Supernatural: Clangs (1/2) by Vehemently
Title: Clangs
By: Vehemently (vee_fic)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for language, scariness, and adult themes
Spoilers: none.
Beta by minim_calibre and cofax7.
What is it: Gen AU. A homecoming. A horror.
Tagline: It was just a stupid accident. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.
***
***
November 2, 2005
Lincoln, Nebraska
Sam walked out of his lab section and into a stiff wind, maple leaves and trash snapping around his ankles. The air wasn't cold, not that real cold of early winter, just a crisp hint of the season to come. It was good running weather. He would blow right through Saturday's 10K in weather like this. It was perfect Halloween weather; too bad it had been in the eighties two days ago.
He was securing the flap of his messenger bag as he paced through the parking lot towards his car, thinking about his social psych midterm and the pretty girl who sat in front of him, and whether she would be at Jim's party on Saturday night, and really, whether it was weird to pick up a girl in your social psych class, wasn't that like splinting the knee of your anatomy classmate? -- which was why he came around from the back of the Impala and was startled to see someone leaning against the hood as if he belonged there.
"Hey," Sam challenged. The guy wore an oversized drab jacket that looked like it had been rolled through a few puddles. Definitely wasn't Crazy Bob, who panhandled in front of the Super Mart ten blocks from here: no gloves, no doggy companion, and he was missing the quilted sleeping bag Bob wore like a cape everywhere he went. At Sam's voice, the figure twisted around, old clothes and unkempt hair, and although Sam knew that face, at first he couldn't place it.
That face should be clean-shaven, attached to a body that stood freakishly straight, ears sticking out under brush-cut hair. That face should be against a Sears-blue background, forehead a little obscured by the brim of that stupid white hat that made him look like a police officer, mouth solemn in his official Marine portrait. It was the totally wrong face for a crazy homeless guy in Lincoln, because Dean was not a crazy homeless guy and he lived in California. Had lived in California.
"Hey yourself," said Dean, and took a drag on the cigarette between his fingers, casual as if he'd disappeared only a day ago. He hadn't been a smoker, the last time Sam had seen him. "How come you park so damn far away from your building?"
"I, I," Sam stammered, mouth open. He came up close for a good look: sunburned, circles under his eyes. His fingernails were bitten to the quick, and some of his cuticles were scabbed. He didn't smell so good, either. Sam had been dreaming about him, the last couple of weeks, half nightmare and half wish, himself but not himself. In his dreams, Dean never looked like this. Sam wasn't sure whether to touch him or not. "I like the walk. What are you doing here? Where have you been all these months? Jesus Christ, Dean, what happened to you?"
Dean put out a hand and stood up. "One at a time, tiger," he said, dropping his cigarette to the pavement. He ground it out with a boot heel, methodical, slow enough Sam just stood there gaping and let him gather his thoughts. But all Dean said was, "You on your way someplace?"
A stiff breeze stepped between them, lifting the edges of Dean's hair. He shrugged his jacket more closely around him, though Sam wasn't feeling the cold at all. "I guess, yeah, home." Sam blurted it without thinking, and then realized that meant he was inviting Dean to go there. It was too late to suggest they go to a diner, or something. Sam stood aside and Dean glanced left and right, illicit.
He pulled open the passenger's side door without arguing about whether Dad had given Sam the car, or only loaned it to him. In the past two years, Sam had replaced the radio with a CD player, and upgraded the lap belts with modern shoulder seat belts. Dean didn't remark on the changes. Sam looked him over again while he turned the key: Dean just sat there with his hands in the pockets of his coat, staring out the windshield, eyes in constant motion. He didn't look like a Marine at all. He looked like a stranger.
Lincoln was a nice enough town, a college town. Sam drove home the slow way, past the hardware store he'd worked in part time, and the grocery store with the cross-dressing manager (he -- she -- had a thing for elegance, pearls every day, and made you feel like your cold cuts and toothpaste were a grand luxury), and the Korean restaurant that had to be some kind of Mafia front, because nobody ever actually ate there. At every stoplight and landmark, Sam opened his mouth to narrate their journey: as if he could peg Dean down into Sam's own reality, as if he would fit here. Dean would not fit here. The blank of his time missing was stifling, brittle. He watched every pedestrian and approaching car as if it might be attacking him. It was a long, quiet drive.
As he pulled into the parking lot Sam finally said, "I'm surprised you didn't go to Lawrence. Dad was -- he worries about you a lot."
"Yeah," Dean grunted over his shoulder, and stepped out of the car.
He paced along the sidewalk up to the front door, and stood there waiting for Sam to come unlock it. Sam held the keys in his hand tightly: he had the power, here. It was his apartment, and Dean was a guest. Sam felt the awkwardness like a too-heavy sweater. "Come in," he said, and slowly Dean did as he was told.
He'd never been in this town, in this building, in this hallway. When they'd last seen each other, it had been in Lawrence, at Dad's house, two years ago. Sam led him up the stairs and into the apartment and wondered at that: whether that had been unconsciously intentional on his part, making sure Dean was excluded from his college life. He'd lived here since his sophomore year, summers as well as during the school year. He couldn't remember whether he'd ever told Dean the address.
The apartment itself was tiny and ramshackle, a place Sam had assembled himself. Everything did double-duty: the futon was folded as a couch during the day; his desk was also the kitchen table; he kept the tomato plant alive (miraculously still yielding tomatoes, this late in the fall) in a big stew pot he'd salvaged from someone else's moving trash. He was proud of himself, that it was tidy and an efficient use of space and looked like a home instead of like a dorm room. His big ambition was art on the walls, or anyway frames for arty posters, instead of thumbtacking them to the wallboard. Dean stood on the worn carpet clearly not giving a shit about art on walls.
"So, uh, I guess you'll -- you hungry, or you want to clean up first?" Sam felt unaccountably naked, as if Dean would disapprove of the place, as if he had the right to judge. There was nothing of Dean or Dad or Lawrence here.
"Clean up, I guess." Dean hunched his shoulders and let Sam lead him to the bathroom. It was just big enough to fit one adult standing up, full of loose floor tiles and amateurishly caulked seams. Sam leaned in and flicked on the light when it became clear Dean hadn't thought to do so. They faced each other across the threshold.
"I'll fix you a sandwich while you're in there," Sam said. "You want coffee or just a Coke or something?"
"Don't make a new pot just for me," Dean said, and began pulling off his jacket. Sam realized suddenly that Dean hadn't brought any luggage with him at all: the clothes on his back were all he had. While he watched, Dean pulled a handgun out of his jeans and set it on top of the toilet tank, next to his half-empty pack of cigarettes.
It was really big, shiny, clean the way nothing else on Dean seemed to be. The noise it made on the porcelain was innocuous, but all Sam could do was stare at the barrel of it, the way it pointed toward the wall for safety. It looked heavy and purposeful and a little bit terrifying. Dean wouldn't be carrying it if it weren't loaded.
"Okay," Sam said, slowly. "Uh, the handle for hot is a little loose, lately. I just haven't got around to fixing it yet. Be careful." He left Dean putting down a folded manila envelope overtop the weapon, and slipped back out into the main room.
His pants would be too big, but they could be belted and rolled up. Sam hunted in the kitchen cabinets for a sweater that was small enough Dean wouldn't be swimming in it. He pulled out a bunch of layers -- even underwear, Sam decided -- and walked into the bathroom while Dean was in the shower.
Dean startled a little as the door opened, the Marine tattoos on his shoulders flashing as he spun around. Sam pretended not to have noticed, and deposited the new clothes and pulled down a fresh towel from the top shelf. He gathered up the pile of dirty clothes, which might have walked out of the room under their own power they were so bad. It would probably be better to just burn them, but Sam decided against that. He gathered up a handful of quarters and headed down to the basement and turned out the pockets for washing: some change and crumpled bills, a couple of filthy keys, a smooth white stone, a Zippo -- no wallet. Sam put the load on hot, and added extra soap. He trudged back up the stairs, feeling the grit of never-washed clothing on his fingertips. He let himself back into the apartment and did a quick reconnoitre of the fridge to make sure there weren't any stray beers he'd forgotten about. But the fridge was thankfully empty of alcohol. He put on a new pot of coffee.
It wasn't too long a wait for Dean to pull himself together and present himself for chow. He'd gone ahead and shaved, though Sam had forgotten to set out a razor for him. He wore every stitch Sam had laid out, down to the ridiculous brown sweater (a gift from Dad? Anyway, it was years old) that was small on Sam but baggy on Dean. He'd put on the clean socks, and left his filthy boots behind on the bathroom tiles. He sat at the kitchen table and tucked into the ham and cheese Sam had made as if he hadn't eaten in days.
Which was a possibility. Sam looked over his longish hair combed back in wet ridges, the way the clothes fit, and couldn't decide whether Dean was really thinner or whether it was just an illusion. He didn't know how to ask, so he said nothing. He busied himself in the ritual of coffee, only wondering after he'd done it whether Dean still took cream or if that was the sort of thing that changed while you were away. He set the cup next to Dean's elbow.
"So," said Dean, around a mouthful of sandwich. "Senior year, huh?" He didn't look up from eating.
"I'm majoring in psychology," Sam babbled, "developmental stuff. Adolescents in transition, that kind of thing. I'm working on an honors thesis about -- about risk-factors and perceived social success in the ninth grade. I had to pass the institutional review board and everything." He trailed off, awkward.
"That's cool," Dean said flatly. He inhaled the coffee. "Seeing anybody?"
"Not -- not right now. I've been kind of busy. I've," and Sam wondered whether it was okay to talk about your future like this, in front of somebody who didn't look like he had one. "I've been applying to doctoral programs. There's this fellowship at Indiana Bloomington I'm going for. It's pretty prestigious, research and stuff, but it's still close enough I can go home and check on Dad."
The way Dean whipped his head around, eyes narrow, made Sam back up a step. "He's not helpless, you know."
"I know." Sam held his hands up, placating.
Dean made a noise and stood to open the fridge himself. Sam wasn't sure he liked this version of Dean much more than the shy stranger. He spread mayonnaise on the bread and folded the slices of ham just so. That was a Marine thing, probably; after he'd gotten back from his first year in the Marines he'd folded his underwear.
"So. There are a bunch of people who were worried about you. Am I allowed to call them and tell them you're all right?"
"Call who?" Dean asked, setting the plate back on the table. He ate as if he didn't care who Sam might name.
"Well, I mean, Dad," Sam said. "And the Marine Corps. Your C.O. A couple of other guys in your unit Dad talked to. The police department in San Diego."
"You got the cops involved?" Petulant, like he was when he thought the rules shouldn't apply to him.
"Of course they did, Dean. Dad filed a missing persons report. He was on the phone every day, nagging them about whether there were any John Does matching your description in the morgue." There was something unnecessarily punitive in the way Sam phrased that. He could feel himself losing his temper. "So you walked away on purpose? Of your own free will, I mean?"
"I had some stuff I had to take care of," Dean said, offhand as if he could end the conversation so simply. He'd been doing it for years, of course.
Sam scratched at a stain on the countertop with his thumbnail. He'd scrubbed it before, and it would never come clean, but he dug at it anyway. "You go to prison for desertion during wartime, Dean. I looked it up. How you could do that to Dad --" Realizing the unsteady ground he was on, Sam shut up and crossed his arms.
Dean didn't react, to the part Sam said or the part he didn't. He finished the sandwich and batted the crumbs around the plate and Sam stood over him fuming.
"Your C.O. explained a few things. A few things you hadn't told Dad about."
All the air vanished from the room as Sam's heart pounded. Dean didn't stand up and clock him, or yell at him, or do anything. He just stood up. His face wasn't as naked as Sam had ever seen it, but it was open and plain, not a face of denial. There were more freckles on Dean's nose, more lines around his mouth. The smoking had taken a toll. He looked like he could stand a good night's sleep in an actual bed. He was twenty-six, and looked a lot older. Something flickered over his forehead, a shadow or a twitch, and Sam wondered whether the paranoid stranger from the car was going to reappear and hustle this honesty away.
"He was so scared," Sam said, and the despair overcame him. "Why didn't you call?"
At last Dean turned away. He stood to put his dishes in the sink. "Wasn't safe."
That wasn't the response Sam had been expecting. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and thought back over five and a half months. Twenty-some weeks, and nobody had heard a word. Dean could have ridden a motorcycle around the world in that time. He could have crossed somebody unpleasant and gone into hiding. He could have joined a cult. He could have joined the circus, for all Sam knew. Dean just stood there at the sink, just looking at the dishes. Sam shrank away from him and cast about for some way to distract himself. The jar of quarters was right there, on top the fridge.
"I'll, uh, I'll go put the stuff in the dryer. You still hungry? Want anything?"
"I need a smoke. Front porch okay?"
"Fire escape. Just climb out that window. Shut it behind you, I don't want bees inside."
There was the remote possibility Dean would just up and disappear while out for his cigarette. Sam pondered it while he set the dryer, how unsafe you had to feel before you would walk away in your brother's socks and no shoes. If he hadn't felt safe on a Marine base, with all the outlandish weaponry they keep -- Sam didn't know what he'd done with that big shiny handgun he'd left in the bathroom. Sam paused, standing in the basement, and listened for other people. There were probably twenty students in the building, most of them grad students. He couldn't hear anyone else. The dryer was a calming, steady noise, like music from down the street that you knew but couldn't recognize, like the sound of Dad's voice from two rooms away.
Sam let himself into the apartment and detoured past the bathroom door while he picked up Dean's muddy boots. The bathroom was otherwise empty. Except for the used towel, neatly hung on the shower rod, there was no sign that an unexpected person had been in there today. He carried Dean's boots to the window to scrub them and to see if Dean was there.
He was, of course. Sitting on the steel slats of the fire escape, halfway through his cigarette, just looking past the row of trees at the street. There was no sign of where he'd hidden the weapon -- the clothes Sam had lent him were too baggy for that. Sam wasn't really sure how you carried a gun like that, in your pocket or just nestled in your buttcrack or what. Dean would know, though. Sam wasn't even sure it was on him. Down on the sidewalk, students walked by, girls in turned-down U-Neb sweatpants and sandals as if it hadn't turned cold. Dean stared at them and they strolled onward and didn't even glance up.
"They're not California girls," Sam said, and used his fingers to dig crusts of dirt out of the boot treads.
"They're not wearing underwear," Dean replied. Sam squinted, but his vision wasn't good enough to assess panty line at that distance. The girls waved their arms at each other, talking, pushing their loose hair back onto their shoulders and not noticing when it fell forward again. They were probably freshman, eighteen or nineteen; he might have met one of them at a party, once. They came to the corner and turned onto a side street, and were gone.
Sam watched Dean take a drag, and said, "You know what Dad said? Right before you disappeared." Dean didn't seem curious, just sitting there with the cigarette between his knuckles, wrist on the railing. "He said you needed to get married. He was annoyed he couldn't think of a girlfriend you'd ever kept for more than a month or two. He thought a good woman would just settle you down and straighten you out."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Dean chuckled, and Sam gave in and laughed a little too. The air was fine and smelled like late rain and except for the cigarette it was like when they were kids, out on the back porch, telling stupid jokes while they fixed a bike chain or oiled their baseball gloves. Then, boot in hand, Sam firmed up again.
"Your C.O. said he tried to get you counseling, more than once. And that you talked your way out of it."
The cigarette was down on the fire escape before Dean remembered he didn't have any shoes on. Sam obliged, and stomped out the butt with the boot on his hand. The breeze picked up and Dean shivered again.
"Listen, I don't know what your plan is." Sam examined his work on the boots carefully. It was shockingly hard to say. "But this isn't Dad's house, it's mine. And I don't -- I don't know if it's a good idea for you to stay the night. I don't have a lot of space, and, and, I don't know if I can be around you if you're still in bad shape. I can't take that."
Dean put his head in his hands. He stayed that way for a long while.
"That's not -- I don't mean to blame you, man. I just can't. I have to take care of myself. If you're, if you want to get better, then I can help with that. I would be totally cool with that." The tears were close. Sam bit his lip and held them off. "But it can't be like it was two years ago, and definitely not if it's gotten worse."
A shaky breath, something that sounded like emotion. But when Dean raised his head, he was dry-eyed. "Your place, your rules. Come on, let's go back inside. I'm tired of the neighbors staring at me."
There were no neighbors to stare. Sam stood and turned all the way around on the fire escape. There weren't even any cars on the street below them.
***
Dean came back in and paced the apartment, all four or five strides of it. He was smooth, agile, not touching things he didn't want to touch. He didn't look like a man on a bender any more; he looked like a man on a mission. It was a little creepy.
"Were you thinking about turning yourself in?" Sam asked, while Dean cocked his head at the stove. "Cause, I mean, the Corps has resources, they can help you..." Sam trailed off, realizing Dean hadn't said a thing about trying to get better. He hadn't committed to anything.
"Haven't decided."
"Decide before you go to Lawrence," Sam pleaded. "Don't make Dad decide for you."
"He still the same?" Dean reached out and touched the electric burner, traced its coil.
"He's got twenty years' practice." Sam shrugged. "Sometimes better, sometimes worse. When you disappeared, he was pretty stressed out." Sam didn't tell about driving down there, helping Dad keep it together and navigate the arcana of police and Marine bureaucracy. His program chair had been pretty understanding, and he'd made up all his incompletes over the summer. Sam had been down every other weekend since then, just to check. Maybe that would change, if Dean went to Lawrence. "Hey, you really need to call him and tell him you're here. Or I could do it," he added hastily, as Dean blanched.
After a few seconds Dean turned away. The kitchen wasn't big enough for pacing and he headed out into the main room. "Just tell him I'm okay."
Sam had his phone in his hand and was hitting the speed-dial before it occurred to him to wonder why this was his job, why he'd volunteered. The phone rang and he put it to his ear stupidly, at a loss what to say. Dean's paces resounded dully from the other room.
"Ace Garage, what can I do for you?" It was a bright, crisp voice in his ear, and Sam startled a little.
"Oh, hi Mike. This is Sam. Is my dad around?" If Dad wasn't around at three in the afternoon -- that would be a problem. He hadn't been that bad for a while.
"Yeah, he's pulling apart a Saab looking for a knock nobody but the owner can hear." Mike laughed, and Sam laughed with him. "Hold on a sec."
Clanking and some distant, tinny music. Lawrence was three hours or a galaxy away, depending on how you counted. And then there was the voice, that familiar deep voice, right in Sam's ear. "Hey sport. What's up?"
He wasn't a superhero who would swoop in to save them. He couldn't even save himself. He was just Dad, as he'd always been. His shoulders had curved forward over the years to support his gut, and his hair was all gray. His hands were gentle, his voice gentler, and his aging loneliness never far from the surface. It resounded in his low tones even now, in the good part of the day, when he was relaxed and looking forward to his first drink, when he was funny and cheerful. "Hey, Dad."
Dad waited and Sam listened to him breathe. Dean wasn't pacing any more; Sam didn't know where he was.
"Uh, I have some news, Dad. I heard from Dean today. He called. He said he's doing okay and that he didn't want you to worry."
"Yeah?" Dad's voice climbed, almost cracking. "Where'd he call from? He leave a number?"
The lie was easy, just a quarter-turn from true. "He was shy about talking to you. He said he'd broken up with some girl, went on a long bender. I think he's going to try and straighten himself out before he comes to see you."
"What did he sound like? Did he talk long? Where is he?"
Dean stood half-in, half-out of the kitchen doorway, unnaturally still. Sam could only see one of his eyes, and half of a thundrous frown. "Uh, I guess he sounded okay, I mean, he didn't sound messed up. He didn't ask me for money. He wasn't in jail or anything. He was at a pay phone, so it wasn't a long conversation."
"Well, did you tell him to call back collect?"
"Yeah, Dad." Sam steeled himself against Dad's hopeful hunger for details. "I told him." It struck Sam suddenly: he was an old man, had been an old man for a while, maybe since Dean enlisted or maybe before. He was just Dad, plodding, unimaginative, slow like he was always afraid he'd break things with his big body. He'd had no idea what to do with a teenager like Dean, and all the yelling in the world hadn't made a dent. Sam had been outmaneuvering him since the age of twelve.
It didn't make any sense, that Dean should be so afraid of facing him. Dean could kill Dad with his bare hands a hundred times over, and could probably kill him quicker with a cruel word. Nobody ever said no to Dean. Nobody except Sam.
Dad's voice rumbled in his ear, like a comforting background noise, and Sam looked up. Dean wasn't in the kitchen doorway any more. He'd disappeared. Stunned, Sam lunged toward the windows, wondering how he'd escaped so silently. But he hadn't escaped; he was just in the next room, arms hard across his chest, frowning at the ceiling.
***
"Dad thinks you'll call him later," Sam said, after he hung up the phone. Dean didn't acknowledge he'd said anything. "I think you should."
He watched Dean stand still, that weird ready stillness he had, where the only thing that let you know he was alive was his breathing and the fact his eyes moved. His eyes were darting everywhere, one wall to the next, too fast to be actually looking at anything. Sam put his hand up on the door lintel, just a few inches above his own head, and realized suddenly that if you weren't used to such a small apartment, it might freak you out.
"Could stand to stretch my legs," said Dean, under Sam's gaze. He shrugged as he said it, casual.
"Let's take a walk, then," Sam agreed. "We can come up with a plan."
A little too enthusiastic, Dean bolted for the door and knocked over a pile of Sam's books as he went. He didn't even notice as they splayed on the floor; he was already in the hallway. Sam nudged them back into some kind of order with his feet, and grabbed an extra jacket for Dean on his way out the door.
Dean led the way, a purposeful stride. He was being a Marine now, putting on that confident face. Sam was nonplussed to realize that he knew Sam's own neighborhood well enough that it wasn't just aimless wandering. There was only one park in this neighborhood -- actually it was a cemetary, but people walked their dogs in it -- and Dean was headed right for it.
He didn't slow till they were under the trees, the late sun slanting through dying leaves. It was brisk, but not uncomfortably so. Dean stepped off the path and into the grass and at last Sam asked, "So did you have a plan in mind?"
Dean shook his head. "I go back to Pendleton, they'll arrest me, right?"
"Yeah, probably." There wasn't a way to bring up the topic smoothly. "Or you could turn yourself in to a VA hospital. To be evaluated."
That got a chuckle. "Only a headcase would walk away from the Marines."
"Seriously, Dean." Sam didn't quite dare reach out and stop him, to make the point as forcefully as he wanted. "They have groups of other guys who were in the war, they have substance abuse treatment pro--"
Dean cut him off. "I quit drinking a long time ago." He said it offhand, the way he would correct Sam if Sam had confused Army jargon with Marine jargon. It didn't sound like a promise or a shaky assertion or a conversion experience. It sounded like something settled and over with. Sam stopped in his tracks, so suddenly that Dean took three more steps under the eaves of a maple tree and had to turn around.
They stared at each other, flame-bright leaves dancing between them. Dean hadn't ever been that great a liar; he charmed his way out of trouble, most of the time. If he was lying, he'd gained a lot of practice since the last time Sam had seen him.
"How long is 'a long time ago'?"
"Almost a year. Back in Iraq." Dean made a face and half-turned away, so the setting sun left him in shadow.
"And you've been completely sober ever since?" As soon as he said it Sam realized how accusatory that sounded. But he watched his brother think it over, mouth pursed, as if he were doing sums in his head.
"Pretty sure," he said at last.
Sam didn't point out to him how weird an answer that was, how much it sounded like a lie. "So... what made you decide to do that? Cause, last time I saw you, you didn't think it was a problem."
"That was two years ago, dude. Shit happened." Dean turned fully around and started walking again, and Sam followed after him. They strolled down a gentle hill, kicking leaves, side by side and each with his hands in his pockets. After a little while Dean said, "There was some pretty serious shit I did, that I didn't remember doing. The other guys would tell me about it after, like it was the most hardcore shit they'd ever seen. Like, shit I would never do if I was myself."
Sam exhaled slowly. There was no point in challenging him on that.
"So I quit." Dean hesitated, but whatever else he'd been about to say, he didn't.
They walked a little while farther, and Sam realized Dean knew where he was going. This was not a random stroll through the trees; Dean was leading him somewhere.
"Well, the VA people can help you stay that way. And I bet there's some kind of group, you know, meet on Thursdays, drink coffee, talk about the war kind of group. Maybe they could get you on medication, Ativan or Xanax or something. You don't have to do this all by yourself in a vacuum, you know? There's a lot of other people who go through what you're going through."
Dean's mouth twisted up, and as if against his own will a dull laugh escaped. He turned his head so Sam wouldn't see him and put on a straight face.
"Seriously, Dean." Sam put out a hand, not so close it would touch Dean but close enough Dean couldn't miss it.
"I know you're serious. I know they're serious." He stopped, and showed Sam that open, honest face again. The sun was at the horizon, Dean's skin painted an orange glow. He was in dreadful earnest. "I have something I want to show you."
He took Sam's elbow, the first time they'd touched all day. His grip was delicate, just a couple of fingers and firm pressure and no hint that he'd leave a bruise if Sam resisted. Sam didn't resist. He let himself be led the rest of the way down the low hill, and his neck became colder as the sun disappeared. Up above his head, the bowl of the sky was a wash of red to yellow to a deepening blue-purple. He stumbled, uncertain in the changing light.
"Here," said Dean, and led him into a small copse of birch trees, thin like whips. The white bark seemed to glow, and Sam looked around him: birches on all sides, a rough circle, the grass long between them. Dean tugged on his elbow and settled to the ground, sitting cross-legged. Baffled, Sam sat with him.
Dean let him go and they breathed side by side in the increasing dark. Dean said nothing. Sam listened carefully for the evening birds and the traffic from out on the boulevard. It was a relaxing place to be, just the grass and the birch leaves and the quiet of the dead all around. But Dean hadn't ever been the sort for nature meditation before.
"You like this place?" Dean asked, intense.
"Yeah, I guess. Kind of pretty."
"Listen, I want you to promise me something and it's going to sound stupid." Dean patted down his chest, as if feeling for the pack of cigarettes he'd left behind on Sam's kitchen counter. Stymied, he crossed his arms and stared at the grass. "If you're ever -- if you ever feel like you're losing it, or like there's somebody else in your head with you, I want you to come here and sit in the circle of these trees. Will you do that?"
Sam was pretty familiar with the concept of projecting your own fears onto somebody else. "This is a safe place to be?"
"Yeah, I think, yeah. I've done everything I can to make it a safe place. Will you promise?"
There wasn't any trash around, and the grass outside the circle was neatly trimmed. Maintenance crews did that kind of thing, though. Sam tried to scrutinize the area in the dark and couldn't see what was so special about this place to Dean. "I --"
Dean's eyes were huge in his head, glassy, tiny glints of far-off light reflecting in their pupils. Dean, who'd picked fights with football players, who had cut open a cherry bomb to find out what was inside, who jumped out of planes for a living: scared. Sam had never thought of him as a fearful person before.
"I promise. If you'll promise the same thing. If you ever have to walk away again, that you'll come here."
"This isn't about me," Dean insisted.
Sam commanded him: "Swear, and I swear I will too." He held out his pinky finger, like they were little kids and could hook each other to faithfulness.
The breath Dean let out was long and slow. "Yeah, okay," he mumbled, and wrapped his pinky finger around his brother's.
***
It was well into full dark when they stumbled out of the graveyard and back to commercial civilization. Sam watched Dean as they crossed the street: his hyperalert assessment, the way he positioned his body at angles from each person coming the other way. The streetlights and neon signs were disorienting after that weird intimate dimness. Sam wasn't sure what to do next.
"Hey, you hungry again? I'm thinking about dinner." There was a sports bar down the block, and after that pizza and Chinese. Sam was pretty sure the Chinese place, at least, didn't have a liquor license. "I'm buying," he added, after he remembered the paltry bills he'd turned out of Dean's pockets.
Dean shrugged and let himself be led past the temptations and into the dingy Chinese place. It smelled like hot grease and was harshly lit, like an interrogation room on TV or like a bus station.
They sat in the front window, waiting for their order. Dean played with the menu, traced characters with a finger. He was content to be silent.
Sam wasn't really watching him. The news was on, on a TV with the sound turned down perched atop the fridge full of Coke cans. It was the ordinary evening news, the national news, and over the talking head's shoulder was a sere picture, gray and tan and bright sky above. The desert photo took over the screen and after a moment it blew up, dust everywhere. Little figures in gray dashed around frantically, yanking at each other, heads bobbing in every direction. It was just the war, just the war going badly, and at least this time Dean wasn't in it. Sam looked away.
But it was too late. "You ever seen an explosion at night?" Dean asked. He was still looking at the menu. "It's kind of awesome. Your eyes are used to the dark so it seems even brighter than it is. Kind of strikes you blind."
Sam listened. For the first time, he wondered why Dean had joined the Marines. He'd been so eager to go, so much less tense after the paperwork was signed, as if he was depending on them to straighten him out. He'd stuck the Corps logo stickers all over his locker at school, and then once he was in he'd tattooed those stupid logos onto his own body. He'd joined in peacetime, gone and done disaster relief and cooled his heels for six months at a time on Okinawa and sent the most outrageous postcards to Dad. He'd joined in peacetime and then peacetime had ended and now here he was.
"Was it something in Iraq that second time that set you off? I mean, you'd only been back at Pendleton three weeks --"
"Check out the little detective," Dean sneered. He had no idea the detective work they'd all done. Fully-grown adults just don't disappear without a trace, not men, not large, healthy, capable men with fighting skills. Not unless their name was Dean Winchester.
"Yeah," Sam bristled. "That's what people do, when they're worried. They search through your stuff to try and see if anything's missing, they find your passport and your driver's license and your bank cards in a cigar box, like wherever you were going you didn't think you'd need them."
Chastened, Dean turned his head away. Sam stared at him, pitiless, and though Dean couldn't see it clearly he was feeling it. "What the hell, I saw a lot of things over there." He fixed Sam with a bitter frown, pugnacious as if it were a competition. "People died. Arms and legs came off. What disgusting story can I tell you to make you happy?"
Sam didn't want any story at all, but he was stuck with it now. He waited Dean out.
"Last fall, I saw my unit use white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon. You know what that is?"
"No," said Sam. "Does it glow?"
"It's an incendiary device. Burns till it runs out of O2. You're supposed to use it as a signal flare or a screen."
Sam listened, cold. Dean wasn't looking at anything in particular, just his hands and the menu and the white melamine table. He wasn't nervous or shocky or guilty; he looked like he was just telling a story.
"It's so bright it's like daylight in the night scopes. You throw water on the fire and it doesn't do shit, just keeps on burning. They were using it on the bad guys like a regular shell."
"They were using it on people?" Sam asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw their order was ready. He put out a hand to make the clerk wait and concentrated on his brother.
"You know, I blow shit up for a living and I wouldn't use white phosphorus on people. Not even on the bad guys." He shook his head, frowning. "Who does that? You burn people alive that way." Sam reached out for one of his hands and Dean avoided the move by simply standing up. "Food's ready."
Sam stood with him. He fumbled out his wallet and they performed the ritual of takeout. Dean lifted the steaming, greasy bag and they let themselves back out into the night air.
With a last glance back at the evening news, Dean said, "We were crawling with embeds. I don't know why it never got reported."
****
(Part 1) | Part 2
By: Vehemently (vee_fic)
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: R for language, scariness, and adult themes
Spoilers: none.
Beta by minim_calibre and cofax7.
What is it: Gen AU. A homecoming. A horror.
Tagline: It was just a stupid accident. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.
***
***
November 2, 2005
Lincoln, Nebraska
Sam walked out of his lab section and into a stiff wind, maple leaves and trash snapping around his ankles. The air wasn't cold, not that real cold of early winter, just a crisp hint of the season to come. It was good running weather. He would blow right through Saturday's 10K in weather like this. It was perfect Halloween weather; too bad it had been in the eighties two days ago.
He was securing the flap of his messenger bag as he paced through the parking lot towards his car, thinking about his social psych midterm and the pretty girl who sat in front of him, and whether she would be at Jim's party on Saturday night, and really, whether it was weird to pick up a girl in your social psych class, wasn't that like splinting the knee of your anatomy classmate? -- which was why he came around from the back of the Impala and was startled to see someone leaning against the hood as if he belonged there.
"Hey," Sam challenged. The guy wore an oversized drab jacket that looked like it had been rolled through a few puddles. Definitely wasn't Crazy Bob, who panhandled in front of the Super Mart ten blocks from here: no gloves, no doggy companion, and he was missing the quilted sleeping bag Bob wore like a cape everywhere he went. At Sam's voice, the figure twisted around, old clothes and unkempt hair, and although Sam knew that face, at first he couldn't place it.
That face should be clean-shaven, attached to a body that stood freakishly straight, ears sticking out under brush-cut hair. That face should be against a Sears-blue background, forehead a little obscured by the brim of that stupid white hat that made him look like a police officer, mouth solemn in his official Marine portrait. It was the totally wrong face for a crazy homeless guy in Lincoln, because Dean was not a crazy homeless guy and he lived in California. Had lived in California.
"Hey yourself," said Dean, and took a drag on the cigarette between his fingers, casual as if he'd disappeared only a day ago. He hadn't been a smoker, the last time Sam had seen him. "How come you park so damn far away from your building?"
"I, I," Sam stammered, mouth open. He came up close for a good look: sunburned, circles under his eyes. His fingernails were bitten to the quick, and some of his cuticles were scabbed. He didn't smell so good, either. Sam had been dreaming about him, the last couple of weeks, half nightmare and half wish, himself but not himself. In his dreams, Dean never looked like this. Sam wasn't sure whether to touch him or not. "I like the walk. What are you doing here? Where have you been all these months? Jesus Christ, Dean, what happened to you?"
Dean put out a hand and stood up. "One at a time, tiger," he said, dropping his cigarette to the pavement. He ground it out with a boot heel, methodical, slow enough Sam just stood there gaping and let him gather his thoughts. But all Dean said was, "You on your way someplace?"
A stiff breeze stepped between them, lifting the edges of Dean's hair. He shrugged his jacket more closely around him, though Sam wasn't feeling the cold at all. "I guess, yeah, home." Sam blurted it without thinking, and then realized that meant he was inviting Dean to go there. It was too late to suggest they go to a diner, or something. Sam stood aside and Dean glanced left and right, illicit.
He pulled open the passenger's side door without arguing about whether Dad had given Sam the car, or only loaned it to him. In the past two years, Sam had replaced the radio with a CD player, and upgraded the lap belts with modern shoulder seat belts. Dean didn't remark on the changes. Sam looked him over again while he turned the key: Dean just sat there with his hands in the pockets of his coat, staring out the windshield, eyes in constant motion. He didn't look like a Marine at all. He looked like a stranger.
Lincoln was a nice enough town, a college town. Sam drove home the slow way, past the hardware store he'd worked in part time, and the grocery store with the cross-dressing manager (he -- she -- had a thing for elegance, pearls every day, and made you feel like your cold cuts and toothpaste were a grand luxury), and the Korean restaurant that had to be some kind of Mafia front, because nobody ever actually ate there. At every stoplight and landmark, Sam opened his mouth to narrate their journey: as if he could peg Dean down into Sam's own reality, as if he would fit here. Dean would not fit here. The blank of his time missing was stifling, brittle. He watched every pedestrian and approaching car as if it might be attacking him. It was a long, quiet drive.
As he pulled into the parking lot Sam finally said, "I'm surprised you didn't go to Lawrence. Dad was -- he worries about you a lot."
"Yeah," Dean grunted over his shoulder, and stepped out of the car.
He paced along the sidewalk up to the front door, and stood there waiting for Sam to come unlock it. Sam held the keys in his hand tightly: he had the power, here. It was his apartment, and Dean was a guest. Sam felt the awkwardness like a too-heavy sweater. "Come in," he said, and slowly Dean did as he was told.
He'd never been in this town, in this building, in this hallway. When they'd last seen each other, it had been in Lawrence, at Dad's house, two years ago. Sam led him up the stairs and into the apartment and wondered at that: whether that had been unconsciously intentional on his part, making sure Dean was excluded from his college life. He'd lived here since his sophomore year, summers as well as during the school year. He couldn't remember whether he'd ever told Dean the address.
The apartment itself was tiny and ramshackle, a place Sam had assembled himself. Everything did double-duty: the futon was folded as a couch during the day; his desk was also the kitchen table; he kept the tomato plant alive (miraculously still yielding tomatoes, this late in the fall) in a big stew pot he'd salvaged from someone else's moving trash. He was proud of himself, that it was tidy and an efficient use of space and looked like a home instead of like a dorm room. His big ambition was art on the walls, or anyway frames for arty posters, instead of thumbtacking them to the wallboard. Dean stood on the worn carpet clearly not giving a shit about art on walls.
"So, uh, I guess you'll -- you hungry, or you want to clean up first?" Sam felt unaccountably naked, as if Dean would disapprove of the place, as if he had the right to judge. There was nothing of Dean or Dad or Lawrence here.
"Clean up, I guess." Dean hunched his shoulders and let Sam lead him to the bathroom. It was just big enough to fit one adult standing up, full of loose floor tiles and amateurishly caulked seams. Sam leaned in and flicked on the light when it became clear Dean hadn't thought to do so. They faced each other across the threshold.
"I'll fix you a sandwich while you're in there," Sam said. "You want coffee or just a Coke or something?"
"Don't make a new pot just for me," Dean said, and began pulling off his jacket. Sam realized suddenly that Dean hadn't brought any luggage with him at all: the clothes on his back were all he had. While he watched, Dean pulled a handgun out of his jeans and set it on top of the toilet tank, next to his half-empty pack of cigarettes.
It was really big, shiny, clean the way nothing else on Dean seemed to be. The noise it made on the porcelain was innocuous, but all Sam could do was stare at the barrel of it, the way it pointed toward the wall for safety. It looked heavy and purposeful and a little bit terrifying. Dean wouldn't be carrying it if it weren't loaded.
"Okay," Sam said, slowly. "Uh, the handle for hot is a little loose, lately. I just haven't got around to fixing it yet. Be careful." He left Dean putting down a folded manila envelope overtop the weapon, and slipped back out into the main room.
His pants would be too big, but they could be belted and rolled up. Sam hunted in the kitchen cabinets for a sweater that was small enough Dean wouldn't be swimming in it. He pulled out a bunch of layers -- even underwear, Sam decided -- and walked into the bathroom while Dean was in the shower.
Dean startled a little as the door opened, the Marine tattoos on his shoulders flashing as he spun around. Sam pretended not to have noticed, and deposited the new clothes and pulled down a fresh towel from the top shelf. He gathered up the pile of dirty clothes, which might have walked out of the room under their own power they were so bad. It would probably be better to just burn them, but Sam decided against that. He gathered up a handful of quarters and headed down to the basement and turned out the pockets for washing: some change and crumpled bills, a couple of filthy keys, a smooth white stone, a Zippo -- no wallet. Sam put the load on hot, and added extra soap. He trudged back up the stairs, feeling the grit of never-washed clothing on his fingertips. He let himself back into the apartment and did a quick reconnoitre of the fridge to make sure there weren't any stray beers he'd forgotten about. But the fridge was thankfully empty of alcohol. He put on a new pot of coffee.
It wasn't too long a wait for Dean to pull himself together and present himself for chow. He'd gone ahead and shaved, though Sam had forgotten to set out a razor for him. He wore every stitch Sam had laid out, down to the ridiculous brown sweater (a gift from Dad? Anyway, it was years old) that was small on Sam but baggy on Dean. He'd put on the clean socks, and left his filthy boots behind on the bathroom tiles. He sat at the kitchen table and tucked into the ham and cheese Sam had made as if he hadn't eaten in days.
Which was a possibility. Sam looked over his longish hair combed back in wet ridges, the way the clothes fit, and couldn't decide whether Dean was really thinner or whether it was just an illusion. He didn't know how to ask, so he said nothing. He busied himself in the ritual of coffee, only wondering after he'd done it whether Dean still took cream or if that was the sort of thing that changed while you were away. He set the cup next to Dean's elbow.
"So," said Dean, around a mouthful of sandwich. "Senior year, huh?" He didn't look up from eating.
"I'm majoring in psychology," Sam babbled, "developmental stuff. Adolescents in transition, that kind of thing. I'm working on an honors thesis about -- about risk-factors and perceived social success in the ninth grade. I had to pass the institutional review board and everything." He trailed off, awkward.
"That's cool," Dean said flatly. He inhaled the coffee. "Seeing anybody?"
"Not -- not right now. I've been kind of busy. I've," and Sam wondered whether it was okay to talk about your future like this, in front of somebody who didn't look like he had one. "I've been applying to doctoral programs. There's this fellowship at Indiana Bloomington I'm going for. It's pretty prestigious, research and stuff, but it's still close enough I can go home and check on Dad."
The way Dean whipped his head around, eyes narrow, made Sam back up a step. "He's not helpless, you know."
"I know." Sam held his hands up, placating.
Dean made a noise and stood to open the fridge himself. Sam wasn't sure he liked this version of Dean much more than the shy stranger. He spread mayonnaise on the bread and folded the slices of ham just so. That was a Marine thing, probably; after he'd gotten back from his first year in the Marines he'd folded his underwear.
"So. There are a bunch of people who were worried about you. Am I allowed to call them and tell them you're all right?"
"Call who?" Dean asked, setting the plate back on the table. He ate as if he didn't care who Sam might name.
"Well, I mean, Dad," Sam said. "And the Marine Corps. Your C.O. A couple of other guys in your unit Dad talked to. The police department in San Diego."
"You got the cops involved?" Petulant, like he was when he thought the rules shouldn't apply to him.
"Of course they did, Dean. Dad filed a missing persons report. He was on the phone every day, nagging them about whether there were any John Does matching your description in the morgue." There was something unnecessarily punitive in the way Sam phrased that. He could feel himself losing his temper. "So you walked away on purpose? Of your own free will, I mean?"
"I had some stuff I had to take care of," Dean said, offhand as if he could end the conversation so simply. He'd been doing it for years, of course.
Sam scratched at a stain on the countertop with his thumbnail. He'd scrubbed it before, and it would never come clean, but he dug at it anyway. "You go to prison for desertion during wartime, Dean. I looked it up. How you could do that to Dad --" Realizing the unsteady ground he was on, Sam shut up and crossed his arms.
Dean didn't react, to the part Sam said or the part he didn't. He finished the sandwich and batted the crumbs around the plate and Sam stood over him fuming.
"Your C.O. explained a few things. A few things you hadn't told Dad about."
All the air vanished from the room as Sam's heart pounded. Dean didn't stand up and clock him, or yell at him, or do anything. He just stood up. His face wasn't as naked as Sam had ever seen it, but it was open and plain, not a face of denial. There were more freckles on Dean's nose, more lines around his mouth. The smoking had taken a toll. He looked like he could stand a good night's sleep in an actual bed. He was twenty-six, and looked a lot older. Something flickered over his forehead, a shadow or a twitch, and Sam wondered whether the paranoid stranger from the car was going to reappear and hustle this honesty away.
"He was so scared," Sam said, and the despair overcame him. "Why didn't you call?"
At last Dean turned away. He stood to put his dishes in the sink. "Wasn't safe."
That wasn't the response Sam had been expecting. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and thought back over five and a half months. Twenty-some weeks, and nobody had heard a word. Dean could have ridden a motorcycle around the world in that time. He could have crossed somebody unpleasant and gone into hiding. He could have joined a cult. He could have joined the circus, for all Sam knew. Dean just stood there at the sink, just looking at the dishes. Sam shrank away from him and cast about for some way to distract himself. The jar of quarters was right there, on top the fridge.
"I'll, uh, I'll go put the stuff in the dryer. You still hungry? Want anything?"
"I need a smoke. Front porch okay?"
"Fire escape. Just climb out that window. Shut it behind you, I don't want bees inside."
There was the remote possibility Dean would just up and disappear while out for his cigarette. Sam pondered it while he set the dryer, how unsafe you had to feel before you would walk away in your brother's socks and no shoes. If he hadn't felt safe on a Marine base, with all the outlandish weaponry they keep -- Sam didn't know what he'd done with that big shiny handgun he'd left in the bathroom. Sam paused, standing in the basement, and listened for other people. There were probably twenty students in the building, most of them grad students. He couldn't hear anyone else. The dryer was a calming, steady noise, like music from down the street that you knew but couldn't recognize, like the sound of Dad's voice from two rooms away.
Sam let himself into the apartment and detoured past the bathroom door while he picked up Dean's muddy boots. The bathroom was otherwise empty. Except for the used towel, neatly hung on the shower rod, there was no sign that an unexpected person had been in there today. He carried Dean's boots to the window to scrub them and to see if Dean was there.
He was, of course. Sitting on the steel slats of the fire escape, halfway through his cigarette, just looking past the row of trees at the street. There was no sign of where he'd hidden the weapon -- the clothes Sam had lent him were too baggy for that. Sam wasn't really sure how you carried a gun like that, in your pocket or just nestled in your buttcrack or what. Dean would know, though. Sam wasn't even sure it was on him. Down on the sidewalk, students walked by, girls in turned-down U-Neb sweatpants and sandals as if it hadn't turned cold. Dean stared at them and they strolled onward and didn't even glance up.
"They're not California girls," Sam said, and used his fingers to dig crusts of dirt out of the boot treads.
"They're not wearing underwear," Dean replied. Sam squinted, but his vision wasn't good enough to assess panty line at that distance. The girls waved their arms at each other, talking, pushing their loose hair back onto their shoulders and not noticing when it fell forward again. They were probably freshman, eighteen or nineteen; he might have met one of them at a party, once. They came to the corner and turned onto a side street, and were gone.
Sam watched Dean take a drag, and said, "You know what Dad said? Right before you disappeared." Dean didn't seem curious, just sitting there with the cigarette between his knuckles, wrist on the railing. "He said you needed to get married. He was annoyed he couldn't think of a girlfriend you'd ever kept for more than a month or two. He thought a good woman would just settle you down and straighten you out."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Dean chuckled, and Sam gave in and laughed a little too. The air was fine and smelled like late rain and except for the cigarette it was like when they were kids, out on the back porch, telling stupid jokes while they fixed a bike chain or oiled their baseball gloves. Then, boot in hand, Sam firmed up again.
"Your C.O. said he tried to get you counseling, more than once. And that you talked your way out of it."
The cigarette was down on the fire escape before Dean remembered he didn't have any shoes on. Sam obliged, and stomped out the butt with the boot on his hand. The breeze picked up and Dean shivered again.
"Listen, I don't know what your plan is." Sam examined his work on the boots carefully. It was shockingly hard to say. "But this isn't Dad's house, it's mine. And I don't -- I don't know if it's a good idea for you to stay the night. I don't have a lot of space, and, and, I don't know if I can be around you if you're still in bad shape. I can't take that."
Dean put his head in his hands. He stayed that way for a long while.
"That's not -- I don't mean to blame you, man. I just can't. I have to take care of myself. If you're, if you want to get better, then I can help with that. I would be totally cool with that." The tears were close. Sam bit his lip and held them off. "But it can't be like it was two years ago, and definitely not if it's gotten worse."
A shaky breath, something that sounded like emotion. But when Dean raised his head, he was dry-eyed. "Your place, your rules. Come on, let's go back inside. I'm tired of the neighbors staring at me."
There were no neighbors to stare. Sam stood and turned all the way around on the fire escape. There weren't even any cars on the street below them.
***
Dean came back in and paced the apartment, all four or five strides of it. He was smooth, agile, not touching things he didn't want to touch. He didn't look like a man on a bender any more; he looked like a man on a mission. It was a little creepy.
"Were you thinking about turning yourself in?" Sam asked, while Dean cocked his head at the stove. "Cause, I mean, the Corps has resources, they can help you..." Sam trailed off, realizing Dean hadn't said a thing about trying to get better. He hadn't committed to anything.
"Haven't decided."
"Decide before you go to Lawrence," Sam pleaded. "Don't make Dad decide for you."
"He still the same?" Dean reached out and touched the electric burner, traced its coil.
"He's got twenty years' practice." Sam shrugged. "Sometimes better, sometimes worse. When you disappeared, he was pretty stressed out." Sam didn't tell about driving down there, helping Dad keep it together and navigate the arcana of police and Marine bureaucracy. His program chair had been pretty understanding, and he'd made up all his incompletes over the summer. Sam had been down every other weekend since then, just to check. Maybe that would change, if Dean went to Lawrence. "Hey, you really need to call him and tell him you're here. Or I could do it," he added hastily, as Dean blanched.
After a few seconds Dean turned away. The kitchen wasn't big enough for pacing and he headed out into the main room. "Just tell him I'm okay."
Sam had his phone in his hand and was hitting the speed-dial before it occurred to him to wonder why this was his job, why he'd volunteered. The phone rang and he put it to his ear stupidly, at a loss what to say. Dean's paces resounded dully from the other room.
"Ace Garage, what can I do for you?" It was a bright, crisp voice in his ear, and Sam startled a little.
"Oh, hi Mike. This is Sam. Is my dad around?" If Dad wasn't around at three in the afternoon -- that would be a problem. He hadn't been that bad for a while.
"Yeah, he's pulling apart a Saab looking for a knock nobody but the owner can hear." Mike laughed, and Sam laughed with him. "Hold on a sec."
Clanking and some distant, tinny music. Lawrence was three hours or a galaxy away, depending on how you counted. And then there was the voice, that familiar deep voice, right in Sam's ear. "Hey sport. What's up?"
He wasn't a superhero who would swoop in to save them. He couldn't even save himself. He was just Dad, as he'd always been. His shoulders had curved forward over the years to support his gut, and his hair was all gray. His hands were gentle, his voice gentler, and his aging loneliness never far from the surface. It resounded in his low tones even now, in the good part of the day, when he was relaxed and looking forward to his first drink, when he was funny and cheerful. "Hey, Dad."
Dad waited and Sam listened to him breathe. Dean wasn't pacing any more; Sam didn't know where he was.
"Uh, I have some news, Dad. I heard from Dean today. He called. He said he's doing okay and that he didn't want you to worry."
"Yeah?" Dad's voice climbed, almost cracking. "Where'd he call from? He leave a number?"
The lie was easy, just a quarter-turn from true. "He was shy about talking to you. He said he'd broken up with some girl, went on a long bender. I think he's going to try and straighten himself out before he comes to see you."
"What did he sound like? Did he talk long? Where is he?"
Dean stood half-in, half-out of the kitchen doorway, unnaturally still. Sam could only see one of his eyes, and half of a thundrous frown. "Uh, I guess he sounded okay, I mean, he didn't sound messed up. He didn't ask me for money. He wasn't in jail or anything. He was at a pay phone, so it wasn't a long conversation."
"Well, did you tell him to call back collect?"
"Yeah, Dad." Sam steeled himself against Dad's hopeful hunger for details. "I told him." It struck Sam suddenly: he was an old man, had been an old man for a while, maybe since Dean enlisted or maybe before. He was just Dad, plodding, unimaginative, slow like he was always afraid he'd break things with his big body. He'd had no idea what to do with a teenager like Dean, and all the yelling in the world hadn't made a dent. Sam had been outmaneuvering him since the age of twelve.
It didn't make any sense, that Dean should be so afraid of facing him. Dean could kill Dad with his bare hands a hundred times over, and could probably kill him quicker with a cruel word. Nobody ever said no to Dean. Nobody except Sam.
Dad's voice rumbled in his ear, like a comforting background noise, and Sam looked up. Dean wasn't in the kitchen doorway any more. He'd disappeared. Stunned, Sam lunged toward the windows, wondering how he'd escaped so silently. But he hadn't escaped; he was just in the next room, arms hard across his chest, frowning at the ceiling.
***
"Dad thinks you'll call him later," Sam said, after he hung up the phone. Dean didn't acknowledge he'd said anything. "I think you should."
He watched Dean stand still, that weird ready stillness he had, where the only thing that let you know he was alive was his breathing and the fact his eyes moved. His eyes were darting everywhere, one wall to the next, too fast to be actually looking at anything. Sam put his hand up on the door lintel, just a few inches above his own head, and realized suddenly that if you weren't used to such a small apartment, it might freak you out.
"Could stand to stretch my legs," said Dean, under Sam's gaze. He shrugged as he said it, casual.
"Let's take a walk, then," Sam agreed. "We can come up with a plan."
A little too enthusiastic, Dean bolted for the door and knocked over a pile of Sam's books as he went. He didn't even notice as they splayed on the floor; he was already in the hallway. Sam nudged them back into some kind of order with his feet, and grabbed an extra jacket for Dean on his way out the door.
Dean led the way, a purposeful stride. He was being a Marine now, putting on that confident face. Sam was nonplussed to realize that he knew Sam's own neighborhood well enough that it wasn't just aimless wandering. There was only one park in this neighborhood -- actually it was a cemetary, but people walked their dogs in it -- and Dean was headed right for it.
He didn't slow till they were under the trees, the late sun slanting through dying leaves. It was brisk, but not uncomfortably so. Dean stepped off the path and into the grass and at last Sam asked, "So did you have a plan in mind?"
Dean shook his head. "I go back to Pendleton, they'll arrest me, right?"
"Yeah, probably." There wasn't a way to bring up the topic smoothly. "Or you could turn yourself in to a VA hospital. To be evaluated."
That got a chuckle. "Only a headcase would walk away from the Marines."
"Seriously, Dean." Sam didn't quite dare reach out and stop him, to make the point as forcefully as he wanted. "They have groups of other guys who were in the war, they have substance abuse treatment pro--"
Dean cut him off. "I quit drinking a long time ago." He said it offhand, the way he would correct Sam if Sam had confused Army jargon with Marine jargon. It didn't sound like a promise or a shaky assertion or a conversion experience. It sounded like something settled and over with. Sam stopped in his tracks, so suddenly that Dean took three more steps under the eaves of a maple tree and had to turn around.
They stared at each other, flame-bright leaves dancing between them. Dean hadn't ever been that great a liar; he charmed his way out of trouble, most of the time. If he was lying, he'd gained a lot of practice since the last time Sam had seen him.
"How long is 'a long time ago'?"
"Almost a year. Back in Iraq." Dean made a face and half-turned away, so the setting sun left him in shadow.
"And you've been completely sober ever since?" As soon as he said it Sam realized how accusatory that sounded. But he watched his brother think it over, mouth pursed, as if he were doing sums in his head.
"Pretty sure," he said at last.
Sam didn't point out to him how weird an answer that was, how much it sounded like a lie. "So... what made you decide to do that? Cause, last time I saw you, you didn't think it was a problem."
"That was two years ago, dude. Shit happened." Dean turned fully around and started walking again, and Sam followed after him. They strolled down a gentle hill, kicking leaves, side by side and each with his hands in his pockets. After a little while Dean said, "There was some pretty serious shit I did, that I didn't remember doing. The other guys would tell me about it after, like it was the most hardcore shit they'd ever seen. Like, shit I would never do if I was myself."
Sam exhaled slowly. There was no point in challenging him on that.
"So I quit." Dean hesitated, but whatever else he'd been about to say, he didn't.
They walked a little while farther, and Sam realized Dean knew where he was going. This was not a random stroll through the trees; Dean was leading him somewhere.
"Well, the VA people can help you stay that way. And I bet there's some kind of group, you know, meet on Thursdays, drink coffee, talk about the war kind of group. Maybe they could get you on medication, Ativan or Xanax or something. You don't have to do this all by yourself in a vacuum, you know? There's a lot of other people who go through what you're going through."
Dean's mouth twisted up, and as if against his own will a dull laugh escaped. He turned his head so Sam wouldn't see him and put on a straight face.
"Seriously, Dean." Sam put out a hand, not so close it would touch Dean but close enough Dean couldn't miss it.
"I know you're serious. I know they're serious." He stopped, and showed Sam that open, honest face again. The sun was at the horizon, Dean's skin painted an orange glow. He was in dreadful earnest. "I have something I want to show you."
He took Sam's elbow, the first time they'd touched all day. His grip was delicate, just a couple of fingers and firm pressure and no hint that he'd leave a bruise if Sam resisted. Sam didn't resist. He let himself be led the rest of the way down the low hill, and his neck became colder as the sun disappeared. Up above his head, the bowl of the sky was a wash of red to yellow to a deepening blue-purple. He stumbled, uncertain in the changing light.
"Here," said Dean, and led him into a small copse of birch trees, thin like whips. The white bark seemed to glow, and Sam looked around him: birches on all sides, a rough circle, the grass long between them. Dean tugged on his elbow and settled to the ground, sitting cross-legged. Baffled, Sam sat with him.
Dean let him go and they breathed side by side in the increasing dark. Dean said nothing. Sam listened carefully for the evening birds and the traffic from out on the boulevard. It was a relaxing place to be, just the grass and the birch leaves and the quiet of the dead all around. But Dean hadn't ever been the sort for nature meditation before.
"You like this place?" Dean asked, intense.
"Yeah, I guess. Kind of pretty."
"Listen, I want you to promise me something and it's going to sound stupid." Dean patted down his chest, as if feeling for the pack of cigarettes he'd left behind on Sam's kitchen counter. Stymied, he crossed his arms and stared at the grass. "If you're ever -- if you ever feel like you're losing it, or like there's somebody else in your head with you, I want you to come here and sit in the circle of these trees. Will you do that?"
Sam was pretty familiar with the concept of projecting your own fears onto somebody else. "This is a safe place to be?"
"Yeah, I think, yeah. I've done everything I can to make it a safe place. Will you promise?"
There wasn't any trash around, and the grass outside the circle was neatly trimmed. Maintenance crews did that kind of thing, though. Sam tried to scrutinize the area in the dark and couldn't see what was so special about this place to Dean. "I --"
Dean's eyes were huge in his head, glassy, tiny glints of far-off light reflecting in their pupils. Dean, who'd picked fights with football players, who had cut open a cherry bomb to find out what was inside, who jumped out of planes for a living: scared. Sam had never thought of him as a fearful person before.
"I promise. If you'll promise the same thing. If you ever have to walk away again, that you'll come here."
"This isn't about me," Dean insisted.
Sam commanded him: "Swear, and I swear I will too." He held out his pinky finger, like they were little kids and could hook each other to faithfulness.
The breath Dean let out was long and slow. "Yeah, okay," he mumbled, and wrapped his pinky finger around his brother's.
***
It was well into full dark when they stumbled out of the graveyard and back to commercial civilization. Sam watched Dean as they crossed the street: his hyperalert assessment, the way he positioned his body at angles from each person coming the other way. The streetlights and neon signs were disorienting after that weird intimate dimness. Sam wasn't sure what to do next.
"Hey, you hungry again? I'm thinking about dinner." There was a sports bar down the block, and after that pizza and Chinese. Sam was pretty sure the Chinese place, at least, didn't have a liquor license. "I'm buying," he added, after he remembered the paltry bills he'd turned out of Dean's pockets.
Dean shrugged and let himself be led past the temptations and into the dingy Chinese place. It smelled like hot grease and was harshly lit, like an interrogation room on TV or like a bus station.
They sat in the front window, waiting for their order. Dean played with the menu, traced characters with a finger. He was content to be silent.
Sam wasn't really watching him. The news was on, on a TV with the sound turned down perched atop the fridge full of Coke cans. It was the ordinary evening news, the national news, and over the talking head's shoulder was a sere picture, gray and tan and bright sky above. The desert photo took over the screen and after a moment it blew up, dust everywhere. Little figures in gray dashed around frantically, yanking at each other, heads bobbing in every direction. It was just the war, just the war going badly, and at least this time Dean wasn't in it. Sam looked away.
But it was too late. "You ever seen an explosion at night?" Dean asked. He was still looking at the menu. "It's kind of awesome. Your eyes are used to the dark so it seems even brighter than it is. Kind of strikes you blind."
Sam listened. For the first time, he wondered why Dean had joined the Marines. He'd been so eager to go, so much less tense after the paperwork was signed, as if he was depending on them to straighten him out. He'd stuck the Corps logo stickers all over his locker at school, and then once he was in he'd tattooed those stupid logos onto his own body. He'd joined in peacetime, gone and done disaster relief and cooled his heels for six months at a time on Okinawa and sent the most outrageous postcards to Dad. He'd joined in peacetime and then peacetime had ended and now here he was.
"Was it something in Iraq that second time that set you off? I mean, you'd only been back at Pendleton three weeks --"
"Check out the little detective," Dean sneered. He had no idea the detective work they'd all done. Fully-grown adults just don't disappear without a trace, not men, not large, healthy, capable men with fighting skills. Not unless their name was Dean Winchester.
"Yeah," Sam bristled. "That's what people do, when they're worried. They search through your stuff to try and see if anything's missing, they find your passport and your driver's license and your bank cards in a cigar box, like wherever you were going you didn't think you'd need them."
Chastened, Dean turned his head away. Sam stared at him, pitiless, and though Dean couldn't see it clearly he was feeling it. "What the hell, I saw a lot of things over there." He fixed Sam with a bitter frown, pugnacious as if it were a competition. "People died. Arms and legs came off. What disgusting story can I tell you to make you happy?"
Sam didn't want any story at all, but he was stuck with it now. He waited Dean out.
"Last fall, I saw my unit use white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon. You know what that is?"
"No," said Sam. "Does it glow?"
"It's an incendiary device. Burns till it runs out of O2. You're supposed to use it as a signal flare or a screen."
Sam listened, cold. Dean wasn't looking at anything in particular, just his hands and the menu and the white melamine table. He wasn't nervous or shocky or guilty; he looked like he was just telling a story.
"It's so bright it's like daylight in the night scopes. You throw water on the fire and it doesn't do shit, just keeps on burning. They were using it on the bad guys like a regular shell."
"They were using it on people?" Sam asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw their order was ready. He put out a hand to make the clerk wait and concentrated on his brother.
"You know, I blow shit up for a living and I wouldn't use white phosphorus on people. Not even on the bad guys." He shook his head, frowning. "Who does that? You burn people alive that way." Sam reached out for one of his hands and Dean avoided the move by simply standing up. "Food's ready."
Sam stood with him. He fumbled out his wallet and they performed the ritual of takeout. Dean lifted the steaming, greasy bag and they let themselves back out into the night air.
With a last glance back at the evening news, Dean said, "We were crawling with embeds. I don't know why it never got reported."
****
(Part 1) | Part 2