Tell me where we go from here 40/?
Chapter 40
For a moment Sam seriously considered if he should risk getting stuck in the bathroom window to escape the scene in front of him. His brother and Cas had totally forgotten that they weren't alone and while Sam was okay with a rather heated welcome kiss, this was definitively going too far. So when they started to grind against each other and Dean's hand found its way to Cas' butt, Sam desperately tried to get their attention.
If they weren't blocking the door he would have been out of the room a minute ago but with Cas pressing Dean against said door in the attempt to screw him right through it Sam had no way out.
The small bathroom window looked very tempting by now.
"Guys!" Sam yelled in clear distress and finally he got their attention. Realizing what he was doing Cas almost jumped back from Dean while Dean just stayed where he was with this back against the door and a quite obvious tent in his pants. Sam hurried to look somewhere else. He almost laughed at Cas' offer to share the room. No way was he staying with them here. Hastily Sam grabbed his stuff, not looking at either of them.
With his bag in one hand and some of his clothes and other stuff balled up under his other arm Sam almost stumbled over his own feet in his haste to get out of the room. At the Impala he had to stop to compose himself.
"Brain bleach. I need brain bleach." He muttered while he tried to fit all his stuff into the bag. Some of it was Dean's he noticed but it probably wasn't a good idea to go back now so he just stuffed everything into the bag and then made his way over to the office. It would be just his luck if there weren't any free rooms left but he would rather sleep in the car than to go back to their room. By now there were probably less clothes involved but more body fluids. And lube. There was probably lube involved by now.
Living in each other's pocket for almost their entire lives, they had seen almost everything there was to see about each other. Sam had lost count on how often he'd heard Dean jerking off in the shower or back in their teenage days right in the other bed when his brother thought Sam was sleeping.
They had walked in to compromising situations, sometimes even embarrassing ones. It happened. They didn't talk about it afterwards and just pretended it never happened. But this time Sam knew exactly what he would be walking in to if he went back now. There wouldn't be enough brain bleach for that.
Lucky him, the sleepy clerk behind the counter had another room for him and it was far enough from the other one to be sure he wouldn't hear anything he didn't want to hear.
By the time Sam had made himself comfortable in his new bed it was close to four in the morning but he just lay there wide awake. His mind either latched on what he'd seen back in their room, Cas and Dean going hot for each other, or on the case.
Knowing he wouldn't get any sleep any time soon he rolled out of bed. He could do at least something useful. Sam opened his laptop and then went to search through the mess in his bag to find the hexbag and his notes with the information on Steve. When he couldn't find either at first he was cursing under his breath, convinced he'd left them over at the other room.
But then, at the bottom of his bag, he found what he was looking for. They had taken the hexbag apart so there was no danger coming from it anymore and Sam laid out the cloth and its content on the table to investigate it farther.
He wasn't an expert on witchcraft and the few things he'd learned over time were barely enough to identify black magic when it was right in front of him. His mind wandered back to Ruby who had shown him a thing or two but that was a chapter of his life he really didn't want to think about so he forced his mind back to the here and now.
Setting the hexbag aside for the moment Sam focused on Steve, the foreman. One quick Google search got him quite some information on him. Looked like Andrew hadn't been the only one who had lost his home to the company he was now working for. According to what he found, Steve had even been the leader of one of the protest groups against the project. It took Sam only a few clicks to find pictures of Steve with a megaphone in front of bulldozers coming to demolish the houses behind him.
"How did he get the job as a foreman, then?" Sam wondered. "He isn't even using a different name or anything"
But one glance at the hexbag right next to him gave him all the answers he needed. This wasn't the work of somebody who had found an old book and just gave it a try. There was a human bone in the bag. No, Steve knew exactly what he was doing so it wouldn't surprise Sam if he'd gotten his job the same way. If you know how and were willing to pay the price you could get almost everything with black magic.
Sam only wondered if Steve knew that he had most likely sold his soul to a demon. Powers like this were usually connected to demons. There were other ways of witchcraft, he knew that, and not all were bad but if burned human bones were involved, the case was clear.
There were enough articles about Steve, who had made the news quite a few times before the protest had died down, to know that he wasn't married and had no children so chances were good that his place would be empty over the day.
Satisfied with that Sam went to see what he could find out about the bag itself. That was a more difficult research and when Sam looked up the next time, morning light had crept into his room.
Sam rubbed his burning eyes with the heels of his hands and then stretched with a yarn. Glancing at the time in the corner of the screen he decided that it was too early to start the day but maybe not too late to get some shut-eye.
For once he was content with waiting for Dean to wake him, no way was Sam going to knock on their door. And for what he'd done earlier Dean better showed up with coffee on his doorstep.
Sam crawled into bed and was a sleep the second his head hit the pillow.
What felt like only minutes later the ringing of his phone brought him back to the land of the living. Blindly he searched for it and almost kicked the lamp off the nightstand, not willing to admit that he was awake just yet.
"Yeah?" He said into the phone, face still buried in the pillow.
"It's safe to come over." Dean's voice greeted him and he sounded way too cheerful for this early in the morning. Granted, Sam had no idea how early it actually was. Probably not that early anymore. "We have coffee and breakfast."
Sam managed to mumble a "five minutes" before he drifted back to sleep with his phone still in hand.
It rang again. Loud and persistent right next to his ear.
"Five minutes are over, bitch." Dean said before Sam had even the chance to grunt his discomfort into the phone. "Get your ass moving." And with that Dean ended the call.
Sam opened his eyes far enough to glare at the phone which stayed utterly unimpressed.
"Yeah, yeah." He rolled to his back and rubbed the sleep off his face. A second glance at the phone told him that it was about time to get up but he really didn't want to.
He did manage to arrive at Dean's door before his brother called once again which Sam counted as a victory. Dean opened the door with a wide grin on his face and Cas standing rather awkwardly behind him. Sam took in the scene with a knowing smile, besides, the lingering smell of sex was still in the air but the coffee did a pretty good job covering it up. At least enough for Sam to enjoy his breakfast.
"While you were ... busy." Sam said with a pointed look at the rumbled bed. After that rude wakeup call Dean deserved a little teasing. "I found out a thing or two."
Over breakfast he clued the others in on what he'd found out about Steve and the hexbag. There was not that much on the bag itself so he handed it over to Cas to have a look at it.
"It's really old school black magic." Sam summed up what he knew about it. "Basically a curse to trigger accidents. Hard to track because there is nothing specific about it. As far as I can tell, it radiates bad luck."
Cas put the bag back on the table. "Sam is right. This is some powerful magic."
Sam shared a glance with Dean and they both rolled their eyes at that.
"Thanks, Captain Obvious." Dean shook his head. "Better question is if you can find these. This is most likely not the only one hidden in the building and I really don't want to take down every single wall in there."
Sam had to agree to that. Nursing his coffee he wondered how far gone a man had to be to curse innocent tenants he didn't even know just because he was mad at the company that had kicked him out of his home.
"I should be able to sense magic this strong." Cas confirmed.
"Good, that's one problem down." Sam nodded to that. "Question is what are we going to do about Steve?" Killing him was out of option but somehow he doubted they could talk him out of this. And there was nothing that would keep him from making new hexbags as soon as they were gone.
"We can't go back to the construction site over the day anyway. Let's check out his place first." Dean avoided that question as well. "Maybe we find something there."
With no better idea at hand they finished their breakfast and then drove over to Steve's place.
They rang first but as expected nobody opened the door. One picked lock later they stood in a small apartment. There were still boxes with unpacked stuff standing around and everything just screamed recently moved in at them. Sam still smelled the fresh paint and the glue they'd used for the new carpet. A few lamps were still missing and a shelf lay in pieces because Steve hadn't come around to put it together just yet. The whole apartment came off as a place to stay at but it didn't feel like somebody's home.
They went through everything and with three people that task was done quickly.
"Found it." Dean announced from the bedroom. When Sam and Cas came into the room they found Dean kneeling on the floor, going through the stuff he'd found in boxes under the bed.
"Why do they always hide it under the bed?" Dean wondered, flipping through a notebook.
"Don't know." Sam stepped closer. "Do you still hide your porn under your bed?"
"Not since I have a place to store it properly." Dean answered easily. "Here, have a look at these."
Sam didn't need to read the titles of the books Dean was handing him to know they were bad news.
Other boxes were full with handwritten notebooks and several glasses and bags with what he assumed were ingredients.
Dean was back at skimming through one of the notebooks.
"There are dates in here." He observed. "This one goes back to 1987."
"He's been in this game for quite a while." Sam picked up another one to have a look himself.
"And he ain't no fool either." Suddenly Steve spoke up behind them. Along with the sound of the safety clicked off of a gun.
Chapter 41
Masterpost