[fic] And the Highway Lines Pass By (2/4)
And the Highway Lines Pass By (2/4)
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four
Bobby calls and tells them he's found someone in California whose brother or lover or something made a deal eight years ago at a crossroads, and she's been searching six years for a way to get the guy out of it. "She might know something you don't," Bobby says.
They're 2000 miles from California, but Dean thinks they can make it in a little over a day if they speed and piss in empty soda bottles and drive through the night. They make it in 30 hours.
It's her son who made the deal, as a dare when he was 12 and they were visiting family in Mississippi. He hasn't lost in a video game ever since. His mom, whose name is Susan-call-me-Sue, is the only person who believes him, and her husband left her over it, accusing her of encouraging their kid's delusions. Dean's never liked listening to people's sob stories, and this one makes him more irritable than usual. But Sam is hanging onto every word, talking to the woman in a soft and comforting tone like they're the ones who are supposed to be helping her and not the other way around. Dean just knows that when they leave, Sam's going to want to have a deep heart-to-heart with him about the experience.
Sue doesn't know anything that Sam and Dean don't already, but she gives them a list of names and contact information of people she's spoken to. Dean wants to say something about what good that's going to do them when she's just told them none of these people have anything useful, but Sam's holding the sheet of paper so reverently Dean bites his tongue.
Sam hugs Sue on her front porch when they leave. Sam's wearing long sleeves so Dean can't see his bare arms, but he easily pictures the way Sam's muscles shift under his skin when his arms curve around her shoulders. He pictures it again and again, wonders stupidly if Sam'll hug him like that when the hellhound comes for him, before the two separate.
"What did you ask the demon for?" Sue asks then, the question Dean knows has been clawing at her teeth trying to get free for the last three hours.
"My brother died," Dean tells her without hesitation, still staring at Sam's bicep. "I asked her to give him back to me."
She doesn't have much of a response to that. They leave.
Sam insists on stopping at a diner about twenty miles from Sue's house. They sit across from each other at a booth by one of the windows, and Dean watches Sam input all of the phone numbers Sue gave them into his phone.
"So what's the plan?"
"I don't know," Sam answers after he puts his phone back in his pocket and picks up the menu by his elbow. "I figured we could call these people. There might not be much point since Sue's already done it, but it doesn't hurt to try. Maybe she didn't ask the right questions."
Dean's more than a little surprised Sam isn't already dialing the numbers as they sit. He isn’t sure whether he should mention this or let it drop, but the waitress comes before he can decide.
She's got blonde hair that might have been a lot darker once if her eyebrows are any indication and her lips are full and red. Dean recognizes that she's pretty in only a kind of vague way, and he doesn't even bother to glance at her nametag. He looks at her when it's his turn to order and then turns his attention back to Sam, watches him organize sugar packets like it's the most important thing he's done all week.
There's a car outside with a Stanford decal on the rear window, which Dean saw as they were getting out of the Impala and he started talking loudly about ketchup on eggs so Sam was so distracted he couldn't see it too. They're about 150 miles east of Palo Alto right now, which Dean first noticed late last night when he snatched the atlas from Sam's hands to see for himself that they were on the right highway. He'd forgotten about it until he saw the car, and now all of a sudden, when he can still see it out the window, Dean is feeling really twitchy. Twitchy with a little bit of shaky because Sam is clearly chewing on some deep thought on the other side of the booth and not acting like he's anywhere near letting Dean in on it.
"So are we gonna talk about it or what?" Dean asks. There's a dessert menu propped up behind the salt and pepper shakers, and he reaches for it just to give his hands something to do.
"You want to talk?" Sam says, lips curling in silent laughter. "You're kidding."
"I didn't say I wanted to talk. I just figured you were dying to, and if I didn't let you get it out now, you'd be coming at me wanting to hug when I'm in the shower or something."
The waitress comes back by with two cups of coffee, and Sam smiles at her, sweet enough it almost looks real. "Don't worry, Dean," he says when she's gone. "I'm fine. Are you?"
"Peachy."
Sam's cup is steaming and Dean's definitely isn't, and he doesn't know what karma is trying to tell him but it pisses him off just the same.
Sam grunts a little and picks through the perfectly organized sugar packets, plucks out one Equal, and empties it into his coffee.
Dean knows that something's off, but it takes him a few seconds to realize what. "Dude, since when do you take your coffee with that artificial crap? For as long as I've known you, you turn your nose up at anything but the real deal."
Sam looks at him like he's just started speaking Russian and then he pointedly isn't looking at Dean at all. "I switched a few years ago, Dean. People's taste buds change."
"Yeah, I know that, smartass. I'm just wondering why you didn't tell me. I get you coffee all the time. You couldn't have told me I've been putting the wrong stuff in it this whole time?"
"I did. At a gas station on the way back from Jericho, remember? After we got rid of that Woman in White?"
"No, Sam, you didn't, okay. I would have remembered it," Dean snaps, harsher than he means to be. He figures there's a lot about Sam he's forgotten, a lot that's okay to forget, but nothing like this. Things like preferred toothpaste, preferred flavor of cough syrup, his usual at McDonald's, how he likes his coffee, that stuff's important because it's what Sam trusts Dean to do and to do right.
"Whatever, it's not a big deal. It's the caffeine that matters, not the taste. Now you know." Sam doesn't get it, and Dean is damned if he's going to explain it to him. He'd never hear the end of it.
Sam takes a big gulp, tells Dean with his expression that it burns all the way down, and turns to stare out the window. Sam's still chewing on that thought, though much more slowly now, like he's savoring it instead of trying to choke on it.
The sun is filtering through the glass at an angle that plays right on Sam's lips, makes them shine and look wetter than they are. Dean finds himself thinking Sam is beautiful in a way he hasn't thought about another person since Cassie. He doesn't realize he's doing it at first, and then when he does it freaks him out so much he doesn't know what to do except sit there frozen.
Until he follows Sam's gaze out the window, sees that it's fixed on the car outside with the Stanford decal, and he doesn't know everything he's feeling at that moment but he knows it's all too strong for him to feel in front of Sam.
Dean almost plows down the waitress, who's coming at them carrying their food on her tray, on his way to the bathroom, where he splashes his face with water and then washes his hands twice, thinking about Sam and Cassie and what she'd say if she could see him now.
*
They head to Arkansas when they get word of what sounds like a demonic possession. It ends up just being a high school kid who decides to turn Satanist and go Columbine on his classmates, with only shitty parents and maybe the beginnings of schizophrenia to blame for it. Nothing supernatural about the case at all. Sam and Dean argue in the car on the way out of town over whether it was a waste of time. By the time they decide to stop driving for the night, they've pretty much agreed that since it's over and done it shouldn't matter anymore.
Dean's seen so much of Sam and no one else lately he's starting to get a little delirious over it. Sam split his knuckles on the Satanist kid's nose and dripped blood on Dean's jeans, which Dean picks at when Sam's not looking just to watch the flakes get lodged under his nails, and Sam hasn't showered for two days and the smell makes Dean dizzy and half-hard.
Yeah, Dean thinks, way too much Sam.
He throws himself on one of the motel beds while Sam showers, listens to it creak every time one of his muscles even twitches, and makes a mental list of all the reasons it's safe to leave Sam alone in the room for an hour or two. By the time Sam comes out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, Dean's convinced himself.
"I'm going out," he says as he pulls his jacket back on. "Shouldn't be gone long. Don't wait up."
Sam looks sort of startled but not unhappy, and he smiles a little as he waves goodbye.
There's a place about six miles down the road that doesn't look too bad, and Dean's feeling pretty good about himself as he pulls into the parking lot. But then he notices that one of the cars there is an old Volkswagen Beetle, and Dean thinks about a knife covered in blood in the backseat and a demon in Sam's body telling him he can't save his brother. He turns the car around and doesn't look back.
Dean stops at a liquor store on the way back and buys a six-pack of beer, which he drinks warm on the hood of the Impala in the motel parking lot before he climbs into the backseat and jerks off, thinking of nothing in particular.
The television is on when Dean finally ventures back into the hotel room, but Sam switches it off before Dean can see what he's watching. Dean raises an eyebrow, but Sam isn't looking at him.
"Hey," Dean says, and digs in his pockets until he finds a wad of wrinkled dollar bills. "Go get me something from the vending machine, will you? Some chips or something."
Sam frowns at the money and doesn't make any move to get off the bed. "You can't get them yourself?"
"Don't know where the machines are. You know I count on you to keep track of that stuff." He waves the money in front of Sam's face, just to be obnoxious. "Come on, Sammy. Sour cream and onion sounds good. Or Cheetos. And you can get yourself something if you want."
"You're too kind," Sam says. He stands, yanks the money out of Dean's hand, and starts putting on his shoes.
Dean counts to five after Sam leaves and then turns on the TV. There's blonde on her knees with some guy's cock down her throat. Dean is a little relieved, since the last time he thought he interrupted Sam in the middle of porn-watching it turned out to be a documentary on Princess Diana and Dean had worried that his brother was more fucked up than he'd thought.
The porn isn't very hot, which Dean figures is why he didn't catch Sam with his hand in his pants. Either that or he'd already finished by the time Dean came in and now there's a come stain on the bed or dirty tissues in the trashcan. Or he'd been working up to it and now he's standing in front of the vending machine with an erection, cursing Dean for showing up before he'd gotten the chance to wrap his hand around it.
Dean feels lightheaded and hot and more than a little dirty for thinking about it. He turns the television back off.
"Sammy, Sammy," he says when Sam pushes the door open a few minutes later. "Next time you should tell me. If you're spending our hard-earned cash on porn, I think I deserve to get in on the action. I mean, think about it, it could be a good bonding experience for us. I wouldn't even make fun of you if you just had to whip it out and-"
"Dean," Sam hisses, and sends a bag of chips flying at Dean's smirking face.
*
They try to avoid major highways, at all times of the day but especially in broad daylight. A '67 Impala is conspicuous even with a new license plate, and to get pulled over wouldn't end pretty for either of them. But sometimes it's either damn near unavoidable or the alternative would take more time than they've got. It means Dean has to drive more cautiously than he's comfortable with, but he doesn't mind too much. Most of his music was meant to be played while driving down a highway and sounds a hell of a lot better than on some gravely back road, so Dean figures it's worth it.
They're riding I-90 east through South Dakota at half-past midnight on a Monday, sharing the road with mostly just truck drivers, which is better than cops but not by much, considering Dean still remembers vividly the damage a semi can do to the Impala and the people in it.
Dean's in the mood for his Zeppelin mixtape #2, but it's who-the-fuck knows where at the moment, probably somewhere Sam threw it because no way Dean would ever be so careless with his tapes as to lose one. So he's listening to his Zeppelin mixtape #1, which is good but not exactly what he wants, and he wakes Sam up by shoving his box full of cassette tapes in his face and watches out of the corner of his eye as Sam, flashlight held steady between his teeth, takes inventory of his music collection.
"Dude, I swear," Sam starts, but that's about as much as Dean can understand since he's talking around a flashlight and not even trying to enunciate.
"Don't talk with your mouth full, Sammy. Remember that time you sprayed your little girlfriend with hotdog when you were 13? I'd have thought that'd have broken you of the habit."
It had been pretty hilarious, especially when Dean decided the best way to make Sam feel better about himself was to spray Sam with food every night at dinner for the next two weeks. Sam looks like he feels the same about the incident now as he did then though, and he scowls at Dean while he spits the flashlight out.
"You've got the case for it right here," Sam says, holding up an empty cassette case. He throws it back in the box and then picks up a tape without a case. "And you've got this unmarked tape that looks like it's got…dried mud stuck in it."
It does. Sam made the tape back when he was learning to drive, and when he slid into the driver's seat and popped it into the tape deck for the first time, he grinned wide over at Dean and said, "Driver picks the music, Dean. Don't change the rule now." Dean was always sure it was music selected just to irritate the hell out of him, but he shut his cakehole like shotgun's supposed to. When Sam left for Stanford, Dean dropped it in a puddle of muddy water in a motel parking lot and tried to make himself crush it with his heel.
He tries not to be insulted that Sam doesn't recognize it.
"But I'm not seeing anything that says 'Zeppelin #2,'" Sam continues, dropping the tape back into the box.
"So it's not in there," Dean says. "Check in the back. Or under the seats. It's in here somewhere, Sammy, and if it's not, I'm blaming you and for the next 600 miles I will sing every song on it again and again until you swear to treat my music with the respect it deserves."
"Dude, I am not crawling into the backseat in the middle of the night to go looking for a cassette tape that you lost."
Sam's waving the flashlight in his hand as he talks, like it's some kind of magic wand that will make Dean forget about the tape. And the thing is, for a second it does, since now Dean can see the spit shining on the handle, probably getting Sam's fingers wet, and the delirium comes back full-force and all he can hear is static sweeter than Zeppelin.
But Dean's gotten used to this by now, and he bounces back quick, turns his eyes to the road and hums Metallica in his head.
"And anyway," Sam is saying, "we're listening to Led Zeppelin right now, right? What's wrong with this? Almost all the songs are the same anyway. Or we could, you know, listen to a Zeppelin tape you didn't make yourself."
"It's all about song order, Sam. Song A and Song B are good, but sometimes Song B has to come before Song A. It's like if you burned the bodies before you salted them. It just doesn't work like it's supposed to."
He's going for something kind of deep, something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because Sam usually responds better to that kind of crap. Truth is, all his homemade tapes came from too much time spent holed up alone in shitty motel rooms with shitty cable and nothing but the cheap double tape deck he used to carry in the car to keep him company. Song order mattered for however long until the tape was done or it was time to move on or whatever, and after that it's just like when you crave a glazed donut instead of a cream-filled one; you don't sit and ask why, you just fucking go get one.
Anyway, his bullshit works. Sam stares at him like he's touched, like Dean's just given him some very important kernel of his soul or something, which makes Dean feel a little sick because Christ, but then it's okay because Sam starts to crawl into the backseat.
Or tries to, anyway. He's too big to be climbing all around the car like he did when they were kids, but he does manage to get most of his upper body back there and his arms are long enough to reach pretty much anything he might want to grab.
The only thing is that his ass is still in the front seat, sticking out right next to Dean's head. It doesn't quite have the effect of the flashlight wet from Sam's mouth, probably because this time he's expecting it, but it's close. Dean shifts closer to window and leans against the door. Too much Sam, too long, yadda yadda, but if he's already used to it now, that means it'll fade soon enough. He knows how these things work.
A few minutes later, Sam sits back down, a cassette tape in his hand. "It was under you," he says.
Dean ejects Zeppelin #1 from the tape deck and Sam pops in Zeppelin #2 in its place. It's in the middle of "Black Dog," the sixth song on the cassette, which isn't really the song Dean was thinking of when he started craving this tape, but it works. He taps along with the rhythm on the steering wheel while Sam yawns big, leans back in his seat, but doesn't close his eyes.
When Dean opens his mouth, he's mostly doing it to see what will come out. He's not too surprised when he says, "So what music do you like?" because it's a question he's been thinking about for a few days now.
Sam, though, looks like Dean's just tried to put a hoodoo curse on him, eyes wide and head jerking back a little. "What?"
Dean shrugs and rubs the back of his neck. He keeps his eyes on the road but his attention on Sam. "I don't know. I just thought, you know what music I like to listen to, but I don't know what you like. You put the radio on sometimes, but I don't pay much attention. I mean, other than to think it's crap."
Dean expects a snort or an eye roll or something for that, but he doesn't get anything. He's kind of disappointed, but he doesn't dwell on it. "So. You got any bands you like or anything?"
Dean looked up popular bands on the internet not too long ago, tried to piece together what smart college kids listen to nowadays-just curious, that's all, nothing to do with Sam and his sudden preference for artificial sweetener, not like he's been sitting around wondering what other changes his brother's been keeping from him-and now he tries to summon a few names. "What about the Dave Matthews Band?" he asks, glancing at Sam's still-startled face. "You listen to them?"
And just like that, Sam's expression shifts so that he looks kind of offended. His eyebrows are furrowed, and he's not exactly frowning but definitely not smiling either. "Yeah, sure," he says. "I guess."
"You guess? That's not much of an answer, Sammy." Dean figures he should have known Sam wouldn't make such a simple question easy. "Come on, didn't you listen to music at Stanford?"
"I don't have much opportunity now to listen to the music I did at Stanford, Dean," Sam says, and yeah, he's definitely not happy Dean picked this as a topic of conversation. He slouches down in his seat and leans his head against the window. "Wake me up when it's my turn to drive." Then he closes his eyes, and the conversation is over.
*
It's not too often Dean finds a hunt before Sam. This time, though, he's glad he does.
Three deaths in Chicago. All boys, college-age. All during weeks of a full moon. Bodies scratched and gnawed on, chest cavities wide open, hearts missing. Police suspect a psycho with a mean pit bull.
If he tells Sam, Sam'll insist that they hightail it to Chicago, and he'll spend the whole drive on the phone with every person whose number is in his address book and who might know how to cure lycanthropy. He'll tell himself and Dean that this time will be different, this time they'll save the poor fucker who's eating people every full moon. Sam'll meet the werewolf, see a little bit of Madison in them, fall a little bit in love again with or without the fucking, and Dean will have to wipe the splatters of blood and tears off Sam's face when he has to admit for the second time that you can't save a werewolf.
Dean clears the internet history and closes out of the browser window. He's breaking a rule, one of the biggest rules there is, one Dad taught them and made them swear they'd always follow: you don't turn your back on a hunt, and sure as hell not for personal reasons. But this, this is different. You can turn your back if you know for certain you can't handle it, if you're damn sure it'll take more than you've got.
Somewhere, he figures, there's someone like Gordon, someone with a dead sister or brother or whatever and a lifelong vendetta against werewolves. He'll forward the find to Ellen or Bobby or maybe Jo, and they'll find someone who can take it, no problem. Besides, you can't hunt werewolves too well without a full moon, and there's a whole month until the next one. Not too much anyone can do now.
"Find anything?" Sam asks when he comes back, a coffee in each hand and a bag of food held tightly between two fingers. His breathing's a little heavy like he sprinted back to the motel room, and he's smiling, all teeth, in a way that probably means he did something like piss in Dean's coffee to get him back for the picture of Pennywise Dean set as the wallpaper on Sam's laptop yesterday. He's happy and alive, and seeing it right then makes Dean's stomach lurch a little.
"No," Dean answers, and reaches to take the cup Sam holds out to him.
*
They exorcise three demons in Des Moines. It's nothing short of a miracle, since it's two humans against three powerful supernatural beings, but they succeed. They walk out covered in sweat and blood, grinning just to grin, high on triumph.
Dean isn't expecting anything but an eye roll when he turns to Sam and asks, "So, want to go out and celebrate?" They're disgusting, sleep-deprived and blood-splattered and sweat-stained, and Sam is Sam, who even when he isn't roleplaying as a monk prefers to be in public only when he's well-rested and squeaky clean like a good boy.
He does a violent double-take when Sam says, "Sure," with no sarcasm at all and like it's no big deal, like whatever funk he's been in for the last two goddamn months never existed at all. Then Dean feels a rush of pride so strong-because he's pulled himself out without even having to talk about it-it could make him stumble if he was a lesser man, but he's not so he claps Sam on the shoulder instead.
"All right, Sammy," he says. "All right. You pick the place."
Sam says he wants wings. Dean's never once seen Sam even look at a plate of hot wings, much less eat any, but he goes with it anyway. They get a room for the night at a cheap motel with such low lighting it turns Dean on just a little bit, mostly because Sam's breathing is never quiet when he starts dousing his cuts in rubbing alcohol and it's too dark to see the blood that always reminds Dean he's in pain.
They both shower quick and make a half-assed attempt to look like decent human beings before they leave, Sam with his laptop in its bag on his shoulder but no journal, book, or calendar, which Dean decides is acceptable.
The place they end up deciding on isn't really much to write home about. It has a pool table with a brown stain in the center in the shape of a huge dick and a foosball table that's missing a ball. But the wings are 30 cents each and come with a stick of celery stuck in a small tub of blue cheese that seems to delight Sam to no end, so Dean figures the place is all right.
There's not too many people, either because it's a Monday or because everyone else in Des Moines is more wary than they are of pool tables with dicks in the middle.
There are only three chicks in the whole place. One's a girl in the corner alone, wings and a soda in front of her, so underage Dean thinks if he fucked her he could hear her cherry pop, wet and loud. Too young to be in a place like this, not that Dean can judge since he and Sam used to be the same. Though probably not for the same reasons.
The girl keeps looking over their way, eyeballing Sam, not that Sam acts like he notices or cares about anything except his beer and the wings, which are crunchy in the wrong places and sort of gross. If Sam fucked her, he'd probably break her, but maybe that's her thing. The image is kind of hot, but at the same time it makes Dean a little sick. He's got a few kinks, but kiddie porn isn't one of them.
The other two girls are probably somewhere around Sam's age, one blonde with long legs and the other with pale pink lips and hair too red to be natural. They've got a table together, but the blonde looks more interested in a half-drunk frat boy, who's holding a pool cue and leaning on the table and smiling at her like whatever she's saying is the most interesting thing he's ever heard, than her friend who's just looking around the room like she's bored as hell.
The redhead is pretty, Dean supposes, though definitely not a knockout. Her tits are too small, maybe nonexistent, and her nose is a little too big. But when she glances over his way, Dean grins wide at her, shows her every bit of gorgeous he knows he's got, and feels a nice and familiar thrill when she smiles back.
In the bag.
He turns to Sam, who's apparently pulled out his laptop in the time Dean's spent examining the place and looks so content with whatever he's doing that it bothers Dean enough to ask, "Dude, what are you doing? They don't have wireless here, do they?"
"No, Dean. You know, people had uses for computers before they had internet," Sam says, very calmly, as he raises his beer to his mouth.
Dean figures he doesn't want to know what levels of geekery his brother has succumbed to. "Hey, you okay here? 'Cause I'm gonna-" He gestures vaguely in the direction of the redhead, who giggles a little at the attention, and Sam follows the motion.
Sam looks annoyed but not surprised, and he gives Dean his best 'bitch, please' face when he says, "I'm not a kid, Dean," and then turns away. Which is pretty close to a "Have fun!" in Dean's mind, so he grins at Sam even though he isn't looking and then makes his way over to her.
It takes him about half an hour-which isn't his best time, but still pretty good after months without practice-of smiling and charming and feeding her lines about the color of her eyes to convince the girl, whose name is Teri, that all she wants in the world is to lead Dean to the women's restroom, press her back to the wall of the handicap stall, and let Dean put his head under her dress.
Teri's legs are a little on the short side, which gives Dean a hard angle to work with, but he manages. It'd be nice, he thinks idly, if he could lift a girl up while he did this, hold her legs on his shoulders and move her so he can get his tongue in nice and easy. He might be able to, but he's never tried and now's not the time for experimenting. Right now he's too hungry for it to stop and say, "Hey, let me try something."
Sam probably could though. He has to be big enough to hold a girl on his shoulders while he ate her. The image is more than a little hot, makes Dean's tongue fumble a little and then move faster. Sam's probably a good fuck all around, with hands as big as his and lips as pretty and Dean's not one to go around admiring other guy's dicks but he's seen Sam's and thinks no girl could complain. No guy either, if Sam's into that sort of thing, which Dean's never seen evidence of, but you never know. After all, Dean's not much into the idea of letting anything up his ass himself, but maybe if someone like Sam asked him to spread his legs, then maybe. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it was someone like Sam.
When Dean finally gets his cock in Teri, while she's straddling him on the toilet, after she's come all over his chin, it lasts something like two minutes, and then he's shooting in the condom, grunting and shaking and seeing stars like it's his first time all over again. It's embarrassing as hell, but Teri doesn't seem to mind, probably because after Dean pulls out he wastes no time in putting his fingers in and making her scream into his hair.
He keeps thinking about Sam, out there with buffalo sauce smeared at the corner of his mouth, long fingers wiping dust from the open spaces in his keyboard in that way he does when he's wasting time, waiting for Dean. He's thinking about the week he spent alone when Sam disappeared, sleeping in the Impala with his phone by his ear, waking in a panic with his arm stretched toward the empty passenger seat, picturing all the different ways he would kick Sam's ass when he found him and all the ways afterwards he could touch Sam, make sure Sam's real and still there and not running again, without Sam realizing what he was doing. He's thinking about whether fucking a guy would mean he'd have to learn to fuck all over again or if his old tricks would get him just as far, if Sam would moan like he's never been happier and cling like he'll never let go if Dean curled two fingers in his ass.
Dean thinks, as he's washing his hands in the sink while Teri cheerfully puts her number in Dean's phone for him, that this tops that waitress in Tampa as the worst sex he's ever had. He knows he's fucked in the head, but he doesn't like to have it spelled out for him in flashing neon lights.
"Call me," Teri says, handing Dean back his phone, glowing a little and smiling all sweet and pretty.
It's easy to blame her. If she was a good lay, Dean wouldn't have had to resort to thinking about his fucking brother to get off. First chance he gets, he's deleting the number from his phone and forgetting this whole night ever happened.
Sam's not alone when he gets back. The kid from the corner's moved her soda and barely-touched plate of hot wings right next to Sam, and the two are talking, something involving the words "theorem" and "derivatives." Sam's eating the stick of celery from her plate. He's also drunk. Not slurring, in danger of tripping over his huge ass feet and passing out on the floor drunk, but his voice is louder than usual and his eyes have a certain shine to them and his smile's too wide to come from pure happiness. Dean knows his brother, and he knows his happy-drunk face.
The only thing Dean doesn't know is how Sam went from nursing a single beer to drunk in a little under an hour, especially when now he's sitting here with only a half-empty glass of ice water in front of him. Because Dean's seen Sam drink, and he's not exactly a lightweight. He's buzzed when most people are wasted and can drink Dean under the table, so he must have been out here doing shots like a machine to get happy-drunk in the time Dean was gone. It's kind of impressive, even if Dean's not exactly sure how he managed it.
Oh, yeah, and Dean also doesn't know why Sam's sitting here drunk, talking to a kid who's clearly carrying something of a torch for him and might even be trying to seduce him with geekery. It'd probably be funny any other time, but because Dean's just had the most fucked up sex of his life and that kind of shit really screws with his view of the world, he goes from disturbed and irritated to full on pissed off in about two seconds.
"Hey," he says, letting his tone do most of the talking for him, not that Sam seems to notice since he looks at Dean with an expression that's all sparkling wine with a little fizz around the edges.
"Dean!" Sam says, a note of honest-to-god shock in his voice like Dean's the last person he expects to see right now or maybe like he's forgotten Dean was even here. It doesn't help Dean's mood, and it definitely lowers it when Sam continues with: "That was quick."
Dean sometimes forgets that one of Sam's purposes in life is to remind Dean of all his failures so he can never feel completely all right with the world. He could probably do without the reminders.
"C'mon, Sammy, let's go. We gotta be on the road again first thing." Dean figures he can hold onto his anger long enough to let Sam have it when he's good and hungover, grimacing when Dean's voice even threatens to rise. Besides, it'll give him time to figure out exactly what he's got to be angry at Sam for. "And last thing I need is one of us falling asleep behind the wheel and wrecking my car."
Little Lolita is giving Dean a look like she's sizing him up, narrowed and eerily unblinking eyes and a little smirk that unnerves Dean just as much as it ticks him off. He looks down at her for maybe a second before he decides it's best if he just ignores her and stares straight at Sam. Who's licking blue cheese off his fingers all slow and thorough and disturbingly hot, because apparently tonight the Dean Is Fucked Up Show doesn't get any commercial breaks. If Dean didn't love his brother so fucking much, he'd leave him here to get arrested for statutory rape.
"Yeah, all right," Sam says, and takes a gulp of his ice water before he turns to the kid. "Charlie, we-"
"Yeah," she says, smiling bright at Sam and all but bouncing out of her seat. "Yeah, I should probably get home anyway. It's getting late, and I've got school."
It throws Dean a little, since it seems to him like if you want to get picked up by an older guy you shouldn't mention things like school that show just how young you are. Sam's a freak in a lot of ways, but pedophilia isn't one of them. Dean wonders if Sam's been giving off some kind of pervert vibes without knowing it, like going starry-eyed and drooling at the mention of a steady school and a nice normal life, and that makes Dean just want to smack Sam on the back of the head nice and hard.
"Yeah. Good luck with calculus!"
"Thank you." Charlie takes a few steps away from them, then turns and gives Sam a shy smile that Dean's seen way too many times sent his way from girls twice as old. "I'll see you around sometime?"
Fat chance, since the job is done and they're leaving town in a matter of hours, but Sam grins and says, "Yeah, maybe," like he didn't get the memo on the subject.
"Calculus," Dean hisses the moment the kid turns back around to leave, not even caring if she's still in hearing range or not. "Dude, what is she in, like, fourth grade?"
"Eighth, actually," Sam answers, his smile still all sparkling wine but with a little less fizz this time, as he bends to pick up his bag at his feet. "But I know, it's impressive. They don't teach calculus until high school, so they have to bring in a tutor for her while her friends are in algebra or whatever."
Of course. Child genius, different from everyone else at school. She probably has some sob story too, something about her parents and why they don't care that she's out after midnight on a Monday, and Sam just sat right here eating it all up, thinking about how she could score herself a full ride to a hotshot school and make something of herself. No wonder the kid thought Sam was hot for her.
"Great. I leave for an hour and you go and get a hard-on for an eighth grade math geek with a guy's name."
Sam starts to say something, probably to defend himself or remind Dean it wasn't even a whole hour, but Dean isn't listening anymore. Instead he's realizing that Charlie hasn't left, that she's standing in the doorway still looking at them with a smirk too cold for any eighth grader, and that her eyes are black, all black.
"Fuck."
Then she's running out the door, and when Dean tries to follow, suddenly there's a chair in his way that definitely wasn't there before. He trips over it, gets a wooden chair back right to the gut, which knocks the wind out of him, and he spends the next few seconds kneeling on the floor, curled in on himself.
Sam's next to him instantly, looking way more sober than he did two minutes ago, one hand on his shoulder and the other on his neck, holding Dean so that he has to look at him and gasp for air right in Sam's face. "Dean," he's saying. "Dean. Dude, what happened?"
People are staring, and Dean can feel it. Maybe one or two are even coming over to make sure he's okay, that he's not drunk or crazy enough to hurt himself or someone else. It gives him twice the incentive to push Sam away and drag himself to his feet. "Charlie," he heaves. "Possessed." Then he runs, trusting Sam to connect the dots.
There's no one outside and no signs that anyone just left. The kid's too young to make her getaway by car, so she had to have gone by foot. Or on bike. Dean sprints to the edge of the parking lot and looks up and down the street. There's no one.
When he turns back around, he sees Sam coming toward him, bag slung over one shoulder, looking pretty damn spooked.
"She was possessed?" Sam's swaying just a little bit, either from emotion or alcohol or an unhealthy mix of the two, and Dean grabs his shoulder to steady him.
"Yeah. Her eyes-"
Sam's face tells him he doesn't need to finish the sentence, so he doesn't.
They're good and stocked up on holy water. There's enough of it in the trunk that Dean could keep her incapacitated with a steady stream of it while Sam did the exorcism. But they'd have to catch her first, chase her down and hold her down, and neither of them is in the right frame of mind for taking down another demon tonight.
"Four demons in one town," Dean says. It's the only thing he can think to say. "That's something to put in the brochures."
Four demons and one of them he left alone with his baby brother. She could have slit Sam's throat and stomped all over his corpse as she walked out, all while Dean fucked some girl thinking about Sam.
He could kiss Sam then, probably. Maybe short and sweet, brush of lips and pull back, or maybe long and deep so he could fuck Sam's mouth with his tongue. Sam wouldn't stop him now, with the alcohol making him slow along with the knowledge that they let a demon get so close without noticing. He might even see it as the act of guilt for leaving his kid brother alone and vulnerable that it half is and forget the whole thing if Dean pretends to cry about it tomorrow. The only thing that stops him is that he's still got Teri on his tongue, and she had a taste so strong he would never be able to taste Sam through it.
"C'mon," he says, putting one hand on Sam's shoulder and nudging him toward the car. "Bedtime for lightweights. We got demon-hunting to do, and you're no good to me like this."
Part Three
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four
Bobby calls and tells them he's found someone in California whose brother or lover or something made a deal eight years ago at a crossroads, and she's been searching six years for a way to get the guy out of it. "She might know something you don't," Bobby says.
They're 2000 miles from California, but Dean thinks they can make it in a little over a day if they speed and piss in empty soda bottles and drive through the night. They make it in 30 hours.
It's her son who made the deal, as a dare when he was 12 and they were visiting family in Mississippi. He hasn't lost in a video game ever since. His mom, whose name is Susan-call-me-Sue, is the only person who believes him, and her husband left her over it, accusing her of encouraging their kid's delusions. Dean's never liked listening to people's sob stories, and this one makes him more irritable than usual. But Sam is hanging onto every word, talking to the woman in a soft and comforting tone like they're the ones who are supposed to be helping her and not the other way around. Dean just knows that when they leave, Sam's going to want to have a deep heart-to-heart with him about the experience.
Sue doesn't know anything that Sam and Dean don't already, but she gives them a list of names and contact information of people she's spoken to. Dean wants to say something about what good that's going to do them when she's just told them none of these people have anything useful, but Sam's holding the sheet of paper so reverently Dean bites his tongue.
Sam hugs Sue on her front porch when they leave. Sam's wearing long sleeves so Dean can't see his bare arms, but he easily pictures the way Sam's muscles shift under his skin when his arms curve around her shoulders. He pictures it again and again, wonders stupidly if Sam'll hug him like that when the hellhound comes for him, before the two separate.
"What did you ask the demon for?" Sue asks then, the question Dean knows has been clawing at her teeth trying to get free for the last three hours.
"My brother died," Dean tells her without hesitation, still staring at Sam's bicep. "I asked her to give him back to me."
She doesn't have much of a response to that. They leave.
Sam insists on stopping at a diner about twenty miles from Sue's house. They sit across from each other at a booth by one of the windows, and Dean watches Sam input all of the phone numbers Sue gave them into his phone.
"So what's the plan?"
"I don't know," Sam answers after he puts his phone back in his pocket and picks up the menu by his elbow. "I figured we could call these people. There might not be much point since Sue's already done it, but it doesn't hurt to try. Maybe she didn't ask the right questions."
Dean's more than a little surprised Sam isn't already dialing the numbers as they sit. He isn’t sure whether he should mention this or let it drop, but the waitress comes before he can decide.
She's got blonde hair that might have been a lot darker once if her eyebrows are any indication and her lips are full and red. Dean recognizes that she's pretty in only a kind of vague way, and he doesn't even bother to glance at her nametag. He looks at her when it's his turn to order and then turns his attention back to Sam, watches him organize sugar packets like it's the most important thing he's done all week.
There's a car outside with a Stanford decal on the rear window, which Dean saw as they were getting out of the Impala and he started talking loudly about ketchup on eggs so Sam was so distracted he couldn't see it too. They're about 150 miles east of Palo Alto right now, which Dean first noticed late last night when he snatched the atlas from Sam's hands to see for himself that they were on the right highway. He'd forgotten about it until he saw the car, and now all of a sudden, when he can still see it out the window, Dean is feeling really twitchy. Twitchy with a little bit of shaky because Sam is clearly chewing on some deep thought on the other side of the booth and not acting like he's anywhere near letting Dean in on it.
"So are we gonna talk about it or what?" Dean asks. There's a dessert menu propped up behind the salt and pepper shakers, and he reaches for it just to give his hands something to do.
"You want to talk?" Sam says, lips curling in silent laughter. "You're kidding."
"I didn't say I wanted to talk. I just figured you were dying to, and if I didn't let you get it out now, you'd be coming at me wanting to hug when I'm in the shower or something."
The waitress comes back by with two cups of coffee, and Sam smiles at her, sweet enough it almost looks real. "Don't worry, Dean," he says when she's gone. "I'm fine. Are you?"
"Peachy."
Sam's cup is steaming and Dean's definitely isn't, and he doesn't know what karma is trying to tell him but it pisses him off just the same.
Sam grunts a little and picks through the perfectly organized sugar packets, plucks out one Equal, and empties it into his coffee.
Dean knows that something's off, but it takes him a few seconds to realize what. "Dude, since when do you take your coffee with that artificial crap? For as long as I've known you, you turn your nose up at anything but the real deal."
Sam looks at him like he's just started speaking Russian and then he pointedly isn't looking at Dean at all. "I switched a few years ago, Dean. People's taste buds change."
"Yeah, I know that, smartass. I'm just wondering why you didn't tell me. I get you coffee all the time. You couldn't have told me I've been putting the wrong stuff in it this whole time?"
"I did. At a gas station on the way back from Jericho, remember? After we got rid of that Woman in White?"
"No, Sam, you didn't, okay. I would have remembered it," Dean snaps, harsher than he means to be. He figures there's a lot about Sam he's forgotten, a lot that's okay to forget, but nothing like this. Things like preferred toothpaste, preferred flavor of cough syrup, his usual at McDonald's, how he likes his coffee, that stuff's important because it's what Sam trusts Dean to do and to do right.
"Whatever, it's not a big deal. It's the caffeine that matters, not the taste. Now you know." Sam doesn't get it, and Dean is damned if he's going to explain it to him. He'd never hear the end of it.
Sam takes a big gulp, tells Dean with his expression that it burns all the way down, and turns to stare out the window. Sam's still chewing on that thought, though much more slowly now, like he's savoring it instead of trying to choke on it.
The sun is filtering through the glass at an angle that plays right on Sam's lips, makes them shine and look wetter than they are. Dean finds himself thinking Sam is beautiful in a way he hasn't thought about another person since Cassie. He doesn't realize he's doing it at first, and then when he does it freaks him out so much he doesn't know what to do except sit there frozen.
Until he follows Sam's gaze out the window, sees that it's fixed on the car outside with the Stanford decal, and he doesn't know everything he's feeling at that moment but he knows it's all too strong for him to feel in front of Sam.
Dean almost plows down the waitress, who's coming at them carrying their food on her tray, on his way to the bathroom, where he splashes his face with water and then washes his hands twice, thinking about Sam and Cassie and what she'd say if she could see him now.
*
They head to Arkansas when they get word of what sounds like a demonic possession. It ends up just being a high school kid who decides to turn Satanist and go Columbine on his classmates, with only shitty parents and maybe the beginnings of schizophrenia to blame for it. Nothing supernatural about the case at all. Sam and Dean argue in the car on the way out of town over whether it was a waste of time. By the time they decide to stop driving for the night, they've pretty much agreed that since it's over and done it shouldn't matter anymore.
Dean's seen so much of Sam and no one else lately he's starting to get a little delirious over it. Sam split his knuckles on the Satanist kid's nose and dripped blood on Dean's jeans, which Dean picks at when Sam's not looking just to watch the flakes get lodged under his nails, and Sam hasn't showered for two days and the smell makes Dean dizzy and half-hard.
Yeah, Dean thinks, way too much Sam.
He throws himself on one of the motel beds while Sam showers, listens to it creak every time one of his muscles even twitches, and makes a mental list of all the reasons it's safe to leave Sam alone in the room for an hour or two. By the time Sam comes out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, Dean's convinced himself.
"I'm going out," he says as he pulls his jacket back on. "Shouldn't be gone long. Don't wait up."
Sam looks sort of startled but not unhappy, and he smiles a little as he waves goodbye.
There's a place about six miles down the road that doesn't look too bad, and Dean's feeling pretty good about himself as he pulls into the parking lot. But then he notices that one of the cars there is an old Volkswagen Beetle, and Dean thinks about a knife covered in blood in the backseat and a demon in Sam's body telling him he can't save his brother. He turns the car around and doesn't look back.
Dean stops at a liquor store on the way back and buys a six-pack of beer, which he drinks warm on the hood of the Impala in the motel parking lot before he climbs into the backseat and jerks off, thinking of nothing in particular.
The television is on when Dean finally ventures back into the hotel room, but Sam switches it off before Dean can see what he's watching. Dean raises an eyebrow, but Sam isn't looking at him.
"Hey," Dean says, and digs in his pockets until he finds a wad of wrinkled dollar bills. "Go get me something from the vending machine, will you? Some chips or something."
Sam frowns at the money and doesn't make any move to get off the bed. "You can't get them yourself?"
"Don't know where the machines are. You know I count on you to keep track of that stuff." He waves the money in front of Sam's face, just to be obnoxious. "Come on, Sammy. Sour cream and onion sounds good. Or Cheetos. And you can get yourself something if you want."
"You're too kind," Sam says. He stands, yanks the money out of Dean's hand, and starts putting on his shoes.
Dean counts to five after Sam leaves and then turns on the TV. There's blonde on her knees with some guy's cock down her throat. Dean is a little relieved, since the last time he thought he interrupted Sam in the middle of porn-watching it turned out to be a documentary on Princess Diana and Dean had worried that his brother was more fucked up than he'd thought.
The porn isn't very hot, which Dean figures is why he didn't catch Sam with his hand in his pants. Either that or he'd already finished by the time Dean came in and now there's a come stain on the bed or dirty tissues in the trashcan. Or he'd been working up to it and now he's standing in front of the vending machine with an erection, cursing Dean for showing up before he'd gotten the chance to wrap his hand around it.
Dean feels lightheaded and hot and more than a little dirty for thinking about it. He turns the television back off.
"Sammy, Sammy," he says when Sam pushes the door open a few minutes later. "Next time you should tell me. If you're spending our hard-earned cash on porn, I think I deserve to get in on the action. I mean, think about it, it could be a good bonding experience for us. I wouldn't even make fun of you if you just had to whip it out and-"
"Dean," Sam hisses, and sends a bag of chips flying at Dean's smirking face.
*
They try to avoid major highways, at all times of the day but especially in broad daylight. A '67 Impala is conspicuous even with a new license plate, and to get pulled over wouldn't end pretty for either of them. But sometimes it's either damn near unavoidable or the alternative would take more time than they've got. It means Dean has to drive more cautiously than he's comfortable with, but he doesn't mind too much. Most of his music was meant to be played while driving down a highway and sounds a hell of a lot better than on some gravely back road, so Dean figures it's worth it.
They're riding I-90 east through South Dakota at half-past midnight on a Monday, sharing the road with mostly just truck drivers, which is better than cops but not by much, considering Dean still remembers vividly the damage a semi can do to the Impala and the people in it.
Dean's in the mood for his Zeppelin mixtape #2, but it's who-the-fuck knows where at the moment, probably somewhere Sam threw it because no way Dean would ever be so careless with his tapes as to lose one. So he's listening to his Zeppelin mixtape #1, which is good but not exactly what he wants, and he wakes Sam up by shoving his box full of cassette tapes in his face and watches out of the corner of his eye as Sam, flashlight held steady between his teeth, takes inventory of his music collection.
"Dude, I swear," Sam starts, but that's about as much as Dean can understand since he's talking around a flashlight and not even trying to enunciate.
"Don't talk with your mouth full, Sammy. Remember that time you sprayed your little girlfriend with hotdog when you were 13? I'd have thought that'd have broken you of the habit."
It had been pretty hilarious, especially when Dean decided the best way to make Sam feel better about himself was to spray Sam with food every night at dinner for the next two weeks. Sam looks like he feels the same about the incident now as he did then though, and he scowls at Dean while he spits the flashlight out.
"You've got the case for it right here," Sam says, holding up an empty cassette case. He throws it back in the box and then picks up a tape without a case. "And you've got this unmarked tape that looks like it's got…dried mud stuck in it."
It does. Sam made the tape back when he was learning to drive, and when he slid into the driver's seat and popped it into the tape deck for the first time, he grinned wide over at Dean and said, "Driver picks the music, Dean. Don't change the rule now." Dean was always sure it was music selected just to irritate the hell out of him, but he shut his cakehole like shotgun's supposed to. When Sam left for Stanford, Dean dropped it in a puddle of muddy water in a motel parking lot and tried to make himself crush it with his heel.
He tries not to be insulted that Sam doesn't recognize it.
"But I'm not seeing anything that says 'Zeppelin #2,'" Sam continues, dropping the tape back into the box.
"So it's not in there," Dean says. "Check in the back. Or under the seats. It's in here somewhere, Sammy, and if it's not, I'm blaming you and for the next 600 miles I will sing every song on it again and again until you swear to treat my music with the respect it deserves."
"Dude, I am not crawling into the backseat in the middle of the night to go looking for a cassette tape that you lost."
Sam's waving the flashlight in his hand as he talks, like it's some kind of magic wand that will make Dean forget about the tape. And the thing is, for a second it does, since now Dean can see the spit shining on the handle, probably getting Sam's fingers wet, and the delirium comes back full-force and all he can hear is static sweeter than Zeppelin.
But Dean's gotten used to this by now, and he bounces back quick, turns his eyes to the road and hums Metallica in his head.
"And anyway," Sam is saying, "we're listening to Led Zeppelin right now, right? What's wrong with this? Almost all the songs are the same anyway. Or we could, you know, listen to a Zeppelin tape you didn't make yourself."
"It's all about song order, Sam. Song A and Song B are good, but sometimes Song B has to come before Song A. It's like if you burned the bodies before you salted them. It just doesn't work like it's supposed to."
He's going for something kind of deep, something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because Sam usually responds better to that kind of crap. Truth is, all his homemade tapes came from too much time spent holed up alone in shitty motel rooms with shitty cable and nothing but the cheap double tape deck he used to carry in the car to keep him company. Song order mattered for however long until the tape was done or it was time to move on or whatever, and after that it's just like when you crave a glazed donut instead of a cream-filled one; you don't sit and ask why, you just fucking go get one.
Anyway, his bullshit works. Sam stares at him like he's touched, like Dean's just given him some very important kernel of his soul or something, which makes Dean feel a little sick because Christ, but then it's okay because Sam starts to crawl into the backseat.
Or tries to, anyway. He's too big to be climbing all around the car like he did when they were kids, but he does manage to get most of his upper body back there and his arms are long enough to reach pretty much anything he might want to grab.
The only thing is that his ass is still in the front seat, sticking out right next to Dean's head. It doesn't quite have the effect of the flashlight wet from Sam's mouth, probably because this time he's expecting it, but it's close. Dean shifts closer to window and leans against the door. Too much Sam, too long, yadda yadda, but if he's already used to it now, that means it'll fade soon enough. He knows how these things work.
A few minutes later, Sam sits back down, a cassette tape in his hand. "It was under you," he says.
Dean ejects Zeppelin #1 from the tape deck and Sam pops in Zeppelin #2 in its place. It's in the middle of "Black Dog," the sixth song on the cassette, which isn't really the song Dean was thinking of when he started craving this tape, but it works. He taps along with the rhythm on the steering wheel while Sam yawns big, leans back in his seat, but doesn't close his eyes.
When Dean opens his mouth, he's mostly doing it to see what will come out. He's not too surprised when he says, "So what music do you like?" because it's a question he's been thinking about for a few days now.
Sam, though, looks like Dean's just tried to put a hoodoo curse on him, eyes wide and head jerking back a little. "What?"
Dean shrugs and rubs the back of his neck. He keeps his eyes on the road but his attention on Sam. "I don't know. I just thought, you know what music I like to listen to, but I don't know what you like. You put the radio on sometimes, but I don't pay much attention. I mean, other than to think it's crap."
Dean expects a snort or an eye roll or something for that, but he doesn't get anything. He's kind of disappointed, but he doesn't dwell on it. "So. You got any bands you like or anything?"
Dean looked up popular bands on the internet not too long ago, tried to piece together what smart college kids listen to nowadays-just curious, that's all, nothing to do with Sam and his sudden preference for artificial sweetener, not like he's been sitting around wondering what other changes his brother's been keeping from him-and now he tries to summon a few names. "What about the Dave Matthews Band?" he asks, glancing at Sam's still-startled face. "You listen to them?"
And just like that, Sam's expression shifts so that he looks kind of offended. His eyebrows are furrowed, and he's not exactly frowning but definitely not smiling either. "Yeah, sure," he says. "I guess."
"You guess? That's not much of an answer, Sammy." Dean figures he should have known Sam wouldn't make such a simple question easy. "Come on, didn't you listen to music at Stanford?"
"I don't have much opportunity now to listen to the music I did at Stanford, Dean," Sam says, and yeah, he's definitely not happy Dean picked this as a topic of conversation. He slouches down in his seat and leans his head against the window. "Wake me up when it's my turn to drive." Then he closes his eyes, and the conversation is over.
*
It's not too often Dean finds a hunt before Sam. This time, though, he's glad he does.
Three deaths in Chicago. All boys, college-age. All during weeks of a full moon. Bodies scratched and gnawed on, chest cavities wide open, hearts missing. Police suspect a psycho with a mean pit bull.
If he tells Sam, Sam'll insist that they hightail it to Chicago, and he'll spend the whole drive on the phone with every person whose number is in his address book and who might know how to cure lycanthropy. He'll tell himself and Dean that this time will be different, this time they'll save the poor fucker who's eating people every full moon. Sam'll meet the werewolf, see a little bit of Madison in them, fall a little bit in love again with or without the fucking, and Dean will have to wipe the splatters of blood and tears off Sam's face when he has to admit for the second time that you can't save a werewolf.
Dean clears the internet history and closes out of the browser window. He's breaking a rule, one of the biggest rules there is, one Dad taught them and made them swear they'd always follow: you don't turn your back on a hunt, and sure as hell not for personal reasons. But this, this is different. You can turn your back if you know for certain you can't handle it, if you're damn sure it'll take more than you've got.
Somewhere, he figures, there's someone like Gordon, someone with a dead sister or brother or whatever and a lifelong vendetta against werewolves. He'll forward the find to Ellen or Bobby or maybe Jo, and they'll find someone who can take it, no problem. Besides, you can't hunt werewolves too well without a full moon, and there's a whole month until the next one. Not too much anyone can do now.
"Find anything?" Sam asks when he comes back, a coffee in each hand and a bag of food held tightly between two fingers. His breathing's a little heavy like he sprinted back to the motel room, and he's smiling, all teeth, in a way that probably means he did something like piss in Dean's coffee to get him back for the picture of Pennywise Dean set as the wallpaper on Sam's laptop yesterday. He's happy and alive, and seeing it right then makes Dean's stomach lurch a little.
"No," Dean answers, and reaches to take the cup Sam holds out to him.
*
They exorcise three demons in Des Moines. It's nothing short of a miracle, since it's two humans against three powerful supernatural beings, but they succeed. They walk out covered in sweat and blood, grinning just to grin, high on triumph.
Dean isn't expecting anything but an eye roll when he turns to Sam and asks, "So, want to go out and celebrate?" They're disgusting, sleep-deprived and blood-splattered and sweat-stained, and Sam is Sam, who even when he isn't roleplaying as a monk prefers to be in public only when he's well-rested and squeaky clean like a good boy.
He does a violent double-take when Sam says, "Sure," with no sarcasm at all and like it's no big deal, like whatever funk he's been in for the last two goddamn months never existed at all. Then Dean feels a rush of pride so strong-because he's pulled himself out without even having to talk about it-it could make him stumble if he was a lesser man, but he's not so he claps Sam on the shoulder instead.
"All right, Sammy," he says. "All right. You pick the place."
Sam says he wants wings. Dean's never once seen Sam even look at a plate of hot wings, much less eat any, but he goes with it anyway. They get a room for the night at a cheap motel with such low lighting it turns Dean on just a little bit, mostly because Sam's breathing is never quiet when he starts dousing his cuts in rubbing alcohol and it's too dark to see the blood that always reminds Dean he's in pain.
They both shower quick and make a half-assed attempt to look like decent human beings before they leave, Sam with his laptop in its bag on his shoulder but no journal, book, or calendar, which Dean decides is acceptable.
The place they end up deciding on isn't really much to write home about. It has a pool table with a brown stain in the center in the shape of a huge dick and a foosball table that's missing a ball. But the wings are 30 cents each and come with a stick of celery stuck in a small tub of blue cheese that seems to delight Sam to no end, so Dean figures the place is all right.
There's not too many people, either because it's a Monday or because everyone else in Des Moines is more wary than they are of pool tables with dicks in the middle.
There are only three chicks in the whole place. One's a girl in the corner alone, wings and a soda in front of her, so underage Dean thinks if he fucked her he could hear her cherry pop, wet and loud. Too young to be in a place like this, not that Dean can judge since he and Sam used to be the same. Though probably not for the same reasons.
The girl keeps looking over their way, eyeballing Sam, not that Sam acts like he notices or cares about anything except his beer and the wings, which are crunchy in the wrong places and sort of gross. If Sam fucked her, he'd probably break her, but maybe that's her thing. The image is kind of hot, but at the same time it makes Dean a little sick. He's got a few kinks, but kiddie porn isn't one of them.
The other two girls are probably somewhere around Sam's age, one blonde with long legs and the other with pale pink lips and hair too red to be natural. They've got a table together, but the blonde looks more interested in a half-drunk frat boy, who's holding a pool cue and leaning on the table and smiling at her like whatever she's saying is the most interesting thing he's ever heard, than her friend who's just looking around the room like she's bored as hell.
The redhead is pretty, Dean supposes, though definitely not a knockout. Her tits are too small, maybe nonexistent, and her nose is a little too big. But when she glances over his way, Dean grins wide at her, shows her every bit of gorgeous he knows he's got, and feels a nice and familiar thrill when she smiles back.
In the bag.
He turns to Sam, who's apparently pulled out his laptop in the time Dean's spent examining the place and looks so content with whatever he's doing that it bothers Dean enough to ask, "Dude, what are you doing? They don't have wireless here, do they?"
"No, Dean. You know, people had uses for computers before they had internet," Sam says, very calmly, as he raises his beer to his mouth.
Dean figures he doesn't want to know what levels of geekery his brother has succumbed to. "Hey, you okay here? 'Cause I'm gonna-" He gestures vaguely in the direction of the redhead, who giggles a little at the attention, and Sam follows the motion.
Sam looks annoyed but not surprised, and he gives Dean his best 'bitch, please' face when he says, "I'm not a kid, Dean," and then turns away. Which is pretty close to a "Have fun!" in Dean's mind, so he grins at Sam even though he isn't looking and then makes his way over to her.
It takes him about half an hour-which isn't his best time, but still pretty good after months without practice-of smiling and charming and feeding her lines about the color of her eyes to convince the girl, whose name is Teri, that all she wants in the world is to lead Dean to the women's restroom, press her back to the wall of the handicap stall, and let Dean put his head under her dress.
Teri's legs are a little on the short side, which gives Dean a hard angle to work with, but he manages. It'd be nice, he thinks idly, if he could lift a girl up while he did this, hold her legs on his shoulders and move her so he can get his tongue in nice and easy. He might be able to, but he's never tried and now's not the time for experimenting. Right now he's too hungry for it to stop and say, "Hey, let me try something."
Sam probably could though. He has to be big enough to hold a girl on his shoulders while he ate her. The image is more than a little hot, makes Dean's tongue fumble a little and then move faster. Sam's probably a good fuck all around, with hands as big as his and lips as pretty and Dean's not one to go around admiring other guy's dicks but he's seen Sam's and thinks no girl could complain. No guy either, if Sam's into that sort of thing, which Dean's never seen evidence of, but you never know. After all, Dean's not much into the idea of letting anything up his ass himself, but maybe if someone like Sam asked him to spread his legs, then maybe. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it was someone like Sam.
When Dean finally gets his cock in Teri, while she's straddling him on the toilet, after she's come all over his chin, it lasts something like two minutes, and then he's shooting in the condom, grunting and shaking and seeing stars like it's his first time all over again. It's embarrassing as hell, but Teri doesn't seem to mind, probably because after Dean pulls out he wastes no time in putting his fingers in and making her scream into his hair.
He keeps thinking about Sam, out there with buffalo sauce smeared at the corner of his mouth, long fingers wiping dust from the open spaces in his keyboard in that way he does when he's wasting time, waiting for Dean. He's thinking about the week he spent alone when Sam disappeared, sleeping in the Impala with his phone by his ear, waking in a panic with his arm stretched toward the empty passenger seat, picturing all the different ways he would kick Sam's ass when he found him and all the ways afterwards he could touch Sam, make sure Sam's real and still there and not running again, without Sam realizing what he was doing. He's thinking about whether fucking a guy would mean he'd have to learn to fuck all over again or if his old tricks would get him just as far, if Sam would moan like he's never been happier and cling like he'll never let go if Dean curled two fingers in his ass.
Dean thinks, as he's washing his hands in the sink while Teri cheerfully puts her number in Dean's phone for him, that this tops that waitress in Tampa as the worst sex he's ever had. He knows he's fucked in the head, but he doesn't like to have it spelled out for him in flashing neon lights.
"Call me," Teri says, handing Dean back his phone, glowing a little and smiling all sweet and pretty.
It's easy to blame her. If she was a good lay, Dean wouldn't have had to resort to thinking about his fucking brother to get off. First chance he gets, he's deleting the number from his phone and forgetting this whole night ever happened.
Sam's not alone when he gets back. The kid from the corner's moved her soda and barely-touched plate of hot wings right next to Sam, and the two are talking, something involving the words "theorem" and "derivatives." Sam's eating the stick of celery from her plate. He's also drunk. Not slurring, in danger of tripping over his huge ass feet and passing out on the floor drunk, but his voice is louder than usual and his eyes have a certain shine to them and his smile's too wide to come from pure happiness. Dean knows his brother, and he knows his happy-drunk face.
The only thing Dean doesn't know is how Sam went from nursing a single beer to drunk in a little under an hour, especially when now he's sitting here with only a half-empty glass of ice water in front of him. Because Dean's seen Sam drink, and he's not exactly a lightweight. He's buzzed when most people are wasted and can drink Dean under the table, so he must have been out here doing shots like a machine to get happy-drunk in the time Dean was gone. It's kind of impressive, even if Dean's not exactly sure how he managed it.
Oh, yeah, and Dean also doesn't know why Sam's sitting here drunk, talking to a kid who's clearly carrying something of a torch for him and might even be trying to seduce him with geekery. It'd probably be funny any other time, but because Dean's just had the most fucked up sex of his life and that kind of shit really screws with his view of the world, he goes from disturbed and irritated to full on pissed off in about two seconds.
"Hey," he says, letting his tone do most of the talking for him, not that Sam seems to notice since he looks at Dean with an expression that's all sparkling wine with a little fizz around the edges.
"Dean!" Sam says, a note of honest-to-god shock in his voice like Dean's the last person he expects to see right now or maybe like he's forgotten Dean was even here. It doesn't help Dean's mood, and it definitely lowers it when Sam continues with: "That was quick."
Dean sometimes forgets that one of Sam's purposes in life is to remind Dean of all his failures so he can never feel completely all right with the world. He could probably do without the reminders.
"C'mon, Sammy, let's go. We gotta be on the road again first thing." Dean figures he can hold onto his anger long enough to let Sam have it when he's good and hungover, grimacing when Dean's voice even threatens to rise. Besides, it'll give him time to figure out exactly what he's got to be angry at Sam for. "And last thing I need is one of us falling asleep behind the wheel and wrecking my car."
Little Lolita is giving Dean a look like she's sizing him up, narrowed and eerily unblinking eyes and a little smirk that unnerves Dean just as much as it ticks him off. He looks down at her for maybe a second before he decides it's best if he just ignores her and stares straight at Sam. Who's licking blue cheese off his fingers all slow and thorough and disturbingly hot, because apparently tonight the Dean Is Fucked Up Show doesn't get any commercial breaks. If Dean didn't love his brother so fucking much, he'd leave him here to get arrested for statutory rape.
"Yeah, all right," Sam says, and takes a gulp of his ice water before he turns to the kid. "Charlie, we-"
"Yeah," she says, smiling bright at Sam and all but bouncing out of her seat. "Yeah, I should probably get home anyway. It's getting late, and I've got school."
It throws Dean a little, since it seems to him like if you want to get picked up by an older guy you shouldn't mention things like school that show just how young you are. Sam's a freak in a lot of ways, but pedophilia isn't one of them. Dean wonders if Sam's been giving off some kind of pervert vibes without knowing it, like going starry-eyed and drooling at the mention of a steady school and a nice normal life, and that makes Dean just want to smack Sam on the back of the head nice and hard.
"Yeah. Good luck with calculus!"
"Thank you." Charlie takes a few steps away from them, then turns and gives Sam a shy smile that Dean's seen way too many times sent his way from girls twice as old. "I'll see you around sometime?"
Fat chance, since the job is done and they're leaving town in a matter of hours, but Sam grins and says, "Yeah, maybe," like he didn't get the memo on the subject.
"Calculus," Dean hisses the moment the kid turns back around to leave, not even caring if she's still in hearing range or not. "Dude, what is she in, like, fourth grade?"
"Eighth, actually," Sam answers, his smile still all sparkling wine but with a little less fizz this time, as he bends to pick up his bag at his feet. "But I know, it's impressive. They don't teach calculus until high school, so they have to bring in a tutor for her while her friends are in algebra or whatever."
Of course. Child genius, different from everyone else at school. She probably has some sob story too, something about her parents and why they don't care that she's out after midnight on a Monday, and Sam just sat right here eating it all up, thinking about how she could score herself a full ride to a hotshot school and make something of herself. No wonder the kid thought Sam was hot for her.
"Great. I leave for an hour and you go and get a hard-on for an eighth grade math geek with a guy's name."
Sam starts to say something, probably to defend himself or remind Dean it wasn't even a whole hour, but Dean isn't listening anymore. Instead he's realizing that Charlie hasn't left, that she's standing in the doorway still looking at them with a smirk too cold for any eighth grader, and that her eyes are black, all black.
"Fuck."
Then she's running out the door, and when Dean tries to follow, suddenly there's a chair in his way that definitely wasn't there before. He trips over it, gets a wooden chair back right to the gut, which knocks the wind out of him, and he spends the next few seconds kneeling on the floor, curled in on himself.
Sam's next to him instantly, looking way more sober than he did two minutes ago, one hand on his shoulder and the other on his neck, holding Dean so that he has to look at him and gasp for air right in Sam's face. "Dean," he's saying. "Dean. Dude, what happened?"
People are staring, and Dean can feel it. Maybe one or two are even coming over to make sure he's okay, that he's not drunk or crazy enough to hurt himself or someone else. It gives him twice the incentive to push Sam away and drag himself to his feet. "Charlie," he heaves. "Possessed." Then he runs, trusting Sam to connect the dots.
There's no one outside and no signs that anyone just left. The kid's too young to make her getaway by car, so she had to have gone by foot. Or on bike. Dean sprints to the edge of the parking lot and looks up and down the street. There's no one.
When he turns back around, he sees Sam coming toward him, bag slung over one shoulder, looking pretty damn spooked.
"She was possessed?" Sam's swaying just a little bit, either from emotion or alcohol or an unhealthy mix of the two, and Dean grabs his shoulder to steady him.
"Yeah. Her eyes-"
Sam's face tells him he doesn't need to finish the sentence, so he doesn't.
They're good and stocked up on holy water. There's enough of it in the trunk that Dean could keep her incapacitated with a steady stream of it while Sam did the exorcism. But they'd have to catch her first, chase her down and hold her down, and neither of them is in the right frame of mind for taking down another demon tonight.
"Four demons in one town," Dean says. It's the only thing he can think to say. "That's something to put in the brochures."
Four demons and one of them he left alone with his baby brother. She could have slit Sam's throat and stomped all over his corpse as she walked out, all while Dean fucked some girl thinking about Sam.
He could kiss Sam then, probably. Maybe short and sweet, brush of lips and pull back, or maybe long and deep so he could fuck Sam's mouth with his tongue. Sam wouldn't stop him now, with the alcohol making him slow along with the knowledge that they let a demon get so close without noticing. He might even see it as the act of guilt for leaving his kid brother alone and vulnerable that it half is and forget the whole thing if Dean pretends to cry about it tomorrow. The only thing that stops him is that he's still got Teri on his tongue, and she had a taste so strong he would never be able to taste Sam through it.
"C'mon," he says, putting one hand on Sam's shoulder and nudging him toward the car. "Bedtime for lightweights. We got demon-hunting to do, and you're no good to me like this."
Part Three