The Killing Moon
2. Leaving Normal
The chick is small, skinny, has piercing blue eyes in a freckled face, and dark hair that looks like it was dragged through a hedge backwards but probably took hours to tousle that artfully. She's wearing faded cut-offs and Converse sneakers, and her tank-top declares that she's slippery when wet, which gives Dean a warm feeling somewhere that hasn't felt any heat since… for a while.
Sam would say she wasn't his type.
But these days anything's my fuckin' type, he thinks, as long as it's female. Because, females. Girls. Women. Chicks. Birds. Dames. Molls. Broads. Skirts. Cupcakes. Bettys.
"What's a betty?"
Dean gapes, knows his jaw is dropping at the thought he might have said any of that out fuckin' loud.
"Nothing… I didn't say that," he squeaks, voice skating through the octaves like Mariah fuckin' Carey's, like it hasn't done since it broke when he hit puberty.
Sam is right behind him now, and Dean can sense his brother's stifled mirth so clearly he wonders for a minute if the bitch's shining has rubbed off on him when he wasn't looking. He clears his throat, switches on his Dean-Winchester-like-the-gun growl before he goes on. "Just thinking out loud, miss."
"There's something wrong with my car," the woman says primly, and Dean knows for sure he's gaping again.
"Th-thank God for that," he stutters. He knows he's lost it now, but he keeps riding on into the valley of death anyway. "Your accent… it's fuckin' awesome. Like Princess fuckin' Diana."
Sam's mirth isn't stifled at all now, Dean can hear his brother's choked laughter from just behind his left shoulder. But it's like a spell or something, he just can't stop.
"Say something else. Please?"
The woman raises a judgmental eyebrow, and her gaze is decidedly chilly. She isn't even all that cute really - too skinny. But the voice…
"What would you like me to say?"
"Anything. Fuckin' anything. The alphabet, the phonebook, doh a fuckin' deer. Anything."
Her eyes wander past him to his brother for a second, and Dean sees a smile just ghost her lips before she looks back at him.
"Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made; those are pearls that were his eyes… nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange."
And we have a winner. God bless you Kathleen Hudak, and all who sail in you.
The woman is looking at him with a gleam in her eye that's more challenge than come-get-me, a gleam that tells Dean she thinks he's some dumb hick who can just about find his ass with a map and a flashlight.
And he lets her have it. "Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell…"
Her eyes widen, and a proper smile curls her lips, one that has Dean thinking that maybe she is cute after all.
"Ding fuckin' dong." Dean nods his head decisively. "The Tempest. Man, I fuckin' love Shakespeare."
Sam coughs behind him. "I'll leave you to it," he croaks out. "My brother's pretty good with cars. He'll get you going in no time."
Oh yeah.
It doesn't work out quite like Dean thought it would.
Oh, she's up for it - has him pinned down on the hood of her car less than two minutes after he steers it around back into Bobby's auto shop, so fast his upstairs brain presses whatever button it is that tells him to whisper a precautionary Christo in her ear, and then his downstairs brain sets off firecrackers and breaks out a fridge-pack to celebrate the fact that her eyes don't turn black and she didn't seem to hear him, because fuck knows if she asks him what the hell he's muttering about he's got nothing.
She's all fingernails raking his back, practically ripping off his tee, purring over his scars because, man, do chicks dig scars, and Jesus, he thinks, please don't be a succubus. Her tongue is bionic, swirls around inside his mouth energetically, never mind that he must taste like some illegal backwoods still, and he wonders what might happen if she just licked a stripe right down his chest, his belly, and then unzipped his jeans and reached in to-
"God… harder…"
Oh… she's up for it.
And he's up for it too, finds his usual morning DTs don't remotely cramp his inner slut as he runs his hands up and down her back, gripping her ass, pulling her in close and grinding up against her. He murmurs say hello to my little friend in his best Pacino, whispers filthybadnobutsogood promises in her ear. He nips down so hard on her shoulder she yelps, sucks perfect purple circles along her neck, Dean Winchester was here, slides his hands inside her cut-offs to discover the delirious joy that is chicks who go commando and find, to his utter delight, that her tank-top wasn't lying, no sir.
Oh, he's up for it.
It's just that he isn't.
And it's not that he doesn't want to - Christ, he does. But it's like all those messages rocketing from his brain down to Little Dean are getting caught in a traffic bottleneck somewhere in his general groin region and all the blood that should be flowing south is getting diverted to the scenic route, meandering along coastal U.S. Route 1 north to Bar Harbor to catch the ferry to Nova fuckin' Scotia instead of zipping down I-95 at eighty miles per hour straight into fuckin' Logan and climbing to thirty thousand feet like it used to before…
Before.
Dean keeps at it even though he knows the dead isn't rising and appearing to many this time. And it slows down, gets comfortable, a tad boring, gets how he imagines it must be for old married couples: close, but no cigar.
"Well," the woman says finally, pulling back and wiping her lips. "You certainly had me going there for a while." She zips up her shorts, rescues her tank-top from where he threw it, pulls it on, scrunches up the scrap of shiny fabric that passes for a bra when you're that skinny and feeds it into her hip pocket.
"Sorry," Dean manages, and Jesus, it's the first time since he first dipped his wick at fifteen that he's ever said that to a chick in this situation.
"Oh, don't be," she says airily, and she reaches into her car and retrieves a pack of Camels. "It's not as if I was expecting anything, anyway. Which means that was an extremely enjoyable diversion even if it all, well, led nowhere really."
She lights up, takes a drag and puffs out an accomplished smoke circle, offers him the cigarette, examines him as he inhales the smoke and coughs with the tickle of still-sensitive airways.
"So. You married then? Pining for someone? Secretly gay?"
"Fuck no," Dean snaps. "No. None of the above."
"Are you still going to fix my car?"
He rolls his eyes, opens the driver's door and pops the hood, spots the problem straightaway. "Look, it's the-"
"God, enough," she cuts in, waving dismissively. "Not interested, don't care. The world is full of strapping young men who can get my engine up and running. Even if they can't get my engine up and running. If you get my drift."
She's a total stranger. Someone he'll never see again once he gets her car going and she pulls out of Bobby's yard onto the highway. You have to talk about it. You have to let it out.
Dean's head is suddenly bursting with the fact that Sam is right. He needs to talk, and he wishes to the very core of his being that he could talk to his brother, but he can't, just can't do it, can't go there willingly - bad enough that his dreams drag him there kicking and screaming. And he knows damn well his brother hears the dreams, sees the shadows under Sam's eyes that speak of his own sleepless nights, but still he just can't tell Sam how much he remembers, can't reveal that much of himself, can't let his kid brother see who chases him in his nightmares, can't let him see the awful despair of being damn well stuck with a valuable fuckin' friend once he gives into his exhaustion. And she's a total stranger, someone he'll never see again once he gets her car going and she pulls out of Bobby's yard onto the highway.
"I don't. I, uh, can't. I was. Uh. Was. Raped."
It's the first time he has said it. His voice trips on it, his throat suddenly dry, and he flinches inwardly at how ugly the word is, how hard and brutal it sounds, thinks how appropriate it is that someone somewhere picked that precise combination of letters, that they totally fit what they describe. It's a vicious word, a hurtful word, a barbed, poisonous word.
"So was I."
And she has his jaw dropping again but only for a split second, because he finds he's stumbling on without even really meaning to.
"My brother… he, uh, wants me to talk. To him. About it. But I can't. It's too, too…" He doesn't even know what word he's searching for and he trails off, shrugs, thinks he might even be blushing, wants the ground to swallow him.
She looks at him for a long moment. "It's hardest with the people you love," she says carefully. "Strangers don't see how it changes you. They take you as you are and don't miss the person you were. Family… you don't want them to see you ruined and broken, but you can't hide it from them because they knew you before. They see the differences. The cracks." She stops for a minute, studies him again. "But your brother… he's the one you need to talk to about it. Not me."
He knows she's right. But maybe there's one thing she can help him with.
"I can't… it doesn't, uh, work any more. But you. You seem to work just fine."
She smiles knowingly. "It'll start working again, believe me. This was recent for you, yes? It takes time. But one day you'll feel like I did - that the bastard who took that from you isn't going to stop you from taking it back."
Dean throws up his hands. "But how, how do you… take it back? How?"
"You choose to. It's your choice. You just aren't ready to make it yet, and I'm not the one."
He wonders if it really can be that easy, and it's as if she can read his mind.
"You'll know when it's time. And when it's the one."
He nods, still a tad doubtful. He wipes his oil-covered hands on a rag, reaches out. "Dean Winchester. Like the gun."
She smiles, shakes his hand with a firm grip. "Lucy Ross. I'm pleased to meet you, Dean-Winchester-like-the-gun."
He's still holding her hand. "That's a mighty strong grip you got there, Lucy," he blurts out.
She nods, smirks. "Yes it is. What a waste, huh?"
Dean has the engine running as sweetly as his own baby within twenty minutes, and then she's gone, in a cloud of dust. He watches her car until it disappears, and it's like she was never there. And then he schleps back to the house.
Sam watches him from the porch swing and there's a glint in his eye that's part amusement and part something else, like he's monitoring Dean, examining him. Dean tells himself he's imagining the scrutiny, but Sam watches him with that look for a long minute, assessing him.
"So."
Dean looks away, sits and plucks his second bottle of hooch from where he stuffed it for safekeeping, down between the cushion and the seat frame. "So what, Sammy?"
"Princess Diana fantasy. Care to share?"
Sam jabs him in the ribs with his elbow, and thank fuck that's all it is, his kid brother teasing him over a teenage crush. But something flashes in Dean's brain, a spark or something, and he presses the heel of his hand to his temple, fights the urge to rub his brow because he knows it worries his brother. He can hear snatches of what he said before cutting in and out inside his head, spat-out insults, wrong and hurtful, Sammy sharp-eye mad at him. It's fragmented, though, like he wasn't there for all of it, like… missing time. His head aches so fuckin' bad. He knows it's not right, but the little voice in there that's bleating tell Sam is drowned out by the sudden flood of gratitude for the fact that his brother isn't pushing, is cutting him the break he desperately wants even if it's a breakthrough he desperately needs.
"Nope. Private." He sees Sam smirking in his peripheral vision, and he returns the grin. "Oh come on. You'd have hit that if you had the chance. She was hot as hell."
"The chick?"
"Princess Diana. Total babe." Dean nods, because heck, someone might as well agree with him for once, pops the cap of the bottle with his ring. "The chick too."
"So. Did you…"
"Don't ask, don't tell, Sammy."
They sit there, not talking, slapping at skeeters, and Dean nurses his booze. And in his head he practices what he could say to his brother… he's in my dreams, every one… dream fuckin' lover or something… stuck in my head… dunno how to get him out… feel so fuckin' pathetic… can't bear you thinking that I am…
And finally the haze of alcohol gets so thick he can't see the woods stretching out in all directions.
He must have dozed off because he winces awake to a squirming bundle dropped right onto his jewels.
"This one's completely harmless, boy. Take my word for it," Bobby says from high up, as Dean lifts the wriggling pup by its scruff and looks up at the old man.
"Won't the other two eat it?" he ponders, and he sees Bobby glance over at Sam, thinks maybe something passes from his brother's eyes to the old man's.
"Re-homed 'em, son," Bobby says after a minute. "Thought it'd be easier for you with Rumsfeld here being smaller."
Dean is touched, genuinely touched. "Bobby, man… you didn't need to do that. They were good dogs, you didn't need to ditch them on my account." But he chokes slightly on the words, and a weight lifts from his shoulders: the weight of short dense fur, solid packed muscle, fangs that rip, shred, tear. He knows he gives a tiny gasp, even if he tries to disguise it by clearing his throat.
Bobby doesn't seem to notice. "That they were. But there are a lot of good dogs, boy. Not too many good kids though. So. Dogs moved house."
"I appreciate that Bobby, I do…"
"I know you do, Dean. I want you to feel safe here." Bobby looks over at Sam again. "Now if I can just borrow Sam here for a while, I got word of a hunt in Pennsylvania, angry spirit maybe. Reckon you can do some research for me, boy?"
Sam pushes up, has to lean down briefly to extricate the snarling pup's needle-sharp teeth from the cuff of his jeans. "Sure, Bobby, can do."
The door creaks shut behind them and Dean drifts off, gazing into the middle distance, miles away.
Sam follows Bobby into the house, heads for his laptop, sees the old man glance out the window as if he's checking that Dean is staying put.
"What the hell was that?" Bobby says then, and his voice crackles with worry. "He was racing round out there for God knows how long with my dogs up his ass before he emptied a full clip into them. And he has no memory of it?"
He's rattled like Sam hasn't seen him since Hibbing as he goes on. "Look Sam, I haven't been sticking my nose in this, I haven't said a damn word until this morning, being as you said this had to happen on Dean's terms. But it isn't getting sorted, and now I feel like you haven't been on the level with me, boy, because you never said anything about him not remembering these dreams."
Sam briefly wonders if he should think up some cover story, but he knows Bobby will see it for the crap it is, so he settles for the truth. And once he's figured that's the best tack, it all pours out. "I'm sorry Bobby. It's just that he's really freaking me out. This, what happened, it's - an escalation. Nightmares are one thing, but this was something way beyond that… he really thought it was Bender's dogs, he was right back in that moment, it was totally real to him. But he wasn't even really awake, it was like a, a fugue."
Sam realizes he has his hands up and pressed to his cheeks, his eyes huge and his mouth open in a Munchian O, and it's shock, is what it is, appalled shock, because even though he's just been sitting out there right next to the burnt-out shell of his brother, scoping him for signs of total breakdown, he hasn't really thought about what that means. "Fuck. Shit-fuck." he says. "Fuck. He sat there and made some crack about scoring points when you kill dogs, Bobby, and five minutes later it was like he'd forgotten, forgotten he said it, forgotten the dogs… no, not forgotten, more like - never knew in the first place." He has to stop for a minute, steady his breathing. "He isn't right. But I don't know what to do about it. So I guess I'm just, I don't know, in a holding pattern with him, waiting for him to land."
Bobby rubs his stubbled jaw hard. "Well, he isn't making his final approach so much as he is tailspinning," he grunts. "Look, Sam. I know you thought it was important for him to be able to live his life, be independent instead of having us baby him and watch him all the time. But-"
"Normal. I wanted him to feel normal," Sam mutters.
"I know. I know that, and I understand your reasoning, boy, I do," the old man says quickly. "But - and don't take this the wrong way, Sam - you're saying this was different, an escalation. And we know he's been driving into town by himself to buy liquor…"
Sam knows exactly what the old man is going to say, knows because he's been trying to stop himself from thinking it.
"So. Is it possible he's gotten hold of something a tad stronger than the booze, that might have kicked this off?"
Sam doesn't reply for a minute, shrugs. "I don't know, Bobby… he just isn't like that. I mean he tokes the odd joint, yeah, but he's never been a user, never. He's too much of a control freak. But… it has crossed my mind." It feels like a total betrayal of his brother and his forced addiction at the Benders' hands to even consider that possibility let alone 'fess up to Bobby that he has, and Sam thinks the older man must sense it, because he backtracks to slightly safer territory.
"The dreams… night terrors, flashbacks, whatever they are. Is he aware after them, does he make sense when he wakes up?"
"He gets up," Sam says, "and he prowls round the room, tries to get out, which is why I've been locking the door. But I don't know if he's even really awake. I just put him back to bed and in the morning it's like it never happened, he doesn't mention it."
"Are the dreams like what happened after we pulled him out of the river back in Hibbing?" Bobby asks. "I mean… does he think Bender's attacking him? He obviously thought Bender's dogs were chasing him."
Sam shakes his head, throws up his hands. "I think so… all the websites I've looked at say it's pretty common after - that. He's - distressed. In the dreams." He flips to his brother's tearstreaked face and desperate eyes, flips away just as fast because he knows he just can't dwell on them without smashing something in the room to pieces. "But Bobby, he's been saying all along he doesn't really remember it, so how can he be dreaming things he says he has no memory of? How does that work?"
The old man snorts. "Well, first off you're assuming he isn't lying to us about how little he remembers. You and I both know what he said in Hibbing. He knew. Or he seemed to."
Sam thinks of his brother's harrowing alleyway confession, shivers.
"But I guess he could have buried it since then," Bobby muses. "Repressed it as a self-defense mechanism because he just can't cope with it. So it's coming out the only way it can - in his dreams." He stops for a minute, continues more thoughtfully. "Dreams are pretty powerful mojo - some say it's the subconscious mind trying to break out into the conscious mind, others reckon they're a way of working through the bad stuff without having to shock the conscious mind with it… deal with the nasty shit in a safe place, if you like. Freud said nightmares help the brain learn to control the emotions you feel after distressing experiences."
Sam gazes up at him, is lost for words for about thirty seconds. He always suspected Bobby was a closet geek, but the old man never ceases to amaze him. "Bobby you're awesome," he says.
Bobby rolls his eyes, looks out the window again. "Question is, what the heck do we do with this? He isn't opening up to you, and this closing down means it's festering inside him. But. Pushing him to face up to it all too soon could be just as bad, the sort of shock he doesn't need."
"So that means leaving things as they are?" Sam says. "Leaving the nasty shit in the safe place?"
Bobby shrugs. "I guess. For now, anyway. But we're going to have to rethink normal when it comes to the weapons. That's starting to look like a bridge too far, boy. He mistook my dogs for Bender's, so who's to say he might not mistake one of us for that sonofabitch? I don't even want to think about him doing that within reach of shooters or sharp objects."
Dean hadn't aimed the gun at him last night, Sam recalls, had aimed right at the dogs even though Sam was in his line of fire. "I was out there with him chasing along behind the dogs, Bobby, and he seemed pretty careful when it came to not hitting me… and he knew it was me, he spoke to me."
Bobby sniffs. "Well. You were there with him when the pitbulls were chasing you. Could be you were in the dream and he thought you were the dream Sam when he spoke to you."
"I'm sure he wouldn't hurt us," Sam says quietly, though he doesn't know how convincing he sounds.
"You think?" Bobby says, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
"I will if you will."
Bobby huffs. "Yeah. Well Freud also believed dreams were a psychosis. Meaning a total personality one-eighty, and an upside-down sense of reality. And you know what Kant said."
"Um. No?"
"The lunatic is a wakeful dreamer. And I'd say your brother was definitely a wakeful dreamer, if not a goddamn lunatic, when he plugged my dogs full of lead."
Next
The chick is small, skinny, has piercing blue eyes in a freckled face, and dark hair that looks like it was dragged through a hedge backwards but probably took hours to tousle that artfully. She's wearing faded cut-offs and Converse sneakers, and her tank-top declares that she's slippery when wet, which gives Dean a warm feeling somewhere that hasn't felt any heat since… for a while.
Sam would say she wasn't his type.
But these days anything's my fuckin' type, he thinks, as long as it's female. Because, females. Girls. Women. Chicks. Birds. Dames. Molls. Broads. Skirts. Cupcakes. Bettys.
"What's a betty?"
Dean gapes, knows his jaw is dropping at the thought he might have said any of that out fuckin' loud.
"Nothing… I didn't say that," he squeaks, voice skating through the octaves like Mariah fuckin' Carey's, like it hasn't done since it broke when he hit puberty.
Sam is right behind him now, and Dean can sense his brother's stifled mirth so clearly he wonders for a minute if the bitch's shining has rubbed off on him when he wasn't looking. He clears his throat, switches on his Dean-Winchester-like-the-gun growl before he goes on. "Just thinking out loud, miss."
"There's something wrong with my car," the woman says primly, and Dean knows for sure he's gaping again.
"Th-thank God for that," he stutters. He knows he's lost it now, but he keeps riding on into the valley of death anyway. "Your accent… it's fuckin' awesome. Like Princess fuckin' Diana."
Sam's mirth isn't stifled at all now, Dean can hear his brother's choked laughter from just behind his left shoulder. But it's like a spell or something, he just can't stop.
"Say something else. Please?"
The woman raises a judgmental eyebrow, and her gaze is decidedly chilly. She isn't even all that cute really - too skinny. But the voice…
"What would you like me to say?"
"Anything. Fuckin' anything. The alphabet, the phonebook, doh a fuckin' deer. Anything."
Her eyes wander past him to his brother for a second, and Dean sees a smile just ghost her lips before she looks back at him.
"Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made; those are pearls that were his eyes… nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange."
And we have a winner. God bless you Kathleen Hudak, and all who sail in you.
The woman is looking at him with a gleam in her eye that's more challenge than come-get-me, a gleam that tells Dean she thinks he's some dumb hick who can just about find his ass with a map and a flashlight.
And he lets her have it. "Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell…"
Her eyes widen, and a proper smile curls her lips, one that has Dean thinking that maybe she is cute after all.
"Ding fuckin' dong." Dean nods his head decisively. "The Tempest. Man, I fuckin' love Shakespeare."
Sam coughs behind him. "I'll leave you to it," he croaks out. "My brother's pretty good with cars. He'll get you going in no time."
Oh yeah.
It doesn't work out quite like Dean thought it would.
Oh, she's up for it - has him pinned down on the hood of her car less than two minutes after he steers it around back into Bobby's auto shop, so fast his upstairs brain presses whatever button it is that tells him to whisper a precautionary Christo in her ear, and then his downstairs brain sets off firecrackers and breaks out a fridge-pack to celebrate the fact that her eyes don't turn black and she didn't seem to hear him, because fuck knows if she asks him what the hell he's muttering about he's got nothing.
She's all fingernails raking his back, practically ripping off his tee, purring over his scars because, man, do chicks dig scars, and Jesus, he thinks, please don't be a succubus. Her tongue is bionic, swirls around inside his mouth energetically, never mind that he must taste like some illegal backwoods still, and he wonders what might happen if she just licked a stripe right down his chest, his belly, and then unzipped his jeans and reached in to-
"God… harder…"
Oh… she's up for it.
And he's up for it too, finds his usual morning DTs don't remotely cramp his inner slut as he runs his hands up and down her back, gripping her ass, pulling her in close and grinding up against her. He murmurs say hello to my little friend in his best Pacino, whispers filthybadnobutsogood promises in her ear. He nips down so hard on her shoulder she yelps, sucks perfect purple circles along her neck, Dean Winchester was here, slides his hands inside her cut-offs to discover the delirious joy that is chicks who go commando and find, to his utter delight, that her tank-top wasn't lying, no sir.
Oh, he's up for it.
It's just that he isn't.
And it's not that he doesn't want to - Christ, he does. But it's like all those messages rocketing from his brain down to Little Dean are getting caught in a traffic bottleneck somewhere in his general groin region and all the blood that should be flowing south is getting diverted to the scenic route, meandering along coastal U.S. Route 1 north to Bar Harbor to catch the ferry to Nova fuckin' Scotia instead of zipping down I-95 at eighty miles per hour straight into fuckin' Logan and climbing to thirty thousand feet like it used to before…
Before.
Dean keeps at it even though he knows the dead isn't rising and appearing to many this time. And it slows down, gets comfortable, a tad boring, gets how he imagines it must be for old married couples: close, but no cigar.
"Well," the woman says finally, pulling back and wiping her lips. "You certainly had me going there for a while." She zips up her shorts, rescues her tank-top from where he threw it, pulls it on, scrunches up the scrap of shiny fabric that passes for a bra when you're that skinny and feeds it into her hip pocket.
"Sorry," Dean manages, and Jesus, it's the first time since he first dipped his wick at fifteen that he's ever said that to a chick in this situation.
"Oh, don't be," she says airily, and she reaches into her car and retrieves a pack of Camels. "It's not as if I was expecting anything, anyway. Which means that was an extremely enjoyable diversion even if it all, well, led nowhere really."
She lights up, takes a drag and puffs out an accomplished smoke circle, offers him the cigarette, examines him as he inhales the smoke and coughs with the tickle of still-sensitive airways.
"So. You married then? Pining for someone? Secretly gay?"
"Fuck no," Dean snaps. "No. None of the above."
"Are you still going to fix my car?"
He rolls his eyes, opens the driver's door and pops the hood, spots the problem straightaway. "Look, it's the-"
"God, enough," she cuts in, waving dismissively. "Not interested, don't care. The world is full of strapping young men who can get my engine up and running. Even if they can't get my engine up and running. If you get my drift."
She's a total stranger. Someone he'll never see again once he gets her car going and she pulls out of Bobby's yard onto the highway. You have to talk about it. You have to let it out.
Dean's head is suddenly bursting with the fact that Sam is right. He needs to talk, and he wishes to the very core of his being that he could talk to his brother, but he can't, just can't do it, can't go there willingly - bad enough that his dreams drag him there kicking and screaming. And he knows damn well his brother hears the dreams, sees the shadows under Sam's eyes that speak of his own sleepless nights, but still he just can't tell Sam how much he remembers, can't reveal that much of himself, can't let his kid brother see who chases him in his nightmares, can't let him see the awful despair of being damn well stuck with a valuable fuckin' friend once he gives into his exhaustion. And she's a total stranger, someone he'll never see again once he gets her car going and she pulls out of Bobby's yard onto the highway.
"I don't. I, uh, can't. I was. Uh. Was. Raped."
It's the first time he has said it. His voice trips on it, his throat suddenly dry, and he flinches inwardly at how ugly the word is, how hard and brutal it sounds, thinks how appropriate it is that someone somewhere picked that precise combination of letters, that they totally fit what they describe. It's a vicious word, a hurtful word, a barbed, poisonous word.
"So was I."
And she has his jaw dropping again but only for a split second, because he finds he's stumbling on without even really meaning to.
"My brother… he, uh, wants me to talk. To him. About it. But I can't. It's too, too…" He doesn't even know what word he's searching for and he trails off, shrugs, thinks he might even be blushing, wants the ground to swallow him.
She looks at him for a long moment. "It's hardest with the people you love," she says carefully. "Strangers don't see how it changes you. They take you as you are and don't miss the person you were. Family… you don't want them to see you ruined and broken, but you can't hide it from them because they knew you before. They see the differences. The cracks." She stops for a minute, studies him again. "But your brother… he's the one you need to talk to about it. Not me."
He knows she's right. But maybe there's one thing she can help him with.
"I can't… it doesn't, uh, work any more. But you. You seem to work just fine."
She smiles knowingly. "It'll start working again, believe me. This was recent for you, yes? It takes time. But one day you'll feel like I did - that the bastard who took that from you isn't going to stop you from taking it back."
Dean throws up his hands. "But how, how do you… take it back? How?"
"You choose to. It's your choice. You just aren't ready to make it yet, and I'm not the one."
He wonders if it really can be that easy, and it's as if she can read his mind.
"You'll know when it's time. And when it's the one."
He nods, still a tad doubtful. He wipes his oil-covered hands on a rag, reaches out. "Dean Winchester. Like the gun."
She smiles, shakes his hand with a firm grip. "Lucy Ross. I'm pleased to meet you, Dean-Winchester-like-the-gun."
He's still holding her hand. "That's a mighty strong grip you got there, Lucy," he blurts out.
She nods, smirks. "Yes it is. What a waste, huh?"
Dean has the engine running as sweetly as his own baby within twenty minutes, and then she's gone, in a cloud of dust. He watches her car until it disappears, and it's like she was never there. And then he schleps back to the house.
Sam watches him from the porch swing and there's a glint in his eye that's part amusement and part something else, like he's monitoring Dean, examining him. Dean tells himself he's imagining the scrutiny, but Sam watches him with that look for a long minute, assessing him.
"So."
Dean looks away, sits and plucks his second bottle of hooch from where he stuffed it for safekeeping, down between the cushion and the seat frame. "So what, Sammy?"
"Princess Diana fantasy. Care to share?"
Sam jabs him in the ribs with his elbow, and thank fuck that's all it is, his kid brother teasing him over a teenage crush. But something flashes in Dean's brain, a spark or something, and he presses the heel of his hand to his temple, fights the urge to rub his brow because he knows it worries his brother. He can hear snatches of what he said before cutting in and out inside his head, spat-out insults, wrong and hurtful, Sammy sharp-eye mad at him. It's fragmented, though, like he wasn't there for all of it, like… missing time. His head aches so fuckin' bad. He knows it's not right, but the little voice in there that's bleating tell Sam is drowned out by the sudden flood of gratitude for the fact that his brother isn't pushing, is cutting him the break he desperately wants even if it's a breakthrough he desperately needs.
"Nope. Private." He sees Sam smirking in his peripheral vision, and he returns the grin. "Oh come on. You'd have hit that if you had the chance. She was hot as hell."
"The chick?"
"Princess Diana. Total babe." Dean nods, because heck, someone might as well agree with him for once, pops the cap of the bottle with his ring. "The chick too."
"So. Did you…"
"Don't ask, don't tell, Sammy."
They sit there, not talking, slapping at skeeters, and Dean nurses his booze. And in his head he practices what he could say to his brother… he's in my dreams, every one… dream fuckin' lover or something… stuck in my head… dunno how to get him out… feel so fuckin' pathetic… can't bear you thinking that I am…
And finally the haze of alcohol gets so thick he can't see the woods stretching out in all directions.
He must have dozed off because he winces awake to a squirming bundle dropped right onto his jewels.
"This one's completely harmless, boy. Take my word for it," Bobby says from high up, as Dean lifts the wriggling pup by its scruff and looks up at the old man.
"Won't the other two eat it?" he ponders, and he sees Bobby glance over at Sam, thinks maybe something passes from his brother's eyes to the old man's.
"Re-homed 'em, son," Bobby says after a minute. "Thought it'd be easier for you with Rumsfeld here being smaller."
Dean is touched, genuinely touched. "Bobby, man… you didn't need to do that. They were good dogs, you didn't need to ditch them on my account." But he chokes slightly on the words, and a weight lifts from his shoulders: the weight of short dense fur, solid packed muscle, fangs that rip, shred, tear. He knows he gives a tiny gasp, even if he tries to disguise it by clearing his throat.
Bobby doesn't seem to notice. "That they were. But there are a lot of good dogs, boy. Not too many good kids though. So. Dogs moved house."
"I appreciate that Bobby, I do…"
"I know you do, Dean. I want you to feel safe here." Bobby looks over at Sam again. "Now if I can just borrow Sam here for a while, I got word of a hunt in Pennsylvania, angry spirit maybe. Reckon you can do some research for me, boy?"
Sam pushes up, has to lean down briefly to extricate the snarling pup's needle-sharp teeth from the cuff of his jeans. "Sure, Bobby, can do."
The door creaks shut behind them and Dean drifts off, gazing into the middle distance, miles away.
Sam follows Bobby into the house, heads for his laptop, sees the old man glance out the window as if he's checking that Dean is staying put.
"What the hell was that?" Bobby says then, and his voice crackles with worry. "He was racing round out there for God knows how long with my dogs up his ass before he emptied a full clip into them. And he has no memory of it?"
He's rattled like Sam hasn't seen him since Hibbing as he goes on. "Look Sam, I haven't been sticking my nose in this, I haven't said a damn word until this morning, being as you said this had to happen on Dean's terms. But it isn't getting sorted, and now I feel like you haven't been on the level with me, boy, because you never said anything about him not remembering these dreams."
Sam briefly wonders if he should think up some cover story, but he knows Bobby will see it for the crap it is, so he settles for the truth. And once he's figured that's the best tack, it all pours out. "I'm sorry Bobby. It's just that he's really freaking me out. This, what happened, it's - an escalation. Nightmares are one thing, but this was something way beyond that… he really thought it was Bender's dogs, he was right back in that moment, it was totally real to him. But he wasn't even really awake, it was like a, a fugue."
Sam realizes he has his hands up and pressed to his cheeks, his eyes huge and his mouth open in a Munchian O, and it's shock, is what it is, appalled shock, because even though he's just been sitting out there right next to the burnt-out shell of his brother, scoping him for signs of total breakdown, he hasn't really thought about what that means. "Fuck. Shit-fuck." he says. "Fuck. He sat there and made some crack about scoring points when you kill dogs, Bobby, and five minutes later it was like he'd forgotten, forgotten he said it, forgotten the dogs… no, not forgotten, more like - never knew in the first place." He has to stop for a minute, steady his breathing. "He isn't right. But I don't know what to do about it. So I guess I'm just, I don't know, in a holding pattern with him, waiting for him to land."
Bobby rubs his stubbled jaw hard. "Well, he isn't making his final approach so much as he is tailspinning," he grunts. "Look, Sam. I know you thought it was important for him to be able to live his life, be independent instead of having us baby him and watch him all the time. But-"
"Normal. I wanted him to feel normal," Sam mutters.
"I know. I know that, and I understand your reasoning, boy, I do," the old man says quickly. "But - and don't take this the wrong way, Sam - you're saying this was different, an escalation. And we know he's been driving into town by himself to buy liquor…"
Sam knows exactly what the old man is going to say, knows because he's been trying to stop himself from thinking it.
"So. Is it possible he's gotten hold of something a tad stronger than the booze, that might have kicked this off?"
Sam doesn't reply for a minute, shrugs. "I don't know, Bobby… he just isn't like that. I mean he tokes the odd joint, yeah, but he's never been a user, never. He's too much of a control freak. But… it has crossed my mind." It feels like a total betrayal of his brother and his forced addiction at the Benders' hands to even consider that possibility let alone 'fess up to Bobby that he has, and Sam thinks the older man must sense it, because he backtracks to slightly safer territory.
"The dreams… night terrors, flashbacks, whatever they are. Is he aware after them, does he make sense when he wakes up?"
"He gets up," Sam says, "and he prowls round the room, tries to get out, which is why I've been locking the door. But I don't know if he's even really awake. I just put him back to bed and in the morning it's like it never happened, he doesn't mention it."
"Are the dreams like what happened after we pulled him out of the river back in Hibbing?" Bobby asks. "I mean… does he think Bender's attacking him? He obviously thought Bender's dogs were chasing him."
Sam shakes his head, throws up his hands. "I think so… all the websites I've looked at say it's pretty common after - that. He's - distressed. In the dreams." He flips to his brother's tearstreaked face and desperate eyes, flips away just as fast because he knows he just can't dwell on them without smashing something in the room to pieces. "But Bobby, he's been saying all along he doesn't really remember it, so how can he be dreaming things he says he has no memory of? How does that work?"
The old man snorts. "Well, first off you're assuming he isn't lying to us about how little he remembers. You and I both know what he said in Hibbing. He knew. Or he seemed to."
Sam thinks of his brother's harrowing alleyway confession, shivers.
"But I guess he could have buried it since then," Bobby muses. "Repressed it as a self-defense mechanism because he just can't cope with it. So it's coming out the only way it can - in his dreams." He stops for a minute, continues more thoughtfully. "Dreams are pretty powerful mojo - some say it's the subconscious mind trying to break out into the conscious mind, others reckon they're a way of working through the bad stuff without having to shock the conscious mind with it… deal with the nasty shit in a safe place, if you like. Freud said nightmares help the brain learn to control the emotions you feel after distressing experiences."
Sam gazes up at him, is lost for words for about thirty seconds. He always suspected Bobby was a closet geek, but the old man never ceases to amaze him. "Bobby you're awesome," he says.
Bobby rolls his eyes, looks out the window again. "Question is, what the heck do we do with this? He isn't opening up to you, and this closing down means it's festering inside him. But. Pushing him to face up to it all too soon could be just as bad, the sort of shock he doesn't need."
"So that means leaving things as they are?" Sam says. "Leaving the nasty shit in the safe place?"
Bobby shrugs. "I guess. For now, anyway. But we're going to have to rethink normal when it comes to the weapons. That's starting to look like a bridge too far, boy. He mistook my dogs for Bender's, so who's to say he might not mistake one of us for that sonofabitch? I don't even want to think about him doing that within reach of shooters or sharp objects."
Dean hadn't aimed the gun at him last night, Sam recalls, had aimed right at the dogs even though Sam was in his line of fire. "I was out there with him chasing along behind the dogs, Bobby, and he seemed pretty careful when it came to not hitting me… and he knew it was me, he spoke to me."
Bobby sniffs. "Well. You were there with him when the pitbulls were chasing you. Could be you were in the dream and he thought you were the dream Sam when he spoke to you."
"I'm sure he wouldn't hurt us," Sam says quietly, though he doesn't know how convincing he sounds.
"You think?" Bobby says, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
"I will if you will."
Bobby huffs. "Yeah. Well Freud also believed dreams were a psychosis. Meaning a total personality one-eighty, and an upside-down sense of reality. And you know what Kant said."
"Um. No?"
"The lunatic is a wakeful dreamer. And I'd say your brother was definitely a wakeful dreamer, if not a goddamn lunatic, when he plugged my dogs full of lead."
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