World's Forgotten Boys, Chapter 24/28 - (Sam/Dean) - NC-17
Fic title: World's Forgotten Boys (link to the full verse via tags)
Chapter 24/28
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17 for this one
Word Count: 9,901
Summary: SPN AU. Ross Christopher Winchester knows three things to be true: that his father, John, is a hero, that he's going to be the best hunter in the goddamn world, and that his two older brothers are in love with each other. An AU-version of Season 1 where The Winchester Boys mean Dean and Sam and Ross, where John is still missing, where Mary and Jess are still crispy-fried, and where Dean and Sam are still obsessed with one another...
Previous Chapters Link to the Masterpost
A/N Many thanks to the lovely endeni for doing this awesome banner. Special thanks also to andreth47 for being such an awesome beta and picking out those niggling britishisms. You know you rock BB <3
Chapter 24
It’s after midnight by the time the bar shuts and Angela joins them in the booth. By that point they’re both feeling more relaxed and magnanimous, thanks to a few beers, a couple of games of pool and some seriously good burgers. Fact is, Dean’s finding it hard to resent someone who can produce a burger that damn good. No wonder Dad was here all the freaking time.
She brings the rest of the bottle of single malt with her and Sam slides around to join him on his side of the booth. She watches the two of them with this troubled but knowing look in her eyes as she pours them three generous measures.
“I met John back in 1984,” she tells them, speaking in slow, conversational tones. “He was huntin’ round these parts. I can’t remember what, a ghost, a spirit I think. He came to see my grandmother, she was a well-known psychic, and hunters used to come by all the time to consult with her. My folks ran a bar in Odessa back then and my grandmother lived with us in the apartment above the bar.” She takes a sip of her drink before continuing, her voice soft and low.
“I remember I was tendin’ bar the night John walked in. I’m embarrassed to think about it now, but the moment I saw him, I decided I wanted him. I was used to gettin’ what I wanted, I was prom queen at my high school and you know what that does to a girl’s ego.” She breaks off for a second to roll her eyes in a self-deprecating way. “Anyway, like you probably guessed, I got my way. John and I hooked up a coupla times and I got pregnant, and that would’ve been it, if it wasn’t for the baby - for Ross. But John wanted to be involved; he wanted the baby to grow up knowing who his daddy was. So for the next few years, he used to come by when he could. I used to say to him ‘bout bringin’ you two with him when he visited - ‘bout y’all gettin’ to meet your little brother - but he wanted to keep y’all separate. I don’t know why, I guess he had his reasons.”
He had his reasons, Dean thinks, the words echoing in his head. Dad always had his reasons. There’s no better epitaph for Dad than that: Here lies John Winchester, he had his reasons.
“So, for the next four years, that was how things went, John would swing by, visit with Ross, and it wasn’t perfect, but compared to what happened next.” - She licks her lips, reaches to refill her glass, as if stealing herself for some big reveal. “It was Valentine’s Day, 1989, John was supposed to be here, he told me he’d come by and take me out. ‘Cept he didn’t show, he was late, and instead - It came instead. The demon.”
“Yellow Eyes?” Sam whispers, leaning forward in the booth, eyes glittering as they bore into Angela’s face.
She shakes her head slowly, not looking at him. “No, not Azazel. This was another demon; it said Azazel was its father. It came and it forced itself into me, and well, I don’t remember a whole lot after that.”
“You were possessed?” Sam breathes out.
Dean takes a big swig of his drink, the warming liquid doing little to stop the hairs on the back of his neck from prickling up, the memories flooding back: Dad’s face with the malevolent yellow eyes, Dad’s big familiar hands on his body, Dad’s tongue invading his mouth...
He shivers, forces the images away. He draws closer to Sam, feels Sam press back into him, curl his big foot around Dean’s ankle under the table, twining them together.
“For two years,” she says. “From February 14th, 1989 to March 1st, 1991. I ain’t gonna forget those dates anytime soon. But during that time - nothing, I barely knew what was going on. I wasn’t the one driving. Most of the time it was like blank, big chunks of time - weeks and months - just gone from my memory. But I’d come to occasionally, and the demon would talk with me. The sonofabitch liked to talk, it liked the sound of its own voice and it got bored. So it would tell me things, things about it - about Azazel - about their little demon family, about Azazel’s plans for me and all the children like me. It said I was special, we were all special, we were Azazel’s special kids.” Dean feels Sam flinch beside him, and he presses his shoulder into Sam’s: his turn to give the reassurance, the two of them lined up from shoulder to toe, practically one long body line.
“The bastard never told me anything I wanted to know, it never told me what happened to my son, never told me about my parents. I didn’t find out what happened to Ross until - until after, after the demon got out of me. A hunter caught me - caught it doin’ something - something bad. Luckily for me, he figured out I was possessed, and he knew what he was doin’. He exorcised the demon from me and took me to a hospital. He told me I was the only person he’d ever met who had survived possession, every other demon he’d exorcised, the human had died. He told me I was lucky.” She breaks off again, the corner of her mouth curling up into a cynical shape. “Lucky,” she repeats. “I was lucky - my folks were dead and my baby was gone, but I was lucky!”
“Your parents died?” Dean interrupts.
She nods, eyes dark and bitter. “Yup, that’s right, baby. There was a fire, same night the demon took me, our place burned to the ground, they both died. And Ross - the police told me one of the girls workin’ that night had gotten him out before the fire caught, before my mom and dad...” She blinks, fingers white-knuckled around her whiskey glass. “It was the one thing I was grateful for - he got out before - before. He didn’t see it; he didn’t see his grandpa and grandma die. I tried lookin’ for him, God, I looked everywhere, I asked everywhere, but he was gone. The police told me there’d been a warrant issued for his kidnapping. He’d been snatched from one of the foster homes just before Christmas but they had no leads, they had no idea where he was. I just - God, I hoped and prayed it was John - it was the kind of thing he would do, but I had no way of knowing for sure, and I was so terrified. I was so scared it was a demon; a demon had gotten my boy. I was a mess for a long fuckin’ time, I felt so certain I was doomed - I knew that one day, one of those sonsofbitches would be back to take me again, so I drank and I took drugs and I slept with guys and I didn’t give a crap what happened to me or how I lived. But then I got pregnant with George.” She breaks off, her hand shaking slightly as she raises the glass to her lips again. She sets it down on the table once more and blinks, her mouth shifting up into a pained but wistful smile.
“I had to clean up then, when I knew I was carryin’ another child. I knew I had to be strong again. I’d lost Ross but I was determined nothing would take my new baby away from me - not child services and not another fuckin’ demon.” She blows out a breath. “That was when John found me. Always with the bad timing, your daddy. Six months pregnant and in fuckin’ rehab and in walks John, cool and collected and larger than life. God, I was so fuckin’ embarrassed, but I was so damn pleased to see him. He told me he had Ross. It was the best thing anyone ever said to me. I wanted to see him - but I was - I was a mess, boys. I was fucked-up and strung out and I wasn’t the same person I’d been - been before - that person who’d been his momma. I’d changed. What that sonofabitch did to me, what I’d done afterwards, I was weak and ashamed and I just - I couldn’t see him.” She gulps, tears starting to fringe her lashes once more. She reaches for a napkin from the dispenser, brings it to her eyes.
“And John - John told me that Ross was doin’ great, he was so smart and confident and happy, and he thought I was dead! My baby thought I was dead. I’d been gone from his life for so damn long, and I just - I couldn’t fuck up his life like that. John - he - he said things would be better for Ross if we waited till he was older. He told me Ross loved bein’ a Winchester, he wanted to be a hunter and he loved being with his brothers and he - just - he adored his big brother -“ she turns to look at Dean, her lips curling upwards into a soft smile, eyes wet and puffy - “I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now, baby, but your daddy was proud of you. I know he was. He said to me that you were lookin’ after my baby while he was there. I was worried, you bein’ just a kid yourself, but John said you were the best person for the job. He told me, ‘Dean will protect him to the very last drop of strength in his body.’”
“Dad - Dad said that?” Sam breathes, and Dean can hear the crack in Sammy’s voice, hear the emotion in the catch of his breath.
She nods insistently, “He did. He did, Sam, I ain’t never forgotten those words ‘cause they gave me such comfort - knowing that my boy had his big brother lookin’ out for him.”
Dean holds his breath, and slowly Sam turns his head, looks at him, familiar big Sammy eyes soft and shining with tears. He looks so happy, so fucking loving that Dean can’t breathe for it, can’t breathe for just how much his brother loves him. And maybe she’s bullshitting - saying what she thinks he wants to hear - ‘cause he’s seen her work that bar well enough to see that she knows exactly the right words to say to a depressed-looking customer to put a smile back on their face and some coins in her tip jar. But, then again, maybe - perhaps - she’s not lying. Maybe Dad really thought of him like that. Maybe Dad really believed that he was the best person to protect Ross.
Still, that was a long time ago. Before Sam and him. Before Sam and him and Ross. Before every fuckup of the past two years. Before Dad knew exactly how depraved his eldest son was, how low he’d fallen. His father’s last words to him couldn’t be more different from the flowery shit Angela’s spouting now; Dad’s last wish was for him to stay away from Sam and Ross for good. Dad had been pretty unequivocal about that. And Angela… what a better way to get him and Sammy on her side than with some tender platitudes from Dad.
But Sam’s still smiling at him, affectionate and starry-eyed, and Dean’s not going to let Sammy down. He can put on a show for Sam’s benefit, make him think that Dad’s words from beyond the grave have touched him too.
“I, yeah. I was just obeying orders,” he says.
She smiles sadly at him. “I know, Dean. And I wanna thank you for what you did for Ross. I know John, and I doubt that he ever told you that himself.”
Sam snorts loudly. “You’d be right. Dad was never much with the praise or gratitude.” He sighs, then smiles at Angela. Obviously Sam at least is mollified by Angela’s praise and gratitude, and in a way, it’s touching, what an easy mark his brother is. Anyone says anything complimentary about Dean (anything not sexually-related of course) and that person is immediately Sam’s newest favorite person.
“Listen, you don’t have to tell us everything,” Sam says to her. “I know telling us all this - remembering everything that happened to you - it can’t be easy.” He’s using that soft soothing Sammy tone that works so well on jittery witnesses, eyes all liquid and sympathetic.
“Yeah, yeah I do,” she says. “Y’all should know why - why I didn’t go after Ross.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to us,” Sam continues.
“Don’t I? Boys, c’mon, I’m psychic, I know exactly what y’all think of me.”
“You’re psychic?” Dean blurts out. “You can read our minds?”
Shit, is his first thought, his second: well, duh. Obviously this was how she knew about Dad’s death. How she figured out him and Sam, though admittedly, that doesn’t take much figuring out, not when the two of them are practically sitting in each other’s laps right now.
Her mouth twitches a little, as if she’s holding back her amusement. “I can’t read minds, Dean, it doesn't work like that. I guess you’d call it, like, an enhanced reading of body-language? I can read emotions, pick up on people’s feelings, I know when they’re telling lies. In this line of work -“ she waves a hand to encompass the dim lit bar around them - “it’s mighty useful. I can lend a sympathetic ear, I know what the customer wants to hear, and I always know when an employee’s had his hand in the till.” She looks up and glances between the two of them: “You two - I had y’all figured out from the moment you walked in here.”
Dean snorts, exchanges a quick glance with Sam. “Sweetheart, everybody figures me and Sammy out. You don’t need psychic powers for that.”
Sam rolls his eyes, jostles him with his elbow. “Dean.”
“What, dude? You know it’s true. We got nothin’ to be ashamed of.”
“That’s your opinion.” He turns to Angela. “I apologize for my brother. He can be a jerk sometimes.”
“Apology accepted,” she says with a smile. “But don’t worry on that front, Sam. It ain’t my place to judge you or Dean. Y’all love each other, that much is obvious. We can’t help who we fall in love with.”
Yeah, amen to that, he thinks grimly. Not that he would change things now. A few years ago maybe, he might’ve done anything back then to be rid of the insidious, terrifying love Sam inspired in him, to be the kind of brother Sam and Ross deserved, the kind of son Dad wanted, and not the fucked-up incestuous freak that he was. He had considered things: spells, curses, cleansing rituals, anything to take away the wrongness - the wrong love - that was eating away at him. But right now he’s grateful that he never had the balls to do anything. He wouldn’t change him and Sammy now. Sam is the one good thing he has left; he’s going to hang onto Sam if it kills him.
“You said,” Sam starts, “you said that you and me are both Azazel’s special kids, but you haven’t said what that means.”
She hesitates for a moment before she answers, and then she nods, says: “Okay. John didn’t want y’all to know ‘bout any of this. He thought Sam would be safer, better protected that way. But he’s gone now, and I never agreed with him anyway. So, okay, I’ll tell you both what I know. The demon who rode me, it explained it all to me. Azazel chose kids. I don’t know how or what his motives were for doing it, but he got into our nurseries when we were babies and he fed us his blood -“
“He did what?” Dean interrupts.
She turns to look at him, her expression calm and matter-of fact. “He bled into our mouths, honey. He cut his palm and fed us the blood, his own demon blood. He infected us with it. Both Sam and me and all the other children he chose, we still have that demon blood inside us. It’s what gives us our abilities. It’s what made me strong enough to survive possession for so long.”
“I - I have demon blood inside me?” Sam whispers, and Dean can feel him trembling beside him, the shivers passing through their pressed together bodies. He slides his hand over to Sam’s, curls his fingers around his brother’s wrist.
“Yes,” says Angela with that same calm tone. “Both of us do. It doesn't mean - it ain’t necessarily a bad thing, baby. You gotta believe that. It’s not the blood - the blood doesn't control us. The blood doesn’t make us who we are, good or evil or whatever. You gotta know that. John told me ‘bout that kid y’all encountered in Michigan, that Max Miller. Azazel did exactly the same thing to him as he did to us. But that kid chose to use his abilities in that way, and by the sounds of things, the poor bastard was driven to it. You and me and all the other kids, the ones John found and the ones we don’t know about, the ones that have no idea ‘bout any of this, we all have the same choice. Sure, we can exploit our powers, use them to do bad shit or get rich quick or whatever, but we don’t have to do that. The demon’s dead. There’s no one around to make that choice for us, except us, Sam.”
Dean flicks a quick sideways glance at his brother. Sam’s nodding his head, his eyes watery and pink, lips trembling, staring at her like she’s the answer to some big fucking prayer. And in a way she is. ‘Cause she’s right, she’s absolutely fucking right, and it’s exactly what he’s been wanting to put into words and shove into Sam’s face ever since the freaky psychic shit started up, ever since that fucking Max Miller kid fucked up Sam’s head. Of course it holds much more weight coming from her. She’s one of them, she’s like Sam, and she can reassure Sammy in ways that Dean never could. Hell, she’s reassuring him right now.
“This is exactly what I’ve been sayin’!” Dean says. “Like I said, man, it’s not whatcha got, it’s whatcha do with it that counts.”
He feels Sam snort feebly, elbow him in the ribs. “Shut up.”
“I’m just sayin’, dude. And hey, you got no fuckin’ excuse, ‘cause you got me, remember? I’m looking out for you, man. You ain’t going darkside on my watch. Not you or Ross.”
“Ross?” Angela says, her eyes narrowing in on them. “What do you mean Ross?”
“Ross has psychic powers too,” says Dean. “Didn’t you know that?”
She swallows, blinking as she stares at the two of them. “No, no, I didn’t know that. What powers?”
He exchanges another quick glance with Sam; sees Sam swallow, look at him as if to say: I’ll take this one…
“We share visions,” Sam says. “When I get a vision, he gets it too. We see exactly the same things, except he seems to see it more clearly than me. And we - we’re connected. We can sense each other sometimes. Not all the time, but when we’re in danger and sometimes at other times, other, uh, emotional times. Not every time, but sometimes.”
Dean resists the urge to snicker or raise an eyebrow, because he’s pretty fucking sure what emotional times Sammy is talking about. And Jesus, is that for real? Do Sam and Ross - is it like having a double orgasm? Do they feel each other come? Because if so, the two of them have seriously been holding out on him.
“Ross’s powers, though. Is he - did the demon -“ Sam starts to say.
“No, no way,” Angela cuts him off. “No - that just - no way! I would know if the demon got to him. There’s no damn way the demonic sonofabitch who took me would’ve kept that little tidbit to itself. It would’ve mentioned it; if they’d gotten to my baby, they would’ve tortured me with that.” She sighs agitatedly, reaches to refill their glasses again. They’re nearing the end of the bottle, Dean notes; they’ve almost drunk the entire bottle between the three of them. “His abilities must come from somewhere else.”
“You said your grandmother was psychic,” Dean points out. “Maybe he’s just, like, inherited it? Like from her or from you? Makes as much sense as fuckin’ demon blood.”
Angela purses her lips. “Maybe,” she says. “Thing is - without seeing him myself, without meeting him, I’m just makin’ guesses.”
The sentence lies there in the air between them, awkward and hanging. Dean can see the argument behind it: Angela’s got this freaky psychic mojo, she could probably “read” Ross or whatever, figure out what his abilities are, what they mean, where the fuck they came from. But for her to see Ross, to meet him -
It would mean a face to face meeting, a heart-wrenching family reunion. And right now, he’s not ready to let that happen. Not yet. Not until they know more about her, not until they’re sure that she’s not gonna hurt Ross.
And even then, if they figure out she’s for real, that she’s on their side. Is it still in Ross’s best interests to tell him about her? How would he feel in Ross’s place? Dad’s betrayal - knowing now what he and Sammy know about Dad and Angela and George and this perfect little family - his own feelings of betrayal would be nothing compared to what Ross would feel, forever denied and written out of this family that should’ve been his. A little brother and a mom of his own.
Ross will end up hurt either way. And while Dean can’t fault Dad for stealing Ross from that care home, how Dad kept all this from Ross for so long, denying him his mom for all those years - he can’t understand why Dad would do that.
Unless there was a reason Dad was keeping Ross away from Angela; a solid concrete reason other than Dad’s unfathomable, stubborn perversity.
Angela shares out the last dregs of the bottle between the three of them. They drink in silence for a couple of minutes; Angela’s suggestion for meeting Ross still hanging unanswered in the air between them. Dean takes a sip from his glass; he feels suddenly exhausted, his brain fuzzy with all the alcohol and the all the information that’s been dumped on them over the last few hours, everything they have to take in. They’d hoped that Angela might be the one with the answers they were looking for, but boy, has she ever delivered.
He can practically hear Sam’s brain whirring away next to him, Sammy trying to make sense of everything, angsting over everything they’ve learned: Sam has demon blood in him; Dad had a secret other family; Ross has a little brother and a mom who are both alive and living in Texas; and perhaps, the weirdest thing out of everything they’ve heard today: Dad had a sort-of step-kid he used to take on fishing trips and to baseball games.
Finally Angela drains the last of her glass, puts it back on the table with a quiet chink.
“I don’t know ‘bout you boys, but I’m beat. I’mma go to bed,” she says, sliding out of the booth.
This is obviously their cue to get the fuck up to bed too as she’s unlikely to let them stay down here while she’s upstairs, so Dean nods, savors the last couple of mouthfuls of whiskey. “Yeah, yeah, bed sounds good. Sam, you ready to hit the sack?”
Sam raises his head, blinks blearily at him. “Yeah, okay, Dean.”
They follow Angela back up the stairs again, Sam swaying into him a little as they round the corner at the top of the stairs. Sammy’s drunk, he realizes with a tug of amusement and affection, and sure enough when they get into their room, Sam face-plants on the bed with a heavy ouff of breath. Dean perches on the edge of the bed beside his brother’s dangling legs and pats his ass.
“You gonna get undressed?”
Sam heaves a sigh and rolls onto his back to blink up at up. “You undress me? Please, Dean.”
Dean makes a face at him. “You ain’t five anymore, man. You can undress yourself.”
“But it’s better when you do it, it’s, like, all hot and sexy.” He smiles gummily at Dean, flutters his eyelashes.
“Jesus, how fuckin’ drunk are you?”
Sam blinks, lip catching between his teeth. “Not enough, not nearly enough,” he murmurs. His expression crumples up, playfulness vanishing as the more familiar anxiety settles over his face, making him look lost and worried once more. “Dean,” he says. He reaches up, catches his hand in Dean’s shirt. “You’ll stop me if I go evil, won’t you? You won’t let me become - become like Max Miller? You won’t let me kill people? Promise me, Dean.”
Dean stares down into his brother’s pleading expression, his big wounded eyes and trembling lips. “That won’t happen, Sammy,” he says, trying to put all his assurance, all his belief into the words.
“But Dean - Dean - it might - you heard what she said - demon blood, Dean. I have demon blood in me! I can - I didn’t tell you this, but I can do shit. Me and Ross - when we were in that cabin. I - I used him, Dean; I used him to get free of the ropes. I, like, I drained him. I took his energy or whatever to get us out of there. I was so fuckin’ scared for you, that sonofabitch was torturing you and I couldn’t bear it, I had to save you! I could’ve hurt him, Dean. I could’ve hurt Ross, but I didn’t care - I -“
“Sammy, Sammy, listen to me.” He leans down, placing his palm gently over Sam’s mouth, shutting him up. Sam blinks at him, eyes huge and watery with anguished drunken tears. “It’s never gonna happen. And Ross was okay, you didn’t hurt him. I know you; you would kill yourself before you ever hurt him deliberately.”
He shuffles onto the bed, shifting closer to Sam, limbs heavy and leaden with tiredness and whiskey. He slides his palm from Sam’s mouth, clammy with Sam’s breath and tears, and brushes Sam’s hair back from his forehead, pressing his face to Sam’s shoulder, his lips inches from Sam’s ear.
“I’m lookin’ out for you, man. Always gonna be lookin’ out for you. And you heard what she said - the demon blood doesn’t matter - it’s you that matters. The person you are, the choices you make. Max Miller had no one, and he was weak. Sam, you got me and you got littlest bro and you’re strong, you’re nothing like him.”
He feels Sam sigh out, feels him roll onto his side, slide his arms around Dean’s back and pull him in until they’re pressed up together.
“Sorry,” Sam whispers.
“Don’t be,” Dean tells him. “Lot to take in. I’m still trying to take it all in. I mean - her and Dad…”
“I know,” says Sam. He opens his eyes again, looks at Dean for a long moment, then he leans in and kisses him on the lips.
Dean opens his mouth to the kiss, lets Sam in as he always does, lets Sam’s tongue explore his mouth.
Sam groans and pushes Dean onto his back, rolling with him, until he’s on top, blanketing Dean from head to foot. Dean feels his dick start to take an interest, start to swell up, Sam’s own dick already a hard line pressing down insistently into his stomach. He’s vaguely surprised that he can still get it up, that after all the whiskey and tears and revelations, they can still do this. Sex should be the last thing on their minds. But this is Sam, and his body is a pushover when it comes to Sam. Dean is a pushover when it comes to Sam, and anyway, he needs this, needs this one thing - this one constant reaffirming thing, needs to reassure himself that he still has this.
“Dean…” Sam moans, pulling his mouth away from Dean’s lips and tracing kisses over Dean’s jaw and down his neck, tugging at the buttons on his shirt.
Dean lies back and lets Sam run the show; lets Sam pull his shirt open. He watches Sam swearing and muttering under his breath when his fumbling drunken fingers falter and slide over the intricate little buttons. He stifles the laugh when Sam growls impatiently and just wrenches hulk-style at the shirt, fabric ripping and buttons flying. And then Sam’s mouth is on his bare chest, tonguing at his nipples and pressing kisses along the lines of his pectorals. His dick is tenting his jeans, and this time he gives Sam some help with the zipper and buttons, yanks open his fly and lets his cock bob out through the slit in his boxers. Sam groans and bends to lick at the head, suck it into his mouth. Dean brings his hand to his mouth and bites hard on his fingers, muffling his moans and groans as Sam goes to work on his cock.
Sam raises his head and licks his lips, looks up Dean’s body with glazed, unfocussed eyes. “What d’you want, Dean? What d’you wanna do?”
“Sex,” Dean says immediately, “want you to fuck me.”
They’ve had a lot of practice keeping quiet when they fuck, all those years of thin motel room walls and Dad and Ross on the other side. They have tricks, they have methods: Sam pushes his fingers into Dean’s mouth while he buries his face into Dean’s neck and back, moans and pants muffled by Dean’s skin, noises reverberating up and down his spine. They’re on the floor, not trusting the bed and the squeaky mattress and the wooden headboard. Dean’s sure he’s getting rug burn on his knees and Sam’s not exactly taking it slow as he pounds into him from behind, but Dean needs this too much to give into the discomfort and pain, he needs to have Sam inside him.
Sam comes first, spills half inside him and half over his ass and thighs, and then Sam’s pushing him down to the floor, rolling him onto his back and kneeling over him like an enormous looming thing. Sam sucks him into mouth once more and Dean curses and arches up, cock banging against the back of his brother’s throat. Some distant part of his brain is registering Sam’s come leaking out of him and onto Angela’s guest room’s carpet, but the rest of his brain is too busy being short-circuited by Sam’s awesome head-giving skills and lack of gag reflex to even give a fuck about his dead dad’s mistress’s goddamn carpet.
He comes with a barely stifled yelp, Sam’s amazing lips and tongue chugging him down like he’s just another shot of that quality single-malt. Sam looks up at him, raises one smug eyebrow, mouth still stuffed full of Dean’s cock; he holds Dean's gaze as he smirks and swallows convulsively, licking his lips ostentatiously when he finally lets Dean's cock go. It slaps back up against Dean's belly, sticky red and gleaming with saliva, and Sam leans down and presses a kiss to the softening head, gently licking up the last few spots of spooge with his clever pink tongue.
Sam sighs and sits back on his haunches, swiping at his lips with the back of his hand, his eyes bright and smile wide. “Man, I feel so much better now.”
Dean snickers and reaches up with one hand; he wraps it around the back of his brother’s neck, and he pulls him down into a kiss.
*****************************
Dean’s woken up by the buzzing of his cell phone on the nightstand. He groans and fumbles for it, the stupid thing slipping away from him and falling to the floor with a soft thud. He swears and slings one leg out of bed, reaching and stretching for it. Of course by this point, the damn thing’s gone to voicemail, beeping annoyingly at him. He picks it up and squints at the display.
ONE MISSED CALL: ROSS CELL
Shit. He glances at Sam; his brother’s still sacked out on the bed, face smushed into the pillow, hair crazy and sticking up all over, cheeks flushed pink with sleep and alcohol, most definitely still dead to the world. He slides both legs out of bed and gets to his feet. He hesitates, remembering where they are, what they were doing last night, just whose place they’re staying in right now. He puts his phone down onto the nightstand and pulls on some clean boxers and a t-shirt. He knows he’s buying time, he knows he’s going to call Ross back - he’s utterly incapable of not calling Ross back - but the gnawing guilt in his belly, the lies and omissions that he’s going to have to tell (or not tell) his little brother are making him nervous.
Fuck, he hates having to lie to his brothers. He fucking loathes it. He feels a sudden twinge of resentment against Dad. Dad who’s the one responsible for putting him in this position; Dad who kept all this shit from them - from Ross - and now, for the time being, until they get more answers, Dean has no other option than to keep up Dad’s lies.
He takes a breath and dials Ross’s number.
Littlest Bro answers on the first ring. “Hey, did I wake you up?” He sounds cheerful and obnoxious and, come on, the little shit totally knows he woke Dean up.
“No,” lies Dean, because he might be feeling guilty, but a chance to tease and fuck with Ross is something he’s never going to pass up. It’s his older brother prerogative.
“Oh right, so I totally caught you and Sammy in the middle of doin’ it? Am I right, or am I right?”
“You’re totally right. In fact, my fist is half way up Sam’s asshole as we speak. I’m takin’ this call one handed, dude. If you hear any moans and groans then it’s Sammy gettin’ off on a good fisting.”
“Ugh, gross,” says Ross, and Dean can totally picture his little brother’s face right now, the frown and pout, the little half-smile. He chuckles, hears Ross snort.
“You’re fuckin’ with me, Dean. He’s probably just asleep, right?”
Dean casts Sam another look, smiles fondly. “Yeah. We, uh, we kinda had a lot to drink last night.”
“Pathetic!” scoffs Ross. “Tell him he’s a pathetic lightweight when he wakes up.”
“Yeah, okay.” He pauses, takes a seat on the armchair in the corner of the room, watches Sam’s chest rise and fall, the sheet slipping down to reveal the pale pink nubs of his nipples, his broad muscled chest, the outline of his soft cock lying against the curve of his thigh, perfectly visible through the thin sheet. If he were doing anything other than talking to Ross right now, he’d be getting his cock out, jerking off to the picture that Sam makes: naked and gorgeous and spread out for the taking.
“So, are you, like, in the middle of a hunt? Where are you guys?” Ross asks.
“Texas,” Dean answers. “But the job was a bust.”
“You gonna head back to Bobby’s then?”
“Guess so, gotta work on my girl.” He licks his lips, fingers cramping uncomfortably, his entire body feeling awkward and unhappy from lying to his little brother, though the hangover’s definitely not helping. He changes the subject quickly: “So, uh, what about you? What you doin’?”
“Workin’,” says Ross proudly. “I’ve got, like, a real job now, Deano, I’m, like, a serious and productive member of society.”
“Yeah, right!”
“No - no - seriously, man!” Ross protests. “I’m totally for real. And get this; Sarah, like, really listens to my suggestions for the business. She thinks I’ve got good ideas and shit.”
“Oh yeah, like what? Extended lunch breaks? Nap time?”
“No,” says Ross patiently, and Dean can practically hear him rolling his eyes. “No, I ain’t you, man. No. I got her to agree to let me go over all the new shit that comes in with the EMF so we know if something’s, like, cursed or whatever when it comes in. So we don’t end up with another creepy-ass killer painting.”
That’s my boy, he thinks, the twinge of missing-Ross, the gnawing guilt and loss in his belly rendering him momentarily speechless. He swallows, hears Ross hesitate, say: “Dean, you there?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, man,” he says. He rubs his eyes, the tension headache that seems to have plagued him ever since - ever since Dad - is back again, admittedly, probably helped on by all the alcohol last night. “That’s a good idea, dude. Good thinking. You know what they say: you can take the hunter away from the hunt but you can’t take the hunt away from the hunter.”
“Really?” Ross asks, sounding dubious. “I ain’t never heard that before.”
“Okay, maybe I just invented it.”
Ross laughs, and Dean smiles despite himself, fond and painful. He licks his lips, his eyes starting to burn, lump starting to gnaw at the back of his throat.
“So, you’re okay then? You gotta tell me the truth, littlest bro. You’re doin’ okay? You know we’ll come get you, any time you need us, whatever we’re doin’. You know that, right?”
There’s a pause and then Ross says quietly, “I know that.”
“Good,” says Dean. He swallows, looks up; Sam’s awake and is blinking at him, watching him from the bed, his eyes full of concern. Dean meets his gaze for a second, then presses his lips together, says: “I - uh - I gotta go, man. But you be good.”
“I can be good,” says Ross. “You know that, Dean.” There’s an innuendo in there, and Dean’s chest tightens at it: want and guilt warring with each other. He licks his lips, says: “And you call whenever you like.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“See you then.”
Ross says goodbye and the line goes dead. Dean sighs and slowly thumbs off the phone, drops it to his lap. He smoothes his hand over his chin, feels the scrape of three or four days’ stubble, bows his head, staring down at the pattern of his faded boxers - he’s sure he’s seen Ross wearing these - perhaps they were even originally bought for Ross. Whatever, it’s pretty irrelevant.
“You okay?” Sam asks.
He shrugs, doesn’t look up. “I fuckin’ hate it, Sam. I hate lying to him.”
“I know, Dean, I know you do. But for the moment, it’s the best thing to do. We’ll tell him when the time is right. We’re not Dad; we’re not gonna keep him in the dark forever.”
Right, sure, Dean thinks, but when will we tell him? When is going to be a good time? Whenever we tell him, however we do it, he’s going to hate us, resent us and Dad for keeping in the dark. There’s never going to be a good time. But he nods to his brother, forces his mouth into a smile when his eyes meet Sam’s.
“Okay, let’s get dressed. I don’t know about you, man, but I’m ready to blow this joint,” Sam says.
Dean blows out a breath, nods in agreement. “God, yes.”
*****************************
Ross hangs up the phone and slides it into his back pocket. He can feel the stupid tears fringing at his eyes and he wipes them away irritably. He’s acting like a fucking chick for fuck’s sake. But the urge to get his phone out again, to press REDIAL and just say: “Yes, come get me, Dean,” is so overwhelming. Jesus, he’s such a pussy.
He glances down at the homemade EMF meter in his right hand. It’s the one Dean made about four or five years ago, that first fall Sam was at Stanford, he made it from this old Sony Walkman. He’s made a couple more since, also from Sony Walkmen, but Ross has always liked this first one the best, this one has always been like “his”. It’s old and battered and if he thinks about it, he could probably remember every single scrape and dent it’s gotten and where they came from and what they were hunting when they all happened. His memory is totally awesome like that.
Dean made one for Dad too, like a special custom-Dad-made one, and Dean had given it to Dad as a Christmas gift that same Sam-less year. Dad had been impressed, thanked Dean with that genuine Dad smile, and Dean had been so overcome by it he’d looked like he was about to burst into tears. Of course he’d hidden it well, it would’ve totally ruined the moment if Dad had seen Dean weeping over a freaking Christmas present, but Ross had gotten it. Dad had never been into the holiday thing, had never seemed to like any of the shit any of them ever bought for him, so for him to actually like his Christmas present was a major deal. Hell, Ross had been emotional just looking at Dean’s happy disbelieving face.
He buries the thoughts of Dad ruthlessly, biting his tongue until it hurts, until his brain is only thinking: ouchthatfuckinghurts, instead of: DadDadDadDadDad…
“Hey, you done, baby?”
He turns around at Sarah’s call. She’s leaning around the door, one hand wrapped around the doorframe.
“Yeah. We’re good to go.” He’s proud of how steady his voice his, how unshaky he sounds.
“Nothing evil lurking?” she says, smiling at him.
He grins back her, and it’s almost real, almost genuine. “Nah, we’re cool.”
“Good. I’ll open up.”
At lunchtime they head to the diner a couple of blocks over, leaving Mandy and Kevin to run the shop. Sarah’s talking on her blackberry to a customer as they stroll down the street, trying to arrange delivery of this ridiculously expense Chinese vase. It’s fall, getting towards the end of September. Fall only ever means one thing in their family - that in a few weeks it will be November 2nd again. It’s a date that Ross has always dreaded, always getting all worried and fucked-up in anticipation, wondering how Dad and Dean are gonna react this time round. Last year, it’d been even worse: Sammy mourning his poor dead girl - the first year anniversary of her death. Of course this year, everything is different and he wonders how Sam will act this year, now that he has Dean all to himself and the demon’s dead and they’ve gotten revenge. Knowing Sam he’ll be just as wracked with guilt as usual, though it probably won’t stop him and Dean from fucking the shit out of each other.
They reach the diner and place their usual orders with Janine, who shoots the shit for ages about her kid who’s just started college, how she’s been, like, on the phone every freaking night blubbing about wanting to come back home. Sarah’s polite, responding to her, though Ross can tell she’s itching for her to leave them alone. After Janine finally leaves to go do her fucking job, Sarah takes a sip on her diet coke, then reaches down and takes the newspaper out of her handbag.
“I wasn’t sure whether or not to show you this, but - “ she nibbles at her bottom lip. “It’s just weird. Thought it might be something you would know about.”
He’s instantly alert again, coming out of the coma Janine’s boring-ass conversation just put him in. He sits up in his seat and holds his hand out for the paper. She passes it to him and he unfolds it. She leans over, points to an article about half-way down page four. “There: a story about cattle mutilations, about something draining cows’ blood up near Glens Falls. Now, I’ve seen that X-Files episode, I know that chupacabras sometimes feed on cattle like that.”
“It’s not a chupacabra,” he tells her. “This is way far north for them. They tend to hang around Mexico and the southern states.”
“Oh, right. So you think it could be something else?”
He reads the rest of the article, brow furrowing. “Yeah. I should investigate it.” His response is like an instinct, like something he can’t help. Something weird shows up in the paper - they investigate. It’s what they do; it’s what he’s always done.
“We could call Sam and Dean?” she suggests.
He hesitates, then shakes his head. He kinda doesn’t want to call his brothers; he likes the idea of figuring this shit out on his own. He’s old enough to do it, and it seems kinda pathetic that he’s been a hunter for so damn long and he’s never hunted solo before. And he likes the idea of telling them all about it afterwards - about some hunt he’s managed on his own - even more.
“Nah, I can handle it,” he says.
“Okay, then I’m gonna help you,” Sarah states, a smile spreading onto her face.
*****************************
He’s feeling conflicted as Sarah drives them further upstate in her Prius, they’re hunting in a Prius, it’s, like, unforgiveable and he knows he should be embarrassed, but whatever. He also knows that he should’ve forced her to stay behind, it ain’t safe, but he really likes her company, and he has to admit when she walks out of the sheriff station and later when she comes out of the town’s lamest dive bar with the info they need, he’s actually pretty fucking pleased he brought her along, he’s always sucked at the information-gathering shit.
“Vampires? Doesn’t sound much like vampires to me,” he says after she tells him what she’s learned.
She shrugs. “You know more about this stuff than me, but the bartender said there was a large group of young folks hanging around an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Apparently they party late every night, have very pale skin and wear a lot of stone-washed denim. That sounds just like that group of vampires you told me about in Colorado.”
The vampires in Colorado… that hunt was when Dad showed up, the one where they got the Colt, the Colt that he used to kill the demon, to kill Dad -
No, he’s not thinking about that, never gonna think about that, and most definitely not right now, not when they’re in a middle of a hunt, when he and Sarah are in the middle of a hunt.
“If it is vampires then we should call Sam and Dean,” he tells her ‘cause he might be game for a hunt, but he ain’t stupid and there’s no freaking way he’s letting Sarah get involved in taking out a nest of vamps.
She nods in agreement. “Okay.”
They’re about to walk back across the parking lot towards her car when a guy’s voice calls out: “Winchester!”
Ross freezes, glances at Sarah, then spins around. A black guy is approaching them from the other side of the lot. He’s unfamiliar, but from the almost predatory way he’s stalking towards them, not to mention the huge-ass machete in his left hand, it’s totally obvious he’s a hunter.
“Hey, I knew it was one of you,” the guy says. He has very straight white teeth and when he smiles at the two of them they glint in the streetlight. “I knew your father. He was a great hunter. You look just like him.”
Ross swallows, nods at him. “Uh, thanks, man. But - who are you? I don’t recognize you.”
The guy laughs, deep and rich and somehow also really kinda chilling. “You’re the youngest one, aren’t you?”
Ross tilts his chin up, narrows his eyes at him. “Yeah. And?”
“The last time I saw you, you were a scrawny little freshman. About so high.” He raises his hand to chest height and chuckles again. “Me and your Dad we crossed paths a coupla times. He was pretty handy, your old man, I was sad to hear he’d passed. Always bad to lose a good hunter.”
How the fuck does he even know about Dad? Ross thinks desperately, flicking another glance at Sarah. She’s watching the guy warily, her eyes narrowed in on him like he’s one of those people who come into the gallery and browse for the entire freaking day and then don’t buy anything.
“Thanks,” he says finally. “But you still ain’t told me your name?”
“Oh, haven’t I?” He holds out his hand - the one not carrying the massive machete. “I’m Gordon, Gordon Walker. And these fangs are mine -“ he raises the machete, gestures around with it - “I’m taking care of this nest. You don’t need to worry about it.”
He hesitates for a second, then shrugs. If this guy wants to get freaking territorial about a hunt then whatever, that’s fine by him, he’s gonna let him get on with it. And hell, it ain’t like the dude don’t look capable, the dude looks scarily capable, that weirdo fanatical gleam in his eyes giving him the look of someone who’s been on the job way too fucking long.
“Okay then,” he says. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, but I won’t need it,” the guy says.
Riiiiight. Okay then. Ross nods at him, a stiff goodbye sort of a nod; he puts one hand on Sarah’s shoulder and they walk back towards the car.
“Who the hell was he?” Sarah hisses when they’re out of earshot.
“I have no freakin’ idea,” he says. “I don’t remember meeting him when I was a kid. If I even did.”
“He was - he gave me the chills,” she says with a shudder.
“Hmm, yeah,” he agrees.
The motel is only a few blocks away and they get there in less than five minutes. He’s fiddling with the lock, Sarah beside him when she gasps out, grabs onto him with one hand. He jumps, spins around. There’s a chick - a dark-haired, gothy, vaguely attractive chick - standing right by Sarah’s shoulder. Neither of them heard her approach, she’s either super stealthy or he is seriously out of practice. Either way, Dad would’ve, like, seriously had his ass for it.
“Hi, I’m Lenore,” says the chick, holding out her hand. “I was hoping we could have a cup of coffee and a chat.”
Lenore, it turns out, is a vampire, one of the vampires currently living at the abandoned farm just out of town. Except she’s nothing like all the vamps Ross has met and killed before. She’s a good vampire, a vegetarian one. Sarah is charmed by her, and easily agrees to Lenore’s pleas to be left alone, for her and her family to be allowed to keep drinking cattle blood in peace.
“I think that sounds fair,” Sarah says, “don’t you think, baby?”
He shrugs. He pretty much agrees, if this vampire chick is for real, if all she drinks is cow blood, then yeah, he’s cool with the idea of letting her and her clan live. He’s not a freaking monster, he only kills shit that’s actually evil, this chick drinks green tea for Christ’s sake, she smells of patchouli oil. She looks more like an anemic hippie than one of the undead.
“Yeah, I’m cool with that,” he tells her, “but it ain’t us you gotta worry about, sweetheart. It’s - uh - “ he turns to Sarah - “ what was that creepy dude’s name?”
“Gordon Walker,” says Sarah.
The change on Lenore’s face is startling, the blood drains from it, and man, Ross thought she was pale before, but Jesus - now she really does look like a freaking corpse. She lifts her cup to her lips, her hands visibly shaking.
“That man - that man is a monster,” she says, her voice crackling with emotion. “He persecutes my kind.”
“To be fair, most of your kind do eat people,” Ross says reasonably.
“But we don’t. Not for years, and yet - that man.” She shivers, then seems to pull herself together. She reaches into a pocket of her flared jeans, brings out a blackberry. “I must warn my family. Once again, we will have to leave, to flee this man who persecutes us.” She might be a vegetarian vampire but she’s definitely got the vampiric flair for the dramatic. Though, hang on, wait a sec… is she seriously using a blackberry to warn her clan? What’s she gonna do - email them?
Seriously, this hunt is weird. He can’t wait to call Dean and tell him all about it.
She puts down the blackberry when she’s done and turns to them. “I want to thank you both - for the warning, and for being so understanding. It’s nice to know that not all hunters are like that man.”
Ross nods at her, gives her a fake smile of reassurance. If he’s, like, totally honest with himself, he’s not sure he’s doing the right thing. He doesn’t know what Dad would do, she is a vampire after all, she is technically a monster. But she’s not a bad vampire, and there’s gotta be a difference. Maybe he should give Dean a quick call, check and see what he would do in his place. But there isn’t really any time and Lenore is already getting to her feet, throwing dollar bills onto the table to cover the cost of her green tea and their coffees.
They follow her out into the parking lot, accompany her to her pick-up.
“Winchester!”
The shout has them all spinning around. It’s Gordon Walker again, striding across the parking lot towards them, machete in hand. Christ, does the guy have nothing better to do than stalk after them like he’s Michael freaking Myers?
Ross steps forward, pushes Sarah and Lenore behind him. “Get into the car,” he tells them.
“Ross -“ Sarah says. She looks worried, blinking and looking between him and Gordon.
“Now!” he snaps at her.
He turns back around, hearing the pick-up’s doors open and close - good, they’re both inside. Gordon has the machete raised, baring his teeth into a snarl, his eyes glowing fanatically.
Jesus, this guy is freaking deranged.
But, whatever, the dude is shit out of luck if he thinks he’s getting past Ross.
“You’re on their side? They’re monsters, Ross, monsters!” Gordon snarls. “Just let me to the bitch, let me kill her!”
“No,” he says firmly, and he sticks out his fist and punches Gordon in the face with all the strength he can muster.
The pain flares up his knuckles, and he winces, hisses out loud, but there’s no time to feel it, no time because Gordon is springing back up again, tossing aside his machete with a roar, spitting blood as he charges at Ross. Ross kicks out, catches him on the shin, darting away to avoid Gordon’s slamming fist. Gordon bellows in frustration and comes at him again; once more, Ross manages to neatly sidestep him, this time letting his leg trail. Gordon stumbles over it and Ross spins around, kicks him firmly on the hip, watches him tumble and sprawl to the ground. He uses the advantage to jump the guy, like, literally leap on him, grinding him into the grit and gravel of the parking lot, following up with his fists and feet.
God, it feels good. It feels so fucking good. And it’s so damn familiar. All those years of sparring with Sam and Dean, of smacking the shit out of each other, of smacking the shit out of monsters or douchebags in bars. He loves it when it’s good and dirty like this. Nothing like a fast and furious fist-fight, nothing like getting the upper hand and knowing that you’re winning, that you’re the one on top, that they ain’t gonna get you back ‘cause you’re too damn good.
He pulls back his fist and punches Gordon hard in the face, feeling the guy’s nose break under it, blood and snot on his knuckles, bone splintering and teeth cracking. Gordon is bellowing with rage and pain, but he can’t make any headway, he can’t get away, Ross has him pinned down. He can’t believe how easily he’s winning this, how much better he is, he’s never felt this wild, this intense, he’s beating the ever-loving shit out of this crazy seasoned hunter.
It’s fantastic.
“Ross! Ross! Baby, no, stop it! Please, Ross! You’ve beaten him! Ross, please! You’re gonna kill him!”
Sarah’s voice drifts through to his consciousness and dimly, at the back of his mind, he registers her hand on his arm, tugging at his sleeve, trying to pull him away. “C’mon, baby, it’s okay. You won.”
He pants for breath, chest heaving up and down, winded and breathless and knuckles throbbing. Not just his knuckles but his hands and his wrists and his arms, all the way up his arms to his shoulders. He aches all over. He stumbles to his feet, aiming one last kick at Gordon’s prostrate form.
She pulls him back, wrapping her arms around his waist and scuffing through the gravel. He stares down at the ground, where Gordon’s curled himself up into a fetal position, moaning pitifully. Jesus, he really did beat the shit out of him, he really did do it.
His heart thuds so hard he can’t hear anything, barely even noticing Sarah wrapped around him, forcing him away from the scene, pushing him back towards her car.
He blinks, feels blood on his lips, against his tongue, hot tears in his eyes. Dean, he thinks, Dean, where are you? He wants Dean to step forward, look pleased, impressed with him, take him into his arms and press his lips to his forehead, whisper: “Good job, littlest bro, you did good,” into his ear.
“Let’s go,” she says quietly, “c’mon, let’s go.”
She drives him back to New Paltz. It’s only a couple of hours; she’s silent the entire way, her expression tight and drawn. He hunkers down into the passenger seat, cradling his throbbing hand, feeling the tears roll silently down his face. He’s not even sure why he’s crying, he has no fucking idea why. He feels so blank and empty and lost. He has no idea what he’s doing with his life, what he’s doing here, in a fucking Prius, with a pretty girl driving him back to her fancy apartment.
He misses Dean and he misses Sammy and his father is dead.
Sarah guides him inside her apartment like he’s a fucking blind man, like he’s not even capable anymore. She sits him down at the kitchen table, gets out her first aid kit. She bathes his cuts and bruises and poor fucked-up hands with ointment; she bandages up his throbbing hand. She forces him to take some painkillers and sleeping tablets.
“You need to sleep, baby,” she tells him. She smiles sadly at him and leans in to press a kiss to his cheek; her own cheeks are wet with tears and he doesn’t know if they’re hers or his.
“It’ll be better in the morning,” she says.
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter 24/28
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17 for this one
Word Count: 9,901
Summary: SPN AU. Ross Christopher Winchester knows three things to be true: that his father, John, is a hero, that he's going to be the best hunter in the goddamn world, and that his two older brothers are in love with each other. An AU-version of Season 1 where The Winchester Boys mean Dean and Sam and Ross, where John is still missing, where Mary and Jess are still crispy-fried, and where Dean and Sam are still obsessed with one another...
Previous Chapters Link to the Masterpost
A/N Many thanks to the lovely endeni for doing this awesome banner. Special thanks also to andreth47 for being such an awesome beta and picking out those niggling britishisms. You know you rock BB <3
Chapter 24
It’s after midnight by the time the bar shuts and Angela joins them in the booth. By that point they’re both feeling more relaxed and magnanimous, thanks to a few beers, a couple of games of pool and some seriously good burgers. Fact is, Dean’s finding it hard to resent someone who can produce a burger that damn good. No wonder Dad was here all the freaking time.
She brings the rest of the bottle of single malt with her and Sam slides around to join him on his side of the booth. She watches the two of them with this troubled but knowing look in her eyes as she pours them three generous measures.
“I met John back in 1984,” she tells them, speaking in slow, conversational tones. “He was huntin’ round these parts. I can’t remember what, a ghost, a spirit I think. He came to see my grandmother, she was a well-known psychic, and hunters used to come by all the time to consult with her. My folks ran a bar in Odessa back then and my grandmother lived with us in the apartment above the bar.” She takes a sip of her drink before continuing, her voice soft and low.
“I remember I was tendin’ bar the night John walked in. I’m embarrassed to think about it now, but the moment I saw him, I decided I wanted him. I was used to gettin’ what I wanted, I was prom queen at my high school and you know what that does to a girl’s ego.” She breaks off for a second to roll her eyes in a self-deprecating way. “Anyway, like you probably guessed, I got my way. John and I hooked up a coupla times and I got pregnant, and that would’ve been it, if it wasn’t for the baby - for Ross. But John wanted to be involved; he wanted the baby to grow up knowing who his daddy was. So for the next few years, he used to come by when he could. I used to say to him ‘bout bringin’ you two with him when he visited - ‘bout y’all gettin’ to meet your little brother - but he wanted to keep y’all separate. I don’t know why, I guess he had his reasons.”
He had his reasons, Dean thinks, the words echoing in his head. Dad always had his reasons. There’s no better epitaph for Dad than that: Here lies John Winchester, he had his reasons.
“So, for the next four years, that was how things went, John would swing by, visit with Ross, and it wasn’t perfect, but compared to what happened next.” - She licks her lips, reaches to refill her glass, as if stealing herself for some big reveal. “It was Valentine’s Day, 1989, John was supposed to be here, he told me he’d come by and take me out. ‘Cept he didn’t show, he was late, and instead - It came instead. The demon.”
“Yellow Eyes?” Sam whispers, leaning forward in the booth, eyes glittering as they bore into Angela’s face.
She shakes her head slowly, not looking at him. “No, not Azazel. This was another demon; it said Azazel was its father. It came and it forced itself into me, and well, I don’t remember a whole lot after that.”
“You were possessed?” Sam breathes out.
Dean takes a big swig of his drink, the warming liquid doing little to stop the hairs on the back of his neck from prickling up, the memories flooding back: Dad’s face with the malevolent yellow eyes, Dad’s big familiar hands on his body, Dad’s tongue invading his mouth...
He shivers, forces the images away. He draws closer to Sam, feels Sam press back into him, curl his big foot around Dean’s ankle under the table, twining them together.
“For two years,” she says. “From February 14th, 1989 to March 1st, 1991. I ain’t gonna forget those dates anytime soon. But during that time - nothing, I barely knew what was going on. I wasn’t the one driving. Most of the time it was like blank, big chunks of time - weeks and months - just gone from my memory. But I’d come to occasionally, and the demon would talk with me. The sonofabitch liked to talk, it liked the sound of its own voice and it got bored. So it would tell me things, things about it - about Azazel - about their little demon family, about Azazel’s plans for me and all the children like me. It said I was special, we were all special, we were Azazel’s special kids.” Dean feels Sam flinch beside him, and he presses his shoulder into Sam’s: his turn to give the reassurance, the two of them lined up from shoulder to toe, practically one long body line.
“The bastard never told me anything I wanted to know, it never told me what happened to my son, never told me about my parents. I didn’t find out what happened to Ross until - until after, after the demon got out of me. A hunter caught me - caught it doin’ something - something bad. Luckily for me, he figured out I was possessed, and he knew what he was doin’. He exorcised the demon from me and took me to a hospital. He told me I was the only person he’d ever met who had survived possession, every other demon he’d exorcised, the human had died. He told me I was lucky.” She breaks off again, the corner of her mouth curling up into a cynical shape. “Lucky,” she repeats. “I was lucky - my folks were dead and my baby was gone, but I was lucky!”
“Your parents died?” Dean interrupts.
She nods, eyes dark and bitter. “Yup, that’s right, baby. There was a fire, same night the demon took me, our place burned to the ground, they both died. And Ross - the police told me one of the girls workin’ that night had gotten him out before the fire caught, before my mom and dad...” She blinks, fingers white-knuckled around her whiskey glass. “It was the one thing I was grateful for - he got out before - before. He didn’t see it; he didn’t see his grandpa and grandma die. I tried lookin’ for him, God, I looked everywhere, I asked everywhere, but he was gone. The police told me there’d been a warrant issued for his kidnapping. He’d been snatched from one of the foster homes just before Christmas but they had no leads, they had no idea where he was. I just - God, I hoped and prayed it was John - it was the kind of thing he would do, but I had no way of knowing for sure, and I was so terrified. I was so scared it was a demon; a demon had gotten my boy. I was a mess for a long fuckin’ time, I felt so certain I was doomed - I knew that one day, one of those sonsofbitches would be back to take me again, so I drank and I took drugs and I slept with guys and I didn’t give a crap what happened to me or how I lived. But then I got pregnant with George.” She breaks off, her hand shaking slightly as she raises the glass to her lips again. She sets it down on the table once more and blinks, her mouth shifting up into a pained but wistful smile.
“I had to clean up then, when I knew I was carryin’ another child. I knew I had to be strong again. I’d lost Ross but I was determined nothing would take my new baby away from me - not child services and not another fuckin’ demon.” She blows out a breath. “That was when John found me. Always with the bad timing, your daddy. Six months pregnant and in fuckin’ rehab and in walks John, cool and collected and larger than life. God, I was so fuckin’ embarrassed, but I was so damn pleased to see him. He told me he had Ross. It was the best thing anyone ever said to me. I wanted to see him - but I was - I was a mess, boys. I was fucked-up and strung out and I wasn’t the same person I’d been - been before - that person who’d been his momma. I’d changed. What that sonofabitch did to me, what I’d done afterwards, I was weak and ashamed and I just - I couldn’t see him.” She gulps, tears starting to fringe her lashes once more. She reaches for a napkin from the dispenser, brings it to her eyes.
“And John - John told me that Ross was doin’ great, he was so smart and confident and happy, and he thought I was dead! My baby thought I was dead. I’d been gone from his life for so damn long, and I just - I couldn’t fuck up his life like that. John - he - he said things would be better for Ross if we waited till he was older. He told me Ross loved bein’ a Winchester, he wanted to be a hunter and he loved being with his brothers and he - just - he adored his big brother -“ she turns to look at Dean, her lips curling upwards into a soft smile, eyes wet and puffy - “I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now, baby, but your daddy was proud of you. I know he was. He said to me that you were lookin’ after my baby while he was there. I was worried, you bein’ just a kid yourself, but John said you were the best person for the job. He told me, ‘Dean will protect him to the very last drop of strength in his body.’”
“Dad - Dad said that?” Sam breathes, and Dean can hear the crack in Sammy’s voice, hear the emotion in the catch of his breath.
She nods insistently, “He did. He did, Sam, I ain’t never forgotten those words ‘cause they gave me such comfort - knowing that my boy had his big brother lookin’ out for him.”
Dean holds his breath, and slowly Sam turns his head, looks at him, familiar big Sammy eyes soft and shining with tears. He looks so happy, so fucking loving that Dean can’t breathe for it, can’t breathe for just how much his brother loves him. And maybe she’s bullshitting - saying what she thinks he wants to hear - ‘cause he’s seen her work that bar well enough to see that she knows exactly the right words to say to a depressed-looking customer to put a smile back on their face and some coins in her tip jar. But, then again, maybe - perhaps - she’s not lying. Maybe Dad really thought of him like that. Maybe Dad really believed that he was the best person to protect Ross.
Still, that was a long time ago. Before Sam and him. Before Sam and him and Ross. Before every fuckup of the past two years. Before Dad knew exactly how depraved his eldest son was, how low he’d fallen. His father’s last words to him couldn’t be more different from the flowery shit Angela’s spouting now; Dad’s last wish was for him to stay away from Sam and Ross for good. Dad had been pretty unequivocal about that. And Angela… what a better way to get him and Sammy on her side than with some tender platitudes from Dad.
But Sam’s still smiling at him, affectionate and starry-eyed, and Dean’s not going to let Sammy down. He can put on a show for Sam’s benefit, make him think that Dad’s words from beyond the grave have touched him too.
“I, yeah. I was just obeying orders,” he says.
She smiles sadly at him. “I know, Dean. And I wanna thank you for what you did for Ross. I know John, and I doubt that he ever told you that himself.”
Sam snorts loudly. “You’d be right. Dad was never much with the praise or gratitude.” He sighs, then smiles at Angela. Obviously Sam at least is mollified by Angela’s praise and gratitude, and in a way, it’s touching, what an easy mark his brother is. Anyone says anything complimentary about Dean (anything not sexually-related of course) and that person is immediately Sam’s newest favorite person.
“Listen, you don’t have to tell us everything,” Sam says to her. “I know telling us all this - remembering everything that happened to you - it can’t be easy.” He’s using that soft soothing Sammy tone that works so well on jittery witnesses, eyes all liquid and sympathetic.
“Yeah, yeah I do,” she says. “Y’all should know why - why I didn’t go after Ross.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to us,” Sam continues.
“Don’t I? Boys, c’mon, I’m psychic, I know exactly what y’all think of me.”
“You’re psychic?” Dean blurts out. “You can read our minds?”
Shit, is his first thought, his second: well, duh. Obviously this was how she knew about Dad’s death. How she figured out him and Sam, though admittedly, that doesn’t take much figuring out, not when the two of them are practically sitting in each other’s laps right now.
Her mouth twitches a little, as if she’s holding back her amusement. “I can’t read minds, Dean, it doesn't work like that. I guess you’d call it, like, an enhanced reading of body-language? I can read emotions, pick up on people’s feelings, I know when they’re telling lies. In this line of work -“ she waves a hand to encompass the dim lit bar around them - “it’s mighty useful. I can lend a sympathetic ear, I know what the customer wants to hear, and I always know when an employee’s had his hand in the till.” She looks up and glances between the two of them: “You two - I had y’all figured out from the moment you walked in here.”
Dean snorts, exchanges a quick glance with Sam. “Sweetheart, everybody figures me and Sammy out. You don’t need psychic powers for that.”
Sam rolls his eyes, jostles him with his elbow. “Dean.”
“What, dude? You know it’s true. We got nothin’ to be ashamed of.”
“That’s your opinion.” He turns to Angela. “I apologize for my brother. He can be a jerk sometimes.”
“Apology accepted,” she says with a smile. “But don’t worry on that front, Sam. It ain’t my place to judge you or Dean. Y’all love each other, that much is obvious. We can’t help who we fall in love with.”
Yeah, amen to that, he thinks grimly. Not that he would change things now. A few years ago maybe, he might’ve done anything back then to be rid of the insidious, terrifying love Sam inspired in him, to be the kind of brother Sam and Ross deserved, the kind of son Dad wanted, and not the fucked-up incestuous freak that he was. He had considered things: spells, curses, cleansing rituals, anything to take away the wrongness - the wrong love - that was eating away at him. But right now he’s grateful that he never had the balls to do anything. He wouldn’t change him and Sammy now. Sam is the one good thing he has left; he’s going to hang onto Sam if it kills him.
“You said,” Sam starts, “you said that you and me are both Azazel’s special kids, but you haven’t said what that means.”
She hesitates for a moment before she answers, and then she nods, says: “Okay. John didn’t want y’all to know ‘bout any of this. He thought Sam would be safer, better protected that way. But he’s gone now, and I never agreed with him anyway. So, okay, I’ll tell you both what I know. The demon who rode me, it explained it all to me. Azazel chose kids. I don’t know how or what his motives were for doing it, but he got into our nurseries when we were babies and he fed us his blood -“
“He did what?” Dean interrupts.
She turns to look at him, her expression calm and matter-of fact. “He bled into our mouths, honey. He cut his palm and fed us the blood, his own demon blood. He infected us with it. Both Sam and me and all the other children he chose, we still have that demon blood inside us. It’s what gives us our abilities. It’s what made me strong enough to survive possession for so long.”
“I - I have demon blood inside me?” Sam whispers, and Dean can feel him trembling beside him, the shivers passing through their pressed together bodies. He slides his hand over to Sam’s, curls his fingers around his brother’s wrist.
“Yes,” says Angela with that same calm tone. “Both of us do. It doesn't mean - it ain’t necessarily a bad thing, baby. You gotta believe that. It’s not the blood - the blood doesn't control us. The blood doesn’t make us who we are, good or evil or whatever. You gotta know that. John told me ‘bout that kid y’all encountered in Michigan, that Max Miller. Azazel did exactly the same thing to him as he did to us. But that kid chose to use his abilities in that way, and by the sounds of things, the poor bastard was driven to it. You and me and all the other kids, the ones John found and the ones we don’t know about, the ones that have no idea ‘bout any of this, we all have the same choice. Sure, we can exploit our powers, use them to do bad shit or get rich quick or whatever, but we don’t have to do that. The demon’s dead. There’s no one around to make that choice for us, except us, Sam.”
Dean flicks a quick sideways glance at his brother. Sam’s nodding his head, his eyes watery and pink, lips trembling, staring at her like she’s the answer to some big fucking prayer. And in a way she is. ‘Cause she’s right, she’s absolutely fucking right, and it’s exactly what he’s been wanting to put into words and shove into Sam’s face ever since the freaky psychic shit started up, ever since that fucking Max Miller kid fucked up Sam’s head. Of course it holds much more weight coming from her. She’s one of them, she’s like Sam, and she can reassure Sammy in ways that Dean never could. Hell, she’s reassuring him right now.
“This is exactly what I’ve been sayin’!” Dean says. “Like I said, man, it’s not whatcha got, it’s whatcha do with it that counts.”
He feels Sam snort feebly, elbow him in the ribs. “Shut up.”
“I’m just sayin’, dude. And hey, you got no fuckin’ excuse, ‘cause you got me, remember? I’m looking out for you, man. You ain’t going darkside on my watch. Not you or Ross.”
“Ross?” Angela says, her eyes narrowing in on them. “What do you mean Ross?”
“Ross has psychic powers too,” says Dean. “Didn’t you know that?”
She swallows, blinking as she stares at the two of them. “No, no, I didn’t know that. What powers?”
He exchanges another quick glance with Sam; sees Sam swallow, look at him as if to say: I’ll take this one…
“We share visions,” Sam says. “When I get a vision, he gets it too. We see exactly the same things, except he seems to see it more clearly than me. And we - we’re connected. We can sense each other sometimes. Not all the time, but when we’re in danger and sometimes at other times, other, uh, emotional times. Not every time, but sometimes.”
Dean resists the urge to snicker or raise an eyebrow, because he’s pretty fucking sure what emotional times Sammy is talking about. And Jesus, is that for real? Do Sam and Ross - is it like having a double orgasm? Do they feel each other come? Because if so, the two of them have seriously been holding out on him.
“Ross’s powers, though. Is he - did the demon -“ Sam starts to say.
“No, no way,” Angela cuts him off. “No - that just - no way! I would know if the demon got to him. There’s no damn way the demonic sonofabitch who took me would’ve kept that little tidbit to itself. It would’ve mentioned it; if they’d gotten to my baby, they would’ve tortured me with that.” She sighs agitatedly, reaches to refill their glasses again. They’re nearing the end of the bottle, Dean notes; they’ve almost drunk the entire bottle between the three of them. “His abilities must come from somewhere else.”
“You said your grandmother was psychic,” Dean points out. “Maybe he’s just, like, inherited it? Like from her or from you? Makes as much sense as fuckin’ demon blood.”
Angela purses her lips. “Maybe,” she says. “Thing is - without seeing him myself, without meeting him, I’m just makin’ guesses.”
The sentence lies there in the air between them, awkward and hanging. Dean can see the argument behind it: Angela’s got this freaky psychic mojo, she could probably “read” Ross or whatever, figure out what his abilities are, what they mean, where the fuck they came from. But for her to see Ross, to meet him -
It would mean a face to face meeting, a heart-wrenching family reunion. And right now, he’s not ready to let that happen. Not yet. Not until they know more about her, not until they’re sure that she’s not gonna hurt Ross.
And even then, if they figure out she’s for real, that she’s on their side. Is it still in Ross’s best interests to tell him about her? How would he feel in Ross’s place? Dad’s betrayal - knowing now what he and Sammy know about Dad and Angela and George and this perfect little family - his own feelings of betrayal would be nothing compared to what Ross would feel, forever denied and written out of this family that should’ve been his. A little brother and a mom of his own.
Ross will end up hurt either way. And while Dean can’t fault Dad for stealing Ross from that care home, how Dad kept all this from Ross for so long, denying him his mom for all those years - he can’t understand why Dad would do that.
Unless there was a reason Dad was keeping Ross away from Angela; a solid concrete reason other than Dad’s unfathomable, stubborn perversity.
Angela shares out the last dregs of the bottle between the three of them. They drink in silence for a couple of minutes; Angela’s suggestion for meeting Ross still hanging unanswered in the air between them. Dean takes a sip from his glass; he feels suddenly exhausted, his brain fuzzy with all the alcohol and the all the information that’s been dumped on them over the last few hours, everything they have to take in. They’d hoped that Angela might be the one with the answers they were looking for, but boy, has she ever delivered.
He can practically hear Sam’s brain whirring away next to him, Sammy trying to make sense of everything, angsting over everything they’ve learned: Sam has demon blood in him; Dad had a secret other family; Ross has a little brother and a mom who are both alive and living in Texas; and perhaps, the weirdest thing out of everything they’ve heard today: Dad had a sort-of step-kid he used to take on fishing trips and to baseball games.
Finally Angela drains the last of her glass, puts it back on the table with a quiet chink.
“I don’t know ‘bout you boys, but I’m beat. I’mma go to bed,” she says, sliding out of the booth.
This is obviously their cue to get the fuck up to bed too as she’s unlikely to let them stay down here while she’s upstairs, so Dean nods, savors the last couple of mouthfuls of whiskey. “Yeah, yeah, bed sounds good. Sam, you ready to hit the sack?”
Sam raises his head, blinks blearily at him. “Yeah, okay, Dean.”
They follow Angela back up the stairs again, Sam swaying into him a little as they round the corner at the top of the stairs. Sammy’s drunk, he realizes with a tug of amusement and affection, and sure enough when they get into their room, Sam face-plants on the bed with a heavy ouff of breath. Dean perches on the edge of the bed beside his brother’s dangling legs and pats his ass.
“You gonna get undressed?”
Sam heaves a sigh and rolls onto his back to blink up at up. “You undress me? Please, Dean.”
Dean makes a face at him. “You ain’t five anymore, man. You can undress yourself.”
“But it’s better when you do it, it’s, like, all hot and sexy.” He smiles gummily at Dean, flutters his eyelashes.
“Jesus, how fuckin’ drunk are you?”
Sam blinks, lip catching between his teeth. “Not enough, not nearly enough,” he murmurs. His expression crumples up, playfulness vanishing as the more familiar anxiety settles over his face, making him look lost and worried once more. “Dean,” he says. He reaches up, catches his hand in Dean’s shirt. “You’ll stop me if I go evil, won’t you? You won’t let me become - become like Max Miller? You won’t let me kill people? Promise me, Dean.”
Dean stares down into his brother’s pleading expression, his big wounded eyes and trembling lips. “That won’t happen, Sammy,” he says, trying to put all his assurance, all his belief into the words.
“But Dean - Dean - it might - you heard what she said - demon blood, Dean. I have demon blood in me! I can - I didn’t tell you this, but I can do shit. Me and Ross - when we were in that cabin. I - I used him, Dean; I used him to get free of the ropes. I, like, I drained him. I took his energy or whatever to get us out of there. I was so fuckin’ scared for you, that sonofabitch was torturing you and I couldn’t bear it, I had to save you! I could’ve hurt him, Dean. I could’ve hurt Ross, but I didn’t care - I -“
“Sammy, Sammy, listen to me.” He leans down, placing his palm gently over Sam’s mouth, shutting him up. Sam blinks at him, eyes huge and watery with anguished drunken tears. “It’s never gonna happen. And Ross was okay, you didn’t hurt him. I know you; you would kill yourself before you ever hurt him deliberately.”
He shuffles onto the bed, shifting closer to Sam, limbs heavy and leaden with tiredness and whiskey. He slides his palm from Sam’s mouth, clammy with Sam’s breath and tears, and brushes Sam’s hair back from his forehead, pressing his face to Sam’s shoulder, his lips inches from Sam’s ear.
“I’m lookin’ out for you, man. Always gonna be lookin’ out for you. And you heard what she said - the demon blood doesn’t matter - it’s you that matters. The person you are, the choices you make. Max Miller had no one, and he was weak. Sam, you got me and you got littlest bro and you’re strong, you’re nothing like him.”
He feels Sam sigh out, feels him roll onto his side, slide his arms around Dean’s back and pull him in until they’re pressed up together.
“Sorry,” Sam whispers.
“Don’t be,” Dean tells him. “Lot to take in. I’m still trying to take it all in. I mean - her and Dad…”
“I know,” says Sam. He opens his eyes again, looks at Dean for a long moment, then he leans in and kisses him on the lips.
Dean opens his mouth to the kiss, lets Sam in as he always does, lets Sam’s tongue explore his mouth.
Sam groans and pushes Dean onto his back, rolling with him, until he’s on top, blanketing Dean from head to foot. Dean feels his dick start to take an interest, start to swell up, Sam’s own dick already a hard line pressing down insistently into his stomach. He’s vaguely surprised that he can still get it up, that after all the whiskey and tears and revelations, they can still do this. Sex should be the last thing on their minds. But this is Sam, and his body is a pushover when it comes to Sam. Dean is a pushover when it comes to Sam, and anyway, he needs this, needs this one thing - this one constant reaffirming thing, needs to reassure himself that he still has this.
“Dean…” Sam moans, pulling his mouth away from Dean’s lips and tracing kisses over Dean’s jaw and down his neck, tugging at the buttons on his shirt.
Dean lies back and lets Sam run the show; lets Sam pull his shirt open. He watches Sam swearing and muttering under his breath when his fumbling drunken fingers falter and slide over the intricate little buttons. He stifles the laugh when Sam growls impatiently and just wrenches hulk-style at the shirt, fabric ripping and buttons flying. And then Sam’s mouth is on his bare chest, tonguing at his nipples and pressing kisses along the lines of his pectorals. His dick is tenting his jeans, and this time he gives Sam some help with the zipper and buttons, yanks open his fly and lets his cock bob out through the slit in his boxers. Sam groans and bends to lick at the head, suck it into his mouth. Dean brings his hand to his mouth and bites hard on his fingers, muffling his moans and groans as Sam goes to work on his cock.
Sam raises his head and licks his lips, looks up Dean’s body with glazed, unfocussed eyes. “What d’you want, Dean? What d’you wanna do?”
“Sex,” Dean says immediately, “want you to fuck me.”
They’ve had a lot of practice keeping quiet when they fuck, all those years of thin motel room walls and Dad and Ross on the other side. They have tricks, they have methods: Sam pushes his fingers into Dean’s mouth while he buries his face into Dean’s neck and back, moans and pants muffled by Dean’s skin, noises reverberating up and down his spine. They’re on the floor, not trusting the bed and the squeaky mattress and the wooden headboard. Dean’s sure he’s getting rug burn on his knees and Sam’s not exactly taking it slow as he pounds into him from behind, but Dean needs this too much to give into the discomfort and pain, he needs to have Sam inside him.
Sam comes first, spills half inside him and half over his ass and thighs, and then Sam’s pushing him down to the floor, rolling him onto his back and kneeling over him like an enormous looming thing. Sam sucks him into mouth once more and Dean curses and arches up, cock banging against the back of his brother’s throat. Some distant part of his brain is registering Sam’s come leaking out of him and onto Angela’s guest room’s carpet, but the rest of his brain is too busy being short-circuited by Sam’s awesome head-giving skills and lack of gag reflex to even give a fuck about his dead dad’s mistress’s goddamn carpet.
He comes with a barely stifled yelp, Sam’s amazing lips and tongue chugging him down like he’s just another shot of that quality single-malt. Sam looks up at him, raises one smug eyebrow, mouth still stuffed full of Dean’s cock; he holds Dean's gaze as he smirks and swallows convulsively, licking his lips ostentatiously when he finally lets Dean's cock go. It slaps back up against Dean's belly, sticky red and gleaming with saliva, and Sam leans down and presses a kiss to the softening head, gently licking up the last few spots of spooge with his clever pink tongue.
Sam sighs and sits back on his haunches, swiping at his lips with the back of his hand, his eyes bright and smile wide. “Man, I feel so much better now.”
Dean snickers and reaches up with one hand; he wraps it around the back of his brother’s neck, and he pulls him down into a kiss.
*****************************
Dean’s woken up by the buzzing of his cell phone on the nightstand. He groans and fumbles for it, the stupid thing slipping away from him and falling to the floor with a soft thud. He swears and slings one leg out of bed, reaching and stretching for it. Of course by this point, the damn thing’s gone to voicemail, beeping annoyingly at him. He picks it up and squints at the display.
ONE MISSED CALL: ROSS CELL
Shit. He glances at Sam; his brother’s still sacked out on the bed, face smushed into the pillow, hair crazy and sticking up all over, cheeks flushed pink with sleep and alcohol, most definitely still dead to the world. He slides both legs out of bed and gets to his feet. He hesitates, remembering where they are, what they were doing last night, just whose place they’re staying in right now. He puts his phone down onto the nightstand and pulls on some clean boxers and a t-shirt. He knows he’s buying time, he knows he’s going to call Ross back - he’s utterly incapable of not calling Ross back - but the gnawing guilt in his belly, the lies and omissions that he’s going to have to tell (or not tell) his little brother are making him nervous.
Fuck, he hates having to lie to his brothers. He fucking loathes it. He feels a sudden twinge of resentment against Dad. Dad who’s the one responsible for putting him in this position; Dad who kept all this shit from them - from Ross - and now, for the time being, until they get more answers, Dean has no other option than to keep up Dad’s lies.
He takes a breath and dials Ross’s number.
Littlest Bro answers on the first ring. “Hey, did I wake you up?” He sounds cheerful and obnoxious and, come on, the little shit totally knows he woke Dean up.
“No,” lies Dean, because he might be feeling guilty, but a chance to tease and fuck with Ross is something he’s never going to pass up. It’s his older brother prerogative.
“Oh right, so I totally caught you and Sammy in the middle of doin’ it? Am I right, or am I right?”
“You’re totally right. In fact, my fist is half way up Sam’s asshole as we speak. I’m takin’ this call one handed, dude. If you hear any moans and groans then it’s Sammy gettin’ off on a good fisting.”
“Ugh, gross,” says Ross, and Dean can totally picture his little brother’s face right now, the frown and pout, the little half-smile. He chuckles, hears Ross snort.
“You’re fuckin’ with me, Dean. He’s probably just asleep, right?”
Dean casts Sam another look, smiles fondly. “Yeah. We, uh, we kinda had a lot to drink last night.”
“Pathetic!” scoffs Ross. “Tell him he’s a pathetic lightweight when he wakes up.”
“Yeah, okay.” He pauses, takes a seat on the armchair in the corner of the room, watches Sam’s chest rise and fall, the sheet slipping down to reveal the pale pink nubs of his nipples, his broad muscled chest, the outline of his soft cock lying against the curve of his thigh, perfectly visible through the thin sheet. If he were doing anything other than talking to Ross right now, he’d be getting his cock out, jerking off to the picture that Sam makes: naked and gorgeous and spread out for the taking.
“So, are you, like, in the middle of a hunt? Where are you guys?” Ross asks.
“Texas,” Dean answers. “But the job was a bust.”
“You gonna head back to Bobby’s then?”
“Guess so, gotta work on my girl.” He licks his lips, fingers cramping uncomfortably, his entire body feeling awkward and unhappy from lying to his little brother, though the hangover’s definitely not helping. He changes the subject quickly: “So, uh, what about you? What you doin’?”
“Workin’,” says Ross proudly. “I’ve got, like, a real job now, Deano, I’m, like, a serious and productive member of society.”
“Yeah, right!”
“No - no - seriously, man!” Ross protests. “I’m totally for real. And get this; Sarah, like, really listens to my suggestions for the business. She thinks I’ve got good ideas and shit.”
“Oh yeah, like what? Extended lunch breaks? Nap time?”
“No,” says Ross patiently, and Dean can practically hear him rolling his eyes. “No, I ain’t you, man. No. I got her to agree to let me go over all the new shit that comes in with the EMF so we know if something’s, like, cursed or whatever when it comes in. So we don’t end up with another creepy-ass killer painting.”
That’s my boy, he thinks, the twinge of missing-Ross, the gnawing guilt and loss in his belly rendering him momentarily speechless. He swallows, hears Ross hesitate, say: “Dean, you there?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, man,” he says. He rubs his eyes, the tension headache that seems to have plagued him ever since - ever since Dad - is back again, admittedly, probably helped on by all the alcohol last night. “That’s a good idea, dude. Good thinking. You know what they say: you can take the hunter away from the hunt but you can’t take the hunt away from the hunter.”
“Really?” Ross asks, sounding dubious. “I ain’t never heard that before.”
“Okay, maybe I just invented it.”
Ross laughs, and Dean smiles despite himself, fond and painful. He licks his lips, his eyes starting to burn, lump starting to gnaw at the back of his throat.
“So, you’re okay then? You gotta tell me the truth, littlest bro. You’re doin’ okay? You know we’ll come get you, any time you need us, whatever we’re doin’. You know that, right?”
There’s a pause and then Ross says quietly, “I know that.”
“Good,” says Dean. He swallows, looks up; Sam’s awake and is blinking at him, watching him from the bed, his eyes full of concern. Dean meets his gaze for a second, then presses his lips together, says: “I - uh - I gotta go, man. But you be good.”
“I can be good,” says Ross. “You know that, Dean.” There’s an innuendo in there, and Dean’s chest tightens at it: want and guilt warring with each other. He licks his lips, says: “And you call whenever you like.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“See you then.”
Ross says goodbye and the line goes dead. Dean sighs and slowly thumbs off the phone, drops it to his lap. He smoothes his hand over his chin, feels the scrape of three or four days’ stubble, bows his head, staring down at the pattern of his faded boxers - he’s sure he’s seen Ross wearing these - perhaps they were even originally bought for Ross. Whatever, it’s pretty irrelevant.
“You okay?” Sam asks.
He shrugs, doesn’t look up. “I fuckin’ hate it, Sam. I hate lying to him.”
“I know, Dean, I know you do. But for the moment, it’s the best thing to do. We’ll tell him when the time is right. We’re not Dad; we’re not gonna keep him in the dark forever.”
Right, sure, Dean thinks, but when will we tell him? When is going to be a good time? Whenever we tell him, however we do it, he’s going to hate us, resent us and Dad for keeping in the dark. There’s never going to be a good time. But he nods to his brother, forces his mouth into a smile when his eyes meet Sam’s.
“Okay, let’s get dressed. I don’t know about you, man, but I’m ready to blow this joint,” Sam says.
Dean blows out a breath, nods in agreement. “God, yes.”
*****************************
Ross hangs up the phone and slides it into his back pocket. He can feel the stupid tears fringing at his eyes and he wipes them away irritably. He’s acting like a fucking chick for fuck’s sake. But the urge to get his phone out again, to press REDIAL and just say: “Yes, come get me, Dean,” is so overwhelming. Jesus, he’s such a pussy.
He glances down at the homemade EMF meter in his right hand. It’s the one Dean made about four or five years ago, that first fall Sam was at Stanford, he made it from this old Sony Walkman. He’s made a couple more since, also from Sony Walkmen, but Ross has always liked this first one the best, this one has always been like “his”. It’s old and battered and if he thinks about it, he could probably remember every single scrape and dent it’s gotten and where they came from and what they were hunting when they all happened. His memory is totally awesome like that.
Dean made one for Dad too, like a special custom-Dad-made one, and Dean had given it to Dad as a Christmas gift that same Sam-less year. Dad had been impressed, thanked Dean with that genuine Dad smile, and Dean had been so overcome by it he’d looked like he was about to burst into tears. Of course he’d hidden it well, it would’ve totally ruined the moment if Dad had seen Dean weeping over a freaking Christmas present, but Ross had gotten it. Dad had never been into the holiday thing, had never seemed to like any of the shit any of them ever bought for him, so for him to actually like his Christmas present was a major deal. Hell, Ross had been emotional just looking at Dean’s happy disbelieving face.
He buries the thoughts of Dad ruthlessly, biting his tongue until it hurts, until his brain is only thinking: ouchthatfuckinghurts, instead of: DadDadDadDadDad…
“Hey, you done, baby?”
He turns around at Sarah’s call. She’s leaning around the door, one hand wrapped around the doorframe.
“Yeah. We’re good to go.” He’s proud of how steady his voice his, how unshaky he sounds.
“Nothing evil lurking?” she says, smiling at him.
He grins back her, and it’s almost real, almost genuine. “Nah, we’re cool.”
“Good. I’ll open up.”
At lunchtime they head to the diner a couple of blocks over, leaving Mandy and Kevin to run the shop. Sarah’s talking on her blackberry to a customer as they stroll down the street, trying to arrange delivery of this ridiculously expense Chinese vase. It’s fall, getting towards the end of September. Fall only ever means one thing in their family - that in a few weeks it will be November 2nd again. It’s a date that Ross has always dreaded, always getting all worried and fucked-up in anticipation, wondering how Dad and Dean are gonna react this time round. Last year, it’d been even worse: Sammy mourning his poor dead girl - the first year anniversary of her death. Of course this year, everything is different and he wonders how Sam will act this year, now that he has Dean all to himself and the demon’s dead and they’ve gotten revenge. Knowing Sam he’ll be just as wracked with guilt as usual, though it probably won’t stop him and Dean from fucking the shit out of each other.
They reach the diner and place their usual orders with Janine, who shoots the shit for ages about her kid who’s just started college, how she’s been, like, on the phone every freaking night blubbing about wanting to come back home. Sarah’s polite, responding to her, though Ross can tell she’s itching for her to leave them alone. After Janine finally leaves to go do her fucking job, Sarah takes a sip on her diet coke, then reaches down and takes the newspaper out of her handbag.
“I wasn’t sure whether or not to show you this, but - “ she nibbles at her bottom lip. “It’s just weird. Thought it might be something you would know about.”
He’s instantly alert again, coming out of the coma Janine’s boring-ass conversation just put him in. He sits up in his seat and holds his hand out for the paper. She passes it to him and he unfolds it. She leans over, points to an article about half-way down page four. “There: a story about cattle mutilations, about something draining cows’ blood up near Glens Falls. Now, I’ve seen that X-Files episode, I know that chupacabras sometimes feed on cattle like that.”
“It’s not a chupacabra,” he tells her. “This is way far north for them. They tend to hang around Mexico and the southern states.”
“Oh, right. So you think it could be something else?”
He reads the rest of the article, brow furrowing. “Yeah. I should investigate it.” His response is like an instinct, like something he can’t help. Something weird shows up in the paper - they investigate. It’s what they do; it’s what he’s always done.
“We could call Sam and Dean?” she suggests.
He hesitates, then shakes his head. He kinda doesn’t want to call his brothers; he likes the idea of figuring this shit out on his own. He’s old enough to do it, and it seems kinda pathetic that he’s been a hunter for so damn long and he’s never hunted solo before. And he likes the idea of telling them all about it afterwards - about some hunt he’s managed on his own - even more.
“Nah, I can handle it,” he says.
“Okay, then I’m gonna help you,” Sarah states, a smile spreading onto her face.
*****************************
He’s feeling conflicted as Sarah drives them further upstate in her Prius, they’re hunting in a Prius, it’s, like, unforgiveable and he knows he should be embarrassed, but whatever. He also knows that he should’ve forced her to stay behind, it ain’t safe, but he really likes her company, and he has to admit when she walks out of the sheriff station and later when she comes out of the town’s lamest dive bar with the info they need, he’s actually pretty fucking pleased he brought her along, he’s always sucked at the information-gathering shit.
“Vampires? Doesn’t sound much like vampires to me,” he says after she tells him what she’s learned.
She shrugs. “You know more about this stuff than me, but the bartender said there was a large group of young folks hanging around an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Apparently they party late every night, have very pale skin and wear a lot of stone-washed denim. That sounds just like that group of vampires you told me about in Colorado.”
The vampires in Colorado… that hunt was when Dad showed up, the one where they got the Colt, the Colt that he used to kill the demon, to kill Dad -
No, he’s not thinking about that, never gonna think about that, and most definitely not right now, not when they’re in a middle of a hunt, when he and Sarah are in the middle of a hunt.
“If it is vampires then we should call Sam and Dean,” he tells her ‘cause he might be game for a hunt, but he ain’t stupid and there’s no freaking way he’s letting Sarah get involved in taking out a nest of vamps.
She nods in agreement. “Okay.”
They’re about to walk back across the parking lot towards her car when a guy’s voice calls out: “Winchester!”
Ross freezes, glances at Sarah, then spins around. A black guy is approaching them from the other side of the lot. He’s unfamiliar, but from the almost predatory way he’s stalking towards them, not to mention the huge-ass machete in his left hand, it’s totally obvious he’s a hunter.
“Hey, I knew it was one of you,” the guy says. He has very straight white teeth and when he smiles at the two of them they glint in the streetlight. “I knew your father. He was a great hunter. You look just like him.”
Ross swallows, nods at him. “Uh, thanks, man. But - who are you? I don’t recognize you.”
The guy laughs, deep and rich and somehow also really kinda chilling. “You’re the youngest one, aren’t you?”
Ross tilts his chin up, narrows his eyes at him. “Yeah. And?”
“The last time I saw you, you were a scrawny little freshman. About so high.” He raises his hand to chest height and chuckles again. “Me and your Dad we crossed paths a coupla times. He was pretty handy, your old man, I was sad to hear he’d passed. Always bad to lose a good hunter.”
How the fuck does he even know about Dad? Ross thinks desperately, flicking another glance at Sarah. She’s watching the guy warily, her eyes narrowed in on him like he’s one of those people who come into the gallery and browse for the entire freaking day and then don’t buy anything.
“Thanks,” he says finally. “But you still ain’t told me your name?”
“Oh, haven’t I?” He holds out his hand - the one not carrying the massive machete. “I’m Gordon, Gordon Walker. And these fangs are mine -“ he raises the machete, gestures around with it - “I’m taking care of this nest. You don’t need to worry about it.”
He hesitates for a second, then shrugs. If this guy wants to get freaking territorial about a hunt then whatever, that’s fine by him, he’s gonna let him get on with it. And hell, it ain’t like the dude don’t look capable, the dude looks scarily capable, that weirdo fanatical gleam in his eyes giving him the look of someone who’s been on the job way too fucking long.
“Okay then,” he says. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, but I won’t need it,” the guy says.
Riiiiight. Okay then. Ross nods at him, a stiff goodbye sort of a nod; he puts one hand on Sarah’s shoulder and they walk back towards the car.
“Who the hell was he?” Sarah hisses when they’re out of earshot.
“I have no freakin’ idea,” he says. “I don’t remember meeting him when I was a kid. If I even did.”
“He was - he gave me the chills,” she says with a shudder.
“Hmm, yeah,” he agrees.
The motel is only a few blocks away and they get there in less than five minutes. He’s fiddling with the lock, Sarah beside him when she gasps out, grabs onto him with one hand. He jumps, spins around. There’s a chick - a dark-haired, gothy, vaguely attractive chick - standing right by Sarah’s shoulder. Neither of them heard her approach, she’s either super stealthy or he is seriously out of practice. Either way, Dad would’ve, like, seriously had his ass for it.
“Hi, I’m Lenore,” says the chick, holding out her hand. “I was hoping we could have a cup of coffee and a chat.”
Lenore, it turns out, is a vampire, one of the vampires currently living at the abandoned farm just out of town. Except she’s nothing like all the vamps Ross has met and killed before. She’s a good vampire, a vegetarian one. Sarah is charmed by her, and easily agrees to Lenore’s pleas to be left alone, for her and her family to be allowed to keep drinking cattle blood in peace.
“I think that sounds fair,” Sarah says, “don’t you think, baby?”
He shrugs. He pretty much agrees, if this vampire chick is for real, if all she drinks is cow blood, then yeah, he’s cool with the idea of letting her and her clan live. He’s not a freaking monster, he only kills shit that’s actually evil, this chick drinks green tea for Christ’s sake, she smells of patchouli oil. She looks more like an anemic hippie than one of the undead.
“Yeah, I’m cool with that,” he tells her, “but it ain’t us you gotta worry about, sweetheart. It’s - uh - “ he turns to Sarah - “ what was that creepy dude’s name?”
“Gordon Walker,” says Sarah.
The change on Lenore’s face is startling, the blood drains from it, and man, Ross thought she was pale before, but Jesus - now she really does look like a freaking corpse. She lifts her cup to her lips, her hands visibly shaking.
“That man - that man is a monster,” she says, her voice crackling with emotion. “He persecutes my kind.”
“To be fair, most of your kind do eat people,” Ross says reasonably.
“But we don’t. Not for years, and yet - that man.” She shivers, then seems to pull herself together. She reaches into a pocket of her flared jeans, brings out a blackberry. “I must warn my family. Once again, we will have to leave, to flee this man who persecutes us.” She might be a vegetarian vampire but she’s definitely got the vampiric flair for the dramatic. Though, hang on, wait a sec… is she seriously using a blackberry to warn her clan? What’s she gonna do - email them?
Seriously, this hunt is weird. He can’t wait to call Dean and tell him all about it.
She puts down the blackberry when she’s done and turns to them. “I want to thank you both - for the warning, and for being so understanding. It’s nice to know that not all hunters are like that man.”
Ross nods at her, gives her a fake smile of reassurance. If he’s, like, totally honest with himself, he’s not sure he’s doing the right thing. He doesn’t know what Dad would do, she is a vampire after all, she is technically a monster. But she’s not a bad vampire, and there’s gotta be a difference. Maybe he should give Dean a quick call, check and see what he would do in his place. But there isn’t really any time and Lenore is already getting to her feet, throwing dollar bills onto the table to cover the cost of her green tea and their coffees.
They follow her out into the parking lot, accompany her to her pick-up.
“Winchester!”
The shout has them all spinning around. It’s Gordon Walker again, striding across the parking lot towards them, machete in hand. Christ, does the guy have nothing better to do than stalk after them like he’s Michael freaking Myers?
Ross steps forward, pushes Sarah and Lenore behind him. “Get into the car,” he tells them.
“Ross -“ Sarah says. She looks worried, blinking and looking between him and Gordon.
“Now!” he snaps at her.
He turns back around, hearing the pick-up’s doors open and close - good, they’re both inside. Gordon has the machete raised, baring his teeth into a snarl, his eyes glowing fanatically.
Jesus, this guy is freaking deranged.
But, whatever, the dude is shit out of luck if he thinks he’s getting past Ross.
“You’re on their side? They’re monsters, Ross, monsters!” Gordon snarls. “Just let me to the bitch, let me kill her!”
“No,” he says firmly, and he sticks out his fist and punches Gordon in the face with all the strength he can muster.
The pain flares up his knuckles, and he winces, hisses out loud, but there’s no time to feel it, no time because Gordon is springing back up again, tossing aside his machete with a roar, spitting blood as he charges at Ross. Ross kicks out, catches him on the shin, darting away to avoid Gordon’s slamming fist. Gordon bellows in frustration and comes at him again; once more, Ross manages to neatly sidestep him, this time letting his leg trail. Gordon stumbles over it and Ross spins around, kicks him firmly on the hip, watches him tumble and sprawl to the ground. He uses the advantage to jump the guy, like, literally leap on him, grinding him into the grit and gravel of the parking lot, following up with his fists and feet.
God, it feels good. It feels so fucking good. And it’s so damn familiar. All those years of sparring with Sam and Dean, of smacking the shit out of each other, of smacking the shit out of monsters or douchebags in bars. He loves it when it’s good and dirty like this. Nothing like a fast and furious fist-fight, nothing like getting the upper hand and knowing that you’re winning, that you’re the one on top, that they ain’t gonna get you back ‘cause you’re too damn good.
He pulls back his fist and punches Gordon hard in the face, feeling the guy’s nose break under it, blood and snot on his knuckles, bone splintering and teeth cracking. Gordon is bellowing with rage and pain, but he can’t make any headway, he can’t get away, Ross has him pinned down. He can’t believe how easily he’s winning this, how much better he is, he’s never felt this wild, this intense, he’s beating the ever-loving shit out of this crazy seasoned hunter.
It’s fantastic.
“Ross! Ross! Baby, no, stop it! Please, Ross! You’ve beaten him! Ross, please! You’re gonna kill him!”
Sarah’s voice drifts through to his consciousness and dimly, at the back of his mind, he registers her hand on his arm, tugging at his sleeve, trying to pull him away. “C’mon, baby, it’s okay. You won.”
He pants for breath, chest heaving up and down, winded and breathless and knuckles throbbing. Not just his knuckles but his hands and his wrists and his arms, all the way up his arms to his shoulders. He aches all over. He stumbles to his feet, aiming one last kick at Gordon’s prostrate form.
She pulls him back, wrapping her arms around his waist and scuffing through the gravel. He stares down at the ground, where Gordon’s curled himself up into a fetal position, moaning pitifully. Jesus, he really did beat the shit out of him, he really did do it.
His heart thuds so hard he can’t hear anything, barely even noticing Sarah wrapped around him, forcing him away from the scene, pushing him back towards her car.
He blinks, feels blood on his lips, against his tongue, hot tears in his eyes. Dean, he thinks, Dean, where are you? He wants Dean to step forward, look pleased, impressed with him, take him into his arms and press his lips to his forehead, whisper: “Good job, littlest bro, you did good,” into his ear.
“Let’s go,” she says quietly, “c’mon, let’s go.”
She drives him back to New Paltz. It’s only a couple of hours; she’s silent the entire way, her expression tight and drawn. He hunkers down into the passenger seat, cradling his throbbing hand, feeling the tears roll silently down his face. He’s not even sure why he’s crying, he has no fucking idea why. He feels so blank and empty and lost. He has no idea what he’s doing with his life, what he’s doing here, in a fucking Prius, with a pretty girl driving him back to her fancy apartment.
He misses Dean and he misses Sammy and his father is dead.
Sarah guides him inside her apartment like he’s a fucking blind man, like he’s not even capable anymore. She sits him down at the kitchen table, gets out her first aid kit. She bathes his cuts and bruises and poor fucked-up hands with ointment; she bandages up his throbbing hand. She forces him to take some painkillers and sleeping tablets.
“You need to sleep, baby,” she tells him. She smiles sadly at him and leans in to press a kiss to his cheek; her own cheeks are wet with tears and he doesn’t know if they’re hers or his.
“It’ll be better in the morning,” she says.
Chapter Twenty Five