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gloveredMASTER POST | PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | ART POST
It'll probably be noon before anyone gets up, so Sam pulls on track pants and a hoodie, and goes on a long run. The neighborhood is quiet. He passes people walking their dogs and a lone kid who is up at seven chalking a driveway. He leaves two churches behind him and a tiny school with a red roof and frosted windows, his feet hitting the pavement, pounding out resolve on certain matters that he needs to conclude in the privacy of his own head.
Drinking good whiskey while entertaining even the smallest hope is dangerous when you have horrible secrets that could ruin everything you've ever loved. The amount of times Sam has told himself this over the years and still almost blown it cannot be counted, and last night only brought that fact back into the light.
It was too close. He's going to break everything. Luckily, though, even if Dean suspects, even if Dean knows there's something, there's no way he could know the extent. Maybe he thinks Sam hasn't named it yet, maybe he doesn't know it's everything.
Sam chooses to believe this, as he's sprinting now, overly awake while the entirety of the world creaks on. He focuses on the glowing feeling of resolve that's now bubbling up in his chest. It's the certain brand of virtue that can only grow from deciding to not push for anything romantic with your brother, and although it feels like desperation, Sam knows it's not. It's just decision, and the sad undertow is just a natural part of letting go.
True, Sam had decided the same thing once, when he'd gone to college and had been serious about it, serious about putting time and distance between them. He'd even told Dean not to call, which had been the worst. They didn't talk for two years that time, and then Dean had come and dragged him home — in their car and with a look on his face — and Sam's been backsliding ever since.
Now, though, he's not doing away with anything that they've known, not really. This is just stone two. This is Sam accepting reality, and in order to do that, he has to let go of a hope that was unfounded from the first.
By the time he gets back to the driveway and jogs over the abandoned newspapers still in their plastic, he's made his mind up. He's not sure how to disentangle that thread of hope from the rest of himself, but he's going to do it.
He thinks this, but when he lets inertia tumble him through the front door and into the kitchen, there's Dean. He's seated at the table in a black t-shirt and ripped jeans and white socks, as if to prove a point. His hair soft and mussed, and the sun catches his eyelashes when he looks up at the noise Sam made when he practically fell through the door.
He's Sam's and Sam's his, and it's proven when Dean blows his nose on a piece of research that's scattered from last night and has the gall to look Sam over and say, "You're disgusting."
"Fuck you," Sam says, words leaving his mouth more like a promise than anything. He unsticks the hoodie form his chest.
Dean apparently doesn't hear Sam's tone, or is set on pretending everything is normal. "You're the sweatiest person that's ever lived. There's coffee if you want some."
Sam feels giddy with being thankful for his brother. Dean, who loves him enough to unsee the thread of fucked up that runs through the virtue. Standing still, he feels stupid, a moment of extreme clarity. There's no separation of how he loves Dean. Of course there's not.
"Sam?"
He edges out of the room again, breath still short. The whole realization feels strange and comfortable and worn, like a renewed sense of doom that's exhilarating as it is terrifying.
"Be back in a sec," he says with his heart hitting his ribcage so hard it's like he's still out running.
He goes to shower and change, and when he heads down to the kitchen, Dean's thrown a couple sandwiches together on a plate and is half done with his own. Sam eats his, with coffee at his elbow. He watches Dean twist the top off a beer.
Dean says, "what?"
Sam says, "nothing." and keeps chewing.
Dean is otherwise quiet, careful. In a day or two, Sam thinks, they'll be back to normal. Nothing says, "we're fine" like the termination of a hunt and a few days to recover in some no-name motel. Dean will ignore what went unspoken, and Sam will be more careful, and he'll grow old with this and the urgency will pass.
What feels like seconds later, Dean says, "Sam!"
Sam looks up, to where Dean's holding his beer. "What?"
"Get your own next time."
"What?"
Dean turns the bottle upside down and a solitary drop hangs onto the lip, but that's it.
Sam frowns. "I didn't drink that."
"Neither did I."
This has Sam's attention. "Dean...."
Dean says, "OK, I am telling you, flat out, I did not drink it."
"It's fine if—"
"No, it's not 'fine if.' Believe me, I know it's a bad sign when you drink a whole beer without noticing." It's more than they've said on the subject. Dean goes on to say, "You may not like the amount I down, but that doesn't mean I like the idea of alcohol-based amnesia. Okay?"
Sam humors him. "Okay, so, it's right there next to you, but you claim you didn't drink it—"
"Didn't touch it—"
"—and I sure as hell didn't touch it—"
"Sure you didn't."
Sam looks at him incredulously. "Who drinks beer and coffee?"
"Well...okay, fair point. Unless—"
"Unless what?"
Dean stands and Sam leans back in his chair, wary. When Dean grabs the front of his shirt, he jerks away but it quickly turns into a scuffle. Sam gets Dean into a headlock, face in his armpit, and Sam says, breathing hard and the warm press of Dean all over him, "Let's talk about this like adults, okay? Wanna tell me why the sudden—"
Lucifer says, "Isn't it obvious? Sudden, uncontrollable lust—"
"Lucifer," Dean says, and Sam lets him go with a guilty jolt.
There's the sound of a throat clearing and Sam's guard drops long enough for Dean to step unnecessarily close, between his knees where Sam's propped back against the table. Dean leans in closer still and says, "Let me smell your breath."
"Sheriff Mills," Sam squeaks.
He gets a hand over Dean's face and pushes him away but with an audience is less forceful and eventually he ends up sitting there at the edge of the table with his head tipped up while Dean smells his mouth. It's gross and a test of self-restraint on any count.
Dean steps back a second later and declares, "OK, just coffee."
Sam frowns. "Told you."
Jody frowns and addresses Sam. "Is he always beating up on you?"
"No!" Dean says just as Sam says, "Yes!"
Dean frowns at him and Sam attempts to look wan until Jody turns her back on him to reprimand his brother, at which point he smiles darkly.
"He's playing it up," Dean says. "Turn around! Look at him!"
Sam is in love with Dean and maybe that's inexcusable, but he's also his brother and Dean totally deserves this.
Jody says, "Dean Winchester, you're not a bully, I know that, but what have I told you about taking that boy for granted."
"Oh my god," Dean says. "He is smirking and you don't even see."
"It's fine, Jody," Sam says, which, as suspected, only makes her continue to give Dean a stern talking to as she begins to make her own breakfast.
The day goes. There is an unmistakable tension that can be directly attributed to their plan to crash a Leviathan gathering in T minus eight hours. Sam is feeling the weirdness of working with other people. Jody and Don can look out for themselves, but he's a little hesitant to lead them into something even he isn't sure about.
Time eats away at itself, however. At one in the afternoon, Sam looks over some research at the table with Don. Dean commandeers the laptop and starts ostensibly reading up on Dick and Jody joins the three of them in the living room and starts in on a backlog of paperwork she brought with her.
At three, Sam gets his computer back, somehow, and starts looking up alcoholism and memory loss. He wants to look up what to do when every decision you make turns out to be impossible, but any vague inquests into his incestuous issues usually turn up porn and not much else.
At four o'clock, Don is on a call from the office. Has been taking calls, in fact, for the better part of the day. Meanwhile, Sam watches Dean watch anime. With a hand over the mouthpiece, Don gives Sam the bland piece of wisdom, "Time waits for no man."
Sam believes him.
Now, at five o'clock, Sam rocks back in his chair and pulls his hands over his head in a long stretch. He groans, "Damn, that feels good." And when he opens his eyes, an arm pulled back behind his neck, Dean's just stepping in from the kitchen and he's the first thing Sam sees. He staring at Sam's abs. It's the tiniest of moments, just one glance in the history of everything, but somehow it's a tipping point, and everything goes to shit.
Dean's eyes meet Sam's, and then he looks past, gaze going bland and sliding past. He wanders over to the table and takes his seat again. Sam is still watching him, rationalizing. They look at each other all the time, he reminds himself. It is normal, even if it seems more than normal, sometimes.
Dean meets his look head on, and it's like a challenge. He raises an eyebrow and then looks carefully away, before Sam does, back to the computer. There's no remorse, just acknowledgement and dismissal.
Sam reads through information they have on the luxury cruise liner business and bites at his thumbnail. Dean doesn't look at him again. Sam knows because he's watching him out of the corner of his eye, thinking he's probably tipped over the edge into delusion again.
He knows that cerebrally, but the intrepid, stupid part of him is all interest, because Dean is acting suspicious. His movements are calm and controlled, but his hands are shaking, just a little, and he's worked his way through a whole flask with devil-may-care swigs.
"Dean," Sam says.
Dean twists the lid back on the flask with a squeak and gives him a look. "None of your business, Sam," he tells him, too quick.
Sam tries not to rise to the bait. He looks at it objectively.
Objectively, the only reason Dean is this aggressively flaunting something that worries Sam is because he knows Sam can't call him out on it. And Sam is sure to a 97 percent confidence that Dean just checked him out with some sort of intent. A silent agreement was forged three minutes ago because where Dean suspects about Sam, maybe Sam knows something, too. Something that could potentially jeopardize their entire relationship, but Sam's natural inclination is to have faith. That morning, screws were synched and latches dropped, case closed, but now it's back again and stoked like a wildfire.
Dean stands and wanders around the room. He drinks the last of the flask and shoves it back in his jeans. Even if they don't talk about it, Sam's got that warm splinter of hope digging into him, like maybe if he can do this right....He doesn't trust Dean as far as he can throw him, not with this, so when Dean nods to the kitchen and says, "Should do a little research," to the room at large, Sam kicks out an empty chair for him.
Dean looks at him, calculating. He says, "Actually," and moves to the door without looking back. "Actually, I'm gonna get some supplies."
Sam stands, too. "Fine, then. I'll go with you."
Which makes Dean stop with his hand on the handle. Don is watching them with vague interest and Jody, openly. Sam watches Dean work his jaw just like their father and grandfather when faced with a difficult decision. He stares into some middle distance of the room until he says, gruffly to the door, "Fine, suit yourself. Just...I don't really want to spend any time with Lucy is all."
The mention jumps Sam's pulse up, almost as sure as if Lucifer actually did appear out of nowhere.
"Don't be a dick," he tells him, but Dean never jokes about this. It's something unconsidered. Maybe that's what Dean's acting weird about—
Don interjects with, "Girlfriend?"
"No!" they both say.
He holds up a hand. "All right."
Dean yanks open the door and stomps out.
"I'm sorry," Sam tells them, and then says, louder so Dean can hear, "He's being a jerk."
When they get to the convenience store, it's like stalking prey. Sam doesn't want to be anywhere near Dean, but he also wants to be stuck by his side because his interest is piqued, two urges which are equally strong and diametrically opposed, so what ends up happening is that they trail each other down aisles, existing under neons, always aware of one another but never talking. It would be amusing if Sam didn't feel the need to avoid Dean's eye every time he caught him staring.
Dean doesn't seem to need much of anything. A very tangible waiting feeling grows up between them. He grabs a 24 pack of Coronas and puts them in his basket, and Sam frowns and moves to the next aisle. When he sees Dean next, there's just a six pack, like magic.
And by the time they leave the store they fall into step next to each other, feet crunching over rain-slick asphalt. Sam shoves his hands in his pockets and doesn't offer to carry any of the bags, waiting Dean out. They're both wound up so tight that when Dean kicks a bottle top that hits ineffectually against a car tire, cursing under his breath, Sam grunts in agreement, because the tension is such a palpable, understood thing.
For the entire ride back, Sam sits slumped against the window, ignoring how Lucifer is giving him tips and prods in the wrong direction. Dean, meanwhile, is sitting ramrod straight. They've spent just under a decade learning their driving language, and right now it's the wrong place, wrong time, in the middle of a hunt and staring them in the face.
Lucifer says, "Sammy" in Dean's voice, low and broken, just as Dean's pulling the car to the curb, parking down the street from their house so as not to alert any neighbors. Sam takes a couple breaths, shifting uncomfortably at the way the tone gives him worried feelings in his chest even though it was a borrowed part of the whole, a facsimile of the guy currently next to him, staring straight ahead.
Dean's hands are flexing on the steering wheel, and he says to the dash, "You just gonna sit there, or are you going to help me carry the stuff?"
Sam reaches back for the bags and notices, with some modicum of relief, that while he was gathering his bearings, Lucifer left the backseat to the grocery bags and detritus of late night drive-thrus.
The relief lasts for a short moment, giving way to concern when Dean starts jiggling his door handle but can't seem to open it. He presses unlock and jerks the handle more and more erratically, and tries to wedge up the lock itself, but none of it does him any good.
"Seriously?" Sam yanks at the handle on his side but it's similarly useless.
"Embarrassing," Dean grumbles. "Guess we'll have to call Stark and the sheriff."
They reach into their pockets in tandem and then share a look of joint unease.
Dean's eyes are big and uncertain when he says, "Sam?"
"I don't have mine either."
There's a sharp, sudden rap against the window and Sam jumps in his seat. Dean is scuffling around on the floor and reaching his arm in the cracks by the center console, and Lucifer has his face at eye level, passenger side, breath making frost on the glass.
His voice is muted when he says, "Hey." He wipes at the window like he's trying to see in. He rattles the door and finally says, "Looks like you're trapped in there."
"We're trapped," Sam repeats. "You think? You're the one who fucking did it."
Lucifer frowns. He and Dean say, "Me? I didn't do this." at the same time.
Lucifer taps the window again. "You might as well talk."
Sam watches him wander off. He slams a palm against the window as if that will help. "Oh, come on!"
Dean slouches next to him. "That's what I'm saying. This never would have happened in my baby."
"I mean, it was Satan."
Dean gives him a cool look, like Sam has ever joked about that sort of thing. "You're shitting me."
"No."
"Well...Well how does that make sense? Did you lock us in the car?"
Sam looks at him, sneering, before saying, "The fuck do you think I know?"
"Dammit." Dean mutters, "I thought I told you, no Lucifer."
Sam gets rationally pissed at this, clenching his hands on his thighs, and Dean takes a deep breath and then says, "Well," like it's decided, and then turns in his seat and kicks Sam's window, hard, narrowly missing Sam's face.
"Hey!"
"Okay, try again," Dean says, and bends to mess around under the steering wheel. He sparks wires but nothing happens. He mutters, "This is friggin weird. If this is a hallucination...well. I'm having it, too. What are we going to do? We need to get back."
"I know," Sam says.
"For real," Dean says.
"I know." Sam knocks his head back against the headrest and sprawls out, the universal sign for giving up.
There's a long silence during which they both stare at the house, which sits asleep down the block, abandoned in the twilight, all the lights switched off and windows dark.
With little warning, Dean grabs Sam's hand and squeezes, pressing his thumb into Sam's palm like he has any right.
Sam twists in his seat and gets a knee up between them, tugging his hand from Dean's halfheartedly. "Let go."
Dean's holding Sam's fingertips with his own and it hurts. His face looks randomly malicious for a second but it's just Sam projecting. Having now dug his fingernail into Sam's skin, Dean tries the door again with his other hand. It doesn't budge.
Sam gives his hand another tug and says, "Dean." He feels like a lab rat or something, that or a five year old sulking, no matter how warranted.
Dean seems to get it. "Goddammit," he says, and sits back. "So, what does Lucifer have to say about this?"
Sam grimaces. "Nothing useful. Well, he thinks we should, um."
"Oh my god," Dean says. "If you say talk...." His eyes are on the road but he smooths his thumb over the dip of Sam's palm like an apology. "I still can't believe this is happening."
"Dean," Sam starts as Dean says to himself, sounding wistful for situations elsewhere: "I could really go for a burger right now."
"Dean, maybe we should talk. What happened this afternoon...."
Their hands are relaxing, forgotten on Sam's knee. Dean says, "You know, nothing good ever starts that way."
"The thing is— I'm not okay."
"Yeah, Sammy. You've told me. When you curled up by the door and stared out all emo after I saved your ass. You think I haven't been worrying about that, oh, I don't know, forever?"
Sam will not be derailed, talking about hunts or who saved who. "I'm not okay," he says again. "But neither are you, Dean!"
"Yeah, you think?" Dean says. "Lucifer — who is not real, if that's slipped your mind — is calling the shots."
"And this thing we're not talking about—"
"Newsflash, Sammy." He waves a hand between them in the dark and says, "This isn't normal!"
"When are we ever normal?"
"Will you stop repeating me?"
"What I mean is," Sam says, loudly, talking over him. "Is that your only argument?"
Dean stares at him, a cool look in his eyes like Sam's gone crazy in other ways, and Dean's just now seeing it. "It's been a damn good argument our entire lives."
"Living in constant fear that you're going to die! It's not normal!" Sam says loudly back.
"Yeah, well!" he doesn't seem to have a followup, and yells instead, "Why are we yelling?"
"I don't know!"
They're brothers, Sam thinks wildly, this happens.
Their hands are sweating together on his knee as they stare at each other. Dean, as if to remedy this, turns his to wipe his palm against Sam's knee but only ends up leaving his hand cupped over it. It's part of the problem; everything is so natural between them that there's a line and they crossed it at some point without realizing. And now here Sam is, feeling jumpy and trapped, and when he reaches back to try the door again, nothing happens.
Dean notices and laughs and says, "oh my god." and, seemingly unaware that he's holding Sam's leg in place. Sam has a dark suspicion. Maybe the reason he hasn't been able to pinpoint the line between what is normal and what isn't is they haven't even been straddling it for years now. Instead, they're way off to one side, far away, the line a receding thing they've been mistaking for the horizon.
"Look," Sam says. He feels hot along the back of his neck and completely out of his mind, the calm a cover for how hard his heart is beating. "Look. It's been a long time."
"Yeah." Dean licks his lip and looks out the window. "A freaking long time."
"It's been a long time, and a long road, so to speak. It isn't too late—"
Dean cuts him off. "For what?" He rests his chin on his hand on Sam's knee and looks at Sam like he's waiting for a bedtime story. He asks, "For what, Sammy? For me to sweep you off your feet, take you away?"
Sam doesn't say anything. He sits, stock still.
Dean has a hard look in his eyes when he says, "Because if memory serves, we've already tried that, and look at things."
Sam can't move. He wants to move but can't. Dean stares at him and Sam stares back. It's really dark and it's not fair, this one moment of honesty and he won't be able to see it clearly.
Dean says, "I'm all fucked up."
"You tell me like I don't know. Jesus, Dean."
There's a rapping at the window and they both jump, heads hitting the roof. Sam rubs the spot, mainly to do something, and Dean touches his hair and looks past him.
"Thank God," he says, loud, talking through the glass.
The door pulls open and Sam nearly falls out onto the sidewalk, but catches himself on the door frame.
"You boys get lost?"
It's Don. He brushes a hand off on his pants and then opens the back door and takes out a couple bags.
"There was some supernatural lock on the doors," Dean says.
To which Don answers, "There's also a rainbow slinky in your backseat."
Dean grabs a bag and slams the door shut. "Just some plastic crap."
"That's what now, number three? Third time I've saved your short lives?"
"Believe me, sometimes it feels like an eternity," Dean mutters and they all troop inside.
Dean splits to head for the room when they get inside and Sam's stomach is at his feet, a numbness around the very thought of Dean, as he walks into the kitchen and grabs himself a drink.
"Look, he declared his undying love for you," Lucifer starts in. "Which I could have have told you — did tell you — whatever. But he turned you down, for the sake of your hopes and dreams, apparently. Sounds like BS to me, but, you know, if that isn't romance...."
Sam whirls. "Shut up!"
The room is empty.
"You okay there, Sam?"
Sheriff Mills steps in through the doorway.
"Jody."
She doesn't look freaked out, only worried. She has lines around her mouth and a world-weary smile for him when she says, "Bobby told me."
"He did?"
"Well, not in as many words, but he said you had a near miss and had some battle scars."
Sam looks at his hands, the one with an unhealing jag down the sole. His heart hammers in his chest. "Yeah, you could say that. Sorry, it's been a really, really long—"
"You're telling me." She laughs. "Sam, we've all got our thing."
"Yeah, I guess."
She steps further into the room and tells him, "Look, my entire life is a shambles but I still do my job. Before all this, when I first met Bobby, I thought he was just a mean old drunk. Oh, I had a soft spot for him, don't get me wrong."
"Oh yeah?"
"He always laid low but I started to get a vague idea about some random acts of vigilante kindness that could be traced back to him. I kept my eye out and it became clear he was helping out around town, this sad, old man whose wife had passed away. And calls that he was causing trouble, believe me we got those too. Had to bring him in at least a dozen times for drunk and disorderly, and he was always claiming this or that but no one believed him. And then—"
"Then?" He's never heard anyone talk about Bobby, more than a line, and he and Dean share most memories.
"Well, then the zombie thing happened. You boys were there. Imagine finding out the meddlesome coot you've been fining has been saving the world right under your very nose, right from our town of Sioux Falls that's not known for much of anything."
Sam leans back against the door as she says, "Wish I could have helped out more."
"You're here now."
She shrugs. "For what it's worth, right? That day must have been hard. I wish I could've been there."
"Yeah. Three months, now."
The hospital had been a nightmare, three months ago. It had been hours of waiting, bracing his hands against the window sill while a couple had a fight about insurance to his left and a man cried into his sleeve at a constant rate to Sam's right. Remembering it, even after so much time has passed, sends him right back to being useless, just waiting. Dean had stormed up at one point, hand cut up after he'd punched the glass next to an employee's face, and Sam thought, Bobby could die, but Dean was going to hold on to a hope.
That's mainly what Sam remembers of that day, now, thinking back: hospital staff rushing past and around, dressed in blue scrubs, while the slow traffic of those waiting on loved ones moved from the vending machine to seats to the bathroom and back. There had been a betrayed look on Dean's face that said he couldn't believe Sam had already given up, Jesus.
Sam remembers holding back saying that,while Dean had watched hospital drama after hospital drama, Sam had accumulated facts from medical texts he'd pored over, whether in his spare time or during desperate, all-night frenzies over his brother's health in times of dire straits. It was need-to-know information, medical terms and procedures, because everyone he's ever loved has been critically wounded at some point, and Sam takes what control he can.
"Almost time," Jody says.
Sam looks at his watch and nods.
She says, "You know, usually I'd be calling in a few squad cars, but it's just us. Odd."
"Yeah. Kind of go it alone." He sticks his head inside the fridge, going for a beer, and he bangs it against the top in the same spot he'd hit in the car when she says, "You and Dean okay?"
"Yeah," he says, wincing. "We're fine."
"That's never good."
Sam opens the beer, and takes a drink. Jody means well, but if she doesn't want to see a grown man cry, she should get out now. It really has come to that. She appears to be waiting on an answer. He says, "We've got stuff to work out, you know, but..."
"It'll work out. Things usually do." She moves to pat his cheek and Sam ducks out of the way, chuckling.
"You'd be surprised." He reaches to grab another beer, pops the cap and holds it out, arm's length. "Here."
When he looks up, her smile's gone sympathetic.
"You never touch anyone, do you?"
Lucifer says, "now this is just sad. You let me touch you all the time, baby."
"It's been known to happen," he says.
"You know what I mean."
Dean steps in, then, a supersoaker hanging from a hand like he's a ten year old and this is a gang war.
He looks between the two of them. "Well? Let's move this party."
Sam nods. "Be right there."
There must be something in Sam's voice, because Dean stays a second to look Sam in the eyes to check it's all good. Sam is sick of this house and this case and his brother. He's tired and looks away and downs his beer, noticing how, even though Dean had all but said explicitly, I want to do you but I'm not gonna, apparently it means open season now because he drags a look up Sam that says things real loud and it makes Sam flush everywhere. Oh well, a little anger goes a long way before a showdown.
"Slowpoke," Dean accuses, and steps by him, a hand briefly over Sam's heart that's beating hard, just cuz. Sam turns slightly with it and watches him leave, a little longer after.
He can feel Jody watching him, maybe stacking the moments together like clues — Dean's hand pressed to his chest, Sam's answering, anxious pulse. Jody is an officer of the law, after all, so she's familiar with judging innocence or the absence of, and Sam could continue this conversation, but it's time to go and there's nothing left that's safe to say on the subject.
It's fucking cold and dark, and they're back at the field. They'd been nearly silent the whole drive over. There is the same impromptu parking situation, the field covered half in cars, half by the tent which is glowing, lit up from the inside like some lamp in the dark to attract Leviathans by flame.
The truck Don had ordered is fifty yards away, and the attached hose is snaked along with them so that, when they duck in the back, before the second partition, Jody at Sam's elbow and Don at Dean's, they have the illusion of being fully armed. It remains to be seen, of course.
And they're just on time.
Dick is dressed in a business suit and has a slide projector cued up, saying, "The meeting will be the answer to all our hopes and dreams." He indicates a section of a graph with a laser pointer, "As you can see here, as proven throughout history, group prayer is the most effective means of...."
Sam turns to Dean, and says, low. "Wasn't this a little too easy? Getting in?"
"It's getting out that's always the hard part," Jody whispers.
Dean's grip tightens on the hose. "Right."
Their attention is caught when a cheer goes up.
Dick clicks and the slide projector dims. "Now," he says, raising a hand. "Let us all pray! But first!"
The lights go down as well, leaving only candles, really, and Sam gets a bad feeling about this.
Dick says, leaning to the microphone, with a hint of a smile. "Bring in the sacrifices."
Don says, "Sacrifices?" in a normal voice, covered by the murmur of the crowd inside.
"Shit." Sam looks wildly around and Dean is staring at him with an expression that probably mirrors his own.
"Sacrifice!" Dick Roman shouts, and the sea of Leviathans murmur like a regular old congregation. "If we want to talk to God, we have to use the same wavelength! We've got to know the number to dial, and talk through the right mouthpiece!"
Dean makes a what do we do now face and Sam widens his eyes and shrugs like, how the hell should I know what to do? He thinks quickly to the times they've come across this— angels and demons cutting human throats into chalices to communicate with the other side, and it makes sense.
"Go around back?" Jody says, just as Dick mimes slitting a throat, his finger dragging the front of his neck. "Grab them from whatever van they brought them in?"
It's too late, though. The Leviathans raise their voices in assent, and the flaps behind the podium move aside to reveal a group of humans, bound and gagged.
"Now's looking like a good time to stun them," Sam mutters to Don.
Don nods. "But remember to use the hose. When I get four or five locked down at a time, and the rest are riled, we might end up with a hostage situation on our hands."
Time is zooming by. Over the mic, Dick's voice says. "Yes, one for each of us. One for each of our immortal — and when I say immortal, I do mean Immortal — souls."
Don's about to step out but Jody grabs his arm. She says, "I don't like this."
She looks at all of them, and then back at the room where the hostages are being taken into the crowd, and then looks back at her impatiently.
Jody repeats, "Sam, I don't like this."
"Neither do we," Dean says. He moves to step forward but she grabs his arm this time and he says, "What?"
"But, those are people, right? Inhabited by Leviathans?"
Sam is watching the room, how people are being distributed out. He says, "Jody, we talked about this."
"Think about it, though."
"Look," Dean says. "That line used to be enough. But now...."
"Now?" Jody prompts, and it looks like she's ready to challenge him, like she knows what his answer is going to be and it's nothing he should be saying.
"Now," he says. "Now, it's just something you gotta get past. I mean, these are people. People. We stand by, they kill these people and stay inhabited, maybe not saveable. We take them down, at least the innocents live."
"They're all innocents," she hisses. "I know I should have thought of this before, but..." She looks out into the crowd and touches the gun at her belt. "Sam?"
He hesitates a second, but says, "Jody, sorry. It's too late for them."
When it comes down to it, that's their line.
It is a mass slaughter. They waste most of the Leviathans, with all the expected screaming and melting. The candles gutter out, so it's mostly dark. They lose Dick in the fray, maybe a few more. They know because the limo slides away, across the grass and back to the road. You cut your losses, Sam knows.
He finds the lights, and he and Dean hurry in Jody and Don to grab hostages who are shaking, and now covered in borax-based cleaning projects and and Leviathan goo. Now that all the Leviathans have been hosed down to nothing but remains, Jody is in police mode, calming the good citizens in ways Sam and Dean rarely manage, getting them untied and out of the tent, and into an orderly mob.
She and Don take them across the grass and disappear from sight, to a spot far down the road and point them in the direction of the town, a mile away. Once the two are in the far distance with the entire group, Dean heaves into a patch of weeds while Sam stands staring at his hands and the discarded hose that's since run out of solution. He's in a sopping, stinking shirt and pair of jeans, soaked through to his skin with stuff most of America probably uses to clean their counter tops. It's all terrible.
Dean finally straightens after a minute or two, and, spitting one more time into the grass, says, "Well."
"Burn it?" Sam asks, looking skeptically at the tent.
"Well, yeah."
They try to set it on fire — it has to be done, and done quickly — but borax must be some sort of flame retardant because the remains sputter before the flame sizzles out. They end up dumping huge contents of lighter fluid they have in the trunk and flinging a Zippo and making a run for it. The thing goes up in a whoosh.
The police are bound to find some strange goop amidst the melted canvas and overabundance of chemical residue from all the cleaning supplies, but with this much accelerant they've manage to start a fire that's unnaturally hot. There will be bones, of course. It will look like mass murder, and thank god they're not going to be caught, because that's what it is. There's no stepping around that.
They meet Jody and Don out on the road, and take off, back to the house. It's quiet save for Don saying, "It was necessary."
Dean says, "No argument there."
When they step into the house, a break in performed with a delicacy that speaks to how tense his brother is, Dean's movements economic as he picks the lock with the aid of Sam's flashlight app, Sam says, "You guys gonna—"
Jody says, "I think I need to treat myself to a fancy hotel type situation before I head home tomorrow. You know, modern shower and room service."
Don straightens his shirtsleeves and says, "I might just join you."
Standing in the living room, at eleven o'clock at night in a hollowed out house, there is the strange abruptness of a hunt being over. Whiskey's been drunk and business done.
Jody smiles at Sam, and says, "I'll see you boys around."
When they part ways, no one tries to hug anyone, they just wave and say, "next time."
"Shower," Sam says and leaves Dean in the living room.
He heads into the master bedroom and goes through his stuff, grabbing his towel out of his bag, all by moonlight from the balcony door. The night is clear and cold and Sam hopes there's hot water when he steps into the bathroom, hopes tonight isn't the night the gas and electric shuts off. He prays for it almost like he's never prayed before, a silent gathering of all his conviction, like if he's ever deserved anything, god, let the payoff be now.
He feels delirious in his own head, expecting Lucifer but not finding him. It's dark like the tent, here, either too dark to see him or Sam is truly alone. He doesn't turn on the lights. Dean is probably resalting the windows, and Sam is just leaving him to it, no room for remorse. They're brothers. They were born to cut each other a break, that's their job.
There is hot water. It feels like the greatest epiphany against his hand. Sam drops his jacket on the counter and his jeans to the ground. He strips off his flannel and his t-shirt and his underwear and adjusts the water a little before stepping in, armed with shampoo and nothing else, covered in crap again, Leviathan goo and counter cleaner.
Sam has been vacillating between yeah I totally got this and fuck, I am not fine at all since the wall broke, but especially lately, since he'd let Lucifer in again and he could barely even think. And they killed hundreds of people tonight. If someone were to ask him now how he was, well. No one's going to ask him.
He's safe and alone until the door clicks open and Sam only notices because that's the fucked up way they were brought up, to recognize infinitesimally small sounds even with your head under the roar of a shower.
"Dean?" he tries. He hasn't been able to really relax for years.
There is a beat. Then: "Who else, dude?"
Sam knows, then, that it's Lucifer. Not Dean, for the sole reason that he wants it to be. He makes peace with it quickly and pushes his hair back with both hands, breathing out through his nose, water fighting to enter in through his ears and mouth.
Dean, the devil, neither of them says anything else. There's the sound of clothes rumpling to the floor and then the sliding door of the shower is opened and Dean steps in.
It's not like Lucifer hasn't tried this before. Sam keeps his eyes closed under the hot pulse of water and grabs for the shampoo.
"Dude, move out of the way," says Dean. "It's fucking cold out there."
He smells like chemicals and horribleness. He jabs Sam with a slippery elbow so he can get under the spray and Sam has to take a big step back, because it's Lucifer again, like in the Cage when he'd climbed into Sam's bunk wearing Dean's skin, and at the cliff, when he'd instilled a new sort of hope for two minutes and then dropped it over the edge.
Sam suds up his entire body three times and then his hair. Shower mist lands and cools on his shoulders and the back of his neck. His back is cold along the tile and his feet are getting pretty direct spray. He wonders about Jody. He hopes she isn't scarred forever. But there's not much worse than what's happened to her already, so it remains to be seen.
The water is a loud patter in the dark where it slaps against Dean's body. Otherwise, he is only just visible. Sam's eyes are adjusting, and the moon is hung somewhere out the small bathroom window. Dean reaches a hand up to the shelf and grabs the shampoo where Sam left it. When he moves away again, Sam steps under the water and washes the suds out of his own hair. He has to duck an inch to really get under there and for twenty seconds he is hot all over and coaxing soap out of his hair.
He sucks in a breath that is half air, half spray, when he feels Dean's body heat behind him. A hallucination fooling him, he reminds himself, imagined body heat where there's only cool air — the human brain is a wonder. He doesn't move, just lets water pulse over him and wash down to his knees, while Lucifer — Dean — moves in so that Sam's back is pressed up against a hot chest, the hint of whoever's dick it is slipping over Sam's ass. They stand there for a beat, another beat. Sam's experiencing sensory overload until he grabs the shampoo and washcloth and begins soaping up his front, ignoring it.
"That last day," says Dean. Lucifer. The voice is a shock that breaks through this dream Sam is calling real life. Sam feels water hit his closed eyelids and he listens. "That last day, before we went in. You were doing perimeter check and it was me and Bobby, in the van. He told me something."
It's like a myth, the way Dean's saying it. It feels back in their past and intractable. Sam experiences a full body shudder and Dean says close to his ear, normal voiced and at odds with their proximity, with the lights off, "He said, I had to find something to live for, said I had to get back in the game. I was walking dead and it would get me killed."
Sam knows that moment. He had been checking out the warehouse, watching people in lab coats accept shady looking shipments of meat, probably not up to health code, and when he'd loped back to the van, he had found Dean staring out the window, looking trapped and cranky, and Bobby mid-rant.
"So, what'd you say?"
"Don't remember," Dean says. "Probably wasn't worth remembering. What's important, is Bobby got all pissed and said something, something that really hit home."
"Yeah?"
"He told me to find something to live for. He said he didn't care if it was love or spite or a ten dollar bet, that if I died before him he'd kill me."
Sam feels a nose brushing the space between his shoulder blades. He feels a mouth press into his skin. Goosebumps peak up his arms and neck and Dean turns his face to rub stubble against Sam's shoulder, then the rough of his lips.
Sam keeps washing in nonsensical circles of washcloth, more for sensation than soap, with his eyes closed and Dean shifting against him until Dean says, "It was me, wasn't it?" His teeth skim Sam's skin. "Huh, Sammy? On the cliff. I've been doing some thinking."
Dean finally puts his hands on him, one at Sam's hip and one arm moving around and up Sam's chest to grip his shoulder and ease them closer together.
"You were surprised, when you found out I was driving up, that day. I saw your face. It's been getting to me for months, driving me fucking crazy when I thought it couldn't get worse. Thinking how you were surprised, means you thought you were with me already. Doesn't take a genius."
Sam bites his lip around a moan as Dean bites down at his shoulder.
"Tell me we're alone," Dean whispers. "We're alone, aren't we? Sammy?"
"We're alone," Sam says. He turns and walks Dean back against the wall, leaning heavily on forearms bracketing Dean's head where it's knocked back. He leans their foreheads together and repeats it like a litany. "We're alone. We're alone, we're alone, we're alone."
This is nothing like kissing Dean before, at the edge of the cliff and cold as air, his brother pulled tight and scratchy against him. This Dean is both sure and uncertain, all wet and hot and sliding under his mouth. This thing is warm and tucked away secret in the dark of someone else's abandoned house.
"Am I better?" Dean asks, and crooks an arm around Sam's neck to slide their mouths together a fifth time. "Am I better than him? That fake me, that figment?"
It's all fast, controlled motions from there. Sam presses Dean up against the tile and gets his hands all over him. He drags his fingers up Dean's sides and then angles Dean's face so he can bite just under his ear, wet suction against skin while he nudges a knee between Dean's legs and presses in.
Dean fumbles for the shower door. It clicks open and cold air whooshes in. The skin of Dean's shoulders pebbles under Sam's fingers, and he pushes them out, grabbing a towel he'd left folded and wrapping it around Dean and shoving him into their room.
Dean goes easily, and when they reach the bed, there's no question. He crawls onto it, wet knees sinking into the sheets which are lain out open on the mattress. Dean kneels over him, warm everywhere and still wet, and kissing Sam's ear and coaxing the towel out of Sam's hand that he's still got wrapped around his waist on muscle memory.
They wake up to sunlight, Sam jerking back to reality, a leg hanging out of the covers in this musty bed of some foreclosed home in Wisconsin. His head is swimming and the sun is glaring and, when he finally dredges himself from the confusion of sleep, he sees by it that Dean is an arm's length away, mouth hanging open and his hair flattened on one side.
He breathes in deep through his nose, watching. He flexes his fingers, until he finally allows himself to reach out, and traces over Dean's nose and then rubs his thumb along Dean's cheek.
Dean rolls toward him, frowning. He shoves his hand under his face and sighs. Sam touches his fingertip to the dip under Dean's lip and Dean's eyes flutter open.
His voice is a rasp when he says, "What are you doing?"
Sam doesn't answer for a time, and Dean waits, watching Sam's face while Sam traces along his cheek again, finally, saying, solemn, "Connect-the-dots."
"All right, that does it." Dean rolls over onto him and holds him with body weight alone, shifting to press Sam fully down until Sam stops laughing and is taking full body breaths, instead, the type that fill up your soul until you're weightless. He plants both feet on the bed so that the sheets slip out from between them.
"Yeah?" Dean asks, and fits against him, making things certain.
Sam wraps his arms around Dean's shoulders. "Of course."
Dean reaches back and pulls the top sheet over them, and then dips in to press his mouth against Sam's in their tent of white light. Sam's palms slip against Dean's sides until he gets his hands on his ass. He thinks of their reasons. Their reasons for carrying on, thinks this has just cemented everything. He kisses Dean for every sound he makes against his mouth, for every hitched breath—
"Ahem."
Sam jerks at the sound and gets an elbow to his armpit. They get entangled in the sheets for a hot minute then Dean manages to struggle to sitting, still astride Sam, knees sunk into the mattress on either side of Sam's hips, the sheet pooled around his waist. They both look up.
Crowley is seated in a rickety chair, glass of scotch in hand.
Sam makes an outraged "Wha—"
Dean says, "Oh my god. This is so—"
"Awkward?" Crowley supplies. "Oh please. Awkward is so two-thousand and...what is it again? Eleven. Yes. Two-thousand eleven."
"Crowley, what do you—"
Dean's grip tightens on his arm. "Sam!"
Sam looks, follows Dean's eyes and really looks. He sees something, in the empty chair.
He almost can't bear to say it, because it's actually impossible. "Bobby?"
A gruff voice answers, "Who do you think it's been all this time?"
"What?"
The specter of Bobby flickers more into view, an ethereal sort of air about his puffy vest, and hat complete with hole in it and ghostly blood.
Dean jolts and Sam can feel it all through his body, as Dean says, "Drinking!"
"Bingo. Locked you in the car, too. Trying to write you a message on the window but my damn elbow slipped, and, welp. That was a barrel of laughs."
"We burned your bones," Sam says, mind racing. "Wait. Dean?" He looks at Dean which happens to be up, right over him. Dean looks down and then a second time, more lewdly, and Sam shoves him off. "It was the flask, wasn't it? That's why you kept it!"
Dean shrugs.
Bobby's spirit flickers and then comes back into focus. "That'd be why I'm still around."
"Chit chat later." They all turn to Crowley. "Thank you. Let me be plain: I want Dick. You've made some strides in that department," and here he gestures to them and Dean adjusts himself and Sam shoots him a look that says not now, my god and Dean rolls his eyes.
"As I was saying!" Crowley says. "Not the right sort of dick, and frankly it's pissing me off. I appreciate what you've done with the whole, killing off a large majority of their number, blah blah blah, but I'm after the big man himself.
"So, get me..." He pauses for effect, then pronounces, "Dick. Comprendo?"
And that's it, then. They yank their clothes on while Crowley and Bobby make small talk: socks, jeans, shirts, overshirts. Sam catches Dean's eye and Dean is still blushing.
They head downstairs to the kitchen.
"I for one, am surprised," Lucifer starts.
Sam ignores him. He doesn't care what Lucifer's surprised about or sure of.
Lucifer snorts. "Thankless, I swear. Well, Sammy. I'm gonna make myself a PB&J. You do whatever the hell it is you're set on doing this time."
They make sandwiches with whatever supplies they have, and Dean pours out drinks — three beers and one scotch — the four of them hanging in the kitchen like any Saturday morning could be, in some other world where there are no monsters, one Sam has given up on imagining by now and only sees that world on TV or in movies.
"Sammy," Lucifer says, messing with the bread. "Where's the peanut butter?"
Sam lets his eyes pass right through him as he sips his beer and idles with his other hand in the pocket of his jeans.
Dean catches Sam's elbow as he passes, an easy rub of his thumb over Sam's inner arm like it's second-nature. Sam thinks this might be stone three, and building. Then, Dean's past, grabbing the American cheese off the counter, telling Bobby, "Your insides look like your outsides, now, man. How do you feel?"
"How do you think I feel?" Bobby retorts with a ghastly eyeroll. "Don't feel a goddamn thing and it's the best I've felt in years.'
Crowley watches him fondly, if that's at all possible, while Lucifer makes a mess of the cupboards.
"Peanut butter," he demands, loudly and for the sixty-sixth time, and Sam just blithely ignores him in favor of going to stand next to his brother, who is applying himself to stripping the cheese of its plastic to leave in a heap that a slight breeze could blow away.
Sam knocks their shoulders together and Dean runs a hand down Sam's arm again, pulling shivers from his skin.
"This is the cheesiest thing we've ever done," Dean avows, while that ruckus goes on behind them. He says it low, like it's a secret and as if a ghost and the king of hell and the devil aren't part and party to it, and Sam snickers and stays put. Dean touches his palm with a light brush of fingertips and Sam curls their pinkies together and holds. He's got a happy buzz that is complicated in all the right ways. He thinks, it's not end of days, it's just the middle.
Behind them, Lucifer's getting louder. "Where in the Hell does one hide the peanut butter around here?"
Sam hears Crowley sigh and say, "Oh, for the love of— Top shelf, mate."
Sam, Dean, Bobby, and Lucifer turn as one and say, "What?"
Crowley shakes his head. "Angels. Needy buggers."
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Date: 2012-03-21 02:47 am (UTC)