Episode 20: Smoke On The Water (Part II)
Title: Smoke On The Water, Part II
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: murron
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam, OCs
Rating: NC-17 for this part
Word Count: ~25,000 for this part (~35,400 total)
Warnings: language, graphic depictions of violence, sexuality
Betas: nyoka and zatnikatel
Notes: Due to size this episode is being split into two parts. Read Part I first here.
Art: Chapter banner by geckoholic; digital drawings by kuma_la_la, which you can also find here and here, digital drawings by usarechan, which you can also find here and here, and digital drawings by ammo, which you can also find here (art contains spoilers for the chapter).
Summary: Team Free Will travel to Brazil in order to search for an artifact that might help to defeat Cthulhu. Arriving at the Green Coast, the team finds itself clashing with Cthulhu cultists, and Dean has to deal with an unexpected case of jealousy when their local contact, former-priest-turned-hunter Jonas Harper, falls for Cas.
Episode 20: Smoke On The Water, Part I
4.
Paraty, Casa Verde Hostel
The second morning of their stay in Paraty, Dean's mood was as black as the coffee in front of him. A headache throbbed behind his temples, and he had lost the patience to pretend he didn't know the source.
After Sam had talked to him, Dean had done his best to push any thoughts of Harper and Cas to the back of his brain, and he'd succeeded quite well, thank you very much. He'd fixed himself a sandwich for dinner, then joined Felix and a couple of others for a Terminator double feature in the common room. He'd focused on dialogues he knew by heart and shut down the part of him that wanted to ask Sam for the name of the bar down the road. Sam had hit the hay around 11:30, but Dean had stuck to his place on the couch even when the ex-governator made way for a documentary on endangered wildlife in the Amazon rainforest. At 1:15, Dean had hit the sack with every intention to crash, but sleep hadn't come. Exhaustion, yes, resentment, also - but no sleep.
He'd refused to check his watch when he heard footsteps on the stairs outside. Jaw clenched, Dean had listened to the scrape of Harper's door only to flinch when the door to his own room opened as well.
Cas had come in on silent feet, his face a pale smudge in the moonlight. He'd undressed in the middle of the room with his usual lack of inhibition and slipped under the sheets in nothing but his boxer-briefs. Through the thin wall that separated their rooms, Dean heard Harper settle down by himself. All good and fine but had it put Dean at ease? Nope. He'd lain on his bed stiff as a board, his jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder he hadn't pulled something. When he'd finally crashed, his dreams had been troubled and confused.
All in all, he'd had better nights.
Yesterday's bad weather had moved on but the air still held a cool note, the smell of wet earth mixing with the scent of coffee inside the common room. Dean, Sam, and Castiel had gathered around one of the tables, sharing a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns. Much to Dean's annoyance, Sam had also conjured up a bowl of fruit.
Sam's insistence on healthy food felt like a thinly veiled critique of Dean's eating habits on good days; today it just pissed Dean off. Cas was telling them about his night out with Harper, how they'd hit a bar and met with the author of Christianity's First Footholds In The Americas. Abel Bernades was in his seventies, a retired historian who'd held a position at the Museu Imperial in Rio. According to Castiel, Bernades had invited them to survey the paper collection of the Historic Society he and some of his peers had founded in the sixties.
"You think it's worth a look?" Sam asked.
"It's a good lead," Castiel answered. He cut off a piece off bacon and speared it with his fork. "Abel said when he wrote his book he didn't go into the Jesuit murder case because what little he'd read about it sounded like exaggeration and made-up stories."
"That does sound promising," Sam agreed, and poured himself another cup of coffee.
Chewing on his bacon, Castiel threw Dean a look as if he wanted to hear his opinion as well.
"Yeah," Dean muttered. "Promising."
Castiel frowned but didn't comment on his sour tone. Dean ignored him, hoped he wasn't doing the mind-reading trick, and defiantly shoved the fresh tomatoes Sam had diced for their eggs to the side of his plate. It was easy to blame Cas for his restless night even though the angel hadn't really done anything to merit Dean's discontent. Fuck, even if Cas did want to play the field Dean shouldn't make a fuss. The decision to be exclusive was just another thing they'd never verbalized between the two of them. Dean had just assumed, but then, he should know what that made of him.
Give Cas space. What a great idea.
Dean dug into his breakfast with a vengeance. Castiel kept side-eyeing him, and Dean half-expected his friend to call him out after all if Harper hadn't sailed into the common room and joined them.
"Mornin'," he said. The t-shirts he'd worn the last two days had been replaced by a light blue shirt with short sleeves, nothing fancy, but it sat good on him. He leaned on the backrest of Castiel's chair with one hand and shoved the other in the pocket of his pants.
"Good news?" Castiel asked.
"Good news," Harper confirmed. "Abel called and said he'll be at the Society's library in thirty minutes. I'm heading there now."
"Want us to come?" Sam asked.
"Nah, you lot finish your breakfast," Harper said. "It's just gonna be more Portuguese stuff anyway."
Dean scooped up his tomato-less eggs, satisfied by the prospect of Harperless time until Sam said, "Great, but shouldn't you take Cas at least? Two sets of eyes see more than one."
Harper shrugged and looked at Castiel. "You game?"
"Sure," Castiel said, finishing his bacon and setting his fork neatly by his plate. Through all this, Dean stared silently into his coffee, which was hot enough it would hurt like hell if he chugged it at Sam's face.
"See you in a bit," Castiel said, slinging his book-bag over his shoulder and following Harper outside.
Dean waited until the two men had left before he glowered at Sam. "Could you stop pimping Cas out?"
Sam shrugged and reached for a banana. "Didn't realize that's what I was doing."
"Bullshit."
At this Sam looked up, his gaze sharp and challenging. "Hey, Harper's an okay guy and Cas is newly human," he said. "Don't you think he wants to sow a few wild oats?"
"Jesus, Sam." Dean closed his eyes. He did not want to think about this.
"Besides, it's not like anyone else is rushing up to stake a claim," Sam added, again in that pointed tone that lacked all subtlety. He was pushing hard at Dean's boundaries, and he knew it, shoving Cas at Harper so Dean would take a stand. Fuck, but Sam should know better than to back Dean into a corner like this.
Anger churning in his stomach, Dean raised his coffee to his mouth and smoothed out his face. "No," he said. "I guess there isn't."
Sam snorted, his glare saying, now who's bullshittin'?.
: : :
Paraty, Old Town
A couple of hours later, Sam and Dean relocated to a coffee shop in the old town, a laid-back place offering ten different kinds of coffee and a WiFi hotspot. Overhead fans stirred the air inside the café and glossy posters advertised day trips up the Gold Trail or turtle watching cruises.
Sam sat in front of his laptop, and Dean had switched on his own, flipping through tabs on international news and mysterious disappearances. He'd also spread a world map on the table, the one he used to track Cthulhu activities. By now he'd peppered the international coastlines with so many Xs they looked like the hostel's spangled roof. If Dean had been looking for a pattern, he'd found it weeks ago, and it all pointed to one conclusion: everyone who lived within twenty miles of the ocean was fucked.
Dean nursed another coffee and went through an online article on tuna fish turned piranha. He scrolled down to the mugshots of two dead fishermen, skimming their stories and the recount of the authorities' confusion before he sat back in his chair with a grunt. Yeah, he recognized the signs now, he knew all the bad mojo was linked, but he still had no idea how to stop any of it.
Dean rubbed his fingers over his closed eyes and took another sip of his coffee. He'd taken a couple of aspirins for his headache, but the tension at the back of his neck wouldn't ease. He looked around the café, at the leather chairs, the large, open windows and the tourists walking by outside, and suddenly he missed the familiar confines of the Impala. Everything was strange here, unfamiliar, making Dean feel like a fish out of water. Whatever holiday vibe he'd picked up over the past two days had evaporated overnight.
Dean ran his thumbnail over a chink in his coffee mug and wondered when he'd lost his bearings. It wasn't just the shapeless threat that gathered under the sea that set him adrift lately - it was everything. He couldn't predict his own reactions anymore, couldn't figure out his moods or this thing he had with Cas. Yeah, mostly that.
Six months, Dean thought. Six months they'd been fooling around, having each other every which way and then some and now that the initial rush had passed, Dean looked back and marveled at how mindlessly they'd made the transition from being friends to being more. They'd gravitated toward each other, and Dean had never stopped, never thought any of it through before he'd reduced the distance between them inch by inch by inch until waking up naked in the same bed wasn't even a surprise anymore.
The thing was, even if Dean could go back he wouldn't change any of it. He was fine, more than fine, with Castiel's feelings for him and the way he felt about Cas. He had no problem with wanting Cas naked and close and sweaty, not despite him being a guy, but maybe because of it, and perhaps that was huge. But it wasn't the problem.
Was it?
So far Dean had neglected the massiveness of his decision, what it could mean for the future, and what it said about him, but he couldn't close his eyes anymore. Tim Janklow wouldn't be the last to comment on him and Castiel, and if it really bothered him, he needed to get a grip on it now. He reviewed his reaction to Tim's slur, his secretiveness at the farm and his decision not to sleep in the same bed with Cas at the hostel. Despite his protest to Sam, he had to admit that his knee-jerk reaction was to keep his thing with Cas under wraps.
Sitting in the dim little café, Dean wondered if he struggled with this because it was a new situation or if part of him had fallen back into old patterns. Hiding was something he was good at, after all.
Dean swirled the coffee around in his mug. Last night, after he'd drifted off, he had dreamed of Marco. He hadn't done that in a while; actually he hadn't done that in more than ten years, not until the phantom of his friend appeared to him in the deserts of Ante-Purgatory. All morning he'd tried to let go of his nightmare but the images clung to him like molasses, viscous and sticky. Marco running down a dark, summer-hot street, Dean failing to climb the wire fence between them before a pack of vampires swarmed over the boy and ripped him apart. It hadn't happened like that at all - Marco had been ripped apart by a hydra - but it didn't take a genius to make the connection between his dream and the things Sam had told him about Harper.
Only Harper's history and Dean's had taken very different turns. Harper kept a picture of his dead friend in his wallet. Dean couldn't remember Marco's face properly outside of his dreams and the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him.
After Marco had died, Dean had gone through his days shell-shocked and distraught. It had gotten so that John had looked at Dean, not in a condemning way, but with an air of speculation on his face. It had been enough to make Dean uneasy. Worrying that his grief might be inappropriate, he'd hidden his attachment and shoved down the memory of Marco as far as it would go.
Little of that fell back on John, to be fair. High-school kids were an intolerant breed, especially in the conservative, backwater towns they often traveled, and Dean had heard enough homophobic slurs to paint his own picture of his life if his friendship with Marco had become common knowledge. Sam had always been more verbal about his disgust for being the new kid, but Dean hadn't enjoyed sticking out either. Yeah, he'd done a good job hiding his insecurities behind attitude and cockiness - or maybe that sort of behavior had been a dead giveaway, he didn't know. In any case he'd decided early on that the key to living as an outsider was to show no weakness, to present no target to the jocks and gossips, the well-meaning teachers and social workers.
He'd tucked Marco and his death far away from anyone who might look and as time passed, the whole episode had become distant and obscure even to him. Now Dean faced what he'd never allowed himself to dwell on before, that at sixteen he'd been in love with another boy, and if he'd allowed it, it might have shaped him into a different man.
Maybe he would have had less trouble trusting the good opinion some people seemed to have of him if he hadn't erased the first friend who cared for him from his memory. The realization stung, but it also relieved a years-old ache as though Dean had pulled a splinter from the depth of his heart.
Dean wrapped his hands around his mug and tried to remember the color of Marco's eyes. He still couldn't, but he recalled other things - the way it had felt to lean his shoulder against the other boy's, the rub of Marco's short sleeve and the warm, damp press of his arm against Dean's. He remembered the scuffed tips of Marco's sneakers as the two of them sat in the shadow of a stabled train-car with their feet against the rail.
He remembered that while they hung out he hadn't been afraid at all. The fear of discovery only came later, worming its way into the chinks that grief had torn into his armor.
One summer leading to Marco's blood slicking Dean's palms as Dean searched for a pulse he knew was no longer there. Somehow that ending had redefined their whole story, made it into something Dean was afraid to think of.
Dean let out a breath, raised his mug, and licked his lips before drinking. He began to see himself in a different light, understanding that his first experience with a person of the same sex had been tied up with secrecy and loss. He figured the first still influenced his behavior, but he had a growing suspicion the latest one really scared him.
That moment, he didn't doubt he'd get over his chicken-shit reflex to hide his relationship. The belief that nothing good ever lasted, though; that friends who fell hard for each other also lost each other, like him and Marco, like Ellie and Tara, like Harper and his friend…what if that was the reason behind his reluctance to see things through with Cas?
Missouri had said to let go a little, but she'd also told him to trust what he had. If Dean was honest, he'd neglected the last part of her advice, and he'd been careful not to ask himself why.
Pulse thumping hard Dean took a long, hard look at his course of action. Was he pushing Cas away?
All this time Dean had been so convinced that he'd kept his distance for Castiel's sake. But was that even true? Didn't he just turn his back and wall-in his heart because he feared laying it bare? Once burned, twice shy they said, and he'd been burned plenty. He'd lived with the scars from the fire that had swallowed his mother, the bonfire that had consumed his father's body, the pyre he'd refused to light for Sam until down in Hell he'd burned his own soul to a cinder so he didn't have to endure the pain of compassion anymore. He didn't want to feel like that again, didn't want to relive the agony of bereavement, the way it twisted his insides and sucked the color out of the world.
And yet, despite the lessons of his past, Castiel made him want to throw caution to the wind. For Cas he'd walk right over that fucking bed of hot embers, and a crazy part of him even insisted this time it wouldn't hurt. It was reckless. Stupid. And it felt better than anything ever had before.
Dean swallowed and thought of Marco again, of how his flickering spirit had said he will be your last. He thought of his surprise when Missouri had asked Cas about their plans, how for a moment he'd wanted so much it scared him. Wanting like that, being aware of his own happiness - it jinxed things, didn't it?
The question Cas had asked back in Florida came back to Dean then:
Why do you fear what is between us more than you fear throwing yourself headfirst into an impossible battle?
Dean had hedged his answer at the time but now he knew, he saw with uncompromising clarity that, yes, loving Castiel frightened him as much as walking into a war. More maybe. Question was, would he allow his fear to keep the upper hand?
Another good question: would Castiel still be there if Dean decided to man up?
Dean had put his cellphone on the table, but it hadn't buzzed once since he and Sam came here. Four hours. Had to be quite the research session if Cas and Harper hadn't finished yet. Picking up the phone, Dean scrolled down through his contacts to Castiel's name, but didn't dial. He almost laughed at himself. All these big thoughts about how much he'd changed and how important Cas was to him and he didn't even have the balls to call him and ask, hey man, how's it going? Any luck with the history books or are you busy making out with Kilty McScruff against the copier machine?
Dean tossed his cellphone on the table and felt as if he didn't much like himself or anyone at the moment. He peered into his mug and eyed the spatter of coffee dregs that clung to the empty bottom.
"I'm getting a refill," he told Sam. "You want some?"
"Nuh, 'm good," Sam muttered, his eyes scanning the laptop screen in front of him.
"Suit yourself," Dean said, and headed for the bar at the back of the café.
The kid who handed out the WLAN keys and sold the snacks took Dean's empty mug and busied himself with the coffee maker. Leaning on the counter, Dean looked around the room until his gaze caught on the doorway next to the bar. A guy stood behind the bead curtain that separated the hall to the restrooms from the café, his body stock still as he stared right at Dean. The strung-up beads hid most of his face, but Dean didn't think he'd seen him before. That didn't change the fact that the guy seemed to be very interested in him.
Dean straightened up, took a step toward the curtain and the guy jumped into motion, disappearing back into the hall so fast the beads rattled. On full alert now, Dean hurried after him, his hand feeling for the borrowed Beretta he'd shoved into his waistband. He slipped through the swaying curtain only to find the hallway empty before him.
"What the fuck," Dean muttered. Checking back over his shoulder, he eased his gun out from under his t-shirt and went to check the men's room. No dice. When he pushed the door to the ladies' room with the tip of his boot, the bead curtain rattled and Sam appeared at his shoulder. He stood between Dean and the doorway, screening Dean from the café's main room.
"What is it?" he asked.
Dean peered into the small restroom but again saw no trace of his stalker. The guy could've scrambled out the window at the back of the room but he must've been wicked quick to manage that. He'd also have had to squeeze a grown man's body through a window the size of a cat flap. With Sam guarding the entrance, Dean walked across the restroom and pushed at the window. He ran his fingertips over the window-frame and they came away smeared with a sticky, colorless liquid.
"Don't know yet," Dean answered. "But I don't think we're flying below radar anymore."
: : :
Sam and Dean were walking across the old town and heading toward the sea. The sky above hung low and gray, the clouds from yesterday had never moved on. The brothers walked downhill, past white-washed houses with doors of every color, passing crafts shops and small galleries, until they reached a cobbled alley filled ankle-deep with water.
"What the hell?" Dean cursed as he lifted his feet from the puddles.
"Flood water," Sam explained. "The water rises in the streets when the tide's up and the moon is full."
"Fantastic," Dean mumbled. The seawater was already seeping through the seams of his shoes, but Sam didn't seem to have much trouble, using his longer legs to hop from one dry spot to the next.
"They have to be connected," Sam said, coming back to their conversation. "The woman you spotted in the church and that guy today. Maybe Meg sent them?"
"They didn't seem like demons to me," Dean said. "They were just weird."
"They seem local?"
"I guess." They didn't say anything else, but Dean thought about the town folk they'd met back in Galveston, the way the darkness of the sea had gotten into them and warped the whole town. So far Paraty had seemed untouched by the Cthulhu blight but maybe that had been a wrong impression. Even the shiniest apple could be rotten at the core.
Leaving the alley, Sam and Dean came out on another church square. This one bordered right on the sea, offering a view of a scenic pier and the Atlantic ocean which had the color of lead that day. Seagulls drifted low above the bay and a couple of skiffs and smaller yachts lay at anchor beyond the seawall. The pier was completely flooded.
Dean and Sam crossed the lawn in front of the church, making for a parking lot the water hadn't swallowed yet. At their backs, the single belfry of the Capela De Santa Rita stood out like a warning finger against the sky.
Dean looked around, but it seemed they hadn't been followed. Didn't mean they'd lost their tail. "Should we smoke them out?" he asked.
Sam narrowed his eyes but shook his head. "No, we better focus on the dagger. We can deal with them if they interfere." He frowned, his gaze slipping to the grey ocean. "The sooner we move on from here, the better."
"Sense a disturbance in the force?" Dean teased.
"I don't know, man," Sam said. "I just have a feeling. You know, like something big is waiting around the corner?"
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "It has tentacles."
Sam snorted. He pushed back his hair, and Dean bit down on a comment. One day he'd buy a hair clip and hand it to Sam in a moment just like this. It would have to be a day when Sam's face didn't look so pinched with worry, though. Sam had always been good at keeping it together in a crisis, no shows of aggressiveness, no demolition of vintage cars. It took a lot until he cracked. Dean had always admired him for that. Sam had their Dad's strength in so many ways.
They reached the parking lot and stepped over a tangle of palm leaves that had been torn down during last night's rainstorm. "Let's hope the holy duo found something," Dean grumbled. Sam shot him a look but didn't say anything.
Castiel's call had come half an hour ago, telling them to meet him and Harper at this church. Dean looked up and as if on cue, Harper's jeep turned a corner and rolled toward them. With an effort, Dean managed not to cross his arms in front of his chest.
The jeep came to a halt and Castiel jumped out first, his book bag still slung over his shoulder and his dark hair flopping down into his forehead. There was a tight set to his mouth, but then he looked like he'd bit into a lemon ninety percent of the time. As he walked over to Sam and Dean, Harper caught up easily and matched Castiel's stride. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, probably because he'd spent half the day in a stuffy room full of books.
Probably, Dean thought.
"So?" Sam asked when Harper and Castiel had reached them. "What's the scoop?"
"Two things," Harper said. "One, our good shepherd didn't go far after he killed his cultist friend."
Dean listened to him but looked at Cas, unable to keep the irritation off his face. Cas returned his gaze and frowned as if he wanted to ask Dean what was wrong. Dean swallowed and forced himself to turn to Harper.
"Two," Harper continued, "the bad sheep has been buried in consecrated ground after all."
"Abel showed us the journal of a secretary who served the town's governor in 1657," Castiel explained. "He documented the events after the missionary smashed the Cthulhu cult."
"Unfortunately the fellow had a talent for exaggeration," Harper added. "He described the cult's ascent like a biblical plague with legions of frogs rising from the ocean, and cast Father Nunes in the role of Moses. Apparently he parted the wave of monsters with his staff and retreated to Mount Sinai after he was done."
"Abel thinks its all fabrication," Castiel concluded, and Harper smiled at him. Watching the smile and the honest fondness in Harper's gaze, Dean felt a stab to his chest that wasn't anger but something else entirely.
"Mount Sinai," Sam repeated. "One of the mountains at the back of town?"
Castiel nodded. "We think so. Harper compared a few maps of the local area from different centuries, and it seems there's a village up the old Gold Trail, which was founded right around the time Nunes left Paraty."
"The journal also says Nunes took the blade of the devil with him," Harper said and scratched at the small of his back.
"Blade," Dean said. "As in sword?"
"Maybe."
"But didn't that other journal say the sword was buried with the cult leader?" Sam asked.
"Yes," Harper agreed. "We have two conflicting accounts, but we also have two clues where to look now."
"The secretary writes that the cult leader has been buried 'under the roof of the watchful Lord'," Castiel said. Maybe Dean was the only one who noticed the hard note in his voice when he talked about God, just as he'd noticed Sam flinch when Harper mentioned the devil. "So there's a good chance the sword is either interred under a church-"
"-or stashed away in the mountain village," Sam finished. "That's a start."
Dean shoved his hands into his pockets. "So where to we begin? Search the churches or the village?"
"I say we split up again," Harper suggested. "We could cover more ground that way."
Yeah I bet you'd like that, Dean thought, but the spite he'd felt earlier was still gone. Harper obviously liked Castiel, and Dean could hardly blame him for that. If he was thinking rationally, he also knew that Cas wouldn't up and elope with the ex-priest. He was probably just enjoying the chance to talk faith with someone who actually had some. And if Dean didn't want Cas to spend the rest of the day in a car with Harper, he just had to open his mouth. Now was the time.
While Harper explained that the drive to the village would take about half an hour and Sam tried to remember which of Paraty's churches was the oldest, Dean fisted his hands and searched for the right words. He wouldn't even have to stage a big coming out, he just had to suggest that Sam team up with Harper and Cas should stick with him.
He'd opened the distance, now he couldn't close it.
Dean had his jaw clenched tight enough he wouldn't be surprised to hear his teeth crack. He was still no closer to getting the damn words out when Cas turned to Harper. "All right," he said. "Sam can go with you. Dean and I will have a look at the churches."
The wave of relief that swept through Dean was pitifully strong. He did his best not to show his emotion on his face and at this at least he succeeded.
Harper's gaze hung on Castiel's two or three seconds too long, and Dean imagined he caught a glimpse of regret there. The Scot took it in stride, though. "Yeah, all right," he said. "Sam, you're okay to ride with me?"
"Sure," Sam answered. He didn't look at Dean, which went a long way to redeeming him for his earlier meddling.
Castiel rooted through his book bag and handed Sam his journal, showing him a couple of earmarked pages where he'd written down his translations of the secretary's journal. He seemed oblivious to Harper's disappointment, which made Dean wonder if Cas even knew that Harper had a crush on him.
"We'll call if we find something," Castiel told Sam.
"Just make sure you watch your back," Sam said. "Someone ogled us earlier today."
Castiel's brows went up. "Demon?"
Sam shot Dean a look, and Dean shrugged. "I don't think so."
"Better expect trouble no matter who they are," Harper said, and turned to Dean. "You need some extra ammo?"
Dean rolled his shoulder and shook off the lockdown of his tongue. Time to act like a professional. "Wouldn't hurt."
Harper nodded and opened the back of his jeep, lifting the lid of the hidden weapons case. Sam picked up a Glock, and Dean chose a decent hunting knife to go with the gun he already carried. Castiel didn't go near the case.
"What about you?" Dean asked, his hand already reaching for another knife he thought might suit Cas. Before he could suggest the weapon, though, Cas turned around. He lifted the hem of his t-shirt and showed Dean a saber similar to his angel sword with a smooth wooden handle and a fourteen-inch, recurved blade. It sat snug in the holster Dean had made for Cas a couple of months ago: a simple cross-back-scabbard with a sheath sitting beneath Castiel's shoulderblade so that he could reach the sword's hilt with one quick grab beneath his shirt.
Dean hadn't even known Cas had brought the scabbard along.
"I'm good," Castiel said, letting his t-shirt fall back into place.
Harper snatched a magazine from the case and shoved it into his backpocket before he clapped Cas on the shoulder. "Good luck."
"You too," Castiel said, and Dean's hand twitched around the knife handle.
Professional, he reminded himself.
As Harper walked to the front of the car, Sam took his time loading the Glock. "You going to be okay?" he asked Dean.
Dean sheathed his knife and shot a look at Cas. He'd already moved in the direction of the church, the easy set of his shoulders so impervious to Dean's jealousy vibes that Dean didn't know if he should be glad or clutch his head in his hands.
"We'll manage." The 'we' slipped out before he realized Sam might have just asked if Dean would be okay to handle the grave search. Dean bit his lip and felt his face heat up, side-eying Sam to check if he'd caught his slip.
Of course he had.
Sam huffed out a laugh and shut the jeep's trunk. "Take care, man."
"You too," Dean mumbled. He watched Sam climb into the jeep before he turned around.
Castiel waited by the edge of the church lawn, one hand in his pocket, the other closed around the strap of his book bag. Dean let out a breath and joined him. He knew he should talk about Harper but decided to save it for later. If Cas didn't know what was up, Dean would have to explain why he'd planned to kick Harper into the Atlantic and that would be awkward as hell. No, he'd figure out a smooth way to bring up the monogamy question and settle it once and for all once the job was done. For now it was enough that Harper drove the other way.
"Let's go to work, huh?" Dean said, ready to concentrate on the grave search.
He should've known he couldn't catch a break.
Castiel slowly turned his head and Dean flinched. Now that Harper and Sam had left, the angel's expression had switched from neutral to full-on stormy. Dean knew then that Cas understood exactly what was going on, and that he was pissed at Dean for acting like an ass.
"Yes," Cas said. "Let's."
Yep, Dean thought. So much for avoiding awkward.
: : :
Choosing the obvious starting point, Dean and Castiel headed for the church in front of them. As they crossed the lawn, Dean fixed his eyes on the church and ground his teeth at the charged silence between him and Cas. If he'd thought talking about Harper to a clueless Cas would be hard, he'd underestimated the challenge of admitting his jealousy to a Cas bristling with indignation. But then, Castiel didn't come out and say what bugged him either so they were unified in their refusal to talk about shit at least.
"So. You had a good research session?" Dean asked at length, unable to keep his mouth shut.
"It was fairly successful."
"Had to be if it took you four hours."
Castiel shot him a poisonous look, but Dean reached the church's entry before he could respond. Dean almost hoped the town stalkers would ambush them inside just so he'd be able to blow off some steam.
Opening the door of the church, Dean expected a shaded narthex and rows of wooden benches. Instead, he stepped into a brightly-lit anteroom with a desk and glossy pictures of the church decorating the walls. It took Dean a second to make sense of what he saw, and then he remembered Sam telling him the Capela De Santa Rita had been turned into a museum.
"This could be problematic," Castiel said softly. Dean opened his mouth to shoot off a 'no shit Sherlock' when a group of tourists bundled into the room and piled through the door that led into the church's nave.
"How are we going to search the church with all those civilians clogging up the place?" Dean muttered, and Cas frowned.
"Wait here." He went over to the reception desk and exchanged a few Portuguese words with the woman behind it before he returned.
"The museum closes at five," Castiel said.
Dean checked his watch. "One hour. We can tick off another church until then."
"If you say so," Castiel said, his voice indifferent again. Dean had the sudden urge to push him into the nearest wall, and he took a quick step in Castiel's direction before he reined himself in. What the fuck was wrong with him? Realizing he'd clenched his fist, Dean forced his fingers to relax.
Suddenly their whole spat seemed staged and ridiculous to Dean, the way he needled Cas, the way Cas clammed up. Sam was right, they were acting like butt-hurt teenagers.
It was all too reminiscent of the way they'd set each other off before they'd visited Missouri, both of them burning on short fuses and no way to defuse them. Dean had hoped that hitting pause would carry them past the friction but no dice. Time to change tactics.
"Cas," Dean began, but when the angel met his gaze, direct and challenging, he lost his courage again. Disappointment flickering across his face, Castiel shook his head and snatched an info flyer from a nearby basket.
"Let's get the job done," he said, and headed for the exit.
: : :
The Haven, São Colina
Sam and Harper drove out of Paraty, following a single-lane road up into the hills. As soon as they left the last townhouses behind, the forest reached higher and the trees stood closer. Rhododendron and stumped palm trees choked the roadside and big-leaved creepers climbed up the tree giants. The jeep's windows were down, and the mushroomy smell of the rainforest mingled with the smoke from Harper's cigarette.
Sam leafed through Castiel's journal, reading up on the village they were headed to. As he flipped back and forth between the pages, a beer coaster fell out that had unfamiliar handwriting on it. Could only be Harper's, Sam mused, and wouldn't Dean love that.
The idea of Cas and Harper comparing notes in some secluded bar did smack of potential, although Sam had no idea how far Cas would take whatever it was they had going. If they had anything going. He shot a sidelong look at the Scot, stubbled beard, smoke in one corner of his mouth, a few scars and a rough-around-the-edges air to him. Seemed Cas had a type. Or maybe certain types were attracted to Cas.
It still mystified Sam that Dean hadn't caught on right away. He was so keen on that stuff otherwise, pointing out to Sam who 'sniffed after who' in his trademark tactful way. But Sam began to understand that when it came to Cas the laws of Deanology didn't apply. For example, he'd expected Dean to joke about the situation, a priest and an angel walk into a bar, that sort of thing. Never in a million years had Sam thought Dean would dummy up and mind quite so much.
Turning the coaster between his fingers, Sam couldn't help wondering if Dean and Cas were still giving each other the silent treatment. His brother and his angel. For lack of a better word.
"There we go," Harper said.
Sam closed Castiel's journal and looked up at the outskirts of São Colina. According to Abel Bernades, there had been an effort to beautify the village some two years ago. With Paraty growing into a tourist magnet, the municipality had hoped to get another historical site out of the settlement, but for some reason or other the renovation efforts never took off. Tourists didn't make the trip up into that particular bit of forest and money that had been promised for the repair of the road went elsewhere.
To Sam, it seemed as if the rainforest was slowly reclaiming the village. Weeds stood high in the small yards, creepers coiled over the slanting telephone poles. A good many of the houses were boarded up, and the ditches that had been dug for new water pipes looked like they'd been deserted for months. Brown water dried in the potholes of the unsealed village road.
"Welcome to the 'holy hill'," Harper commented.
"Where did you want to look?" Sam asked.
"Bernades said to check out O Porto," Harper said.
"'The Haven'," Sam translated, remembering a passage from Castiel's journal. "That's the ex-chapel?"
"First building of the village," Harper agreed. "Just a one room capela, and it's been converted into a family home around 18-something-or-other."
"Cas writes that the family that owns it has an antique collection? Relics from when the chapel was in use?"
"That's the rumor," Harper said. "Although no one's seen the pieces in a dog's age." He stubbed out his cigarette on the window and dropped it in the dashboard's ashtray. "House has been in the possession of the Almeidas for several generations, but they're pretty reclusive. One of the daughters made a splash once, running away with a couple of musicians in the 1960s. Bernades says it's only the patriarch up there now, holing up like an old iguana. Abel tried to arrange a meeting when he wrote his book, but he never got hold of the man."
"Think he'll see us?" Sam asked.
"I think we can persuade him," Harper smiled and slowed the jeep. "Hold on a bit."
He stopped the jeep next to two women who were chatting by the side of the road. Harper leaned out of the jeep's window, threw out a friendly greeting, and talked to them in Portuguese. Soon the three of them seemed to be exchanging directions, and the women pointed up the hill.
Harper thanked them, but before he could drive off, one of the women tapped his arm and asked a question. Harper frowned and said, "Sim, claro." The woman nodded, said something else and stepped away from the jeep.
"What was that about?" Sam asked as Harper drove away from the women.
"Dunno, really," Harper said. "She asked if I was a Christian man."
"And when you said you were?"
Harper shot Sam a look. "She said, 'Don't you forget it'."
: : :
The road up to the Haven was even worse than the main one up into the village. In some places the single lane narrowed so much, the leaves of the roadside bushes slapped against the jeep's side, and Sam had to close his window.
Just when it seemed the bush would swallow them whole, the road suddenly opened and the jeep rolled out onto a clearing. The Haven stood on the far side, a flat, square house with a wrap-around porch. There was no sign of a garage or a car, and in fact the place jumped immediately to the number one spot on Sam's houses-most-likely-to-be-haunted list. There was something menacing about the gray, blind windows and the way the porch's roof sagged over the front door.
"Charming." Harper peered out the windshield and joked, "Maybe we should cross ourselves."
"I'm not the religious type," Sam said. He pulled the Glock from the glove department and stuffed it into the back of his pants.
Harper shot him a look, amused. "That works too."
: : :
They walked up to the front of the house, watching the windows for movement. No one showed. In absence of a bell, Harper knocked on the door, but that had no effect either.
"Think the master of the house is out?" Harper asked.
Sam shrugged. "Food shopping perhaps," he suggested. There had been tire-tracks in the clearing after all.
"Don't know about you, but I'm no good at waiting," Harper said. He tried the door handle, and the door opened easily. "Will you look at that."
"Looks like they've been expecting us." Sam smirked. A disregard for private property seemed to be ingrained in every hunter, no matter their background. Dean always said the best people in the business had no qualms and good instincts. Instincts that told you, for example, when a place was rotten.
The second Sam stepped over the threshold, he knew the Haven was corrupted to the core. Floorboards creaked under his feet as he moved into the house. The sun filtered through finely-meshed curtains, the green thread dimming the light and giving the rooms an underwater feel. Even more disconcerting, the place was quiet as a grave. No tick of a clock, no fridge humming. It even smelled vaguely crypt-like, the air redolent with mold and dust.
Sam followed Harper into the living room, stepping over stacks of yellowed newspapers. Black-and-white photographs lined the walls, but the pictures had paled into obscurity. If the elder Almeida really did collect old items, he didn't take good care of them.
At the far side of the room, Harper let out a low whistle. He stood in front of a doorway that let out onto the back porch, brushing a tattered curtain to the side.
"Found something?" Sam asked and joined him.
"A fast way to break your neck," Harper said, and pointed at the porch.
Sam peered outside. The wicker mesh in the porch's door had been torn and through the gaps, Sam saw the sheer drop beyond the house's back. The house must have been built on the edge of a cliff so the rotten floorboards of the porch reached out over a deep green sea of wilderness. The top of palm trees swayed below the porch instead of above.
"This place gives me the willies," Harper said. "You reckon someone lives here?"
"I saw last week's newspapers on the table," Sam said, and Harper shook his head.
"Jesus. Shall I look at the other rooms?"
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I'll see if I dig up anything here."
Harper cast his gaze over the clutter and shook his head again. "Good luck."
He was halfway out the living room when Sam stopped him. "Hey, Harper. Do you smell something?"
Harper sniffed. "Besides the mothballs?"
"Nah, something else," Sam frowned. There was a stench, something faint lying under the smell of decomposing cushions. "I don't know. Something fishy?"
Harper sniffed again. "I don't think so."
Sam clucked his tongue. "I could be wrong."
"Maybe," Harper said. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if something crawled into this mess and died. Watch out for holes in the floor," he added. "I think there's a cellar underneath."
Sam nodded absently, his hands already sorting through the junk on the couch. Dog-eared paperbacks from the fifties, candle stubs, a bald doll, and other derelict toys. Sam held up a stuffed doggy that missed both eyes and grimaced. Harper was right. Who'd want to live in this scrap-heap?
He dropped the dog and rubbed at his nose. Seriously, what was that smell? Was it coming from the walls?
Sam moved around the table, would have passed it by too if he hadn't glimpsed a corner of something glossy. He stopped, raised a sheaf of newspaper and looked at a picture of himself.
For a few seconds, Sam simply stared. The snapshot was recent, showing his profile among the crowd inside Galeão International Airport. Feeling as if a large hand closed into a fist around his heart, Sam picked up the print and discovered other pictures, one of Dean, one of Cas, one of Dean and Cas together, and then another of the three of them buying paella at the pier in Paraty.
They'd been made the second they'd touched down in Brazil. The watchers in the town, Dean's shadow in the church and the internet café. Someone sent them, someone put them on their tail, and it wasn't Meg - it wasn't anyone they'd met yet. Watching them from the Haven in a house rank with the smell of slick and sea.
Sam whipped out his phone before he'd even stopped to think about it. He punched the speed dial for Dean's number, but there was no reception bar on his phone and the call wouldn't go through.
"Dammit," Sam cursed, and snapped his phone shut. His eyes flew up, straight to the door. They needed to get out of here stat. He had to get a warning out to Dean, because if the other side had surveillance on them they had a plan. If they hadn't attacked yet, chances were they'd been waiting for the right opportunity. Like the four of them splitting up.
Sam routed through the newspapers, pushed them off the table but found no other pictures, no other clues. Damn, they should have been on red alert but Sam had told Dean, he'd told him not to mind their stalkers, that they'd be prepared to deal with them when the time came.
"Sam!" Harper's voice called out and Sam's fingers clenched into the pictures. "Sam. Hey, Sam, you need to see this."
From the sound of it, Harper had found the cellar.
: : :
Episode 20: Smoke On The Water (Part II Continued)
Masterpost: Supernatural: Redemption Road (for full series info, warnings, and disclaimer)
Author: murron
Characters/Pairing: Dean/Castiel, Sam, OCs
Rating: NC-17 for this part
Word Count: ~25,000 for this part (~35,400 total)
Warnings: language, graphic depictions of violence, sexuality
Betas: nyoka and zatnikatel
Notes: Due to size this episode is being split into two parts. Read Part I first here.
Art: Chapter banner by geckoholic; digital drawings by kuma_la_la, which you can also find here and here, digital drawings by usarechan, which you can also find here and here, and digital drawings by ammo, which you can also find here (art contains spoilers for the chapter).
Summary: Team Free Will travel to Brazil in order to search for an artifact that might help to defeat Cthulhu. Arriving at the Green Coast, the team finds itself clashing with Cthulhu cultists, and Dean has to deal with an unexpected case of jealousy when their local contact, former-priest-turned-hunter Jonas Harper, falls for Cas.
Episode 20: Smoke On The Water, Part I
4.
Paraty, Casa Verde Hostel
The second morning of their stay in Paraty, Dean's mood was as black as the coffee in front of him. A headache throbbed behind his temples, and he had lost the patience to pretend he didn't know the source.
After Sam had talked to him, Dean had done his best to push any thoughts of Harper and Cas to the back of his brain, and he'd succeeded quite well, thank you very much. He'd fixed himself a sandwich for dinner, then joined Felix and a couple of others for a Terminator double feature in the common room. He'd focused on dialogues he knew by heart and shut down the part of him that wanted to ask Sam for the name of the bar down the road. Sam had hit the hay around 11:30, but Dean had stuck to his place on the couch even when the ex-governator made way for a documentary on endangered wildlife in the Amazon rainforest. At 1:15, Dean had hit the sack with every intention to crash, but sleep hadn't come. Exhaustion, yes, resentment, also - but no sleep.
He'd refused to check his watch when he heard footsteps on the stairs outside. Jaw clenched, Dean had listened to the scrape of Harper's door only to flinch when the door to his own room opened as well.
Cas had come in on silent feet, his face a pale smudge in the moonlight. He'd undressed in the middle of the room with his usual lack of inhibition and slipped under the sheets in nothing but his boxer-briefs. Through the thin wall that separated their rooms, Dean heard Harper settle down by himself. All good and fine but had it put Dean at ease? Nope. He'd lain on his bed stiff as a board, his jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder he hadn't pulled something. When he'd finally crashed, his dreams had been troubled and confused.
All in all, he'd had better nights.
Yesterday's bad weather had moved on but the air still held a cool note, the smell of wet earth mixing with the scent of coffee inside the common room. Dean, Sam, and Castiel had gathered around one of the tables, sharing a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns. Much to Dean's annoyance, Sam had also conjured up a bowl of fruit.
Sam's insistence on healthy food felt like a thinly veiled critique of Dean's eating habits on good days; today it just pissed Dean off. Cas was telling them about his night out with Harper, how they'd hit a bar and met with the author of Christianity's First Footholds In The Americas. Abel Bernades was in his seventies, a retired historian who'd held a position at the Museu Imperial in Rio. According to Castiel, Bernades had invited them to survey the paper collection of the Historic Society he and some of his peers had founded in the sixties.
"You think it's worth a look?" Sam asked.
"It's a good lead," Castiel answered. He cut off a piece off bacon and speared it with his fork. "Abel said when he wrote his book he didn't go into the Jesuit murder case because what little he'd read about it sounded like exaggeration and made-up stories."
"That does sound promising," Sam agreed, and poured himself another cup of coffee.
Chewing on his bacon, Castiel threw Dean a look as if he wanted to hear his opinion as well.
"Yeah," Dean muttered. "Promising."
Castiel frowned but didn't comment on his sour tone. Dean ignored him, hoped he wasn't doing the mind-reading trick, and defiantly shoved the fresh tomatoes Sam had diced for their eggs to the side of his plate. It was easy to blame Cas for his restless night even though the angel hadn't really done anything to merit Dean's discontent. Fuck, even if Cas did want to play the field Dean shouldn't make a fuss. The decision to be exclusive was just another thing they'd never verbalized between the two of them. Dean had just assumed, but then, he should know what that made of him.
Give Cas space. What a great idea.
Dean dug into his breakfast with a vengeance. Castiel kept side-eyeing him, and Dean half-expected his friend to call him out after all if Harper hadn't sailed into the common room and joined them.
"Mornin'," he said. The t-shirts he'd worn the last two days had been replaced by a light blue shirt with short sleeves, nothing fancy, but it sat good on him. He leaned on the backrest of Castiel's chair with one hand and shoved the other in the pocket of his pants.
"Good news?" Castiel asked.
"Good news," Harper confirmed. "Abel called and said he'll be at the Society's library in thirty minutes. I'm heading there now."
"Want us to come?" Sam asked.
"Nah, you lot finish your breakfast," Harper said. "It's just gonna be more Portuguese stuff anyway."
Dean scooped up his tomato-less eggs, satisfied by the prospect of Harperless time until Sam said, "Great, but shouldn't you take Cas at least? Two sets of eyes see more than one."
Harper shrugged and looked at Castiel. "You game?"
"Sure," Castiel said, finishing his bacon and setting his fork neatly by his plate. Through all this, Dean stared silently into his coffee, which was hot enough it would hurt like hell if he chugged it at Sam's face.
"See you in a bit," Castiel said, slinging his book-bag over his shoulder and following Harper outside.
Dean waited until the two men had left before he glowered at Sam. "Could you stop pimping Cas out?"
Sam shrugged and reached for a banana. "Didn't realize that's what I was doing."
"Bullshit."
At this Sam looked up, his gaze sharp and challenging. "Hey, Harper's an okay guy and Cas is newly human," he said. "Don't you think he wants to sow a few wild oats?"
"Jesus, Sam." Dean closed his eyes. He did not want to think about this.
"Besides, it's not like anyone else is rushing up to stake a claim," Sam added, again in that pointed tone that lacked all subtlety. He was pushing hard at Dean's boundaries, and he knew it, shoving Cas at Harper so Dean would take a stand. Fuck, but Sam should know better than to back Dean into a corner like this.
Anger churning in his stomach, Dean raised his coffee to his mouth and smoothed out his face. "No," he said. "I guess there isn't."
Sam snorted, his glare saying, now who's bullshittin'?.
: : :
Paraty, Old Town
A couple of hours later, Sam and Dean relocated to a coffee shop in the old town, a laid-back place offering ten different kinds of coffee and a WiFi hotspot. Overhead fans stirred the air inside the café and glossy posters advertised day trips up the Gold Trail or turtle watching cruises.
Sam sat in front of his laptop, and Dean had switched on his own, flipping through tabs on international news and mysterious disappearances. He'd also spread a world map on the table, the one he used to track Cthulhu activities. By now he'd peppered the international coastlines with so many Xs they looked like the hostel's spangled roof. If Dean had been looking for a pattern, he'd found it weeks ago, and it all pointed to one conclusion: everyone who lived within twenty miles of the ocean was fucked.
Dean nursed another coffee and went through an online article on tuna fish turned piranha. He scrolled down to the mugshots of two dead fishermen, skimming their stories and the recount of the authorities' confusion before he sat back in his chair with a grunt. Yeah, he recognized the signs now, he knew all the bad mojo was linked, but he still had no idea how to stop any of it.
Dean rubbed his fingers over his closed eyes and took another sip of his coffee. He'd taken a couple of aspirins for his headache, but the tension at the back of his neck wouldn't ease. He looked around the café, at the leather chairs, the large, open windows and the tourists walking by outside, and suddenly he missed the familiar confines of the Impala. Everything was strange here, unfamiliar, making Dean feel like a fish out of water. Whatever holiday vibe he'd picked up over the past two days had evaporated overnight.
Dean ran his thumbnail over a chink in his coffee mug and wondered when he'd lost his bearings. It wasn't just the shapeless threat that gathered under the sea that set him adrift lately - it was everything. He couldn't predict his own reactions anymore, couldn't figure out his moods or this thing he had with Cas. Yeah, mostly that.
Six months, Dean thought. Six months they'd been fooling around, having each other every which way and then some and now that the initial rush had passed, Dean looked back and marveled at how mindlessly they'd made the transition from being friends to being more. They'd gravitated toward each other, and Dean had never stopped, never thought any of it through before he'd reduced the distance between them inch by inch by inch until waking up naked in the same bed wasn't even a surprise anymore.
The thing was, even if Dean could go back he wouldn't change any of it. He was fine, more than fine, with Castiel's feelings for him and the way he felt about Cas. He had no problem with wanting Cas naked and close and sweaty, not despite him being a guy, but maybe because of it, and perhaps that was huge. But it wasn't the problem.
Was it?
So far Dean had neglected the massiveness of his decision, what it could mean for the future, and what it said about him, but he couldn't close his eyes anymore. Tim Janklow wouldn't be the last to comment on him and Castiel, and if it really bothered him, he needed to get a grip on it now. He reviewed his reaction to Tim's slur, his secretiveness at the farm and his decision not to sleep in the same bed with Cas at the hostel. Despite his protest to Sam, he had to admit that his knee-jerk reaction was to keep his thing with Cas under wraps.
Sitting in the dim little café, Dean wondered if he struggled with this because it was a new situation or if part of him had fallen back into old patterns. Hiding was something he was good at, after all.
Dean swirled the coffee around in his mug. Last night, after he'd drifted off, he had dreamed of Marco. He hadn't done that in a while; actually he hadn't done that in more than ten years, not until the phantom of his friend appeared to him in the deserts of Ante-Purgatory. All morning he'd tried to let go of his nightmare but the images clung to him like molasses, viscous and sticky. Marco running down a dark, summer-hot street, Dean failing to climb the wire fence between them before a pack of vampires swarmed over the boy and ripped him apart. It hadn't happened like that at all - Marco had been ripped apart by a hydra - but it didn't take a genius to make the connection between his dream and the things Sam had told him about Harper.
Only Harper's history and Dean's had taken very different turns. Harper kept a picture of his dead friend in his wallet. Dean couldn't remember Marco's face properly outside of his dreams and the more he thought about it, the more it bothered him.
After Marco had died, Dean had gone through his days shell-shocked and distraught. It had gotten so that John had looked at Dean, not in a condemning way, but with an air of speculation on his face. It had been enough to make Dean uneasy. Worrying that his grief might be inappropriate, he'd hidden his attachment and shoved down the memory of Marco as far as it would go.
Little of that fell back on John, to be fair. High-school kids were an intolerant breed, especially in the conservative, backwater towns they often traveled, and Dean had heard enough homophobic slurs to paint his own picture of his life if his friendship with Marco had become common knowledge. Sam had always been more verbal about his disgust for being the new kid, but Dean hadn't enjoyed sticking out either. Yeah, he'd done a good job hiding his insecurities behind attitude and cockiness - or maybe that sort of behavior had been a dead giveaway, he didn't know. In any case he'd decided early on that the key to living as an outsider was to show no weakness, to present no target to the jocks and gossips, the well-meaning teachers and social workers.
He'd tucked Marco and his death far away from anyone who might look and as time passed, the whole episode had become distant and obscure even to him. Now Dean faced what he'd never allowed himself to dwell on before, that at sixteen he'd been in love with another boy, and if he'd allowed it, it might have shaped him into a different man.
Maybe he would have had less trouble trusting the good opinion some people seemed to have of him if he hadn't erased the first friend who cared for him from his memory. The realization stung, but it also relieved a years-old ache as though Dean had pulled a splinter from the depth of his heart.
Dean wrapped his hands around his mug and tried to remember the color of Marco's eyes. He still couldn't, but he recalled other things - the way it had felt to lean his shoulder against the other boy's, the rub of Marco's short sleeve and the warm, damp press of his arm against Dean's. He remembered the scuffed tips of Marco's sneakers as the two of them sat in the shadow of a stabled train-car with their feet against the rail.
He remembered that while they hung out he hadn't been afraid at all. The fear of discovery only came later, worming its way into the chinks that grief had torn into his armor.
One summer leading to Marco's blood slicking Dean's palms as Dean searched for a pulse he knew was no longer there. Somehow that ending had redefined their whole story, made it into something Dean was afraid to think of.
Dean let out a breath, raised his mug, and licked his lips before drinking. He began to see himself in a different light, understanding that his first experience with a person of the same sex had been tied up with secrecy and loss. He figured the first still influenced his behavior, but he had a growing suspicion the latest one really scared him.
That moment, he didn't doubt he'd get over his chicken-shit reflex to hide his relationship. The belief that nothing good ever lasted, though; that friends who fell hard for each other also lost each other, like him and Marco, like Ellie and Tara, like Harper and his friend…what if that was the reason behind his reluctance to see things through with Cas?
Missouri had said to let go a little, but she'd also told him to trust what he had. If Dean was honest, he'd neglected the last part of her advice, and he'd been careful not to ask himself why.
Pulse thumping hard Dean took a long, hard look at his course of action. Was he pushing Cas away?
All this time Dean had been so convinced that he'd kept his distance for Castiel's sake. But was that even true? Didn't he just turn his back and wall-in his heart because he feared laying it bare? Once burned, twice shy they said, and he'd been burned plenty. He'd lived with the scars from the fire that had swallowed his mother, the bonfire that had consumed his father's body, the pyre he'd refused to light for Sam until down in Hell he'd burned his own soul to a cinder so he didn't have to endure the pain of compassion anymore. He didn't want to feel like that again, didn't want to relive the agony of bereavement, the way it twisted his insides and sucked the color out of the world.
And yet, despite the lessons of his past, Castiel made him want to throw caution to the wind. For Cas he'd walk right over that fucking bed of hot embers, and a crazy part of him even insisted this time it wouldn't hurt. It was reckless. Stupid. And it felt better than anything ever had before.
Dean swallowed and thought of Marco again, of how his flickering spirit had said he will be your last. He thought of his surprise when Missouri had asked Cas about their plans, how for a moment he'd wanted so much it scared him. Wanting like that, being aware of his own happiness - it jinxed things, didn't it?
The question Cas had asked back in Florida came back to Dean then:
Why do you fear what is between us more than you fear throwing yourself headfirst into an impossible battle?
Dean had hedged his answer at the time but now he knew, he saw with uncompromising clarity that, yes, loving Castiel frightened him as much as walking into a war. More maybe. Question was, would he allow his fear to keep the upper hand?
Another good question: would Castiel still be there if Dean decided to man up?
Dean had put his cellphone on the table, but it hadn't buzzed once since he and Sam came here. Four hours. Had to be quite the research session if Cas and Harper hadn't finished yet. Picking up the phone, Dean scrolled down through his contacts to Castiel's name, but didn't dial. He almost laughed at himself. All these big thoughts about how much he'd changed and how important Cas was to him and he didn't even have the balls to call him and ask, hey man, how's it going? Any luck with the history books or are you busy making out with Kilty McScruff against the copier machine?
Dean tossed his cellphone on the table and felt as if he didn't much like himself or anyone at the moment. He peered into his mug and eyed the spatter of coffee dregs that clung to the empty bottom.
"I'm getting a refill," he told Sam. "You want some?"
"Nuh, 'm good," Sam muttered, his eyes scanning the laptop screen in front of him.
"Suit yourself," Dean said, and headed for the bar at the back of the café.
The kid who handed out the WLAN keys and sold the snacks took Dean's empty mug and busied himself with the coffee maker. Leaning on the counter, Dean looked around the room until his gaze caught on the doorway next to the bar. A guy stood behind the bead curtain that separated the hall to the restrooms from the café, his body stock still as he stared right at Dean. The strung-up beads hid most of his face, but Dean didn't think he'd seen him before. That didn't change the fact that the guy seemed to be very interested in him.
Dean straightened up, took a step toward the curtain and the guy jumped into motion, disappearing back into the hall so fast the beads rattled. On full alert now, Dean hurried after him, his hand feeling for the borrowed Beretta he'd shoved into his waistband. He slipped through the swaying curtain only to find the hallway empty before him.
"What the fuck," Dean muttered. Checking back over his shoulder, he eased his gun out from under his t-shirt and went to check the men's room. No dice. When he pushed the door to the ladies' room with the tip of his boot, the bead curtain rattled and Sam appeared at his shoulder. He stood between Dean and the doorway, screening Dean from the café's main room.
"What is it?" he asked.
Dean peered into the small restroom but again saw no trace of his stalker. The guy could've scrambled out the window at the back of the room but he must've been wicked quick to manage that. He'd also have had to squeeze a grown man's body through a window the size of a cat flap. With Sam guarding the entrance, Dean walked across the restroom and pushed at the window. He ran his fingertips over the window-frame and they came away smeared with a sticky, colorless liquid.
"Don't know yet," Dean answered. "But I don't think we're flying below radar anymore."
: : :
Sam and Dean were walking across the old town and heading toward the sea. The sky above hung low and gray, the clouds from yesterday had never moved on. The brothers walked downhill, past white-washed houses with doors of every color, passing crafts shops and small galleries, until they reached a cobbled alley filled ankle-deep with water.
"What the hell?" Dean cursed as he lifted his feet from the puddles.
"Flood water," Sam explained. "The water rises in the streets when the tide's up and the moon is full."
"Fantastic," Dean mumbled. The seawater was already seeping through the seams of his shoes, but Sam didn't seem to have much trouble, using his longer legs to hop from one dry spot to the next.
"They have to be connected," Sam said, coming back to their conversation. "The woman you spotted in the church and that guy today. Maybe Meg sent them?"
"They didn't seem like demons to me," Dean said. "They were just weird."
"They seem local?"
"I guess." They didn't say anything else, but Dean thought about the town folk they'd met back in Galveston, the way the darkness of the sea had gotten into them and warped the whole town. So far Paraty had seemed untouched by the Cthulhu blight but maybe that had been a wrong impression. Even the shiniest apple could be rotten at the core.
Leaving the alley, Sam and Dean came out on another church square. This one bordered right on the sea, offering a view of a scenic pier and the Atlantic ocean which had the color of lead that day. Seagulls drifted low above the bay and a couple of skiffs and smaller yachts lay at anchor beyond the seawall. The pier was completely flooded.
Dean and Sam crossed the lawn in front of the church, making for a parking lot the water hadn't swallowed yet. At their backs, the single belfry of the Capela De Santa Rita stood out like a warning finger against the sky.
Dean looked around, but it seemed they hadn't been followed. Didn't mean they'd lost their tail. "Should we smoke them out?" he asked.
Sam narrowed his eyes but shook his head. "No, we better focus on the dagger. We can deal with them if they interfere." He frowned, his gaze slipping to the grey ocean. "The sooner we move on from here, the better."
"Sense a disturbance in the force?" Dean teased.
"I don't know, man," Sam said. "I just have a feeling. You know, like something big is waiting around the corner?"
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "It has tentacles."
Sam snorted. He pushed back his hair, and Dean bit down on a comment. One day he'd buy a hair clip and hand it to Sam in a moment just like this. It would have to be a day when Sam's face didn't look so pinched with worry, though. Sam had always been good at keeping it together in a crisis, no shows of aggressiveness, no demolition of vintage cars. It took a lot until he cracked. Dean had always admired him for that. Sam had their Dad's strength in so many ways.
They reached the parking lot and stepped over a tangle of palm leaves that had been torn down during last night's rainstorm. "Let's hope the holy duo found something," Dean grumbled. Sam shot him a look but didn't say anything.
Castiel's call had come half an hour ago, telling them to meet him and Harper at this church. Dean looked up and as if on cue, Harper's jeep turned a corner and rolled toward them. With an effort, Dean managed not to cross his arms in front of his chest.
The jeep came to a halt and Castiel jumped out first, his book bag still slung over his shoulder and his dark hair flopping down into his forehead. There was a tight set to his mouth, but then he looked like he'd bit into a lemon ninety percent of the time. As he walked over to Sam and Dean, Harper caught up easily and matched Castiel's stride. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, probably because he'd spent half the day in a stuffy room full of books.
Probably, Dean thought.
"So?" Sam asked when Harper and Castiel had reached them. "What's the scoop?"
"Two things," Harper said. "One, our good shepherd didn't go far after he killed his cultist friend."
Dean listened to him but looked at Cas, unable to keep the irritation off his face. Cas returned his gaze and frowned as if he wanted to ask Dean what was wrong. Dean swallowed and forced himself to turn to Harper.
"Two," Harper continued, "the bad sheep has been buried in consecrated ground after all."
"Abel showed us the journal of a secretary who served the town's governor in 1657," Castiel explained. "He documented the events after the missionary smashed the Cthulhu cult."
"Unfortunately the fellow had a talent for exaggeration," Harper added. "He described the cult's ascent like a biblical plague with legions of frogs rising from the ocean, and cast Father Nunes in the role of Moses. Apparently he parted the wave of monsters with his staff and retreated to Mount Sinai after he was done."
"Abel thinks its all fabrication," Castiel concluded, and Harper smiled at him. Watching the smile and the honest fondness in Harper's gaze, Dean felt a stab to his chest that wasn't anger but something else entirely.
"Mount Sinai," Sam repeated. "One of the mountains at the back of town?"
Castiel nodded. "We think so. Harper compared a few maps of the local area from different centuries, and it seems there's a village up the old Gold Trail, which was founded right around the time Nunes left Paraty."
"The journal also says Nunes took the blade of the devil with him," Harper said and scratched at the small of his back.
"Blade," Dean said. "As in sword?"
"Maybe."
"But didn't that other journal say the sword was buried with the cult leader?" Sam asked.
"Yes," Harper agreed. "We have two conflicting accounts, but we also have two clues where to look now."
"The secretary writes that the cult leader has been buried 'under the roof of the watchful Lord'," Castiel said. Maybe Dean was the only one who noticed the hard note in his voice when he talked about God, just as he'd noticed Sam flinch when Harper mentioned the devil. "So there's a good chance the sword is either interred under a church-"
"-or stashed away in the mountain village," Sam finished. "That's a start."
Dean shoved his hands into his pockets. "So where to we begin? Search the churches or the village?"
"I say we split up again," Harper suggested. "We could cover more ground that way."
Yeah I bet you'd like that, Dean thought, but the spite he'd felt earlier was still gone. Harper obviously liked Castiel, and Dean could hardly blame him for that. If he was thinking rationally, he also knew that Cas wouldn't up and elope with the ex-priest. He was probably just enjoying the chance to talk faith with someone who actually had some. And if Dean didn't want Cas to spend the rest of the day in a car with Harper, he just had to open his mouth. Now was the time.
While Harper explained that the drive to the village would take about half an hour and Sam tried to remember which of Paraty's churches was the oldest, Dean fisted his hands and searched for the right words. He wouldn't even have to stage a big coming out, he just had to suggest that Sam team up with Harper and Cas should stick with him.
He'd opened the distance, now he couldn't close it.
Dean had his jaw clenched tight enough he wouldn't be surprised to hear his teeth crack. He was still no closer to getting the damn words out when Cas turned to Harper. "All right," he said. "Sam can go with you. Dean and I will have a look at the churches."
The wave of relief that swept through Dean was pitifully strong. He did his best not to show his emotion on his face and at this at least he succeeded.
Harper's gaze hung on Castiel's two or three seconds too long, and Dean imagined he caught a glimpse of regret there. The Scot took it in stride, though. "Yeah, all right," he said. "Sam, you're okay to ride with me?"
"Sure," Sam answered. He didn't look at Dean, which went a long way to redeeming him for his earlier meddling.
Castiel rooted through his book bag and handed Sam his journal, showing him a couple of earmarked pages where he'd written down his translations of the secretary's journal. He seemed oblivious to Harper's disappointment, which made Dean wonder if Cas even knew that Harper had a crush on him.
"We'll call if we find something," Castiel told Sam.
"Just make sure you watch your back," Sam said. "Someone ogled us earlier today."
Castiel's brows went up. "Demon?"
Sam shot Dean a look, and Dean shrugged. "I don't think so."
"Better expect trouble no matter who they are," Harper said, and turned to Dean. "You need some extra ammo?"
Dean rolled his shoulder and shook off the lockdown of his tongue. Time to act like a professional. "Wouldn't hurt."
Harper nodded and opened the back of his jeep, lifting the lid of the hidden weapons case. Sam picked up a Glock, and Dean chose a decent hunting knife to go with the gun he already carried. Castiel didn't go near the case.
"What about you?" Dean asked, his hand already reaching for another knife he thought might suit Cas. Before he could suggest the weapon, though, Cas turned around. He lifted the hem of his t-shirt and showed Dean a saber similar to his angel sword with a smooth wooden handle and a fourteen-inch, recurved blade. It sat snug in the holster Dean had made for Cas a couple of months ago: a simple cross-back-scabbard with a sheath sitting beneath Castiel's shoulderblade so that he could reach the sword's hilt with one quick grab beneath his shirt.
Dean hadn't even known Cas had brought the scabbard along.
"I'm good," Castiel said, letting his t-shirt fall back into place.
Harper snatched a magazine from the case and shoved it into his backpocket before he clapped Cas on the shoulder. "Good luck."
"You too," Castiel said, and Dean's hand twitched around the knife handle.
Professional, he reminded himself.
As Harper walked to the front of the car, Sam took his time loading the Glock. "You going to be okay?" he asked Dean.
Dean sheathed his knife and shot a look at Cas. He'd already moved in the direction of the church, the easy set of his shoulders so impervious to Dean's jealousy vibes that Dean didn't know if he should be glad or clutch his head in his hands.
"We'll manage." The 'we' slipped out before he realized Sam might have just asked if Dean would be okay to handle the grave search. Dean bit his lip and felt his face heat up, side-eying Sam to check if he'd caught his slip.
Of course he had.
Sam huffed out a laugh and shut the jeep's trunk. "Take care, man."
"You too," Dean mumbled. He watched Sam climb into the jeep before he turned around.
Castiel waited by the edge of the church lawn, one hand in his pocket, the other closed around the strap of his book bag. Dean let out a breath and joined him. He knew he should talk about Harper but decided to save it for later. If Cas didn't know what was up, Dean would have to explain why he'd planned to kick Harper into the Atlantic and that would be awkward as hell. No, he'd figure out a smooth way to bring up the monogamy question and settle it once and for all once the job was done. For now it was enough that Harper drove the other way.
"Let's go to work, huh?" Dean said, ready to concentrate on the grave search.
He should've known he couldn't catch a break.
Castiel slowly turned his head and Dean flinched. Now that Harper and Sam had left, the angel's expression had switched from neutral to full-on stormy. Dean knew then that Cas understood exactly what was going on, and that he was pissed at Dean for acting like an ass.
"Yes," Cas said. "Let's."
Yep, Dean thought. So much for avoiding awkward.
: : :
Choosing the obvious starting point, Dean and Castiel headed for the church in front of them. As they crossed the lawn, Dean fixed his eyes on the church and ground his teeth at the charged silence between him and Cas. If he'd thought talking about Harper to a clueless Cas would be hard, he'd underestimated the challenge of admitting his jealousy to a Cas bristling with indignation. But then, Castiel didn't come out and say what bugged him either so they were unified in their refusal to talk about shit at least.
"So. You had a good research session?" Dean asked at length, unable to keep his mouth shut.
"It was fairly successful."
"Had to be if it took you four hours."
Castiel shot him a poisonous look, but Dean reached the church's entry before he could respond. Dean almost hoped the town stalkers would ambush them inside just so he'd be able to blow off some steam.
Opening the door of the church, Dean expected a shaded narthex and rows of wooden benches. Instead, he stepped into a brightly-lit anteroom with a desk and glossy pictures of the church decorating the walls. It took Dean a second to make sense of what he saw, and then he remembered Sam telling him the Capela De Santa Rita had been turned into a museum.
"This could be problematic," Castiel said softly. Dean opened his mouth to shoot off a 'no shit Sherlock' when a group of tourists bundled into the room and piled through the door that led into the church's nave.
"How are we going to search the church with all those civilians clogging up the place?" Dean muttered, and Cas frowned.
"Wait here." He went over to the reception desk and exchanged a few Portuguese words with the woman behind it before he returned.
"The museum closes at five," Castiel said.
Dean checked his watch. "One hour. We can tick off another church until then."
"If you say so," Castiel said, his voice indifferent again. Dean had the sudden urge to push him into the nearest wall, and he took a quick step in Castiel's direction before he reined himself in. What the fuck was wrong with him? Realizing he'd clenched his fist, Dean forced his fingers to relax.
Suddenly their whole spat seemed staged and ridiculous to Dean, the way he needled Cas, the way Cas clammed up. Sam was right, they were acting like butt-hurt teenagers.
It was all too reminiscent of the way they'd set each other off before they'd visited Missouri, both of them burning on short fuses and no way to defuse them. Dean had hoped that hitting pause would carry them past the friction but no dice. Time to change tactics.
"Cas," Dean began, but when the angel met his gaze, direct and challenging, he lost his courage again. Disappointment flickering across his face, Castiel shook his head and snatched an info flyer from a nearby basket.
"Let's get the job done," he said, and headed for the exit.
: : :
The Haven, São Colina
Sam and Harper drove out of Paraty, following a single-lane road up into the hills. As soon as they left the last townhouses behind, the forest reached higher and the trees stood closer. Rhododendron and stumped palm trees choked the roadside and big-leaved creepers climbed up the tree giants. The jeep's windows were down, and the mushroomy smell of the rainforest mingled with the smoke from Harper's cigarette.
Sam leafed through Castiel's journal, reading up on the village they were headed to. As he flipped back and forth between the pages, a beer coaster fell out that had unfamiliar handwriting on it. Could only be Harper's, Sam mused, and wouldn't Dean love that.
The idea of Cas and Harper comparing notes in some secluded bar did smack of potential, although Sam had no idea how far Cas would take whatever it was they had going. If they had anything going. He shot a sidelong look at the Scot, stubbled beard, smoke in one corner of his mouth, a few scars and a rough-around-the-edges air to him. Seemed Cas had a type. Or maybe certain types were attracted to Cas.
It still mystified Sam that Dean hadn't caught on right away. He was so keen on that stuff otherwise, pointing out to Sam who 'sniffed after who' in his trademark tactful way. But Sam began to understand that when it came to Cas the laws of Deanology didn't apply. For example, he'd expected Dean to joke about the situation, a priest and an angel walk into a bar, that sort of thing. Never in a million years had Sam thought Dean would dummy up and mind quite so much.
Turning the coaster between his fingers, Sam couldn't help wondering if Dean and Cas were still giving each other the silent treatment. His brother and his angel. For lack of a better word.
"There we go," Harper said.
Sam closed Castiel's journal and looked up at the outskirts of São Colina. According to Abel Bernades, there had been an effort to beautify the village some two years ago. With Paraty growing into a tourist magnet, the municipality had hoped to get another historical site out of the settlement, but for some reason or other the renovation efforts never took off. Tourists didn't make the trip up into that particular bit of forest and money that had been promised for the repair of the road went elsewhere.
To Sam, it seemed as if the rainforest was slowly reclaiming the village. Weeds stood high in the small yards, creepers coiled over the slanting telephone poles. A good many of the houses were boarded up, and the ditches that had been dug for new water pipes looked like they'd been deserted for months. Brown water dried in the potholes of the unsealed village road.
"Welcome to the 'holy hill'," Harper commented.
"Where did you want to look?" Sam asked.
"Bernades said to check out O Porto," Harper said.
"'The Haven'," Sam translated, remembering a passage from Castiel's journal. "That's the ex-chapel?"
"First building of the village," Harper agreed. "Just a one room capela, and it's been converted into a family home around 18-something-or-other."
"Cas writes that the family that owns it has an antique collection? Relics from when the chapel was in use?"
"That's the rumor," Harper said. "Although no one's seen the pieces in a dog's age." He stubbed out his cigarette on the window and dropped it in the dashboard's ashtray. "House has been in the possession of the Almeidas for several generations, but they're pretty reclusive. One of the daughters made a splash once, running away with a couple of musicians in the 1960s. Bernades says it's only the patriarch up there now, holing up like an old iguana. Abel tried to arrange a meeting when he wrote his book, but he never got hold of the man."
"Think he'll see us?" Sam asked.
"I think we can persuade him," Harper smiled and slowed the jeep. "Hold on a bit."
He stopped the jeep next to two women who were chatting by the side of the road. Harper leaned out of the jeep's window, threw out a friendly greeting, and talked to them in Portuguese. Soon the three of them seemed to be exchanging directions, and the women pointed up the hill.
Harper thanked them, but before he could drive off, one of the women tapped his arm and asked a question. Harper frowned and said, "Sim, claro." The woman nodded, said something else and stepped away from the jeep.
"What was that about?" Sam asked as Harper drove away from the women.
"Dunno, really," Harper said. "She asked if I was a Christian man."
"And when you said you were?"
Harper shot Sam a look. "She said, 'Don't you forget it'."
: : :
The road up to the Haven was even worse than the main one up into the village. In some places the single lane narrowed so much, the leaves of the roadside bushes slapped against the jeep's side, and Sam had to close his window.
Just when it seemed the bush would swallow them whole, the road suddenly opened and the jeep rolled out onto a clearing. The Haven stood on the far side, a flat, square house with a wrap-around porch. There was no sign of a garage or a car, and in fact the place jumped immediately to the number one spot on Sam's houses-most-likely-to-be-haunted list. There was something menacing about the gray, blind windows and the way the porch's roof sagged over the front door.
"Charming." Harper peered out the windshield and joked, "Maybe we should cross ourselves."
"I'm not the religious type," Sam said. He pulled the Glock from the glove department and stuffed it into the back of his pants.
Harper shot him a look, amused. "That works too."
: : :
They walked up to the front of the house, watching the windows for movement. No one showed. In absence of a bell, Harper knocked on the door, but that had no effect either.
"Think the master of the house is out?" Harper asked.
Sam shrugged. "Food shopping perhaps," he suggested. There had been tire-tracks in the clearing after all.
"Don't know about you, but I'm no good at waiting," Harper said. He tried the door handle, and the door opened easily. "Will you look at that."
"Looks like they've been expecting us." Sam smirked. A disregard for private property seemed to be ingrained in every hunter, no matter their background. Dean always said the best people in the business had no qualms and good instincts. Instincts that told you, for example, when a place was rotten.
The second Sam stepped over the threshold, he knew the Haven was corrupted to the core. Floorboards creaked under his feet as he moved into the house. The sun filtered through finely-meshed curtains, the green thread dimming the light and giving the rooms an underwater feel. Even more disconcerting, the place was quiet as a grave. No tick of a clock, no fridge humming. It even smelled vaguely crypt-like, the air redolent with mold and dust.
Sam followed Harper into the living room, stepping over stacks of yellowed newspapers. Black-and-white photographs lined the walls, but the pictures had paled into obscurity. If the elder Almeida really did collect old items, he didn't take good care of them.
At the far side of the room, Harper let out a low whistle. He stood in front of a doorway that let out onto the back porch, brushing a tattered curtain to the side.
"Found something?" Sam asked and joined him.
"A fast way to break your neck," Harper said, and pointed at the porch.
Sam peered outside. The wicker mesh in the porch's door had been torn and through the gaps, Sam saw the sheer drop beyond the house's back. The house must have been built on the edge of a cliff so the rotten floorboards of the porch reached out over a deep green sea of wilderness. The top of palm trees swayed below the porch instead of above.
"This place gives me the willies," Harper said. "You reckon someone lives here?"
"I saw last week's newspapers on the table," Sam said, and Harper shook his head.
"Jesus. Shall I look at the other rooms?"
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "I'll see if I dig up anything here."
Harper cast his gaze over the clutter and shook his head again. "Good luck."
He was halfway out the living room when Sam stopped him. "Hey, Harper. Do you smell something?"
Harper sniffed. "Besides the mothballs?"
"Nah, something else," Sam frowned. There was a stench, something faint lying under the smell of decomposing cushions. "I don't know. Something fishy?"
Harper sniffed again. "I don't think so."
Sam clucked his tongue. "I could be wrong."
"Maybe," Harper said. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if something crawled into this mess and died. Watch out for holes in the floor," he added. "I think there's a cellar underneath."
Sam nodded absently, his hands already sorting through the junk on the couch. Dog-eared paperbacks from the fifties, candle stubs, a bald doll, and other derelict toys. Sam held up a stuffed doggy that missed both eyes and grimaced. Harper was right. Who'd want to live in this scrap-heap?
He dropped the dog and rubbed at his nose. Seriously, what was that smell? Was it coming from the walls?
Sam moved around the table, would have passed it by too if he hadn't glimpsed a corner of something glossy. He stopped, raised a sheaf of newspaper and looked at a picture of himself.
For a few seconds, Sam simply stared. The snapshot was recent, showing his profile among the crowd inside Galeão International Airport. Feeling as if a large hand closed into a fist around his heart, Sam picked up the print and discovered other pictures, one of Dean, one of Cas, one of Dean and Cas together, and then another of the three of them buying paella at the pier in Paraty.
They'd been made the second they'd touched down in Brazil. The watchers in the town, Dean's shadow in the church and the internet café. Someone sent them, someone put them on their tail, and it wasn't Meg - it wasn't anyone they'd met yet. Watching them from the Haven in a house rank with the smell of slick and sea.
Sam whipped out his phone before he'd even stopped to think about it. He punched the speed dial for Dean's number, but there was no reception bar on his phone and the call wouldn't go through.
"Dammit," Sam cursed, and snapped his phone shut. His eyes flew up, straight to the door. They needed to get out of here stat. He had to get a warning out to Dean, because if the other side had surveillance on them they had a plan. If they hadn't attacked yet, chances were they'd been waiting for the right opportunity. Like the four of them splitting up.
Sam routed through the newspapers, pushed them off the table but found no other pictures, no other clues. Damn, they should have been on red alert but Sam had told Dean, he'd told him not to mind their stalkers, that they'd be prepared to deal with them when the time came.
"Sam!" Harper's voice called out and Sam's fingers clenched into the pictures. "Sam. Hey, Sam, you need to see this."
From the sound of it, Harper had found the cellar.
: : :
Episode 20: Smoke On The Water (Part II Continued)