He Who Wins You Over, part one
Title: He Who Wins You Over
Word count : 15,000
Author's Notes: Here is my entry for spn_summergen. I'm reposting a slightly edited version of it - I fixed a small inconsistency, among other things. All my thanks to sylvia_locus for betaing this story, and to my recipient steeplechasers for the awesome prompts (I had a hard time making a choice!), and of course, to brightly_lit, quickreaver and septembers_coda for making that challenge happen this year.
Summary: That Dean got them lost isn’t the most worrying thing about their situation. No, the problem is that, one, this town isn’t on the map at all; and two, it looks like it might be impossible for them to leave. Season three era.
Link to the fic on AO3
The low whirring sound of the car engine. Tires eating away the asphalt. The whizz of the car cutting through the wind. Warmth and peace, the smell of leather, of laundry detergent.
Sam slowly opened his eyes, trying to cling to the last shreds of his dream. He couldn’t remember what it’d been about except that it was cozy and relaxing, and that it was hard to come back to reality. The deep blue of the sky hurt his eyes and he shut them tight again with a groan.
“Where are we?” he asked his brother, his voice raspy.
“I left I-40 when we reached Gallup,” Dean said.
Sam opened a suspicious eye. There was no music on - points for consideration there, bro - but Dean’s fingers were drumming against the wheel to the beat of a tune only he could hear, the rhythm reverberating into his whole body: shoulders, neck, bobbing head and all. He was wearing the fake cheerful expression that hadn’t left him since he’d sold his soul at a crossroad.
“Why the hell did you leave I-40?” Sam pushed himself up on his seat, hissing at the burn of heated leather against the palms of his hands. “I thought we were going to California. Dean?”
“I’m taking the scenic route.”
“The scenic route. Right.”
Sam looked out of the rolled down window on his side: empty miles of grayish earth all around, the monotony of it only broken by creosote bushes, sprinkled here and there like green fluffy dust bunnies abandoned under the bed. Far away in the distance, the mesas, so perfectly flat and dusted with lighter green, looked like a giant had decided to cut off the tops of mountains. Clouds rolled in the blue sky in a race with the Impala.
“And where’s the scenic route taking us?” Sam asked.
“Chaco Canyon, man! The Pueblo ruins! Don’t you want to get your geek on ancient historical stones?”
“I’ve already been there,” Sam said. “With friends from college.”
Used to be, mentioning college was one efficient way to shut Dean up. Not so much now. “Well, I haven’t,” Dean said, casually resting his arm against the windowsill on his side. Which was undoubtedly burning from the heat if the way Dean’s hand twitched was any indication, but Dean still didn’t move his arm, probably unwilling to ruin the whole nonchalant demeanor he had going.
“Okay,” Sam said. “You didn’t answer my question, though. Where are we?”
The corner of Dean’s mouth dipped down. “About that: I’m not entirely absolutely sure-”
“Don’t tell me you’re lost,” Sam said, keeping his voice flat.
Dean coughed up a noise that was halfway between a chuckle and clearing his throat. “Lost is such an extreme word.”
“But you don’t know where we are.”
“I’ll find my way! I’ve been around these parts before.”
“Before? When? When we were kids and we spent half the time on the road sleeping or fighting with each other?”
“No, more recently, with Dad. Come on, you just gotta trust me on this.”
Sam sighed. “Yeah, get us lost in the desert. That’d be great.”
The baking heat outside and inside the car made him long for shade and refreshing drinks. He tried to doze off again, chin tucked against his chest and arms crossed so his skin didn’t touch anything heated, but he couldn’t recover the previous feeling of comfort and peace. His t-shirt clung to his skin, his palms sweated too much no matter how often he wiped them on his jeans, and he had to keep pushing sweat-matted strands of hair off his forehead while Dean helpfully pointed and laughed.
“I bet you wish you could shave off that mop of yours, don’t you, Sammy?”
“Fuck off. Aren’t you hot?”
Dean was wearing a shirt open on an undershirt, the rolled up sleeves his only concession to the temperature. He smirked smugly with his I laugh in the face of heat expression. Sam wanted to dunk the asshole’s head into cold water.
“Right, right, I know. Mind over matter, is it?”
“One day, grasshopper,” Dean said. “One day.”
They stopped twenty minutes later to take a leak on the roadside. The wind had picked up again and they had to pee facing the road in order to avoid getting splashed. Fortunately, they hadn’t met any other vehicle in a while. It was so quiet out there that it was startling, and Sam found himself almost holding his breath rather than break the silence. The sky was clouding over and it was getting slightly, but measurably, cooler, the wind drying the sweat off Sam’s skin.
“How close do you think we are from the nearest town?” he asked.
Dean shrugged, in the process of zipping his jeans up. “Couple hours, give or take.”
Translation: he had no goddamn idea. When they climbed back in the car, Sam fumbled in the glove box through cassette tapes and empty wrappers, and pulled out a map of New Mexico. The map was worn white at the creases where it folded, coffee-stained, and Sam wasn’t even sure it was up to date.
“What road are we on?” he asked, eyes looking for Gallup as a reference point.
“We were on NM57 at one point.” Meaning that they didn’t know where they were now. Good fucking job, Dean.
Sam looked up from the map to the road, searching for a sign that would enlighten them as to their location. The road wasn’t in the best of states, cracked right in the middle like it was at any moment going to open in two and swallow them whole, and edged with burned grass that ate away the white strips painted on both sides.
“Here.” A flash of green and white at the corner of his vision field. “There was a sign. It said ‘Broadhouse, 10’.” Sam frowned at the map. “I can’t find Broadhouse anywhere on this.”
“Maybe the map’s too old?”
“Hmm. That sign didn’t look very recent, though.”
Although it could have just been desert dust making it look old. In any case, the fact that they had a destination within less than ten miles in reach allowed Sam to unbend a little. It was almost 8pm and twilight was meeting with them quickly, offering them a gorgeous colorful sky, golden orange on the horizon, where the sun was setting behind the mesas, velvet blue above their heads. It was now chill enough that Sam had to roll up his window, shivering in his still damp t-shirt.
“We’re getting there,” Dean said with a glance at him.
Sam knew this was the only kind of apology he could hope from his brother. He smiled at him. “Yeah. Well, I hope for you they’ll have vacant beds and gas for the Impala.”
- Fist Night -
When they passed the entrance sign to Broadhouse it was already dark, and only the Impala’s lights sweeping over the sign allowed Sam to read it: “‘Broadhouse, population: 268.’”
“Now that’s what I call a city,” Dean said.
“Hey, shut it. If you’d stayed on I-40-”
“All in the past, Sammy. Aren’t you excited to discover what kind of marvels Broadhouse has to offer us?”
Sam rolled his eyes. All he wanted was to shoot this chipper version of Dean in the head and get his real brother back, and then go to bed, but there was only one of those things he could get in the immediate future. Dean seemed convinced that if he acted like everything was alright about his current situation, he’d manage to get Sam to think it too. In the meantime, Sam merely hoped that Broadhouse wasn’t on the shit end of backwater places.
“Hey, gas station,” Dean said suddenly. “Sweet, we can get my baby something to drink.”
“How lucky for the car.”
“Aren’t you in a pissy mood tonight?”
Sam thought it best to abstain from a reply. The gas station was bathed in a halo of electric light; there were only two pumps and it was pay-at-the-pump, no gas station store in sight. Sam unfolded out of the car as Dean proceeded to fill the Impala. He stretched and took a few steps, looking around at the silent town, the darker shapes of the houses huddled in shadows. It smelled like gas and warm desert, creosote and sage, carried to him by the wind. It wasn’t completely dark yet and the horizon was pale where the sun had disappeared.
“Looks like a fucking ghost town,” Dean commented from where he was holding the pump into the car. “It’s not even nine.”
“God, don’t jinx us.”
They got back into the Impala once Dean had finished slaking his car’s thirst, and drove down the main street at a slow pace, an eye out for signs of life. Sam’s attention was caught by the lit-up front of a low, painted white building with the word “bar” in red capital letters on its side. He pointed it to his brother, who decided it sounded promising and parked the Impala next to the building.
There were people inside, so it wasn’t an actual ghost town - good thing, because Sam didn’t feel like working tonight. It was a long, narrow room with a low ceiling adorned with old-fashioned green ceiling tiles. There was a bar on one side and a few tables on the other, with a booth on the far end corner. Patrons turned their heads at Sam and Dean’s entrance, first in an absent-minded way, and then, when they saw that the newcomers were strangers, with insistent, lingering stares.
“Hello there,” Dean said a little too loud, in that cheerful belligerent way that amused some people and antagonized others.
“Did you get lost?” the bartender said abruptly. She was in her mid-forties, her dark hair gathered into a long braid, and was wearing a denim shirt with the tails tied up on the front. Her face betrayed nothing: no welcome, but no suspicion either.
“We’re just passing through,” Dean said, eluding the word ‘lost.’ “Is there a motel where we can stay for one night?”
“We have a motel.” That coming from an old white guy in baseball cap, sitting at the bar. “People do tend to get lost around here.”
Someone in one of the darker corners of the bar snorted. “So easy to take the wrong turn.” Several other people laughed.
“The motel’s on Cedar Street,” the bartender said, with a scowl to whoever had talked. “Second street on the right, then you turn left, then left again. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you very much,” Sam said with his sweetest smile, hoping to mellow her out. “Can we have some food?”
She waved for them to sit at the booth, and they had to walk across the room to get there, everyone’s eyes intent on them. “Nice people,” Dean murmured, sliding into the booth.
“Behave,” Sam said in the same tone. “We want to survive the night.”
The bartender brought them laminated menus that split at the corners. She lingered a moment too long at their table, like she wanted to tell them something, but when Sam looked at her expectantly she scurried back behind her bar. Sam and Dean exchanged a look, and Dean shrugged. They were used to small towns, to being strangers in small towns, but this one sure took the cake. Dean, though, chose to let it slide, like he did with everything these days. He looked around the bar with the air of an appreciative tourist.
“Hey, look.” He reached across the table to poke at Sam’s arm, and Sam followed his look: left of the bar, in a corner they hadn’t been able to see when they’d entered, was a pool table. No one was playing.
“Want to play a game after dinner?” Dean suggested.
Sam waited for the normal chatter from other patrons to resume. “I don’t know if I want to stay any longer than we have to in here.”
“Aw, come on. One little game. Are you afraid I’ll kick your ass?”
“I’m not twelve anymore.”
“Really? Because you’re acting twelve. Why do we care what those people think about us playing pool in their bar? It’s a free country.”
Sam saw the bartender move again in their direction, probably wanting to take their order. “We’ll see.”
In the end, he relented. It was rare for them to have a chance to play pool together without it being part of hustling, and the people in the bar seemed to have relaxed and were now happy to pretend Sam and Dean weren’t there. And Dean wanted it, and as complicated as Sam’s feelings were about his brother these days, he couldn’t really go against anything Dean wished for, not when… well. Sam firmly closed the door on that train of thought - nothing helpful would come from there.
When they finished their dinner, it was already twenty to ten and the bar had cleared from half its patrons. Besides Sam and Dean, the only people left were the bartender, the old man at the bar, and a black teenager who had fallen asleep at one of the tables, his head cushioned on his crossed arms.
Dean rose from his seat and went to the pool table with a proprietary air, looking as much as ease as he was anywhere else. Sam followed him with a glance to the bartender, but she was wiping glasses and didn’t seem to pay them any mind. They flipped a coin and Sam got to be the one to break. The cues looked like they’d been used a lot: the tips were well-worn, to the point that they were almost flat. Dean made a face when he took note of it but they started playing anyway. It’d been too long since Sam had not played for money, and soon enough he found himself loosening up, forgetting where they were and their current circumstances. Dean played in a relaxed manner, not attempting any complicated shots, eyes crinkled at the corners from enjoyment. Sam won the first game; they ordered two beers and Dean asked for a rematch.
In the middle of their second game, as Dean was leaning over the table, the tip of his cue a hair’s breadth from the cue ball, there was a tingle from the door and a draft of cool air sneaked into the bar. Sam, who’d had his back to the door, felt the sudden urge to turn back and look at who was coming in. The bartender put down the glass she was holding a little too harshly onto the counter; the black kid started awake, looking wide-eyed at the newcomer.
It was a white man somewhere in his early thirties, tall but not quite as tall as Sam. He wore a cowboy hat but took it off after he’d closed the door behind him, pressing it against his chest like he’d just entered a church.
“Good evening, Mari,” he told the bartender. He had a low, silky voice, the kind of voice that sounded like it belonged to a nighttime radio host.
“We’re closed,” said Mari in a brittle tone. The tendons in her necks were pulled taut.
The man chuckled like she’d just said some inconsequential joke. “Good evening, Marvin,” he said to the kid and, “Good evening, Earl,” to the old man.
He advanced into the room until he could see the pool table and Sam and Dean. Sam saw that his brother had frozen into his shooting position.
“Newcomers,” the strange man said with a slow warm smile. He had a chiseled, high-cheek-boned face, and teeth as white as a Hollywood actor. “Hello there.”
“’Lo,” Dean said, his tone barely civil, and Sam echoed him in a low murmur.
The man didn’t seem to take offense. “Welcome to Broadhouse,” he said. “I’m Budd.”
“I’m Sam, this is my brother Dean.”
“I imagine you need some place to stay tonight.”
“Mari already told us about the motel,” Dean said, straightening up and resting his cue stick against the rail.
“Oh, no, don’t let me stop you from playing! Or - allow me to join you.”
“Budd,” Mari said. “Leave them alone.”
“Don’t be such a kill-joy, Maria,” Budd said, and the old man at the bar cackled at Maria’s sour expression. “Just a friendly game.”
The offer didn’t seem open to refusal. Sam and Dean shared a grim look: you couldn’t be a hunter for half of your life and not be able to read a situation. The tension in the room had ratcheted up to sky-high level. The kid on the other side of the room was fidgeting, like he wanted to make a run for the door but didn’t dare draw attention to himself.
“Fine. We need to start over, then,” Dean said, and started to gather the balls into the rack. “Are we playing for anything?”
Budd’s smile widened, like he’d hoped Dean would say that. “Is there any other kind of game? Let’s start with money.”
Dean paused in his task to shoot the man a look. “And then what? We’ll play our immortal souls?”
Sam’s heart skipped a beat at the quip but Budd laughed with genuine amusement.
“We just met, Dean,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “That would be greedy.”
On a tacit agreement, they let Budd break and watched him carefully, trying to determine what kind of player he was, whether he was the kind to calculate angles and whatnot, or the patient, observing kind, or a hustler - just like they were. Almost against his will, Sam felt himself slide into hustling mode, assessing the opponent, his weaknesses, trying to determine how they should play this up. Budd already knew they were brothers, and they couldn’t have hidden the fact that they’d arrived together, so they couldn’t work their usual con. It wouldn’t do, anyway - they weren’t going to rip off this man as a mark, not in such a tiny town; but Sam had a feeling they’d have to fight to protect their money.
Budd played without hurry, rarely losing his smile, but his strokes had the fluidity of long-time practice. He never took long before a shot, but rarely missed anything, to the point that Sam and Dean didn’t spend a lot of time playing, to their growing frustration.
“Get me a beer, Mari,” Budd said cheerfully after his eighth perfect shot in a row. “I feel lucky tonight.”
Dean raised an eyebrow at Sam and quirked his mouth. Luck, right. This wasn’t luck, this was skill, and Budd wasn’t bashful about it. Nor was he showing off, not exactly; he just seemed to be good-naturedly making his way to victory.
Maria, tight-lipped, brought him a beer bottle. When she passed next to Sam she cast him a look that he couldn’t decipher. Was she blaming him - them - for something? Was she worried? About them, for them? He was interrupted in his musings by a whoop of joy coming from his brother.
“Sorry,” Dean said with a smirk at Budd. “I’m just happy I finally get to play.”
Budd dismissed the apology with a wave. “It’s the game.”
Dean grabbed his cue and carefully positioned himself at one side of the table for his shot. It was a difficult cut shot, but then Sam had seen Dean manage worse. Except that his brother had been on the road all day long, behind the wheel most of the time, and probably wasn’t at his best. Sam worriedly watched the way Dean stifled a yawn behind a close fist, the way he blinked before taking the shot. One of the balls was knocked off the table and Dean smacked the rail with his knuckles.
“Goddamn it!”
Dean gave another string of curses, red in the face with anger and shame, but Sam’s attention was on Budd. The man was taking a long swig of his beer, Adam’s apple moving up and down as he swallowed, his eyes fixed on Dean, dark eyes that looked like two cool pools of still water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and told Sam, “Your turn, pal.”
Sam missed his shot too, and the game, not really in their favor so far, went even more downhill from there. They played until midnight, lost fifty dollars to Budd With No Last Name, and when Dean aggressively asked for a rematch, Sam touched his elbow and said in a low voice, “Not a good idea.”
“But-”
“Dean.” Sam intently looked him in the eye, hoping to convey the message that something was very wrong here and they were in need of a strategic retreat. “Let’s find a room to crash. I’m exhausted.”
“You’ll find that the Desert Motel’s an ideal place to rest,” Budd said in the tone of friendly conversation.
“Nice to hear,” said Sam, grabbing his brother’s elbow to keep him in check. “Well, thanks for the game.”
“Pleasure was mine.” It wasn’t said in a gloating way, and yet Sam had never wanted more to punch someone in the face.
The bar had emptied while they were playing, and only Maria remained, standing poised behind her bar.
“Welcome to Broadhouse,” she said as Dean pushed the door to outside. For some reason, the way she said it sent chills up Sam’s spine.
“Is it me or have we just been conned?” Dean said.
“Yes, we have. I just have no clue on the how.”
---
At least Budd hadn’t lied about the Desert Motel being a pleasant place. The motel was a one-story building shaped as an L, with a red-tiled roof and low semicircular arches decorating the covered gallery that ran along the rooms. They got Room 1, as there were apparently no other guests at the moment, and Dean made the obligatory Norman Bates joke to that. The room had walls covered with wooden panels, an old-fashioned writing desk with thousands of drawers, and warm orange and sand-colored bedspreads. Both Sam and Dean slept like logs and woke up around ten to an already hot day.
“I look forward to getting out of this hellhole,” Dean groaned, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Sam looked at the sight from their window: a handful of long, one-story houses painted various pastel colors; a windmill cut out against the blue sky with a water tower next to it, its blades spinning lazily in the direction the wind pushed them; and far in the background, mountains, striped red and beige, were rising like islands from the desert sea below.
“It doesn’t look so hellish outside,” Sam said.
“Want to stay here? Be my guest.”
They got dressed and went to the motel lobby. Last night when they’d checked in the clerk had been a middle-aged Hispanic man. Now it was a girl a few years younger than Sam, light brown hair curling on her shoulders, pale skin burned at the nose and cheeks. She had a badge pinned to her blouse that read, “Laure.”
“Good morning, Laure,” Dean said with a grin, perked up by the apparition of a pretty girl.
“You’re the newcomers,” she said, giving them an appraising look.
“News travel fast, I see.”
The girl snorted. “Small towns. What can I do for you, gentlemen?”
There was a flat cadence to her words that Sam recognized. “Are you French?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” she said, looking surprised. “Not many people recognize my accent.”
“There was a French exchange student in one of my classes in high school.”
“How did you end up here?” Dean asked. “If you don’t mind my asking. This town looks a little…”
“Lost in the middle of nowhere?” Laure smiled. “You don’t say. Well, my story isn’t that interesting. Are you checking out?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and handed her the key to their room. “We’d like to have breakfast before we leave town. Any recommendations?”
“Well, you’ve already been to Maria’s bar. There’s Penny’s Diner down the road, the breakfast is good. Otherwise… I don’t think you’ll want to go to Budd’s bar.”
“Budd’s a bar owner?” Dean said. He and Sam looked at each other. “And he has the time to cruise around other people’s establishments?”
“Budd isn’t hard-pressed for profits.”
“What’s this guy’s story anyway?”
“His story? Budd doesn’t have a story. Budd is Budd, that’s all.” She looked at something over Sam’s shoulder, in the direction of the window overlooking the street. “Maybe you’ll want to skip breakfast.”
Sam turned around to see what she was looking at - he thought he’d heard a car drive by - but all he could see was a cloud of dust floating above the ground.
“Why are you saying that?” Dean asked.
“Listen,” Laure said in a lower voice, leaning toward them. She had thin, chafed lips that looked like she had a habit of biting them. “Get into your car and drive the hell out of here. Drive fast. Don’t look back. Drive until you get to the next town-”
“What is the next town?” Sam asked.
“I... I don’t know. I’ve never been further than here.”
They couldn’t get anything more out of her after that. She shut down like a bank vault, turned back to polite motel clerk mode and bade them a good day.
“What the hell was that?” Dean said as they walked to the spot where the Impala was parked.
“I don’t know. But I feel like following her advice. Don’t you? We could do some research about this town and come back later, but it feels like we’re sitting ducks right now.”
“I’m kind of hungry,” Dean said, looking mournfully in the direction Laure had pointed to Penny’s Diner. “But you’re right. Something’s wonky about this place. Let’s bail.”
But once they were inside the Impala and Dean turned the key into the ignition, the engine coughed with a weak kitten noise, and then nothing.
“What the fuck now,” Dean bit out, his brow deeply furrowed.
“Maybe it’s the carburetor,” Sam said.
Dean gave him a look. “You just used the first word that popped in your mind, didn’t you?”
He got out of the car without waiting for a reply, slamming the door behind him. Sam watched him fumble under the hood for a moment, and then went to join him.
“So?” he asked.
“So I don’t know what’s wrong yet,” Dean grumbled.
“Do you think someone tampered with it? To stop us from leaving town?”
“I don’t know. You know what?” Dean straightened up from the depths of the car’s insides. “You should go get us some breakfast. If we can’t leave right now at least we’ll have some food in the bargain.” He glanced around quickly, and lowered his voice: “And maybe you can get an inkling about what’s going on here.”
Sam nodded. “Got you.”
Hands in his pockets, Sam walked down Cedar Street, leaving his brother to curse and sputter at the car. He walked past a few houses, nodded at the people lounging on their porches. He waved, in friendly neighbor mode, but not many people waved back. Instead they looked at him, whispering to each other like he was the latest piece of juicy gossip.
He knew he’d found Penny’s Diner when he saw the red neon sign flash at him. The inside of the diner was all shiny white and silver, like the inside of a spaceship. A plump older woman, maybe the eponymous Penny, smiled breezily at his entrance.
“Hello! Beautiful morning, is it?”
Maybe it was paranoia talking, but Sam thought that her bright smile looked even faker than the usual commercial expression of welcome.
“Yeah. It sure is sunny.”
“What will you have?”
“Uhh…” Sam’s eyes were drawn to the shiny colors of the menu above the woman’s head. “I’ll have two breakfast sandwiches.”
“Sure thing, hon.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and while he waited for her to come back, fingers drumming against the counter, Sam looked outside to the street. Two men walked by the diner and stopped at the front window to look inside, to look at Sam, and Sam had to turn his back on them, feeling awkward at being put on the spot. Small towns, he thought. Obviously, they all knew each other and Dean and he stuck out like sore thumbs. But… it wasn’t just that, was it? It felt like they all knew about the new people and were watching them, expectant of… something.
“Here you go!”
Sam almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of the woman’s voice, and she chuckled at his reaction. “Nervous, are we?”
“No, I… I guess I was just lost in thought. How much do I owe you?”
“Twelve dollars, sweetie.”
Sam shot her a covert glance as he looked into his wallet for the right amount. He saw that now that she thought he wasn’t looking at her anymore, her smile had congealed on her face like cooling wax. Her terms of endearment sounded off to his ears, like she was playing a part she hadn’t had a lot of time to practice.
He gave her the money and offered her his own much more polished smile, turning up the boyish charm. “Do you know where Budd’s bar is?”
She blinked at him. Looked like he had strayed away from the script. “You know Budd?”
Now it was Sam’s turn to be surprised: he’d thought that the story of how he and his brother had lost to Budd had already gone around the town. It would’ve explained why all these people seemed to know about them.
“Uh, yes. My brother and I played pool with him last night. I heard he owned a bar in town.”
“You played… Oh.” The woman looked downright despondent about it. “Then you…”
“We what?”
She opened her mouth for what looked like an earnest answer, but then seemed to catch herself and her bright, fake smile reappeared. “You’ll find Budd’s bar at the corner of Oak Avenue and 8th Street. Just… follow the flow.”
“The flow?”
Her smile turned mysterious. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough. Have a good day!”
That was a dismissal if Sam had ever heard one. He managed a smile and left with the two breakfast sandwiches in a brown bag. The diner had been air-conditioned and the heat hit him in the face when he got out. He exhaled a sigh. Follow the flow. What the hell did she mean by that? He walked slowly, following Cedar Street to its end. She’d said he’d see what she meant, so he looked around him for anything that stood out. He was in a residential area again, houses with large gardens and burned lawns and clumps of desert plants: fuzzy cholla cactuses and blooming prickly pears, showcasing their palette of bright fuchsia pink, orange and yellow. One front yard had a pile of old tires and Sam could smell heated rubber from here.
The strangest thing was the people: not just the fact that they were all observing him - Sam was getting used to that - but there was also something aimless about them. The few walking the streets with him walked at a slow, measured pace, not with the sense of purpose that people with an actual destination had. But then Sam noticed that they were all going down the street, not up, so he… followed the flow. A car rolled by and Sam saw it turn left; he stopped and watched the two young women walking ahead of him, waiting to see whether they were going to make the turn or not. They did, and Sam followed them. The street they now found themselves on didn’t go straight but made a gentle curve - Sunset Loop, was the street’s name. Sam and everyone else went down the loop until Sam saw a building simply named ‘Budd’s Bar’, and he knew they’d reached their destination. The women he was following glanced at the bar and murmured to each other. One of them spat on the ground, next to the steps leading to the bar’s front door, and they went on their way.
On the other side of the street a group of people was gathered: some were smoking, some had dragged out a table and a few chairs and were playing cards. They weren’t all looking at Budd’s bar, but there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that the bar was the reason they were here. Sam’s eyes detailed the plain ochre walls of the façade, looking for anything strange. There was one window on the bar’s front, but it was obscured with curtains and it was hard to see if there was anyone inside. The only noteworthy thing was the presence of two drawings, painted in simple black lines, one on each side of the entrance: on the left was a coyote sitting on its behind, its tail erect, its head thrown back, and its mouth open in a howl; on the right was an owl with huge round eyes and wide open wings.
Eyes still on the bar, Sam inconspicuously got closer to the group. They probably knew who he was, or at least that he’d just come into town, and he was curious to see if they would try to speak to him.
He only had to wait a few minutes. “New guy, huh,” said one of the men playing cards.
Sam turned his head, eyebrows raised, as if surprised to be talked to. “Well, I… My brother and I got lost and spent the night at the Desert Motel.” And suddenly, Sam could put his finger on what had been bothering him all along: the new guy, the newcomers; people weren’t treating them like strangers passing through, but like they were moving in.
“Have you been here long?” Sam asked the man, trying to keep the realization from his voice.
The guy scratched his arm with nicotine-stained fingers. “A few months.”
“What made you move here?”
The man exchanged looks with the other card players. One of them laughed nervously and said, “The weather?”
“Right,” said the first man. “The weather. Don’t you like the desert?”
“Not really a favorite of mine.” The man was still scratching his arm, a self-conscious gesture, and Sam noticed the golden band on his left hand’s ring finger. “Does your wife like it here?”
It was like a cold wind had blown over the group. Faces clouded over and pitying looks were directed the married man’s way. For a moment, Sam thought the blunder was that the man was a widow, and started to apologize.
“She’s in New Orleans,” the man said abruptly. “She can’t come here.”
Feeling he was touching onto something interesting, Sam had more questions - why? were they divorced? had they split? - but the man didn’t seem open for more discussion. The rest of the gathering had decided to ignore Sam now, going back to playing cards or watching Budd’s bar, but in a very forced way, with no casual conversation going on. Oddly, it felt to Sam like they were more embarrassed than outright hostile.
He left them and went back to Dean at the Desert Motel. He found his brother still working under the Impala’s hood, stripped down to a t-shirt, his face running with sweat, his hands grease-stained. At Sam’s approach Dean closed the hood and made his spine crack, two hands pressed on the small of his back.
“I hope you had better luck than me,” he grumbled, then sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his wrist.
“Uh, Dean, you’re bleeding.”
Dean looked at the blood on his wrist, then tentatively touched the underside of his nose. “Shit,” he said, pinching his nose and throwing his head back. “Fucking dry wind.” He sounded like a duck.
“I got us breakfast,” Sam said as a consolation. He looked inside the bag: the bread had gotten soggy and the eggs had congealed. “I also had a walk around the town.”
Dean moved an eyebrow to signal he was listening. “There’s definitely something weird going on here,” Sam continued. “I found Budd's bar, and everyone in town seems to gravitate around it. And the people here - they don’t act natural: it’s not just that they notice we’re strangers, it’s that they know about us, and… They’re waiting for something to happen.”
Dean let go of his nose and poked at it. “Well, that’s not ominous at all.”
“How’s the car?”
“The car won’t start, and I don’t know why. Something’s definitely up with that. I swear, if that asshole messed with my car, I will rip him apart.”
“So what are we doing now?”
“Now,” Dean took the bag from Sam’s hands and got one of the sandwiches out, “we do what tourists do. We pay a visit to the town’s main attraction.”
They found out that Budd’s bar only opened in the evenings. With the Impala still not working, they could only go back to the motel and asked again for a room. When they entered the lobby, Laure looked at them and didn’t even pretend to be surprised that they were back.
“Same room okay?” she said, already getting the key to Room 1.
“You knew we’d be back,” Sam said, not making it a question. “What’s going on here? Why did you tell us to leave as fast as we could?”
She looked away. “Just one more night?”
Dean leaned forward, one hand on the counter. “Help us. You know what’s happening here, don’t you? You tried to warn us. Now if you could just-”
Laure turned to him with blazing eyes. “I can’t help you, okay? Putain.” She murmured something else in French under her breath. “It’s too late, now.”
“Why is it too late?” Sam asked. “What is it too late for? Laure, please-”
“Stop bothering me, or I’ll call my boss!”
They let it go - if they were stuck in Broadhouse, now was not the moment to start a fight with the locals - and proceeded to move their stuff back into the room they’d left a few hours before. Sam didn’t waste time before turning on his laptop and trying for a WiFi connection.
“Nothing,” he said after a moment. “I can’t get on the Internet.”
“Well, we’re kind of the middle of nowhere.” Dean had reclaimed the bed he’d used last night and was lying down on it, arms crossed behind his head. “Try to call Bobby?”
Sam tried. “No signal.” He threw his phone on the free bed, hissing in frustration. “Is he doing this? Blocking the signal?”
Dean turned on his side, propping his head with one hand. “This is becoming a conspiracy theory. Is this guy God or something? Well, if he’s doing it, the question is: is he using natural or supernatural means?”
They let it hang there, but none of what had happened seemed exactly natural. Sam focused on the lone cloud he could see floating in the sky. “No one’s going to talk to us,” he thought out loud. “But I don’t think they mean us harm either. So… whatever we do, I don’t think the locals - or at least the majority of them - are going to try to stop us. What we need, is to figure out what the hell this Budd guy is.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon debating theories, skimming through their dad's journal, making lists of possible bad guys, writing down the clues they had. When the sun started to go down behind the mountains on the horizon line, they left the motel armed to the teeth, prepared for any kind of threat.
Part two
Word count : 15,000
Author's Notes: Here is my entry for spn_summergen. I'm reposting a slightly edited version of it - I fixed a small inconsistency, among other things. All my thanks to sylvia_locus for betaing this story, and to my recipient steeplechasers for the awesome prompts (I had a hard time making a choice!), and of course, to brightly_lit, quickreaver and septembers_coda for making that challenge happen this year.
Summary: That Dean got them lost isn’t the most worrying thing about their situation. No, the problem is that, one, this town isn’t on the map at all; and two, it looks like it might be impossible for them to leave. Season three era.
Link to the fic on AO3
The low whirring sound of the car engine. Tires eating away the asphalt. The whizz of the car cutting through the wind. Warmth and peace, the smell of leather, of laundry detergent.
Sam slowly opened his eyes, trying to cling to the last shreds of his dream. He couldn’t remember what it’d been about except that it was cozy and relaxing, and that it was hard to come back to reality. The deep blue of the sky hurt his eyes and he shut them tight again with a groan.
“Where are we?” he asked his brother, his voice raspy.
“I left I-40 when we reached Gallup,” Dean said.
Sam opened a suspicious eye. There was no music on - points for consideration there, bro - but Dean’s fingers were drumming against the wheel to the beat of a tune only he could hear, the rhythm reverberating into his whole body: shoulders, neck, bobbing head and all. He was wearing the fake cheerful expression that hadn’t left him since he’d sold his soul at a crossroad.
“Why the hell did you leave I-40?” Sam pushed himself up on his seat, hissing at the burn of heated leather against the palms of his hands. “I thought we were going to California. Dean?”
“I’m taking the scenic route.”
“The scenic route. Right.”
Sam looked out of the rolled down window on his side: empty miles of grayish earth all around, the monotony of it only broken by creosote bushes, sprinkled here and there like green fluffy dust bunnies abandoned under the bed. Far away in the distance, the mesas, so perfectly flat and dusted with lighter green, looked like a giant had decided to cut off the tops of mountains. Clouds rolled in the blue sky in a race with the Impala.
“And where’s the scenic route taking us?” Sam asked.
“Chaco Canyon, man! The Pueblo ruins! Don’t you want to get your geek on ancient historical stones?”
“I’ve already been there,” Sam said. “With friends from college.”
Used to be, mentioning college was one efficient way to shut Dean up. Not so much now. “Well, I haven’t,” Dean said, casually resting his arm against the windowsill on his side. Which was undoubtedly burning from the heat if the way Dean’s hand twitched was any indication, but Dean still didn’t move his arm, probably unwilling to ruin the whole nonchalant demeanor he had going.
“Okay,” Sam said. “You didn’t answer my question, though. Where are we?”
The corner of Dean’s mouth dipped down. “About that: I’m not entirely absolutely sure-”
“Don’t tell me you’re lost,” Sam said, keeping his voice flat.
Dean coughed up a noise that was halfway between a chuckle and clearing his throat. “Lost is such an extreme word.”
“But you don’t know where we are.”
“I’ll find my way! I’ve been around these parts before.”
“Before? When? When we were kids and we spent half the time on the road sleeping or fighting with each other?”
“No, more recently, with Dad. Come on, you just gotta trust me on this.”
Sam sighed. “Yeah, get us lost in the desert. That’d be great.”
The baking heat outside and inside the car made him long for shade and refreshing drinks. He tried to doze off again, chin tucked against his chest and arms crossed so his skin didn’t touch anything heated, but he couldn’t recover the previous feeling of comfort and peace. His t-shirt clung to his skin, his palms sweated too much no matter how often he wiped them on his jeans, and he had to keep pushing sweat-matted strands of hair off his forehead while Dean helpfully pointed and laughed.
“I bet you wish you could shave off that mop of yours, don’t you, Sammy?”
“Fuck off. Aren’t you hot?”
Dean was wearing a shirt open on an undershirt, the rolled up sleeves his only concession to the temperature. He smirked smugly with his I laugh in the face of heat expression. Sam wanted to dunk the asshole’s head into cold water.
“Right, right, I know. Mind over matter, is it?”
“One day, grasshopper,” Dean said. “One day.”
They stopped twenty minutes later to take a leak on the roadside. The wind had picked up again and they had to pee facing the road in order to avoid getting splashed. Fortunately, they hadn’t met any other vehicle in a while. It was so quiet out there that it was startling, and Sam found himself almost holding his breath rather than break the silence. The sky was clouding over and it was getting slightly, but measurably, cooler, the wind drying the sweat off Sam’s skin.
“How close do you think we are from the nearest town?” he asked.
Dean shrugged, in the process of zipping his jeans up. “Couple hours, give or take.”
Translation: he had no goddamn idea. When they climbed back in the car, Sam fumbled in the glove box through cassette tapes and empty wrappers, and pulled out a map of New Mexico. The map was worn white at the creases where it folded, coffee-stained, and Sam wasn’t even sure it was up to date.
“What road are we on?” he asked, eyes looking for Gallup as a reference point.
“We were on NM57 at one point.” Meaning that they didn’t know where they were now. Good fucking job, Dean.
Sam looked up from the map to the road, searching for a sign that would enlighten them as to their location. The road wasn’t in the best of states, cracked right in the middle like it was at any moment going to open in two and swallow them whole, and edged with burned grass that ate away the white strips painted on both sides.
“Here.” A flash of green and white at the corner of his vision field. “There was a sign. It said ‘Broadhouse, 10’.” Sam frowned at the map. “I can’t find Broadhouse anywhere on this.”
“Maybe the map’s too old?”
“Hmm. That sign didn’t look very recent, though.”
Although it could have just been desert dust making it look old. In any case, the fact that they had a destination within less than ten miles in reach allowed Sam to unbend a little. It was almost 8pm and twilight was meeting with them quickly, offering them a gorgeous colorful sky, golden orange on the horizon, where the sun was setting behind the mesas, velvet blue above their heads. It was now chill enough that Sam had to roll up his window, shivering in his still damp t-shirt.
“We’re getting there,” Dean said with a glance at him.
Sam knew this was the only kind of apology he could hope from his brother. He smiled at him. “Yeah. Well, I hope for you they’ll have vacant beds and gas for the Impala.”
- Fist Night -
When they passed the entrance sign to Broadhouse it was already dark, and only the Impala’s lights sweeping over the sign allowed Sam to read it: “‘Broadhouse, population: 268.’”
“Now that’s what I call a city,” Dean said.
“Hey, shut it. If you’d stayed on I-40-”
“All in the past, Sammy. Aren’t you excited to discover what kind of marvels Broadhouse has to offer us?”
Sam rolled his eyes. All he wanted was to shoot this chipper version of Dean in the head and get his real brother back, and then go to bed, but there was only one of those things he could get in the immediate future. Dean seemed convinced that if he acted like everything was alright about his current situation, he’d manage to get Sam to think it too. In the meantime, Sam merely hoped that Broadhouse wasn’t on the shit end of backwater places.
“Hey, gas station,” Dean said suddenly. “Sweet, we can get my baby something to drink.”
“How lucky for the car.”
“Aren’t you in a pissy mood tonight?”
Sam thought it best to abstain from a reply. The gas station was bathed in a halo of electric light; there were only two pumps and it was pay-at-the-pump, no gas station store in sight. Sam unfolded out of the car as Dean proceeded to fill the Impala. He stretched and took a few steps, looking around at the silent town, the darker shapes of the houses huddled in shadows. It smelled like gas and warm desert, creosote and sage, carried to him by the wind. It wasn’t completely dark yet and the horizon was pale where the sun had disappeared.
“Looks like a fucking ghost town,” Dean commented from where he was holding the pump into the car. “It’s not even nine.”
“God, don’t jinx us.”
They got back into the Impala once Dean had finished slaking his car’s thirst, and drove down the main street at a slow pace, an eye out for signs of life. Sam’s attention was caught by the lit-up front of a low, painted white building with the word “bar” in red capital letters on its side. He pointed it to his brother, who decided it sounded promising and parked the Impala next to the building.
There were people inside, so it wasn’t an actual ghost town - good thing, because Sam didn’t feel like working tonight. It was a long, narrow room with a low ceiling adorned with old-fashioned green ceiling tiles. There was a bar on one side and a few tables on the other, with a booth on the far end corner. Patrons turned their heads at Sam and Dean’s entrance, first in an absent-minded way, and then, when they saw that the newcomers were strangers, with insistent, lingering stares.
“Hello there,” Dean said a little too loud, in that cheerful belligerent way that amused some people and antagonized others.
“Did you get lost?” the bartender said abruptly. She was in her mid-forties, her dark hair gathered into a long braid, and was wearing a denim shirt with the tails tied up on the front. Her face betrayed nothing: no welcome, but no suspicion either.
“We’re just passing through,” Dean said, eluding the word ‘lost.’ “Is there a motel where we can stay for one night?”
“We have a motel.” That coming from an old white guy in baseball cap, sitting at the bar. “People do tend to get lost around here.”
Someone in one of the darker corners of the bar snorted. “So easy to take the wrong turn.” Several other people laughed.
“The motel’s on Cedar Street,” the bartender said, with a scowl to whoever had talked. “Second street on the right, then you turn left, then left again. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you very much,” Sam said with his sweetest smile, hoping to mellow her out. “Can we have some food?”
She waved for them to sit at the booth, and they had to walk across the room to get there, everyone’s eyes intent on them. “Nice people,” Dean murmured, sliding into the booth.
“Behave,” Sam said in the same tone. “We want to survive the night.”
The bartender brought them laminated menus that split at the corners. She lingered a moment too long at their table, like she wanted to tell them something, but when Sam looked at her expectantly she scurried back behind her bar. Sam and Dean exchanged a look, and Dean shrugged. They were used to small towns, to being strangers in small towns, but this one sure took the cake. Dean, though, chose to let it slide, like he did with everything these days. He looked around the bar with the air of an appreciative tourist.
“Hey, look.” He reached across the table to poke at Sam’s arm, and Sam followed his look: left of the bar, in a corner they hadn’t been able to see when they’d entered, was a pool table. No one was playing.
“Want to play a game after dinner?” Dean suggested.
Sam waited for the normal chatter from other patrons to resume. “I don’t know if I want to stay any longer than we have to in here.”
“Aw, come on. One little game. Are you afraid I’ll kick your ass?”
“I’m not twelve anymore.”
“Really? Because you’re acting twelve. Why do we care what those people think about us playing pool in their bar? It’s a free country.”
Sam saw the bartender move again in their direction, probably wanting to take their order. “We’ll see.”
In the end, he relented. It was rare for them to have a chance to play pool together without it being part of hustling, and the people in the bar seemed to have relaxed and were now happy to pretend Sam and Dean weren’t there. And Dean wanted it, and as complicated as Sam’s feelings were about his brother these days, he couldn’t really go against anything Dean wished for, not when… well. Sam firmly closed the door on that train of thought - nothing helpful would come from there.
When they finished their dinner, it was already twenty to ten and the bar had cleared from half its patrons. Besides Sam and Dean, the only people left were the bartender, the old man at the bar, and a black teenager who had fallen asleep at one of the tables, his head cushioned on his crossed arms.
Dean rose from his seat and went to the pool table with a proprietary air, looking as much as ease as he was anywhere else. Sam followed him with a glance to the bartender, but she was wiping glasses and didn’t seem to pay them any mind. They flipped a coin and Sam got to be the one to break. The cues looked like they’d been used a lot: the tips were well-worn, to the point that they were almost flat. Dean made a face when he took note of it but they started playing anyway. It’d been too long since Sam had not played for money, and soon enough he found himself loosening up, forgetting where they were and their current circumstances. Dean played in a relaxed manner, not attempting any complicated shots, eyes crinkled at the corners from enjoyment. Sam won the first game; they ordered two beers and Dean asked for a rematch.
In the middle of their second game, as Dean was leaning over the table, the tip of his cue a hair’s breadth from the cue ball, there was a tingle from the door and a draft of cool air sneaked into the bar. Sam, who’d had his back to the door, felt the sudden urge to turn back and look at who was coming in. The bartender put down the glass she was holding a little too harshly onto the counter; the black kid started awake, looking wide-eyed at the newcomer.
It was a white man somewhere in his early thirties, tall but not quite as tall as Sam. He wore a cowboy hat but took it off after he’d closed the door behind him, pressing it against his chest like he’d just entered a church.
“Good evening, Mari,” he told the bartender. He had a low, silky voice, the kind of voice that sounded like it belonged to a nighttime radio host.
“We’re closed,” said Mari in a brittle tone. The tendons in her necks were pulled taut.
The man chuckled like she’d just said some inconsequential joke. “Good evening, Marvin,” he said to the kid and, “Good evening, Earl,” to the old man.
He advanced into the room until he could see the pool table and Sam and Dean. Sam saw that his brother had frozen into his shooting position.
“Newcomers,” the strange man said with a slow warm smile. He had a chiseled, high-cheek-boned face, and teeth as white as a Hollywood actor. “Hello there.”
“’Lo,” Dean said, his tone barely civil, and Sam echoed him in a low murmur.
The man didn’t seem to take offense. “Welcome to Broadhouse,” he said. “I’m Budd.”
“I’m Sam, this is my brother Dean.”
“I imagine you need some place to stay tonight.”
“Mari already told us about the motel,” Dean said, straightening up and resting his cue stick against the rail.
“Oh, no, don’t let me stop you from playing! Or - allow me to join you.”
“Budd,” Mari said. “Leave them alone.”
“Don’t be such a kill-joy, Maria,” Budd said, and the old man at the bar cackled at Maria’s sour expression. “Just a friendly game.”
The offer didn’t seem open to refusal. Sam and Dean shared a grim look: you couldn’t be a hunter for half of your life and not be able to read a situation. The tension in the room had ratcheted up to sky-high level. The kid on the other side of the room was fidgeting, like he wanted to make a run for the door but didn’t dare draw attention to himself.
“Fine. We need to start over, then,” Dean said, and started to gather the balls into the rack. “Are we playing for anything?”
Budd’s smile widened, like he’d hoped Dean would say that. “Is there any other kind of game? Let’s start with money.”
Dean paused in his task to shoot the man a look. “And then what? We’ll play our immortal souls?”
Sam’s heart skipped a beat at the quip but Budd laughed with genuine amusement.
“We just met, Dean,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “That would be greedy.”
On a tacit agreement, they let Budd break and watched him carefully, trying to determine what kind of player he was, whether he was the kind to calculate angles and whatnot, or the patient, observing kind, or a hustler - just like they were. Almost against his will, Sam felt himself slide into hustling mode, assessing the opponent, his weaknesses, trying to determine how they should play this up. Budd already knew they were brothers, and they couldn’t have hidden the fact that they’d arrived together, so they couldn’t work their usual con. It wouldn’t do, anyway - they weren’t going to rip off this man as a mark, not in such a tiny town; but Sam had a feeling they’d have to fight to protect their money.
Budd played without hurry, rarely losing his smile, but his strokes had the fluidity of long-time practice. He never took long before a shot, but rarely missed anything, to the point that Sam and Dean didn’t spend a lot of time playing, to their growing frustration.
“Get me a beer, Mari,” Budd said cheerfully after his eighth perfect shot in a row. “I feel lucky tonight.”
Dean raised an eyebrow at Sam and quirked his mouth. Luck, right. This wasn’t luck, this was skill, and Budd wasn’t bashful about it. Nor was he showing off, not exactly; he just seemed to be good-naturedly making his way to victory.
Maria, tight-lipped, brought him a beer bottle. When she passed next to Sam she cast him a look that he couldn’t decipher. Was she blaming him - them - for something? Was she worried? About them, for them? He was interrupted in his musings by a whoop of joy coming from his brother.
“Sorry,” Dean said with a smirk at Budd. “I’m just happy I finally get to play.”
Budd dismissed the apology with a wave. “It’s the game.”
Dean grabbed his cue and carefully positioned himself at one side of the table for his shot. It was a difficult cut shot, but then Sam had seen Dean manage worse. Except that his brother had been on the road all day long, behind the wheel most of the time, and probably wasn’t at his best. Sam worriedly watched the way Dean stifled a yawn behind a close fist, the way he blinked before taking the shot. One of the balls was knocked off the table and Dean smacked the rail with his knuckles.
“Goddamn it!”
Dean gave another string of curses, red in the face with anger and shame, but Sam’s attention was on Budd. The man was taking a long swig of his beer, Adam’s apple moving up and down as he swallowed, his eyes fixed on Dean, dark eyes that looked like two cool pools of still water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and told Sam, “Your turn, pal.”
Sam missed his shot too, and the game, not really in their favor so far, went even more downhill from there. They played until midnight, lost fifty dollars to Budd With No Last Name, and when Dean aggressively asked for a rematch, Sam touched his elbow and said in a low voice, “Not a good idea.”
“But-”
“Dean.” Sam intently looked him in the eye, hoping to convey the message that something was very wrong here and they were in need of a strategic retreat. “Let’s find a room to crash. I’m exhausted.”
“You’ll find that the Desert Motel’s an ideal place to rest,” Budd said in the tone of friendly conversation.
“Nice to hear,” said Sam, grabbing his brother’s elbow to keep him in check. “Well, thanks for the game.”
“Pleasure was mine.” It wasn’t said in a gloating way, and yet Sam had never wanted more to punch someone in the face.
The bar had emptied while they were playing, and only Maria remained, standing poised behind her bar.
“Welcome to Broadhouse,” she said as Dean pushed the door to outside. For some reason, the way she said it sent chills up Sam’s spine.
“Is it me or have we just been conned?” Dean said.
“Yes, we have. I just have no clue on the how.”
---
At least Budd hadn’t lied about the Desert Motel being a pleasant place. The motel was a one-story building shaped as an L, with a red-tiled roof and low semicircular arches decorating the covered gallery that ran along the rooms. They got Room 1, as there were apparently no other guests at the moment, and Dean made the obligatory Norman Bates joke to that. The room had walls covered with wooden panels, an old-fashioned writing desk with thousands of drawers, and warm orange and sand-colored bedspreads. Both Sam and Dean slept like logs and woke up around ten to an already hot day.
“I look forward to getting out of this hellhole,” Dean groaned, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
Sam looked at the sight from their window: a handful of long, one-story houses painted various pastel colors; a windmill cut out against the blue sky with a water tower next to it, its blades spinning lazily in the direction the wind pushed them; and far in the background, mountains, striped red and beige, were rising like islands from the desert sea below.
“It doesn’t look so hellish outside,” Sam said.
“Want to stay here? Be my guest.”
They got dressed and went to the motel lobby. Last night when they’d checked in the clerk had been a middle-aged Hispanic man. Now it was a girl a few years younger than Sam, light brown hair curling on her shoulders, pale skin burned at the nose and cheeks. She had a badge pinned to her blouse that read, “Laure.”
“Good morning, Laure,” Dean said with a grin, perked up by the apparition of a pretty girl.
“You’re the newcomers,” she said, giving them an appraising look.
“News travel fast, I see.”
The girl snorted. “Small towns. What can I do for you, gentlemen?”
There was a flat cadence to her words that Sam recognized. “Are you French?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” she said, looking surprised. “Not many people recognize my accent.”
“There was a French exchange student in one of my classes in high school.”
“How did you end up here?” Dean asked. “If you don’t mind my asking. This town looks a little…”
“Lost in the middle of nowhere?” Laure smiled. “You don’t say. Well, my story isn’t that interesting. Are you checking out?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, and handed her the key to their room. “We’d like to have breakfast before we leave town. Any recommendations?”
“Well, you’ve already been to Maria’s bar. There’s Penny’s Diner down the road, the breakfast is good. Otherwise… I don’t think you’ll want to go to Budd’s bar.”
“Budd’s a bar owner?” Dean said. He and Sam looked at each other. “And he has the time to cruise around other people’s establishments?”
“Budd isn’t hard-pressed for profits.”
“What’s this guy’s story anyway?”
“His story? Budd doesn’t have a story. Budd is Budd, that’s all.” She looked at something over Sam’s shoulder, in the direction of the window overlooking the street. “Maybe you’ll want to skip breakfast.”
Sam turned around to see what she was looking at - he thought he’d heard a car drive by - but all he could see was a cloud of dust floating above the ground.
“Why are you saying that?” Dean asked.
“Listen,” Laure said in a lower voice, leaning toward them. She had thin, chafed lips that looked like she had a habit of biting them. “Get into your car and drive the hell out of here. Drive fast. Don’t look back. Drive until you get to the next town-”
“What is the next town?” Sam asked.
“I... I don’t know. I’ve never been further than here.”
They couldn’t get anything more out of her after that. She shut down like a bank vault, turned back to polite motel clerk mode and bade them a good day.
“What the hell was that?” Dean said as they walked to the spot where the Impala was parked.
“I don’t know. But I feel like following her advice. Don’t you? We could do some research about this town and come back later, but it feels like we’re sitting ducks right now.”
“I’m kind of hungry,” Dean said, looking mournfully in the direction Laure had pointed to Penny’s Diner. “But you’re right. Something’s wonky about this place. Let’s bail.”
But once they were inside the Impala and Dean turned the key into the ignition, the engine coughed with a weak kitten noise, and then nothing.
“What the fuck now,” Dean bit out, his brow deeply furrowed.
“Maybe it’s the carburetor,” Sam said.
Dean gave him a look. “You just used the first word that popped in your mind, didn’t you?”
He got out of the car without waiting for a reply, slamming the door behind him. Sam watched him fumble under the hood for a moment, and then went to join him.
“So?” he asked.
“So I don’t know what’s wrong yet,” Dean grumbled.
“Do you think someone tampered with it? To stop us from leaving town?”
“I don’t know. You know what?” Dean straightened up from the depths of the car’s insides. “You should go get us some breakfast. If we can’t leave right now at least we’ll have some food in the bargain.” He glanced around quickly, and lowered his voice: “And maybe you can get an inkling about what’s going on here.”
Sam nodded. “Got you.”
Hands in his pockets, Sam walked down Cedar Street, leaving his brother to curse and sputter at the car. He walked past a few houses, nodded at the people lounging on their porches. He waved, in friendly neighbor mode, but not many people waved back. Instead they looked at him, whispering to each other like he was the latest piece of juicy gossip.
He knew he’d found Penny’s Diner when he saw the red neon sign flash at him. The inside of the diner was all shiny white and silver, like the inside of a spaceship. A plump older woman, maybe the eponymous Penny, smiled breezily at his entrance.
“Hello! Beautiful morning, is it?”
Maybe it was paranoia talking, but Sam thought that her bright smile looked even faker than the usual commercial expression of welcome.
“Yeah. It sure is sunny.”
“What will you have?”
“Uhh…” Sam’s eyes were drawn to the shiny colors of the menu above the woman’s head. “I’ll have two breakfast sandwiches.”
“Sure thing, hon.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and while he waited for her to come back, fingers drumming against the counter, Sam looked outside to the street. Two men walked by the diner and stopped at the front window to look inside, to look at Sam, and Sam had to turn his back on them, feeling awkward at being put on the spot. Small towns, he thought. Obviously, they all knew each other and Dean and he stuck out like sore thumbs. But… it wasn’t just that, was it? It felt like they all knew about the new people and were watching them, expectant of… something.
“Here you go!”
Sam almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of the woman’s voice, and she chuckled at his reaction. “Nervous, are we?”
“No, I… I guess I was just lost in thought. How much do I owe you?”
“Twelve dollars, sweetie.”
Sam shot her a covert glance as he looked into his wallet for the right amount. He saw that now that she thought he wasn’t looking at her anymore, her smile had congealed on her face like cooling wax. Her terms of endearment sounded off to his ears, like she was playing a part she hadn’t had a lot of time to practice.
He gave her the money and offered her his own much more polished smile, turning up the boyish charm. “Do you know where Budd’s bar is?”
She blinked at him. Looked like he had strayed away from the script. “You know Budd?”
Now it was Sam’s turn to be surprised: he’d thought that the story of how he and his brother had lost to Budd had already gone around the town. It would’ve explained why all these people seemed to know about them.
“Uh, yes. My brother and I played pool with him last night. I heard he owned a bar in town.”
“You played… Oh.” The woman looked downright despondent about it. “Then you…”
“We what?”
She opened her mouth for what looked like an earnest answer, but then seemed to catch herself and her bright, fake smile reappeared. “You’ll find Budd’s bar at the corner of Oak Avenue and 8th Street. Just… follow the flow.”
“The flow?”
Her smile turned mysterious. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough. Have a good day!”
That was a dismissal if Sam had ever heard one. He managed a smile and left with the two breakfast sandwiches in a brown bag. The diner had been air-conditioned and the heat hit him in the face when he got out. He exhaled a sigh. Follow the flow. What the hell did she mean by that? He walked slowly, following Cedar Street to its end. She’d said he’d see what she meant, so he looked around him for anything that stood out. He was in a residential area again, houses with large gardens and burned lawns and clumps of desert plants: fuzzy cholla cactuses and blooming prickly pears, showcasing their palette of bright fuchsia pink, orange and yellow. One front yard had a pile of old tires and Sam could smell heated rubber from here.
The strangest thing was the people: not just the fact that they were all observing him - Sam was getting used to that - but there was also something aimless about them. The few walking the streets with him walked at a slow, measured pace, not with the sense of purpose that people with an actual destination had. But then Sam noticed that they were all going down the street, not up, so he… followed the flow. A car rolled by and Sam saw it turn left; he stopped and watched the two young women walking ahead of him, waiting to see whether they were going to make the turn or not. They did, and Sam followed them. The street they now found themselves on didn’t go straight but made a gentle curve - Sunset Loop, was the street’s name. Sam and everyone else went down the loop until Sam saw a building simply named ‘Budd’s Bar’, and he knew they’d reached their destination. The women he was following glanced at the bar and murmured to each other. One of them spat on the ground, next to the steps leading to the bar’s front door, and they went on their way.
On the other side of the street a group of people was gathered: some were smoking, some had dragged out a table and a few chairs and were playing cards. They weren’t all looking at Budd’s bar, but there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that the bar was the reason they were here. Sam’s eyes detailed the plain ochre walls of the façade, looking for anything strange. There was one window on the bar’s front, but it was obscured with curtains and it was hard to see if there was anyone inside. The only noteworthy thing was the presence of two drawings, painted in simple black lines, one on each side of the entrance: on the left was a coyote sitting on its behind, its tail erect, its head thrown back, and its mouth open in a howl; on the right was an owl with huge round eyes and wide open wings.
Eyes still on the bar, Sam inconspicuously got closer to the group. They probably knew who he was, or at least that he’d just come into town, and he was curious to see if they would try to speak to him.
He only had to wait a few minutes. “New guy, huh,” said one of the men playing cards.
Sam turned his head, eyebrows raised, as if surprised to be talked to. “Well, I… My brother and I got lost and spent the night at the Desert Motel.” And suddenly, Sam could put his finger on what had been bothering him all along: the new guy, the newcomers; people weren’t treating them like strangers passing through, but like they were moving in.
“Have you been here long?” Sam asked the man, trying to keep the realization from his voice.
The guy scratched his arm with nicotine-stained fingers. “A few months.”
“What made you move here?”
The man exchanged looks with the other card players. One of them laughed nervously and said, “The weather?”
“Right,” said the first man. “The weather. Don’t you like the desert?”
“Not really a favorite of mine.” The man was still scratching his arm, a self-conscious gesture, and Sam noticed the golden band on his left hand’s ring finger. “Does your wife like it here?”
It was like a cold wind had blown over the group. Faces clouded over and pitying looks were directed the married man’s way. For a moment, Sam thought the blunder was that the man was a widow, and started to apologize.
“She’s in New Orleans,” the man said abruptly. “She can’t come here.”
Feeling he was touching onto something interesting, Sam had more questions - why? were they divorced? had they split? - but the man didn’t seem open for more discussion. The rest of the gathering had decided to ignore Sam now, going back to playing cards or watching Budd’s bar, but in a very forced way, with no casual conversation going on. Oddly, it felt to Sam like they were more embarrassed than outright hostile.
He left them and went back to Dean at the Desert Motel. He found his brother still working under the Impala’s hood, stripped down to a t-shirt, his face running with sweat, his hands grease-stained. At Sam’s approach Dean closed the hood and made his spine crack, two hands pressed on the small of his back.
“I hope you had better luck than me,” he grumbled, then sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his wrist.
“Uh, Dean, you’re bleeding.”
Dean looked at the blood on his wrist, then tentatively touched the underside of his nose. “Shit,” he said, pinching his nose and throwing his head back. “Fucking dry wind.” He sounded like a duck.
“I got us breakfast,” Sam said as a consolation. He looked inside the bag: the bread had gotten soggy and the eggs had congealed. “I also had a walk around the town.”
Dean moved an eyebrow to signal he was listening. “There’s definitely something weird going on here,” Sam continued. “I found Budd's bar, and everyone in town seems to gravitate around it. And the people here - they don’t act natural: it’s not just that they notice we’re strangers, it’s that they know about us, and… They’re waiting for something to happen.”
Dean let go of his nose and poked at it. “Well, that’s not ominous at all.”
“How’s the car?”
“The car won’t start, and I don’t know why. Something’s definitely up with that. I swear, if that asshole messed with my car, I will rip him apart.”
“So what are we doing now?”
“Now,” Dean took the bag from Sam’s hands and got one of the sandwiches out, “we do what tourists do. We pay a visit to the town’s main attraction.”
They found out that Budd’s bar only opened in the evenings. With the Impala still not working, they could only go back to the motel and asked again for a room. When they entered the lobby, Laure looked at them and didn’t even pretend to be surprised that they were back.
“Same room okay?” she said, already getting the key to Room 1.
“You knew we’d be back,” Sam said, not making it a question. “What’s going on here? Why did you tell us to leave as fast as we could?”
She looked away. “Just one more night?”
Dean leaned forward, one hand on the counter. “Help us. You know what’s happening here, don’t you? You tried to warn us. Now if you could just-”
Laure turned to him with blazing eyes. “I can’t help you, okay? Putain.” She murmured something else in French under her breath. “It’s too late, now.”
“Why is it too late?” Sam asked. “What is it too late for? Laure, please-”
“Stop bothering me, or I’ll call my boss!”
They let it go - if they were stuck in Broadhouse, now was not the moment to start a fight with the locals - and proceeded to move their stuff back into the room they’d left a few hours before. Sam didn’t waste time before turning on his laptop and trying for a WiFi connection.
“Nothing,” he said after a moment. “I can’t get on the Internet.”
“Well, we’re kind of the middle of nowhere.” Dean had reclaimed the bed he’d used last night and was lying down on it, arms crossed behind his head. “Try to call Bobby?”
Sam tried. “No signal.” He threw his phone on the free bed, hissing in frustration. “Is he doing this? Blocking the signal?”
Dean turned on his side, propping his head with one hand. “This is becoming a conspiracy theory. Is this guy God or something? Well, if he’s doing it, the question is: is he using natural or supernatural means?”
They let it hang there, but none of what had happened seemed exactly natural. Sam focused on the lone cloud he could see floating in the sky. “No one’s going to talk to us,” he thought out loud. “But I don’t think they mean us harm either. So… whatever we do, I don’t think the locals - or at least the majority of them - are going to try to stop us. What we need, is to figure out what the hell this Budd guy is.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon debating theories, skimming through their dad's journal, making lists of possible bad guys, writing down the clues they had. When the sun started to go down behind the mountains on the horizon line, they left the motel armed to the teeth, prepared for any kind of threat.
Part two