In the Pines, for TheYmp, 1/3
Title: In The Pines
Recipient: TheYmp
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 20K
Warnings: [Spoilery.]alcoholism and depictions/discussions thereof, mentions of suicide, underage drinking, Hell torture, on-screen slaying of a farm animal, canon-typical John Winchester’s parenting, and perceived MCD..
Author's Notes: Dear TheYmp, I used one of your prompts with a dash of three other prompts in it! I hope this story is to your liking. A very very happy Summergen to you!
A shout-out goes to the mods for running this challenge year after year and being responsive and wonderful!
And a huge, giant, enormous (and all the other large-sized adjectives!) thank you goes out to my most amazing beta, C! Thanks for being honest with me always and helping me make this story better. I could not appreciate you more. <3 All the remaining mistakes are mine.
Summary: It's no surprise that Sam walks out on Dean after finding out the truth about his kitsune BFF. And it's not a stretch to imagine he doesn't want to hear from Dean again. But Dean can't let the thought of his brother go. It's a good thing, too, because Sam's not just royally pissed. Sam's missing.
Summer, 1989.
“Are Dad and Bobby gonna be okay?”
Sam pulls on Dean’s sleeve and looks up at him, eyes wide. At ten, Dean’s looked into the business end of more than a couple of shotguns. They never made him as nervous as Sam’s double-barrel gaze.
“You know it,” he says easily, even though his own stomach is squirming with nerves. Bobby’s place is one of the rare constants in their lives. If Dad gets into a major spat with him, too, then no more Sioux Falls. And Sam loves Sioux Falls. Dean doesn’t hate it here either. But it’s the thought of his brother’s inevitable pouting that made him lead Sam out of the old house and away from the yelling. The summer woods behind Bobby’s house are way better than their dusty room, anyway. And Dean’s carrying some sandwiches and Sammy’s carrying a couple of books in his backpack, so, see? The day is not too bad at all. “They’ll be toasting each other by the time we get back, I bet.”
Sam eyes Dean suspiciously.
“Dad’s friends never stick around,” he says under his breath, shoving his left hand in the large pocket of his denim coveralls.
Yeah. Dean actually brought it up with Bobby a few months ago, that the whole damn world seemed to be out to get Dad. And Bobby said, “look, your daddy is a fine man, but it’d take an idiot not to notice that he’s the common denominator here.”
Dean didn’t ask what a common demon-inator was, but it was kinda mean of Bobby to say. Sure, Dad has his moments but comparing him to a freaking demon is way too far. So maybe it isn’t so surprising they’re fighting.
“Well, maybe Dad’s friends are dumbasses,” Dean says, rubbing his nose.
“Bobby’s not a dumbass.” Sam seems super offended on Bobby’s behalf. “It sounded serious, Dean. Why are they even fighting?”
Because Bobby thinks Dad’s hunting methods are reckless, and Bobby says “you have two boys to think about, John,” and John says “what about all the kids whose parents get killed by the things I dispatch?” And Dean’s not sure who he agrees with, because Dad’s a hero, that much he knows. But Dean would also rather Dad play it safe and come back to them. Does it make him selfish? Wanting his Dad to be safe before he can worry about other kids’ dads? But their family comes first, doesn’t it? Dad told him that so many times.
Either way, Dean can’t exactly explain any of this to Sam, because as far as Sam’s concerned, the monsters don’t exist. And Dad told him not to tell.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dean says and forces a smile. A smile that’s apparently so unconvincing, it warrants an eye-roll. A freaking eye-roll! Dean tries to slap Sam upside his head, but Sam ducks out of the way.
“You don’t ever tell me anything,” Sam says, and his voice is accusatory.
“The hell do you even mean? I tell you all the things. I explained to you how the engine works the other day.”
“I mean you don’t tell me anything important.”
“Dude, engines are way important.”
“You know I’m not talking about the stupid engines!” Sam gestures in frustration. “I mean- why do we have to drive around everywhere?”
“Cause road trips are cool,” Dean says. He’s getting a headache. The older Sam gets, the harder it is to lie to him. A part of Dean wishes Dad would sign off on bringing Sammy into the fold, at least on a need to know basis. But Dad thinks Sammy doesn’t need to know a thing. Dean has to admit it’s true; Sam's better off thinking these howling noises outside his window are just wind. Finding out all the evil crap is real and it’s out there… well, you can’t ever shove that toothpaste back in the tube.
“Why didn’t Dad take me along when the two of you went away last month?”
Because Dad was teaching Dean all the cool shit about how to find his way in a forest, survivalist-style. But Sam is way too young for that crap. He’d get scared. Or complain about mosquitoes all day long. Sam was drawing on motel walls with crayons, like, five minutes ago. He’s still a baby.
“What does Dad do? Why does he have to leave us with other people? Why do we have to lie to social workers?”
“Hey, Sam.” Dean grabs him by the arm and nods at a fallen tree in the clearing. It’s looking all kinds of welcome and inviting, covered in bright green moss and lit up by the morning sun. “Looks like we can crash here and eat our sandwiches, huh?”
“Why won’t you tell-?”
“Can it already!” Dean snaps, and Sam recoils as if burned. His mouth wobbles like he’s teetering at the verge of tears, and, wow, Dean feels like crap. But a second later Sam gets himself together again and stomps away to the tree Dean showed him.
“Whatever, jerk. Just read me the book,” he says and he plops down on the tree trunk. Sam unzips his backpack, all too big for a short stack like him, and pulls out the book they’ve been reading together. It’s from Bobby’s library, a large vintage book of fairytales. The cover is worn out with time and the pages are yellowed, stained, and dog-eared, like most of the books in Bobby’s house.
At some point before either of them learned to read, Dean used to make up what the comics characters said when he read Sam some instead of bedtime stories. Now that Sam could somewhat read himself, it wouldn’t fly anymore. At least he still likes Dean reading to him, which is kind of cute, even if Dean wouldn’t admit it. He suspects the days of them reading together are numbered, though. Sammy already likes to read by himself these days because it’s faster.
“Where’d we leave off?” Dean sits down as well, right in the warm soft moss. He turns his face up to meet the patch of sun filtering through the tree crowns. See, they don’t need to go back to Bobby's anytime soon. It’s great out here.
“The sister and the brother had an argument and then the little brother was taken,” Sam says with a dramatic gasp. “And the big sister…”
“Asked the swans that were flying by, right.” Dean flips the book open and looks for the right page, finger dragging over the lines. Once he tracks it down, he clears his throat dramatically. “And she called out to the swans, oh, have you seen a little boy pass you by? And the swans said, no, we haven’t seen a boy pass by, but you could ask the moon? It sees everything that happens at night.”
Sam moves a little closer, enthralled. Hell, Dean himself is kind of curious how this story will end. Hits kind of close to home.
“And the big sister climbed a tall hill on a night of a full moon, and she asked the moon, Moon, you’re so wise, have you seen a little boy,” Dean makes a “ye high” gesture, “pass by?”
“But the moon hasn’t seen him either!” Sam exclaims in surprise.
“Quit reading ahead,” Dean smacks Sam on the head. “Yeah, the moon said, no, I haven’t seen a boy you’re looking for. Have you asked the Sun? It knows everything that happens at day!”
Sam nods.
“And the sister called out to the sun again and again, but it was too high up to hear her voice carry. So the sister climbed the tallest mountain on a hot summer day, and she raised her hands and she raised her voice, oh, Sun, you see everything, have you seen a little boy pass by?”
Sam looks up at Dean and back at the book.
“And the Sun says…” Dean flips to the next page and gapes. A large illustration of the sister reaching out to the sun covers the entire left page, but the right page is missing. In fact, the rest of the story is missing. Man, this book is old.
“Aw, are you kidding me?” Sam groans. “How does it end?”
“Guess we’ll have to make the ending up ourselves. What do you think, Sammy? What happened next?”
“I think the Sun knew where he was. He was just a little lost. The sister found him and they lived happily ever after!” Sam beams, waving his hands. “What do you think?”
“Okay, so the Sun tells the sister a bad guy got her little bro. Then she gets a grenade launcher...”
“Where’d she get a grenade launcher?”
“She knows a guy. Anyway, then she gets a grenade launcher, and she goes to save her brother. And she kills all the bad guys with grenades and Molotovs. Explosions everywhere!” Dean hands the book over to Sam and gets back on his feet. “And she uses kung fu on the ones who are too close to the brother to kill with the grenade launcher. Hiya!” He high-kicks the air and karate chops it a couple of times.
Sam laughs, his nose scrunched. “I don’t think you understood the story.”
“But my version is cooler.”
“I guess it is,” Sam says and sticks his tongue out. “You still didn’t get it.” Then he grows serious. “Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“If I got lost, would you ask the sun and the moon where I was?” Sam toys with the frayed corner of the book and doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes.
“You bet, Sammy,” Dean promises, easy as breathing. “I’d ask anyone and I’d make them talk if I had to!”
“Promise?” Sam asks. No matter how much Dean tries to lie and hide and evade, Sam seems to suspect the world is a dangerous place anyway. Hell, it took their Mom, it has to be dangerous by default. Other kids can pretend death is like, this made-up thing. Even Dean used to, for four whole years. Sam never had that.
“Dude, yeah. Anyone who tried to mess with you? I’d fuck them up.”
“That’s a bad word,” Sam says, but he smiles anyway.
“Well, no one else’s here to fucking hear me say it, is there?”
“I won’t tell,” Sam promises and offers Dean the book again. “Read me the next one?” The sun tangles in Sam’s messy hair, and his front tooth is missing.
Dean takes the book.
Growing up is way overrated.
-
Fall, 2011.
One, two, three well-placed kicks next to the lock, and the door swings open. The squeaky hinges creak.
This dilapidated house actually looks haunted. Cobwebs decorate the room corners, the large empty fireplace gapes like an open maw, and the jingle of the wind chimes on the doorstep is nothing short of ominous. Looks, when it comes to ghost-hunting, mean nothing. Sam and Dean found ghosts in brightly lit supermarkets and in high school buses and came up short in an eerie mental hospital or two before. But sometimes a haunted-looking joint is legitimately haunted. Today is one of those days.
This is a milk run of a case. Roseanne Green died in a tragic accident falling off the stairs when she was thirteen years old. She haunts this place ever since. Her younger sister, who is pushing fifty now, told Dean that while Roseanne had been cremated, their mother kept a lock of each of her kids’ hair in a jewelry box on the shelf above the chimney.
She watched Dean get in the car through the large window of her living room after he finished the interview. Maybe she was suspicious of the weird invasive questions he’d been asking, pushing too far even for the air of authority given to him by the sheer virtue of being with the federal government.
Or maybe she was trying to place where she’s seen his face before. Dean gets this little stare of recognition way too often for comfort these days. The evil crime-spree twins may have been declared dead, but between St. Louis and the police station explosion, Sam and Dean Winchester have faked their deaths a few times before. So there was a note of tenseness to the announcement as if even though the brothers were dead like a pair of doornails, there was still some unfinished business. Like they could still get deader than this.
So, yeah, maybe Beth Green thought Dean looks kind of like the man who’s been mowing down people all over the country. He and that other tall guy. The realization that since Sam’s not by his side, it’s less likely he’ll be recognized does nothing to lift Dean's spirit. It makes sense for them to be apart, which is a giant bummer.
Whether it makes sense or not, Sam’s not here. End of story.
Dean heads straight for the small jewelry box. Its lacquered side catches the moonlight as Dean turns it around. He opens it up and makes a face at the assorted hairs and milk teeth mixed together in a cocktail worthy of a witch but in fact concocted by an eccentric, loving mother.
“Kinda gross,” he announces to the empty house. A rusted bucket stands right next to the chimney, and Dean kicks it closer. He empties the jewelry box’s contents into it and unzips his duffle.
“Burn, baby, burn,” Dean says out loud as he douses the hairs in gasoline. Since Sam’s not around, he’s been reduced to talking to himself. Some would say it’s crazy, but, on the contrary, this habit helps Dean cling to the last of his sanity. You try walking around creeptastic places all by your lonesome as your day job, see how fast you’ll start chatting aloud to keep yourself company.
The tell-tale ghost chill sets in, and Dean scrambles to grab the salt out of his duffle, but he’s a moment too late. The world tilts.
Dean falls right onto a coffee table and it gives under him, shattering into pieces. The wind knocked out of him, he groans under the table debris. His leg echoes with pain at the attempts to move. The ghost of a young girl, clad in a striped sweater and wide jeans, slowly treads across the room. She wouldn’t look threatening if it wasn’t for the way her head jerked back and forth every few seconds, demonstrating exactly how her neck twisted in the fall.
The ghost notices him moving and flickers over in two swift motions. Her dead white eyes are sunken and hollow as she sinks her hand into Dean’s chest. Dean screams, arching up, and calls out for Sam-
Who’s miles and miles away and doesn’t know what Dean’s doing.
Man, if Dean kicks the bucket working a vengeful spirit case, he’s going to be so pissed. Vengeful spirits are Hunting 101. He hunted his first when he hadn’t even reached double digits yet.
Dean desperately grabs for the shotgun, but it’s a couple of inches too far. His fingers end up scraping the dusty carpet flooring instead. The ghost is relentless, twisting something inside of him and cutting off his air supply. Dean wheezes.
“It’s been so lonely here,” she mutters. “I fell and everybody left me. I wasn’t really gone! But no one saw me anymore. No one cared. Not even my baby sister. Did that pinkie swear mean nothing?”
Yeah, well, join the club, Roseanne. Little siblings are like that. Childhood promises, however fervent, don’t mean squat.
“I’m here now,” Dean rasps between choking breaths. “Let me help.”
“You’re too late,” she leans in close, her semi-transparent hair falling off her shoulder. “You’ll join me and then you’ll understand.”
Black dots dance in the corners of Dean’s field of vision, closing it up. He grasps at the carpet in a last-ditch attempt to escape. His fingers close on something cold and metal and firm. Dean blindly swings it in a last-gasp bid for freedom. The ghost vanishes and the pressure in his lungs lets up.
Dean coughs, rolling onto his side. The fireplace poker-aha, so that’s what it was-falls from his fingers with a loud clang. His hands free, Dean grabs at the aching spot in his left leg. A sizeable shard of glass protrudes from the side of his upper thigh, and he grits his teeth as he yanks it out. Hurts like a bitch. Dean tosses the bloodied glass aside and forces himself to his feet. He hobbles a couple of steps to the bucket before his leg gives out and he topples back down on the floor.
In the spirit scuffle, the salt rolled away to the opposite corner of the room. There is no way he is making the trek to the salt and back in time, not before the ghost re-emerges. Dean checks his pockets.
“Yahtzee,” he mumbles to himself as he pulls a well-worn tube packet of salt out of his pocket, handfuls of it stolen from some buffet in Nowhere, USA. “Told you hoarding this crap would come in handy one day. And you doubted me.”
Sam doesn’t answer anything, because Sam is somewhere else, busy being pissy about Dean doing what had to be done. What they always do.
Dean tears the salt packet open and sprinkles the teeth and hairs with it.
“Rest in peace,” he says and flicks his zippo on.
-
The morning sun trickles across the pillow and into Dean’s eyes. He squints and drapes his arm over his face to shield it from the insistent sunlight. The hangover and the hunting injuries tend to make a positively shittastic cocktail.
“Man, I’m getting too old for this.” Dean sits up, grunting at the pain tugging at the stitches in his left thigh. That shard of glass went in way too close to an artery for comfort. A little bit to the left and last night would’ve been a whole different story, one involving a coroner’s van.
Even though he narrowly avoided untimely demise yesterday, patching himself up all by his lonesome sucked, too. No one to get his back, no one to sew his open wound up. Had to make do with a hefty dose of hunter’s helper and resigning to poking himself with a needle.
Dean picks up a beer bottle from the floor and puts it on the bedside cabinet next to the other ones. Like a little skyline with a Jack Daniels-shaped skyscraper. He straightens up and wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. This walk of shame around the motel room to clean up the remnants of last night’s epic bender takes way more out of him than he expects. Maybe Sam is right and he should try to cut back. At least a little.
Or maybe Sam’s talking out of his ass and doesn’t know a thing, an angry voice in the back of his mind pipes up. And anyway, Sam’s not here, and if there is a single upside to Sam storming off when they were at that pier, this would be it. Dean is free to drink all night without anyone to nag him about it. Somehow free-fall drinking is way less fun in real life than it seemed it would be every time Sam quirked his eyebrow at him with an “another one, seriously?” or “it’s barely noon, De-e-a-a-an.” Sam has this way of drawling Dean’s name that condenses a crapton of disappointment and judgement and saint-like patience all into a few sounds.
Noon, shmoon. Sam’s head isn’t any less broken before five, Castiel isn’t any less dead before five, the country isn’t any less screwed in the ass by prehistoric monsters before five.
He sits down at the table and stretches until his joints crack. The sun pours into the shades and Dean winces at the world being way too bright. He opens the beat-up laptop that he inherited from Sam when Sam upgraded to a newer version.
“Maybe now I’ll finally be able to open my laptop without seeing it frozen mid-porno and wondering if I should call in the hazmat to clean my keyboard,” Sam said when he handed his old laptop over. Little brothers, man. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t…
Dean opened a new page in the browser and searched for the freakiest of the freak incident the World Wide Web had to offer. Something to shoot or stab or burn. The pickings were slim, though. A psychic that died mid-séance from what looked like a generic heart attack, an animal attack which very well could be a normal bear, a ghost sighting in a small-town diner… The website reporting on the ghost story looks like the pop-up ads are trying to give this already busted laptop the internet clap, which doesn't exactly add to its credibility. But the ghost description sounded somewhat legit. If Dean squinted and tilted his head to the side just right.
“I swear, the jukebox let out this blood-curdling scream. And it got so cold all of a sudden!” says Joe Sherman, 16, a local resident. The diner’s owner, Peter Gallagher, stated he wasn’t at the diner at the time, and derided the latest ghost news as a “load of hooey”. Could it be he didn’t want everyone in town to know Sailor Pete’s Diner is oh so very haunted?
This case has ‘bust’ written all over it. If Sam was here, Dean would suggest they keep their heads low while this whole “Leviathans wearing their faces on a murder spree that would put Pumpkin and Honey Bunny to shame” thing blows over. But Sam’s not here, and if Dean stays here any longer, he’s running a real risk of going stir-crazy. Might as well take the car out on the road, watch the hills and the valleys and the forests go by and get a grip.
Someone else’s car, that is, because his Baby had to be stashed away, at least until the general public moves onto the next hot thing. What a kick when Dean is already down.
Dean glances out of the window to shop for his next ride and whistles. A blue 1965 Pontiac Catalina catches the light a couple of motel doors down. It’s a little worse for wear, scratched up and shaky in parts, but still clearly well-loved. Any muscle car that old has to be, or it won’t even think of starting. As much as Dean would love to take this girl for a ride, he’d never do that to the owner. Not to mention driving a car as flashy as her would defeat the whole purpose of leaving Baby behind.
Dean sighs and looks at the car to the left of the Catalina. A 2004 Ford Taurus. Good enough, and by that he means ugly enough.
If Sam was here, Dean would’ve been pointing these cars out in the window and cracking a joke about them looking like total suckers in that Ford, and Sam would be the one to lecture Dean about not GTA-ing the pretty car and Dean would say, yeah, okay, killjoy, you suck the fun outta everything, and Sam would’ve rolled his eyes and maybe laughed a little.
But Sam’s an overly dramatic bitch, and he’s not here. Him and his stupid bleeding heart.
Dean picks his phone up and hesitates between two numbers on his speed-dial for a second before dialing one.
“What’s wrong now, boy?” Bobby’s gruff voice booms out of the speaker.
“Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“You don’t call me unless something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Even Bobby’s silence is judgmental. “Was wondering if you could get someone to check out this new case with me.” It’s not even that Dean needs backup. He needs someone to talk to as he works so he doesn’t lose the last of his marbles.
“No offense, Dean, but no way in Hell. I only got so many friends, and I can’t risk any more of them holding a grudge ‘cause I set them up with your stupid ass. Three people you drove off by being a massive asshole. Three!”
“Maybe if you didn’t send all these rookies my way, man.”
“Please. These were no rookies, and even if they were, you’re not exactly shabby at teaching newbies how to hunt. When you want to, that is.” Bobby tsked. “You want to know what I think?”
“I get a feeling you’ll tell me whether I want to hear it or not.”
“You’re damn right, boy,” Bobby’s voice goes growl-low. “You’ve been rejecting good hunters like a bad kidney transplant because you already got a partner. And it doesn’t feel right hunting with anyone else.”
“Sam made it crystal clear he’s pissed and he feels like going it solo for now.”
“Then get over yourself and say sorry.”
“So you’re siding with him.” Fucking unbelievable.
“I think you two are a pair of buffoons who decided to act like petty schoolgirls while Leviathans suck this world dry. So stow your crap, pick up the phone, and call Sam’s number.”
Bobby is right, of course. Bobby has this outsider’s perspective that leaves him in a perfect spot to watch Sam and Dean stumble around and pass out wise advice like some kind of hunter Yoda. Doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying that he hits the mark more often than not. Or that it’s suddenly easy to swallow his pride and reach out to Sam's annoying ass.
I met this hot chick in a bar off 66 the other day and she was obsessed with true crime. You’d have a field day arguing with her who the real Zodiac Killer is.
As good of an olive branch as any, right? Right.
-
Turns out, Peter Gallagher, the Sailor Pete’s Diner’s owner, was not only right about the ghost stories being a load of hooey but also inadvertently caused these ghost stories. The AC is malfunctioning, alternately making the diner sweat-hot and chills-cold, and the jukebox hasn’t been fixed since the day it was installed. Now it periodically makes shrill screaming noises, adding a touch of primal fear to the diner’s general ambiance.
In spite of all that, they serve a mean plate of eggs ‘n bacon. And it’s hardly Dean’s first time eating as someone screams in the background, anyway. At least it’s only a broken jukebox this time.
The newspapers he flips through while having his breakfast with a side of screams tell him something that looks like a werewolf has been tearing its way through North Dakota. Great news! Not for the people it ate, of course, but for Dean. Something to shoot and stab and kill.
-
The werewolf hunt is a piece of cake. Dean still manages to get a black eye and a seriously bruised forehead in the scuffle. As he lays in a motel bed, cradling one ice-cold can of beer to his head and sipping at the other, he picks up his phone and flips it open.
The phone book contains four numbers: Sam’s phone, Sam’s other phone, Sam’s other, other phone, and Bobby. This is the Dean Winchester Emergency line. Used to be, a handful of other people had this number, but his friends and family’s ranks have been dwindling for a while. And then there were two.
Sam still hasn’t replied. Man, the guy holds a grudge like no one’s business.
You know, Dean types after wasting a witch in Kentucky, she was killing people.
Amy Pond, that is. Not the witch. Although the witch was killing people, too. Which is a repetitive theme for the people-for the things-he stops, with a bullet or a knife.
Sam doesn’t reply to that one. No surprise there.
Okay, maybe I should’ve told you earlier, Dean texts after a few days. Sam’s silent treatment is surprisingly effective. Dean’s in Nevada and he didn’t even swing by the casinos. Not in the mood.
Sam doesn’t respond to that one, either. Dean ends up calling him from Idaho. The rings are long and slow. The line crackles, and Dean’s heart rate picks up for a second when Sam’s voice resounds on the other end of the line.
You’ve got Sam’s voicemail. If it’s something urgent, call my brother Dean…
“Hey. I know you’re mad but call me back. Just wanna be sure you’re not dead in a ditch. You owe me that much, man.”
It’s not that Bobby’s speech got to Dean or anything. Sam’s his responsibility, no matter where he is and no matter how pissed either of them (or both) might be. Sam’s his little brother, and that doesn’t change.
The next day, Dean finds a payphone and places a call to Sam. When he gets the voicemail on all three of Sam’s numbers is when the worry really settles in. Maybe Sam’s pissed at Dean, but now he has no way of knowing it was Dean calling and still, nada.
Dean slams the phone back on the receiver. He pushes the glass door ajar, stumbles outside, and walks all the way back to the motel room. A swarm of thoughts crawls over each other in his head like worker bees. Sam’s busy. Hunting. It happens that sometimes you go off the grid to nail the thing you're hunting. Dad used to go dark for weeks, and every time, he turned up.
Still, Dean finds himself dialing Bobby’s number as soon as he closes the motel room’s door behind himself.
Bobby picks up straight away. At least someone’s waiting for Dean’s calls.
“Have you heard from Sam lately?” Dean asks instead of a hello.
“Not since, what, a month ago? He told me he was chasing a case near Peoria all by his lonesome since you two,” Bobby coughs, “are at each other’s throats in the middle of a Leviathan crapfest.”
“A month? And you didn’t think to tell me Sam’s gone off the radar?”
“Watch your tone, boy. I’m not your brother’s keeper. I assumed he was busy but managing.” Bobby’s tone shifts ever so slightly. “You haven’t heard from him either, I’m taking.”
“No,” Dean says, and presses his phone to his ear with his shoulder as he opens the laptop.
“Have you considered he’s simply majorly pissed at you?”
“He is. But I tried another number, and he still hasn’t picked up.” Dean taps the keyboard, logging in on Sam’s phone account. At least he hasn’t changed his passwords. The Find My Phone map slowly loads on the crappy motel wi-fi. The green radar icon in the corner sweeps a few circles before it finally zeroes on a town of Windfall, Washington.
“He’s nowhere near Peoria anymore,” Dean says. “But it’s only seven hours from here.”
“Guess you best go and check up on him, then. If this is a big case he’s tied up with, he might appreciate the backup. And if he’s in trouble…”
Dean’s already packing his bags.
-
Windfall, Washington has a population of 1,136 people. It’s a small dot of a town near I-5, designed to lure in a tired traveler. That’s why for such a tiny place, Windfall has a lot of joints someone can get a bite to eat and lay their head to rest. Dean knows Sam’s not staying at anything three stars levels of fancy, which narrows his search down. The cheapest place in town is, ironically, called “Pineview Deluxe Inn”. There’s nothing deluxe about this inn. A two-story building with yellow walls and red doors.
The pines are just as advertised, though. Towering and tall and scraping the orange sunset behind the inn.
Dean flashes his FBI badge at the sleepy clerk, a skinny guy with a patchy beard and a sprinkling of pimples all over his face.
“I’m looking for a witness to a murder. I need to see who checked in and out in the past month,” Dean says with so much authority, the clerk almost trips over himself in the rush to get the guest book to him. They’re still using pen-and-paper records. Dean drags his finger down the list until his finger comes to a halt on a name.
Edgar Asimov. Oh, Sammy. Trying to switch it up from the rock aliases and still being so obviously, unquestionably Sam.
“This guy,” Dean says, tapping the entry a few times. “You got a spare key?”
“Oh, him. Yeah, he stayed for a couple of days, what, a few weeks ago? Weird fella.”
“How so?”
“Didn’t grab any of his stuff, from what I’ve seen. Didn’t check out. Just up and left.”
Dean’s blood runs cold. “What?”
“Your witness skipped town, agent,” the clerk says, slapping a key on the counter. A large 8 is written on a garish blue keychain. “You’re in luck, though. The business isn't exactly booming right now, so I may or may not have been procrastinating cleaning his room out. Big time procrastinating. But, hey, that works out well for you, right? You can, like, look for clues ‘n shit.” He frowns, seemingly concerned about swearing right to a federal agent’s face. “Er, clues ‘n crap, sir.”
Dean doesn’t even tell him bye. He suspects that he’s lost some credibility as an FBI agent by going as silent and pale as he did, but he can’t give a fuck about that right now. He leaves the office and marches across the parking lot and up the rickety deck to reach Sam’s room.
Dean only manages to put the key into the keyhole on the third try. He swings the door open, desperately hoping to see Sam sprawled on the bed, or sitting at the table, or brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, doing something stupid and mundane. Maybe a little angry at Dean for tracking him down, that’s fine. But there.
His wordless prayers go unanswered. The room is empty. The bathroom door is ajar and it’s also empty. Sam’s phone is on the bed stand, hooked to a charger. Some of Sam’s clothes are folded on the bed. His duffle is perched at the foot of it. Dad’s journal is on the table, open on a page about witches. Next to it, a pair of unfamiliar car keys. Actual keys, huh? Fancy. Sam must’ve stumbled upon a car whose owner forgot the keys in the ignition.
“Sammy?” Dean still calls out, like he’s hoping Sam’s hiding under the bed or in the shower to scare him. “Sam?”
Sam doesn’t appear.
Dean picks up the phone. He gulps when he sees Sam’s texts inbox overflowing with texts. The little icon blinks incessantly but no one’s been around to check it in a while.
He checks Sam’s voicemails himself. The voicemails are all from him and Dean winces at how demanding his voice sounds on a recording.
Sam doesn’t owe him anything. Sam’s not here, and foul play looks more and more likely by the second. Dad’s journal is right there, and Sam wouldn’t have left that behind. Not even if he tried to stage a disappearance to throw Dean off his scent. Not that he would. Sam could be a major bitch, and he liked to walk out on Dean whenever the going got tough. But a vanishing act like that would border on cruel, and Sam's not cruel.
No, Sam’s been taken. Dean can’t see any visible signs of struggle but he has worked enough mysterious disappearance cases to know this doesn’t mean shit.
The parking lot is empty and eerie, lit up by a few stray streetlights. A plastic bag flies around, pushed by stray gusts of wind. Dean disarms the alarm with the remote on the car keys and a silver ‘08 Honda Civic blinks its headlights.
It’s kind of grimy both inside and out, probably thanks to the previous owner, but nothing about it pings Dean as fishy. No blood in the salon or broken glass. Someone wrote “Wash me :(“ in the dust on the hood, but that’s hardly a clue.
Dean yanks the door open and slips into the driver’s seat. Yup, this has to be Sam’s car: the seat has been pushed all the way back for his Sasquatch-long legs to fit. A manila folder lies on the passenger on the seat. Dean flips through it to find a stack of well-organized case research for a case in Mt. Vermont, a witch pretending to be a psychic. A neatly folded receipt for a berry bowl from a Crunchy Granola two weeks and a few hundred miles ago lies on top of the case research. Dean weakly laughs. That’s Sam’s, alright.
Dean checks the glove compartment. A gun. Sam’s trusty Taurus. Dean pulls it out and turns it back and forth, inspecting it.
Sam wouldn’t leave this gun behind. They may shoot whatever is on hand, but Sam takes a long time accepting a gun as truly his own. He doesn’t like guns the way Dean does, doesn’t have a fancy engraved Colt or anything. He considers them deadly tools of the trade, that’s all. But Sam does appreciate this Taurus.
You get used to a gun, you learn exactly how to hold your breath to hit your mark, how to reload it quick, saving an extra fraction of second that could mean the difference between life and death, how to clean it nice and get into each and every crevice…
Sam wouldn’t leave this gun behind to run for the hills. The gun or the journal. Hell, even his stupid classic silver iPod is lying on the passenger’s seat, the screen black and the battery dead. All of Sam’s crap is here, in this town, stretched between Sam’s car of the week and Sam’s motel room of the week.
But Sam’s not here. Dean fucked up at following his prime directive-take care of your brother, boy!-once again.
Dean grabs the iPod and the folder and tucks the Taurus away before walking shamefully back to the motel.
Dean checks Sam’s notes. There’s nothing about a possible case in the town of Windfall. Sam killed a few vampires near Sacramento, by the looks of it, and he was going to ice a witch near Mt. Vernon a couple of hours away from here. Dean googled the hell out of this town but there were no cases. Sam must’ve made a pit stop here on his way from one hunt to the next. Stopped to refuel, maybe to switch cars, definitely to grab some food, and vanished.
Dean calls Bobby with a depressing update. Bobby wants to get to Dean, but Dean tells him, you stay put in case he comes there, your place is the last North Star he’s got. Bobby tells Dean oddly supportive things like we’ll find your brother and I’ll ask my sources and it feels like a man in a white coat acting nice after showing you some charts and telling you you’re a goner. Bobby’s only sweet when someone’s dead or dying.
Going to sleep feels like betraying Sam. He could be looking for Sam right now instead of catching z’s as if nothing happened. But Dean’s exhausted and he’s not gonna do Sam much good even if he keeps going. Plus, it’s the middle of the night, and there’s no one else he could call right now. And it’s been two weeks. The trail is not getting much colder than that.
Man, if only he hadn’t let Sam go on that pier. Even if Sam still went missing, Dean would’ve at least known when it happened. Looking for Sam now is starting out ten paces behind.
Dean lies in the darkness for half an hour like the serial insomniac he is before getting up and heading to his car. There’s still some undrunk beer in the cooler.
Beer is a social drink or a post-hunt drink, and Dean’s neither socializing nor hunting. Now whiskey, that’s way more of an “oh, shit, what have I done” drink. But beer’s what he’s got, and beer’s liquor, so it’ll do.
Sam’s still gone, though. Whether Dean’s sober or tipsy or anything in between.
-
The morning after a tragedy is the worst part. For a second, Dean forgets Sam’s gone and chalks it down to yet another bad dream of his, but then reality sinks in. He rolls onto his back and watches the intricate patterns of the water stains on the ceiling as if they’re making up a map that will lead him to Sam. If he only looks hard enough.
He gets up. After a shower and brushing his teeth, and not shaving, because first, he can’t be fucked, and second, the stubble makes him look slightly different from the serial killer they showed on TV, Dean almost feels like a regular human person.
The ugly paintings of fruits and landscapes the motel room came equipped with go down. The map of the PNW goes up. Sam could be anywhere here. He could be anywhere else in the country, too.
Dean can’t call the cops and can’t make Sam the next milk carton boy. All this will result in is a manhunt and Dean most likely will get arrested too if people are on the lookout for the brothers Winchester alive and on the prowl. And Dean’s got no one, short of Bobby, to play Prison Break with him.
Anyway, there’s nothing cops can do for him that he can’t do himself. He should treat this like he would any other case. They never call the cops to sniff around then, do they?
Dean remembers every single thing Sam told him about VPNs and hacking into databases. The security camera footage from the day Sam went missing has already been overwritten. The hospitals and the morgues in the area don’t have any John Does matching Sam’s description. Dean groans and leans back in the chair as he hangs up on the last hospital for today. He picks up the pen and crosses it off a To Call list he wrote on the motel stationary.
Sam’s not in the morgues, great. He could still be dead in a ditch somewhere. Worse, he could be slowly bleeding out, and Dean is not around to stop it.
What could’ve happened to him? Maybe a Leviathan took him. But Leviathans aren’t exactly smooth criminals. Black goo and messes everywhere. And this place was spotless.
Maybe Sam chose to go off the grid. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. A certain place called Flagstaff came to mind. But Sam wouldn’t leave his gun or John’s journal behind for a civvy to find.
Maybe a human psycho got him. But it would take one hell of a pro to sneak up on a paranoid Sam. He was twitchy right now, trigger-happy, because of the Devil taking residence in his head.
And there it is, the elephant in the room. Sam’s been quickly deteriorating since Cas broke the wall in his brain. Who knows, hand scar or not, maybe the Devil got him to go somewhere secluded and he popped his own top. There’s a thick forest right next to the farms outside of this town. Sam knows how to hide a body. He’d well make sure his own was never found.
After a beat of hesitation, Dean widens the search net to mental hospitals as well. Sam’s not in those either.
By the time he’s done cold-calling, the sun already dips close to the horizon. This isn’t fair. Sam’s always been better at research than Dean was.
Sam should be here, looking for himself. He’d get further faster and he’d keep it together better and he wouldn’t need to pace the floor so fucking much. Sam’s methodical and efficient and speedier at hacking and better at scouring databases. There’s a reason why they work so damn well together: they each got their strengths, yin and yang style. And this, searching for a needle in a stack of hay, is one of Sam’s.
Sam should be here, and he’s not.
-
The town of Windfall is squeaky clean. No mysterious disappearances (if you don’t count Sam), no gruesome murders (hopefully even counting Sam), no nothing. It’s got a hospital (no one resembling Sam’s description there), a grade and a middle school (Sam loves school, but he’s a little too old for these ones), a bunch of generic fast food places (no signs of Sam), a small dingy store with a Kinko’s (Dean prints a few pictures of Sam on it to make asking about him easier), a motel (Dean goes door to door and canvasses the guests, but not a lot of people stay at the motel this time of the year, and the ones that do keep to themselves and don’t remember seeing Sam), a hotel (Sam wouldn’t stay in one, and no one saw him there), and a bar.
This bar is a prime dive, the kind Dean thrives in, with smoky air, peeling fake leather of the seats, and large antlers mounted on the walls. There’s a pool table surrounded by three bikers that Dean takes note of as he walks over to the bartender. If he stays long enough, he’ll need to start making cash somehow.
Even though Sam’s all classy and drinks his tea with his pinky out, he also digs these places. Sam may not admit it out loud, but he can’t hide it from Dean: he feels right at home at a seedy joint the same as Dean does. And Dean misses him bad right now. Misses him complaining about sticky tables or dirty glasses or Dean hitting on the hot bartender or something else stupid.
“Hey, what can I get you?” the bartender asks. She’s a tall, no-nonsense woman with a long thick braid and a muscular figure. She reminds Dean of a mixture between Ellen and Jo and his heart twists with a familiar pang of old guilt.
“Whiskey on the rocks,” he says, sliding onto the barstool. “Can I ask you something?”
“If it’s my number, I’m flattered, but let’s keep it professional,” she says with a quirk of her mouth.
Dean smiles back. “Not today. I’m looking for someone. Have you seen him?” He pulls Sam’s photo out of his pocket. “Here.”
She takes the photo and brings it close to her eyes, squinting at it in the low lighting in the bar. Sam’s smiling in the picture. He hasn’t been doing a lot of smiling lately, but that was a good day. They’d made a pit-stop in Phoenix and Sam dragged Dean to the local art museum to see the “Fireflies'' infinity room. Even though Dean never was one for modern art, this exhibit was pretty cool. What was even cooler was seeing Sam grin wide, just like when he did when they were still little and stayed out too late on firefly-filled summer nights.
Then they had ice cream and they wandered the local alley known for its street art (thanks to Sam again, he did his research), and Dean pretended to listen as Sam told him about Yayoi Kusama’s influence in contemporary sculpture... yeah. It was a good day.
“Is he missing? Is he in trouble?”
“I can’t find him. Not sure yet about the trouble part,” Dean says, although he was pretty fucking sure. But all he has to go on is an empty room and a whole lot of hunter’s instinct he doesn’t want to believe.
She sizes him up as if deciding if Dean could be trusted with the information she is about to share. Finally, she speaks again.
“He was here, a couple of weeks ago. Beginnin’ of November. He had a beer, then left. Not too exciting.” She frowns. “He’s seriously missing? From here?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. This is a small town, man. Nothing happens around here.” She pours Dean his drink and slides it across the bar. Dean grabs it as it teeters a little too close to the edge. “My name’s Kristy. I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for your brother if he ever passes by again. You staying at Pineview?”
Dean nods with a hesitant thanks. He’s not exactly holding his breath hoping Sam will come by Moosetown Bar. After finishing his drink, Dean asks the pool-playing bikers whether they’ve seen Sam. Their names are Ed, Mike, and Steve, and none of them have seen and/or remember Sam, so that calls for another drink. And a third one.
-
The nest Sam cleaned out is nothing short of professional work. Dean never sticks around to see the consequences of a hunt pan out, but it’s weird to see articles mourning these fangs as stand-up members of their community slain by a serial killer when they ate fellow citizens for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Sam chopped their heads clean off in their sleep, the coroner and the police report says. Well, the reports use terms such as “decapitation” and “an unknown assailant”, but Dean knows perfectly well what that means. There’s nothing weird about this hunt, nothing that would chase Sam for miles to catch up with him.
On to PART TWO...
Recipient: TheYmp
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 20K
Warnings: [Spoilery.]alcoholism and depictions/discussions thereof, mentions of suicide, underage drinking, Hell torture, on-screen slaying of a farm animal, canon-typical John Winchester’s parenting, and perceived MCD..
Author's Notes: Dear TheYmp, I used one of your prompts with a dash of three other prompts in it! I hope this story is to your liking. A very very happy Summergen to you!
A shout-out goes to the mods for running this challenge year after year and being responsive and wonderful!
And a huge, giant, enormous (and all the other large-sized adjectives!) thank you goes out to my most amazing beta, C! Thanks for being honest with me always and helping me make this story better. I could not appreciate you more. <3 All the remaining mistakes are mine.
Summary: It's no surprise that Sam walks out on Dean after finding out the truth about his kitsune BFF. And it's not a stretch to imagine he doesn't want to hear from Dean again. But Dean can't let the thought of his brother go. It's a good thing, too, because Sam's not just royally pissed. Sam's missing.
Summer, 1989.
“Are Dad and Bobby gonna be okay?”
Sam pulls on Dean’s sleeve and looks up at him, eyes wide. At ten, Dean’s looked into the business end of more than a couple of shotguns. They never made him as nervous as Sam’s double-barrel gaze.
“You know it,” he says easily, even though his own stomach is squirming with nerves. Bobby’s place is one of the rare constants in their lives. If Dad gets into a major spat with him, too, then no more Sioux Falls. And Sam loves Sioux Falls. Dean doesn’t hate it here either. But it’s the thought of his brother’s inevitable pouting that made him lead Sam out of the old house and away from the yelling. The summer woods behind Bobby’s house are way better than their dusty room, anyway. And Dean’s carrying some sandwiches and Sammy’s carrying a couple of books in his backpack, so, see? The day is not too bad at all. “They’ll be toasting each other by the time we get back, I bet.”
Sam eyes Dean suspiciously.
“Dad’s friends never stick around,” he says under his breath, shoving his left hand in the large pocket of his denim coveralls.
Yeah. Dean actually brought it up with Bobby a few months ago, that the whole damn world seemed to be out to get Dad. And Bobby said, “look, your daddy is a fine man, but it’d take an idiot not to notice that he’s the common denominator here.”
Dean didn’t ask what a common demon-inator was, but it was kinda mean of Bobby to say. Sure, Dad has his moments but comparing him to a freaking demon is way too far. So maybe it isn’t so surprising they’re fighting.
“Well, maybe Dad’s friends are dumbasses,” Dean says, rubbing his nose.
“Bobby’s not a dumbass.” Sam seems super offended on Bobby’s behalf. “It sounded serious, Dean. Why are they even fighting?”
Because Bobby thinks Dad’s hunting methods are reckless, and Bobby says “you have two boys to think about, John,” and John says “what about all the kids whose parents get killed by the things I dispatch?” And Dean’s not sure who he agrees with, because Dad’s a hero, that much he knows. But Dean would also rather Dad play it safe and come back to them. Does it make him selfish? Wanting his Dad to be safe before he can worry about other kids’ dads? But their family comes first, doesn’t it? Dad told him that so many times.
Either way, Dean can’t exactly explain any of this to Sam, because as far as Sam’s concerned, the monsters don’t exist. And Dad told him not to tell.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dean says and forces a smile. A smile that’s apparently so unconvincing, it warrants an eye-roll. A freaking eye-roll! Dean tries to slap Sam upside his head, but Sam ducks out of the way.
“You don’t ever tell me anything,” Sam says, and his voice is accusatory.
“The hell do you even mean? I tell you all the things. I explained to you how the engine works the other day.”
“I mean you don’t tell me anything important.”
“Dude, engines are way important.”
“You know I’m not talking about the stupid engines!” Sam gestures in frustration. “I mean- why do we have to drive around everywhere?”
“Cause road trips are cool,” Dean says. He’s getting a headache. The older Sam gets, the harder it is to lie to him. A part of Dean wishes Dad would sign off on bringing Sammy into the fold, at least on a need to know basis. But Dad thinks Sammy doesn’t need to know a thing. Dean has to admit it’s true; Sam's better off thinking these howling noises outside his window are just wind. Finding out all the evil crap is real and it’s out there… well, you can’t ever shove that toothpaste back in the tube.
“Why didn’t Dad take me along when the two of you went away last month?”
Because Dad was teaching Dean all the cool shit about how to find his way in a forest, survivalist-style. But Sam is way too young for that crap. He’d get scared. Or complain about mosquitoes all day long. Sam was drawing on motel walls with crayons, like, five minutes ago. He’s still a baby.
“What does Dad do? Why does he have to leave us with other people? Why do we have to lie to social workers?”
“Hey, Sam.” Dean grabs him by the arm and nods at a fallen tree in the clearing. It’s looking all kinds of welcome and inviting, covered in bright green moss and lit up by the morning sun. “Looks like we can crash here and eat our sandwiches, huh?”
“Why won’t you tell-?”
“Can it already!” Dean snaps, and Sam recoils as if burned. His mouth wobbles like he’s teetering at the verge of tears, and, wow, Dean feels like crap. But a second later Sam gets himself together again and stomps away to the tree Dean showed him.
“Whatever, jerk. Just read me the book,” he says and he plops down on the tree trunk. Sam unzips his backpack, all too big for a short stack like him, and pulls out the book they’ve been reading together. It’s from Bobby’s library, a large vintage book of fairytales. The cover is worn out with time and the pages are yellowed, stained, and dog-eared, like most of the books in Bobby’s house.
At some point before either of them learned to read, Dean used to make up what the comics characters said when he read Sam some instead of bedtime stories. Now that Sam could somewhat read himself, it wouldn’t fly anymore. At least he still likes Dean reading to him, which is kind of cute, even if Dean wouldn’t admit it. He suspects the days of them reading together are numbered, though. Sammy already likes to read by himself these days because it’s faster.
“Where’d we leave off?” Dean sits down as well, right in the warm soft moss. He turns his face up to meet the patch of sun filtering through the tree crowns. See, they don’t need to go back to Bobby's anytime soon. It’s great out here.
“The sister and the brother had an argument and then the little brother was taken,” Sam says with a dramatic gasp. “And the big sister…”
“Asked the swans that were flying by, right.” Dean flips the book open and looks for the right page, finger dragging over the lines. Once he tracks it down, he clears his throat dramatically. “And she called out to the swans, oh, have you seen a little boy pass you by? And the swans said, no, we haven’t seen a boy pass by, but you could ask the moon? It sees everything that happens at night.”
Sam moves a little closer, enthralled. Hell, Dean himself is kind of curious how this story will end. Hits kind of close to home.
“And the big sister climbed a tall hill on a night of a full moon, and she asked the moon, Moon, you’re so wise, have you seen a little boy,” Dean makes a “ye high” gesture, “pass by?”
“But the moon hasn’t seen him either!” Sam exclaims in surprise.
“Quit reading ahead,” Dean smacks Sam on the head. “Yeah, the moon said, no, I haven’t seen a boy you’re looking for. Have you asked the Sun? It knows everything that happens at day!”
Sam nods.
“And the sister called out to the sun again and again, but it was too high up to hear her voice carry. So the sister climbed the tallest mountain on a hot summer day, and she raised her hands and she raised her voice, oh, Sun, you see everything, have you seen a little boy pass by?”
Sam looks up at Dean and back at the book.
“And the Sun says…” Dean flips to the next page and gapes. A large illustration of the sister reaching out to the sun covers the entire left page, but the right page is missing. In fact, the rest of the story is missing. Man, this book is old.
“Aw, are you kidding me?” Sam groans. “How does it end?”
“Guess we’ll have to make the ending up ourselves. What do you think, Sammy? What happened next?”
“I think the Sun knew where he was. He was just a little lost. The sister found him and they lived happily ever after!” Sam beams, waving his hands. “What do you think?”
“Okay, so the Sun tells the sister a bad guy got her little bro. Then she gets a grenade launcher...”
“Where’d she get a grenade launcher?”
“She knows a guy. Anyway, then she gets a grenade launcher, and she goes to save her brother. And she kills all the bad guys with grenades and Molotovs. Explosions everywhere!” Dean hands the book over to Sam and gets back on his feet. “And she uses kung fu on the ones who are too close to the brother to kill with the grenade launcher. Hiya!” He high-kicks the air and karate chops it a couple of times.
Sam laughs, his nose scrunched. “I don’t think you understood the story.”
“But my version is cooler.”
“I guess it is,” Sam says and sticks his tongue out. “You still didn’t get it.” Then he grows serious. “Hey, Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“If I got lost, would you ask the sun and the moon where I was?” Sam toys with the frayed corner of the book and doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes.
“You bet, Sammy,” Dean promises, easy as breathing. “I’d ask anyone and I’d make them talk if I had to!”
“Promise?” Sam asks. No matter how much Dean tries to lie and hide and evade, Sam seems to suspect the world is a dangerous place anyway. Hell, it took their Mom, it has to be dangerous by default. Other kids can pretend death is like, this made-up thing. Even Dean used to, for four whole years. Sam never had that.
“Dude, yeah. Anyone who tried to mess with you? I’d fuck them up.”
“That’s a bad word,” Sam says, but he smiles anyway.
“Well, no one else’s here to fucking hear me say it, is there?”
“I won’t tell,” Sam promises and offers Dean the book again. “Read me the next one?” The sun tangles in Sam’s messy hair, and his front tooth is missing.
Dean takes the book.
Growing up is way overrated.
-
Fall, 2011.
One, two, three well-placed kicks next to the lock, and the door swings open. The squeaky hinges creak.
This dilapidated house actually looks haunted. Cobwebs decorate the room corners, the large empty fireplace gapes like an open maw, and the jingle of the wind chimes on the doorstep is nothing short of ominous. Looks, when it comes to ghost-hunting, mean nothing. Sam and Dean found ghosts in brightly lit supermarkets and in high school buses and came up short in an eerie mental hospital or two before. But sometimes a haunted-looking joint is legitimately haunted. Today is one of those days.
This is a milk run of a case. Roseanne Green died in a tragic accident falling off the stairs when she was thirteen years old. She haunts this place ever since. Her younger sister, who is pushing fifty now, told Dean that while Roseanne had been cremated, their mother kept a lock of each of her kids’ hair in a jewelry box on the shelf above the chimney.
She watched Dean get in the car through the large window of her living room after he finished the interview. Maybe she was suspicious of the weird invasive questions he’d been asking, pushing too far even for the air of authority given to him by the sheer virtue of being with the federal government.
Or maybe she was trying to place where she’s seen his face before. Dean gets this little stare of recognition way too often for comfort these days. The evil crime-spree twins may have been declared dead, but between St. Louis and the police station explosion, Sam and Dean Winchester have faked their deaths a few times before. So there was a note of tenseness to the announcement as if even though the brothers were dead like a pair of doornails, there was still some unfinished business. Like they could still get deader than this.
So, yeah, maybe Beth Green thought Dean looks kind of like the man who’s been mowing down people all over the country. He and that other tall guy. The realization that since Sam’s not by his side, it’s less likely he’ll be recognized does nothing to lift Dean's spirit. It makes sense for them to be apart, which is a giant bummer.
Whether it makes sense or not, Sam’s not here. End of story.
Dean heads straight for the small jewelry box. Its lacquered side catches the moonlight as Dean turns it around. He opens it up and makes a face at the assorted hairs and milk teeth mixed together in a cocktail worthy of a witch but in fact concocted by an eccentric, loving mother.
“Kinda gross,” he announces to the empty house. A rusted bucket stands right next to the chimney, and Dean kicks it closer. He empties the jewelry box’s contents into it and unzips his duffle.
“Burn, baby, burn,” Dean says out loud as he douses the hairs in gasoline. Since Sam’s not around, he’s been reduced to talking to himself. Some would say it’s crazy, but, on the contrary, this habit helps Dean cling to the last of his sanity. You try walking around creeptastic places all by your lonesome as your day job, see how fast you’ll start chatting aloud to keep yourself company.
The tell-tale ghost chill sets in, and Dean scrambles to grab the salt out of his duffle, but he’s a moment too late. The world tilts.
Dean falls right onto a coffee table and it gives under him, shattering into pieces. The wind knocked out of him, he groans under the table debris. His leg echoes with pain at the attempts to move. The ghost of a young girl, clad in a striped sweater and wide jeans, slowly treads across the room. She wouldn’t look threatening if it wasn’t for the way her head jerked back and forth every few seconds, demonstrating exactly how her neck twisted in the fall.
The ghost notices him moving and flickers over in two swift motions. Her dead white eyes are sunken and hollow as she sinks her hand into Dean’s chest. Dean screams, arching up, and calls out for Sam-
Who’s miles and miles away and doesn’t know what Dean’s doing.
Man, if Dean kicks the bucket working a vengeful spirit case, he’s going to be so pissed. Vengeful spirits are Hunting 101. He hunted his first when he hadn’t even reached double digits yet.
Dean desperately grabs for the shotgun, but it’s a couple of inches too far. His fingers end up scraping the dusty carpet flooring instead. The ghost is relentless, twisting something inside of him and cutting off his air supply. Dean wheezes.
“It’s been so lonely here,” she mutters. “I fell and everybody left me. I wasn’t really gone! But no one saw me anymore. No one cared. Not even my baby sister. Did that pinkie swear mean nothing?”
Yeah, well, join the club, Roseanne. Little siblings are like that. Childhood promises, however fervent, don’t mean squat.
“I’m here now,” Dean rasps between choking breaths. “Let me help.”
“You’re too late,” she leans in close, her semi-transparent hair falling off her shoulder. “You’ll join me and then you’ll understand.”
Black dots dance in the corners of Dean’s field of vision, closing it up. He grasps at the carpet in a last-ditch attempt to escape. His fingers close on something cold and metal and firm. Dean blindly swings it in a last-gasp bid for freedom. The ghost vanishes and the pressure in his lungs lets up.
Dean coughs, rolling onto his side. The fireplace poker-aha, so that’s what it was-falls from his fingers with a loud clang. His hands free, Dean grabs at the aching spot in his left leg. A sizeable shard of glass protrudes from the side of his upper thigh, and he grits his teeth as he yanks it out. Hurts like a bitch. Dean tosses the bloodied glass aside and forces himself to his feet. He hobbles a couple of steps to the bucket before his leg gives out and he topples back down on the floor.
In the spirit scuffle, the salt rolled away to the opposite corner of the room. There is no way he is making the trek to the salt and back in time, not before the ghost re-emerges. Dean checks his pockets.
“Yahtzee,” he mumbles to himself as he pulls a well-worn tube packet of salt out of his pocket, handfuls of it stolen from some buffet in Nowhere, USA. “Told you hoarding this crap would come in handy one day. And you doubted me.”
Sam doesn’t answer anything, because Sam is somewhere else, busy being pissy about Dean doing what had to be done. What they always do.
Dean tears the salt packet open and sprinkles the teeth and hairs with it.
“Rest in peace,” he says and flicks his zippo on.
-
The morning sun trickles across the pillow and into Dean’s eyes. He squints and drapes his arm over his face to shield it from the insistent sunlight. The hangover and the hunting injuries tend to make a positively shittastic cocktail.
“Man, I’m getting too old for this.” Dean sits up, grunting at the pain tugging at the stitches in his left thigh. That shard of glass went in way too close to an artery for comfort. A little bit to the left and last night would’ve been a whole different story, one involving a coroner’s van.
Even though he narrowly avoided untimely demise yesterday, patching himself up all by his lonesome sucked, too. No one to get his back, no one to sew his open wound up. Had to make do with a hefty dose of hunter’s helper and resigning to poking himself with a needle.
Dean picks up a beer bottle from the floor and puts it on the bedside cabinet next to the other ones. Like a little skyline with a Jack Daniels-shaped skyscraper. He straightens up and wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. This walk of shame around the motel room to clean up the remnants of last night’s epic bender takes way more out of him than he expects. Maybe Sam is right and he should try to cut back. At least a little.
Or maybe Sam’s talking out of his ass and doesn’t know a thing, an angry voice in the back of his mind pipes up. And anyway, Sam’s not here, and if there is a single upside to Sam storming off when they were at that pier, this would be it. Dean is free to drink all night without anyone to nag him about it. Somehow free-fall drinking is way less fun in real life than it seemed it would be every time Sam quirked his eyebrow at him with an “another one, seriously?” or “it’s barely noon, De-e-a-a-an.” Sam has this way of drawling Dean’s name that condenses a crapton of disappointment and judgement and saint-like patience all into a few sounds.
Noon, shmoon. Sam’s head isn’t any less broken before five, Castiel isn’t any less dead before five, the country isn’t any less screwed in the ass by prehistoric monsters before five.
He sits down at the table and stretches until his joints crack. The sun pours into the shades and Dean winces at the world being way too bright. He opens the beat-up laptop that he inherited from Sam when Sam upgraded to a newer version.
“Maybe now I’ll finally be able to open my laptop without seeing it frozen mid-porno and wondering if I should call in the hazmat to clean my keyboard,” Sam said when he handed his old laptop over. Little brothers, man. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t…
Dean opened a new page in the browser and searched for the freakiest of the freak incident the World Wide Web had to offer. Something to shoot or stab or burn. The pickings were slim, though. A psychic that died mid-séance from what looked like a generic heart attack, an animal attack which very well could be a normal bear, a ghost sighting in a small-town diner… The website reporting on the ghost story looks like the pop-up ads are trying to give this already busted laptop the internet clap, which doesn't exactly add to its credibility. But the ghost description sounded somewhat legit. If Dean squinted and tilted his head to the side just right.
“I swear, the jukebox let out this blood-curdling scream. And it got so cold all of a sudden!” says Joe Sherman, 16, a local resident. The diner’s owner, Peter Gallagher, stated he wasn’t at the diner at the time, and derided the latest ghost news as a “load of hooey”. Could it be he didn’t want everyone in town to know Sailor Pete’s Diner is oh so very haunted?
This case has ‘bust’ written all over it. If Sam was here, Dean would suggest they keep their heads low while this whole “Leviathans wearing their faces on a murder spree that would put Pumpkin and Honey Bunny to shame” thing blows over. But Sam’s not here, and if Dean stays here any longer, he’s running a real risk of going stir-crazy. Might as well take the car out on the road, watch the hills and the valleys and the forests go by and get a grip.
Someone else’s car, that is, because his Baby had to be stashed away, at least until the general public moves onto the next hot thing. What a kick when Dean is already down.
Dean glances out of the window to shop for his next ride and whistles. A blue 1965 Pontiac Catalina catches the light a couple of motel doors down. It’s a little worse for wear, scratched up and shaky in parts, but still clearly well-loved. Any muscle car that old has to be, or it won’t even think of starting. As much as Dean would love to take this girl for a ride, he’d never do that to the owner. Not to mention driving a car as flashy as her would defeat the whole purpose of leaving Baby behind.
Dean sighs and looks at the car to the left of the Catalina. A 2004 Ford Taurus. Good enough, and by that he means ugly enough.
If Sam was here, Dean would’ve been pointing these cars out in the window and cracking a joke about them looking like total suckers in that Ford, and Sam would be the one to lecture Dean about not GTA-ing the pretty car and Dean would say, yeah, okay, killjoy, you suck the fun outta everything, and Sam would’ve rolled his eyes and maybe laughed a little.
But Sam’s an overly dramatic bitch, and he’s not here. Him and his stupid bleeding heart.
Dean picks his phone up and hesitates between two numbers on his speed-dial for a second before dialing one.
“What’s wrong now, boy?” Bobby’s gruff voice booms out of the speaker.
“Why do you think something’s wrong?”
“You don’t call me unless something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Even Bobby’s silence is judgmental. “Was wondering if you could get someone to check out this new case with me.” It’s not even that Dean needs backup. He needs someone to talk to as he works so he doesn’t lose the last of his marbles.
“No offense, Dean, but no way in Hell. I only got so many friends, and I can’t risk any more of them holding a grudge ‘cause I set them up with your stupid ass. Three people you drove off by being a massive asshole. Three!”
“Maybe if you didn’t send all these rookies my way, man.”
“Please. These were no rookies, and even if they were, you’re not exactly shabby at teaching newbies how to hunt. When you want to, that is.” Bobby tsked. “You want to know what I think?”
“I get a feeling you’ll tell me whether I want to hear it or not.”
“You’re damn right, boy,” Bobby’s voice goes growl-low. “You’ve been rejecting good hunters like a bad kidney transplant because you already got a partner. And it doesn’t feel right hunting with anyone else.”
“Sam made it crystal clear he’s pissed and he feels like going it solo for now.”
“Then get over yourself and say sorry.”
“So you’re siding with him.” Fucking unbelievable.
“I think you two are a pair of buffoons who decided to act like petty schoolgirls while Leviathans suck this world dry. So stow your crap, pick up the phone, and call Sam’s number.”
Bobby is right, of course. Bobby has this outsider’s perspective that leaves him in a perfect spot to watch Sam and Dean stumble around and pass out wise advice like some kind of hunter Yoda. Doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying that he hits the mark more often than not. Or that it’s suddenly easy to swallow his pride and reach out to Sam's annoying ass.
I met this hot chick in a bar off 66 the other day and she was obsessed with true crime. You’d have a field day arguing with her who the real Zodiac Killer is.
As good of an olive branch as any, right? Right.
-
Turns out, Peter Gallagher, the Sailor Pete’s Diner’s owner, was not only right about the ghost stories being a load of hooey but also inadvertently caused these ghost stories. The AC is malfunctioning, alternately making the diner sweat-hot and chills-cold, and the jukebox hasn’t been fixed since the day it was installed. Now it periodically makes shrill screaming noises, adding a touch of primal fear to the diner’s general ambiance.
In spite of all that, they serve a mean plate of eggs ‘n bacon. And it’s hardly Dean’s first time eating as someone screams in the background, anyway. At least it’s only a broken jukebox this time.
The newspapers he flips through while having his breakfast with a side of screams tell him something that looks like a werewolf has been tearing its way through North Dakota. Great news! Not for the people it ate, of course, but for Dean. Something to shoot and stab and kill.
-
The werewolf hunt is a piece of cake. Dean still manages to get a black eye and a seriously bruised forehead in the scuffle. As he lays in a motel bed, cradling one ice-cold can of beer to his head and sipping at the other, he picks up his phone and flips it open.
The phone book contains four numbers: Sam’s phone, Sam’s other phone, Sam’s other, other phone, and Bobby. This is the Dean Winchester Emergency line. Used to be, a handful of other people had this number, but his friends and family’s ranks have been dwindling for a while. And then there were two.
Sam still hasn’t replied. Man, the guy holds a grudge like no one’s business.
You know, Dean types after wasting a witch in Kentucky, she was killing people.
Amy Pond, that is. Not the witch. Although the witch was killing people, too. Which is a repetitive theme for the people-for the things-he stops, with a bullet or a knife.
Sam doesn’t reply to that one. No surprise there.
Okay, maybe I should’ve told you earlier, Dean texts after a few days. Sam’s silent treatment is surprisingly effective. Dean’s in Nevada and he didn’t even swing by the casinos. Not in the mood.
Sam doesn’t respond to that one, either. Dean ends up calling him from Idaho. The rings are long and slow. The line crackles, and Dean’s heart rate picks up for a second when Sam’s voice resounds on the other end of the line.
You’ve got Sam’s voicemail. If it’s something urgent, call my brother Dean…
“Hey. I know you’re mad but call me back. Just wanna be sure you’re not dead in a ditch. You owe me that much, man.”
It’s not that Bobby’s speech got to Dean or anything. Sam’s his responsibility, no matter where he is and no matter how pissed either of them (or both) might be. Sam’s his little brother, and that doesn’t change.
The next day, Dean finds a payphone and places a call to Sam. When he gets the voicemail on all three of Sam’s numbers is when the worry really settles in. Maybe Sam’s pissed at Dean, but now he has no way of knowing it was Dean calling and still, nada.
Dean slams the phone back on the receiver. He pushes the glass door ajar, stumbles outside, and walks all the way back to the motel room. A swarm of thoughts crawls over each other in his head like worker bees. Sam’s busy. Hunting. It happens that sometimes you go off the grid to nail the thing you're hunting. Dad used to go dark for weeks, and every time, he turned up.
Still, Dean finds himself dialing Bobby’s number as soon as he closes the motel room’s door behind himself.
Bobby picks up straight away. At least someone’s waiting for Dean’s calls.
“Have you heard from Sam lately?” Dean asks instead of a hello.
“Not since, what, a month ago? He told me he was chasing a case near Peoria all by his lonesome since you two,” Bobby coughs, “are at each other’s throats in the middle of a Leviathan crapfest.”
“A month? And you didn’t think to tell me Sam’s gone off the radar?”
“Watch your tone, boy. I’m not your brother’s keeper. I assumed he was busy but managing.” Bobby’s tone shifts ever so slightly. “You haven’t heard from him either, I’m taking.”
“No,” Dean says, and presses his phone to his ear with his shoulder as he opens the laptop.
“Have you considered he’s simply majorly pissed at you?”
“He is. But I tried another number, and he still hasn’t picked up.” Dean taps the keyboard, logging in on Sam’s phone account. At least he hasn’t changed his passwords. The Find My Phone map slowly loads on the crappy motel wi-fi. The green radar icon in the corner sweeps a few circles before it finally zeroes on a town of Windfall, Washington.
“He’s nowhere near Peoria anymore,” Dean says. “But it’s only seven hours from here.”
“Guess you best go and check up on him, then. If this is a big case he’s tied up with, he might appreciate the backup. And if he’s in trouble…”
Dean’s already packing his bags.
-
Windfall, Washington has a population of 1,136 people. It’s a small dot of a town near I-5, designed to lure in a tired traveler. That’s why for such a tiny place, Windfall has a lot of joints someone can get a bite to eat and lay their head to rest. Dean knows Sam’s not staying at anything three stars levels of fancy, which narrows his search down. The cheapest place in town is, ironically, called “Pineview Deluxe Inn”. There’s nothing deluxe about this inn. A two-story building with yellow walls and red doors.
The pines are just as advertised, though. Towering and tall and scraping the orange sunset behind the inn.
Dean flashes his FBI badge at the sleepy clerk, a skinny guy with a patchy beard and a sprinkling of pimples all over his face.
“I’m looking for a witness to a murder. I need to see who checked in and out in the past month,” Dean says with so much authority, the clerk almost trips over himself in the rush to get the guest book to him. They’re still using pen-and-paper records. Dean drags his finger down the list until his finger comes to a halt on a name.
Edgar Asimov. Oh, Sammy. Trying to switch it up from the rock aliases and still being so obviously, unquestionably Sam.
“This guy,” Dean says, tapping the entry a few times. “You got a spare key?”
“Oh, him. Yeah, he stayed for a couple of days, what, a few weeks ago? Weird fella.”
“How so?”
“Didn’t grab any of his stuff, from what I’ve seen. Didn’t check out. Just up and left.”
Dean’s blood runs cold. “What?”
“Your witness skipped town, agent,” the clerk says, slapping a key on the counter. A large 8 is written on a garish blue keychain. “You’re in luck, though. The business isn't exactly booming right now, so I may or may not have been procrastinating cleaning his room out. Big time procrastinating. But, hey, that works out well for you, right? You can, like, look for clues ‘n shit.” He frowns, seemingly concerned about swearing right to a federal agent’s face. “Er, clues ‘n crap, sir.”
Dean doesn’t even tell him bye. He suspects that he’s lost some credibility as an FBI agent by going as silent and pale as he did, but he can’t give a fuck about that right now. He leaves the office and marches across the parking lot and up the rickety deck to reach Sam’s room.
Dean only manages to put the key into the keyhole on the third try. He swings the door open, desperately hoping to see Sam sprawled on the bed, or sitting at the table, or brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, doing something stupid and mundane. Maybe a little angry at Dean for tracking him down, that’s fine. But there.
His wordless prayers go unanswered. The room is empty. The bathroom door is ajar and it’s also empty. Sam’s phone is on the bed stand, hooked to a charger. Some of Sam’s clothes are folded on the bed. His duffle is perched at the foot of it. Dad’s journal is on the table, open on a page about witches. Next to it, a pair of unfamiliar car keys. Actual keys, huh? Fancy. Sam must’ve stumbled upon a car whose owner forgot the keys in the ignition.
“Sammy?” Dean still calls out, like he’s hoping Sam’s hiding under the bed or in the shower to scare him. “Sam?”
Sam doesn’t appear.
Dean picks up the phone. He gulps when he sees Sam’s texts inbox overflowing with texts. The little icon blinks incessantly but no one’s been around to check it in a while.
He checks Sam’s voicemails himself. The voicemails are all from him and Dean winces at how demanding his voice sounds on a recording.
Sam doesn’t owe him anything. Sam’s not here, and foul play looks more and more likely by the second. Dad’s journal is right there, and Sam wouldn’t have left that behind. Not even if he tried to stage a disappearance to throw Dean off his scent. Not that he would. Sam could be a major bitch, and he liked to walk out on Dean whenever the going got tough. But a vanishing act like that would border on cruel, and Sam's not cruel.
No, Sam’s been taken. Dean can’t see any visible signs of struggle but he has worked enough mysterious disappearance cases to know this doesn’t mean shit.
The parking lot is empty and eerie, lit up by a few stray streetlights. A plastic bag flies around, pushed by stray gusts of wind. Dean disarms the alarm with the remote on the car keys and a silver ‘08 Honda Civic blinks its headlights.
It’s kind of grimy both inside and out, probably thanks to the previous owner, but nothing about it pings Dean as fishy. No blood in the salon or broken glass. Someone wrote “Wash me :(“ in the dust on the hood, but that’s hardly a clue.
Dean yanks the door open and slips into the driver’s seat. Yup, this has to be Sam’s car: the seat has been pushed all the way back for his Sasquatch-long legs to fit. A manila folder lies on the passenger on the seat. Dean flips through it to find a stack of well-organized case research for a case in Mt. Vermont, a witch pretending to be a psychic. A neatly folded receipt for a berry bowl from a Crunchy Granola two weeks and a few hundred miles ago lies on top of the case research. Dean weakly laughs. That’s Sam’s, alright.
Dean checks the glove compartment. A gun. Sam’s trusty Taurus. Dean pulls it out and turns it back and forth, inspecting it.
Sam wouldn’t leave this gun behind. They may shoot whatever is on hand, but Sam takes a long time accepting a gun as truly his own. He doesn’t like guns the way Dean does, doesn’t have a fancy engraved Colt or anything. He considers them deadly tools of the trade, that’s all. But Sam does appreciate this Taurus.
You get used to a gun, you learn exactly how to hold your breath to hit your mark, how to reload it quick, saving an extra fraction of second that could mean the difference between life and death, how to clean it nice and get into each and every crevice…
Sam wouldn’t leave this gun behind to run for the hills. The gun or the journal. Hell, even his stupid classic silver iPod is lying on the passenger’s seat, the screen black and the battery dead. All of Sam’s crap is here, in this town, stretched between Sam’s car of the week and Sam’s motel room of the week.
But Sam’s not here. Dean fucked up at following his prime directive-take care of your brother, boy!-once again.
Dean grabs the iPod and the folder and tucks the Taurus away before walking shamefully back to the motel.
Dean checks Sam’s notes. There’s nothing about a possible case in the town of Windfall. Sam killed a few vampires near Sacramento, by the looks of it, and he was going to ice a witch near Mt. Vernon a couple of hours away from here. Dean googled the hell out of this town but there were no cases. Sam must’ve made a pit stop here on his way from one hunt to the next. Stopped to refuel, maybe to switch cars, definitely to grab some food, and vanished.
Dean calls Bobby with a depressing update. Bobby wants to get to Dean, but Dean tells him, you stay put in case he comes there, your place is the last North Star he’s got. Bobby tells Dean oddly supportive things like we’ll find your brother and I’ll ask my sources and it feels like a man in a white coat acting nice after showing you some charts and telling you you’re a goner. Bobby’s only sweet when someone’s dead or dying.
Going to sleep feels like betraying Sam. He could be looking for Sam right now instead of catching z’s as if nothing happened. But Dean’s exhausted and he’s not gonna do Sam much good even if he keeps going. Plus, it’s the middle of the night, and there’s no one else he could call right now. And it’s been two weeks. The trail is not getting much colder than that.
Man, if only he hadn’t let Sam go on that pier. Even if Sam still went missing, Dean would’ve at least known when it happened. Looking for Sam now is starting out ten paces behind.
Dean lies in the darkness for half an hour like the serial insomniac he is before getting up and heading to his car. There’s still some undrunk beer in the cooler.
Beer is a social drink or a post-hunt drink, and Dean’s neither socializing nor hunting. Now whiskey, that’s way more of an “oh, shit, what have I done” drink. But beer’s what he’s got, and beer’s liquor, so it’ll do.
Sam’s still gone, though. Whether Dean’s sober or tipsy or anything in between.
-
The morning after a tragedy is the worst part. For a second, Dean forgets Sam’s gone and chalks it down to yet another bad dream of his, but then reality sinks in. He rolls onto his back and watches the intricate patterns of the water stains on the ceiling as if they’re making up a map that will lead him to Sam. If he only looks hard enough.
He gets up. After a shower and brushing his teeth, and not shaving, because first, he can’t be fucked, and second, the stubble makes him look slightly different from the serial killer they showed on TV, Dean almost feels like a regular human person.
The ugly paintings of fruits and landscapes the motel room came equipped with go down. The map of the PNW goes up. Sam could be anywhere here. He could be anywhere else in the country, too.
Dean can’t call the cops and can’t make Sam the next milk carton boy. All this will result in is a manhunt and Dean most likely will get arrested too if people are on the lookout for the brothers Winchester alive and on the prowl. And Dean’s got no one, short of Bobby, to play Prison Break with him.
Anyway, there’s nothing cops can do for him that he can’t do himself. He should treat this like he would any other case. They never call the cops to sniff around then, do they?
Dean remembers every single thing Sam told him about VPNs and hacking into databases. The security camera footage from the day Sam went missing has already been overwritten. The hospitals and the morgues in the area don’t have any John Does matching Sam’s description. Dean groans and leans back in the chair as he hangs up on the last hospital for today. He picks up the pen and crosses it off a To Call list he wrote on the motel stationary.
Sam’s not in the morgues, great. He could still be dead in a ditch somewhere. Worse, he could be slowly bleeding out, and Dean is not around to stop it.
What could’ve happened to him? Maybe a Leviathan took him. But Leviathans aren’t exactly smooth criminals. Black goo and messes everywhere. And this place was spotless.
Maybe Sam chose to go off the grid. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. A certain place called Flagstaff came to mind. But Sam wouldn’t leave his gun or John’s journal behind for a civvy to find.
Maybe a human psycho got him. But it would take one hell of a pro to sneak up on a paranoid Sam. He was twitchy right now, trigger-happy, because of the Devil taking residence in his head.
And there it is, the elephant in the room. Sam’s been quickly deteriorating since Cas broke the wall in his brain. Who knows, hand scar or not, maybe the Devil got him to go somewhere secluded and he popped his own top. There’s a thick forest right next to the farms outside of this town. Sam knows how to hide a body. He’d well make sure his own was never found.
After a beat of hesitation, Dean widens the search net to mental hospitals as well. Sam’s not in those either.
By the time he’s done cold-calling, the sun already dips close to the horizon. This isn’t fair. Sam’s always been better at research than Dean was.
Sam should be here, looking for himself. He’d get further faster and he’d keep it together better and he wouldn’t need to pace the floor so fucking much. Sam’s methodical and efficient and speedier at hacking and better at scouring databases. There’s a reason why they work so damn well together: they each got their strengths, yin and yang style. And this, searching for a needle in a stack of hay, is one of Sam’s.
Sam should be here, and he’s not.
-
The town of Windfall is squeaky clean. No mysterious disappearances (if you don’t count Sam), no gruesome murders (hopefully even counting Sam), no nothing. It’s got a hospital (no one resembling Sam’s description there), a grade and a middle school (Sam loves school, but he’s a little too old for these ones), a bunch of generic fast food places (no signs of Sam), a small dingy store with a Kinko’s (Dean prints a few pictures of Sam on it to make asking about him easier), a motel (Dean goes door to door and canvasses the guests, but not a lot of people stay at the motel this time of the year, and the ones that do keep to themselves and don’t remember seeing Sam), a hotel (Sam wouldn’t stay in one, and no one saw him there), and a bar.
This bar is a prime dive, the kind Dean thrives in, with smoky air, peeling fake leather of the seats, and large antlers mounted on the walls. There’s a pool table surrounded by three bikers that Dean takes note of as he walks over to the bartender. If he stays long enough, he’ll need to start making cash somehow.
Even though Sam’s all classy and drinks his tea with his pinky out, he also digs these places. Sam may not admit it out loud, but he can’t hide it from Dean: he feels right at home at a seedy joint the same as Dean does. And Dean misses him bad right now. Misses him complaining about sticky tables or dirty glasses or Dean hitting on the hot bartender or something else stupid.
“Hey, what can I get you?” the bartender asks. She’s a tall, no-nonsense woman with a long thick braid and a muscular figure. She reminds Dean of a mixture between Ellen and Jo and his heart twists with a familiar pang of old guilt.
“Whiskey on the rocks,” he says, sliding onto the barstool. “Can I ask you something?”
“If it’s my number, I’m flattered, but let’s keep it professional,” she says with a quirk of her mouth.
Dean smiles back. “Not today. I’m looking for someone. Have you seen him?” He pulls Sam’s photo out of his pocket. “Here.”
She takes the photo and brings it close to her eyes, squinting at it in the low lighting in the bar. Sam’s smiling in the picture. He hasn’t been doing a lot of smiling lately, but that was a good day. They’d made a pit-stop in Phoenix and Sam dragged Dean to the local art museum to see the “Fireflies'' infinity room. Even though Dean never was one for modern art, this exhibit was pretty cool. What was even cooler was seeing Sam grin wide, just like when he did when they were still little and stayed out too late on firefly-filled summer nights.
Then they had ice cream and they wandered the local alley known for its street art (thanks to Sam again, he did his research), and Dean pretended to listen as Sam told him about Yayoi Kusama’s influence in contemporary sculpture... yeah. It was a good day.
“Is he missing? Is he in trouble?”
“I can’t find him. Not sure yet about the trouble part,” Dean says, although he was pretty fucking sure. But all he has to go on is an empty room and a whole lot of hunter’s instinct he doesn’t want to believe.
She sizes him up as if deciding if Dean could be trusted with the information she is about to share. Finally, she speaks again.
“He was here, a couple of weeks ago. Beginnin’ of November. He had a beer, then left. Not too exciting.” She frowns. “He’s seriously missing? From here?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. This is a small town, man. Nothing happens around here.” She pours Dean his drink and slides it across the bar. Dean grabs it as it teeters a little too close to the edge. “My name’s Kristy. I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for your brother if he ever passes by again. You staying at Pineview?”
Dean nods with a hesitant thanks. He’s not exactly holding his breath hoping Sam will come by Moosetown Bar. After finishing his drink, Dean asks the pool-playing bikers whether they’ve seen Sam. Their names are Ed, Mike, and Steve, and none of them have seen and/or remember Sam, so that calls for another drink. And a third one.
-
The nest Sam cleaned out is nothing short of professional work. Dean never sticks around to see the consequences of a hunt pan out, but it’s weird to see articles mourning these fangs as stand-up members of their community slain by a serial killer when they ate fellow citizens for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Sam chopped their heads clean off in their sleep, the coroner and the police report says. Well, the reports use terms such as “decapitation” and “an unknown assailant”, but Dean knows perfectly well what that means. There’s nothing weird about this hunt, nothing that would chase Sam for miles to catch up with him.
On to PART TWO...