The Great God Pan Is as Dead as Disco [Supernatural/American Gods]
At long last, here is the Sweet Charity fic I wrote for blackclaude. Thank you for your patience, and I hope you enjoy the story.
Also, many, many thanks to aishuu for pacing me and serving as sounding board/on-the-fly beta for me, and to arliss for reading and doing beta duty on the thing as a whole.
Title: The Great God Pan Is as Dead as Disco (1 of 2)
Series: Supernatural/American Gods
Word count: Approx. 13,500
Rating: R (very hard R)
Summary: In which a bet is placed, a trap is set, and questions of ownership and birthdays prove to be far more complicated than originally thought.
"Here's the thing--we do not mention this again. Ever."
There was a smirk and a damnably long pause, then: "Agreed."
It was a cliché to say there were fates worse than death, but at the moment, one brother had a brain pan chock full of embarrassment and the other would very much like to un-see certain events he saw just a few hours earlier. Things such as that could make death and hellfire seem like the more refreshing option.
"Oh, man... you should have seen yourself, Sammy. You had that waitress--"
"Didn't you just agree you weren't going to mention this again?"
"My bad."
Dean didn't sound the least bit sorry.
* * *
In one sense, the whole mess started when Bela stole the Colt. The boys had said, and Bobby agreed, that hunting her down directly wouldn't be at all effective. She was too wily to be taken down like that, and the attempt would probably put them in an even worse bind than before.
What they had to do, Sam said, was find the kind of artifact Bela was likely to go after, and use it to bait a trap for her. Dean suggested digging through their dad's old storage locker for something interesting, but it was Bobby's opinion it would be better to wait for something to turn up on its own. It would be more effective, he said, and most likely a damn sight safer, what with it seeming less like a set-up. As valuable as the Colt was, it wouldn't do them any good if they were both killed trying to get it back.
It took over a month, but eventually Bobby got wind of some suitably strange happenings. People going crazy in coffee houses and bars and waking up with the worst cases of 'morning after' on record. There had been five incidents all told, leading to two deaths, seven hospitalizations, three lawsuits, and fourteen arrests. Once Bobby and Sam took a good look at the newspaper articles it only took them thirty minutes to figure out the connection. And if they could figure it out, well, so could Bela.
It was the perfect setup.
* * *
"I cannot believe that bitch didn't show!" Dean slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel with every other syllable. "Three days down the crapper, and we're no closer to getting it back."
Sam just let him rant and tried not to think too much about why Bela wanted the Colt if it wasn't for profit. He'd have to think about it later, but it could wait until they'd crossed a state line or even a county line.
The idea of putting a boundary between themselves and... and that was highly appealing.
"She should have been all over it like white on rice. There's sickos out there'd give their firstborn to get their hands on that thing. I just don't get it, Sam. I simply do not get it."
Even that much was more than Sam wanted to talk about what had happened. He just made a sound that was half-grunt, half-sigh and that didn't express agreement or disagreement with anything. They rode on in blessed, blessed silence for a while, and when Dean seemed to be getting restless again, and feeling a need to break the silence, Sam headed him off with a sure-fire distraction.
"Can we stop for dinner once we cross into Illinois? I'm starving."
"Sure." That would have been the end of it, but Dean's head lifted as he read a passing sign. "Huh. It says there's a diner just two miles down the road. Why don't we--"
"Illinois."
"Whatever." Pause. "Freak."
* * *
In another sense, it started back when a little boy gave his brother a Christmas gift that should have been given to someone else and that should have been given on any other day of the year. There are plenty of old holidays that go around wearing new clothes, and it's not always easy to tell which one you're looking at when it's wrapped up in its tacky sweaters and sporting its novelty ties.
And right then, as the Impala roared past the Crossroads Inn and Pot Roast Diner, two men sat inside, roaring with laughter even as one reluctantly passed a bottle over to the other. In yet another sense, it's all their fault.
They must have been able to sense the Impala's passing, because just as it roared by, one of the two men raised a glass of absinthe in a toast.
(Later, the waitress would have sworn they didn't stock any of that absentee hooch or whatever it was that old black man with the yellow gloves had ordered, but there was a bottle all the same, right by the Jagermeister--just like he said. There was even a box of sugar cubes.)
"To two of the most fucked up, fucked over, and just plain fucked people who are traipsing through this happy world of ours."
His companion smirked and echoed the toast with his glass of fruit punch.
"To the perfect setup."
* * *
"You sure you don't want to stop? 'Cause we can stop. That place looked halfway decent. And they serve beer."
"Dean..."
"Fine, fine. You know, one of these days, your face is gonna freeze like that, and that would be tragic, you know?" Dean nodded and pursed his lips as if he had just passed on a gem of true wisdom. "You have a hard enough time getting any action as it is, and oh, I'm sorry--I'm not supposed to talk about that, right? Or was it something else I'm not supposed to talk about, because you never did say just what that was. Lawyer-boy."
Sam didn't dignify that with a response, but he didn't stop scowling, either. He couldn't explain it, but the need to cross some sort of border, even one marked by a WELCOME TO ILLINOIS THE LAND OF LINCOLN, was as visceral, as instinctive, as urgent...
But he wasn't thinking about that any more. Much. He shifted in his seat, trying to adjust his jeans without Dean noticing.
He just wished Dean would stop grinning and shaking his head, trying to pretend he wasn't about to bust out laughing.
"Dude, this driving in silence thing sucks. It's been long enough, right?"
"No." Sam blocked the cassette slot with his hand, knowing full well Dean wouldn't scuffle with him while driving. He'd pay for it later, of course, once they crossed the border and he could relax. Dean probably had a 'Worst of the Eighties' compilation tucked away for just such an occasion as this. "Not yet."
Sam turned to look out the rear window, and watched until the diner disappeared over the horizon. It wasn't a total relief when it did, but it was a relief all the same. He wondered why.
He also wondered when he was going to get that damned song out of his head.
"Illinois."
* * *
There are many kind of boundaries. Geographic, legal, moral, temporal, visual, spiritual. When the boys were younger it used to drive John up a tree and right back down again whenever they crossed a state line and whichever brother was riding shotgun (usually Dean) would turn and quickly yell I'minNewHampshireandyou'renot!
Not only did this tend to start the kind of squabble that led to one boy trying to haul the other over the back of the bench seat, but John by then had enough experience to know (although he didn't know that he knew) that calling attention to boundaries and borders was not always safe.
For one thing, there are certain beings who infest the territories near boundaries and crossroads. Guardians. Ghosts. Demons. Gods.
Of these, gods are the worst of the lot, and some gods are worse than others. You see, boundary gods tend to come in two flavors, and of these two types, the gods of life and death are by far the least dangerous.
Mr. Nancy whistled long and low as his yellow-gloved fingers nimbly aligned the fragments of reed along the top of the paper placemat. He sorted them in roughly parallel lines, long to short, blocking out the ad for AL'S TOWING AND GENERAL CONTRACTING that otherwise had pride of place across the top of the mat.
"My, my, my... Your boy did a number on this, that's for darn certain. And all without that souped-up peashooter of his." Nancy tsk-tsk-tsk'd and moved another piece of shattered reed into place.
"Ah, they're better off without that thing. They're a bit too trigger-happy as it is, these days. All very Bonnie and Clyde, but I'm not sure which one would wear the dress. Anyhow, he's hardly my boy." The man across the table currently did not wear a name. Instead, he wore an old pair of jeans with holes out at the knees and a scrub top he'd pilfered from a stint at a Chicago hospital. "Dean Winchester's got a few too many claims on him as it is."
"That would explain some things, now, wouldn't it?" By way of experiment, Mr. Nancy slid one of the reed fragments down a fraction of an inch. There was the faintest whisper of music as it dragged across the paper. Even though there was no way she could hear it, the waitress looked up, glassy-eyed, her hips jerkily swaying in time to a music that no longer played. She ran one hand up her side, tracing and savoring the dip at her waist until the unheard music stopped and she returned to the present with a brisk shake of her head.
Mr. Nancy slid the reed back into place. "What would happen," he mused, "if I started to whistle that fine old tune when she brings me my pie?"
"Nothing. Well, not nothing. Just nothing, you know, spectacular." The god's tone made it clear that it wasn't worth expending any effort on anything with a lesser result than that. "Our dear Miz Marge--she of the granny panties and the sheer disapproval of anything remotely resembling fun--might wiggle her hips a bit more and have a passing naughty thought about Ryan Seacrest, but that's it. It won't change the fact that her twat's dryer than the Sahara. Anyhow, I am far more interested in what's going to happen when El Deano's deal comes due. I'm thinking we should maybe sell tickets."
* * *
One day, Sam feared, he would look back at this day and he would count it as a good one because Dean was still here to rag on him for what happened back at the club. For now, though, he could only gaze out at the window at all the nothing passing by, trying to find a safe place for his mind to settle in the vast ground between mortification and dread.
Of course, now that he'd opened that particular door in his mind, thinking about his loss of control at the club was starting to seem not so bad by comparison. Sam told himself it was all going to be okay--both the club and the other thing--but the ghost of himself he saw in the window looked him in the eye and told him otherwise.
He knew damned well what it was like to lose Dean. He'd been forced to live through that moment over and over and over again not too long ago. Then, after living through the moment of truth a hundred times he'd gotten a taste of what living with that truth was going to be like.
"Stop thinking so much, Sam." It hadn't taken Dean long to figure out when Sam was picking over that endless Tuesday and the three phantom months that had followed.
"Two bottles of vodka ought to take care of that." It was meant to be sharp and snarky, but it came out sounding a bit more like Eeyore on a bad day than someone who wanted to put his brother in his place.
"Nooo... no more booze for you today, Sam. You've had your fun. Besides, you always said vodka makes you puke."
There was something there in Dean's comment that bit at Sam's ear in a way he couldn't pin down, but it didn't strike him as important enough to go after.
"It wasn't all that fun." If anything, it had been terrifying--one long panic-stricken ride that he could still remember in too-present flashes of sense memory. "Trust me. And it's tequila that makes me puke."
"Heh. That's not how I remember it. The point is, you're moping again, and it's really starting to piss me off. None of what the Trickster showed you was real, right? It was just him fucking with your head, you know that."
Again, Dean's comment was answered with a grunt that could have been agreement or disagreement. Two more mile markers flashed by (eight miles until the border, less than eight minutes) before either of them spoke again. And then, both of them spoke at once.
"We're going to find a way to get me out of this, Sam."
"But why? Why would he go to the trouble of messing with us? Why such elaborate setups?"
Dean switched on his typical, devastating grin, the one that had no chance of working on his brother. But reflex is reflex and Sam recognized it as such. "Maybe 'cause we're a couple of criminally cool dudes? C'mon, you know better than to ask that. You're the flavor of the week in the occult world, you know that."
Now, it was Dean's turn to look aside, focusing on something out in the middle distance and deep within. Sam was content to leave him to it. There was no good way, no good way at all, to tell Dean that his soul had been bought by someone far more powerful than a mere crossroads demon.
Sam looked at his brother as long as he dared (if he left it too long, Dean would turn on him with an aggravated what?!), wondering if he should just out with it, admit what he knew and try not to admit how he knew.
He was just drawing breath to tell Dean about his own trip to a crossroads and his own desperate, pointless gamble, but the bloody light of the setting sun shone dull and red on old bronze and the story that came out was by no means the story Sam had planned to tell.
* * *
Ah, yes. That crazy deal. The older Winchester boy had gotten himself into more of a pickle than he ever could have imagined when he pandered himself at that crossroads. Himself and a whole mess of others, not that he knew anything about that.
It was a wonder Dean had even been allowed to go through with it. Unless, of course, it was all part of some sort of complicated plan that Mr. Nancy would probably be much, much better off steering well clear of.
"What's going to happen is that I will be visiting family down in the islands and having pretty girls listening to my stories and bringing me drinks." With that, Marge came by, and Mr. Nancy gave her a smile that actually leached some of the sour from her face, even though she seemed baffled and perturbed by the collection of splinters on the placemat.
"Here, let me get this out of your way, my dear. It's just a little puzzle I'm working out for my friend, and my! That pie looks absolutely spectacular. I've never seen cherries so plump--you know, in the cookbook pictures, they leave the pits in them so the cherries stay nice and round, can you believe that? Why go to the trouble of baking a pie that's only nice to look at? Now hold on a moment and let me taste... ah, now that is a cherry. I have to say, your cook works miracles--no! You mean to say you baked this yourself?" He pressed the tips of his fingers to his mouth and blew her a kiss.
By the time Mr. Nancy slid the glistening red cherry between those white, white teeth of his, Marge was blushing and fair twittering like a chickadee. In fact, she was so flustered she almost walked off before delivering his companion's chocolate-chip pancakes (with extra whipped cream, just as requested).
"See? No need for the pipes after all." The other god unlayered his stack of pancakes and started putting it back together again with whipped cream and chocolate syrup mortaring the stack together. "Our Marge is as bigoted as they come--not that she'd ever in a million years admit it--and yet you could have her up against a wall and singing holy hosannas in five minutes if you wanted, and she'd treasure the memory as if it were one of her Precious Moments figurines."
"Still, it's a crying shame." All that was left of the pan pipes was a handful of pock-marked shards. They were still very powerful--one of them, steeped in a bottle of wine for a month, would yield an aphrodisiac that would strip the knickers off anyone after a single sip--but that was nothing but lust.
"It was worth it." The nameless Trickster held up the vial he'd just won, dangling it between two fingers so that the light slid greasily over blue-black glass, then hiding it away in a safe spot somewhere between moments. "And not just for the soma. That's just the icing on the cake. So to speak. Yummy."
Mr. Nancy clucked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head. He could afford to give up a small bottle of soma. It had been a great, grand day when his stories started being taught in grades schools all in the name of multiculturalism. It meant that occasionally he could spare enough scraps of belief to place the kind of bet he half-planned to lose.
"One of these days, I'll find out from you why you're so interested in those two boys."
"Besides the obvious?"
"Besides the obvious." One brother was set to become king of Hell and the other to become some demon's bitch. That would have been enough to interest most people, but not him. Demons bought and sold souls as if they were on the Chicago commodities exchange. And if a Duke of Hell didn't have at least one human pawn in the wings, he was hardly a duke at all. No, none of that was anything he hadn't seen before.
Now, If Mr. Nancy had won the bet, he'd have heard the whole truth behind why his compatriot was still bird-dogging the Winchesters. He'd lost, though, but in losing he'd managed to learn almost as much as if he'd won.
"I can't believe that boy didn't even squirm. Not so much as a woody, and sober enough to make Carrie Nation look like W.C. Fields." Again, shaking his head as if tut-tutting all the ills of the world, Mr. Nancy rolled up the placemat, folded over the ends, and slid the now neatly wrapped bundle across the table. Needless to say, he'd palmed a couple of the shards for his own purposes. Lust might be simple, but it had its uses. "His brother, now..."
Mr. Nancy's chuckle was a discreet whisper, barely louder than the wind through dry grass, but it had all the raunch of a good, drunken belly-laugh.
His companion smiled a sharp smile that looked a bit too much like the late, not-so-lamented Loki's. "Hey, after watching three months of boring vengeful angst with a side order of major OCD-and-Daddy issues, I was more in the mood for something a bit more 'Girls Gone Wild,' you know?"
"Too bad your boy Dean had to go and ruin the fun. He's a damned good shot. Almost unnaturally good, even without Sam Colt's little gew-gaw." Idly, he wondered if Colt's gun could kill a god.
The Trickster didn't rise to the bait. He just smiled that Loki-like smile and said, "I keep on telling you. Not my boy."
There was an interesting moment of held breath and tensed backs when a burly man in a red cap got up and walked past their table. But it was only a Saint Louis Cardinals fan who was just a little ways off home turf. Nothing more, nothing less, and neither god would admit that he'd even thought for a nanosecond that it might have been anything else.
Nor would they have admitted to fear; after all, the thrill of nearly getting caught in the game was half the fun.
* * *
The sun was low to the horizon, low enough to cast a strange, red-gold light. It thickened the air, making everything seem to be suspended in amber. It grazed Dean's cheek and jaw like blood spatter.
"I don't know why I'm thinking of this now, of all times." Or why he was thinking of all the other times he'd seen his brother splashed with blood, or wondered what there was about it that made his brother seem both more himself and less at the same time. Even in memories of happier times (or at least, memories of the lulls between storms), it was easy for Sam's memory to paint blood streaks where none had been, smudges of blood that reminded him of the dark smudge on Jess's forehead the two Ash Wednesdays he'd known her.
"Thinking of what?"
It seemed stupid, but Sam had to tell the story, and he had to tell it now. The crossroads could wait.
"It was back at Stanford, my second year," he said, and right then Dean went from the kind of quiet that said he was waiting for the right moment for a quip to the kind of quiet that was a hunter's quiet, the kind of quiet that came from not wanting to scare off the game.
It had been well over a year since Sam had volunteered anything about his time at school, so maybe that was what grabbed Dean's interest. Or maybe it was something about the way the story was being told, distant and dreamy, as if Sam was talking about something that had happened to someone else, somewhere ages ago and miles away. Which, in its own way, was exactly what he was talking about.
"What makes this story weird is that I hadn't been thinking about hunting or anything like that. Hadn't been for a while. I always worried about you--and Dad--of course, but after my first year, after I was able to go away for a whole summer and then come back and see everyone again..."
Sam let the pause tell the story for a minute or so.
"...well, I guess I just kind of got caught up in everything else, you know? Studying." Jess. Having a normal life. "I always figured that if something happened, Pastor Jim or maybe even Bobby would be able to track me down."
As far as Sam knew, Dad never found out that Sam made a point of forwarding each year's new dorm or apartment address and phone number to Pastor Jim. There was never any need to say anything about not passing the information along to Dad.
"As long as I never heard anything, you guys were okay. I didn't hear anything for over a year. And then this guy walked into a bar. He was..."
Sam hadn't thought about it in years, but he could now see the flash of light out of the corner of his eye as the bar door opened and closed. Instinct made him turn (always know who's in a room, who's coming, who's leaving--he heard his father as clearly as if he'd been on the stool next to him) but he couldn't see the man all that well. All he saw was sunlight. Sunlight bright on the man's red cap and glinting dully on the amulet around his neck. Sunlight and a presence that was like a blow to the chest.
"And for... well, it was only a few seconds, but it felt like forever, I knew something had happened to you."
It was just like that eternal Wednesday, only he didn't know that at the time.
* * *
They watched the red-capped man--just a trucker, nothing more, on his way home to a wife who loved him and a son who hated him--leave the diner. The bells on the door clanked rather than rang as the door shut behind him.
"A propos of nothing," the Trickster lied, "have you seen any sign of our old soldier friend of late? I'd have thought with all the ruckus, he'd be popping up sooner rather than later. War against Hell and all that good fun. He should be all over that. Assuming he's hasn't made like the title of a Kansas song."
"'Wayward Son?'" Mr. Nancy said, deliberately getting it wrong. "True, true, he's been plenty scarce for a while. I thought I'd see him at that little set-to Wednesday cooked up a few years back. Never actually thought he was gone gone, no matter what that busybody Ibis said. I'd have heard if he was gone to dust. Somehow." Mr. Nancy did not like not knowing things.
"Mmm..." The nameless trickster leaned back in his chair, looking more than a little smug. If he'd been at the battle at Lookout Mountain, it had been as someone else. Then there was the little matter of how his dark hair now had a touch of ginger to it, or how his smile sometimes had that Loki-like twist. Mr. Nancy had said many a nice how-de-do to Death more than a few times over the centuries, but he wondered if one of these days he'd hang up his fedora for good and his friend would suddenly start sporting an eight-legged shadow.
Stranger things had happened, and would happen yet. And Mr. Nancy had no intention of parting with his fine green hat anytime soon.
"I wonder if it's ever occurred to Sammy-boy why exactly his brother's never been possessed by a demon."
* * *
"You knew? Knew how? One of those..." Dean waggled his fingers in front of his eyes but stopped short of making woo-woo noises. "I didn't think you started having those psychic flash things until later, you know, not until the demon started messing with you again."
Sam was still facing straight ahead, watching the road streaking away beneath them, pulling the border closer to them, but he spared a sidelong glare at Mister Sensitive.
"It didn't have anything to do with the demon." Sam wasn't sure what it was connected to, but it wasn't a demon. Even back then, even over a year out of practice, he could tell that much.
"You sound pretty sure of that, Sam." Dean didn't. Sam nearly said never mind, just forget about it, it's not important, but then he remembered back at the club, and how even though the madness and the music he had noticed Dean standing there with red streaming down his face, eyes cold and frighteningly sane as he fired one perfect shot. At the time, though, his eyes had been fixed by something else, just as they were back then. "So what was this guy, then? Skinwalker? Fetch?"
Sam shrugged, and tried to push aside the thought that the person he'd seen back in the club was not Dean. If he wasn't careful, his memory would paint Dean's eyes as solid black. "No, not a skinwalker and not a fetch," he said, with the aggravated patience that greeted so many of Dean's remarks. "He didn't look like anyone I knew. Well, not anyone I can put a name to. He looked familiar. And he was wearing your amulet."
Dean took a quick, panicked look down at his chest, then grimaced and shook his head, no doubt pissed at himself for having letting the reaction slip.
"No fucking way. Only times I haven't worn this in the past some-odd years are when we did that job for Deacon and back when that skinwalking son-of-a-bitch took it from me." His lips curled back from his teeth. "Felt like boiling it in holy water--salted holy water--after that. Slimy, face-stealing creep..."
Sam had felt the same way. That amulet was Dean's. No one else's. It didn't matter that Bobby had given it to Sam to pass along to John. His face grew hot, even now, to think of how he'd assumed that Bobby had meant it as a Christmas present. But it had been early December, and all Sam could think about was Santa, and presents.
(He'd never worried much about Christmas before, but there was that man at the truck stop who had asked him what he was getting for his dad and his brother for Christmas. When Sam had shyly, cautiously said 'nothing?' the man had stared at him in shock and sorrow, mouth pursed around the candy cane he was sucking on. He told Sam that was no good, and that he had to get at least one gift for his dad or for his brother--it wasn't Christmas unless you gave someone a gift, everyone knew that. Ever since then, the idea had nagged at him, like a splinter that wouldn't work its way to the surface.)
So, when Bobby pulled him aside and said in an earnest whisper to give this to your dad, and make sure it's wrapped good and tight when you hand it over, Sam thought he knew what Bobby meant.
He'd never thought anything about opening the package Bobby gave him (he could always wrap it up again, right?), and whenever Dad and Dean weren't around, he'd hold up the pendant by its leather thong and watch it twist back and forth, taking in and slowly learning every detail. He remembered wondering if Dad would like the strange bull-man thing, and telling himself over and over that Uncle Bobby wouldn't give him something Dad would hate.
Then, Dad hadn't shown up for Christmas, and Sam gave the amulet to Dean instead. The instant he handed it over, Sam had the strange feeling that he'd done something very, very good and very, very bad.
"It was your amulet, Dean. Maybe you never took it off, maybe you never lost it, but it was your amulet." Sam shook his head and wished that the tightness in his chest would go away. This was all too close, too fresh, and for a moment, he even went so far to wish that the music would return and drown it all out again.
* * *
Yellow-gloved fingers tapped out a rhythm that Sam Winchester would have recognized all too well. Somehow, Mr. Nancy even managed to hit the sweet spots on the old wooden table so the tones suggested the melody that went with the pulsing, hip-thrusting beat. It was a sweet melody, completely different from yet perfectly suited to the fevered heartbeat of the percussion.
"One of these days, I'll win one of our bets, and I'll find out what you're up to with those two boys," Mr. Nancy said, but he didn't sound too fussed about it.
The other trickster (Mr. Nancy suspected he was close, dangerously close, to becoming an archetype, not a god--it would explain why names no longer stuck to him, except by brute force) tongued a mint from one side of his mouth to the other. "What makes you think I'm up to anything?"
He took advantage of the opening of his mouth to pop another two Starlite mints in there. Marge normally only allowed one mint per customer when she brought the checks, but she'd dug an entire handful out of her apron pocket for the two gods.
"You talk. You breathe. You exist. That's why I know you're up to mischief. Fire's hot, water's wet, and you turn people's lives ass over teakettle. That's how it is."
The trickster lifted an eyebrow. The mints puffed out one cheek as he worked them against his gums. "You know, there so many possible jokes I could make right now about pots and kettles that I just can't decide."
Mr. Nancy took another bite of his pie. "Some people just don't know how to take a compliment. It's a sad, sorry world."
They meddled. That's what they did. That's what they were. Once upon a time, Mr. Nancy wouldn't have hesitated before messing with another god's doings just for the sheer topsy-turvyness of it all. But that was before Wednesday.
Still and all, though, today had been a hoot and a half. "If I'd known you had those pipes, I would have swindled them off you years ago," Mr. Nancy volunteered. He didn't need the pipes, not any more than he needed the fragments he'd stashed away in his breast pocket. Needing, though, had nothing to do with it. "Now where on earth did you ever get your hands on such a thing, anyhow? Those were the real deal, weren't they?"
"Go them off the horny old goat himself."
* * *
"We never did find out just what this is, did we?" Dean asked. Someone else might have reached up unconsciously to touch the amulet, perhaps rub a thumb across the thing's face, or test the sharpness of its horns. Dean, though... he never paid any mind to the thing unless he was putting it on after he'd had to take it off for some reason. "Best Bobby could put to it was that it has some sort of protective power or something. Not that it's done a bang-up job of that, past few years."
"You're still alive." Sam could have added for now, but (as he had so many times before) pointedly chose not to.
"Yeah, whatever." Dean heard it all the same, and Sam knew he was starting to drift back into his own Wednesday. But then Dean shook his head like he was jerking himself back to wakefulness. "So, this guy had my amulet--which he didn't, like I told you. Maybe there's two of them. So anyhow, what happened. How come you weren't burning up the phone to find out what happened?"
"Dunno." Dean was right. He should have called Pastor Jim. He should have called Bobby. "The guy walked into the bar, looked around, and..."
He couldn't explain it. The man had looked familiar, deeply familiar, but Sam could not have described him even if his life was at stake. There was something about him that reminded Sam of his father--a bearing that he'd only seen in other hunters with years of military experience behind them. Other than that, though, all Sam could focus on was the red of the cap and the dull glint of sunlight on old bronze.
Except it wasn't bronze. It was gold, but he'd seen bronze. And the familiar, weathered and primitive features of Dean's amulet (he'd pulled it out and watched it turn and swing, over and over, every night leading up to that Christmas) were sharper and almost hyper-realistic. How he could have seen that from across the dimly lit room, he couldn't say, but he knew it.
"It was weird. He just walked in and stopped a few feet inside the door, like he was looking for someone."
His gaze had passed over Sam, lingering just long enough for Sam to tell that he was being considered, appraised, and then passed over. He should have felt relief at the sudden lifting of attention, but instead, he found himself looking to his side, half-expecting Dean to be there, eyebrows raised, with a what the fuck was that? look to match Sam's own.
Whoever the man was, he wasn't a demon, but Sam would have bet everything he owned that the man wasn't human, either.
"So what happened then? Did you go after him?" There was a sidelong, pitying glance. "You didn't go after him. Wuss."
"No, I didn't go after him, Dean." Sam wished he hadn't even brought it up. "I thought about it, but by the time I was able to move again, he was gone."
When he and Luis left the bar, all of Sam's instincts went redline, telling him that there was something watching him, studying him. Sam wanted to turn and call out "Dean?" or possibly even "Dad?" but he also very much wanted Luis not to think he was crazy.
"That's a really stupid story, Sam. A guy comes into a bar, he leaves again, nothing happens. It's like a joke, but without the joke part. What the hell are you telling me this for?"
Because today, when I was going crazy, you were standing there with red covering half your face. You made an impossible shot, you didn't even hesitate, you just did what had to be done, and it was the same thing as back then. I know why that man looked so familiar.
"Dunno." Sam drummed his fingers on the arm rest, and watched the not-scenery pass by on the other side of his reflection. He never even noticed what rhythm he was tapping out. "Something made me think of it, that's all."
Something in him reminded me of you. Something about you reminded me of him.
Sam once again started to ask Dean if they should maybe do some more research on the amulet, just in case, but as often happened, the thought slid right from his mind between the thinking of it and the saying of it.
"Let's call Bobby when we get to Illinois and tell him it's a done deal. He deserves to know, since he's the one that found out about the pipes." As far as Sam was concerned, that was what he'd intended to say.
"Done deal, but no Bela. Damn, I can't believe she didn't show."
"At least it's over." But Sam's fingers kept tapping out that rhythm and his mind kept sifting through things he'd rather forget.
* * *
"Oh, I had these a long time. Pan's been missing 'em since before that miserable reflection of him who showed up at Lookout Mountain first came over from the olde country." Naturally, the 'e' in 'olde' was pronounced. The Trickster patted the pocket where he'd stashed the fragments. "Just one of those things it's nice to keep lying around, in case you need to kick a little life into the party. Shame they're gone, though."
There was a lack of sufficient sorrow in those words, hinting to Mr. Nancy that perhaps those reeds might reform themselves into Pan's pipes, given enough time and enough of a push. If his suspicions about his mercurial friend were correct, it made absolute sense that he'd have possession of those pipes, possession enough to keep them coming back to him. Then again, the Trickster had gone around so long thieving and salvaging attributes of other gods who'd faded or dwindled away, who was to say who he really was, way back when and once upon a time?
"I'm sure you'll find some use for the remains." Of course, it would be amsing to see if the pipes worked the way they should now that they were missing a few pieces. Mr. Nancy might have to tail along after the other trickster for a while. It wouldn't hurt, in any case; things were bound to stay interesting around him in the not-too-distant future.
"Anyhow, it was fun while it lasted. For us, anyhow." A flicker of malice showed in the Trickster's usual, lazy grin, and Mr. Nancy's smile seemed to be a bit toothier than normal. Tricksters might goof about and enjoy a good joke, but coyotes have teeth, ravens have claws, and a spider's bite is no laughing matter.
"Yes, indeedy. That was a high old time, oh yes it was--mmm, mmm, mmm..." During the last performance of the pipes, Mr. Nancy had been sitting in a corner of the ceiling, legs tucked around him as he watched. Other times, he might have preferred to be down in the action, but given what he knew (or had guessed) about the Winchester boys, it was much safer to be out of the way and partaking of the proverbial fly on the wall as he enjoyed the show.
The club was just down the road, and had just a seedy enough reputation to keep away families and the kind of women who had a care about their reputation. Harleys and Ford F-250s lined up front, with maybe a decades-old sedan or two parked in between. There were those who showed up to drink from noon to night, and there were those who stopped by to hear a local band or play a few games of pool. It was the sort of place where a Sam Adams or a Corona was considered a "fancy" beer, but somehow they'd managed to come up with a chocolate martini for the band's sound guy. The band had come in to set up and run a few songs just to get the feel of the space.
The trickster had stared openly, turning on his stool to face the room, when the screen door snapped shut behind the Winchester boys. He did everything but wave and call out Hey guys, how've you been? How's Thursday treating you, Sam?
The Winchesters sat down just two stools over from him, none the wiser. The early shift was coming in for their pre-dinner beers, and no one paid the boys too much mind. They were all interested in the band. All acoustic instruments--bluegrass? some people wondered--and not the usual sort who came through here. But that was just idle interest. There were a few in the room who were watching more intently.
Mr. Nancy won a minor bet when Dean Winchester was the one to zero in on the strangest instrument the band. His eyebrows shot up as he saw the lead player move to the front of the stage.
"Dude. We're going up against Zamfir?"
Sam rolled his eyes. The comment got a chuckle from the spider in the corner, but the man with the chocotini smiled sharply and cocked one eyebrow. The curly-haired youth with the pan pipes nodded solemnly and pursed those kissable lips as he lifted the pipes to his mouth.
He began to play.
Onwards to Part Two
Also, many, many thanks to aishuu for pacing me and serving as sounding board/on-the-fly beta for me, and to arliss for reading and doing beta duty on the thing as a whole.
Title: The Great God Pan Is as Dead as Disco (1 of 2)
Series: Supernatural/American Gods
Word count: Approx. 13,500
Rating: R (very hard R)
Summary: In which a bet is placed, a trap is set, and questions of ownership and birthdays prove to be far more complicated than originally thought.
"Here's the thing--we do not mention this again. Ever."
There was a smirk and a damnably long pause, then: "Agreed."
It was a cliché to say there were fates worse than death, but at the moment, one brother had a brain pan chock full of embarrassment and the other would very much like to un-see certain events he saw just a few hours earlier. Things such as that could make death and hellfire seem like the more refreshing option.
"Oh, man... you should have seen yourself, Sammy. You had that waitress--"
"Didn't you just agree you weren't going to mention this again?"
"My bad."
Dean didn't sound the least bit sorry.
* * *
In one sense, the whole mess started when Bela stole the Colt. The boys had said, and Bobby agreed, that hunting her down directly wouldn't be at all effective. She was too wily to be taken down like that, and the attempt would probably put them in an even worse bind than before.
What they had to do, Sam said, was find the kind of artifact Bela was likely to go after, and use it to bait a trap for her. Dean suggested digging through their dad's old storage locker for something interesting, but it was Bobby's opinion it would be better to wait for something to turn up on its own. It would be more effective, he said, and most likely a damn sight safer, what with it seeming less like a set-up. As valuable as the Colt was, it wouldn't do them any good if they were both killed trying to get it back.
It took over a month, but eventually Bobby got wind of some suitably strange happenings. People going crazy in coffee houses and bars and waking up with the worst cases of 'morning after' on record. There had been five incidents all told, leading to two deaths, seven hospitalizations, three lawsuits, and fourteen arrests. Once Bobby and Sam took a good look at the newspaper articles it only took them thirty minutes to figure out the connection. And if they could figure it out, well, so could Bela.
It was the perfect setup.
* * *
"I cannot believe that bitch didn't show!" Dean slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel with every other syllable. "Three days down the crapper, and we're no closer to getting it back."
Sam just let him rant and tried not to think too much about why Bela wanted the Colt if it wasn't for profit. He'd have to think about it later, but it could wait until they'd crossed a state line or even a county line.
The idea of putting a boundary between themselves and... and that was highly appealing.
"She should have been all over it like white on rice. There's sickos out there'd give their firstborn to get their hands on that thing. I just don't get it, Sam. I simply do not get it."
Even that much was more than Sam wanted to talk about what had happened. He just made a sound that was half-grunt, half-sigh and that didn't express agreement or disagreement with anything. They rode on in blessed, blessed silence for a while, and when Dean seemed to be getting restless again, and feeling a need to break the silence, Sam headed him off with a sure-fire distraction.
"Can we stop for dinner once we cross into Illinois? I'm starving."
"Sure." That would have been the end of it, but Dean's head lifted as he read a passing sign. "Huh. It says there's a diner just two miles down the road. Why don't we--"
"Illinois."
"Whatever." Pause. "Freak."
* * *
In another sense, it started back when a little boy gave his brother a Christmas gift that should have been given to someone else and that should have been given on any other day of the year. There are plenty of old holidays that go around wearing new clothes, and it's not always easy to tell which one you're looking at when it's wrapped up in its tacky sweaters and sporting its novelty ties.
And right then, as the Impala roared past the Crossroads Inn and Pot Roast Diner, two men sat inside, roaring with laughter even as one reluctantly passed a bottle over to the other. In yet another sense, it's all their fault.
They must have been able to sense the Impala's passing, because just as it roared by, one of the two men raised a glass of absinthe in a toast.
(Later, the waitress would have sworn they didn't stock any of that absentee hooch or whatever it was that old black man with the yellow gloves had ordered, but there was a bottle all the same, right by the Jagermeister--just like he said. There was even a box of sugar cubes.)
"To two of the most fucked up, fucked over, and just plain fucked people who are traipsing through this happy world of ours."
His companion smirked and echoed the toast with his glass of fruit punch.
"To the perfect setup."
* * *
"You sure you don't want to stop? 'Cause we can stop. That place looked halfway decent. And they serve beer."
"Dean..."
"Fine, fine. You know, one of these days, your face is gonna freeze like that, and that would be tragic, you know?" Dean nodded and pursed his lips as if he had just passed on a gem of true wisdom. "You have a hard enough time getting any action as it is, and oh, I'm sorry--I'm not supposed to talk about that, right? Or was it something else I'm not supposed to talk about, because you never did say just what that was. Lawyer-boy."
Sam didn't dignify that with a response, but he didn't stop scowling, either. He couldn't explain it, but the need to cross some sort of border, even one marked by a WELCOME TO ILLINOIS THE LAND OF LINCOLN, was as visceral, as instinctive, as urgent...
But he wasn't thinking about that any more. Much. He shifted in his seat, trying to adjust his jeans without Dean noticing.
He just wished Dean would stop grinning and shaking his head, trying to pretend he wasn't about to bust out laughing.
"Dude, this driving in silence thing sucks. It's been long enough, right?"
"No." Sam blocked the cassette slot with his hand, knowing full well Dean wouldn't scuffle with him while driving. He'd pay for it later, of course, once they crossed the border and he could relax. Dean probably had a 'Worst of the Eighties' compilation tucked away for just such an occasion as this. "Not yet."
Sam turned to look out the rear window, and watched until the diner disappeared over the horizon. It wasn't a total relief when it did, but it was a relief all the same. He wondered why.
He also wondered when he was going to get that damned song out of his head.
"Illinois."
* * *
There are many kind of boundaries. Geographic, legal, moral, temporal, visual, spiritual. When the boys were younger it used to drive John up a tree and right back down again whenever they crossed a state line and whichever brother was riding shotgun (usually Dean) would turn and quickly yell I'minNewHampshireandyou'renot!
Not only did this tend to start the kind of squabble that led to one boy trying to haul the other over the back of the bench seat, but John by then had enough experience to know (although he didn't know that he knew) that calling attention to boundaries and borders was not always safe.
For one thing, there are certain beings who infest the territories near boundaries and crossroads. Guardians. Ghosts. Demons. Gods.
Of these, gods are the worst of the lot, and some gods are worse than others. You see, boundary gods tend to come in two flavors, and of these two types, the gods of life and death are by far the least dangerous.
Mr. Nancy whistled long and low as his yellow-gloved fingers nimbly aligned the fragments of reed along the top of the paper placemat. He sorted them in roughly parallel lines, long to short, blocking out the ad for AL'S TOWING AND GENERAL CONTRACTING that otherwise had pride of place across the top of the mat.
"My, my, my... Your boy did a number on this, that's for darn certain. And all without that souped-up peashooter of his." Nancy tsk-tsk-tsk'd and moved another piece of shattered reed into place.
"Ah, they're better off without that thing. They're a bit too trigger-happy as it is, these days. All very Bonnie and Clyde, but I'm not sure which one would wear the dress. Anyhow, he's hardly my boy." The man across the table currently did not wear a name. Instead, he wore an old pair of jeans with holes out at the knees and a scrub top he'd pilfered from a stint at a Chicago hospital. "Dean Winchester's got a few too many claims on him as it is."
"That would explain some things, now, wouldn't it?" By way of experiment, Mr. Nancy slid one of the reed fragments down a fraction of an inch. There was the faintest whisper of music as it dragged across the paper. Even though there was no way she could hear it, the waitress looked up, glassy-eyed, her hips jerkily swaying in time to a music that no longer played. She ran one hand up her side, tracing and savoring the dip at her waist until the unheard music stopped and she returned to the present with a brisk shake of her head.
Mr. Nancy slid the reed back into place. "What would happen," he mused, "if I started to whistle that fine old tune when she brings me my pie?"
"Nothing. Well, not nothing. Just nothing, you know, spectacular." The god's tone made it clear that it wasn't worth expending any effort on anything with a lesser result than that. "Our dear Miz Marge--she of the granny panties and the sheer disapproval of anything remotely resembling fun--might wiggle her hips a bit more and have a passing naughty thought about Ryan Seacrest, but that's it. It won't change the fact that her twat's dryer than the Sahara. Anyhow, I am far more interested in what's going to happen when El Deano's deal comes due. I'm thinking we should maybe sell tickets."
* * *
One day, Sam feared, he would look back at this day and he would count it as a good one because Dean was still here to rag on him for what happened back at the club. For now, though, he could only gaze out at the window at all the nothing passing by, trying to find a safe place for his mind to settle in the vast ground between mortification and dread.
Of course, now that he'd opened that particular door in his mind, thinking about his loss of control at the club was starting to seem not so bad by comparison. Sam told himself it was all going to be okay--both the club and the other thing--but the ghost of himself he saw in the window looked him in the eye and told him otherwise.
He knew damned well what it was like to lose Dean. He'd been forced to live through that moment over and over and over again not too long ago. Then, after living through the moment of truth a hundred times he'd gotten a taste of what living with that truth was going to be like.
"Stop thinking so much, Sam." It hadn't taken Dean long to figure out when Sam was picking over that endless Tuesday and the three phantom months that had followed.
"Two bottles of vodka ought to take care of that." It was meant to be sharp and snarky, but it came out sounding a bit more like Eeyore on a bad day than someone who wanted to put his brother in his place.
"Nooo... no more booze for you today, Sam. You've had your fun. Besides, you always said vodka makes you puke."
There was something there in Dean's comment that bit at Sam's ear in a way he couldn't pin down, but it didn't strike him as important enough to go after.
"It wasn't all that fun." If anything, it had been terrifying--one long panic-stricken ride that he could still remember in too-present flashes of sense memory. "Trust me. And it's tequila that makes me puke."
"Heh. That's not how I remember it. The point is, you're moping again, and it's really starting to piss me off. None of what the Trickster showed you was real, right? It was just him fucking with your head, you know that."
Again, Dean's comment was answered with a grunt that could have been agreement or disagreement. Two more mile markers flashed by (eight miles until the border, less than eight minutes) before either of them spoke again. And then, both of them spoke at once.
"We're going to find a way to get me out of this, Sam."
"But why? Why would he go to the trouble of messing with us? Why such elaborate setups?"
Dean switched on his typical, devastating grin, the one that had no chance of working on his brother. But reflex is reflex and Sam recognized it as such. "Maybe 'cause we're a couple of criminally cool dudes? C'mon, you know better than to ask that. You're the flavor of the week in the occult world, you know that."
Now, it was Dean's turn to look aside, focusing on something out in the middle distance and deep within. Sam was content to leave him to it. There was no good way, no good way at all, to tell Dean that his soul had been bought by someone far more powerful than a mere crossroads demon.
Sam looked at his brother as long as he dared (if he left it too long, Dean would turn on him with an aggravated what?!), wondering if he should just out with it, admit what he knew and try not to admit how he knew.
He was just drawing breath to tell Dean about his own trip to a crossroads and his own desperate, pointless gamble, but the bloody light of the setting sun shone dull and red on old bronze and the story that came out was by no means the story Sam had planned to tell.
* * *
Ah, yes. That crazy deal. The older Winchester boy had gotten himself into more of a pickle than he ever could have imagined when he pandered himself at that crossroads. Himself and a whole mess of others, not that he knew anything about that.
It was a wonder Dean had even been allowed to go through with it. Unless, of course, it was all part of some sort of complicated plan that Mr. Nancy would probably be much, much better off steering well clear of.
"What's going to happen is that I will be visiting family down in the islands and having pretty girls listening to my stories and bringing me drinks." With that, Marge came by, and Mr. Nancy gave her a smile that actually leached some of the sour from her face, even though she seemed baffled and perturbed by the collection of splinters on the placemat.
"Here, let me get this out of your way, my dear. It's just a little puzzle I'm working out for my friend, and my! That pie looks absolutely spectacular. I've never seen cherries so plump--you know, in the cookbook pictures, they leave the pits in them so the cherries stay nice and round, can you believe that? Why go to the trouble of baking a pie that's only nice to look at? Now hold on a moment and let me taste... ah, now that is a cherry. I have to say, your cook works miracles--no! You mean to say you baked this yourself?" He pressed the tips of his fingers to his mouth and blew her a kiss.
By the time Mr. Nancy slid the glistening red cherry between those white, white teeth of his, Marge was blushing and fair twittering like a chickadee. In fact, she was so flustered she almost walked off before delivering his companion's chocolate-chip pancakes (with extra whipped cream, just as requested).
"See? No need for the pipes after all." The other god unlayered his stack of pancakes and started putting it back together again with whipped cream and chocolate syrup mortaring the stack together. "Our Marge is as bigoted as they come--not that she'd ever in a million years admit it--and yet you could have her up against a wall and singing holy hosannas in five minutes if you wanted, and she'd treasure the memory as if it were one of her Precious Moments figurines."
"Still, it's a crying shame." All that was left of the pan pipes was a handful of pock-marked shards. They were still very powerful--one of them, steeped in a bottle of wine for a month, would yield an aphrodisiac that would strip the knickers off anyone after a single sip--but that was nothing but lust.
"It was worth it." The nameless Trickster held up the vial he'd just won, dangling it between two fingers so that the light slid greasily over blue-black glass, then hiding it away in a safe spot somewhere between moments. "And not just for the soma. That's just the icing on the cake. So to speak. Yummy."
Mr. Nancy clucked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head. He could afford to give up a small bottle of soma. It had been a great, grand day when his stories started being taught in grades schools all in the name of multiculturalism. It meant that occasionally he could spare enough scraps of belief to place the kind of bet he half-planned to lose.
"One of these days, I'll find out from you why you're so interested in those two boys."
"Besides the obvious?"
"Besides the obvious." One brother was set to become king of Hell and the other to become some demon's bitch. That would have been enough to interest most people, but not him. Demons bought and sold souls as if they were on the Chicago commodities exchange. And if a Duke of Hell didn't have at least one human pawn in the wings, he was hardly a duke at all. No, none of that was anything he hadn't seen before.
Now, If Mr. Nancy had won the bet, he'd have heard the whole truth behind why his compatriot was still bird-dogging the Winchesters. He'd lost, though, but in losing he'd managed to learn almost as much as if he'd won.
"I can't believe that boy didn't even squirm. Not so much as a woody, and sober enough to make Carrie Nation look like W.C. Fields." Again, shaking his head as if tut-tutting all the ills of the world, Mr. Nancy rolled up the placemat, folded over the ends, and slid the now neatly wrapped bundle across the table. Needless to say, he'd palmed a couple of the shards for his own purposes. Lust might be simple, but it had its uses. "His brother, now..."
Mr. Nancy's chuckle was a discreet whisper, barely louder than the wind through dry grass, but it had all the raunch of a good, drunken belly-laugh.
His companion smiled a sharp smile that looked a bit too much like the late, not-so-lamented Loki's. "Hey, after watching three months of boring vengeful angst with a side order of major OCD-and-Daddy issues, I was more in the mood for something a bit more 'Girls Gone Wild,' you know?"
"Too bad your boy Dean had to go and ruin the fun. He's a damned good shot. Almost unnaturally good, even without Sam Colt's little gew-gaw." Idly, he wondered if Colt's gun could kill a god.
The Trickster didn't rise to the bait. He just smiled that Loki-like smile and said, "I keep on telling you. Not my boy."
There was an interesting moment of held breath and tensed backs when a burly man in a red cap got up and walked past their table. But it was only a Saint Louis Cardinals fan who was just a little ways off home turf. Nothing more, nothing less, and neither god would admit that he'd even thought for a nanosecond that it might have been anything else.
Nor would they have admitted to fear; after all, the thrill of nearly getting caught in the game was half the fun.
* * *
The sun was low to the horizon, low enough to cast a strange, red-gold light. It thickened the air, making everything seem to be suspended in amber. It grazed Dean's cheek and jaw like blood spatter.
"I don't know why I'm thinking of this now, of all times." Or why he was thinking of all the other times he'd seen his brother splashed with blood, or wondered what there was about it that made his brother seem both more himself and less at the same time. Even in memories of happier times (or at least, memories of the lulls between storms), it was easy for Sam's memory to paint blood streaks where none had been, smudges of blood that reminded him of the dark smudge on Jess's forehead the two Ash Wednesdays he'd known her.
"Thinking of what?"
It seemed stupid, but Sam had to tell the story, and he had to tell it now. The crossroads could wait.
"It was back at Stanford, my second year," he said, and right then Dean went from the kind of quiet that said he was waiting for the right moment for a quip to the kind of quiet that was a hunter's quiet, the kind of quiet that came from not wanting to scare off the game.
It had been well over a year since Sam had volunteered anything about his time at school, so maybe that was what grabbed Dean's interest. Or maybe it was something about the way the story was being told, distant and dreamy, as if Sam was talking about something that had happened to someone else, somewhere ages ago and miles away. Which, in its own way, was exactly what he was talking about.
"What makes this story weird is that I hadn't been thinking about hunting or anything like that. Hadn't been for a while. I always worried about you--and Dad--of course, but after my first year, after I was able to go away for a whole summer and then come back and see everyone again..."
Sam let the pause tell the story for a minute or so.
"...well, I guess I just kind of got caught up in everything else, you know? Studying." Jess. Having a normal life. "I always figured that if something happened, Pastor Jim or maybe even Bobby would be able to track me down."
As far as Sam knew, Dad never found out that Sam made a point of forwarding each year's new dorm or apartment address and phone number to Pastor Jim. There was never any need to say anything about not passing the information along to Dad.
"As long as I never heard anything, you guys were okay. I didn't hear anything for over a year. And then this guy walked into a bar. He was..."
Sam hadn't thought about it in years, but he could now see the flash of light out of the corner of his eye as the bar door opened and closed. Instinct made him turn (always know who's in a room, who's coming, who's leaving--he heard his father as clearly as if he'd been on the stool next to him) but he couldn't see the man all that well. All he saw was sunlight. Sunlight bright on the man's red cap and glinting dully on the amulet around his neck. Sunlight and a presence that was like a blow to the chest.
"And for... well, it was only a few seconds, but it felt like forever, I knew something had happened to you."
It was just like that eternal Wednesday, only he didn't know that at the time.
* * *
They watched the red-capped man--just a trucker, nothing more, on his way home to a wife who loved him and a son who hated him--leave the diner. The bells on the door clanked rather than rang as the door shut behind him.
"A propos of nothing," the Trickster lied, "have you seen any sign of our old soldier friend of late? I'd have thought with all the ruckus, he'd be popping up sooner rather than later. War against Hell and all that good fun. He should be all over that. Assuming he's hasn't made like the title of a Kansas song."
"'Wayward Son?'" Mr. Nancy said, deliberately getting it wrong. "True, true, he's been plenty scarce for a while. I thought I'd see him at that little set-to Wednesday cooked up a few years back. Never actually thought he was gone gone, no matter what that busybody Ibis said. I'd have heard if he was gone to dust. Somehow." Mr. Nancy did not like not knowing things.
"Mmm..." The nameless trickster leaned back in his chair, looking more than a little smug. If he'd been at the battle at Lookout Mountain, it had been as someone else. Then there was the little matter of how his dark hair now had a touch of ginger to it, or how his smile sometimes had that Loki-like twist. Mr. Nancy had said many a nice how-de-do to Death more than a few times over the centuries, but he wondered if one of these days he'd hang up his fedora for good and his friend would suddenly start sporting an eight-legged shadow.
Stranger things had happened, and would happen yet. And Mr. Nancy had no intention of parting with his fine green hat anytime soon.
"I wonder if it's ever occurred to Sammy-boy why exactly his brother's never been possessed by a demon."
* * *
"You knew? Knew how? One of those..." Dean waggled his fingers in front of his eyes but stopped short of making woo-woo noises. "I didn't think you started having those psychic flash things until later, you know, not until the demon started messing with you again."
Sam was still facing straight ahead, watching the road streaking away beneath them, pulling the border closer to them, but he spared a sidelong glare at Mister Sensitive.
"It didn't have anything to do with the demon." Sam wasn't sure what it was connected to, but it wasn't a demon. Even back then, even over a year out of practice, he could tell that much.
"You sound pretty sure of that, Sam." Dean didn't. Sam nearly said never mind, just forget about it, it's not important, but then he remembered back at the club, and how even though the madness and the music he had noticed Dean standing there with red streaming down his face, eyes cold and frighteningly sane as he fired one perfect shot. At the time, though, his eyes had been fixed by something else, just as they were back then. "So what was this guy, then? Skinwalker? Fetch?"
Sam shrugged, and tried to push aside the thought that the person he'd seen back in the club was not Dean. If he wasn't careful, his memory would paint Dean's eyes as solid black. "No, not a skinwalker and not a fetch," he said, with the aggravated patience that greeted so many of Dean's remarks. "He didn't look like anyone I knew. Well, not anyone I can put a name to. He looked familiar. And he was wearing your amulet."
Dean took a quick, panicked look down at his chest, then grimaced and shook his head, no doubt pissed at himself for having letting the reaction slip.
"No fucking way. Only times I haven't worn this in the past some-odd years are when we did that job for Deacon and back when that skinwalking son-of-a-bitch took it from me." His lips curled back from his teeth. "Felt like boiling it in holy water--salted holy water--after that. Slimy, face-stealing creep..."
Sam had felt the same way. That amulet was Dean's. No one else's. It didn't matter that Bobby had given it to Sam to pass along to John. His face grew hot, even now, to think of how he'd assumed that Bobby had meant it as a Christmas present. But it had been early December, and all Sam could think about was Santa, and presents.
(He'd never worried much about Christmas before, but there was that man at the truck stop who had asked him what he was getting for his dad and his brother for Christmas. When Sam had shyly, cautiously said 'nothing?' the man had stared at him in shock and sorrow, mouth pursed around the candy cane he was sucking on. He told Sam that was no good, and that he had to get at least one gift for his dad or for his brother--it wasn't Christmas unless you gave someone a gift, everyone knew that. Ever since then, the idea had nagged at him, like a splinter that wouldn't work its way to the surface.)
So, when Bobby pulled him aside and said in an earnest whisper to give this to your dad, and make sure it's wrapped good and tight when you hand it over, Sam thought he knew what Bobby meant.
He'd never thought anything about opening the package Bobby gave him (he could always wrap it up again, right?), and whenever Dad and Dean weren't around, he'd hold up the pendant by its leather thong and watch it twist back and forth, taking in and slowly learning every detail. He remembered wondering if Dad would like the strange bull-man thing, and telling himself over and over that Uncle Bobby wouldn't give him something Dad would hate.
Then, Dad hadn't shown up for Christmas, and Sam gave the amulet to Dean instead. The instant he handed it over, Sam had the strange feeling that he'd done something very, very good and very, very bad.
"It was your amulet, Dean. Maybe you never took it off, maybe you never lost it, but it was your amulet." Sam shook his head and wished that the tightness in his chest would go away. This was all too close, too fresh, and for a moment, he even went so far to wish that the music would return and drown it all out again.
* * *
Yellow-gloved fingers tapped out a rhythm that Sam Winchester would have recognized all too well. Somehow, Mr. Nancy even managed to hit the sweet spots on the old wooden table so the tones suggested the melody that went with the pulsing, hip-thrusting beat. It was a sweet melody, completely different from yet perfectly suited to the fevered heartbeat of the percussion.
"One of these days, I'll win one of our bets, and I'll find out what you're up to with those two boys," Mr. Nancy said, but he didn't sound too fussed about it.
The other trickster (Mr. Nancy suspected he was close, dangerously close, to becoming an archetype, not a god--it would explain why names no longer stuck to him, except by brute force) tongued a mint from one side of his mouth to the other. "What makes you think I'm up to anything?"
He took advantage of the opening of his mouth to pop another two Starlite mints in there. Marge normally only allowed one mint per customer when she brought the checks, but she'd dug an entire handful out of her apron pocket for the two gods.
"You talk. You breathe. You exist. That's why I know you're up to mischief. Fire's hot, water's wet, and you turn people's lives ass over teakettle. That's how it is."
The trickster lifted an eyebrow. The mints puffed out one cheek as he worked them against his gums. "You know, there so many possible jokes I could make right now about pots and kettles that I just can't decide."
Mr. Nancy took another bite of his pie. "Some people just don't know how to take a compliment. It's a sad, sorry world."
They meddled. That's what they did. That's what they were. Once upon a time, Mr. Nancy wouldn't have hesitated before messing with another god's doings just for the sheer topsy-turvyness of it all. But that was before Wednesday.
Still and all, though, today had been a hoot and a half. "If I'd known you had those pipes, I would have swindled them off you years ago," Mr. Nancy volunteered. He didn't need the pipes, not any more than he needed the fragments he'd stashed away in his breast pocket. Needing, though, had nothing to do with it. "Now where on earth did you ever get your hands on such a thing, anyhow? Those were the real deal, weren't they?"
"Go them off the horny old goat himself."
* * *
"We never did find out just what this is, did we?" Dean asked. Someone else might have reached up unconsciously to touch the amulet, perhaps rub a thumb across the thing's face, or test the sharpness of its horns. Dean, though... he never paid any mind to the thing unless he was putting it on after he'd had to take it off for some reason. "Best Bobby could put to it was that it has some sort of protective power or something. Not that it's done a bang-up job of that, past few years."
"You're still alive." Sam could have added for now, but (as he had so many times before) pointedly chose not to.
"Yeah, whatever." Dean heard it all the same, and Sam knew he was starting to drift back into his own Wednesday. But then Dean shook his head like he was jerking himself back to wakefulness. "So, this guy had my amulet--which he didn't, like I told you. Maybe there's two of them. So anyhow, what happened. How come you weren't burning up the phone to find out what happened?"
"Dunno." Dean was right. He should have called Pastor Jim. He should have called Bobby. "The guy walked into the bar, looked around, and..."
He couldn't explain it. The man had looked familiar, deeply familiar, but Sam could not have described him even if his life was at stake. There was something about him that reminded Sam of his father--a bearing that he'd only seen in other hunters with years of military experience behind them. Other than that, though, all Sam could focus on was the red of the cap and the dull glint of sunlight on old bronze.
Except it wasn't bronze. It was gold, but he'd seen bronze. And the familiar, weathered and primitive features of Dean's amulet (he'd pulled it out and watched it turn and swing, over and over, every night leading up to that Christmas) were sharper and almost hyper-realistic. How he could have seen that from across the dimly lit room, he couldn't say, but he knew it.
"It was weird. He just walked in and stopped a few feet inside the door, like he was looking for someone."
His gaze had passed over Sam, lingering just long enough for Sam to tell that he was being considered, appraised, and then passed over. He should have felt relief at the sudden lifting of attention, but instead, he found himself looking to his side, half-expecting Dean to be there, eyebrows raised, with a what the fuck was that? look to match Sam's own.
Whoever the man was, he wasn't a demon, but Sam would have bet everything he owned that the man wasn't human, either.
"So what happened then? Did you go after him?" There was a sidelong, pitying glance. "You didn't go after him. Wuss."
"No, I didn't go after him, Dean." Sam wished he hadn't even brought it up. "I thought about it, but by the time I was able to move again, he was gone."
When he and Luis left the bar, all of Sam's instincts went redline, telling him that there was something watching him, studying him. Sam wanted to turn and call out "Dean?" or possibly even "Dad?" but he also very much wanted Luis not to think he was crazy.
"That's a really stupid story, Sam. A guy comes into a bar, he leaves again, nothing happens. It's like a joke, but without the joke part. What the hell are you telling me this for?"
Because today, when I was going crazy, you were standing there with red covering half your face. You made an impossible shot, you didn't even hesitate, you just did what had to be done, and it was the same thing as back then. I know why that man looked so familiar.
"Dunno." Sam drummed his fingers on the arm rest, and watched the not-scenery pass by on the other side of his reflection. He never even noticed what rhythm he was tapping out. "Something made me think of it, that's all."
Something in him reminded me of you. Something about you reminded me of him.
Sam once again started to ask Dean if they should maybe do some more research on the amulet, just in case, but as often happened, the thought slid right from his mind between the thinking of it and the saying of it.
"Let's call Bobby when we get to Illinois and tell him it's a done deal. He deserves to know, since he's the one that found out about the pipes." As far as Sam was concerned, that was what he'd intended to say.
"Done deal, but no Bela. Damn, I can't believe she didn't show."
"At least it's over." But Sam's fingers kept tapping out that rhythm and his mind kept sifting through things he'd rather forget.
* * *
"Oh, I had these a long time. Pan's been missing 'em since before that miserable reflection of him who showed up at Lookout Mountain first came over from the olde country." Naturally, the 'e' in 'olde' was pronounced. The Trickster patted the pocket where he'd stashed the fragments. "Just one of those things it's nice to keep lying around, in case you need to kick a little life into the party. Shame they're gone, though."
There was a lack of sufficient sorrow in those words, hinting to Mr. Nancy that perhaps those reeds might reform themselves into Pan's pipes, given enough time and enough of a push. If his suspicions about his mercurial friend were correct, it made absolute sense that he'd have possession of those pipes, possession enough to keep them coming back to him. Then again, the Trickster had gone around so long thieving and salvaging attributes of other gods who'd faded or dwindled away, who was to say who he really was, way back when and once upon a time?
"I'm sure you'll find some use for the remains." Of course, it would be amsing to see if the pipes worked the way they should now that they were missing a few pieces. Mr. Nancy might have to tail along after the other trickster for a while. It wouldn't hurt, in any case; things were bound to stay interesting around him in the not-too-distant future.
"Anyhow, it was fun while it lasted. For us, anyhow." A flicker of malice showed in the Trickster's usual, lazy grin, and Mr. Nancy's smile seemed to be a bit toothier than normal. Tricksters might goof about and enjoy a good joke, but coyotes have teeth, ravens have claws, and a spider's bite is no laughing matter.
"Yes, indeedy. That was a high old time, oh yes it was--mmm, mmm, mmm..." During the last performance of the pipes, Mr. Nancy had been sitting in a corner of the ceiling, legs tucked around him as he watched. Other times, he might have preferred to be down in the action, but given what he knew (or had guessed) about the Winchester boys, it was much safer to be out of the way and partaking of the proverbial fly on the wall as he enjoyed the show.
The club was just down the road, and had just a seedy enough reputation to keep away families and the kind of women who had a care about their reputation. Harleys and Ford F-250s lined up front, with maybe a decades-old sedan or two parked in between. There were those who showed up to drink from noon to night, and there were those who stopped by to hear a local band or play a few games of pool. It was the sort of place where a Sam Adams or a Corona was considered a "fancy" beer, but somehow they'd managed to come up with a chocolate martini for the band's sound guy. The band had come in to set up and run a few songs just to get the feel of the space.
The trickster had stared openly, turning on his stool to face the room, when the screen door snapped shut behind the Winchester boys. He did everything but wave and call out Hey guys, how've you been? How's Thursday treating you, Sam?
The Winchesters sat down just two stools over from him, none the wiser. The early shift was coming in for their pre-dinner beers, and no one paid the boys too much mind. They were all interested in the band. All acoustic instruments--bluegrass? some people wondered--and not the usual sort who came through here. But that was just idle interest. There were a few in the room who were watching more intently.
Mr. Nancy won a minor bet when Dean Winchester was the one to zero in on the strangest instrument the band. His eyebrows shot up as he saw the lead player move to the front of the stage.
"Dude. We're going up against Zamfir?"
Sam rolled his eyes. The comment got a chuckle from the spider in the corner, but the man with the chocotini smiled sharply and cocked one eyebrow. The curly-haired youth with the pan pipes nodded solemnly and pursed those kissable lips as he lifted the pipes to his mouth.
He began to play.
Onwards to Part Two