fic: Market Value in the Free Economy
Fandom: SPN, gen, x-over
Rating: PG
Spoilers: A passing familiarity with the movie Catch Me If You Can would help greatly.
Summary: Given up for adoption at six months of age, Sam Arsenault has spent the greater part of his adult life obsessed with a con-man that only he knows is his brother.
Notes: Just over 4000 words, my contribution to reel_spn. All mistakes are mine.
“Arsenault. What is that, French?” Dean Winchester asks, reaching a hand up to brush the plastic nameplate on the office door as he passes it by. His opinion of the French reads clear in his tone, having spent six months in one of their prison cells, practically dead of tuberculosis, or whatever the doctors called it. He drops himself in the chair in front of Sam's desk and eyes the rest of the room with a certain leftover intensity.
He is trying to look like he doesn't care, Sam knows. He recognizes the attitude, because it's the same casualness he's been practising himself. Both of them are dressed in almost identical cheap suits. White or near-white collared shirts with short sleeves appropriate for the blazing August sun outside, but chill and too thin in this grey, air-conditioned labyrinth. Skinny little ties, Sam's black and knotted tight, Dean's striped diagonal in a godawful purple. Just a new hire and his boss, sitting down. Happens every day.
“Yeah, French.” Sam answers, closing the door and seating himself. He notes, a little surprised, that Dean has never spoken his last name before. He pronounces the lt at the end and Sam doesn't correct him. Somehow through the past seven years it never came up - Dean was one to seize advantages, and always calling the FBI tail by his Christian name fit the bill: aggravatingly clever and self-satisfied. Far too close for comfort. Somehow, this never managed to bother Sam.
Dean is still examining the office: rows of labelled binders in temporary-looking metal shelving units crowd the opposite wall, making it necessary for Sam to turn sideways to get behind his desk. Which is made of particle board and stacked (neatly) with files upon manila files. A dark computer monitor, beige and square; a cell-phone charger, but no landline. His degree - Economics, Brown - and a few commendations are framed in black on the wall. No window, just the standard glass walls looking out to the lay of the cubicle grid.
Sam seats himself and looks across at Dean, who is mostly avoiding his gaze, turning the potted, sharp-edged plant on the desk slowly in place with two fingers.
“I thought we'd go over exactly what kind of workload you'll be taking on,” says Sam, ignoring the plant, pulling some papers up out of his briefcase. He'd drawn up a division of case files spreadsheet the night before, when he couldn't sleep. Worried either that he'd bore Dean, or that he'd entrust him with too much and be disappointed and embarrassed in front of Connor and the board.
“Do I get my own office?” asks Dean, not bothering to pick up his copy, or even glance at it.
“Yes,” Sam says, and doesn't add that it's only because an office is easier adapted to prison cell status than a cubicle. Dean will be monitored, with no phone, no computer, just him and his special tasks, specially assigned by Sam and only Sam. An open door and glass walls will mean that anyone standing at the coffee pot will notice if he ups and disappears. Sam can't sleep at night, thinking about how Dean will up and disappear.
“My own cell phone?” asks Dean.
“You got a full pardon and a salary,” Sam says, flat, even as he knows Dean's just saying it to say it. He can't help but rise to the bait. He blinks, puts his palms against the table, thumbs brushing each edge of the paper. He paraphrases: “At the federal level, this office handles bank and check, credit and loan, and where it overlaps with private losses down on fourth, some identity theft. Nothing corporate, nothing forensic. And our division only handles institutional cases. No Nigerian ex-pats or pyramid schemes. Your role-”
“So you're in this for the banks?” Dean has picked up his spreadsheet, still barely glancing at it. “That's why you wanted me so bad - because I was siphoning off some investment banker's private island fund. I kind of expected a little more from you, Sam. You struck me as the kind of guy who needs the moral high ground when it comes to this kind of stuff.”
Sam can't respond to that, he knows Dean understands the realities and moralities of his crimes a lot better than he's playing at. He's too angry to work up any kind of response, so he just keeps going, “We get probably a couple hundred fresh cases a year. And that's just me, Ferris and Selkirk doing the legwork - all our evidence gets passed on for arrests and prosecution.”
“How many you actually shut down?”
“Enough,” says Sam, wishing he sounded less defensive. Definitely, Dean is their best collar in years: good for publicity, good for morale. The fact it took three years to get him is just a badge of the FBI's long arm and inhuman patience, according to PR.
“So half, maybe. You got a backlog of what, ten thousand cold? People who just walked away with the money.” Dean tsks at the sheet, and Sam glances at it, wondering where the hell he'd written that down.
“Yeah, we'll do the full review when you've got your paperwork with human resources settled, alright?” Sam decides he's made a mistake, bringing Dean in to talk like an employee. He's not. He's much more than that, and much less. And he has an acute awareness of his own value to the Bureau, to Sam, that he will always carry like a banner. Cocky smile, indifferent shrug.
Sam stands up and inches past his desk again, gesturing for Dean to open the door. “Lemme show you your office.”
--
The deal with the board is that Sam is legally responsible for Dean, his ward and parolee, even if the man is four years older than him and a hell of a lot more dangerous. Sam's name and reputation are tied up in that responsibility. Which means that his career is, too, but that's not news. Three years to track Dean down, and four years of incarceration, including the extradition back stateside that Sam also supervised. So the least he can do is find him a bachelor suite on a bus route. He bought him the suit, too, though Dean picked a sharper grey rather than Sam's usual, and added a pair of shoes to the bill without asking.
Regardless, Sam drives him home after work and there isn't much to say in the car. Dean spent the day doodling on file folders as far as Sam can tell. He keeps telling himself tomorrow will be better, Dean'll get used to it, the weird looks and the low growl of inter-cubicle mutters will die down once everyone realizes that it's business as usual.
He glances to his right, and Dean's looking like he's convinced himself of the opposite. His mouth is turned down at the corners in an unconscious sneer, like the green leaves and heritage buildings lining the boulevard disgust him. Like he's contemplating a new life sentence, one he hadn't anticipated.
Sam pulls up beside the blank-faced apartment block, and Dean's out of the car before Sam has even thrown it into park.
The grey suit jacket Sam bought lies crumpled and forgotten in the fold of the passenger seat, and by the time he looks up after Dean, he's already disappeared inside.
--
Sam still sleeps on the flattened twin mattress he bought when he first moved to DC for an internship after college. Actually, not a lot has changed since then, materially. The only thing he spends money on are mystery paperbacks and comic books. Everything else - car, clothes, the mortgage his parents insisted he get when he first got on with the Bureau - is on an as-needed basis. He has a lot of cheap bookshelves, and a desk for when he brings files home. His fridge isn't empty and tonight he bakes himself salmon, but he leaves his suit in a pile on the bathroom floor and though he looks at it occasionally and knows he'll end up getting it dry-cleaned, he can't be bothered to hang it up. He sits on his kitchen counter in a t-shirt and boxer-briefs and reads The Invisibles and eats his fish.
His mother calls at eight, and he shocks himself by not picking up the phone. Just stands staring at the display unable to think of the appropriate words to say when one lifts the receiver. She wants to pester him to pick a weekend to meet them at the cottage, talk about his dad's latest medical exam, ask about that girl he was seeing a while back - a year ago, in fact, and only for a few months.
Topics he can mostly appreciate, most of the time. He talks to her and dad weekly, if not more. But right now, standing with bare feet on the linoleum, the only person he really wants to talk to is John Winchester.
He'd met him once. Showed up at his little apartment in Minneapolis, where he was working as an auto mechanic at the time. He'd asked about Dean and Winchester had lied fearlessly and consistently through his teeth. Sam hadn't asked his question then. Never had a chance after.
John Winchester, dead for three and a half years. Sam had been notified immediately: killed in a freak accident, fell and broke his neck out hunting in northern Minnesota. Sam hadn't recognized any of the handful of people at the funeral. Dean was in Europe at the time. Some part of Sam hoped for a blonde woman in her early fifties, one with a strange warmth in her eyes, even if she did turn her face away from him. She didn't appear. He knew that she too was long, long dead.
John and Mary Winchester, he has only the one question he'd like answered. It's one that Joy Arsenault would weep to hear. Which is why he doesn't pick up the phone.
--
In the morning, Sam idles at Dean's door for twenty minutes. He tries to use the buzzer, but it isn't connected yet. And Dean really didn't get a cell phone from the Bureau, so Sam just sits and waits until finally, dark-eyed and rumpled in the same slacks from yesterday, Dean drops into the passenger seat.
"Good morning," says Sam, tongue-tied with irritation. He's never been a talker. Confrontation makes him queasy, he really can't do any better than passive-aggressive eye rolls when it comes to stuff like this. It's why he doesn't do field work anymore, not since he collared Dean in France. Without that single-minded obsession driving him, attempts to continue work out in the real world trigger mild panic attacks. Sam prefers his office, even if he doesn't get a window.
Dean doesn't respond, just sits with his mouth pressed together, same as yesterday. Halfway to the office, he finally says, "Can we pick up some coffee? I have to drink that crude oil again I'll be spending the morning in the john."
Sam says, "We're already late."
And Dean looks down at the clock, checks his wrist watch and goes, "The contract I signed said eight o'clock, not seven forty-five."
So Sam pulls into a meter spot and sits in the car while he watches Dean wait in an interminable line of dull-faced office workers at some nameless little coffee shop. His order alone takes three minutes to make, Sam times it.
When he gets back in the car, foam spilling over the sides of his paper cup, Dean glances at the clock and says, "Now we're late."
--
Three weeks into Dean's parole, Sam is pretty damn sure he's going to lose his job. Dean's office is a swamp of file folders and crates filled with paper - evidence, requests, years worth of work waiting for his expert perusal - from which nothing ever seems to return. Sam finds himself torn between avoiding the place altogether and wandering in every fifteen minutes to casually enquire about what Dean's up to.
Dean's eyebrows go up and his jaw sets whenever he hears those words: up to. If Sam's lucky, he'll get a brief one sentence verb-subject description. If not, Dean will just scowl and look away without bothering to respond at all. Neither is at all reassuring.
But the office gossip has died down. And the doodling's stopped. It's just - Sam sits at his own desk, glancing sidelong out his half-open blinds whenever anyone walks by - that the guy still comports himself like a prisoner. Not that he asks permission to go to the washroom or anything so obvious. Just in the way he sits at his desk. Like he's chained there, a manacle around his ankle that no one can see. Like the case files are no different than stamping license plates or whatever it was he used to do in real jail. Like he has ten years, he may as well save some work for later.
What Sam means by up to, is: does this matter yet? Are you going to start caring now? The answer seems to be predominantly no. No, Dean doesn't care. He'll keep taking cases until the files collapse around him and they have to send him air through a tube and he starves to death under the paper. But he won't start to care. It's a prison sentence to him.
Sam's life work is no better, no worse, than a prison sentence.
--
One night in November they're talking during the drive home. Dean still hasn't learned to take the bus. And Sam finds that though he has start to resent - deeply - Dean's silent and unhelpful presence in the office, he's better on the drive home. Friendly, almost. Pleasant.
“I got her on a hypoallergenic diet now I know about the sensitivity,” Dean's saying, talking about the tabby he took in off the street, the only thing he ever talks about at length. “Vet says it'll keep her from getting sick on the floor - she really likes doing it on my bed if I forget to close the door, which is worse.”
Sam can't imagine living with anything that would throw up on his bed. That includes cats, girlfriends, family members. “What about her paw?” he asks.
“That was just a little infection, it's cleared up now she isn't digging through garbage for her dinner. Dirty little hussy.” Dean smiles fondly out the window.
Sam nods, and takes a breath as they pull up to Dean's door. He got an email from Connor's secretary today, asking for his schedule in order to book a review, and it's kind of got him sweating. “So-” he says, hoping to God some muse will put the inoffensive, effective words on his tongue for him.
“Thanks for the ride, see ya tomorrow,” Dean's already out the door, pushing it shut just hard enough to jar Sam's teeth in his skull.
--
Then, two days later Dean follows Sam into his office after lunch, arms crossed and brow creased. He sits without being asked and says, “This guy in Illinois, I think we have to go after him.”
Sam shows all his surprise on his face, he even makes a little sound in his throat, he's so shocked. He didn't even know Dean had made it down the stack to the Illinois guy, the accounts juggler, already in it for two million. He looks closer at Dean, wondering what after him could possibly mean. “Really.”
“Yeah. Nothing else for it. I won't know who he is till I see him - what am I supposed to tell the field guys - look for a guy who talks in binary code? They'll screw it up.”
“That's why we keep doing the back-up, Dean. We work until we find something they can go on.”
“It'll be too late if we wait until I can back up my gut with a damn paper trail. I know that if I so much as stand next to this guy at a urinal, I've got him. Why send anyone else?”
Sam presses his mouth together. He bites back the answer, because you're a convicted felon. And says instead, “I'll think about it,”
“You mean you'll talk to Connor and book us a flight.”
“I said I'll think about it,” this is as firm as Sam can imagine getting. Repeating himself. He's never been able to say that one word, no, that would make it all so much easier. Sometimes he looks at the office etiquette seminar brochures in HR: learn how to say no without disappointing people! Be pleasant and assertive, not passive-aggressive! There are always pictures of skirt-suited, lipsticked women on the covers.
Dean heaves a sigh in his chair. His collar isn't wrinkled today, Sam notices. He looks vigorous, energetic. He's probably screwing one of the girls in archives. He certainly goes down there enough, with his hands in his pockets, and a speculative tilt to his gaze.
Sam feels a twinge of sour envy. It's familiar, in fact, it's almost nostalgic - sometimes that same twist in the belly will be brought on by the smell of diner food, disinfectant, the taste of blueberry or rhubarb pie. Those long years trailing from city to city, tracking him down, failing, hating him. There was that first year where he didn't even know who Dean was, where the name Winchester didn't mean anything to little Sammy Arsenault. Then, the cut of envy, always surprising, never something to acknowledge. Sam's obsession with Dean Winchester was never something that bore much thinking about. Aside from the obvious.
And now it's professional, that envy. Sam thinks, for probably the seven hundredth time, that he has made a very big, very embarrassing mistake, one that grins sardonically across the room, flashing its smooth white wolfish teeth, secretly triumphant.
--
The job in Illinois should've been a failure. Had Sam been running it alone, it would've been, without a doubt. But Dean doesn't need any assertiveness training: he second-guesses and corrects Sam's orders so often that eventually Sam just slips aside, lets Dean handle the strategy, the direct orders to what little crew they have.
The bit of cooperation they get from the city goes to surveillance at Sam's insistence. Dean argues they should take the guy down on first sight, but Sam wants enough to evidence to nail him good and hard. So they wait the extra week, which is one day too long. When the guy - an assets analyst working for the bank's clients, managing to slip himself bonuses from both sides of the pot at the same time, which is why it was so hard to pin him down - finally takes off, Dean's on him.
They leave the surveillance team in Chicago and follow the guy south down the interstate. Sam frets most of the way: through his three years tracking Dean he never once followed him by road. There are too many variables, too many unpredictable ways to lose your mark, short of cordoning off the entire state before he makes it past the border. Eventually, that's what Sam had done - at great cost, and great embarrassment when Dean still made it through state lines, and then to Mexico, and then to Europe.
But Dean, he drives the black SUV with a great deal of speed and caution. Sam raises his objections - Ostby could stop at a rest stop, he could take any turn he wanted, he could still be in the city, heading to O'Hare, for chrissake - but Dean brushes them aside. “This guy knows systems, he uses them and he hates them, he's going off the grid. I think he's probably already set up a little place for himself somewhere far far south, Chile maybe, or Argentina. I'd do Argentina, anyway.”
“So how are we gonna find him then? Search all the Super 8 parking lots between here and Buenos Aires?” Sam peers into the cars they pass, looking for the navy Volkswagon Jetta with a heavyset thirty-five year old white guy driving it. He figures it's about as good as any chance they've got, now. He should've let Dean bust him two days ago - but he was hoping for one odd transaction, something to say where the money went. Banks love getting their money back, and Connor loves whatever the banks love.
“Nope,” says Dean. “He's gonna stop at his sister's.”
--
God, it's terrible. There are two brown-eyed nieces that creep in from the kitchen to watch and listen as Kevin Ostby drains of all colour and starts muttering low, specific instructions to his taut-faced sister. Dean stands at the door, grim and silent, while Sam does the talking. Not much is needed. The local police are five minutes away - they called them when Dean rolled up in front of the green-shingled little house, and pointed out the navy blue Jetta in the drive.
But these five minutes, of standing stiffly not looking at each other are painful. Ostby's mouth sets in a firm, strained line and a powerful smell of sweat and adrenaline comes off him while Sam holds him, handcuffed, by the elbow beside the door. Dean is staring straight at the older of the two girls, his face filled with a regret so acute it's painful to look at. At one point, the sister offers them coffee, and everyone declines in mumbles.
And Sam feels responsible - not for this man, who was greedy and took what wasn't his - but for the system that places more value on those invisible zeros floating between servers in the bowels of the bank halls, than whatever happiness those two girls could've had with their uncle still in their lives.
When the police come, they ring the doorbell and stand outside polite as you please.
--
“You think he was gonna take them with him?” Sam asks, later, sitting in the staff room at the little suburban police outpost, drinking bad coffee and waiting for the paperwork to process so they can be on their way.
“If she said yes,” says Dean. “Then sure. But I don't think she would've said yes.”
Sam sits silent for a while. Dean is in an odd mood - morose, that's obvious, but also strangely talkative. Needy, almost. “Did you ask anyone to go with you to Europe?” Sam asks, finally.
“Yeah,” snorts Dean, “Two people. They both said no.”
Sam can guess. John Winchester. And the Harvelle girl that he'd married and then abandoned as fair trade for his freedom.
“That's probably for the best,” says Sam, “I would've had to arrest them as accomplices when I caught you.”
Dean looks over, offense quickly clouding over the initial shock, and then incredulity. He laughs, a pained sound, from deep within his chest. He shakes his head, and they're both laughing together.
--
They fly back to DC on a red eye, Dean doped up on infant Gravol for most of it, and groaning through the turbulence. Sam's always liked turbulence, half of him comforted by a probably misguided but unshakable trust in the authority that keeps the aircraft aloft - pilots, the control tower, God. The other half of him is perfectly content to die in something as unequivocal as a fire-bomb hurtling out of the sky. Better than cancer, better than a bar fight. Sam has never boarded a plane without making sure that he is at peace with the world, first.
Now, though, watching Dean toss, half asleep, beside him. Sam feels a sudden and solitary jolt of desperation, agony.
If they were to drop out of the sky right now, Dean would die not knowing that there were three people he could've invited to Europe. One person who would've dropped everything to go.
Sam sits, quiet, watching his brother sleep. He will tell him when he opens his eyes. He will tell him before the sun rises or the plane touches ground.
He will assign value where it is due.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: A passing familiarity with the movie Catch Me If You Can would help greatly.
Summary: Given up for adoption at six months of age, Sam Arsenault has spent the greater part of his adult life obsessed with a con-man that only he knows is his brother.
Notes: Just over 4000 words, my contribution to reel_spn. All mistakes are mine.
“Arsenault. What is that, French?” Dean Winchester asks, reaching a hand up to brush the plastic nameplate on the office door as he passes it by. His opinion of the French reads clear in his tone, having spent six months in one of their prison cells, practically dead of tuberculosis, or whatever the doctors called it. He drops himself in the chair in front of Sam's desk and eyes the rest of the room with a certain leftover intensity.
He is trying to look like he doesn't care, Sam knows. He recognizes the attitude, because it's the same casualness he's been practising himself. Both of them are dressed in almost identical cheap suits. White or near-white collared shirts with short sleeves appropriate for the blazing August sun outside, but chill and too thin in this grey, air-conditioned labyrinth. Skinny little ties, Sam's black and knotted tight, Dean's striped diagonal in a godawful purple. Just a new hire and his boss, sitting down. Happens every day.
“Yeah, French.” Sam answers, closing the door and seating himself. He notes, a little surprised, that Dean has never spoken his last name before. He pronounces the lt at the end and Sam doesn't correct him. Somehow through the past seven years it never came up - Dean was one to seize advantages, and always calling the FBI tail by his Christian name fit the bill: aggravatingly clever and self-satisfied. Far too close for comfort. Somehow, this never managed to bother Sam.
Dean is still examining the office: rows of labelled binders in temporary-looking metal shelving units crowd the opposite wall, making it necessary for Sam to turn sideways to get behind his desk. Which is made of particle board and stacked (neatly) with files upon manila files. A dark computer monitor, beige and square; a cell-phone charger, but no landline. His degree - Economics, Brown - and a few commendations are framed in black on the wall. No window, just the standard glass walls looking out to the lay of the cubicle grid.
Sam seats himself and looks across at Dean, who is mostly avoiding his gaze, turning the potted, sharp-edged plant on the desk slowly in place with two fingers.
“I thought we'd go over exactly what kind of workload you'll be taking on,” says Sam, ignoring the plant, pulling some papers up out of his briefcase. He'd drawn up a division of case files spreadsheet the night before, when he couldn't sleep. Worried either that he'd bore Dean, or that he'd entrust him with too much and be disappointed and embarrassed in front of Connor and the board.
“Do I get my own office?” asks Dean, not bothering to pick up his copy, or even glance at it.
“Yes,” Sam says, and doesn't add that it's only because an office is easier adapted to prison cell status than a cubicle. Dean will be monitored, with no phone, no computer, just him and his special tasks, specially assigned by Sam and only Sam. An open door and glass walls will mean that anyone standing at the coffee pot will notice if he ups and disappears. Sam can't sleep at night, thinking about how Dean will up and disappear.
“My own cell phone?” asks Dean.
“You got a full pardon and a salary,” Sam says, flat, even as he knows Dean's just saying it to say it. He can't help but rise to the bait. He blinks, puts his palms against the table, thumbs brushing each edge of the paper. He paraphrases: “At the federal level, this office handles bank and check, credit and loan, and where it overlaps with private losses down on fourth, some identity theft. Nothing corporate, nothing forensic. And our division only handles institutional cases. No Nigerian ex-pats or pyramid schemes. Your role-”
“So you're in this for the banks?” Dean has picked up his spreadsheet, still barely glancing at it. “That's why you wanted me so bad - because I was siphoning off some investment banker's private island fund. I kind of expected a little more from you, Sam. You struck me as the kind of guy who needs the moral high ground when it comes to this kind of stuff.”
Sam can't respond to that, he knows Dean understands the realities and moralities of his crimes a lot better than he's playing at. He's too angry to work up any kind of response, so he just keeps going, “We get probably a couple hundred fresh cases a year. And that's just me, Ferris and Selkirk doing the legwork - all our evidence gets passed on for arrests and prosecution.”
“How many you actually shut down?”
“Enough,” says Sam, wishing he sounded less defensive. Definitely, Dean is their best collar in years: good for publicity, good for morale. The fact it took three years to get him is just a badge of the FBI's long arm and inhuman patience, according to PR.
“So half, maybe. You got a backlog of what, ten thousand cold? People who just walked away with the money.” Dean tsks at the sheet, and Sam glances at it, wondering where the hell he'd written that down.
“Yeah, we'll do the full review when you've got your paperwork with human resources settled, alright?” Sam decides he's made a mistake, bringing Dean in to talk like an employee. He's not. He's much more than that, and much less. And he has an acute awareness of his own value to the Bureau, to Sam, that he will always carry like a banner. Cocky smile, indifferent shrug.
Sam stands up and inches past his desk again, gesturing for Dean to open the door. “Lemme show you your office.”
--
The deal with the board is that Sam is legally responsible for Dean, his ward and parolee, even if the man is four years older than him and a hell of a lot more dangerous. Sam's name and reputation are tied up in that responsibility. Which means that his career is, too, but that's not news. Three years to track Dean down, and four years of incarceration, including the extradition back stateside that Sam also supervised. So the least he can do is find him a bachelor suite on a bus route. He bought him the suit, too, though Dean picked a sharper grey rather than Sam's usual, and added a pair of shoes to the bill without asking.
Regardless, Sam drives him home after work and there isn't much to say in the car. Dean spent the day doodling on file folders as far as Sam can tell. He keeps telling himself tomorrow will be better, Dean'll get used to it, the weird looks and the low growl of inter-cubicle mutters will die down once everyone realizes that it's business as usual.
He glances to his right, and Dean's looking like he's convinced himself of the opposite. His mouth is turned down at the corners in an unconscious sneer, like the green leaves and heritage buildings lining the boulevard disgust him. Like he's contemplating a new life sentence, one he hadn't anticipated.
Sam pulls up beside the blank-faced apartment block, and Dean's out of the car before Sam has even thrown it into park.
The grey suit jacket Sam bought lies crumpled and forgotten in the fold of the passenger seat, and by the time he looks up after Dean, he's already disappeared inside.
--
Sam still sleeps on the flattened twin mattress he bought when he first moved to DC for an internship after college. Actually, not a lot has changed since then, materially. The only thing he spends money on are mystery paperbacks and comic books. Everything else - car, clothes, the mortgage his parents insisted he get when he first got on with the Bureau - is on an as-needed basis. He has a lot of cheap bookshelves, and a desk for when he brings files home. His fridge isn't empty and tonight he bakes himself salmon, but he leaves his suit in a pile on the bathroom floor and though he looks at it occasionally and knows he'll end up getting it dry-cleaned, he can't be bothered to hang it up. He sits on his kitchen counter in a t-shirt and boxer-briefs and reads The Invisibles and eats his fish.
His mother calls at eight, and he shocks himself by not picking up the phone. Just stands staring at the display unable to think of the appropriate words to say when one lifts the receiver. She wants to pester him to pick a weekend to meet them at the cottage, talk about his dad's latest medical exam, ask about that girl he was seeing a while back - a year ago, in fact, and only for a few months.
Topics he can mostly appreciate, most of the time. He talks to her and dad weekly, if not more. But right now, standing with bare feet on the linoleum, the only person he really wants to talk to is John Winchester.
He'd met him once. Showed up at his little apartment in Minneapolis, where he was working as an auto mechanic at the time. He'd asked about Dean and Winchester had lied fearlessly and consistently through his teeth. Sam hadn't asked his question then. Never had a chance after.
John Winchester, dead for three and a half years. Sam had been notified immediately: killed in a freak accident, fell and broke his neck out hunting in northern Minnesota. Sam hadn't recognized any of the handful of people at the funeral. Dean was in Europe at the time. Some part of Sam hoped for a blonde woman in her early fifties, one with a strange warmth in her eyes, even if she did turn her face away from him. She didn't appear. He knew that she too was long, long dead.
John and Mary Winchester, he has only the one question he'd like answered. It's one that Joy Arsenault would weep to hear. Which is why he doesn't pick up the phone.
--
In the morning, Sam idles at Dean's door for twenty minutes. He tries to use the buzzer, but it isn't connected yet. And Dean really didn't get a cell phone from the Bureau, so Sam just sits and waits until finally, dark-eyed and rumpled in the same slacks from yesterday, Dean drops into the passenger seat.
"Good morning," says Sam, tongue-tied with irritation. He's never been a talker. Confrontation makes him queasy, he really can't do any better than passive-aggressive eye rolls when it comes to stuff like this. It's why he doesn't do field work anymore, not since he collared Dean in France. Without that single-minded obsession driving him, attempts to continue work out in the real world trigger mild panic attacks. Sam prefers his office, even if he doesn't get a window.
Dean doesn't respond, just sits with his mouth pressed together, same as yesterday. Halfway to the office, he finally says, "Can we pick up some coffee? I have to drink that crude oil again I'll be spending the morning in the john."
Sam says, "We're already late."
And Dean looks down at the clock, checks his wrist watch and goes, "The contract I signed said eight o'clock, not seven forty-five."
So Sam pulls into a meter spot and sits in the car while he watches Dean wait in an interminable line of dull-faced office workers at some nameless little coffee shop. His order alone takes three minutes to make, Sam times it.
When he gets back in the car, foam spilling over the sides of his paper cup, Dean glances at the clock and says, "Now we're late."
--
Three weeks into Dean's parole, Sam is pretty damn sure he's going to lose his job. Dean's office is a swamp of file folders and crates filled with paper - evidence, requests, years worth of work waiting for his expert perusal - from which nothing ever seems to return. Sam finds himself torn between avoiding the place altogether and wandering in every fifteen minutes to casually enquire about what Dean's up to.
Dean's eyebrows go up and his jaw sets whenever he hears those words: up to. If Sam's lucky, he'll get a brief one sentence verb-subject description. If not, Dean will just scowl and look away without bothering to respond at all. Neither is at all reassuring.
But the office gossip has died down. And the doodling's stopped. It's just - Sam sits at his own desk, glancing sidelong out his half-open blinds whenever anyone walks by - that the guy still comports himself like a prisoner. Not that he asks permission to go to the washroom or anything so obvious. Just in the way he sits at his desk. Like he's chained there, a manacle around his ankle that no one can see. Like the case files are no different than stamping license plates or whatever it was he used to do in real jail. Like he has ten years, he may as well save some work for later.
What Sam means by up to, is: does this matter yet? Are you going to start caring now? The answer seems to be predominantly no. No, Dean doesn't care. He'll keep taking cases until the files collapse around him and they have to send him air through a tube and he starves to death under the paper. But he won't start to care. It's a prison sentence to him.
Sam's life work is no better, no worse, than a prison sentence.
--
One night in November they're talking during the drive home. Dean still hasn't learned to take the bus. And Sam finds that though he has start to resent - deeply - Dean's silent and unhelpful presence in the office, he's better on the drive home. Friendly, almost. Pleasant.
“I got her on a hypoallergenic diet now I know about the sensitivity,” Dean's saying, talking about the tabby he took in off the street, the only thing he ever talks about at length. “Vet says it'll keep her from getting sick on the floor - she really likes doing it on my bed if I forget to close the door, which is worse.”
Sam can't imagine living with anything that would throw up on his bed. That includes cats, girlfriends, family members. “What about her paw?” he asks.
“That was just a little infection, it's cleared up now she isn't digging through garbage for her dinner. Dirty little hussy.” Dean smiles fondly out the window.
Sam nods, and takes a breath as they pull up to Dean's door. He got an email from Connor's secretary today, asking for his schedule in order to book a review, and it's kind of got him sweating. “So-” he says, hoping to God some muse will put the inoffensive, effective words on his tongue for him.
“Thanks for the ride, see ya tomorrow,” Dean's already out the door, pushing it shut just hard enough to jar Sam's teeth in his skull.
--
Then, two days later Dean follows Sam into his office after lunch, arms crossed and brow creased. He sits without being asked and says, “This guy in Illinois, I think we have to go after him.”
Sam shows all his surprise on his face, he even makes a little sound in his throat, he's so shocked. He didn't even know Dean had made it down the stack to the Illinois guy, the accounts juggler, already in it for two million. He looks closer at Dean, wondering what after him could possibly mean. “Really.”
“Yeah. Nothing else for it. I won't know who he is till I see him - what am I supposed to tell the field guys - look for a guy who talks in binary code? They'll screw it up.”
“That's why we keep doing the back-up, Dean. We work until we find something they can go on.”
“It'll be too late if we wait until I can back up my gut with a damn paper trail. I know that if I so much as stand next to this guy at a urinal, I've got him. Why send anyone else?”
Sam presses his mouth together. He bites back the answer, because you're a convicted felon. And says instead, “I'll think about it,”
“You mean you'll talk to Connor and book us a flight.”
“I said I'll think about it,” this is as firm as Sam can imagine getting. Repeating himself. He's never been able to say that one word, no, that would make it all so much easier. Sometimes he looks at the office etiquette seminar brochures in HR: learn how to say no without disappointing people! Be pleasant and assertive, not passive-aggressive! There are always pictures of skirt-suited, lipsticked women on the covers.
Dean heaves a sigh in his chair. His collar isn't wrinkled today, Sam notices. He looks vigorous, energetic. He's probably screwing one of the girls in archives. He certainly goes down there enough, with his hands in his pockets, and a speculative tilt to his gaze.
Sam feels a twinge of sour envy. It's familiar, in fact, it's almost nostalgic - sometimes that same twist in the belly will be brought on by the smell of diner food, disinfectant, the taste of blueberry or rhubarb pie. Those long years trailing from city to city, tracking him down, failing, hating him. There was that first year where he didn't even know who Dean was, where the name Winchester didn't mean anything to little Sammy Arsenault. Then, the cut of envy, always surprising, never something to acknowledge. Sam's obsession with Dean Winchester was never something that bore much thinking about. Aside from the obvious.
And now it's professional, that envy. Sam thinks, for probably the seven hundredth time, that he has made a very big, very embarrassing mistake, one that grins sardonically across the room, flashing its smooth white wolfish teeth, secretly triumphant.
--
The job in Illinois should've been a failure. Had Sam been running it alone, it would've been, without a doubt. But Dean doesn't need any assertiveness training: he second-guesses and corrects Sam's orders so often that eventually Sam just slips aside, lets Dean handle the strategy, the direct orders to what little crew they have.
The bit of cooperation they get from the city goes to surveillance at Sam's insistence. Dean argues they should take the guy down on first sight, but Sam wants enough to evidence to nail him good and hard. So they wait the extra week, which is one day too long. When the guy - an assets analyst working for the bank's clients, managing to slip himself bonuses from both sides of the pot at the same time, which is why it was so hard to pin him down - finally takes off, Dean's on him.
They leave the surveillance team in Chicago and follow the guy south down the interstate. Sam frets most of the way: through his three years tracking Dean he never once followed him by road. There are too many variables, too many unpredictable ways to lose your mark, short of cordoning off the entire state before he makes it past the border. Eventually, that's what Sam had done - at great cost, and great embarrassment when Dean still made it through state lines, and then to Mexico, and then to Europe.
But Dean, he drives the black SUV with a great deal of speed and caution. Sam raises his objections - Ostby could stop at a rest stop, he could take any turn he wanted, he could still be in the city, heading to O'Hare, for chrissake - but Dean brushes them aside. “This guy knows systems, he uses them and he hates them, he's going off the grid. I think he's probably already set up a little place for himself somewhere far far south, Chile maybe, or Argentina. I'd do Argentina, anyway.”
“So how are we gonna find him then? Search all the Super 8 parking lots between here and Buenos Aires?” Sam peers into the cars they pass, looking for the navy Volkswagon Jetta with a heavyset thirty-five year old white guy driving it. He figures it's about as good as any chance they've got, now. He should've let Dean bust him two days ago - but he was hoping for one odd transaction, something to say where the money went. Banks love getting their money back, and Connor loves whatever the banks love.
“Nope,” says Dean. “He's gonna stop at his sister's.”
--
God, it's terrible. There are two brown-eyed nieces that creep in from the kitchen to watch and listen as Kevin Ostby drains of all colour and starts muttering low, specific instructions to his taut-faced sister. Dean stands at the door, grim and silent, while Sam does the talking. Not much is needed. The local police are five minutes away - they called them when Dean rolled up in front of the green-shingled little house, and pointed out the navy blue Jetta in the drive.
But these five minutes, of standing stiffly not looking at each other are painful. Ostby's mouth sets in a firm, strained line and a powerful smell of sweat and adrenaline comes off him while Sam holds him, handcuffed, by the elbow beside the door. Dean is staring straight at the older of the two girls, his face filled with a regret so acute it's painful to look at. At one point, the sister offers them coffee, and everyone declines in mumbles.
And Sam feels responsible - not for this man, who was greedy and took what wasn't his - but for the system that places more value on those invisible zeros floating between servers in the bowels of the bank halls, than whatever happiness those two girls could've had with their uncle still in their lives.
When the police come, they ring the doorbell and stand outside polite as you please.
--
“You think he was gonna take them with him?” Sam asks, later, sitting in the staff room at the little suburban police outpost, drinking bad coffee and waiting for the paperwork to process so they can be on their way.
“If she said yes,” says Dean. “Then sure. But I don't think she would've said yes.”
Sam sits silent for a while. Dean is in an odd mood - morose, that's obvious, but also strangely talkative. Needy, almost. “Did you ask anyone to go with you to Europe?” Sam asks, finally.
“Yeah,” snorts Dean, “Two people. They both said no.”
Sam can guess. John Winchester. And the Harvelle girl that he'd married and then abandoned as fair trade for his freedom.
“That's probably for the best,” says Sam, “I would've had to arrest them as accomplices when I caught you.”
Dean looks over, offense quickly clouding over the initial shock, and then incredulity. He laughs, a pained sound, from deep within his chest. He shakes his head, and they're both laughing together.
--
They fly back to DC on a red eye, Dean doped up on infant Gravol for most of it, and groaning through the turbulence. Sam's always liked turbulence, half of him comforted by a probably misguided but unshakable trust in the authority that keeps the aircraft aloft - pilots, the control tower, God. The other half of him is perfectly content to die in something as unequivocal as a fire-bomb hurtling out of the sky. Better than cancer, better than a bar fight. Sam has never boarded a plane without making sure that he is at peace with the world, first.
Now, though, watching Dean toss, half asleep, beside him. Sam feels a sudden and solitary jolt of desperation, agony.
If they were to drop out of the sky right now, Dean would die not knowing that there were three people he could've invited to Europe. One person who would've dropped everything to go.
Sam sits, quiet, watching his brother sleep. He will tell him when he opens his eyes. He will tell him before the sun rises or the plane touches ground.
He will assign value where it is due.