thumb going up to trace over his bottom lip as he faked a casual sort of shrug, “Yeah, he, uh. Not anymore, he died.”
Huh. I’m sure no one else had noticed anything, but Dean was… Dean was spooked. He was still thumbing at his lip and clutching his beer pretty hard in his other hand - both of those dead Dean giveaways.
“Oh, sorry, sorry, man, I shouldn’t’ve said anything. S’cuse me and my big mouth.”
“S’alright,” said Dean, shrugging again and carefully not looking at anyone. “My dad too, and hey, my mom. But, whatever, it was a long time ago. You get over it.”
Fuck, so Dean had lost his entire family? I thought about all those people who had said to me, over and over again, it’ll get easier… It hadn’t. Not really. And Dean had lost his dad and his mom and his brother… his entire fucking family. I didn’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to my Mom… the thought made my throat feel heavy as if I was about to cry, I pushed the feelings away and took a long pull on my beer, talk about the worst fucking timing.
“At least you have Sam,” said Gabe, aiming for a soothing sort of tone of voice, and seriously, was he auditioning for fucking grief counseling, because what was with that?
Dean looked like he was about to laugh for a moment, before giving Gabe a bland smile, “Oh, yeah, least I have Sam.”
“So, what was so incredibly important that you couldn’t tell me on the phone?” I hissed when Lucinda answered the door to me and dragged me inside.
“Shush, shut up. C’mon,” she said, directing me up the stairs to her room.
It hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d been there, which was probably back when we were dating. But she still had most of the same posters on her walls, all the same crap on her cork board, except for the color-coded schedule and a couple of photographs of friends I didn’t recognize, obviously college people.
“I found out something, and I’ve gotta show you.”
I glanced at her; she seemed really agitated, practically fucking vibrating as she shut the door behind her.
“What?”
“Here, sit down.”
She pushed me onto the bed, amongst the mountain of throw pillows. I unzipped my hoodie, might as well get comfortable while I waited for her to indulge her drama queen streak.
She picked a bunch of papers up off her desk and perched on the edge of her desk chair, staring at me and biting her lip.
“You are so gonna freak about this.”
“What are you talking about? And what’s with all the fuckin’ secrecy shit?”
“Okay. But, uh, I think this might be kinda illegal,” she wrinkled her nose, “but I don’t really know, I just. Look, you gotta promise you’re not going to tell my Dad.”
“Why the hell would I tell your Dad anything?”
Seriously, this was getting weird. What the fuck did her father have anything to do with anything? Lucinda’s father and I had never been exactly best pals. I was pretty sure he’d thought I’d been totally wrong for his daughter when we were going out, which, yeah… maybe he’d had a point, and then there was the whole deal with him being the local sheriff, and well, I’d always tried hard to keep out of his way in the past.
“Well, I kinda used his login and password at work to get some information off the police database.”
“You did what?”
She sighed and gave me one of her stern, librarian looks.
“Derek, calm down. It’s fine, he won’t find out. Anyway, he lets me use his computer all the time at work, and that’s totally not supposed to be allowed, so really, when you think about it, it’s his fault.” She spread her hands, all what can you do? and I remembered Evan’s theory about Lucinda being the secret, love child of Hermione Granger and Lex Luthor, (if they were, like, actually real people and not fictional characters). “Anyway, this is not the point; this is not what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to tell you about was what I found out.”
I sighed and dropped my head into my hands. I had the very real feeling that I didn’t want to hear any of this, and whatever it was, it was really not going to be good.
“You remember the other weekend, when we went to that barbecue party and that old guy nearly busted us for going through your boss’s stuff?”
Did I remember? Jesus, I hadn’t stopped angsting about it for the past couple of weeks, course I fucking remembered. I was still half expecting to get fired, panicking that Bobby had told Dean and that Dean was playing me with some sort of long game, letting me sweat for ages while he kept thinking up a long term revenge strategy that ended up with me being fired and never being able to show my face around town, ever again.
“Well, I didn’t tell you this at the time, because we didn’t have time, and I just didn’t think about it, but when I was going through his wallet, I noticed that he had two drivers licenses and one was for Dean Cooper and one was for Dean Winchester and they both had his picture.”
“So? Loads of people have fake ID’s. You have a fake ID.”
“Yeah, I know, but with everything else that was going on, with what you said about him lying about how he and Sam met, I thought it was kinda weird, so I looked up both names on the police database.”
“What did you find out?” I blurted out, trying to keep my voice steady because this… this had to be some big deal. Yeah, okay, I know what she was doing was totally illegal and an invasion of privacy and I shouldn’t be enabling her like this, but, fuck, I had to know.
She looked conflicted for a moment, then said quickly, “Yeah, there was. And I - I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you, because this is some serious shit, Derek.”
“Oh my God, what? Spit it out already!”
“Well, for a start: Dean Cooper doesn’t exist, neither does Sam Truman. But Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester - they exist. They’re their real names.”
“What - they’re, like, married?”
“They’re brothers.”
“What?”
“Here.” She turned around and flicked open the paper folder, sliding out two photocopies of pages that looked like the mugshots you saw pinned up at the station, ones you’d see in cop shows on TV.
“But - they -“
“I know.” She nodded furiously, biting her lip.
“They can’t be -“
“They are, I’m sure of it. Look.”
She thrust the pages at me, and I was right, they were mugshots, FBI mugshots, fucking FB-fucking-I mugshots. That was Dean and that was Sam, and yeah, they were obviously taken a few years ago because they looked younger, but it was them. No mistake.
“According to their records, Dean and Sam Winchester are dead. They died in FBI custody five years ago. They were being held for multiple counts of murder, kidnap, bank robbery, grave desecration, credit card fraud… God, loads of shit! But there was a big explosion at the station and they died on the scene, along with some deputies, the sheriff and a couple of FBI agents.”
“No, just, no fuckin’ way, Lucinda.” I thrust the pages away, they slipped off my lap and fell, scattering across the floor, landing on the thick blue carpet, inches from our feet.
“Derek, listen,” she said, leaning forward, her hair falling across her face as her voice got more intense. “It’s all there: they were on the FBI’s most wanted list for a couple of years. They even escaped from prison. But the weird thing is, after all this, after they supposedly died, they were posthumously acquitted of all the charges. And that's weird, that doesn’t happen very often.”
“They were innocent?”
“I don’t know.” I stared at her, at the small crease between her eyebrows, at her usually comforting face, and I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to make her stop telling me this, because I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to know what crimes Dean had been guilty of, (murder) what he’d done and whether he’d actually done it or not, (murder) and whether - oh God - Sam was really his brother.
I didn’t know what to think. Where the fuck did you start with this?
“It’s all so… strange,” she said softly, her voice trailing off.
I bent over to pick up the mugshots again, the sheets of text that she’d printed off. Considered armed and extremely dangerous. They kept a huge-ass revolver on the nightstand in their bedroom. I’d seen it myself. That wasn’t normal behavior. Dean wasn’t a saint, I knew he wasn’t. Those things about him, the weird shit: the guns and the scars, the hunting and the look he’d sometimes get on his face, he was always… He was different. Dangerous, mysterious, and him and Sam together, they were…
Armed and extremely dangerous.
No way. This couldn’t be real. This was like a soap opera, a bad movie… Not real.
Fuck, they’d fascinated me, for months, all I’d been able to think about was Dean, and when I wasn’t thinking about him, or hell, about him and Sam, remembering that time I’d seen them making out (brothers), I’d be thinking about them, together, jerking off to the pictures and the memories in my head. And when I wasn’t jerking off thinking about Dean, I was thinking about the endless fucking mysteries: the matching scars on their hands, the weird, touch-phobic thing… And hell, just them, just the two of them, everything about them - so different, so strange, this relationship that was nothing like any I’d seen before amongst the other adults in my life, so freakishly intense, so wrapped up in one another.
Jesus Christ, they were brothers. Brothers who fucked each other, brothers who kissed and touched and were madly in love with each other, and I’d seen, I’d seen it with my own eyes, I’d seen the way they acted with each other, the way they kissed, I’d fucking fantasized about it. I’d put myself in Sam’s place, imagined Dean looking at me the way he looked at Sam, and then imagined myself between them, a Dean/Sam sandwich. An incest sandwich.
Was this why they fascinated me so much? Cause they were brothers, cause they were like that…
I wanted to laugh, this couldn’t be real.
Lucinda was talking again, soft and quiet and thoughtful, and I wasn’t really hearing her, (…if they’re brothers then naturally Dean would lie about how they met and the photo would therefore make sense because of course they would’ve known each other when Sam was a teenager…) just her voice going on and on, as if she was presenting a case in Debate class and not talking about my boss - the guy I had a fucking epic gay crush on - the same one that had been responsible for my sexual identity crisis, and just why he’d been fucking his brother for fucking years. Oh yeah, and how he used to be wanted by the FBI for murder.
“God, Lucinda! Please, just… shut up!”
She shut up, her mouth snapping closed immediately and eyes narrowing in on me.
“I’m gonna puke,” I said hopelessly, because I was… my stomach and guts churning and trying to make sense of -
“Tch, please, you’re not going to puke.”
“Lucinda -“
“People always do that on TV, but in real life, it doesn’t happen very often. You’ve got to be seriously in shock to puke.” Her voice was so calm, so matter of fact and scornful. “Just - get it together, Derek. We need to decide what to do about this.”
Why was she so fucking calm? Why wasn’t she freaking the hell out? I plucked at my t-shirt, I felt gross, rank beads of sweat collecting under my armpits, and it was all reminding me of that night in the bar, the night when I’d realized that the fuzzy, tingling feelings I’d been having every time I looked at my boss were because I was actually queer and had a ginormous gay crush on him.
But I couldn’t think about that now, because this made me just like those sad, lonely freaks who write to death row murderers and then go get married to them without ever knowing anything about them, because I obviously knew nothing about Dean because he’d been on the FBI’s Most Wanted and was crazy in love with his brother.
“What do you mean, do about this?”
“Well… We should go to the police. We should tell someone.”
“Why do we need to tell anyone?”
She gaped at me for a while, stammering out, “Derek, Sam is - he’s one of my teachers. He’s in a position of responsibility; he must’ve lied to get the job, because if the college knew about any of this, then there’s no way he’d ever have gotten the job. So he must’ve got it under false pretences.”
“So? You gonna inform on him? He’ll lose his job, he’ll get run out of town, hell, he might even get arrested. They both might… You’d ruin his fucking life.”
And then it struck me, what I was saying: they might get arrested; they might get run out of town… They’d leave. Dean would leave, and I wouldn’t work for him every day and I wouldn’t see him every day and that would be it… the end of this - end of all of it, my job, everything -
Whatever the fuck Dean had done, whether it was all true, or he was or wasn’t guilty, and he’d been pardoned, right? All those charges were dropped. And okay, yeah, so he and Sam weren’t dead and were living under assumed names but… whatever, it all didn’t matter because I still wanted him. I didn’t want him to leave, or fuck, get put in prison, no… I couldn’t. No. Just. No.
“Lucinda -“
“What?” she snapped. She was worrying her lip between her teeth, a classic Lucinda sign of inner conflict. Good. This meant she hadn’t decided anything yet, there was still time to save this, to figure things out…
“I thought you liked Sam. You told me he was, like, the best professor ever. If you did this, then you’d ruin his life, you’d get him sent to jail. Do you really want to do that? You’d really want to ruin his life?”
“I do like him,” she bit back. “Don’t look at me like that! He’s the best professor I have. He’s, like, miles better than the others, just really damn good, and I just - I don’t know, okay? I’ve been thinking about this ever since I got all this stuff and I… I haven’t decided what to do. I thought you might be able to help, but of course you’re no fucking use!” She gave me a dirty look which I returned with interest.
“I don’t think we should tell the police or the authorities,” I said forcefully. “Anyway, if we do, they’re gonna want to know how you got the information in the first place, hacking into the police database like that - that’s a crime too.”
“I know that, Jesus, I know that!” She looked pale and anxious, smoothing those fucking pages over as she replaced them in that folder.
“Fuck’s sake, Lucinda, why’d you have to look in the first place? Why’d you always do this?”
I felt so mad at her, she’d ruined everything. Why’d she have to do it? So what if Dean had made up some bullshit story about how he and Sam first met each other? So what if he couldn’t touch people and Sam spoke weird languages and they had tattoos that moved and so fucking what about all of it…
What did it even matter when they were gonna have to leave? When I wasn’t gonna see him anymore and I’d forget everything: I’d forget how he looked when he was pleased with himself and I’d forget how he’d sing along to those dumb records he liked and how he flirted with all the fucking women under forty, and hell, over forty, who came around. I’d forget. And that would be it. Over. And what would I do then? I’d go back to lying in bed at night remembering how my Dad looked when he’d gone into that coma for the last time, and I’d be thinking about that again instead of thinking how Dean had winked at me over lunch, and it would be all her fault.
“Maybe you should go now, Derek.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice and I could see her shoulders tense up at it, but I didn’t care. This was all her fault.
I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t. No way. The only thing I could think about was Dean. Dean and Sam. While that was totally not a new thing for me, (I was used to being kept awake with thoughts of Dean and various parts of his body and his voice, and Jesus Christ, his face), I wasn’t used to being kept up with thoughts like these.
I kept seeing Dean and Sam in my head. That time I’d seen them make out, the looks on their faces, the way Sam had smashed Dean up against the desk, the way he’d buried his face into Dean’s neck like he was inhaling him… The countless times I’d seen them exchange quick touches, long, lingering looks, groping each other as if they couldn’t help themselves. And all the time…
Brothers?
I’d never had a brother. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to want to fuck your brother. I had a Dad though - I’d had a Dad, and the thought of ever wanting to -
Christ, no, the thought made me so sick, like I was really gonna puke this time, fuck you, Lucinda.
Dean had mentioned a brother. In the bar the other night: I didn’t know you had a brother… and Dean’s hesitation, his quick answer, which, of course, had been a lie: uh, yeah, he died a long time ago… He was talking about Sam. Sam, his brother. And his Dad, the shit he’d said about his Dad - his and Sam’s Dad, because they had the same Dad, because they were brothers.
Jesus.
I guess my Dad used to ride us pretty hard… Cause that - now - that conjured up entirely new images, new thoughts, he was a one-off my old man… Had Dean’s Dad… had Dean and Sam’s Dad…
Fuck. It was well known that kids who went on to be abusers or sexual deviants were often victims of abuse in their childhoods. Lucinda would know, would probably be able to quote some fucking statistics on it. Had Dean and Sam learned that from their father? Had he been the one who’d started it all?
Or maybe it was just them? Just Dean and Sam and the fact they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, that was the reality I was used to seeing.
I got to work early the next day. I’d been driving myself crazy at home, unable to sleep at all, getting up early to try and watch early morning TV. In the end, I gave in. I had to face Dean at some point, might as well get it over and done with.
The only thing was, I’d gotten to work so early, the place was still shut up. I’d never been there that early, usually Dean or Gabe opened up. This morning, I was forced to sit on the back stoop with a lukewarm bottle of water. I got up to pace around, I was in the middle of staring at the pock marks on the back wall of the lot, when I heard the familiar rumble of the Impala’s engine and the sound of Dean and Sam’s voices.
I froze immediately, my skin popping gooseflesh, despite the warm weather, my stomach starting to churn with the gross-ass water I’d been forcing down. They were getting out their cars, Dean in the Impala, Sam in his car, voices going up and down, teasing each other about something. Brothers, they were brothers. I stared at them as they walked over, trying to see it: the resemblance between them. But I couldn’t see it; it was just the two of them, same as always.
“What you doin’ here so early, kiddo?”
I didn’t know what I said in response, it was as if I wasn’t really there, my ears and eyes and head, groggy and detached, the lack of sleep probably didn’t help. I watched them unlock the back door, Sam coming up behind Dean and resting his hand on the small of Dean’s back, fingers creeping under Dean’s waistband, so normal and possessive and something I’d seen him do a thousand times.
Dean said something to me when we got inside, Sam stomping off to get the coffee machine started.
I nodded blankly and said, “I need to talk to you.”
Dean stopped half way through whatever he was saying and frowned. “Huh?”
“I need to talk to you about something.” I tried to make my voice sound stronger; it was too watery in my ears, too weak. “It’s personal.”
“Well, you can talk to me anytime, dude,” said Dean with a reassuring look. I felt sick to my stomach, and gulped, nodding and trying to look away from him.
“It’s about you. Uh, you and, uh, Sam. I, uh, I know.”
The change on Dean’s face was startling, the reassuring look vanishing like a snap of fingers, replaced by nasty suspicion, his eyes hardening as he gazed at me. He didn’t blink as he opened his mouth to call out: “Sam, get your ass out here!”
“What?” Sam sounded surprised, giving me a half-smile as he came out the kitchen.
When Dean spoke to me, his voice was icy: “Tell me. What do you think you know, Derek?”
I didn’t mean for it to go down like this. I was gonna think about it, plan it, try to make a proper decision. But I should’ve known better, I’d never been able to make a proper decision in my life. So when I’d seen Dean and Sam crossing the parking lot, something cracked, and now, I was here with two pissed off, possibly murderous, wanted felons.
I took a deep breath and spoke quickly, stammering, “I, uh, I know that your real names are Sam and Dean Winchester and that you’re, uh, you’re brothers.”
Sam took a step towards me, his face icy, a matching expression like Dean’s. I wished overwhelmingly that I’d waited, that I’d at least waited for it to just be Dean, because Dean… I could deal with him, but Sam… he was fucking scary.
“That’s a bunch of crap,” he said, voice frighteningly calm.
I flinched and took a step backwards, away from him. Dean stuck out a hand, as if he was calling Sam off, keeping him away from me, and I felt a sudden burst of gratitude to him.
“It’s not just me,” I blurted out, “I’m not the only one who knows, so if you think you can do something to me -“
Dean interrupted me with his usual bark of a laugh, exchanging an incredulous look with Sam.
“Dude, you think we’re gonna do something to you?”
I hesitated, glancing between them, “I, uh, you have police records, you’ve both, uh, you’ve done some stuff.”
Dean blinked then gave a shaky laugh. “Whatever you think you’ve found out - it’s bullshit, Derek. It’s not true.”
Beside him, Sam was nodding, coming forward again until he was level with Dean. I watched his long fingers curl around Dean’s bicep, saw Dean relax into the touch, it was almost imperceptible, but I was used to watching Dean… I knew Dean and I knew then that they were lying. Dean was freaked out and Sam was reassuring him. He was lying and he wasn’t making a good job of it. I steeled myself, slowly raising my head until I was looking Sam in the face.
“You’re Sam Winchester, Sam Truman’s a fake name, and Dean is your brother, Dean Cooper - that’s another fake name. You were both wanted criminals, and then you died and for some reason, all the charges against you were dropped.”
Sam eyes narrowed on me, face blank and devoid of any tells. With Dean - I knew his tells, I’d learned them - with Sam - a whole other matter. I gulped and forced myself to continue.
“We did some diggin' and found it all out. It’s useless denying it. We have pictures, mugshots of the both of you.”
“We?” interrupted Sam, gaze piercing into me. “And who might be your partner in crime?”
“It, uh, it doesn’t matter,” I answered hastily.
Sam looked at me again then shook his head. “It’s Lucinda, isn’t it?”
“His little girlfriend?” said Dean, “Fuck, I knew that girl had a thing for you, Sammy.”
Sam laughed humorlessly. “Never mind that. Her father’s the town sheriff.”
“What?” Dean twisted to look at him. “Ah, great. Just fucking. Peachy.”
He wrenched his arm out of Sam’s grasp and stalked across the room, fist coming out to thump against the wall. I flinched and Sam bored his eyes into mine.
“So, the question is: what’re you gonna do about it?”
*******************************************************
There’s probably some sort of karma involved in the fact that one of his own students, someone he’s encouraged in good research habits, has found out about him and Dean. Lucinda Croupland is a good student, definitely one of the best in his current freshman class. She’s eager and dedicated, and has one of those minds that just doesn’t quit, insistent on finding out every last detail possible, a true researcher in the making.
Dean’s freaked. He locks up the shop and calls the rest of the guys, saying, “Shop’s closed today,” and, “Yeah, you’ll get paid”. He turns to the kid after he’s done, holds out the receiver and says, “Call your girlfriend.”
The kid - Derek - looks scared. He’s pale and trembling and not bothering to hide it. He sounds terrified on the phone, and who can blame him? The shit he must’ve dug up on them… Sam can well imagine what the FBI reports say, the list of their crimes, their previous Most Wanted status. He should’ve known. Things were too good to be true. It couldn’t continue this well, he and Dean never could catch a fucking break. It was always gonna end up like this.
They have to leave. There really isn’t any other way of getting around this. They have to leave: the house, the garage, his job… Fuck, he doesn’t want to leave his job, he loves his job. For the first time in God knows - fuck, for the first time ever, they’re happy. And okay, things aren’t perfect- with Dean’s situation, what he did to his brother - things can’t be perfect, but everything else…
“She comin’ over?” Dean asks, when the kid puts down the receiver.
He nods nervously, swallowing and shaking and looking as if he’s about to lose that huge mug of coffee he’s just gulped down.
Dean nods tightly and turns to Sam, “Shoulda known this was all too good to be true. Shoulda known it’ll all come back to bite us in the ass.” He sounds bitter, that resigned, fatalistic look back on his face, the one that makes Sam’s chest ache.
“Hey,” he lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder, squeezes gently, “it’ll be okay. We’ll be alright.”
Dean pulls away from him with a soft snort and stomps off back to the kitchen - to the kid - who’s watching Dean, that half-awestruck, half-infatuated look on his face, as usual. Sam’s caught him staring once too often to not know what’s really going under that dumb, teenage exterior, lips slightly parted and eyes glazed, locked on the spot where Dean might be caressing the nape of Sam’s neck or the spot where he’d placed his hand on Dean’s hip.
It was flattering, seeing this kid and his hopeless pining for Dean, Dean who was Sam’s, utterly and completely, and who would never be anyone else’s. He used to feel sorry for him, it can't be easy being nineteen years old and realizing you like dick, having an impossible crush on your boss. And in a way, it was pretty cool, imagining how he and Dean might appear to outsiders, to messed-up, sexually confused kids like these. Hell, they could even be something of an inspiration, giving them hope and showing them that you didn’t have to conform to some sitcom stereotype to be gay, that you could like cars and rock music and hunting and guns, all that ”real man” bullshit, and still like cock…
…But it’s his fault - this kid and his stupid obsession with Dean - his fault that they’re here right now, and Sam’s not feeling sympathetic towards him now, not feeling like an inspiration now... He watches Dean take a seat at the kitchen table and motion to the kid to do the same, which he does, clumsily, practically falling into it in his haste to obey Dean. Dean leans forward and starts talking, slowly, seriously, the kid lowers his head, nodding, listening closely to whatever Dean’s saying, fingers twisting anxiously in the too-long sleeves of his hoodie.
Dean’s not giving up, Dean doesn’t give up, and neither does he. Maybe they can salvage something from this, maybe things will be alright, maybe they won’t have to leave after all.
Dean looks up, catches his eye and cocks his head. Sam walks over and looms over the table, staring down at the kid, from this angle, all he can make out is the top of his head, his messy, dark-blond hair, his pale neck and the strip of vulnerable skin under his hairline. How fragile he looks from up above, how easy it would be to just -
He could do it. Do it to keep him and Dean safe… and he would do it. Do anything to keep Dean safe.
But Dean would never forgive him. Sam’s willing to do anything to save Dean, always has been, and Dean’s just as bad, holds his own life so cheap when it comes to Sam, but murdering innocent boys - Dean would never even consider that. The scary thing is, though, that he’s not even sure that he wouldn’t be capable of it, that he could do it, dispassionate and clinical, do it to keep Dean safe. How far would he go to keep his brother safe? The answer to that is easy; it’s branded into both of their hands, written into his blood. He remembers Dean saying the same thing to him years ago, what I wouldn’t do to protect this family, it scares me sometimes… But Sam’s not scared; he knows he could do it, if he had to.
“Derek and I have been having a little talk,” says Dean. He doesn’t look at Sam, eyes instead fixed on the top of the kid’s head. “He says he’s willing to keep our secret.”
The kid lifts his head up and nods furiously, his eyes look red, watery, the kid’s been fucking crying. Jesus.
Sam swallows down the tidal wave of revulsion, coarse and acidic in his throat. Was he really thinking… Yes, he was thinking… of killing him, and he would’ve, he could’ve. But fuck, this is a kid - this is a fucking kid, a kid called Derek with a stupid crush, and he was seriously considering…
“I won’t tell anyone,” Derek pleads. “Believe me, please. I didn’t want - all this - I didn’t want to find it all out. Lucinda is just,” he breaks off and gives a huge sigh that seems to dwarf his skinny body. “When she gets an idea in her head, she never lets it go. And all this research stuff, she loves it.”
Dean snorts at that, raises his eyes to Sam with an accusing look, “You know this is kinda your fault, dude.”
He snaps back at Dean, absurdly angry, because this - this isn’t a fucking joke. None of this is a joke.
“Christ, Dean, I was just doing my fuckin’ job!”
“Oh Lucinda thinks you’re awesome, she’ll kill me for saying this but she’s got this huge crush on you,” says Derek.
“I knew that chick was hot for you,” grunts Dean.
He presses his lips together, willing himself forcibly back to calmness, patience.
“Yeah, okay, Dean, because that’s what’s important here, some girl wantin’ to jump my bones.” He turns to Derek, “Derek. Listen. What you’re agreeing here - you’re agreeing to say nothing. To tell no one about what you and Lucinda have found out. Is that right?”
Derek widens his eyes and nods furiously some more; it makes him look even younger somehow. “Yeah, yeah, I didn’t want to - it wasn’t really me. I didn’t want to know. I don’t want… you shouldn’t leave. There’s no reason for you to leave.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” snaps Dean.
Derek flinches and darts him a look, Sam glares at Dean over the kid’s head, signaling: shut up.
“And Lucinda, will you able to convince her to keep quiet too?”
“I don’t know. She’s uh, with her dad, she can be kinda moral sometimes.”
Dean sighs loudly and slams his fist down on the stained worktop, “Fuck!” He grips the edge, his back to them, as if he’s steeling himself, as if he’s trying to learn how to breathe again. Sam watches him, feels his heart miss a beat as Dean slowly turns around. He looks defeated, painful, bitter amusement written into the lines around his eyes and mouth.
“Okay. So. We need to go. We should leave here, cause, I don’t know about you, Sam, but I’m not takin’ a chance on this chick keepin’ her mouth shut. You and me’ve been through way too much shit to spend the rest of our lives in freakin’ jail. I’m just - that’s not happening.”
“No, wait!” interrupts the kid suddenly. He looks distraught, tugging at the sleeves of his hoodie, every possible tick or gesture that signals distraught, lovesick teenager, “Don’t, don’t think about leavin’ just yet. I can talk to her, we can work this out.” He stares up at Dean with a clear, blazing look in his eyes that’s almost reverent. “Dean, I don’t want - please, you shouldn’t think about goin’. We can keep secrets. Lucinda, she’s, uh, she’s kinda been keepin’ a secret for me for a while. She’s pretty good at it.”
Sam narrows his gaze on him, the kid blushes, blinks and ducks his head.
“Derek, listen. We appreciate it, really -“
“Would’ve appreciated it a damn site more if he’d kept his nose outta our fuckin’ business, in the first place,” bites out Dean. Derek flinches again and Sam represses the urge to sigh out loud in frustration, instead glaring at his brother.
“Derek, we do appreciate your willingness to lie for us. But this is gonna get out. People are going to know, they’ll find out, they always do. And think about what you found out, not just the criminal charges, which, believe me, are not true, but the other stuff,” he pauses, swallows, sets his shoulders, meeting the kid’s eyes: “Yeah, all that is true. Dean is my older brother.”
The kid gapes at the two of them, face red and flushed, his mouth opens and closes silently for a moment, then he licks his lips, fingers twisting together. “But you - I, I’ve seen you together…”
Sam flushes and coughs, looking away, not wanting to meet Dean’s eye, but he can hear his brother’s uncomfortable laugh, see him walking out of the room and disappearing into the shop from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s a long story,” he says at last. “There are reasons, personal good reasons, that Dean and I - that we are what we are, and we’re not, we’re not proud of it. But it is what it is and I’m not going to explain any of it right now.” He sighs and sits down at the table, facing the kid. Derek stiffens, frozen in his chair; his hands white knuckled as he grips the table. “We are not the bad guys. What we do together, it’s nobody’s business but ours.”
“I know,” he stutters, “I know that, Sam, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, too late now.” He leans back in his chair, feeling a sudden burst of vindication when the kid’s face pales.
“Hey, look who I found outside.”
He looks up as Dean strolls back in, grim-faced and grim-voiced, a terrified looking Lucinda trailing after him. She glances at him, face flushing a brilliant red when he meets her eyes. He shakes his head and huffs out a breath.
“Okay, let’s talk.”
Dean goes missing after Lucinda arrives, gets into the car and drives off, leaving it all to him. He talks to the two kids for a while, they both swear, eyes shining and red stains on their cheeks, apologies on their lips and full of ardent promises, they won’t spill, swear to God, they won’t say a word.
Lucinda’s less guarded than Derek, asks him questions, like she’s interviewing him for a thesis, he’s half impressed, hell, normally he would be, gotta admire that kind of academic discipline. But it’s too late now.
He takes his car, Dougal in the backseat and the kid in shotgun with a look of pure terror on his face as he buckles up. But Sam offered and the kid was already too apologetic and shit-scared to turn him down. They pull up at the kid’s house and Sam kills the engine. He slowly removes his seatbelt and turns to look at him with a conflicted expression.
“Sam, is it, uh, can I ask you something?”
It’s only just after eleven by the time he gets home. The morning isn’t over yet, and already, their world has been turned upside down. He’s been too occupied to call the department, let them know why he hasn’t shown for the 10am Freshman Introduction to American Folklore study group, and he only remembers as he’s bumping his car up their driveway.
He pulls up at the front and heads around the side of the house. Dean’s out the back, sitting on the grass, arms spread out behind him to take his weight, face upturned towards the sun. Dougal perks up from his spot by Dean and runs up to greet Sam. He bends over and pets him distractedly, eyes only for his brother, for the way the sun dapples his body, for the sweaty gleam of his skin and the blond tinge of his hair. Dean, he thinks, my Dean.
He walks over to join him, drops down to the grass. The ground is prickly through the thin seat of his dress pants, grass sparse and dry.
Dean turns his head, squints at him, there’s a pink tinge to his nose, the sun’s pretty high, gotta be heading towards 90 degrees already, and Dean, the stupid idiot, is already burning.
“Dude, you’re burning up. Put some damn sunscreen on.”
Dean shrugs, ignores the advice. “Nah, s’just a healthy glow.”
Sam snorts, starts to loosen the tie around his neck, undo the top button of his dress shirt, it’s hot out here, he can feel the sweat begin to pool in the dip of his lower back, his armpits and behind his knees.
He watches Dean run his hands over Dougal’s fur; the dog nestled up against Dean’s side, there’s genuine affection in the way Dean’s fingers idle through his ruff, the comforting way he ruffles at Dougal’s ears. Sam thinks of how they first got him: about a year after the ritual, during a hunt in Arkansas. The family he belonged to had been eviscerated by a local coven, their bodies laid out across the kitchen floor in a hideous mockery of a bloody tableau, Dougal left cowering and whimpering in the corner when Sam and Dean burst in, too late to save anybody except the family pet. “We should take him just for the night, Sam, we’ll drop him off at a kennel tomorrow,” Dean said, and Sam didn't have the heart to gainsay him. Four years later, he still doesn't.
“You know he can come with us, Dean. There’s room in the backseat. Be all wrong without him.”
“Damn straight,” says Dean.
He turns his head to look at Sam; he’s squinting still, eyes moss green slits. “How long do you reckon they’ll keep quiet?”
“I don’t know. A week, tops. Probably less.”
“Fuckin’ teenagers.”
He sighs, “Yeah, fuckin’ teenagers.”
“Guess we should blow this joint then, Sammy.”
“Guess so.”
It’s their cue to move, but neither of them does. Dean twists his head around, peers up at the roof. “I was gonna finish that up this weekend,” he says. “Thinkin’ about starting work on the garden afterwards, hedges need cutting back, pretty fuckin’ desperately.”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees.
“Guess I don’t need to worry about that anymore.”
Sam turns his head to look at him; Dean looks wistful, lips pursed in that way that means he’s thinking things over, lines in his face more prominent than usual in the harsh sunlight. He was thinking himself of starting a herb garden: belladonna, rosemary, sage, wolfsbane, chamomile, real juicy shit, honestly, he can’t believe he didn’t think of it sooner, it seems like such a glaring oversight now. He catches Dean’s eye and feels his heart start to break.
“Dean, I don’t want to leave.” In his own head, he sounds like he’s fourteen again, that same tone of voice he used to try with Dad, Dad, please, I don’t want to leave, not this time. Can’t we stay till the end of the year? Just this time? Please, Dad…
“Sammy, we’ve got no choice.”
He chokes out a laugh, nods his head, hair flying into his eyes. “Right, yeah, yeah. You’re right.”
Neither of them says anything for a moment, then Sam speaks, not bothering to hide the yearning in his voice, the hope: “Do you think we’ll ever find somewhere like this again? That we’ll ever… be able to be, just, in one place? Do you think we’ll ever have that?”
Dean shrugs, when he turns to Sam, he’s looking hopeful, every emotion clear and present on his face, there for Sam to see, nothing hidden, and Sam loves him so, so much. “We can try.”
************************************************
Sam told me not to come into work until he or Dean called, said that the shop would be closed for the rest of the day, but they’d probably be open again tomorrow, said that it would take a couple of days for things to go back to normal. He’d been surprisingly calm in the car, and it made me feel bad for ever thinking of him as some sort of Satan worshipping nutjob, not that being on the run from the FBI and fucking your brother didn’t make you into a nutjob, because yeah, it did.
“Sam, is it, uh, can I ask you something?” I asked, after we’d pulled up outside my house. He looked surprised, then nodded okay.
“It’s… the scars on your hands, you and Dean, you have matching scars and I’ve always wondered, if they - if they mean anything?”
He looked at me for a long moment, as if thinking deeply about something, before he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, and said tightly, “Believe me, Derek, you do not want to know about that.”
“Oh, right,” I said lamely. “Uh, sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I should’ve gotten out of the car right then. The silence was seriously uncomfortable, and he was acting as if he was only just managing to hold himself in check, or hold himself together. I don’t know, it was hard to explain, but it was like there was something broken in my head too, because I didn’t move either. I had this feeling, this gut, deep-down feeling, that this was the last chance I’d have to ever talk to either Sam or Dean, and there was so much, so many things about them that I’d been thinking about and obsessing about for so long.
And today… today had just been so much. When I’d got up this morning, I hadn’t even thought about telling Dean what we’d discovered, still trying to process it all, and now I’d gone and done it, and Sam knew, and Lucinda had been dragged into it, though seriously, whole thing was her fucking fault, and now... ,
…Now what exactly? What was going to happen next?
“I, I’m sorry. We shouldn’t, you know, we shouldn’t have gone, like, snooping into your backgrounds like that. It was… not right.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” he said tiredly. “Anyway, if you hadn’t, someone else would’ve. We should’ve thought - nothing stays buried forever.”
We were silent for what felt like a long moment, though it probably wasn’t that long at all. I stared at his hands, still on the wheel, still at ten to two, the twisted purple scar. I was never going to know.
“Well, uh, thanks for the ride,” I said at last. “I’ll, uh, see you around.”
I waited at home for the phone call, but none came, and really, I wasn’t surprised. Eventually, Uncle Lou called, sounding gruff and pissed, telling me that they’d left, “Fuckin’ gone for good. I knew there was something wrong with those two faggots.”
I wasn’t surprised about that either.
Bobby Singer turned up a few days later, told us that the business was for sale, that Dean and Sam wouldn’t be back and that whoever bought it would decide whether or not we kept our jobs. In the end, it was bought by Tom Phelan who ran the rival garage at the other end of town, he’d apparently wanted to get a hold of the place back before, when Old Man McGregor had owned it, except Dean and Sam had gotten in first.
I borrowed my Mom’s car and drove to their house on one of the days I knew Bobby’d be there, and sure enough, he was, helping a couple of guys pack their stuff into the back of a truck. The place looked deserted, though it was kinda hard to tell the difference, it had never looked particularly well-looked after.
Bobby saw me and raised his hand in greeting as I pulled up. He was pretty friendly, so either Dean and Sam hadn’t told him about my part in their sudden departure or he just didn’t give a shit.
“So, when are you leaving?” I asked.
He shrugged and adjusted his hat. “Soon as I’m done. Tomorrow most likely.”
I nodded, feeling my stomach twist, chest screwing up and getting tight. “And that’s - that’s it. They’re gone? For good?”
Bobby nodded, “That’s right.”
I could feel the tears threatening, my eyes were all hot and damp and burning and I had a huge-ass lump in the back of my throat. I sort of nodded and waved goodbye and got the hell out of there.
After about a mile, I pulled over to search through the box of CD’s in the glove compartment until I found the one I was looking for: Neil Young’s Harvest. We’d played it at my Dad’s funeral, it was his favorite album, he’d loved Neil Young. I hadn’t been able to listen to it since then, but today felt like the right time to start again.
Epilogue