fic: Vocation
Fandom: SPN, Sam and Dean and Pastor Jim.
Spoilers: General, but nothing episodic.
Rating: PG-whatever, nothing graphic.
Word Count: 6600ish
Summary: AU: Raised by Pastor Jim and schooled by the Catholic Church since their father died fourteen years ago, Dean and Sam are now freshly-minted priests in a rural Minnesota parish, better equipped to save souls than lives.
Notes: opprobrium now holds the rights to my typing fingers. She's responsible for whatever comes out in the next four months. Solely responsible, I should say.
ETA: AVERT YOUR EYES ASAP, AND GO DL THE FREAKING HONEST-TO-GOD ILLUSTRATED VERSION THAT delighter MADE FOR ME. I AM SUCH A SPARKLY PRINCESS.
ETA II: AND HERE'S THE KILLER FANMIX, by onthecontrary, featuring Calexico, Sondre Lerche, Rock Plaza Central and the hearts of a hundred altar boys.
Sam bolted down the steps and through the sacristy door with a look that verged on meltdown on his face. “Dean,” he hissed, pressing his back against the closed door, “Dean. You - uh, you have to go out there.”
“Oh yeah?” Dean was doing maintenance on Pastor Jim's knives: testing blades, polishing silver, looking for any signs of rust on the ancient or sacred ones. He didn't look up. “Kinda busy here.”
“No. No, you have to.” Sam scratched at his jaw and cast a glance backwards, as if he could see the altar and pews through the heavy stone and pressed oak. “It's that grocery store girl - what's her name, Culver, Melissa Culver. I recognize that look, Dean-” his voice lowered, “She's coming to confess again.”
Dean smirked at his brother's anguished face, “Well, Father, it's your sacred duty to take the girl's confession. You neglect her at her immortal soul's peril.”
“You. Don't. Understand.” Sam's words barely made it past his clenched teeth.
“Sure I do, I took her cousin's last Sunday.” Dean made a sound in his throat, came forward and pried Sam off the door. “Take it as a job perk.” He opened it and went up the stairs and into the church proper, smiling beatifically at the pretty little thing in the pastel cardigan and tweed skirt. “Melissa, my child.” he said, coming down from behind the altar, “How can we serve you?”
Melissa Culver's brown eyes flicked over to Sam in appraisal as she said, “Fathers, will you take my confession?”
“Father Winchester here is ecstatic to hear you out,” Dean stepped aside, and waited the long moment before Sam's sense of duty won out over his justified instinct for self-preservation, and he stumped down the steps, looking for all the world like a schoolboy about to have his mouth washed out with soap.
Dean watched them adjourn to a confessional along the west wall, and returned to the sacristy, smirking.
--
They hosted Pastor Jim for dinner that night at their little house down the alley. Considering that all three of their lives were funded almost entirely by parishioner donations, it was bad form to go down to Main Street and buy a six pack from Henry Marcourt, like everyone else in Blue Earth did. But praise God, Jim had just got back from a thing down at their old seminary in St. Louis, and he'd evidently stopped to pick up some alcohol on the way back, because they had both whiskey and wine to go with the barbecue chicken.
“There's a reason I don't like hearing confession from those kids, Pastor. But it's probably not a very good one.” Sam said, drizzling extra sauce over the meat on the grill, and gesticulating with his tongs.
“Sammy don't like hearing about all the sex he isn't having,” put in Dean, lounging in a sagging plastic lawn chair, bare feet scuffing up clouds in the dry, grassless dirt. “Ain't ever gonna have.”
Jim shook his grey head, and Dean raised his hands and clacking whiskey glass in self-defence: “Hey, I'm just extrapolating, here.”
“Yeah, Dean, that's part of it.” Sam's voice rose stringently, “They do a lot of things that I don't understand. And half the time I don't know whether they're just trying to shock me or get legitimate moral counselling.”
“I think a bit of both, probably,” Pastor Jim suggested.
“Or maybe they're just aiming for a hard on,” amended Dean.
“Whatever,” Sam shook his head at the barbecue, troubled, “I just don't see how a couple of platitudes and thirty Our Fathers will fix her problems for her. These kids -” he paused. “I'm hearing about sex and pregnancy, all sorts of drugs and parties. They aren't even seventeen, most of them. But they can't wait. They just want out of this town and this is the next best thing.”
Jim, perched on the picnic table in the full June sun, made the best of it. “You know, Sam, two years ago not much was different. They just weren't coming to confession to tell us about it afterwards. Take that as consolation, at least.”
“Yeah, well, they're laying it on a little thick, even for the bad asses they are,” said Dean, who'd taken most of the angst-ridden adolescent confessions of lust and masturbation and backseat gropings himself. Granted, over the past few weeks it'd been like someone had thrown a switch and the details had taken a sudden dive to the tawdry and sordid.
Attempted rape, the selling of sex for drugs, a certain type of friendly activity that the Church would instantly label homosexual; drunken fights involving knives and someone's dad's pistol. Thank God in all his mercy that Justin Adams hadn't pulled the trigger, though he sobbed in the confessional like he had. But at the same time, who knew, they could certainly be lying. Dean had heard nothing from the sheriff or Dr. Messner, the general practitioner, though he'd asked. And he wouldn't put it past the kids to act up their life's woes, push the envelope and see what kind of reaction they could get. If Sam had been the one listening, they sure would've got an earful. But Dean had played it cool, as wary of playing the fanatic preacher as the lecherous one.
As priests in Blue Earth, they acted as kind of a department store display. Every movement watched, analyzed, gossipped to death. Of course, with Sam and Dean, everyone wanted a slip-up, parishioners and heathens alike; some even went so far as to push for one. Dean was pretty damn sure Melissa Culver's parents were Anglican, for instance. And there'd been a marked, practically historical, gap in Mass attendance between the ages of thirteen and thirty, a gap which had suddenly filled up with tight cardigans and impractical heels maybe twenty-two months ago.
But of course, the second a breathy sigh led to a lingering glance led to a press of bodies in passing, the town would eat them alive. Pastor Jim had flat out told them so before he'd even considered letting them come serve under him after their ordination. He'd also extracted a promise that went above and beyond their vows of celibacy, one that involved their father's name and their commitment to finding the thing that had orphaned them.
“So, how'd the old boys treat you down at Kenrick, Jim?” Dean stretched, eyed the pastor. “Lots of reminiscing and fretting about the levels of masturbation in the dorm rooms?”
“No,” said Jim, who'd removed his collar for the sake of the barbecue sauce, but never really removed his priestliness. “Now you're gone, they're more concerned about this rash of possessions.”
“What is it, six in the archdiocese?” Sam shook his head, tweezered up a breast and deposited it on Jim's plate at the mouldering picnic table. He waved off a few wasps.
“Seven. Another one in Minneapolis. It crashed a schoolbus last week. The demonologists at the seminary can't explain it, Rome can't explain it. They keep promising funding, or manpower, but nothing ever materializes. They say they're praying.”
“Pass some of that over here, Sammy.” Dean tapped a rococo beat on his paper plate with plastic fork and knife. “Well. I wouldn't say no to the cash, but we're fine taking care of our people, that's for sure.”
“I was thinking,” Sam, also collarless, his black shirt hanging loose over a pair of canvas shorts, handed Dean his chicken. “That we should paint one of those traps Bobby emailed over up in the sacristy - right above the door. Just in case. We get one of those things in town, we know where to take it. Lure it in.”
“I doubt the Bishop would enjoy seeing a pentacle from the Key of Solomon painted above the chalices and surplices, Sam,” said Jim.
“Yeah, but I doubt he'd enjoy seeing parishioners cracked open with their lungs hanging out over their shoulders, either,” Dean pointed out, through and around a mouthful of chicken.
Jim's eyebrows rose and he shrugged. He reached over, smacked Dean's cutlery out of his hands and folded his hands in preparation for Grace. “Regardless, it would be next to impossible to get the damned thing into the church in the first place. I'd say if its already in the sacristy we've already won. Agreed?”
Sam mumbled his concession and Dean made a sharp nod, “Yessir.”
"Good," said Pastor Jim, and they bent their heads in a prayer of thanks.
--
Maybe one of Dean's favourite things about their parish was the cemetery out back behind the church. More than the little bungalow off Holland Street, and more than their well-stocked sacristy, the cemetery felt like home. Pastor Jim had buried Dad there, and later they'd even considered moving Mom up from Lawrence, but decided to let her bones rest, instead. And against all logic, having his grave so close was a constant comfort, even if the only thing in the ground was a cement urn filled with ashes. Safe in holy ground, watched over by his sons, John Winchester could sleep in peace.
The only thing Dean couldn't remember between the morning his dad left them to go die in a Louisiana swamp and the day they arrived at Kenrick was the wait in the hospital. He'd been twelve, Sammy eight, and the note in Dean's pocket gave Pastor Jim's name and phone number in St. Louis. They'd sat there for probably eighteen hours, while Jim got the phone call and flew seven hundred miles due south to come and pick them up, drive them in the Impala back north again. Sam says the hospital's the only part he can remember: the nurses smoothing their hair and offering puddings, the lights, the hall, the nervous pity thick in the bleached air.
So Dean spent the morning of the summer solstice whistling while he mowed the grass - the diocese figured that with two able-bodied young men helping out, there was no need to pay a caretaker (Dean), or even a secretary (Sam) - and he clipped the hedge and checked over the few dozen graves for signs of vandalism.
Once they'd had some witchy hooligan types come in and actually dig up a grave, leave mounds of dirt and a gaping scar in the grass, the coffin banged up but unopened. Dean had spent two days tracking the kids down, found them at their high school in Sioux Falls - city kids, it figured - and gave them a story to tell their grandkids. That time the guy burst into the sophomore advanced history class and swore such a blue streak at the president of the chess club and her friends that the teacher called the principal, who called the cops, but the guy left before they got there. It made the papers - words like jailbait and suspected felon were used - and thank all that was holy that Dean had left his collar in the Impala, or he'd be cooling his heels in a monastery up in Nova Scotia even now.
He cut the mower's engine, leaned his forearms against the handlebar and squinted out across the graveyard. A blue bowl of a sky with little ice cream clouds floating around, reflecting the heat down on his sweaty neck. Christ, he needed a beer. No more of this wine shit: if he never tasted wine again he could die a happy man. A happy, hell-bound man.
He was walking over to the shed - more a miniature castle, but functionally a shed - to pull the power cord out of the socket, when he noticed the girl. Melissa Culver's baby cousin, right? Still in sophomore year, with freckles like confused gnats all over her face, but a sly smile that'd perk up a dead man.
No slyness this time, though. She stood uncertainly, her canvas school bag hanging in her hands, wet half-circles marring her sleeveless blouse. “Father?” she was on the other side of the wrought iron fence. Dean almost felt safe with those seven-foot barbs standing in between them. Almost. This whole town: waiting for one indiscretion, perceived or otherwise.
“It's Kathy, isn't it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Beautiful day, Kathy. Shouldn't you be in class?”
“Absolutely,” she stepped forward, put a hand on the iron cross-bar, “but I need to talk to you.”
Dean had better manners than to look away or grimace, but in God's name, if this was another pregnancy scare he'd be forced to unpleasant action. He dredged up a smile that he hoped could be categorized as beatific, and channelled Pastor Jim: “Well, that's what I'm here for.”
--
Later, Sam and Dean were sitting out on their side porch, which was mostly hidden from the street's view by various trees and shrubbery, but evidently not well enough to fool the mosquitoes. The sun had just set, but heat still radiated out of the ground.
“She didn't say, exactly, what she thought was going on.” Dean hedged, “But she strongly hinted towards orgies. Blood sacrifice, drunkenness. In the woods. ”
“And this is different from their regular behaviour, in that-” said Sam.
“Also, problems at home. A whole bunch of them are apparently just not themselves. Parents are helpless. Talking about boarding schools, military academies.”
“I dunno. I just don't see that drinking and screwing and cussing out their parents is really, you know, indicative of demonic possession.” Sam was drinking raspberry lemonade that he'd mixed up in his water bottle with a chopstick. “I see your concern, Dean. I really do. But possession? Come on. She probably ate a few mushrooms, saw Marty Fisher get in a fistfight.”
Sam was also still wearing the little plastic visor he used when he coded and balanced the parish's monthly bank statements. He claimed the desk lamp in the church office hurt his eyes. The fact that he'd managed to take off his shoes, his collar, his pants and his socks, but not the visor, was enough for Dean to dismiss whatever he said out of hand.
“What would you know about drinking and screwing, Sammy? Something happen with Mrs. Heaney last month at the choir bake sale?”
“God. Shut up,” said Sam, grimacing.
“Better learn to keep it in your pants, hot stuff, or we'll be excommunicated before you can say pound cake.”
“Seriously. I will punch you in the face.”
“Seriously. You want her to pop your cherry so bad it keeps you awake at night.” Dean wiggled his eyebrows. “Don't think I don't hear you-”
Sam punched him in the face, except he mostly missed, and they both fell out of the lawn chairs.
--
Mrs. Heaney was at the 8 o'clock Mass the next morning, looking absolutely fraught with guilt and half-buried pain. Kyle Heaney was one of the kids Kathy had mentioned, of course, and Dean tried to pick out the other families she'd named while he sweated under his embroidered poncho, blessed girdle and white dress, echoing Latin like an altar boy in response to Pastor Jim's more lordly intonations.
Not one of the kids was there, even though some of the girls formed the core membership of the Fathers Winchester Seduction Committee, and never missed a Sunday. And afterwards, every single one of their parents clustered around the church steps, and tried to nail down an afternoon appointment for family counselling with Jim or Sam.
Dean wasn't quite so popular, but that was alright, because he was good in confession. Sam liked to see people as victims, and hated punishing them for the inescapable realities of the world at large. But Dean always preferred to see parishioners take some damn responsibility for themselves, and often ended up being a bit more creative than the standard ten or twenty Hail Marys. Also, he was nosey, and liked knowing what was going on behind the scenes at the Parent Teacher Association or what percentage of the summer's marriages had been shotgunned into existence.
“So, Kathy's not the only one hearing about drunken orgies in the woods,” Sam told him later, as they were disrobing in the sacristy, “I have three separate sessions this afternoon.”
“Any guarantee the kids will show up?” Dean reached over to lift Sam's violently green chasuble over his head, let Sam do the same for him, shrugged off his stole, untied the girdle.
“I guess it'll depend on how persuasive the parents get.” The albs and maniples and amices went into the wardrobe, too, sprayed down with Febreze, ready to be blessed and worn again.
“Bless the instant coffee or that raspberry crap. Whatever you're gonna feed 'em. Just make sure it touches their rosebud lips, and watch for smoke. And tell Pastor Jim to do his, too.”
“Why?” Sam was straightening out his blacks, “I mean, sure. But where are you going?'
Dean shrugged into his t-shirt, slid into sneakers. “I'm going for a long, contemplative walk in the woods.”
--
The bush parties that the high school kids held every weekend were always in the same location: a fifteen minute walk into the brush on the east side of town, between the large secular cemetery and the dairy farm. Obviously, Dean wasn't the only authority who knew this, but the county sheriff's office liked to keep them accessible, and so didn't harass them enough to make them move.
He found a huge fire pit, thoughtfully lined with rocks and bracketed by a dozen fallen logs, all of which were stripped of bark on top to form splinter-less stadium seating. The ground was mostly pinecones and dried spruce needles, the odd beer can trapped under a tree root, but remarkably free of litter. There was even a stack of cleared-out underbrush and some evidently stolen split wood sitting ready by the fire pit for next weekend.
Scuffling around, Dean was almost amazed. These kids obviously valued their drinking and screwing and cussing enough to take good care of their hideout. They didn't litter, and they certainly weren't making blood sacrifices, or scraping pentacles in the mulch, or snapping condoms at each other, even. He was kind of disappointed. And kind of envious of the regularity of their adolescence.
Not every sixteen year old had to lose their virginity to a drop-out nun who recognized him hanging around a local dive bar, insisted on taking him home and copped a lot more than a feel while debating the merits of ratting him out to the Rector. “I got kicked out for smoking marijuana,” complained the drop-out nun. “It helped me connect spiritually. Do they even know they've got a junior alcoholic lined up to take the vows?” He remembered shouting, “Thanks a lot, Mary Magdalene!” as he'd slammed the door. The height of wit, even then.
Dean kept going along the little deer track the kids had trampled down for themselves, investigated the forest until he emerged out the other side, where the hills started to jut up and the ranchlands began. No blood on the ground, no mulch swept awry by wild orgies. No signs that any of the stories were true.
Except for the body turning gently in the breeze just off to the left. Dean's heart shuddered as he recognized Kathy Culver's freckles in the shade. She was hanging like a slab of uncut beef, skirt hanging in tatters over her scratched and dirty legs. She was wearing one shoe, a camisole. Her eyes were open, and she was hanging from a rancher's rope tied into a lasso knot under her armpits.
“I don't want to go,” she murmured, and her eyes blinked.
So it wasn't the breeze turning her slowly under a branch, it was her breathing. And as Dean hooked his arms around her to take her down, he thanked the lord in as many ways as he knew how for that.
--
Sam's face was pallid when he found Dean in the hallway at the county hospital. He'd caught a ride with Bill and Maureen Culver, the parents, and evidently done something right, because those two looked a lot calmer than he did. Maureen touched Dean's arm and accepted a murmured blessing before they went in to see Kathy. Dean held Sam back, played out the rope in his fingers.
“If this is a demon we're dealing with, he's a subtle bastard. The kids did this themselves, I can guarantee it.”
“What?” Sam eyes wrinkled in disgust, “Why would they? Because she talked to you?”
“Maybe. I don't know. Did you see any of them during counselling?”
“All of them. They were all there. None of them said a single word.” Sam's hands twitched at his sides. “Their parents cried, they begged. We prayed. Not a sound. It was like they weren't even there. Pastor Jim is still with the Heaneys.”
Dean shook his head. “So I guess they didn't start burning up with the holy water.”
“No. You're right. Dear Lord in heaven - these kids aren't themselves. Justin Adams, Luke Chiasson. They used to be good kids.” Sam retreated to a waiting room chair, fingers finding his rosary while Dean's still held the rope. He leaned forward, voice low: “Dean, what did they do to her?”
“Doctor says everything's fine on the inside,” Dean hedged. He'd said there were no signs of abuse, no rape, no beating. Just a fifteen year-old girl, strung up from a tree like a Christmas decoration in June. Silent, awake. He couldn't answer the question, desperately wanted to force the answer out of someone.
“You know that Melissa girl,” said Sam, after a long silence. “Her parents didn't book a meeting. Didn't even come to Mass.”
Dean nodded, looked askance.
“In confession,” Sam's voice dropped to a half-whisper, and he pulled Dean down to sit. Not breaking the Seal of Confession so much as asking advice, as was advocated and allowed by the church. Neither of them particularly cared at that moment, though. “She said she'd met someone. Older guy, knew her parents wouldn't approve. She talked like - well she said, outright - that he set her free.”
“Set her free? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Sam sighed, leaned back and rubbed his temples. “I don't know.”
Dean stood up, “Let's go ask.”
--
They pulled up in the Impala: collared, with bibles and rosaries and sachets of exorcised salt, holy water and a single blessed blade between them. Sam let Dean lead the march up to the Culver's - this time, Frank and Peg - front door. No one answered the knock.
The neighbours, when interviewed, said they'd heard about an ill aunt in Wisconsin, and yes, they'd seen Melissa around. Watering the lawn, taking out some pizza boxes to the garbage, heading out that afternoon, dressed optimistically, they might add, for the upcoming high pressure front.
Dean shook his head and said, “Let's try the woods.”
But nothing. They returned to the church empty-handed, hot and frustrated. Pastor Jim was waiting. He accosted them on the steps and actually gripped Dean's shirt at the elbow. He steered them straight through the doors into the cool air of the vaulted hall. His face was set, eyes hard, voice stilted.
“Maureen Culver just called, asking for a Mass for Kathy. She said to thank you two. I told her that our prayers were with her and didn't let her know that I had no clue what - exactly - has happened.”
“Father,” started Sam, “Dean found her daughter in the woods-”
“I pieced most of it together since then, thanks,” Jim cut him off, “And this is not something you two should be handling. It's not something you're equipped to handle.”
A brief second of choked silence, then Sam was back at it, jaw thrust out in fury, hair falling in his eyes: “Twelve years in seminary, and we're not equipped? What exactly does 'equipped' even mean to you, Jim? We care about this girl. We are responsible for these kids. And you're turning around to tell us that we are not equipped to answer our vocation? When we could have a goddamn demon running around our parish?”
“Sam,” Dean called off his brother's bulldog attack. Sam would sniff around an argument, sink his teeth in and tear until one or both sides were bloody and gasping on the ground. Shocking, that when it came to this Dean was the reasonable one.
“Have you seen this demon?” asked Jim.
“No sir,” said Dean. In fact, we're not even sure-”
“Of course you're not. You haven't seen an imp, let alone hellspawn. How could you know?” Jim let out a sigh, rubbed his neck as he raised his eyes to glance up the aisle to the pulpit and altar, down along the pews. Dean followed his gaze and felt a wave of homesickness: for this town, the cemetery, his dorm room at Kenrick, and a house he barely remembered in Lawrence, Kansas. They all felt the same in his gut - missing, gone. But Jim, oblivious, waved them along and led the way back to the sacristy. “I made a promise to your father before he died. I said I'd keep you both safe. It's obviously my own fault for not keeping you ignorant, too.”
Sam chafed at this. He closed the sacristy door behind them and went to open the closet that contained all of Jim's hunting gear: knives, guns, lore and research.
Jim stopped him by putting a hand out to his shoulder, sighing again. “I raised you on consecrated ground, because no one knew whether the demon that killed your parents would come after you, too.”
“No,” Sam corrected, “You raised us to be priests so we'd be ready to fight the thing, to kill it.”
Jim stood shaking his head, but before he spoke Dean knew what he would say. They'd never hunted down a thing and killed it in their lives. The last spirit Dean had witnessed firsthand had been the one they'd been hunting when he was twelve, when the demon had caught up with Dad. Since then, it had all been training, fitting the odd archery practise in between their classes at seminary, duties at the church. The thousand duties that had been broken to them in waves, distractions masked as their life's work. The myriad reasons that when Jim did go on one of his rare out-of-town hunts, they couldn't go with him. He'd thought for years that he'd learn enough, grow strong enough, to go out and find that demon and kill it. But he'd also known that there was a price for the relative tranquillity.
“Dean, you keep your brother here while I go deal with this thing.” Jim raised his eyebrows, hefted a black duffel bag over his shoulder. “Alright?”
“Yes sir,” said Dean, and caught Sam by the shoulder when he made an involuntary lunge after Jim as the door closed. Sam's fight had apparently dissolved in the long silence, his features were slack, wide-eyed. He looked at Dean, and Dean tightened his grip on his shoulder.
What could he say? It's alright, Sammy, we've just been so selfish that we abandoned Dad and Mom. We'll figure it out. Or: There, there. It's not like we've entirely wasted our lives. He remembered the day of their ordination, when Sam had told him he wanted to continue his studies in Austria, at a theological university there. Dean had panicked, and started guilt-tripping him on the spot, thinking he was reminding Sam of the incredible duty they had to kill the bastard, but actually just sealing their fate as protectors of the bored and middle class. At least Sam had loved what they were doing, even though now it probably increased his stricken guilt tenfold.
The little bell in the sacristy had tinkled when Jim had left through the front door, and now it tinkled again.
They looked at each other, and went up the stairs, Sam leading.
Melissa Culver was standing in the aisle in dirty jeans and tangled hair. She looked like she'd been climbing through the woods for the past week, little twigs stuck to her clothes in sappy splotches, and she wore a flimsy rubber sandal on one foot, but not the other. Sam barely hesitated before approaching her. “Melissa? Are you okay?”
“I need to confess,” the miserable voice was keen with self-hatred, and Dean didn't even have to prompt Sam to the confessionals. If she had hung her baby cousin up to dry, then at least they'd know. And still, Dean had to admit he believed in the strength of their church, its consecration and holiness.
Dean hung around, eavesdropping and trying not to eavesdrop. He heard murmuring, Sam leading a brief prayer, and then the girl's voice pierced through the cabinet doors. “He left me, he said he was leaving me while he took the others.” Sam's voice, urgent and low, asking the questions directly even as Dean mouthed them: who? Who left you? Where did he go? Did he bring the other kids? To where?
Sam emerged, guided Melissa to the kneelers to pray, handed her his own rosary. He came forward to confer with Dean, who sat at the organ. “She says he's a stranger, came to town a about a month ago. Showed up at a bush party, suddenly everyone was having a great time. Sex, booze - all those things she mentioned in confession last week.”
“Sounds like an alright guy,” Dean put in.
“Yeah, except, all the kids are so into this that everything else is slipping. Parents, family, school. A few of them get worried, but the others are so into no one wants to speak up. But in the meantime, these kids are breaking up their lives in a matter of four or five days.”
“That much we knew - silence, sullenness, retreat.”
“And now she's saying that this guy Peter wants to bring them somewhere. Out of town, out into the world. Kathy's there Saturday night when he tells them this, she makes a stand, and a whole bunch of the boys pick her up and take her somewhere. Melissa's too scared to find out. So she stays put. Doesn't go home when the others do, eventually, in the morning. And when she's alone with Peter, he tells her she can't come with them.”
“And she's heartbroken by this?”
“Devastated. For some reason, this guy is all she wants. All any of them want. He tells her the reason she can't go is because she's pregnant, and he only needs the pure children.”
Dean rolled his eyes, “Guy wants to get out of paying child support, more like.”
“Dean, really.” Sam's voice, already at a whisper, strengthened. “I think I know what this is.”
“Not a demon?”
“No, not a demon. I think we've got more a pied piper scenario. You know, like in the stories: Pied Piper doesn't get paid, so he lures away all the children, takes them to a cave somewhere and kills them, or settles them down in a new town, or whatever. The point is their absence: their preference for adventure - even death - over home. In the stories the figure's linked with the Grim Reaper, or the devil, come to take his due.”
“So, what didn't we pay?”
“I don't know, we'll have to ask it.” Sam rocked back on his haunches, stood up. “I don't know if we can kill something like this, Dean. If it's a reaper, we might not even be able to reason with it. You want to go downstairs, get the standard stuff, just in case?”
They dropped Melissa at home - she refused to go see the GP and Sam didn't argue with her - and Dean turned into the town cemetery's parking lot just as the sun merged with the cloud bank coming over the western horizon, casting the trees and gravestones under an orange glow.
As they relocated flasks into pockets and knives into hidden sheathes, Sam turned, opened his mouth and closed it. Dean supplied the question for him: “What do you think Pastor Jim will say when he catches us?”
“That depends whether we're alive, dead, or somewhere in between when he finds us.” Sam shrugged into his canvas jacket and slammed the trunk of the Impala closed.
“Sammy,” Dean said, and leaned against the car, “We don't know what we're doing, here. This thing could-” he took a breath, and Sam cut him off.
“It doesn't matter. This is what we're supposed to do. And this is what we'll keep doing, after. C'mon.” He started for the main path, forcing Dean to intercede and take point, leading them both in the right direction.
There was a fire burning in the pit as they approached. The orange and grey figures around it were kids from the high school. Not just the Catholic ones, either. A bunch of familiar faces, unfamiliar names, turned to Dean as he walked into the clearing. He nodded at Kyle Heaney, said “What's up, Luke,” to the Chiasson kid. They just stared, and then turned to look when one of them - a dark-haired young man perched near the fire - cleared his throat.
“Father,” he greeted Dean. “We've all been so worried about Kathy. Is she alright?”
Dean let his incredulous smirk show. “Are you kidding me?” He turned, gestured: “Kyle? Is this guy kidding me? It was you who strung her up there. Come on.”
The black-haired kid, who was too pretty by half, and wearing the kind of motley city clothes that came with tears and stripes and layers that had been popular thirty years ago, got up off his tree branch. “We've all made our decision here, Father. If you've come to argue, you might as well start preaching at the tree trunks.” The kids around him stirred in agreement.
“I didn't come to argue, buddy. I came here to give you an order.” Dean shifted, aware he was at a disadvantage. He hadn't expected the entire brainwashed horde to be here. Or if he had, he'd hoped for something a little less passively hostile. “Whatever witchy spell you've got going on here, end it. Let the kids go.”
“Goodness.” The kid didn't speak with a boy's voice. Mild surprise seemed as close to piqued as it could get. He talked like old Mrs. Miller, teacups and porch gossip and matronly care. “I don't mean to be melodramatic, Father, but I'm not working any witchcraft. My name's Peter, and my friends are here for themselves. They know what they're getting into. Or out of.”
“Yeah, I'm sure.” Dean wasn't sure. He felt lost. He wished Sam would just send a knife straight into the kid's throat, so they could deal with it all in terms of blood and hospitals and police files that could explain everything. Without his voice getting in the way, stirring up a dustcloud of doubt and confusion.
Dean thought for a second that he knew where these kids were going, and he wanted to go with them.
“Why are you doing this?” Pastor Jim emerged from the trees on the other side of the fire. Collared, clad in black, his eyes strained tight in the pooling darkness. “We paid you.”
The kid - Peter - grinned suddenly, teeth flashing white. If he was surprised, he didn't show it. He ducked his head modestly. “Yeah, you did. I know. I'm not breaking the rules though.” He raised his hands, empty. “Look, no pipe.”
“You paid him for what?” Dean choked out.
“To lead the demons astray,” said Peter, his voice mellifluous, warm. “Of course. I led them straight into the river Lethe and down the bony steps to Hell. All seven of them. Fee paid in full.”
Dean stared across the fire at Jim. Jim looked back, face blank. He had known. Dean didn't feel protected, or safe, he felt outraged. Behind him, he could feel Sam's anger rising like heat, as well.
Jim turned his face to Peter, as if the betrayal was beside the point. He raised his hands. “These are our children, and you are not a creature of God. Release them.”
Peter shook his head. He bared his teeth and gestured as if blessing the children in question. “You are released,” he proclaimed, his voice sardonic and sharp.
None of them moved, except to turn stony eyes to Jim.
Across the fire, the Pastor started in with the Latin, an intonation that Dean didn't recognize, but had Sam out into the open in half a heartbeat. “Father, don't do this-” he stopped as all eyes turned to him, but Jim continued to chant, stooping to place a handful of scattered candles on the ground, lighting them quickly, his voice increasing in pace.
“They aren't possessed, or even seduced-” Sam muttered to Dean, “He's going to try to purify them, but it'll wipe us all clean.”
"Clean like baptised?"
"Clean like newborns. Memory, minds, everything. He isn't screwing around - this is ancient stuff."
Dean cast a glance back at his brother. Everyone in the clearing had made their own decision. Every person here was autonomous, including Pastor Jim. “I'll handle the piper,” he said, and Sam was already halfway across the clearing, barrelling toward the incense and patterned salt like a halfback.
But at Sam's first step all the kids, perched like so many crows on telephone wires, scattered into the woods. Dean looked for the motley piper, knife in hand, but the boy found him first, voice a bright hum in his ear even as he watched his brother tackle their guardian, sending them both skidding through the mulch. “You have your own calling too, Dean Winchester. You know you're lying to yourself if you think these people need you to absolve them of their petty sins. There are others out there who do, though. They're waiting for you and your brother.”
“There's only one thing out there that needs me,” said Dean, his fingers tensing around the knife.
“He's waiting for you, too.” The piper's grin was a hiss in his ear, and then he was gone, the kids were gone, the clearing was just a panting Sam stamping out flames from knocked over candles, and a prone, silent Pastor Jim.
--
A few days later, they celebrated Mass for the kids who'd gone missing that night. Some had left notes, two or three just disappeared. Most, though, thank all that was holy, had returned home, dirty and maybe a bit hungover. Together, they all showed up at the church that evening, not grateful, but curious. A bit frightened, though they didn't show it.
Dean officiated, and found that he couldn't handle the staring, the mute change that had affected the kids and their parents and was spreading through the parishioners like a bad case of pink eye.
In the sacristy, after the torturous round of god blesses and confessions and folded cheques was over, he paused to lean against the wall and stare at Sam. "Can we really keep doing this?"
Sam looked at him from under knit eyebrows, and then snorted softly. "Can we really leave?"
"Don't answer a question with a question. Honestly." Dean sat down behind the Pastor's desk.
"Then yes. I think we can keep doing this. The gossip would stop, eventually. The Bishop wants us here. We could spend the rest of our lives here, no problem."
"Do we want to?"
"I know you don't." Sam tossed a dirty t-shirt in his satchel, closed the thing up. "I think you should talk to Pastor Jim."
Pastor Jim hadn't been talking. Dean had seen him at the evening's Mass, tucked into the back beside Dr. Messner. But other than that, they hadn't seen him in the past two days. They'd both haunted the church, listless and unable to focus enough to smile and pontificate at the grocery store. Sam had spent the time pawing through the shelves of texts, reading out and taking notes on the various rites Jim had failed to mention in his brief and infrequent lessons. But they'd both been waiting. Dean did not, however, want to break the silence himself. "You're the one who tackled him," he said sulkily.
"Dean." Sam almost rolled his eyes, stopped himself. "I'll come with you."
They found Jim in his tiny kitchen, sipping his whiskey and reading the Old Testament. He looked up, but didn't close the bible. He folded his hands, stood, and approached Dean where he hovered in the doorway, Sam lingering in the hall behind.
"It's unchristian of me," Jim murmured, "but I can't ask your forgiveness."
Dean smelled the whiskey on the old man's breath even as he was pulled into an embrace. He bent his head against Jim's shoulder and shuddered out a long breath.
"I'll beg your father for his, when I see him next," whispered Jim, and released him.
"We're going," said Sam, stepping forward, "As soon as we can, properly."
"I'll make an announcement," Jim's voice cut out. "I'll ask the Bishop for a stipend for a secretary."
All three of them stood hot with shame in the yellow light of the kitchen. Sam turned to go.
"I absolve you," said Jim Murphy, their priest and Father, making the sign of the cross, "from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
--
The day they left, a committee of maybe twelve parishioners came to their door off Holland Street, with wrapped sandwiches and thermoses of raspberry juice and a little golden cross to hang on the Impala's rearview mirror.
Sam stopped in his tracks when he saw them coming, a bag full of clothing and handguns, and two kilos of salt in his hands. “Dean, you have to come out here,” he called into the kitchen. Dean came out with their jackets over his arm and his own bag of clothes.
“Fathers, we will miss you very dearly,” said Mrs. Miller, who'd been the high school principal once and a town councillor after that, and so was the designated spokeswoman. Her voice rose goosebumps on Dean's forearms. “We've come to say godspeed and god bless you, wherever you go.”
“Th- thank you, all,” stuttered Sam, a faint blush rising on his brown neck. Dean could tell, he barely knew what to say. He chose honesty: “It was a very difficult decision for us.”
Melissa and Kathy Culver stepped forward in accidental, fumbling unison, to hand Dean the gold cross. “For the car. In case you don't find a new parish right away,” said Kathy. The official announcement had been 'missionary work,' of course. Down to convert the hoodoo practitioners in the South.
Dean's smile was weak, and he nodded.
“Now, you go on, let us take care of the house for you.” said Mrs. Miller. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, but you're still two single men, and we don't want to scare off whoever they send us next with the mold in your bathtub.” There was a tittering of polite laughter.
“Alright,” Dean mumbled, “Thank you.”
“Go on, now.” The committee had liquidly insinuated themselves between Sam and Dean and the door of their little house.
When they'd got in the car and closed the doors, Sam said, “I never wiped off the devil's trap from the living room ceiling.” And Dean started the car, laughing, and they drove off, leaving smiles and waves behind them.
--
Two days later, in a motel room in Wyoming, Sam woke up screaming.
Spoilers: General, but nothing episodic.
Rating: PG-whatever, nothing graphic.
Word Count: 6600ish
Summary: AU: Raised by Pastor Jim and schooled by the Catholic Church since their father died fourteen years ago, Dean and Sam are now freshly-minted priests in a rural Minnesota parish, better equipped to save souls than lives.
Notes: opprobrium now holds the rights to my typing fingers. She's responsible for whatever comes out in the next four months. Solely responsible, I should say.
ETA: AVERT YOUR EYES ASAP, AND GO DL THE FREAKING HONEST-TO-GOD ILLUSTRATED VERSION THAT delighter MADE FOR ME. I AM SUCH A SPARKLY PRINCESS.
ETA II: AND HERE'S THE KILLER FANMIX, by onthecontrary, featuring Calexico, Sondre Lerche, Rock Plaza Central and the hearts of a hundred altar boys.
Sam bolted down the steps and through the sacristy door with a look that verged on meltdown on his face. “Dean,” he hissed, pressing his back against the closed door, “Dean. You - uh, you have to go out there.”
“Oh yeah?” Dean was doing maintenance on Pastor Jim's knives: testing blades, polishing silver, looking for any signs of rust on the ancient or sacred ones. He didn't look up. “Kinda busy here.”
“No. No, you have to.” Sam scratched at his jaw and cast a glance backwards, as if he could see the altar and pews through the heavy stone and pressed oak. “It's that grocery store girl - what's her name, Culver, Melissa Culver. I recognize that look, Dean-” his voice lowered, “She's coming to confess again.”
Dean smirked at his brother's anguished face, “Well, Father, it's your sacred duty to take the girl's confession. You neglect her at her immortal soul's peril.”
“You. Don't. Understand.” Sam's words barely made it past his clenched teeth.
“Sure I do, I took her cousin's last Sunday.” Dean made a sound in his throat, came forward and pried Sam off the door. “Take it as a job perk.” He opened it and went up the stairs and into the church proper, smiling beatifically at the pretty little thing in the pastel cardigan and tweed skirt. “Melissa, my child.” he said, coming down from behind the altar, “How can we serve you?”
Melissa Culver's brown eyes flicked over to Sam in appraisal as she said, “Fathers, will you take my confession?”
“Father Winchester here is ecstatic to hear you out,” Dean stepped aside, and waited the long moment before Sam's sense of duty won out over his justified instinct for self-preservation, and he stumped down the steps, looking for all the world like a schoolboy about to have his mouth washed out with soap.
Dean watched them adjourn to a confessional along the west wall, and returned to the sacristy, smirking.
--
They hosted Pastor Jim for dinner that night at their little house down the alley. Considering that all three of their lives were funded almost entirely by parishioner donations, it was bad form to go down to Main Street and buy a six pack from Henry Marcourt, like everyone else in Blue Earth did. But praise God, Jim had just got back from a thing down at their old seminary in St. Louis, and he'd evidently stopped to pick up some alcohol on the way back, because they had both whiskey and wine to go with the barbecue chicken.
“There's a reason I don't like hearing confession from those kids, Pastor. But it's probably not a very good one.” Sam said, drizzling extra sauce over the meat on the grill, and gesticulating with his tongs.
“Sammy don't like hearing about all the sex he isn't having,” put in Dean, lounging in a sagging plastic lawn chair, bare feet scuffing up clouds in the dry, grassless dirt. “Ain't ever gonna have.”
Jim shook his grey head, and Dean raised his hands and clacking whiskey glass in self-defence: “Hey, I'm just extrapolating, here.”
“Yeah, Dean, that's part of it.” Sam's voice rose stringently, “They do a lot of things that I don't understand. And half the time I don't know whether they're just trying to shock me or get legitimate moral counselling.”
“I think a bit of both, probably,” Pastor Jim suggested.
“Or maybe they're just aiming for a hard on,” amended Dean.
“Whatever,” Sam shook his head at the barbecue, troubled, “I just don't see how a couple of platitudes and thirty Our Fathers will fix her problems for her. These kids -” he paused. “I'm hearing about sex and pregnancy, all sorts of drugs and parties. They aren't even seventeen, most of them. But they can't wait. They just want out of this town and this is the next best thing.”
Jim, perched on the picnic table in the full June sun, made the best of it. “You know, Sam, two years ago not much was different. They just weren't coming to confession to tell us about it afterwards. Take that as consolation, at least.”
“Yeah, well, they're laying it on a little thick, even for the bad asses they are,” said Dean, who'd taken most of the angst-ridden adolescent confessions of lust and masturbation and backseat gropings himself. Granted, over the past few weeks it'd been like someone had thrown a switch and the details had taken a sudden dive to the tawdry and sordid.
Attempted rape, the selling of sex for drugs, a certain type of friendly activity that the Church would instantly label homosexual; drunken fights involving knives and someone's dad's pistol. Thank God in all his mercy that Justin Adams hadn't pulled the trigger, though he sobbed in the confessional like he had. But at the same time, who knew, they could certainly be lying. Dean had heard nothing from the sheriff or Dr. Messner, the general practitioner, though he'd asked. And he wouldn't put it past the kids to act up their life's woes, push the envelope and see what kind of reaction they could get. If Sam had been the one listening, they sure would've got an earful. But Dean had played it cool, as wary of playing the fanatic preacher as the lecherous one.
As priests in Blue Earth, they acted as kind of a department store display. Every movement watched, analyzed, gossipped to death. Of course, with Sam and Dean, everyone wanted a slip-up, parishioners and heathens alike; some even went so far as to push for one. Dean was pretty damn sure Melissa Culver's parents were Anglican, for instance. And there'd been a marked, practically historical, gap in Mass attendance between the ages of thirteen and thirty, a gap which had suddenly filled up with tight cardigans and impractical heels maybe twenty-two months ago.
But of course, the second a breathy sigh led to a lingering glance led to a press of bodies in passing, the town would eat them alive. Pastor Jim had flat out told them so before he'd even considered letting them come serve under him after their ordination. He'd also extracted a promise that went above and beyond their vows of celibacy, one that involved their father's name and their commitment to finding the thing that had orphaned them.
“So, how'd the old boys treat you down at Kenrick, Jim?” Dean stretched, eyed the pastor. “Lots of reminiscing and fretting about the levels of masturbation in the dorm rooms?”
“No,” said Jim, who'd removed his collar for the sake of the barbecue sauce, but never really removed his priestliness. “Now you're gone, they're more concerned about this rash of possessions.”
“What is it, six in the archdiocese?” Sam shook his head, tweezered up a breast and deposited it on Jim's plate at the mouldering picnic table. He waved off a few wasps.
“Seven. Another one in Minneapolis. It crashed a schoolbus last week. The demonologists at the seminary can't explain it, Rome can't explain it. They keep promising funding, or manpower, but nothing ever materializes. They say they're praying.”
“Pass some of that over here, Sammy.” Dean tapped a rococo beat on his paper plate with plastic fork and knife. “Well. I wouldn't say no to the cash, but we're fine taking care of our people, that's for sure.”
“I was thinking,” Sam, also collarless, his black shirt hanging loose over a pair of canvas shorts, handed Dean his chicken. “That we should paint one of those traps Bobby emailed over up in the sacristy - right above the door. Just in case. We get one of those things in town, we know where to take it. Lure it in.”
“I doubt the Bishop would enjoy seeing a pentacle from the Key of Solomon painted above the chalices and surplices, Sam,” said Jim.
“Yeah, but I doubt he'd enjoy seeing parishioners cracked open with their lungs hanging out over their shoulders, either,” Dean pointed out, through and around a mouthful of chicken.
Jim's eyebrows rose and he shrugged. He reached over, smacked Dean's cutlery out of his hands and folded his hands in preparation for Grace. “Regardless, it would be next to impossible to get the damned thing into the church in the first place. I'd say if its already in the sacristy we've already won. Agreed?”
Sam mumbled his concession and Dean made a sharp nod, “Yessir.”
"Good," said Pastor Jim, and they bent their heads in a prayer of thanks.
--
Maybe one of Dean's favourite things about their parish was the cemetery out back behind the church. More than the little bungalow off Holland Street, and more than their well-stocked sacristy, the cemetery felt like home. Pastor Jim had buried Dad there, and later they'd even considered moving Mom up from Lawrence, but decided to let her bones rest, instead. And against all logic, having his grave so close was a constant comfort, even if the only thing in the ground was a cement urn filled with ashes. Safe in holy ground, watched over by his sons, John Winchester could sleep in peace.
The only thing Dean couldn't remember between the morning his dad left them to go die in a Louisiana swamp and the day they arrived at Kenrick was the wait in the hospital. He'd been twelve, Sammy eight, and the note in Dean's pocket gave Pastor Jim's name and phone number in St. Louis. They'd sat there for probably eighteen hours, while Jim got the phone call and flew seven hundred miles due south to come and pick them up, drive them in the Impala back north again. Sam says the hospital's the only part he can remember: the nurses smoothing their hair and offering puddings, the lights, the hall, the nervous pity thick in the bleached air.
So Dean spent the morning of the summer solstice whistling while he mowed the grass - the diocese figured that with two able-bodied young men helping out, there was no need to pay a caretaker (Dean), or even a secretary (Sam) - and he clipped the hedge and checked over the few dozen graves for signs of vandalism.
Once they'd had some witchy hooligan types come in and actually dig up a grave, leave mounds of dirt and a gaping scar in the grass, the coffin banged up but unopened. Dean had spent two days tracking the kids down, found them at their high school in Sioux Falls - city kids, it figured - and gave them a story to tell their grandkids. That time the guy burst into the sophomore advanced history class and swore such a blue streak at the president of the chess club and her friends that the teacher called the principal, who called the cops, but the guy left before they got there. It made the papers - words like jailbait and suspected felon were used - and thank all that was holy that Dean had left his collar in the Impala, or he'd be cooling his heels in a monastery up in Nova Scotia even now.
He cut the mower's engine, leaned his forearms against the handlebar and squinted out across the graveyard. A blue bowl of a sky with little ice cream clouds floating around, reflecting the heat down on his sweaty neck. Christ, he needed a beer. No more of this wine shit: if he never tasted wine again he could die a happy man. A happy, hell-bound man.
He was walking over to the shed - more a miniature castle, but functionally a shed - to pull the power cord out of the socket, when he noticed the girl. Melissa Culver's baby cousin, right? Still in sophomore year, with freckles like confused gnats all over her face, but a sly smile that'd perk up a dead man.
No slyness this time, though. She stood uncertainly, her canvas school bag hanging in her hands, wet half-circles marring her sleeveless blouse. “Father?” she was on the other side of the wrought iron fence. Dean almost felt safe with those seven-foot barbs standing in between them. Almost. This whole town: waiting for one indiscretion, perceived or otherwise.
“It's Kathy, isn't it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Beautiful day, Kathy. Shouldn't you be in class?”
“Absolutely,” she stepped forward, put a hand on the iron cross-bar, “but I need to talk to you.”
Dean had better manners than to look away or grimace, but in God's name, if this was another pregnancy scare he'd be forced to unpleasant action. He dredged up a smile that he hoped could be categorized as beatific, and channelled Pastor Jim: “Well, that's what I'm here for.”
--
Later, Sam and Dean were sitting out on their side porch, which was mostly hidden from the street's view by various trees and shrubbery, but evidently not well enough to fool the mosquitoes. The sun had just set, but heat still radiated out of the ground.
“She didn't say, exactly, what she thought was going on.” Dean hedged, “But she strongly hinted towards orgies. Blood sacrifice, drunkenness. In the woods. ”
“And this is different from their regular behaviour, in that-” said Sam.
“Also, problems at home. A whole bunch of them are apparently just not themselves. Parents are helpless. Talking about boarding schools, military academies.”
“I dunno. I just don't see that drinking and screwing and cussing out their parents is really, you know, indicative of demonic possession.” Sam was drinking raspberry lemonade that he'd mixed up in his water bottle with a chopstick. “I see your concern, Dean. I really do. But possession? Come on. She probably ate a few mushrooms, saw Marty Fisher get in a fistfight.”
Sam was also still wearing the little plastic visor he used when he coded and balanced the parish's monthly bank statements. He claimed the desk lamp in the church office hurt his eyes. The fact that he'd managed to take off his shoes, his collar, his pants and his socks, but not the visor, was enough for Dean to dismiss whatever he said out of hand.
“What would you know about drinking and screwing, Sammy? Something happen with Mrs. Heaney last month at the choir bake sale?”
“God. Shut up,” said Sam, grimacing.
“Better learn to keep it in your pants, hot stuff, or we'll be excommunicated before you can say pound cake.”
“Seriously. I will punch you in the face.”
“Seriously. You want her to pop your cherry so bad it keeps you awake at night.” Dean wiggled his eyebrows. “Don't think I don't hear you-”
Sam punched him in the face, except he mostly missed, and they both fell out of the lawn chairs.
--
Mrs. Heaney was at the 8 o'clock Mass the next morning, looking absolutely fraught with guilt and half-buried pain. Kyle Heaney was one of the kids Kathy had mentioned, of course, and Dean tried to pick out the other families she'd named while he sweated under his embroidered poncho, blessed girdle and white dress, echoing Latin like an altar boy in response to Pastor Jim's more lordly intonations.
Not one of the kids was there, even though some of the girls formed the core membership of the Fathers Winchester Seduction Committee, and never missed a Sunday. And afterwards, every single one of their parents clustered around the church steps, and tried to nail down an afternoon appointment for family counselling with Jim or Sam.
Dean wasn't quite so popular, but that was alright, because he was good in confession. Sam liked to see people as victims, and hated punishing them for the inescapable realities of the world at large. But Dean always preferred to see parishioners take some damn responsibility for themselves, and often ended up being a bit more creative than the standard ten or twenty Hail Marys. Also, he was nosey, and liked knowing what was going on behind the scenes at the Parent Teacher Association or what percentage of the summer's marriages had been shotgunned into existence.
“So, Kathy's not the only one hearing about drunken orgies in the woods,” Sam told him later, as they were disrobing in the sacristy, “I have three separate sessions this afternoon.”
“Any guarantee the kids will show up?” Dean reached over to lift Sam's violently green chasuble over his head, let Sam do the same for him, shrugged off his stole, untied the girdle.
“I guess it'll depend on how persuasive the parents get.” The albs and maniples and amices went into the wardrobe, too, sprayed down with Febreze, ready to be blessed and worn again.
“Bless the instant coffee or that raspberry crap. Whatever you're gonna feed 'em. Just make sure it touches their rosebud lips, and watch for smoke. And tell Pastor Jim to do his, too.”
“Why?” Sam was straightening out his blacks, “I mean, sure. But where are you going?'
Dean shrugged into his t-shirt, slid into sneakers. “I'm going for a long, contemplative walk in the woods.”
--
The bush parties that the high school kids held every weekend were always in the same location: a fifteen minute walk into the brush on the east side of town, between the large secular cemetery and the dairy farm. Obviously, Dean wasn't the only authority who knew this, but the county sheriff's office liked to keep them accessible, and so didn't harass them enough to make them move.
He found a huge fire pit, thoughtfully lined with rocks and bracketed by a dozen fallen logs, all of which were stripped of bark on top to form splinter-less stadium seating. The ground was mostly pinecones and dried spruce needles, the odd beer can trapped under a tree root, but remarkably free of litter. There was even a stack of cleared-out underbrush and some evidently stolen split wood sitting ready by the fire pit for next weekend.
Scuffling around, Dean was almost amazed. These kids obviously valued their drinking and screwing and cussing enough to take good care of their hideout. They didn't litter, and they certainly weren't making blood sacrifices, or scraping pentacles in the mulch, or snapping condoms at each other, even. He was kind of disappointed. And kind of envious of the regularity of their adolescence.
Not every sixteen year old had to lose their virginity to a drop-out nun who recognized him hanging around a local dive bar, insisted on taking him home and copped a lot more than a feel while debating the merits of ratting him out to the Rector. “I got kicked out for smoking marijuana,” complained the drop-out nun. “It helped me connect spiritually. Do they even know they've got a junior alcoholic lined up to take the vows?” He remembered shouting, “Thanks a lot, Mary Magdalene!” as he'd slammed the door. The height of wit, even then.
Dean kept going along the little deer track the kids had trampled down for themselves, investigated the forest until he emerged out the other side, where the hills started to jut up and the ranchlands began. No blood on the ground, no mulch swept awry by wild orgies. No signs that any of the stories were true.
Except for the body turning gently in the breeze just off to the left. Dean's heart shuddered as he recognized Kathy Culver's freckles in the shade. She was hanging like a slab of uncut beef, skirt hanging in tatters over her scratched and dirty legs. She was wearing one shoe, a camisole. Her eyes were open, and she was hanging from a rancher's rope tied into a lasso knot under her armpits.
“I don't want to go,” she murmured, and her eyes blinked.
So it wasn't the breeze turning her slowly under a branch, it was her breathing. And as Dean hooked his arms around her to take her down, he thanked the lord in as many ways as he knew how for that.
--
Sam's face was pallid when he found Dean in the hallway at the county hospital. He'd caught a ride with Bill and Maureen Culver, the parents, and evidently done something right, because those two looked a lot calmer than he did. Maureen touched Dean's arm and accepted a murmured blessing before they went in to see Kathy. Dean held Sam back, played out the rope in his fingers.
“If this is a demon we're dealing with, he's a subtle bastard. The kids did this themselves, I can guarantee it.”
“What?” Sam eyes wrinkled in disgust, “Why would they? Because she talked to you?”
“Maybe. I don't know. Did you see any of them during counselling?”
“All of them. They were all there. None of them said a single word.” Sam's hands twitched at his sides. “Their parents cried, they begged. We prayed. Not a sound. It was like they weren't even there. Pastor Jim is still with the Heaneys.”
Dean shook his head. “So I guess they didn't start burning up with the holy water.”
“No. You're right. Dear Lord in heaven - these kids aren't themselves. Justin Adams, Luke Chiasson. They used to be good kids.” Sam retreated to a waiting room chair, fingers finding his rosary while Dean's still held the rope. He leaned forward, voice low: “Dean, what did they do to her?”
“Doctor says everything's fine on the inside,” Dean hedged. He'd said there were no signs of abuse, no rape, no beating. Just a fifteen year-old girl, strung up from a tree like a Christmas decoration in June. Silent, awake. He couldn't answer the question, desperately wanted to force the answer out of someone.
“You know that Melissa girl,” said Sam, after a long silence. “Her parents didn't book a meeting. Didn't even come to Mass.”
Dean nodded, looked askance.
“In confession,” Sam's voice dropped to a half-whisper, and he pulled Dean down to sit. Not breaking the Seal of Confession so much as asking advice, as was advocated and allowed by the church. Neither of them particularly cared at that moment, though. “She said she'd met someone. Older guy, knew her parents wouldn't approve. She talked like - well she said, outright - that he set her free.”
“Set her free? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Sam sighed, leaned back and rubbed his temples. “I don't know.”
Dean stood up, “Let's go ask.”
--
They pulled up in the Impala: collared, with bibles and rosaries and sachets of exorcised salt, holy water and a single blessed blade between them. Sam let Dean lead the march up to the Culver's - this time, Frank and Peg - front door. No one answered the knock.
The neighbours, when interviewed, said they'd heard about an ill aunt in Wisconsin, and yes, they'd seen Melissa around. Watering the lawn, taking out some pizza boxes to the garbage, heading out that afternoon, dressed optimistically, they might add, for the upcoming high pressure front.
Dean shook his head and said, “Let's try the woods.”
But nothing. They returned to the church empty-handed, hot and frustrated. Pastor Jim was waiting. He accosted them on the steps and actually gripped Dean's shirt at the elbow. He steered them straight through the doors into the cool air of the vaulted hall. His face was set, eyes hard, voice stilted.
“Maureen Culver just called, asking for a Mass for Kathy. She said to thank you two. I told her that our prayers were with her and didn't let her know that I had no clue what - exactly - has happened.”
“Father,” started Sam, “Dean found her daughter in the woods-”
“I pieced most of it together since then, thanks,” Jim cut him off, “And this is not something you two should be handling. It's not something you're equipped to handle.”
A brief second of choked silence, then Sam was back at it, jaw thrust out in fury, hair falling in his eyes: “Twelve years in seminary, and we're not equipped? What exactly does 'equipped' even mean to you, Jim? We care about this girl. We are responsible for these kids. And you're turning around to tell us that we are not equipped to answer our vocation? When we could have a goddamn demon running around our parish?”
“Sam,” Dean called off his brother's bulldog attack. Sam would sniff around an argument, sink his teeth in and tear until one or both sides were bloody and gasping on the ground. Shocking, that when it came to this Dean was the reasonable one.
“Have you seen this demon?” asked Jim.
“No sir,” said Dean. In fact, we're not even sure-”
“Of course you're not. You haven't seen an imp, let alone hellspawn. How could you know?” Jim let out a sigh, rubbed his neck as he raised his eyes to glance up the aisle to the pulpit and altar, down along the pews. Dean followed his gaze and felt a wave of homesickness: for this town, the cemetery, his dorm room at Kenrick, and a house he barely remembered in Lawrence, Kansas. They all felt the same in his gut - missing, gone. But Jim, oblivious, waved them along and led the way back to the sacristy. “I made a promise to your father before he died. I said I'd keep you both safe. It's obviously my own fault for not keeping you ignorant, too.”
Sam chafed at this. He closed the sacristy door behind them and went to open the closet that contained all of Jim's hunting gear: knives, guns, lore and research.
Jim stopped him by putting a hand out to his shoulder, sighing again. “I raised you on consecrated ground, because no one knew whether the demon that killed your parents would come after you, too.”
“No,” Sam corrected, “You raised us to be priests so we'd be ready to fight the thing, to kill it.”
Jim stood shaking his head, but before he spoke Dean knew what he would say. They'd never hunted down a thing and killed it in their lives. The last spirit Dean had witnessed firsthand had been the one they'd been hunting when he was twelve, when the demon had caught up with Dad. Since then, it had all been training, fitting the odd archery practise in between their classes at seminary, duties at the church. The thousand duties that had been broken to them in waves, distractions masked as their life's work. The myriad reasons that when Jim did go on one of his rare out-of-town hunts, they couldn't go with him. He'd thought for years that he'd learn enough, grow strong enough, to go out and find that demon and kill it. But he'd also known that there was a price for the relative tranquillity.
“Dean, you keep your brother here while I go deal with this thing.” Jim raised his eyebrows, hefted a black duffel bag over his shoulder. “Alright?”
“Yes sir,” said Dean, and caught Sam by the shoulder when he made an involuntary lunge after Jim as the door closed. Sam's fight had apparently dissolved in the long silence, his features were slack, wide-eyed. He looked at Dean, and Dean tightened his grip on his shoulder.
What could he say? It's alright, Sammy, we've just been so selfish that we abandoned Dad and Mom. We'll figure it out. Or: There, there. It's not like we've entirely wasted our lives. He remembered the day of their ordination, when Sam had told him he wanted to continue his studies in Austria, at a theological university there. Dean had panicked, and started guilt-tripping him on the spot, thinking he was reminding Sam of the incredible duty they had to kill the bastard, but actually just sealing their fate as protectors of the bored and middle class. At least Sam had loved what they were doing, even though now it probably increased his stricken guilt tenfold.
The little bell in the sacristy had tinkled when Jim had left through the front door, and now it tinkled again.
They looked at each other, and went up the stairs, Sam leading.
Melissa Culver was standing in the aisle in dirty jeans and tangled hair. She looked like she'd been climbing through the woods for the past week, little twigs stuck to her clothes in sappy splotches, and she wore a flimsy rubber sandal on one foot, but not the other. Sam barely hesitated before approaching her. “Melissa? Are you okay?”
“I need to confess,” the miserable voice was keen with self-hatred, and Dean didn't even have to prompt Sam to the confessionals. If she had hung her baby cousin up to dry, then at least they'd know. And still, Dean had to admit he believed in the strength of their church, its consecration and holiness.
Dean hung around, eavesdropping and trying not to eavesdrop. He heard murmuring, Sam leading a brief prayer, and then the girl's voice pierced through the cabinet doors. “He left me, he said he was leaving me while he took the others.” Sam's voice, urgent and low, asking the questions directly even as Dean mouthed them: who? Who left you? Where did he go? Did he bring the other kids? To where?
Sam emerged, guided Melissa to the kneelers to pray, handed her his own rosary. He came forward to confer with Dean, who sat at the organ. “She says he's a stranger, came to town a about a month ago. Showed up at a bush party, suddenly everyone was having a great time. Sex, booze - all those things she mentioned in confession last week.”
“Sounds like an alright guy,” Dean put in.
“Yeah, except, all the kids are so into this that everything else is slipping. Parents, family, school. A few of them get worried, but the others are so into no one wants to speak up. But in the meantime, these kids are breaking up their lives in a matter of four or five days.”
“That much we knew - silence, sullenness, retreat.”
“And now she's saying that this guy Peter wants to bring them somewhere. Out of town, out into the world. Kathy's there Saturday night when he tells them this, she makes a stand, and a whole bunch of the boys pick her up and take her somewhere. Melissa's too scared to find out. So she stays put. Doesn't go home when the others do, eventually, in the morning. And when she's alone with Peter, he tells her she can't come with them.”
“And she's heartbroken by this?”
“Devastated. For some reason, this guy is all she wants. All any of them want. He tells her the reason she can't go is because she's pregnant, and he only needs the pure children.”
Dean rolled his eyes, “Guy wants to get out of paying child support, more like.”
“Dean, really.” Sam's voice, already at a whisper, strengthened. “I think I know what this is.”
“Not a demon?”
“No, not a demon. I think we've got more a pied piper scenario. You know, like in the stories: Pied Piper doesn't get paid, so he lures away all the children, takes them to a cave somewhere and kills them, or settles them down in a new town, or whatever. The point is their absence: their preference for adventure - even death - over home. In the stories the figure's linked with the Grim Reaper, or the devil, come to take his due.”
“So, what didn't we pay?”
“I don't know, we'll have to ask it.” Sam rocked back on his haunches, stood up. “I don't know if we can kill something like this, Dean. If it's a reaper, we might not even be able to reason with it. You want to go downstairs, get the standard stuff, just in case?”
They dropped Melissa at home - she refused to go see the GP and Sam didn't argue with her - and Dean turned into the town cemetery's parking lot just as the sun merged with the cloud bank coming over the western horizon, casting the trees and gravestones under an orange glow.
As they relocated flasks into pockets and knives into hidden sheathes, Sam turned, opened his mouth and closed it. Dean supplied the question for him: “What do you think Pastor Jim will say when he catches us?”
“That depends whether we're alive, dead, or somewhere in between when he finds us.” Sam shrugged into his canvas jacket and slammed the trunk of the Impala closed.
“Sammy,” Dean said, and leaned against the car, “We don't know what we're doing, here. This thing could-” he took a breath, and Sam cut him off.
“It doesn't matter. This is what we're supposed to do. And this is what we'll keep doing, after. C'mon.” He started for the main path, forcing Dean to intercede and take point, leading them both in the right direction.
There was a fire burning in the pit as they approached. The orange and grey figures around it were kids from the high school. Not just the Catholic ones, either. A bunch of familiar faces, unfamiliar names, turned to Dean as he walked into the clearing. He nodded at Kyle Heaney, said “What's up, Luke,” to the Chiasson kid. They just stared, and then turned to look when one of them - a dark-haired young man perched near the fire - cleared his throat.
“Father,” he greeted Dean. “We've all been so worried about Kathy. Is she alright?”
Dean let his incredulous smirk show. “Are you kidding me?” He turned, gestured: “Kyle? Is this guy kidding me? It was you who strung her up there. Come on.”
The black-haired kid, who was too pretty by half, and wearing the kind of motley city clothes that came with tears and stripes and layers that had been popular thirty years ago, got up off his tree branch. “We've all made our decision here, Father. If you've come to argue, you might as well start preaching at the tree trunks.” The kids around him stirred in agreement.
“I didn't come to argue, buddy. I came here to give you an order.” Dean shifted, aware he was at a disadvantage. He hadn't expected the entire brainwashed horde to be here. Or if he had, he'd hoped for something a little less passively hostile. “Whatever witchy spell you've got going on here, end it. Let the kids go.”
“Goodness.” The kid didn't speak with a boy's voice. Mild surprise seemed as close to piqued as it could get. He talked like old Mrs. Miller, teacups and porch gossip and matronly care. “I don't mean to be melodramatic, Father, but I'm not working any witchcraft. My name's Peter, and my friends are here for themselves. They know what they're getting into. Or out of.”
“Yeah, I'm sure.” Dean wasn't sure. He felt lost. He wished Sam would just send a knife straight into the kid's throat, so they could deal with it all in terms of blood and hospitals and police files that could explain everything. Without his voice getting in the way, stirring up a dustcloud of doubt and confusion.
Dean thought for a second that he knew where these kids were going, and he wanted to go with them.
“Why are you doing this?” Pastor Jim emerged from the trees on the other side of the fire. Collared, clad in black, his eyes strained tight in the pooling darkness. “We paid you.”
The kid - Peter - grinned suddenly, teeth flashing white. If he was surprised, he didn't show it. He ducked his head modestly. “Yeah, you did. I know. I'm not breaking the rules though.” He raised his hands, empty. “Look, no pipe.”
“You paid him for what?” Dean choked out.
“To lead the demons astray,” said Peter, his voice mellifluous, warm. “Of course. I led them straight into the river Lethe and down the bony steps to Hell. All seven of them. Fee paid in full.”
Dean stared across the fire at Jim. Jim looked back, face blank. He had known. Dean didn't feel protected, or safe, he felt outraged. Behind him, he could feel Sam's anger rising like heat, as well.
Jim turned his face to Peter, as if the betrayal was beside the point. He raised his hands. “These are our children, and you are not a creature of God. Release them.”
Peter shook his head. He bared his teeth and gestured as if blessing the children in question. “You are released,” he proclaimed, his voice sardonic and sharp.
None of them moved, except to turn stony eyes to Jim.
Across the fire, the Pastor started in with the Latin, an intonation that Dean didn't recognize, but had Sam out into the open in half a heartbeat. “Father, don't do this-” he stopped as all eyes turned to him, but Jim continued to chant, stooping to place a handful of scattered candles on the ground, lighting them quickly, his voice increasing in pace.
“They aren't possessed, or even seduced-” Sam muttered to Dean, “He's going to try to purify them, but it'll wipe us all clean.”
"Clean like baptised?"
"Clean like newborns. Memory, minds, everything. He isn't screwing around - this is ancient stuff."
Dean cast a glance back at his brother. Everyone in the clearing had made their own decision. Every person here was autonomous, including Pastor Jim. “I'll handle the piper,” he said, and Sam was already halfway across the clearing, barrelling toward the incense and patterned salt like a halfback.
But at Sam's first step all the kids, perched like so many crows on telephone wires, scattered into the woods. Dean looked for the motley piper, knife in hand, but the boy found him first, voice a bright hum in his ear even as he watched his brother tackle their guardian, sending them both skidding through the mulch. “You have your own calling too, Dean Winchester. You know you're lying to yourself if you think these people need you to absolve them of their petty sins. There are others out there who do, though. They're waiting for you and your brother.”
“There's only one thing out there that needs me,” said Dean, his fingers tensing around the knife.
“He's waiting for you, too.” The piper's grin was a hiss in his ear, and then he was gone, the kids were gone, the clearing was just a panting Sam stamping out flames from knocked over candles, and a prone, silent Pastor Jim.
--
A few days later, they celebrated Mass for the kids who'd gone missing that night. Some had left notes, two or three just disappeared. Most, though, thank all that was holy, had returned home, dirty and maybe a bit hungover. Together, they all showed up at the church that evening, not grateful, but curious. A bit frightened, though they didn't show it.
Dean officiated, and found that he couldn't handle the staring, the mute change that had affected the kids and their parents and was spreading through the parishioners like a bad case of pink eye.
In the sacristy, after the torturous round of god blesses and confessions and folded cheques was over, he paused to lean against the wall and stare at Sam. "Can we really keep doing this?"
Sam looked at him from under knit eyebrows, and then snorted softly. "Can we really leave?"
"Don't answer a question with a question. Honestly." Dean sat down behind the Pastor's desk.
"Then yes. I think we can keep doing this. The gossip would stop, eventually. The Bishop wants us here. We could spend the rest of our lives here, no problem."
"Do we want to?"
"I know you don't." Sam tossed a dirty t-shirt in his satchel, closed the thing up. "I think you should talk to Pastor Jim."
Pastor Jim hadn't been talking. Dean had seen him at the evening's Mass, tucked into the back beside Dr. Messner. But other than that, they hadn't seen him in the past two days. They'd both haunted the church, listless and unable to focus enough to smile and pontificate at the grocery store. Sam had spent the time pawing through the shelves of texts, reading out and taking notes on the various rites Jim had failed to mention in his brief and infrequent lessons. But they'd both been waiting. Dean did not, however, want to break the silence himself. "You're the one who tackled him," he said sulkily.
"Dean." Sam almost rolled his eyes, stopped himself. "I'll come with you."
They found Jim in his tiny kitchen, sipping his whiskey and reading the Old Testament. He looked up, but didn't close the bible. He folded his hands, stood, and approached Dean where he hovered in the doorway, Sam lingering in the hall behind.
"It's unchristian of me," Jim murmured, "but I can't ask your forgiveness."
Dean smelled the whiskey on the old man's breath even as he was pulled into an embrace. He bent his head against Jim's shoulder and shuddered out a long breath.
"I'll beg your father for his, when I see him next," whispered Jim, and released him.
"We're going," said Sam, stepping forward, "As soon as we can, properly."
"I'll make an announcement," Jim's voice cut out. "I'll ask the Bishop for a stipend for a secretary."
All three of them stood hot with shame in the yellow light of the kitchen. Sam turned to go.
"I absolve you," said Jim Murphy, their priest and Father, making the sign of the cross, "from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
--
The day they left, a committee of maybe twelve parishioners came to their door off Holland Street, with wrapped sandwiches and thermoses of raspberry juice and a little golden cross to hang on the Impala's rearview mirror.
Sam stopped in his tracks when he saw them coming, a bag full of clothing and handguns, and two kilos of salt in his hands. “Dean, you have to come out here,” he called into the kitchen. Dean came out with their jackets over his arm and his own bag of clothes.
“Fathers, we will miss you very dearly,” said Mrs. Miller, who'd been the high school principal once and a town councillor after that, and so was the designated spokeswoman. Her voice rose goosebumps on Dean's forearms. “We've come to say godspeed and god bless you, wherever you go.”
“Th- thank you, all,” stuttered Sam, a faint blush rising on his brown neck. Dean could tell, he barely knew what to say. He chose honesty: “It was a very difficult decision for us.”
Melissa and Kathy Culver stepped forward in accidental, fumbling unison, to hand Dean the gold cross. “For the car. In case you don't find a new parish right away,” said Kathy. The official announcement had been 'missionary work,' of course. Down to convert the hoodoo practitioners in the South.
Dean's smile was weak, and he nodded.
“Now, you go on, let us take care of the house for you.” said Mrs. Miller. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, but you're still two single men, and we don't want to scare off whoever they send us next with the mold in your bathtub.” There was a tittering of polite laughter.
“Alright,” Dean mumbled, “Thank you.”
“Go on, now.” The committee had liquidly insinuated themselves between Sam and Dean and the door of their little house.
When they'd got in the car and closed the doors, Sam said, “I never wiped off the devil's trap from the living room ceiling.” And Dean started the car, laughing, and they drove off, leaving smiles and waves behind them.
--
Two days later, in a motel room in Wyoming, Sam woke up screaming.