Closer to Comfort
Title: Closer to Comfort: A fic for erickripke
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through Season 3
Summary: In the dust and sun of west Texas, city and ghost town, avenue and interstate, two brothers learn about the love in pranks, the importance - and sorrow - of hunting knives, and just what it means to go through hell.
Word Count: 2692
Notes: Unbetaed for the sake of time. Written on three different computers. This started off as a Lisa-and-Ben run into Sam-and-Dean in west Texas fic and then turned into something else entirely. I apologise for the lack of Lisa and Ben and hope that Texas and Rte 10 make up for it.
I'd like to thank epodunk.com and tshaonline.org for their amazing help in getting me to know a state where I've only been to the airport. I'd love to thank AAA for maps and hotel information and my Texan relatives for putting up with stupid questions. And Wikipedia for always being there with information, whether it be on ghost towns and Slavic demons or census information on Nowhere, Texas.
*
"Remind me why we're here?" Sam asked darkly. The parking lot was mostly empty and even at eleven at night the asphalt kept the heat of the day. The other cars, parked near their owners' rooms, shimmered like desert heat mirages.
"Don't you love west Texas, Sammy-boy?" Dean asked with a grin. Behind him, heat lightning flickered across the horizon. "I seem to remember you saying something like that a few years ago."
"I am going to spend three days in west Texas, trying to get Silly Putty out of my hair and you out of jail, aren't I?"
Dean just grinned at him, his eyes and teeth bright white in the yellow sodium light of the parking lot.
"I saw you buying it back in Big Spring. You're a three year old, really." Sam's words would have been insulting if his voice wasn't quite so flat and his eyes weren't rimmed with black and red. Black circles and blood shot green weren't the prettiest - or the healthiest - looking eyes to ever grace the motel parking lot.
"So that's why you didn't sleep all the way down 10? You should've said something. I wasn't going to wreck my seats with Silly Putty."
Sam huffed and shrugged his shoulders a bit. He wished he had one of Dean's old plaid shirts to wear, tight across the shoulders, or even one of his college sweatshirts, but the heat was too much to take. "Do you want to tell me what we're doing at a Travelodge outside Ozona? You hate west Texas almost as much as I do."
"It's got Davy Crockett?"
"Dean," Sam said warningly.
"And it's got Emerald Grove."
"What?"
"A real live - or as the case may be, dead - ghost town. Disappeared off the face of the map a hundred years ago." Dean was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"And this is why you stole the laptop? So I wouldn't know where we're going?"
Dean just grinned at him more. "C'mon. Let's get some sleep. Big day tomorrow, exploring Crockett."
"Don't you mean Emerald Grove?" Sam asked suspiciously.
Dean lifted his duffel bag out of the back of the Impala. "You know, you keep my baby too damn organised. It's creepy, bro. She likes a little clutter, reminds her of where she came from."
Sam shrugged again and kept his eyes on Dean as he picked up his own small bag and followed him into the rented room. It was garish, bronze and green with a cowboy theme, but he really didn't notice. He slipped his favourite curved skinning knife under his pillow and pretended he couldn't feel Dean's eyes on him.
*
"Jesus Christ," Sam cursed at his brother as they left Bryan's Poco Taco, just another in a series of unique and faceless restaurants. "I'm never going to get this stuff off." He pulled his hand at the skin of his neck and grimaced as it came away sticky. "What the hell compelled you to put a Jolly Rancher in the shower head?"
"Feeling a little sticky?"
"Fuck you." Sam stomped his way to the bench in front of the giant Davie Crockett statue and started wiping his arms and face with the towelettes the waitress had given him.
Dean frowned at him. "Don't you want to, um, go to the library or something? Check out the history?"
"There's no history to Emerald Grove, Dean." Sam made a face as he ripped his shirt back to towel his arm. It made a painful noise. "It was just relocated. There was no trauma, no demon, nothing supernatural at all. This entire county is riddled with towns that just didn't make it."
"Are you sure?" Dean asked uncertainly. "I thought you didn't know anything about it. You didn't say anything last night."
"I've been this way before." Sam didn't look at his brother, focused instead on checking how sticky his face was. "There was a bonnacon up near the ruins of Bullisford. I checked out the ghost towns before I headed to El Paso. They've got to be some of the best adjusted ghost towns in the country, not even a La Llorona."
"And you managed this while I was sleeping?" Dean demanded.
Sam's face shuttered closed and his eyes went entirely flat. What Dean didn't know, wouldn't - couldn't - hurt him. "Why are we here? Emerald Grove's history doesn't even have an unsolved murder."
Dean stared at him for a long moment. "Well, there's something out there, east of the city, and it's bothering people, mostly kids, some livestock."
"Ghost?"
Dean shrugged. "You're the geek boy."
"Most of the bodies from the old cemeteries were relocated to Cedar Hill Cemetery, except for Ellis," Sam explained, his voice and expression as flat as the desert. "And the sections are marked. If it is a body, we shouldn't have any trouble finding it."
"How the hell do you know this?"
"I've been here before."
Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned, the lines deeply creasing his face. Even their father had disliked the wide, dusty expanse of west Texas, the long and lonely Rte 10 and the dirt and wind of Rte 20. They had a way of stretching on for hours while you got no further than when you started. They'd passed through Ozona once, when Dean was seven and Sam was three, but Sam didn't remember anything but stories about that. "Then I guess you'd know where the library is?"
"Avenue G. Follow me." At Dean's blank look he added, "Near 163. It's not far."
*
Sam tried not to flinch when Dean leaned over his shoulder at the small table in Central Library. He was trying to focus on the figures on the page and not Dean Dean's alive Dean's safe Dean's here. Deaths, he told himself, deaths and numbers and saving people and killing things. That's what's important. Dean's here and Dean's alive and now is the time to kill things that hurt people, hurt people like Dean's hurt.
Dean whistled, close to Sam's ear. "Got something against the Armentrouts and Barhies or do you just like making pretty little charts, Sammy?" He reached around Sam's shoulder to adjust the paper. "Jarnigan? What the hell kind of name is that?"
This time Sam did flinch, away from his brother's arm and toward the knife tucked into his jeans.
Dean dropped Sam's chart, with it's sharp lines and neatly written names and causes of death. "What the hell?"
"There don't seem to be many unusual deaths or any disturbed graves."
"You're acting like fucking Caleb when he first met Dad," Dean accused, his angry voice loud in the library.
"Dean, be quiet."
"No! I don't know what the fuck this is, some kind of act or game or something else, but you won't talk to me, won't tell me anything, hell, you won't even fuck with my music, got to organise all the weapons according to god damn use, and now you're going to pull a knife on me? On me, your own damn brother?"
"Dean..."
A young woman with black hair and dark eyes peeked around the stacks, watching them for sudden movements before stepping out and exposing herself fully. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave," she said, in a firm voice belied by her stature. "No weapons or fighting in the library. Or the museum, if you were thinking of going there."
"We were done anyway." Sam stood and folded his charts into neat squares before putting them carefully into his backpack. He checked the table briefly to make sure that he didn't leave any papers behind and touched the knife in his waistband for good luck. He felt Dean's eyes on him as he walked down the steps and onto Avenue G and he knew, he just knew, that the pretty little librarian was watching and fingering her cell phone and he could see the old men on the street and the woman walking her dog and wondered, just wondered if Dean saw them, too.
"What's with you?" Dean demanded as soon as they got onto the baking sidewalk. "You've got a knife under your pillow and - and I checked this morning - 20 rounds of blessed silver bullets in the trunk that weren't there last time I looked. You won't talk, won't let me touch you, and you're so - so god damned organised!"
Sam saw the woman with the dog cross the street when Dean started to yell and two of the old men stand up from their park benches. He took a deep, calming breath. "No ghost towns, but some livestock problems. And in west Texas. Bothered some young kids, but nothing happening to adults or even dogs. What does that sound like to you?"
"Chupacabra?"
"Why don't we get our shotguns. I have some iron rounds for those, too," he suggested calmly, quietly, watching the two old men watch him. "We can head out to the plateaus where the attacks are happening."
"You still didn't answer my question!" Dean protested, following Sam down the street, back toward Rte 10 and the Impala.
Sam pretended he didn't hear, pretended that there wasn't a question in the fear that laced Dean's voice, pretended he'd always been like this, pretended it didn't make his skin itch and heart ache every time Dean put Blue Oyster Cult in the tape deck.
*
After stopping at the local hardware store, because Dean didn't trust Sam's iron rounds or the way he was handling the guns or something, they drove south down 163 and then west on some dirt road, past ranches and scrub and a whole lot of goats. Dean pulled over when Sam told him to do so, but complained vehemently about it.
Four hundred yards from the Impala, Dean spun around on his heel to face his brother. "You know, I don't know what your problem is! If this is about my deal, I'd think you'd be nicer about -"
Sam pulled the trigger on his shotgun and shot three times under Dean's waving arm.
"Jesus Christ!"
"It's dead," Sam said, walking past Dean to look at the animal he'd shot. It was thin to the point of emaciation and utterly hairless, with sharp teeth and blotchy skin. Sam kicked it and the body flopped, but no blood came from its wounds.
Dean trained his own gun on the body. "You sure it's dead?"
"Twice in the head, once in the heart. And my own iron rounds. It's dead."
Before Dean could say anything to the contrary or ask any questions, a man with a hunting rifle jogged up from the road. When he saw Sam and Dean, he lowered his gun, but, as far as Sam was concerned, looked no friendlier.
"Hey," Dean called in his friendliest tone. "Got some crazy coyotes around here, mister. It went after my brother and -"
"Sam Winchester," the man said, his Texas drawl cold.
Sam looked up from the chupacabra body to stare the man in the eye. "Matt Fitzroy."
"What did I say about you, my land, and guns?" The man, Matt, rested his hand on his rifle butt.
"To get off it or you'd kill me." Sam's lips curved upward in a facsimile of a smile. "Or you'd try to have me arrested for illegal hunting and trespassing."
Dean froze and looked from one man to the other.
"So what are you doing back here? I won't have you bothering my goats. Or sacrificing them, if that's what you've been up to."
Sam laughed. "I don't need your goats' blood. I've got everything I need."
"Then you can haul ass off my land." Matt paused. "Gina's got a sister down toward Sonora, a place called Roosevelt. Her husband just bought himself and ranch and they're being bothered by something that won't let their animals near the water."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
"You handled the damn flaming shit thing." Matt gestured at the chupacabra. "And you got that. It's been bothering animals for miles. I looked you up. You and that brother you talked about." His face set in grim lines. "You didn't say anything about killing people before."
"Don't kill people. I told you that." Sam knew his voice was cold and could see that Dean was twitchy with questions, but he couldn't help himself. "It didn't change anything anyway."
Matt scowled. "Get your ass back in that pretty car and get yourself back to the highway. I can take care of the body."
Sam shrugged and tucked his gun under his arm. "Does your sister-in-law have a name?"
"Serena Gonzalez. Her husband is Joseph."
When Dean moved to follow Sam to the car, clearly confused by the interaction, Matt stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you sure you want to go with him, son? If you just need a place to go or some work to do, I can give you that. Me and Gina have got space up at the house and Lord knows we could use a hand with the herd."
"I don't know what he told you," Dean retorted, his voice carrying clearly to the car. "But I'm his brother and I'm not leaving him behind."
Matt pulled his hand off Dean's shoulder like it burned. Ignoring Dean, he turned back to Sam, who was putting his shotgun in the Impala's meticulously organised trunk. "Get the fuck off my land, Winchester. If I see you - or your brother - back here again, you're dead men. I've got silver bullets that'll do the job."
*
The Impala sped down Rte 10, toward Sonora and Roosevelt and San Antonio, and Sam gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. He knew Matt Fitzroy and his beautiful wife Regina. He'd first met them when he killed the bonnacon and asked for the use of their ranch. While they had been thankful, they hadn't been that thankful and Sam wouldn't forget how Regina kept their children from talking or even interacting at all with him. And when he'd explained why he wanted - needed - the land on their ranch, Regina had cried and Matt told him that they were decent people and to get the fuck out of his house.
"What was that?" Dean asked him, finally tired of watching the scrub pass by his window.
"It was nothing."
"That wasn't nothing, Sam. That man hated you. Did you do some hunting while you were at Stanford? Is that it?" Dean touched the pendant around his neck.
"No."
"Then what -"
"It doesn't matter, not anymore. I've got what I need." Dean sitting in the seat beside him. Dean watching his back during a hunt. Dean's even breath filling motel rooms across the country. Sam had what was necessary.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through Season 3
Summary: In the dust and sun of west Texas, city and ghost town, avenue and interstate, two brothers learn about the love in pranks, the importance - and sorrow - of hunting knives, and just what it means to go through hell.
Word Count: 2692
Notes: Unbetaed for the sake of time. Written on three different computers. This started off as a Lisa-and-Ben run into Sam-and-Dean in west Texas fic and then turned into something else entirely. I apologise for the lack of Lisa and Ben and hope that Texas and Rte 10 make up for it.
I'd like to thank epodunk.com and tshaonline.org for their amazing help in getting me to know a state where I've only been to the airport. I'd love to thank AAA for maps and hotel information and my Texan relatives for putting up with stupid questions. And Wikipedia for always being there with information, whether it be on ghost towns and Slavic demons or census information on Nowhere, Texas.
*
"Remind me why we're here?" Sam asked darkly. The parking lot was mostly empty and even at eleven at night the asphalt kept the heat of the day. The other cars, parked near their owners' rooms, shimmered like desert heat mirages.
"Don't you love west Texas, Sammy-boy?" Dean asked with a grin. Behind him, heat lightning flickered across the horizon. "I seem to remember you saying something like that a few years ago."
"I am going to spend three days in west Texas, trying to get Silly Putty out of my hair and you out of jail, aren't I?"
Dean just grinned at him, his eyes and teeth bright white in the yellow sodium light of the parking lot.
"I saw you buying it back in Big Spring. You're a three year old, really." Sam's words would have been insulting if his voice wasn't quite so flat and his eyes weren't rimmed with black and red. Black circles and blood shot green weren't the prettiest - or the healthiest - looking eyes to ever grace the motel parking lot.
"So that's why you didn't sleep all the way down 10? You should've said something. I wasn't going to wreck my seats with Silly Putty."
Sam huffed and shrugged his shoulders a bit. He wished he had one of Dean's old plaid shirts to wear, tight across the shoulders, or even one of his college sweatshirts, but the heat was too much to take. "Do you want to tell me what we're doing at a Travelodge outside Ozona? You hate west Texas almost as much as I do."
"It's got Davy Crockett?"
"Dean," Sam said warningly.
"And it's got Emerald Grove."
"What?"
"A real live - or as the case may be, dead - ghost town. Disappeared off the face of the map a hundred years ago." Dean was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"And this is why you stole the laptop? So I wouldn't know where we're going?"
Dean just grinned at him more. "C'mon. Let's get some sleep. Big day tomorrow, exploring Crockett."
"Don't you mean Emerald Grove?" Sam asked suspiciously.
Dean lifted his duffel bag out of the back of the Impala. "You know, you keep my baby too damn organised. It's creepy, bro. She likes a little clutter, reminds her of where she came from."
Sam shrugged again and kept his eyes on Dean as he picked up his own small bag and followed him into the rented room. It was garish, bronze and green with a cowboy theme, but he really didn't notice. He slipped his favourite curved skinning knife under his pillow and pretended he couldn't feel Dean's eyes on him.
*
"Jesus Christ," Sam cursed at his brother as they left Bryan's Poco Taco, just another in a series of unique and faceless restaurants. "I'm never going to get this stuff off." He pulled his hand at the skin of his neck and grimaced as it came away sticky. "What the hell compelled you to put a Jolly Rancher in the shower head?"
"Feeling a little sticky?"
"Fuck you." Sam stomped his way to the bench in front of the giant Davie Crockett statue and started wiping his arms and face with the towelettes the waitress had given him.
Dean frowned at him. "Don't you want to, um, go to the library or something? Check out the history?"
"There's no history to Emerald Grove, Dean." Sam made a face as he ripped his shirt back to towel his arm. It made a painful noise. "It was just relocated. There was no trauma, no demon, nothing supernatural at all. This entire county is riddled with towns that just didn't make it."
"Are you sure?" Dean asked uncertainly. "I thought you didn't know anything about it. You didn't say anything last night."
"I've been this way before." Sam didn't look at his brother, focused instead on checking how sticky his face was. "There was a bonnacon up near the ruins of Bullisford. I checked out the ghost towns before I headed to El Paso. They've got to be some of the best adjusted ghost towns in the country, not even a La Llorona."
"And you managed this while I was sleeping?" Dean demanded.
Sam's face shuttered closed and his eyes went entirely flat. What Dean didn't know, wouldn't - couldn't - hurt him. "Why are we here? Emerald Grove's history doesn't even have an unsolved murder."
Dean stared at him for a long moment. "Well, there's something out there, east of the city, and it's bothering people, mostly kids, some livestock."
"Ghost?"
Dean shrugged. "You're the geek boy."
"Most of the bodies from the old cemeteries were relocated to Cedar Hill Cemetery, except for Ellis," Sam explained, his voice and expression as flat as the desert. "And the sections are marked. If it is a body, we shouldn't have any trouble finding it."
"How the hell do you know this?"
"I've been here before."
Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned, the lines deeply creasing his face. Even their father had disliked the wide, dusty expanse of west Texas, the long and lonely Rte 10 and the dirt and wind of Rte 20. They had a way of stretching on for hours while you got no further than when you started. They'd passed through Ozona once, when Dean was seven and Sam was three, but Sam didn't remember anything but stories about that. "Then I guess you'd know where the library is?"
"Avenue G. Follow me." At Dean's blank look he added, "Near 163. It's not far."
*
Sam tried not to flinch when Dean leaned over his shoulder at the small table in Central Library. He was trying to focus on the figures on the page and not Dean Dean's alive Dean's safe Dean's here. Deaths, he told himself, deaths and numbers and saving people and killing things. That's what's important. Dean's here and Dean's alive and now is the time to kill things that hurt people, hurt people like Dean's hurt.
Dean whistled, close to Sam's ear. "Got something against the Armentrouts and Barhies or do you just like making pretty little charts, Sammy?" He reached around Sam's shoulder to adjust the paper. "Jarnigan? What the hell kind of name is that?"
This time Sam did flinch, away from his brother's arm and toward the knife tucked into his jeans.
Dean dropped Sam's chart, with it's sharp lines and neatly written names and causes of death. "What the hell?"
"There don't seem to be many unusual deaths or any disturbed graves."
"You're acting like fucking Caleb when he first met Dad," Dean accused, his angry voice loud in the library.
"Dean, be quiet."
"No! I don't know what the fuck this is, some kind of act or game or something else, but you won't talk to me, won't tell me anything, hell, you won't even fuck with my music, got to organise all the weapons according to god damn use, and now you're going to pull a knife on me? On me, your own damn brother?"
"Dean..."
A young woman with black hair and dark eyes peeked around the stacks, watching them for sudden movements before stepping out and exposing herself fully. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave," she said, in a firm voice belied by her stature. "No weapons or fighting in the library. Or the museum, if you were thinking of going there."
"We were done anyway." Sam stood and folded his charts into neat squares before putting them carefully into his backpack. He checked the table briefly to make sure that he didn't leave any papers behind and touched the knife in his waistband for good luck. He felt Dean's eyes on him as he walked down the steps and onto Avenue G and he knew, he just knew, that the pretty little librarian was watching and fingering her cell phone and he could see the old men on the street and the woman walking her dog and wondered, just wondered if Dean saw them, too.
"What's with you?" Dean demanded as soon as they got onto the baking sidewalk. "You've got a knife under your pillow and - and I checked this morning - 20 rounds of blessed silver bullets in the trunk that weren't there last time I looked. You won't talk, won't let me touch you, and you're so - so god damned organised!"
Sam saw the woman with the dog cross the street when Dean started to yell and two of the old men stand up from their park benches. He took a deep, calming breath. "No ghost towns, but some livestock problems. And in west Texas. Bothered some young kids, but nothing happening to adults or even dogs. What does that sound like to you?"
"Chupacabra?"
"Why don't we get our shotguns. I have some iron rounds for those, too," he suggested calmly, quietly, watching the two old men watch him. "We can head out to the plateaus where the attacks are happening."
"You still didn't answer my question!" Dean protested, following Sam down the street, back toward Rte 10 and the Impala.
Sam pretended he didn't hear, pretended that there wasn't a question in the fear that laced Dean's voice, pretended he'd always been like this, pretended it didn't make his skin itch and heart ache every time Dean put Blue Oyster Cult in the tape deck.
*
After stopping at the local hardware store, because Dean didn't trust Sam's iron rounds or the way he was handling the guns or something, they drove south down 163 and then west on some dirt road, past ranches and scrub and a whole lot of goats. Dean pulled over when Sam told him to do so, but complained vehemently about it.
Four hundred yards from the Impala, Dean spun around on his heel to face his brother. "You know, I don't know what your problem is! If this is about my deal, I'd think you'd be nicer about -"
Sam pulled the trigger on his shotgun and shot three times under Dean's waving arm.
"Jesus Christ!"
"It's dead," Sam said, walking past Dean to look at the animal he'd shot. It was thin to the point of emaciation and utterly hairless, with sharp teeth and blotchy skin. Sam kicked it and the body flopped, but no blood came from its wounds.
Dean trained his own gun on the body. "You sure it's dead?"
"Twice in the head, once in the heart. And my own iron rounds. It's dead."
Before Dean could say anything to the contrary or ask any questions, a man with a hunting rifle jogged up from the road. When he saw Sam and Dean, he lowered his gun, but, as far as Sam was concerned, looked no friendlier.
"Hey," Dean called in his friendliest tone. "Got some crazy coyotes around here, mister. It went after my brother and -"
"Sam Winchester," the man said, his Texas drawl cold.
Sam looked up from the chupacabra body to stare the man in the eye. "Matt Fitzroy."
"What did I say about you, my land, and guns?" The man, Matt, rested his hand on his rifle butt.
"To get off it or you'd kill me." Sam's lips curved upward in a facsimile of a smile. "Or you'd try to have me arrested for illegal hunting and trespassing."
Dean froze and looked from one man to the other.
"So what are you doing back here? I won't have you bothering my goats. Or sacrificing them, if that's what you've been up to."
Sam laughed. "I don't need your goats' blood. I've got everything I need."
"Then you can haul ass off my land." Matt paused. "Gina's got a sister down toward Sonora, a place called Roosevelt. Her husband just bought himself and ranch and they're being bothered by something that won't let their animals near the water."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
"You handled the damn flaming shit thing." Matt gestured at the chupacabra. "And you got that. It's been bothering animals for miles. I looked you up. You and that brother you talked about." His face set in grim lines. "You didn't say anything about killing people before."
"Don't kill people. I told you that." Sam knew his voice was cold and could see that Dean was twitchy with questions, but he couldn't help himself. "It didn't change anything anyway."
Matt scowled. "Get your ass back in that pretty car and get yourself back to the highway. I can take care of the body."
Sam shrugged and tucked his gun under his arm. "Does your sister-in-law have a name?"
"Serena Gonzalez. Her husband is Joseph."
When Dean moved to follow Sam to the car, clearly confused by the interaction, Matt stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you sure you want to go with him, son? If you just need a place to go or some work to do, I can give you that. Me and Gina have got space up at the house and Lord knows we could use a hand with the herd."
"I don't know what he told you," Dean retorted, his voice carrying clearly to the car. "But I'm his brother and I'm not leaving him behind."
Matt pulled his hand off Dean's shoulder like it burned. Ignoring Dean, he turned back to Sam, who was putting his shotgun in the Impala's meticulously organised trunk. "Get the fuck off my land, Winchester. If I see you - or your brother - back here again, you're dead men. I've got silver bullets that'll do the job."
*
The Impala sped down Rte 10, toward Sonora and Roosevelt and San Antonio, and Sam gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. He knew Matt Fitzroy and his beautiful wife Regina. He'd first met them when he killed the bonnacon and asked for the use of their ranch. While they had been thankful, they hadn't been that thankful and Sam wouldn't forget how Regina kept their children from talking or even interacting at all with him. And when he'd explained why he wanted - needed - the land on their ranch, Regina had cried and Matt told him that they were decent people and to get the fuck out of his house.
"What was that?" Dean asked him, finally tired of watching the scrub pass by his window.
"It was nothing."
"That wasn't nothing, Sam. That man hated you. Did you do some hunting while you were at Stanford? Is that it?" Dean touched the pendant around his neck.
"No."
"Then what -"
"It doesn't matter, not anymore. I've got what I need." Dean sitting in the seat beside him. Dean watching his back during a hunt. Dean's even breath filling motel rooms across the country. Sam had what was necessary.