palpable obscure

spn 8.11

amonitrate — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 16:36:54 GMT

was enjoyable and cute. at times seemed to be trying way too hard, couldn't tell if that was a script thing or a direction thing? IDK enough about how to tell the difference. anyway, some parts of it seemed to be trying REALLY HARD TO BE CHARMING AND FUNNY instead of just being charming and funny. Other parts were genuinely so. This seems to be a common problem with SPN's lighter episodes in the past few years.

I did enormously enjoy Charlie and Dean being BFFs. Sam, your inability to relax and let go is so GPOY it's painful. (or should that be GPOM?). Dean, your ability to compartmentalize is also GPOM. I was tweeting about this, how this season is more than any other the season of OMG I IDENTIFY TOO MUCH WITH BOTH BROTHERS MAKE IT STOP. I think the season has been more consistent about Sam's characterization than Dean's overall but I can go with it because see: compartmentalization. It's just that they tease with these interesting bits of post-purgatory fallout like Dean in the interrogation room coming close to torturing a dude and I want some follow through; I know enough about how SPN paces characterization that they will probably get back to that at some point. Anyway! Ramble ramble. I just kinda miss the internal consistency in Dean's characterization on an episode-to-episode level that was one of my favorite parts of season 6, and it seemed to kind of get lost somewhere mid-season-7 and never quite recover, though I probably should actually rewatch season 7 and the first half of season 8 before I make blanket statements like that, because Dean being sort of all over the place this season makes some sense to me. I do think they're doing a super job on that front with Sam this season though.

Others have talked about how Dean made Sam leaving Amelia Dean's fault when he was talking to Charlie even though the text explicitly showed us how that's not true; which doesn't in the least bit mean that Dean's text message stunt wasn't still a hurtful dick move. But it is consistent with the theme that played out earlier with Cas & Purgatory. If Benny falls off the wagon, Dean will probably feel like that's his fault too. It's hard for him to separate out making a mistake or poor and/or hard choice or dick move under shitty circumstances (the cell phone trick, cutting Benny off) with choices other people make (Sam cutting Amelia out of his life, potentially Benny eating people).

He sees simple cause and effect where it's not simple at all. It's a very childlike way of looking at the world. I've seen people call this self-centered, and I think that's a choice of words that flattens what's going on even as it seems to get at it, but there doesn't seem to be a good English word for this concept that when some aspect of your development has been frozen at a point in childhood where you feel like everything that happens around you has to do with you because you don't really have a conception of other people as separate from yourself yet. So literally self-centered, but not in the same connotation as the term is often used. IDK if I'm even expressing this well. It's why kids think it's their fault if their parents fight. Dean had this reinforced over and over by his dad putting way too much responsibility on his shoulders way too young, so that if things went wrong (as in "Something Wicked") when he'd made a choice that a normal kid his age would make (getting bored and leaving his little brother alone) he perceives it all as his fault, not John's fault for leaving his pre-pubescent kids alone for days at a time in outright parental neglect. So he internalizes that when he makes a mistake (actual or perceived) everything that happens after that is due to that action and his fault.

In Purgatory, he perceives that his mistake was letting go of Cas as they went through the portal, so that Cas getting left behind after that is Dean's fault. Cas making the choice to let go and stay for his own reasons isn't something that is a possibility in Dean's understanding.

With Sam, he perceives that he did something really fucked up by sending that text to make Sam feel like Amelia was in danger. In this case, that's true -- it was fucked up and the wrong thing to do. However, Sam had already left Amelia once for his own reasons, and Sam making the choice to leave her again didn't have much to do with Dean's text message ruse. It was for Sam's own reasons. But Dean sees it as cause and effect (probably connected to his experience with Lisa, which I wish the show would be more explicit about, sigh) -- he made Sam think Amelia was in danger, Sam cut off Amelia.

With Benny, if Benny does give in to the (as the show has explained it, nearly overpowering) urge to eat some people, Dean will probably perceive that Benny called him in a moment of need and Dean chose to cut him off, therefore anyone who dies because of Benny is Dean's fault. He probably won't be able to see that Benny's choices are Benny's. It's complicated, because sometimes yes, being there for a friend in need can have the effect of stopping them from falling off the highwire. But it's also unfair to be put in the position to be the only person between someone and that plunge into the abyss. Which is a position both Sam and Dean have repeatedly put each other in over the years. It's interesting that in season 6 with Cas, Dean was able to actually make that separation and see Cas's choices as on Cas and not on Dean, even when Cas tried to toss things back at Dean ("I did it for you!"). But Cas dying in season 7 seems to have thrown Dean back into the mindset of "anything I can't stop from happening and/or had the slightest part in is entirely my fault."

As Sam came out and said, it's survivor's guilt. I wouldn't be shocked if Dean deep down thinks it's his fault that his mom burned on the ceiling, though this has only been implied in the show (see: Dark Side of the Moon and the scene with Zach and not!Mary); it's just a very 4-year-old thing to do.

OKAY WOW I think I have meta thoughts about this that aren't coming out in any coherent fashion at allll so I should probably stop while I'm ahead.

spn 8.10

amonitrate — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:17:37 GMT

WAS SUPER GREAT.

I don't have a lot of deep thoughts about it right now, beyond how fucked up everything is in just the way I like it best.

more and more i'm wondering if the endgame isn't no hell below us, above us only sky. i mean. angel tablet?

spn 8.10

amonitrate — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:16:43 GMT

WAS SUPER GREAT.

I don't have a lot of deep thoughts about it right now, beyond how fucked up everything is in just the way I like it best.

year in review 2012

amonitrate — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 17:11:37 GMT

This was not the most fannishly productive year for me!

So in 2012 I only posted two fics:

till the cows come down the river
season five, between "Dark Side of the Moon" and "99 Problems." gen
Sam’s never understood anything, not really, and Dean’s never wanted him to. But he always tries, even for the stuff Dean himself doesn’t understand. Dean’s never known what to do with that.
~10,000 words

it would be this
season six, between "Clap Your Hands" and "Caged Heat," slight AU. gen (past Dean/Lisa)
"I'm not trying to mess with you, Dean. It's what you said. Leverage. The vamps can use Lisa and Ben against you."
~12,000 words

I'm super proud of both of them for different reasons.

Meta-wise I also posted twice (tho there are probably ep reaction posts that are meta-y):

I'm not someone you want to aim to be : Dean in SPN season 6
an exploration of how and why Dean wasn't able to stay in the "apple pie life" with Lisa and Ben in season 6
~2,700 words

"If you're generic enough, you'll do" : on Lisa as Dean's fantasy of an "apple pie life"
a response to a post that argues Dean is turned off by women who have their own agendas and that his relationship with Lisa in season 6 was an example of Dean "using real women to live off his fantasy of an apple pie life."
~1,600 words

lol just noticed "apple pie life" shows up in both. so yeah, I still really really really love season 6 you guys.

spn 8.09

amonitrate — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:48:55 GMT

So! I imagine there's a lot of Sam vs. Dean going around in fandom right now, or so I hear. Somehow I have managed to avoid all of it on my various social media outlets.

If I could sum up SPN in a pithy phrase, it would be "Everyone's an Asshole and Everything Hurts" so I'm always a little confused about fandom's reaction to the show when the characters are at odds. There's something really pared down about Sam and Dean's conflicts this season I am enjoying.

So! I was feeling a little underwhelmed by this episode as an episode last night while enjoying the discrete events and the characterizations, so I'm going to rewatch and post my incoherent thoughts...

I really, really hope I'm being fair to both Sam and Dean in this post! I'm trying to articulate what I'm seeing without getting into any false equivalencies, but I empathize a whooole bunch with both of them this season in ways that sometimes are confusing because I'm empathizing with them really strongly AT THE SAME TIME when they're COMPLETELY AT ODDS. lolol spn.

Also I'm not gonna respond to Sam vs. Dean comments, btw, or comments about how the show is screwing over one or the other character. Not interested.

CLASSIC ROCK long contented sigh.

I have shallow feelings when it comes to Benny. The actor is a bit like JDM to me in that I prefer his edgier scenes to when he's emoting and sympathetic. I like that Benny-the-character is sympathetic, don't get me wrong. I just find the Benny who looms and might bite you really hot. I also have shallow feelings about the lovely diner set. As well as undying love for the curvy teal arrow sign in the first scene with Sam and Dean, for the Lost in the 50's Drive-In.

Dean tries sooo hard to be reasonable and fair after he finds out that Sam put a hunter on Benny. Of course, he also knows he has the Amelia Gambit to use if it comes to it. I have to say, I really enjoy the calculation that implies, which isn't something typical of Dean -- he's usually more the guy who reacts to things more immediately rather than making contingency plans. It's a giant dick move that I completely understand (dude only knows he woke up chained to a radiator, his brother gone to hunt his friend after Dean gave evidence that Benny's innocent) but I think it says something about the Dean who's come back from Purgatory. How he's harder, he's apparently more proactive and calculating, I like it. Dean's usually more of a lash-out-in-the-moment kind of guy. Dean doesn't really make plans often, is all I'm saying, and so this is new.

Allll the simmering resentments behind everything in this episode, from Sam putting a hunter on Benny in the first place, to Dean trying to explain why he trusts Benny by falling back onto his own relationship baggage ("he has never let me down") and jamming his finger into a sore spot from "Southern Comfort" with Sam.

"You're too close to this" -- simultaneously true, not coming from a 100% objective place for Sam, and suuuuch a callback to the Amy situation. As much as parts of fandom argued that Sam totally (and too easily) forgave or agreed with Dean killing Amy last season, I don't think he did, and I think that's part of his reaction to Benny. Sam's always been the guy who gives the monsters the benefit of the doubt, and Sam's the guy who (rightly) pointed out to Dean at the beginning of this season that people are gonna die with or without them hunting monsters, so I think while a whoooole lot of his reaction to Benny has to do with everything Dean said in "Southern Comfort" and with Dean (from Sam's perspective) keeping secrets from him about Benny and Purgatory, I feel like maybe there are traces of unresolved feelings about Amy here too. That the situations aren't parallel (Benny wasn't killing anyone and then only did to save his granddaughter's life when Martin was actively threatening it; Amy killed people she saw as lowlifes in order to save her son but those people weren't actively threatening her son's life) isn't as important as the fact that he asked Dean to trust him on Amy and Dean didn't, went behind Sam's back, and lied about it. But also maybe a bit with the fact that Sam *did* realize he was too close to the Amy situation to make an unbiased call, and feels Dean's in the same boat here. So Sam's suspicion of Benny has very little to do with Benny being a monster and everything to do with a whole shitton of issues between himself and Dean.

Everyone's an Asshole and Everything Hurts. The best thing about SPN is that every character has perfectly understandable and sympathetic reasons for doing what they're doing.

Even Martin! Though I think the episode could have been a bit stronger if we knew a bit more about why Martin ended up in the hospital in the first place -- hunting has obviously damaged him, and its enough to make his actions in the episode make sense especially after Sam ditches him, but I kinda wanted to get a little more insight into what made Martin tick in the first place.

The chain of events that lead up to Dean using Amelia against Sam, and Martin going after Elizabeth, are so intimately tied to every unresolved piece of baggage between Sam and Dean that their respective choices make total sense for them as characters and yet are sooo fucked up. Things had come to a point where they might have gone either way -- Sam was still trying to listen to Dean enough to leash Martin and let Dean approach Benny alone, Dean was still trying to explain why he believed Benny deserved the benefit of the doubt, and then the pivotal scene where those resentments boil out despite, I think, Dean's best efforts. I don't think he intended to lean on that sore spot about not trusting Sam when he set out to defend Benny, but he felt cornered and outnumbered and his friend's life was on the line, and those are his honest feelings right now -- that of all his relationships, Benny's been the one to not let him down. Sam abandoned him to Purgatory, Cas abandoned him to Purgatory, Benny was the one he put his back against. That's not to say his feelings are particularly fair.

"Are we just going on trust here?"

There's a quote from Judith Herman on cPTSD that I think fits here, to get at Dean's mindset regarding Sam and Benny. It's a bit long, so bear with me:

In every encounter, basic trust is in question. To [the traumatized person] ... there are only a limited number of roles: one can be a perpetrator, a passive witness, an ally, or a rescuer. Every new or old relationship is approached with the implicit question : Which side are you on? The victim’s greatest contempt is often reserved, not for the perpetrator, but for the passive bystander. …

The survivor oscillates between intense attachment and terrified withdrawal. She approaches all relationships as though questions of life and death are at stake. She may cling desperately to a person whom she perceives as a rescuer, flee suddenly from a person she suspects to be a perpetrator or accomplice, show great loyalty and devotion to a person she perceives as an ally, and heap wrath and scorn on a person who appears to be a complacent bystander. The roles she assigns to others may change suddenly, as the result of small lapses or disappointments, for no internal representation of another person is any longer secure.

Dean might talk about Purgatory as something pure, but the level of anger he's carrying towards Sam for not doing anything to get him out -- in the terms of this quote, Sam's the complacent bystander to something that fucked Dean up. Benny's an ally. Benny's the fellow soldier who's been where Sam hasn't been, who had Dean's back. Sam's now not just a civilian and so outside of that bond that Dean feels with Benny, but Dean can't articulate that bond without pairing it with the resentment he feels about Sam sitting back and doing nothing while Dean was trapped in a warzone for a year. Like I said, none of this is fair to Sam, but I think it's pretty accurate to the landscape inside Dean's head. Cas is a special case, I think, because he was in Purgatory too even if he disappeared at first, and so doesn't quite fall into the same category as Sam in Dean's mindset.

Pair this with the history of betrayals by loved ones Dean's never quite resolved -- Sam & Ruby in season 4, Cas & Crowley in season 6. He loves them, they're his family, but he can't process his own feelings about what happened, so he ends up shoving them aside in order to stay in the relationships. The problem is, those feelings don't go away. They turn into something ugly and impossible to keep swallowing down, and they boil up in ways that aren't fair to the people who inspired them. There's a lot of reasons why Dean operates this way, which would probably take a whole other post to explore, but I really love how much of this underpins this episode and drives the action.

Trying to find a way to reach Sam about why Benny deserves to be trusted, Dean makes a comment about Benny being the only one who hasn't let Dean down, Sam reacts to it because Sam's human, and any chance that this episode could have gone another way evaporates. Maybe, if Dean hadn't made that comment, if "Southern Comfort" hadn't happened to be in the background of that comment, Sam wouldn't have left Dean chained to a radiator when Martin went wildcard and knocked him out. Now, I'm not trying to say Sam made a great choice there, just a human one. Just as Dean's comment, his resentment, comes from a really human place.

A bit about the flashbacks: I think what we've seen of Sam and Amelia's story in the past couple episodes makes some of the earlier scenes this season even more emotionally complex than they already were -- we find out that Sam wasn't pulled away from Amelia by Dean's return at all, but that he'd left of his own accord, to give Amelia and Don a chance, despite the fact that Amelia (and Don) asked him to let Amelia have a little time to make her own decision about her relationships. Sam's resentment about hunting has been understandable and lovely and interesting to me and this makes it even more complex.

I totally empathize with where he's coming from -- hunting got everyone he loved killed, and Dean comes back and just expects Sam to jump right back into it, enthusiastically, with the implication that leaving hunting means abandoning Dean and with a heavy dose of John's guilt trips about the people who will die without the Winchester Family Business. But at the same time, and with the caveat that it's really hard to navigate the kind of guilt trip Dean was laying on him earlier in the season, Sam's made the decision to hunt with Dean of his own free will. He could make the choice not to.

He's trying to do what he thinks is the right thing while not wanting to get involved in this destructive lifestyle that has taken everything from him, and he's caught. I think Sam's human, and so it came out in a kind of simmering passive-aggressiveness that I've really enjoyed. Less present in recent episodes -- he's been more outright aggressive and straightforward since "Southern Comfort" about what he thinks, and less resentful of hunting itself at the same time -- but some of the early episodes had some great snippy asides and eyerolls. What I like about this is that I've been there, and it's really really super hard not to be passive aggressive in the face of the kinds of pressures and stress Sam's been under. It's really hard to do something you don't want to do because you think you're supposed to, or because you're not ready to do the alternative and just confront someone you would be better off confronting, no matter how difficult -- and Dean, for his own reasons, has been really difficult this season. Throw in Sam's fear that Dean will die on him again, which is one reason I think he's agreed to join back up with the hunting against his best instincts. Add the fact that (unless we see more in flashbacks from Sam) Sam was aimless when he left Amelia's -- all he knew is that he wasn't with her anymore and didn't want to hunt when Dean showed up, alive -- and Sam's been in quite the tailspin this season, emotionally. Augh Sam.

Anyway, that was a really long winded way of saying that I really love the emotional dynamics that the show has set up between Sam and Dean. They're both really human. They're both sitting on unresolved shit that's getting in the way of communicating, they're both pulling some dick moves that are compounded by their inability to really communicate. A year of nonstop combat with monsters who want to eat you isn't something a dude comes back from not a raging asshole sometimes, and one thing I think SPN has always done well is show that the fallout of trauma is often a lot of rage, as well as an inability to easily talk about what happened, which compounds things. Sam and Dean exhibit this in different ways at different times, and it's very much in contrast to the h/c model of PTSD that fandom tends to be more used to. Fucked up people aren't always fun to be around. Doesn't mean it's their fault they're fucked up, or that they're even all that aware they're being giant assholes, or that everyone they're interacting with are blameless. I think this is what I was trying to get at in my last post about Dean and how he was treating Sam re: hunting, but didn't articulate very well.

"Guys like us, we don't get a home. We don't get family."

I love the progression this represents in the theme of Dean Is a Monster. Just go with me a moment -- since season 6 (well before season 6 really, but 6 was where it got explicit) Dean's spoken of himself as a monster who doesn't get to have a life with good, normal people like Lisa and Ben. His identification with monsters went up a notch when he killed Amy in season 7, but also evolved -- here he's not really drawing a line between monsters and people when he tells Amy But people... They are who they are. No matter how hard you try, you are what you are. You will kill again. He was already erasing the differences between monsters and people there; now he's underlining it. Guys like us.

Does he include Sam in that category? Benny says "You've got Sam." I think Dean does put Sam into the category of people who don't get family, given his comments about Sam's year off, and how they reflect Dean's baggage about how his experience with Lisa ended. I think his feelings about Sam-as-his-family are really ambiguous right now, though, for all the reasons I got into above.

And speaking of chains of actions and consequences -- Sam ditching Martin in the woods when he gets the (false) message from Amelia. Sam comes across as panicked there, and with everything that's happened with everyone Sam cares about, that makes sense. But he also runs off in Martin's car and leaves the dude he called into the case in a lurch, in a situation where from Martin's perspective he's left alone against a vamp who's killing people. So Martin's choice to go after Elizabeth again makes sense. Of course Martin's not going to listen to Dean about Benny after that. Of course he's going to do what it takes to bring down a monster.

And Benny -- did Benny have another choice? I think he probably did. I think he killed Martin arguably in self-defense and in defense of his family, but did he have to rip out his throat? He could have easily overpowered Martin and killed him via other means, but he did it personal. Do I blame him? Not particularly. Was it a choice that's going to have consequences? Yep.

Maybe, maybe, Sam would come around on Benny if Benny had killed Martin with Martin's own knife, given Elizabeth's testimony. But even with Elizabeth as witness, Benny killed a hunter monster-style. And after Dean's little stunt with the cell phone...

And now I'm wondering if Dean expected Sam to stay with Amelia, in the short scene before Elizabeth calls him, when he's singing along with the radio in the Impala. Oh man, the way he touches Elizabeth, his face as he walks into the diner. His lack of surprise at what he finds.

SAAAM your face when you realize who sent the distress text. And Dean knowing exactly what he was doing when he answered that particular phone.

I think the reason I love the conflict this season is because it's so divorced of the pressures of The Apocalypse. They really don't have that excuse to explain away their behavior. They don't have the deadline of the seals or Lucifer over their heads, just the weight of all their baggage and pain. IT'S BEAUTIFUL, OKAY. :D:D :D

AUGH OKAY. I went into this episode kinda meh. I think most of that was due to expectations formed by previous hiatus eps of EPICCCCCNESSSS which wasn't what this episode was meant to do. AND NOW I REALLY LOVE IT.

so i had really high expectations

amonitrate — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 03:32:43 GMT

and that made me happy in different ways than my expectations led me to want.

spn 8.07

amonitrate — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:27:47 GMT

I'VE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I DON'T THINK I CAN ACTUALLY TALK COHERENTLY ABOUT THIS SHOW ANYMORE.

It's like there are topics I think I want to write about this season in a more formal posting-type fashion and then I have too many feelings to actually do it. Maybe this is the season I just sit back and just HAVE THE FEELINGS rather than dissect them. lololol. Maybe by hiatus. Maybe next week when there is no new episode. Maybe tomorrow.

SPN 8.06

amonitrate — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:49:43 GMT

THAT MADE ME VERY HAPPY.

thoughts on rewatching SPN 8.05, on Benny & Dean and Sam & Dean...

amonitrate — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 13:11:00 GMT

xposted to tumblr...

So, complete speculation ahead:

It struck me rewatching 8.05 last night that Benny might actually be re-adjusting back to the world much better than Dean is. I think it might have to do with the fact that Benny had faced his inner monster, so to speak, before he went to Purgatory in the first place, came to terms with it, moved on from it with Andrea. Not saying it wasn’t traumatizing for the dude to see his love killed in front of him and then die himself and end up in Purgatory, but watching the episode, I got the sense that it wasn’t so much revenge driving him to take out his old nest as it was stopping them from hurting people. THIS MIGHT BE READING TOO MUCH INTO THINGS at this point, but the other exchange that really struck me was when Dean and Benny met up with Sam, and it became clear not just to Sam but to Benny that Dean hadn’t told Sam anything about Benny. And Benny says something like “Looks like you guys have a lot of catching up to do” or something like that. It struck me as a bit of a gentle reprimand from a friend to a friend, like, dude, what the fuck, why didn’t you tell your brother about me? But also at the same time getting that it’s not that easy maybe.

Anyway, so my total and utter speculation is that it’s not going to be Benny that needs to be reigned in this season, but Dean, and that Benny will call him out on it at some point? Blood brother to blood brother.

I don’t know if this is why Sam hasn’t out and out confronted Dean yet, but I think it might be that Sam doesn’t know how to talk to this Dean who doesn’t listen to him at all anymore. Whereas Benny was there when Dean became that Dean. The other scene that struck me between Benny and Dean along these lines is the bit in Purgatory when both he *and* Cas are trying to convince Dean that they’ll never make it out if Cas tags along with them, that this is just reality — but Dean isn’t having it, at all. The fact that he’s not having it at all, that he’s refusing to listen to them here — is in one sense admirable in that he is refusing to leave someone he loves behind regardless of the cost. But in another sense it’s a refusal of the reality that’s probably going to get them all killed. It’s just that Dean doesn’t care if it gets them all killed, because staying true to his loyalty to Cas and refusing to leave someone he loves behind (which might be read as feeling responsible for getting Cas out alive) is more important to Dean than whether or not he actually makes it out alive himself.

The scene between Sam and Dean that I think is key right now is the one from… um, was it 8.02? Where Sam is telling Dean straight up that Sam is out of the family business after this one last gig, and Dean is outright telling Sam that Sam is wrong about Sam’s feelings and choices, that Sam will change his mind because that’s what Dean wants Sam to do. It’s one of the more fucked up scenes to happen between them since season 4, I think.

There’s just no talking to someone who is telling you that your own feelings about your life are not just wrong, but erasing them outright and substituting their own. I really love how that scene contrasts with the scene in late season 1 between Sam and Dean, with a Dean who is much more vulnerable to the idea of Sam leaving because he doesn’t feel he has any control over it. This Dean seems to think he *can* control Sam, and that’s really fucked up. And it puts Sam in the awful position of having to be the one to back down or de-escalate the argument because to argue with that is to be put in the position to have to establish his own personhood, basically, and how do you do that in the face of someone outright denying that you are able to and have the right to make your own choices?

Anyway, I think there’s a lot here. I think my speculation is that the show is going to flip audience expectation, that Benny’s not going to be the one who can’t re-adjust to life post-Purgatory, and I think that might be why this week’s episode went to such lengths to give us insight into Benny’s backstory. It’s another reason why I don’t think Benny is going to end up as Dean’s Ruby, as the betrayer. I don’t think the story is going to be about whether or not Dean is right to trust Benny the Vampirate at all. And it’s also why I think the found footage episode about the kids turned into werewolves is more about Dean than it is about Benny — the show might be showing Dean acting like a complete asshole to Sam but it’s never lost sight of why exactly Dean is behaving this way, either.

Almost every monster on this show didn’t choose what happened to them, and I don’t think the show’s moral universe condemns them for giving in to the overwhelming pressure to kill once they’ve been turned — they’re starved lions rather than it being about moral judgment. But at the same time, once that’s passed, the show is making clear that they can make a choice not to kill. It’s a terrifyingly hard thing to do, but it is possible to change, to choose not to harm. And I think that’s the storyarc they’re going with for Dean this season. It’s not his fault that he had to fight for his life for a year in Purgatory and that it left him this pared of so much of his ability to emphasize with others, including his brother; but at some point it does become his responsibility to re-find that place in himself, no matter how difficult. Because the consequences of not doing that are hurting the one person he loves most in the world, down deep.

But what I think is that it needs to be a third party to talk to Dean about this, and about his relationship to Sam, because Dean can't hear anyone who didn't experience what he experienced in Purgatory right now, and he can't hear himself and how he's coming across, either.

rambling meta-ish thoughts

amonitrate — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:53:27 GMT

started this on Friday and it never really found a solid structure, but hey. SPN s8 thoughts.

idly watching "hell house" from spn season one because it's on TNT, I'd forgotten that in late s1 it was Sam who was pressing for working cases in between The Big Search, which was for John rather than Kevin, though it had been Dean in the early part of the season who pressed for hunting when they had no leads on John.

I think s8 is doing some interesting things with its callbacks to season 1 -- it's not a reboot, it's not rehashing season 1 at all, but it is intentionally using season 1 as a touchstone, without forgetting all the later canon. Instead, if you put Season One Sam and Dean next to Season Eight Sam and Dean, the differences those years in between make are, to me, the entire point that the show is asking the viewer to see. These aren't the same guys at all. They're not even close to similar to who they were in season one. They might want similar things at this point (Sam, ultimately, to get out of hunting; Dean, ultimately, to have his family with him) but what they want and how they want it and even the driving forces behind their behavior are pretty different from how it played in season one.

In season one they argued constantly, which is something I think fandom sometimes forgets or glosses over. The tone or flavor of the arguing is different in season eight, feels more awful to watch, because of the weight of everything that's happened, both between them and *to* them both. I think there's more to talk about on this topic but I also think I want to see more of the season before I can articulate it well.

I think the other bit I started to get at in the beginning of this post is that Sam and Dean, starting in season 1, have always traded back and forth who was the one pushing hunting as a lifestyle/who they are/what they do. In season two, Dean wanted to stop and Sam pressed forward. In season three Sam wanted to stop and focus on Dean's deal, and Dean pressed forward with hunting. It goes on like that throughout the seasons, for different reasons. Season 6 Dean more or less wanted to work out something part time, until he got vamped and saw things with Lisa as inevitably fucked up. Season 7 he again basically wanted to stop but didn't seem to know what else to do, and Sam was much more focused on hunting in order to give himself structure and distraction from his wall-breakdown problems, and Dean wasn't willing to leave him. Now this back-and-forth has shifted again, due to the circumstances of the missing year between seasons 7 and 8. I guess I see this push-pull between them and hunting over the years as organic and understandable, given that it's how they grew up, it's what they both know the best, even if they have very different relationships to it even when they're on the same page.

The differences in how they relate to hunting as individuals over the course of the series could probably take up a whole post, but distilled down to the essence, I think that Sam has always looked at hunting as something outside of himself, whether he's chafing against it or pushing for it -- the times he embraces it, it's not because he thinks of it as something he *is* down deep, even when he speaks of it as an inevitability, like in "Frontierland" in season 6, but because he feels external factors will never allow him out. Dean's relationship to hunting on the other hand, is all about what he *is* as a person. Either he embraces it (as in s8) or he sees it as what doesn't allow him to have what he wants, what makes him monstrous (s6) but he always sees it as his essential state. And both of them, in season 7, seemed to stick to it because they thought the other wanted it that way, and they weren't willing to leave the other behind -- but also, I think, because neither of them felt they had an alternative.

So what happened between seasons 7 and 8? Sam lost everyone he still loved, a pretty short list at that point, and suddenly there weren't any external factors forcing him to continue doing something he's never seen as essential to who he is. So he stopped. And the world kept going on without him, which at that point, after everything that's happened since he learned he was some kind of chosen one in season 1, must have been such a relief. Even when he was the one pushing hunting in previous seasons it was never because he felt the weight of (potential) victims on his head if he did nothing -- and this is a good thing. Feeling that weight, that everyone who dies if you're not there to save them is on your head, the way Dean expressed in What Is and What Should Never Be in season 2, is some fucked up shit.

And fucked up shit is probably the easiest summation of Dean's experience of that in-between year.

spn 8.04

amonitrate — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 03:01:30 GMT

HOW WAS THAT SO AWESOME?

SPN 8.03

amonitrate — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:17:46 GMT

More later after I can rewatch (damn we'd nights) but I lovvved all the tension and sniping between Sam and Dean. Really great stuff there, seething not so under the surface. I loved how Sam's memory of the surprise picnic starts with him panicking over Amelia disappearing given Dean literally vanishing on him. The whole contrast between what someone momentarily going missing means to Sam vs Amelia.

More to say later.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

"If you're generic enough, you'll do" : on Lisa as Dean's fantasy of an "apple pie life"

amonitrate — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 01:06:36 GMT

(xposted from my tumblr)

Inspired by this framing of the Dean/Lisa relationship:

IMO, the Lisa/Dean dream sequence in “Dream a little dream of me” and I’ll go as far as to say, their relationship in S6, is basically “What is and should never be” with Dean having a fantasy about a model he saw in a magazine, but that has escalated to him using real women to live off his fantasy of an apple pie life.

Basically, he’s not really interested in the person, not really. If you’re generic enough, you will do.

We all of us have fantasies about how we want to live our lives, we all have desires.

Many (if not most) relationships start off as mutual fantasy to some extent, that’s what we call “falling in love.” Many relationships end when the realities rub up against the fantasies. Does this mean we weren’t ever “interested in the person” as an individual in the first place? I’d argue no. I’d argue that’s a flat and uncharitable way of looking at relationships. But I’d also argue this friction of reality against fantasy had nothing to do with why and how Dean and Lisa’s relationship ended.

I find it interesting that this idea of fantasy and desire is often twisted in SPN fandom when it comes to Dean’s dream of a “normal” life: Dean’s fantasies are read as shallow and empty and something he has no willingness to back up or follow through with in reality. Or they’re put down as unattainable, or a distraction from his “real” life, or all of the above.

I think there’s often a certain distain for “normal” life involved in this mindset, as if it’s something below Dean Winchester. I also think this undercurrent of distain for “normal” life or dismissal of Dean’s desire for one as mere empty fantasy can come from a place of privilege when you’re talking about a character who hasn’t had a stable life, let alone a “home,” since he was four years old. These are the things in the back of my mind whenever I read commentary dismissing Dean/Lisa as Dean’s fantasy wish fulfillment.

The author of this meta claims that:

When the female character has her own agenda, like Jo or Bella, then of course the writers have to make Dean completely against it and therefore turned off by them. **

And yet when the audience is first introduced to Lisa in 3.02, it’s in the context of her displaying an agenda - parenting her kid - in direct opposition to Dean’s desire to interfere:

LISA: What are you even still doing here? We had one weekend together a million years ago. You don’t know me. You have no business with my son.

If the claim above about Dean being turned off by women with their own agendas has any truth, if Dean’s only attracted to empty fantasies of an “apple pie life” with a woman and her kid, being confronted by Lisa in this scene should have driven him away.

It didn’t.

Instead, Lisa herself invites Dean to stay, flirting openly with him. And yes, at this point Lisa knows nothing more about Dean than Dean knows about her — he is, in fact, a fantasy to her. And the only real reason Dean doesn’t take her up on it is he knows he’s living on borrowed time, and when the clock runs out he’s gonna die bloody.

Arguably up to the point of 5.17, Lisa did represent Dean’s fantasy of a stable life with someone he could love who loved him. Setting aside the fact that as I said, most of us harbor some kind of fantasy of our ideal life and I find it curious that Dean’s falling into this pretty universal pattern is used to discount the legitimacy of his desire for a relationship with Lisa, this theory is blown apart in season 6.

If Lisa was only a fantasy to Dean — if he couldn’t see the real woman behind that fantasy, if he wasn’t interested in her as a person — I think the relationship would have fallen apart in a very different way than it did, much quicker than it did.

The first time Lisa challenged him about his actions, he would have been gone. We see Lisa challenge him several times in 6.01 and 6.02, especially after he’s moved the household out of fear in 6.02 — and at this point they’ve been together a year. We see her challenge him on how he interacts with Ben. We see her challenge him on how he’s dealing (or not) with his own problems. We see her challenge him even after they’ve separated.

Here’s the explanation Dean gives as the relationship starts falling apart, after he’s been vamped in 6.05:

DEAN: Lisa, I can’t bring this crap home to you.

LISA: You’re talking about your work?

DEAN: I’m talking about my LIFE. It’s ugly…and it’s violent…and I’m gonna die — SOON.

Guess what? The reason he gives Ben for why he’s left? Has nothing to do with being unable to live with a reality that challenges his fantasy of a “normal life.”

Instead, this is what he tells Ben, and this is the root of why his relationship with Lisa fell apart:

DEAN Okay, fine. It’s like this, then. Just ‘cause you love someone doesn’t mean you should stick around and screw up their life. So I can’t be here.

BEN You think something will follow you home?

DEAN No. No, I don’t, but I think my job turns me into somebody that can’t sit at your dinner table. And if I stayed, you’d end up just like me.

BEN Why do you say it like you’re so…bad?

DEAN Well, trust me, I’m not someone you want to aim to be.

I wrote about this in greater length on LJ.

The gist of it is, Dean’s “failure” to live the normal life with Lisa and Ben had nothing to do with them being real people that he couldn’t fit into his fantasy. To argue such ignores everything that happens in season 6. Ignores the fact that he lived with Lisa and Ben for a year, continued to live with them after Sam’s return, and it all only fell apart directly as a result of Dean’s getting turned into a vampire and feeling like that’s what he is — a monster. That he was going to hurt them.

I’m just going to quote my own post here:

Dean knows what he wants from them; he said it very plainly in 6.02 — I can’t just lose you and Ben. But now he’s given up hope that he can have it, that he deserves to have it, that he won’t harm them by virtue of who he is.

So his inability to let this view of himself as a monster go, to forgive himself for what he did in hell, for how his childhood as a soldier affected him, for being turned into a vampire against his will, for the mistakes he’s made while traumatized and under pressure, causes him to fall back into old behavior of not communicating with the people he loves, sabotaging a relationship he very much wants.

I do think one could make a convincing argument that Lisa Braeden was an underwritten character, that she could have used more attention in the narrative. However I don’t think she was “generic” at all, and I don’t think using the critique that she could have used more fleshing out as a character is valid support for an argument that Dean (or the narrative) saw her only as a generic fulfillment of his fantasy for the “apple pie life.” I think that erases a whole hell of a lot about Dean’s characterization in season 6, Dean’s ongoing struggle with his own issues, and does Lisa herself a disservice.

In another post, the author claims of the Dean/Lisa relationship:

And it’s kind of a case of having your cake and eating it too (some sort of peek-a-boo romance where it looks like it’s there but it’s actually not ).

IMO this potentially says more about the author’s perspective on what relationships in fiction are supposed to look like to be valid than it does the narrative, or Dean, to be quite honest. I think it says a lot about how relationships are looked at — if they’re not framed by the narrative as storybook, as falling madly in love, they aren’t legitimate. They’re the narrative trying to have its cake and eat it too, or as the author says:

I will go out on a limb here and say that the writers do this kind of thing with the best of intentions so that things are left open to interpretation. The ones who want to see real romance actually get the oportunity to have some, for a change, while the portion of the audience that is not that interested in it has an intelectual explanation to fall back on that explains why the character is doing what he’s doing, which has very, very little to do with romance.

I think that’s giving the narrative and the characters no credit. I think that erases all the complexity of messy human relationships, where two people might love one another and be important to one another and form a relationship, but not be “in love” in the traditional romantic sense.

I’d argue that what’s actually happening with the Dean/Lisa relationship arc has nothing to do with “real romance” at all. I’d also argue that it has nothing to do with handing the romance-adverse portion of SPN’s audience a convenient out. Instead, I think it’s a vital part of Dean’s ongoing characterization, and dismissing it as either of these two options is to miss the entire point.

** there's a whole other essay that could be written disputing the idea that Dean isn't interested in and is turned off by women with their own agendas. In fact, most of the women we've seen Dean show interest in are precisely that: women with their own agendas, who often (usually) turn him down or challenge him in some way. Which typically makes him more attracted to them. You can trace this back to the second episode of the series and his chemistry with Haley in Wendigo. See Jaimie in Monster Movie, for example. See Jo herself, because... what? Jo having her own agenda and challenging Dean did not, in fact, make Dean run the other way. And Bela is a completely out of context example. I think Bela nearly getting Sam killed by stealing the cursed rabbit's foot, and, you know, shooting him, probably had more to do with Dean's reaction to her than Bela having her own agenda. Dean doesn't typically have a positive reaction to people who cause harm to his brother.

there's also a whole essay that could be written disputing the author's take on Carmen in 2.20 as "just a face from a beer commercial" to Dean.

There are many essays, and not very much time :D

imagine i still write meta

amonitrate — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 03:40:55 GMT

(crossposted to tumblr)

8.02 What's Up Tiger Mommy

I mean yeah, it would have sucked and I would have hated myself, but what's one more nightmare, right?

7.07 The Mentalists

That's what family does -- the dirty work.

1.22 Devil's Trap

Killing that guy, killing Meg. I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t even flinch. For you or Dad, the things I’m willing to do or kill, it’s just, uh … it scares me sometimes.

This is not a new story. This has always been the story.

:D :D :D

amonitrate — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 02:26:41 GMT

I can't even get into whether the episode was objectively good or not because HOLY CRAP.

SPN 8.01

amonitrate — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 03:11:18 GMT

Dear LJ, I am so so so very behind. but.

DEAR GOD EVERYTHING I'D EVER WANT.

brief thoughts:

the pacing was uneven and weird after they joined up with Kevin. I don't think Sam's flashbacks were integrated into the pacing/flow very well. Dean's fit better. Kevin's were also awkward. This isn't a comment on the content of the flashbacks, just the pacing of the episode. Benny's accent might grow on me or might get annoying, I can't decide.

this isn't a reboot or a rehash it's the story they've been telling all along. Every character moment made perfect sense to me, and honestly that's all I ask from this show. The plot can be wonky, the pacing and direction of an episode can be wonky (this one felt a bit like it was trying to find its legs) but JFC the characterization. fuck me, the characterization was so great. Everything about it, for both Sam and Dean, just rang completely true to me. I know in the back of my head that it's gonna get wanky out there, but goddamn that's so beside the point. It's always wanky, because people can't deal with the fact that no one is right and no one is wrong, they're just human beings trying to figure out how to deal with what's happened to them, human beings with very different experiences trying to find some kind of common ground after a long time and world apart, and that's messy and fucked up and that's how it should be.

Also ILU Kevin.

teen wolf season 2

amonitrate — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:28:12 GMT

SOOOO Season 2 is like, 10x better than season 1 so far! I'm impressed. If television was a yearbook, Teen Wolf would be "Show Most Improved From the Pilot." The look of the show alone is much smoother, cinematographically.

It's occasionally still having issues with uneven pacing/tone and jarring moments of cheese but I'm unironically enjoying it for the most part.

So the show is still The Allison Argent & Lydia Martin Show to me. There should really be more Lydia. I want to know more about her home life, for one. She's an odd duck, I want to know more about what makes her tick.

Grandpa Argent has taken over the Most OTT/Scenery Chewing award this season, so I have been mentally replacing him with Mitch Pileggi. I really liked Michael Hogan on BSG, but man, he needs reigning in on this one.

I decided that to make this into an obvious crossover with SPN: Deanna Campbell (Sam & Dean's grandmother) was totally an Argent. She was Gerard's sister, and then she married into a rival hunter family, the Campbells. Chris Argent ran into John Winchester once or twice but thought he was a dangerous, rank amateur and steered clear of him. Also, Kate Argent/Dean Winchester They'd probably hate each other. It'd be awesome. Or maybe Kate/John Winchester, because Chris told her to stay away.

I've watched through episode 2.05. Mostly I spend my time excited whenever Allison wields her crossbow and wringing my hands over Lydia. Scott is still ridiculously adorable. Derek Hale is the show's John Winchester, what with the creating an army of child soldiers due to his own fear and damage.

I really, really don't get Derek/Stiles.

I think that's about it, as far as Teen Wolf Update goes.

teen wolf season 1

amonitrate — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 01:23:52 GMT

Finished it! I ended up enjoying the end of the season, after struggling with the first part. Teen Wolf has this weird whiplash between intentionally campy, possibly unintentionally cheesy and lolarious, and then really effective, solid scenes. Sometimes all of this happens in the same scene and hurts my brain.

Scott grew on me as the season progressed, because the actor who plays him was possibly genetically engineered to be adorable in ways that usually annoy me when too forced. My heart, though, belongs to Allison and Lydia. As an aside, Chris and Kate Argent are the first sibling pairing I've ever seen the potential, uh, shippiness in? I'm not much with the incest ships usually, just don't see it. But there, there I could maybe see it.

Anyway! I hear terrible things happen to Lydia in season 2 and also there is more body horror in store for Jackson, therefore I will be giving it a shot.

another summergen rec

amonitrate — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 01:16:00 GMT

I wanted to rec this one right after I read it, and I thought I'd closed the tab, and I couldn't remember which fic it was, and then I found the tab! Still open! So here it is:

Here There Be Tygers (author unrevealed) at spn_summergen

Again, don't want to say much about this one, except amnesia fic is one of my favorite tropes, but here it's put to really chilling, creative use.

There are some things--though the knives are not typically one of them--that Sam explains daily. Chief among them, what has happened. Why they're here. How long they're going to stay, and why. Why, why, why. Dean doesn't typically try to understand, or refuses to. Not that Sam blames him; he's not sure if he believes himself half the time. But as the days go by, Sam learns to streamline a little.

"You're sick, Dean," he says, which is not exactly true. (It's not at all true.) "You're hurt." (Closer.)

"I can't--" Remember, Dean doesn't say.

"I know," Sam does. And he knows whose fault that is.

uh, hi!

amonitrate — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 23:54:09 GMT

Man, I haven't had much to post about. Been spending a lot of energy on personal life stuff, mostly, and having a hard time writing.

Did a Breaking Bad marathon last month (? maybe? I've lost track of time) and have caught up, and am really enjoying it. I think season 4 was my favorite, because I love Gus, but this season I really really love what they're doing with Skylar.

I haven't posted anything about SPN spoilers, mostly because I'm a wait-and-see-before-I-draw-any-conclusions kind of girl. I'm intrigued. I haven't been able to rewatch season 7 and only saw most of the episodes once so I don't have a good overall sense of what I think about that season besides that it had some issues, but I think my opinion of it is far less negative than perhaps the fandom average? IDK.

Mostly I thought that the leviathans weren't used consistently well and didn't have a close enough tie to Sam and Dean; I think the "Revenge for Bobby" plot could have worked in theory but didn't in execution, and yeah. Mostly execution issues, though I think there was definitely a developing theme/arc for Dean in the early part of the season that seemed to have been mostly dropped by the last third or so, which was unusual for SPN. I've found that the show typically is stronger on character arc than executing plotting, and so that was disappointing. But I liked a lot about the season too. Like I said, I'd have to do a rewatch before I have any deeper thoughts than that. I thought the end of the season came together pretty well despite the problems.

Teen Wolf has taken over tumblr! I keep giving it a shot, and I've watched a little over half of the first season so far. HONEST OPINION TIME, if you don't want squee harshing, probably you should stop reading. I haven't watched the second season yet, which I hear is better. If not for so many people whose opinions I respect liking it, I'd have written it off after the pilot, which I thought was really, really, really terrible. The show has gotten steadily better from there. I like The Family Argent and Lydia the best, and some of that is more that I like the idea of them than the execution, which is kind of how I feel about the show in general so far. IDK, it just doesn't click with me even as there are things I abstractly respect in it? The acting (and writing) has been uneven for the most part, which might be part of why it doesn't grab me, though the plotting is pretty good. And the other part is the general problem I typically have with shows about high school students, which is that their experiences are never very close to what my own were like, so it's hard to relate to them as characters.

All that said, those fingers crawling out of Jackson's mouth were very effective in the OH MY GOD WTF area -- probably the only real surprise I've had so far. I hear tell there is more of that kind of thing to come. And the actor who plays Scott is so genuinely adorable in a completely unaffected way, it's refreshing. He doesn't seem to be trying to be adorable, he's just a natural apparently.

The comparison of Breaking Bad doesn't help, because that's the only other show I've been watching. LOL.

One thing I do like about TW is that it doesn't have any filler eps, every episode forwards the season's arc. One downside I've noticed though is that it doesn't give the show as much opportunity (so far) to flesh out the non-Scott and Stiles characters as much. Allison gets a bit more, but I think I potentially enjoy Jackson and Lydia, it's just that they don't get very much screen time yet. On 22-ep season shows there is more filler, but filler episodes do serve the purpose of allowing (when done well) more time for character development.

To a much lesser extent this is also true of Breaking Bad, but it's not a detriment to Breaking Bad, I'm just kind of greedy and want more of the secondary characters who don't get as much development, especially Walt Jr. and Marie. I get that the show's not really about them, but they feel neglected in a show that has otherwise done an amazing job of taking characters who didn't have much depth in the very beginning and really drawing them out, like Hank. Anyway, BB is amazing. It's easily the best written show I've ever seen -- though I say this knowing I haven't seen The Wire.

Uh, I think that might be it. Oh, Batman. Well, I mostly hated Batman, to be completely honest. With the exception of Catwoman, who was amazing.

Also I have applied for a new job in the same organization I'm with now, and have an interview in a couple weeks, and am nervous, but hopefully it'll go well!

That's about the state of me. I could tell you a bunch about how my big project right now is trying to rewire my habits to make my living spaces more consistently pleasant to live in, but that's boring.

fic rec -- spn

amonitrate — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 20:20:58 GMT

Super great, devastating version of a theme I've seen before, but don't remember being this full of OUCH.

dark is too hard to beat (author unrevealed) written for spn_summergen

I don't want to say too much, given the structure and the way the fic slowly reveals what happened. Even if you guess early on what happened, it still packs a punch.

bringing a vid everyone has probably already seen!

amonitrate — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 16:32:59 GMT

hi! this summer has been kinda slow for me on the everything front (writing, personal life) but here, this is an amazing vid:

by affablyevil

I am more frequently found on tumblr these days, because it requires very little thought and is pretty. I'm amonitrate over there too.

I'm really behind on reading everything! At some point I will catch up.

fic: it would be this (2/2) -- SPN

amonitrate — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:55:17 GMT

title: it would be this (2/2)
rating: R
summary: "I'm not trying to mess with you, Dean. It's what you said. Leverage. The vamps can use Lisa and Ben against you."
words: 12,000
notes: mildly AU, taking place after "Clap Your Hands" in season 6 but before Sam's soul was restored, entirely due to the fact that I've been writing this since shortly after "Live Free and Twihard" originally aired. Thanks so much to destro for support and oddmonster for an awesome beta.

part 1/2

There was indeed beer in Lisa's refrigerator. Not El Sol this time, but something local: Bell's Two-Hearted Ale. Sam popped off the cap and took a sip. He thought there'd be more shouting but instead only a low murmur of voices reached him, mostly Lisa's from the pitch, and after awhile even that dropped off into silence. Sam was halfway through his second bottle when Lisa appeared in the kitchen doorway carrying the laundry basket from her bedroom, her face set in lines of exhaustion that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. She shot him an indignant look and then stalked past him into the adjoining laundry room, so he followed.

"Those weren't painkillers," Lisa accused, dropping the basket onto the concrete floor with a thunk.

"No," Sam agreed.

He watched her yank open the washer and pull at the knobs to start the flow of water. "He's practically a zombie, Sam. What did you give him?" she asked, dumping a capful of detergent and the clothes from the basket into the washer and slamming the cover shut.

Sam shrugged and tossed her the prescription bottle. Raised a brow when she managed to catch it one handed. She glanced at the label and blanched.

"He's got a concussion and you gave him Xanax?" Lisa hissed. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"He was out of control."

Lisa just stared at him. "That wasn't your brother out of control," she said after a long moment, voice flat again. "Not by a long shot."

Sam settled against the door frame and took another sip of beer. "Really?"

Something of his genuine curiosity must have leaked through, because Lisa cocked her head, aiming the kind of distaste at him that he'd gotten used to receiving from Samuel.

"So he's out already?" Sam asked.

Lisa's moue of disgust deepened. "Not yet. He's in the shower." She shook the pill bottle. "You took this from my bathroom?"

Sam shrugged.

"You're not what I expected," Lisa said.

"What did you expect?"

Lisa's mouth turned down, not quite a frown. "Not someone who would drug his brother because he was upset."

Even in what were obviously her chores-around-the-house sweatpants and t-shirt, her hair back in a ponytail, there was something poised about Lisa. Maybe it was all the yoga.

"I might have only met you the one time but I recognized you, you know." Lisa pressed on before Sam could say anything. "I thought maybe... I don't know what I thought. But when I found out you weren't dead after all everything made sense."

"Everything?"

"You weren't very subtle. Watching us from across the street back in Cicero? You're lucky the neighbors didn't call in a peeping tom." Her expression went brittle. "I'm pretty sure Dean saw you once or twice. But my guess is you didn't think about the effect that would have on him. Given that he believed you were in hell at the time."

So, Dean had told her about his stint in hell. That was unexpected.

"Well, technically," Sam said, "I was in hell at the time. Still am."

"What?"

"I'm told it's an interesting philosophical question."

Lisa stared at him for a beat and then lifted her chin, ignoring the obvious bait. "Does it explain why you didn't tell your brother you were alive? A year, Sam. He thought you were suffering the whole time. The way he did."

"Yeah, I know."

"You know? I don't think you do. You watched us eat dinner through the window a couple of times and you think you know anything about that year?"

"You're protective of him," Sam said, tipping back the last swig of beer. "It's nice, he didn't get much of that growing up."

"You think this is just about Dean? Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? Who do you think made sure your brother didn't fucking kill himself those first few months? What do you think that was like, for me and Ben?"

"He promised he wouldn't," he said evenly, rolling the empty beer bottle between his hands. Sam knew in a distant kind of way that given Dean's past flirtations with suicide what Lisa was saying should have rocked him. But he wasn't that Sam anymore, and so it didn't.

"It doesn't work that way, and--"

"He's still alive, isn't he?"

"--and the whole time, you were alive, out playing hunter."

Sam let the bottle slide through his hand, until it dangled from his fingers. "He wouldn't have stayed if I'd told him I was back. You've got to know that."

Lisa flashed teeth, a sardonic grimace. "Aren't you the hero. You think you did him a favor, not telling him? Or was that for my benefit?"

His own smile felt tight on his face, unfamiliar. He shifted his grip on the neck of the beer bottle. Watched Lisa's attention drift down to his hand, to the bottle, and something in her face went still, careful. Maybe she'd seen Dean hold a bottle like this, maybe she'd had to pull him out of a bar fight or two. Her gaze slid past him to the open doorway and he couldn’t help a laugh at how obviously she was telegraphing her fear.

"Is something about this funny to you?" Lisa asked, a hint of nerves creeping into her tone. This happened sometimes since he got topside -- people came down with the jitters around him and he wasn’t always sure what he’d done to set them off. She didn't wait for his answer, just pushed past him back out into the kitchen. Sam let her go, gave her a moment, and then followed.

Lisa was leaning against the kitchen counter, one hand fingering the knob of one of the drawers. Smart, not giving him her back, even though he was Dean's brother. He wasn't sure what had rattled her, probably the bottle, so he set it down on the counter top and turned to run his fingers over the edges of the snapshots tacked to a cork board on the wall by the phone. She must have brought it from Cicero when Dean moved them.

"He looks happy," Sam said. "He's smiling, anyway, but with Dean you have to look at the eyes. He can't lie worth shit if you look him in the eye."

He could hear Lisa easing one of the drawers open behind him. "Those a new set? I bet Dean got them custom made."

The drawer clicked shut. "What?"

"The knives. They're silver, right? Probably got them for your birthday, or Christmas? Weird gift from anyone else, but you knew what he meant by them. Silver, for protection. The Winchester way of going steady, I guess. Where was this taken?"

He turned around, holding out a photo of Dean and Ben covered in sunscreen and sand. Dean was terrified of flying so the answer was obvious but he waited anyway. Lisa stood stiff in her corner, a silver plated knife in one hand. Sharper than it looked, he'd bet.

"Lake Michigan?" Sam said, nodding. "He probably taught you how to sharpen those too, huh? What else did he teach you and the kid?"

Out here he could hear the high pitched sound of water rushing through the pipes above them, Dean in the shower.

"What are you doing, Sam?" Lisa asked, low, her fist white-knuckled around the handle of the knife.

Sam glanced at the picture of his brother sunburned and smiling for the camera on some Midwestern lake shore and back over at Lisa and shook his head. "Nothing. Dean cares about you. I know that." He tried on a grin, tried for friendly, knew by her face he wasn't hitting the mark, even though he meant it as much as he was able. "I don't have any reason to hurt you, Lisa. I'm here to make sure nothing does."

"What's wrong with you?" she asked after a long moment. Her grip had loosened around the knife but she didn't put it down.

He remembered going to the ocean with Jess, a long time ago. The way they got sand everywhere, the taste of salt on her skin. But Jess had died and Sam knew that had still ached when he'd jumped into the pit with Lucifer, but now it didn't.

"Left my soul in hell," he said.

"Literally? You mean... you actually meant that. What you said earlier." Lisa tilted her head, like she was adding him up. Factoring in what she knew from Dean's behavior since Sam had shown up on her doorstep. It wasn't much, but then Dean didn't usually fall for airheads. And it was kind of nice, being honest about it with someone who wasn't a hunter. A relief.

"Yep." Sam shrugged, then glanced at the photo in his hand. "You still have his picture up. His pills in your medicine cabinet."

"Sam," Lisa said, and now her voice was soft, something other than wary distrust or disgust filtering into her expression, though he noticed she hadn't let go of the knife.

"You were right to break it off with him. He understands that, you know."

Lisa shook her head, but Sam couldn't tell whether it was in disagreement or something else. "That's why you're... different?" she asked. "Can you feel it? Whatever's happening to your soul?"

A laugh hiccoughed out before he knew it was going to happen. "Nope. Didn't even know it was gone."

"How--"

Sam laughed again. "It's a long story."

Lisa's attention drifted up to the ceiling, towards the sound of rushing water. “I didn’t know you’d dosed him up with Xanax when I left him alone. I should make sure--”

"Probably a good idea." Sam half turned, tacked the photograph back in place on the cork board.

She took the knife with her but at least this time she gave him her back.

By the time Sam had finished a check of the outside perimeter and returned to the kitchen the rushing-water sound had cut off, leaving the house blanketed in a bright silence.

A flock of Deans smiled at him from the wall by the phone. Dean with his arm draped around Lisa or Ben, Dean looking as relaxed as Sam had ever seen him. In one snapshot his head was thrown back in laughter at something just out of frame. In another someone had caught him unawares as he dozed on a lawn chair, a paperback book loose in one of his hands. The image was too small for Sam to read the title but the cover was well worn, the spine cracked. Sam plucked the photo from the cork board and flipped it over. A neat cursive on the reverse recorded the date: a month and a half after Stull. On closer scrutiny, Dean's face was drawn even in slumber and the knuckles of the hand holding the book were scabbed over.

Back at the house in Cicero the cork board full of pictures had seemed thrown together, just another part of the shifting tumult of life. Here it looked as carefully preserved as a shrine.

Sam replaced the photo of his sleeping brother and traced his way through the kitchen to the living room. Paused at the foot of the staircase and listened, but all he could hear was the ticking of an antique clock on the mantel over the fireplace.

At the top of the stairs he found Lisa sitting with her knees drawn up and her back to the closed bathroom door, her head in her hands. He must have made a sound because she jerked a little, one hand flying to the knife where it rested next to her on the carpet. Then she blew out a breath and let the knife go. Rubbed her face with both hands.

"He lock you out?"

Lisa tilted her head to stare up at him, washed out in the dim light of the hall. "What does it look like?"

Sam felt his mouth quirk, didn't suppress it. "Looks like he locked you out."

"What happened?" she asked.

"We took down a nest of vamps last night. One of them threatened you."

"I gathered that much." Lisa looked away, down the hallway towards her bedroom. “Is it... how do they know where we live?”

She didn’t know that Dean had been a vampire himself, that the vamps were connected by some kind of telepathy to their Alpha. She didn’t know because Dean hadn’t told her, and Dean hadn’t told her because... well, Sam wasn’t clear on that part.

Lisa picked up on his hesitation and took a breath, like she was running through some kind of mantra in her head.

“How long before they find us?”

She picked up the knife again, weighing it in her hand. It wouldn’t be much use against a vampire but at least she was prepared to try. She was something, Lisa. Most civilians would be a mess by now but the first time he’d met her she’d survived a thing that had looked like her kid and tried to eat her and had come out the other side okay.

“We’re not sure,” Sam said. “We’re not sure they’re even coming.”

“Better safe than sorry?” Her laugh was slightly shaky.

“Something like that. Look, we’re gonna take care of it.”

“Yeah, I know you will.” She spoke like she only half-believed her own words and was trying her best to ignore that fact. Fiddling with the knife, she hesitated before continuing. “Last time Dean was here. Do you know what happened? Why he..."

"Oh," Sam said. What would a souled guy do here? Tell the truth? Dean kept going on about not keeping secrets, but he’d also harangued Sam about time and place and empathy and how people should be treated. Sam wasn’t sure who he was supposed to be empathizing with here, though. It was all so contradictory. “I dunno--”

“It's just... he was really freaked out and I didn't know why.” Lisa shook her head. "I can usually... I used to at least have a grip on why, what set him off, but..."

"He never told me what happened," Sam said. "But--"

"Sam--" Dean's voice punched hoarse and muffled through the door, and they both turned.

"Thought he'd passed out." Sam jiggled the doorknob. "Dean, let me in," he called.

Lisa pulled herself to her feet, stretched up onto her toes and slid something from the top of the door jamb. Handed him a slim nail. "I'd really rather not have to buy a new door."

"Why didn't you just open it?" Sam asked, turning the nail over in his hand.

She didn't answer. Just backed up to lean against the wall opposite the door, her arms crossed tight over her chest. Sam popped the lock and shoved but the door only moved inward about an inch, enough to give him a glimpse of one of his brother's bare feet. After a moment Sam heard the rustle of fabric and the door gave way, giving him space to squeeze through into the bathroom.

Dean sat hunched over his knees against the tiled bathroom wall, dressed in a clean Henley and a pair of track pants he must have left in Lisa's closet. The clothes he'd changed into at the rest stop were wadded up in a corner next to the tub. His hair was plastered to his forehead in damp spikes and water still dripped down the back of his neck to soak a small wet patch into the collar of his shirt. The uncovered fang marks stood out livid and ugly on the side of his throat.

Sam glanced back at Lisa and shut the door behind him.

The mirror over the sink was still half fogged over, the shower head dripping an uneven patter and plunk of wasted water. Moisture condensed into a thin film on Sam's skin, the room still muggy as a sauna from Dean's protracted shower. Faint traced letters were fading from the mirror, an E, a T, two L's. Ben's doing, probably. At twelve Dean had been obsessed with Metallica too.

"It'd be nice if you'd stop treating me like I'm a moron," Dean said, soft and a little blurry, without looking up from the floor. "I can recognize my own meds, you know."

Sam stepped over him and took a seat on the closed toilet. "So why'd you take it?"

Dean let out a mangled sound, something between a laugh and a cough. When his head lifted, Sam could see the vagueness of the tranquilizer glazing his eyes. "So what's the plan, Sam? Lise can handle herself but she's not a hunter. And I'm down for the count."

"No sign of 'em yet," Sam shrugged. "I could call Samuel in."

"I thought," Dean said slowly. "I thought if I wasn't here they'd be okay."

"You know that's not how it works."

Dean rubbed at his face with one hand and blew out a puff of air. "I think I liked it better when you were faking it."

"Like that's a surprise." Sam clasped his hands between his knees and studied the top of his brother's head. "You ever going to tell her what happened?"

"Doesn't matter," Dean said finally. "What would it change?"

Sam's stomach cramped in hunger. Maybe he should leave Dean here to mope and go get something to eat. "Probably nothing."

Dean nodded. Shielded his eyes with one hand, like he had in the car. He hadn't had breakfast and paired with the booze and the blood loss it was only a matter of time before the drugs pulled him under.

"Your head still bothering you?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded again. Gingerly touched the edge of the goose egg.

Sam eyed the slumped posture, the way Dean was sliding by increments into bonelessness and yet remained clenched fist tight at the core. "What about the rest?"

"You mean am I sprouting fangs? No," Dean snorted. He didn’t look at Sam, but there was a bitter twist to his mouth. "Looks like I dodged that bullet."

Sam didn’t say I told you so, but after a moment’s silence Dean’s hand dropped from his face and his chin came up and he let out a sound that was more an exhale than a laugh. “Not gonna rub it in?”

“D’you want me to?”

Dean sagged against the wall, heavy-lidded and drifting. He didn’t track when Sam stood up and swiped the condensation from his forehead with the back of one wrist.

“Come on,” Sam said. “You pass out in here and we’ll have to step over you to take a piss.”

“There’s another bathroom downstairs,” Dean mumbled.

Sam kicked lightly at his ankle. “Get up. I’m not carrying you.”

In the end Sam had to grip his brother under the arms and haul him off of the floor like a sack of cement. Dean pawed at him in protest the whole way up, his face going ashy and slick with sweat at the sudden change in altitude. Once Dean’s feet were under him he managed a loose-limbed stumble under his own power out into the hallway, but he came up short at the sight of Lisa and had to palm the door frame for balance.

Sam squeezed past him and eyed Lisa. “He should lie down before gravity does the job for him.”

Lisa nodded but her attention was locked on the bruised holes in Dean’s neck. “Jesus,” she breathed. “Vampires, I mean, you said vampires, but--”

Dean shook his head and edged away from Sam, away from Lisa, one hand trailing along the wall as he lurched towards the stairs.

“Sore subject,” Sam said. “Dean, where are you going?”

“Downstairs.”

“No, no, wait,” Lisa said, catching him by the sleeve. His head shot up and around and he twisted in her grip and she immediately backed off, hands out and open at her sides. “Stay up here. In the bedroom.”

“No,” Dean said, mulish.

“Dean--” Lisa looked to Sam then, as if Sam should be able to convince him. Sam could overpower him easy at this point but short of tying him to the bed it’d be pointless. And Dean was far less susceptible to manipulation than you’d think. It’d been a long time since their father had been able to make him guess how high with a look.

“What’s the hangup?” Sam asked him.

Dean shook his head. “No hangup.” But he didn’t meet their eyes as he started picking his way down the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister.

Lisa’s mouth went tight and she nodded to herself like she got it. “Your brother’s a gentleman,” she bit off, and then yanked open a hall closet, pulling out a knit afghan.

Sam left Lisa behind and did a quick circuit of the inside of the house, checking the doors and windows starting in the cellar, where a folded ping-pong table rubbed elbows with an old stationary bike and a stacked pile of worn cardboard boxes labeled “xmas” -- up to the second floor bedrooms. One of the windows in the master bedroom overlooked the backyard where the snow was just as trampled as the front, useless for tracking any new footprints. A concrete patio, empty of everything but a covered gas grill, butted up against the detached garage where patio furniture and bicycles were probably stored for the winter.

It was all very sitcom suburbia. Sam still couldn’t imagine his brother living like this for a year, couldn’t picture Dean carefully turning pieces of barbecue-sauce slathered chicken on the grill. Maybe Lisa did the grilling -- it wasn’t like Dean had a lot of experience. Sam certainly didn’t. He’d always left the beach cookouts up to Brady and Jess and their friends.

Sam had held the photograph of Dean stretched out asleep with a book in a folding lounge chair, seen the incongruous set of golf clubs in the closet back in Cicero. He’d watched from a distance as Dean sat down to a dinner table, as he mucked around doing yard work. Once he’d even followed Dean to one of Ben’s baseball games but it had been like watching his brother inhabiting a character from one of the reruns they’d watched on countless shitty TVs in countless shitty motel rooms growing up. That buttoned-down guy hadn’t even looked like Dean, not really. The body language had been all wrong, too contained; Dean playing the role of the keeps-mostly-to-himself neighbor, the one who would surprise you by tossing your ball back for you with a pitcher’s perfect aim if it strayed into his yard.

Maybe it was what Dean had always wanted, maybe it was something Sam had wanted years and years ago, but it all seemed so painfully sedate, so unchanging, so mind-numbingly boring.

Downstairs Dean was still trying to pretend he wasn’t going to pass out any minute now. He was on the couch at least, propped heavily against one arm, his boots planted on the floor as if that proved something. Lisa sat at the other end of the couch with the afghan wadded in her hands. They weren’t looking at one another and the air hung heavy with whatever they’d been saying before they heard Sam’s footsteps descending the stairs.

“Sam,” Lisa said, looking up, “there’s a first aid kit under the sink in the kitchen.”

The vamp bite, right. Their kit out in the Impala was probably better stocked but Sam didn’t argue, just retreated to the kitchen. The cabinet under the sink was full of cleaning supplies: a squat bottle of bleach, a spray bottle of electric blue window solution, a shriveled sponge sitting on top of a green can of Comet cleanser, some kind of lemon-fresh liquid for the floors. The kit he was looking for was back behind the collection of plastic bottles, not exactly convenient for an emergency. He pulled the little red vinyl bag clear of the cabinet and unzipped it on the counter to make sure it was decently stocked.

Voices drifted in from the living room as Sam poked around the packages of gauze and anti-bacterial cream and standard plastic band-aids, the kind good for splinters and scrapes and not much else.

“I’m not doing that again,” Lisa said evenly. “I’m not going to uproot Ben on the off-chance that--”

“Lisa--”

“No. We can’t live our lives like that, Dean. We moved once and I understood why, I did. I got it. But I’m not going to do this every time something happens. We’ve been over this.”

“It’d be the last time,” Dean grated. “You’d go and not tell me where. That way--”

“You’re not hearing me. We’re not going to move again. I know you’re worried, I know... but it wouldn’t be the last time. There’s always going to be something else.”

“You don’t understand.” Dean’s voice had gone low, miserable. “I brought this on you. I can’t--”

“You can,” Lisa said. “You’re going to have to, unless you and Sam are planning on tying us up and sticking us in your trunk. Maybe vampires will find us today, maybe they won’t. Maybe it’ll be a year from now and it will be some other kind of awful thing. Or maybe I’ll slip in the shower and crack my head open. Would that be your fault, too?”

“It’s not the same,” Dean said as Sam packed the kit back up, and sensing a lull in the argument, rejoined them in the living room.

“Yeah, it is.” Lisa turned at Sam’s approach, set aside the afghan and gestured for the first aid kit. “Thanks,” she said as Sam dropped it into her hands. Sam didn’t know if she had any idea what she was doing but she’d raised a kid and lived with Dean for a year so she probably at least had some experience with the ways of gauze and tape and terrible patients. It wasn’t like she was going to be performing surgery and the wounds were mostly closed up anyway.

Lisa scooted over on the couch and Dean held very still, staring straight ahead at the bank of windows that faced the front yard. The curtains had been drawn since the first time Sam had been in the room, casting everything in a sleepy dullness with just an edge of sunlight around the perimeter. Lisa turned Dean’s chin away an inch or two with one hand so she could get a better look at the wounds on his neck.

“So you’re staying, huh?” Sam said as she rummaged through the kit for a package of sterile gauze.

Dean closed his eyes, swallowed. Lisa didn’t answer right away. She tore open the paper package and pressed the gauze against Dean’s neck. “Here, hold this,” she told him, drawing up his hand to keep the gauze in place while she tore off a few lengths of tape. Dean obeyed with a sharp snatch of air like maybe the touch still hurt. “Sorry,” Lisa said into his ear. Sam was about to ask her again when her attention slid briefly in his direction.

“I’m going to my sister’s for the rest of the weekend,” she said. “Might stay through Monday.”

Dean just sat there with his eyes closed to everything, expressive as a store mannequin, while Lisa taped the gauze in place. Maybe he was ignoring them, maybe he was just done. Maybe none of the above, who knew. Since Dean had been turned in that alley Sam had lost the grip he thought he’d had on what his brother would do in any given moment. It was probably for the best; taking Dean for granted was lazy, unobservant. Might get them killed.

“Come on,” Lisa said to Dean once she’d finished. “Off with the boots.”

Sam crossed to the windows and twitched open the curtains a crack to scan the street outside. Lisa didn’t wait for Dean’s cooperation, just bent down and picked apart his laces, pulled the boots off herself. Then she zipped the first aid kit back up and stood looking down a moment at Dean before disappearing back into the kitchen. After a minute or two of silence Dean slumped against the couch cushions, blinking sluggishly.

The thought that Sam should say something arrived and left again just as quickly. Dean didn’t seem to remember he was there anyway, so Sam followed Lisa into the kitchen. Found it empty, but heard her banging around in the laundry room.

“You know, I do get it.” Lisa didn’t turn around as she pulled wet clothes out of the washer and stuffed them into the dryer. “Why he wants us to leave. I do. These things, I know they’re real. It’s just--”

Sam didn’t try to hide his smile. “You can’t live your life that way?”

“So you were listening. I thought it’d taken you too long to find that kit.” There was something wry in Lisa’s face when she threw him a glance over her shoulder. “I’ve got a twelve year old,” she said, as if that explained everything, and maybe it did. He kept underestimating her.

“I get more than he thinks I do,” she continued, her expression dropping into tired lines. “But what am I supposed to do with that?”

Sam leaned against the door to the laundry room, watching her slam the dryer door shut and start the machine tumbling. “Do with what?”

Lisa turned and crossed her arms over her chest, considering him. “No offense, Sam, but from what I’ve seen today I don’t think you’d understand.”

She was still pissed about the Xanax, then. He lifted a shoulder. “You’re probably right.”

Sam considered trailing after Lisa as she headed back upstairs to her bedroom to pack but decided another beer would be a better use of his time. While he was poking around in her fridge he came up with a bag of green grapes. He was popping one into his mouth when voices rose again from the living room.

“I can’t believe you’d risk Ben like this,” Dean grated. He’d apparently taken Lisa’s reappearance as an opportunity to rouse himself for one more kamikaze try.

Sam leaned against the doorway between the living room and kitchen, unnoticed. The back of Dean’s head bobbed above the couch like a fishing lure about to be dragged under the water. Lisa must have just bought the grapes, they were that crisp, but he probably should have washed them. Sam pulled another handful free of the bag as Lisa stopped at the foot of the stairs, a plastic grocery bag of trash in one hand.

“Ben’s not your responsibility any more,” Lisa snapped, her jaw set. Without glancing down, she nimbly tied the handles of the plastic bag together and pulled the knot tight with a jerk of her hands.

Sam could practically hear his brother’s teeth grinding from across the room. “You think I don’t know that?” he said. “I’m not saying he is. But Lisa--”

“Nothing is ever going to be enough, Dean. You want Ben to grow up like you did, is that what you think will keep him safe?” The words skittered out of her like she was trying to draw them back even as they escaped. She twisted the loose handles of the bag around her fingers, tight enough to turn the skin pink and white. “Because that worked out so well for you.”

There was a long, long silence, the air in the room thick with it. Beer with grapes was a strange combination, Sam decided, but it worked.

“No,” Dean said finally. Sam was beginning to be seriously impressed with his brother’s tolerance for benzodiazepines and booze -- his speech was slurred more than it had been twenty minutes ago, but still articulate. “That’s... that’s the last thing I want. The very last thing.”

“I know.” Lisa said. She looked away toward the curtained windows as if she was trying to see beyond them. “That’s why you have to let us go.”

Dean didn’t have a response to that, it seemed. Lisa nodded to herself and turned away, then came up short when she saw Sam standing there.

“Go ahead and help yourself, Sam,” she said curtly, gesturing at his bag of fruit.

Sam shrugged. “I already did.”

Lisa took a breath, like she was having some kind of internal argument, and then let it out.

“You’re both welcome to stay here while you, you know. Make sure. About the vampires.”

Sam hadn’t planned on asking. “Thanks,” he said.

“And anything you need, just -- it’s yours.” She hesitated then like she wanted to say something else. Her gaze went to the couch and she shook her head then disappeared up the stairs.

Dean had finally dragged his legs up onto the couch and was lying on his side, wilted against the cushions, the afghan still wadded up by his feet. Sam watched his body move with shallow even breaths, free of the twitchy restlessness he’d carried since the warehouse.

Sam had finished the grapes and tossed the bag of stems by the time Lisa returned, the sweats gone in favor of jeans and a sweater under a ski jacket, a small suitcase in one hand and her purse in the other.

“Well,” she said, and then stopped, taking in Dean’s apparent unconsciousness. “Um--”

“You’re welcome,” Sam said. She frowned, so that must have been the wrong thing to say. “Do you want me to tell him anything?”

Her frown smoothed out, so maybe this time he’d hit the bull’s eye, but she was shaking her head. “I don’t think there’s anything left to say,” she said too evenly, and he couldn’t quite read the emotion there. “I’ll be back on Monday.”

With that she swept by him and out the side door. He tossed the towel onto the counter and crossed to the living room windows, pulling the curtain aside to follow her progress out to her car. There was a soft sound behind him from the couch, a rustle of blankets. He waited until Lisa’s Honda turned the corner at the end of the block to let the curtain swing back into place.

“She’s gone,” he said, turning to face the couch. Dean was good, and sure the past 24 hours and the tranquilizer had taken their toll, but Sam knew Dean’s minute tells just like Dean knew his. Or had. Before. “You can stop faking now.”

Dean stirred but didn’t sit up. “Wasn’t faking,” he muttered, eyes still closed.

“Uh-huh.” Sam folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the window frame.

Dean’s mouth thinned out but he didn’t have anything to say to that, apparently. He blinked a couple of times in slow motion then squinted at Sam like even the muffled light was too much now. Sam tried to prod him once more but Dean had years of practice ignoring him when he wanted to and eventually he slipped into a real sleep.

Sam prowled the perimeter of the house again, searched through all the rooms, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. He was beginning to suspect there never would be. Coming here had been his idea, what he’d thought Dean’s brother would have done, the right thing. Instead it was turning out to be a colossal waste of time with consequences he was going to have to work around for weeks, if Dean’s last trip to Battle Creek was any indication.

So much for the right thing.

fic: it would be this (1/2) -- SPN

amonitrate — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:49:52 GMT

title: it would be this (1/2)
rating: R (some graphic violence)
summary: "I'm not trying to mess with you, Dean. It's what you said. Leverage. The vamps can use Lisa and Ben against you."
words: 12,000
notes: mildly AU, taking place after "Clap Your Hands" in season 6 but before Sam's soul was restored, entirely due to the fact that I've been writing this since shortly after "Live Free and Twihard" originally aired. Thanks so much to destro for support and oddmonster for an awesome beta.

Sam followed the swing of his machete, the blade flicking blood in a messy arc as head toppled from body, only to see that the last vamp left alive had his brother pinned down on the litter-strewn floor of the warehouse.

The leader of the nest was straddling Dean’s hips, bent low over his torso, one of its hands clamping Dean’s wrists to the concrete above his head. Dean’s machete lay a few feet away out of his reach and he wasn't struggling and that was never a good sign.

They’d followed hints of the escaped Alpha vamp to Sterling, Illinois and though there was no sign of the Alpha, they’d found an infestation of his children in an abandoned auto parts warehouse in the run-down industrial district. Luckily they weren’t as organized as the group in Limestone had been, though they’d put up a fight.

Last time, in that alley in Limestone, Sam had stood back and watched a vamp turn his brother as Dean hung stunned in its grip. This time he didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a fistful of the vamp's shaggy hair and swung his machete before it knew he was there.

The blade had dulled from use on the rest of the nest, so it took Sam two hacking attempts, the vamp writhing and howling in his grip, before the flesh of its neck split into raw meat. The howls turned to whistling gurgles and then went silent as Sam sawed through muscle and tendons and gristle until bone crunched and snapped and the head came away spraying blood. Sam tossed it over his shoulder and kicked the spurting body off his brother.

Underneath, Dean was drenched in red from the chest up, his shirts and jacket soaked through, hair slicked to the skull with it.

Dean scrubbed at his mouth with one sleeve before speaking. "You couldn't fucking pull it off me first?" He wasn't making a move to get off the floor. Just dragged his knees up, planted his boots and lay there, his chest fluttering unevenly, his attempts to pull in air echoing in the sudden quiet of the warehouse, strangling his words. "You and Gwen been spending time together, huh? You both think it's hilarious, seeing me dunked in vamp blood like I'm Carrie."

Sam crouched by his brother’s side and picked up one of his hands, peering at the bluish nail beds. Dean jerked away but his reflexes were slower than they should have been and he was blinking like he couldn’t quite get his eyes to focus.

"How much did he get?" Sam asked and yeah, when Dean turned his head, straining to check the perimeter for more vamps, there was a set of ragged punctures in his neck still leaking fresh blood into the gore.

"I don't--"

"The vamp, how long did he have you down?"

Dean screwed his face up and scrambled to his knees, nearly toppling over again before catching himself with one hand on the concrete and then flinching away from Sam’s attempt to steady him.

"Dean--"

"Fuck, the bite, the fucking bite," Dean ground out, his eyes wide enough that the whites flashed in the dim light. "I gotta, gotta--" He broke off and just wavered there, staring at Sam.

He hadn't reacted like this after Gordon Walker had bit him. Sam tried for reasonable. "Even if some of the vamp's blood got in the wounds--"

"If?" Dean winced as he tried to wipe the blood away from his neck with the tail of his flannel shirt, but he had to know it was too late. If he was going to get infected it had already happened. This time, though, Sam would handle it better. Be upfront with his brother.

That's what had set Dean off last time, not knowing about the cure. That had been the mistake.

"If you'd just calm down and listen for a second. It doesn't matter, we've got the vamp right here, we can just--"

Dean made it to his feet and turned away, making a beeline for the door of the warehouse.

Sam picked up his brother's machete and followed. Found him at the open trunk of the Impala, carefully blotting the skin around the wounds on his neck with a wad of gauze soaked in holy water. It was a waste of time but Sam left him to it. Grabbed the spare gas can and an empty syringe from the box tucked with the first aid kit and went back into the warehouse, into the charnel ground of the nest.

It was past midnight in a Rust Belt industrial park so abandoned most of the street lights had burnt out. The chance of interruption might be slim but those still weren’t odds Sam liked to count on. He eyed his watch then bent to fill the syringe with blood from the vamp that had fed on his brother. He hadn't had time to notice before but there were five other bodies scattered around Dean’s vamp. Sam let out an impressed whistle. Sure, his brother had eliminated most of a nest on his own after he'd been turned the last time, but then he'd been on somewhat even footing, mostly vamp himself.

The syringe capped and nestled in the pocket of his jacket, Sam considered the echoing space of the warehouse.

Two of the vamps Dean had killed tonight were immature, probably teenagers. From the bone structure the smallest looked no older than twelve, but it was hard to tell without the head. So even with the Alpha out of the picture the vamps were stepping up their recruitment plans. Roping in kids. Samuel would be interested in that little tidbit.

He checked the time again and then set the gas can down. Started dragging the corpses into a line -- a pile would burn too unevenly. This would go faster with two, but Sam was pretty sure that his brother had lost enough blood that his help would just be a hindrance, would cause too much delay.

Sam was used to taking care of this kind of thing himself now anyways.

Once he'd gathered Dean’s five kills and his own seven he drenched them with gas and set them alight. Watched for a moment to make sure the fire would be adequate, wouldn't go out too soon, and then left the burning pile of bodies behind.

Outside the warehouse there wasn't any sign of the fire yet, but that wouldn't last long.

The Impala looked packed up and he could just see Dean slumped in the driver's seat. Sam frowned. They didn't have time for an argument, any minute now smoke from the burning corpses was bound to find its way out of a broken window somewhere. He tapped on the driver's window and Dean's head lifted and after Sam waved the gas can at him Dean popped the trunk. Sam stowed the empty can and carefully wrapped the full syringe in a piece of gauze and stuck it back into the first aid kit in case they needed it for the cure.

After slamming the trunk shut he crossed back to the driver’s door and pulled it open, standing over his brother.

"Slide over,” he said.

The gauze pad Dean had taped to his neck was already spotted with fresh blood. He'd scrubbed the vamp off himself the best he could but he still looked like he'd been on the wrong end of a chainsaw massacre. And the thousand-yard stare he was giving Sam wasn't helping matters.

"Dean, shove over."

Dean’s knuckles were white against the wheel. "No."

Sam considered just knocking Dean out but he hadn't had a chance to check him over for a concussion. They really didn't have time for this. A faint hint of black smoke was already leaking around the warehouse doors and Sam could just taste it bitter at the back of his tongue.

"Have you seen yourself in the mirror?” he snapped at his brother. “You're doing a good impression of Slasher Victim Number Three and we really don't need the attention right now. You're less noticeable on the passenger side so move over."

By now a dense cloud of smoke was gathering in the clear night air around the front of the warehouse. Sam thought about prying his brother's fingers away from the wheel but Dean finally shook his head and scooted to the other side of the car, making room for Sam to take over the driver’s seat. Sam ignored the rasp of cloth on leather from Dean's jittery shifting in the seat next to him and revved the Impala’s engine. He picked his way through the potholed, crumbled streets of Sterling’s deserted industrial wasteland, wondering why vampires were so in love with Illinois, and kept one eye on the rear view mirror until they hit the highway.

"Need a shower." Dean’s eyes were slitted against the glare of the oncoming headlights as Sam merged onto 88-East heading toward Chicago. His breathing had picked up pace, rasping and loud in the enclosed space of the car. Maybe he’d hyperventilate and pass out and make their getaway a little easier.

"It'll have to wait,” Sam said. “We need to put some distance between us and the flaming vampires first.”

It had been a bad idea, letting Dean get turned the last time. Hadn't it? The thing was, Sam wasn't entirely convinced it had been a bad idea, taking advantage of the opportunity when it had presented itself. They'd gotten the intel they needed, information they wouldn't have been able to get any other way, and it had led them to the Alpha. But Sam had made a tactical error or two. Approached it the wrong way, overestimated his ability to handle Dean, and he wasn't going to make that mistake again.

Sam shot a glance at his brother. “Are you... how do you feel?"

Dean lifted a shoulder. He stared out the windshield at the semi hauling past them fast enough to rattle even the Impala’s heavy frame. There were blue-brown marks under Dean's eyes, his sclera shot through with red.

"I need to know if you're gonna try for my throat while we're on the interstate," Sam said.

Dean slumped over again, let his head drop against the door frame. "It's not... I dunno. Can't tell yet."

"Well, that's reassuring."

"He said something, before he... you know." Dean waved at his neck.

"The vamp? What'd he say?"

"He laughed. Said it didn't matter what we did to his nest, 'cause there'll be -- there'll always be more of them."

"We knew that, though, right?” Sam checked the rear view, looking for any sign they were being followed. “That hivemind thing they have going on must let these guys share cheesy last words or something."

"He said. He said that we might have their Alpha, but-but now they have leverage."

"He said that?” Sam tapped the wheel. “Leverage?"

"Yeah."

Sam waited to see if Dean would put the pieces together but he just sat there, rubbing at his forehead. So Sam watched the lines of the highway for a few miles. Considered the options. Tried to trace out the consequences, but it was hard. Harder to anticipate Dean than he'd thought it would be when they'd joined back up. Hard to figure out whether he should follow his own impulses or figure out what the Sam his brother expected him to be would do.

He knew he was missing things, didn't pick up on things he should. Most of the time he didn't even notice what he was missing and other times it was like when he'd lost his two front baby teeth. A hole he could poke his tongue through, the soft gum underneath, the weird numb absence. The way everyone could see the gap when he smiled.

"You should call Lisa," Sam said finally.

"Fuck you."

"Dean--"

"No, seriously, fuck you, Sam. What the fuck are you playing at?"

Dean's hand fumbled under his jacket and he pulled out a flask from the inside pocket. Sometimes his brother was too predictable for words, and yet Sam was still missing something here. But so was Dean.

"I'm not trying to mess with you, Dean. It's what you said. Leverage. The vamps can use Lisa and Ben against you."

"But we don't have the Alpha anymore," Dean protested. “We got nothing they want.”

"The other vamps might not know that. And they were connected to you. The one who bit you knew who you were. We have to assume all of them do. The Alpha--"

"Sam--"

"No, listen. They know you and you have outside connections. Christian might be married but he's got a demon in him and everyone else, well. Leverage. You're the only one who--"

"Had," Dean grated. "Had outside connections."

"That's semantics, Dean, and you know it."

"No. Just, no." He took a swig from the flask. "Even if you're right, they don't know where the house is. I made sure I wasn't followed."

Sam took a breath. Let it out. Found something like patience, because there wasn't another option here. "The Alpha knew you. You want to gamble on what else he picked up? We can't be sure that filling him full of dead man's blood stopped his Jedi mind tricks. Even if it did, he was loose a long time after we gave you the cure. We don't know--"

"Jesus. Stop. Okay? I get it." Dean dug his phone out of his pocket and then shook it, making a face. "It's dead. Fucking vamp."

Keeping an eye on the road, Sam pulled out his own phone and handed it over. Dean punched in a number from memory and turned away, hunched towards the passenger window. There was a long silence punctuated by the thrum of the wheels on the road and Dean's shallow breathing and the faint, tinny ring of Lisa's phone on the other end of the line.

"Fuck," Dean said under his breath. "Yeah. Lise, uh. It's me. I'm. I don't want to be doing this and I'm sorry, I wouldn't be calling unless it was important, but you've got to -- you and Ben, you've got to take a long weekend out of town. If you're not at home go with what you've got, just get out of there. Take the gun I left you. I'm just. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to do this to you again. Head to Bobby's if you can. Don't go back to the house until one of us calls, okay? I'll explain, I will, but please go. This is real, it's too much to get into over the phone but--"

The voicemail must have ended because Dean broke off. Pocketed Sam's phone and kind of collapsed against the seat.

"That's probably a bad idea with the amount of blood you've lost," Sam said when Dean unscrewed the cap of the flask again.

But Dean was apparently done talking to him. Sam could have plucked the flask from his hands, easy, but instead he turned back to the road.

"You said you didn't care. Before."

They were crossing the border between Illinois and Indiana and it had been an hour since Dean had uttered a word. He'd worked steadily through the flask, enough that his voice carried a faint slur that was more a vagueness than anything else and he didn't look at Sam when he spoke.

"Care about what?" Sam asked.

"Lisa and Ben."

Sam only had the flicker of headlights and streetlamps and the glow from billboards to go by, but he didn't like the lines that his brother's face had settled into. He couldn't begin to name what was there, though, and it didn’t seem to be an immanent hunger for his blood, so he let it go and kept his attention on the road. Thought about the difference between what Dean might want to hear and the truth. Thought about how little Dean would trust whatever he said anyway.

"I don't. But you do. And the vamps know that."

"Ah, so it's strategic." Dean shifted in his seat, one arm curling around his middle. "Why not just use them as bait, then?"

Sam took in his brother's pallor, the way he was hunched over in his seat, squinting against every passing bit of brightness. "Dude, you're not going to puke in your own car, are you? Because there's nowhere to pull off right now."

Dean's head came up and he scowled blurrily at Sam. "Answer the question."

"I told you. You care about them."

There was a long silence. "I saw it," Dean said finally. "When I drank the antidote last time."

Sam took a moment to strip the impatience out of his voice. "Saw what, Dean."

"You." And now Sam knew his brother was drunk for certain, because it had been months and Dean had never brought this up, not once. He'd never said how he'd figured it out and Sam had thought it better not to ask. "You were standing at the end of the alley. Just watching. When he turned me."

Sam couldn't help his fascination. "You saw that? How? Did the antidote give you some kind of vision?"

It was the wrong thing to say.

"I know it's not your fault," Dean said, then sank into himself, sank deep, like he wasn't planning on coming back up any time soon.

Sam waited until they were a good hundred miles away from the warehouse before he found a rest stop off the highway and pulled as close to the bathroom doors as he could get. It was going to be dawn soon. The risk of some good Samaritan noticing the horror-flick-extra in the Impala’s passenger seat would only increase with daylight, not to mention that Sam himself had streaks of blood up to his elbows and spatters all over his shirt. When the engine cut off Dean shifted and shot him an incurious look.

"Stay here a minute," Sam said.

He checked the men's room to make sure it was empty and then grabbed their duffels and the first aid kit from the trunk. After he got the passenger door open he had to tug on Dean's arm to get him going, but once Dean made it to his feet he moved under his own power, following Sam wordlessly to the men's room. There wasn't a lock on the door. Not much they could do about that except hope it was late enough they wouldn't be interrupted.

Dean leaned on one of the sinks, avoiding the mirror, his eyes slitted against the fluorescent glare. "I really need a shower," he said again.

Sam dropped the bags and dug out Dean's zippered shaving kit and a towel. "Strip off the bloody stuff."

It was slow going and in the end Sam had to push Dean's fumbling hands aside and do it himself. Bare of his shirts, the dried blood painting Dean's skin ended in a semi-circle where the collar of his tee-shirt had been and started again at his wrists. His hand kept drifting up to cover his eyes. Sam wet the towel at one of the faucets and rubbed it with soap from Dean's kit, then handed it over. Dean swiped at his neck, at his face, but he was sloppy about it, missing too much, so Sam ended up taking the towel back.

Dean let Sam wipe the flaking blood from his face and neck and hands, standing there like he'd removed himself from the room, left his body behind. Sam was... uncomfortable, Dean’s flesh clammy and chilled under his hands. Sam finished as best he could then turned on the warm water in the sink nearest Dean. Handed him a bottle of shampoo. Dean just held it, weighing it in his hand like it meant something, the rushing water muffling his uneven breathing.

"You got some of its blood, you know, in case?" Dean asked. He'd closed his eyes, the lids reddened where he'd been rubbing at them.

Sam pulled the shampoo bottle out of Dean's hands. Popped it open. "Yeah, it's in the trunk, and we still have the rest of the stuff for the cure if we need it. Dunk your head."

Dean obeyed, wetting down his crusted hair, eyes squeezed shut. Sam grabbed one of his hands, squirted shampoo into his palm, and watched as Dean tried to wash away the vamp's blood.

Sam studied his brother's bent back. Almost two hours had passed since Dean had been exposed and though he was definitely showing signs of light sensitivity, he hadn't mentioned anything about his hearing. Last time symptoms had developed almost immediately -- Dean had been freaking out on him before they'd even made it back to the motel room, complaining about how loud everything was, how bright, all his senses kicked up ten notches. This time he was weirdly passive, resigned in the way he’d been at the worst moments of the year before Stull. Sam could pull up the memory of how much that had terrified the old him, watching his brother give up by degrees; but now it was just another thing he had to work around.

Dean straightened out of his crouch over the sink, pinkish water running in rivulets down his neck and shoulders. A goose egg was purpling through the short hair behind his left ear where the vamp had probably slammed his head against the concrete floor. Great.

"My head is killing me. The lights..."

"Is it as bad as last time?" Sam asked, handing him a towel.

Dean ducked his head, drying off, gingerly avoiding the sodden bandage on his neck. "What? I dunno, I just -- can we get out of here?"

"Lemme see the bite."

Maybe it was the threat to Lisa and Ben, maybe it was blood loss and the booze, but Dean had gone pliant, turning when Sam tugged at his elbow. The skin of his shoulders and chest was white and prickled with gooseflesh, cold as a fish belly under Sam's hands. So, factor in shock and probably a concussion on top of the possible vamp infection. The odds here weren't adding up in their favor.

"Maybe I should call the Samuel in on this one," Sam said, peeling the bandage away from Dean's neck.

Dean crossed his arms over his bare chest, voice uneven. "You know how to make the cure now. We don't need him."

"That's not what I was talking about."

Sam tossed the used bandage into the trash and pulled some fresh gauze out of the kit. The wounds were swollen and raw but at least the bleeding had stopped. Dean flinched at his touch but didn't pull away, so Sam smeared on some antiseptic cream and taped the new bandage in place. There wasn't much else he could do at this point but get Dean back into the car.

Dean just stood there while Sam changed his own shirt, washed away the lingering traces of blood in the sink and wiped down their prints with the towel, then balled up the towel with the bloody clothes and stuffed them back into the duffel. Clean as a rest stop bathroom was gonna get him and dressed in dry clothes, whatever remnant of adrenalin that had got Dean this far had drained away. He stumbled over his feet at the threshold and Sam practically had to haul him back out to the Impala.

On the bright side, he didn't argue this time when Sam dumped him in the passenger seat.

As he slid back into the car after paying for gas just outside Elkhart, Sam caught Dean prodding at his gums, looking for fangs.

"Anything?"

Dean dropped his hand like Sam had walked in on him jacking off. Then the smell of Sam's breakfast burrito must have hit him because he went a color Sam couldn't describe and scrabbled at his door handle. Got the door open and hung half out, back bent and taut, but nothing happened and after a minute he uncurled.

"I'm guessing that's a no on food for you," Sam said. "We're about an hour out. You gonna make it?"

He didn't get an answer. Dean dragged himself back into the car and slammed the door shut, then pressed his forehead against the window.

"Dean, I need you to tell me if you're, you know. Going to eat me."

"I'm not going to--" Dean's head rolled against the glass, eyes closed. "I managed to go longer than this last time without fucking killing anyone."

Which wasn't exactly true, but maybe vamps didn't count as people in this equation.

"Alright.” Sam took a couple of bites of burrito, adding up his observations, comparing them to the last time. "I think you're in the clear, anyway."

"You don't know that," Dean muttered.

"It's been three hours, you're not sprouting fangs or super-hearing--"

"Sam--"

"The light sensitivity is probably the concussion--"

"You don't know," Dean plowed right over him. Something in his face wound tighter and tighter with every word. "You don't know, you can't be sure, it could just be taking longer 'cause I didn't get as much this time. You don't fucking know, Sam."

"Okay, I get it." Sam popped the rest of the burrito into his mouth and crumpled up the wrapper.

"You really don't."

"I think I do," Sam said. "I've been possessed a couple of times. I get it."

"Getting it and understanding aren't the same thing," Dean said to the window, and then it was like he'd switched off or tuned Sam out. Sam didn't remember him doing this before Stull but now it happened all the time. Dean, just going away in front of him, lights out even if his eyes were open.

Maybe with a soul Sam would have known the right thing to say, but somehow he doubted it.

When they turned onto Weinbach Avenue Dean was still curled up in the passenger seat with his hand shading his eyes against the sun like maybe the vamp had hit him harder than Sam had first assumed. Or maybe Dean just got migraines now. There was a lot Sam didn't know about that year they'd been apart.

Mid-morning on a Saturday in the Battle Creek suburbs wasn't exactly the most inconspicuous time of day. Sam frowned at the little Civic parked in Lisa’s drive and let the Impala drift past the house. The crust of snow in the front yard was trampled by kid-sized tracks and what might have been the half-frozen remains of some kind of snow fort held a strategic position near the front porch. Ben seemed a little old for snow forts, but then again Sam didn't exactly have the best grip on age-appropriate activities for kids.

He circumnavigated the block, inventoried all the obvious approaches to the house, and then pulled into Lisa's driveway. It took a few long moments before Dean stirred, running a hand through his flattened hair. Sam knew he hadn't been asleep but his head swiveled groggily anyway and he stared at the house like he hadn't known all along that this was their destination. Stared at it the way he'd stared at their old house in Lawrence, something like dread in the set of his jaw.

And then he noticed Lisa's car.

Dean was out of the Impala and onto the front porch before Sam could say a word. Apparently he still had a key because by the time Sam made it out of the car Dean had the front door open and was slipping inside.

Fuck. Dean didn't have a gun. As far as Sam knew he didn't have any weapons on him at all.

Dean was already yelling when Sam burst through the front door, gun drawn. He had Lisa backed up against the living room wall, his hands fisted at his sides, tendons standing out in his neck, his voice strangled like he couldn't get enough air to really scream. Sam came up short a few feet away, taking in Lisa's round eyes and set jaw, her hands planted flat on the wall behind her, then left to make a quick sweep of the house.

His brother's voice drifted after him, only slightly buffered by the walls. "I called, I called, why the fuck are you still here?" Sam couldn't hear whether Lisa had any response but from the sound of it even if she had it would have been steamrolled by Dean's ranting.

Lisa's new place was about the same size as the house in Cicero, minus a guest bedroom but with a little room that she probably used as an office. Ben's bed was neatly made, his bedroom floor mostly picked up with the exception of a scattered handful of Legos around some kind of half-completed, intricate spacecraft. The master bedroom was in more of a disarray: bedclothes still rumpled, an overflowing laundry basket at the foot of the bed. People were creatures of habit and Lisa's bathroom was set up nearly identical to the one in Cicero, down to the contents of her medicine cabinet.

Downstairs, Dean's shouting was a muffled litany of rage.

Sam spared a moment to consider the prescription bottles lined up on one of the shelves in the medicine cabinet. It had been months since Lisa had cut Dean off but two of the little orange plastic bottles still bore his name. Sam didn't recognize the name of one of the medications but the other was familiar from the pile of scrips Dean had left the hospital with after Alastair had nearly killed him. The pills rattled when Sam plucked the bottle from the shelf, half full.

The rest of the house was more of the same. There was no sign that the vamps had found the place yet and no sign of the kid, either.

Back in the living room Lisa had gone pale and Dean was edging towards panic. He was repeating himself, looked like he didn't even know what he was saying anymore. "You can't be here, you can't, why the fuck didn't you leave, I told you I told you to leave. I'm not joking around about this shit, Lisa, do you think this isn't real?"

Lisa swallowed, some of the shock leaving her face, her eyes hardening. "Dean--"

"When I call and tell you to leave I'm not, I'm not doing it for fun. I told you what would happen. I told you, why didn't you listen? Do you want to die bloody? You and Ben? Is that it? Because how could you, how could you still be here when I called and warned you, this isn't, this isn't some kind of game--"

Sam found himself waiting to see what Lisa would do. Dean hadn't exactly been forthcoming about what had gone down with Lisa and Ben while he'd been vamped last time or about what had happened when he'd finally gotten her on the phone afterwards. And Sam hadn’t seen his brother melt down this completely in years, not even during the worst of their fighting over Ruby and the demon blood. Certainly never in front of a civilian. Sam’s old self, the one who had lived through the memories he had of Dean before Stull, would have been appalled. All he could muster up now was a mild curiosity.

Dean swiveled a little at Sam's presence, including him in the next volley. "Where's Ben? We've got to, we've got to get them out of here."

"Ben's not here," Sam offered. Rather than calm his brother down it ramped him back up again. Dean made a wild, abruptly truncated gesture and turned the full force of his attention back onto Lisa.

"Jesus, Lisa, we think they know where you live, are you listening to me? It doesn't matter what I want, it doesn't matter what you want, they don't care that we're not, that I'm not--" Dean broke off, close to panting now, and when he uncurled one of his fists a tremor ran through his hand.

Lisa just stood there while Dean's ragged breathing filled the sudden silence. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and pushed off from the wall a little and Dean stumbled backwards a step in response.

"Are you done?" Lisa asked, firm and a little flat, and Sam had to admire how she managed to keep all but a hint of a quaver out of her voice.

Dean shook his head, but didn't say anything else.

"I take it you called and left me a message?"

"Yeah," Dean rasped.

"Okay," Lisa bit off. "I plugged my phone in to recharge last night and forgot about it. So I didn't hear your message."

"Oh," Dean said, his hand drifting back up to his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. Whatever was left of the rage drained away just like that, leaving him slumped and shaky, back to that disconnected version of Dean from the rest stop bathroom.

“I get that you were worried, but this, just now?” Lisa circled her hand in the air between them and then crossed her arms over her chest, her jaw tight. “This doesn’t happen again. Ever.”

Dean didn’t lift his head, avoided looking either of them in the eye, but he nodded.

"Hey Lisa, where do you keep your dishes?" Sam asked, fingering the prescription bottle in his pocket.

Lisa and Dean turned nearly identical blank gazes on him, like they'd both forgotten he was there. "The cabinet to the right of the sink," Lisa answered.

"Ben's at my sister's, up in Kalamazoo," Lisa was telling Dean when Sam returned with a glass of water. "He's spending the weekend with his cousins."

"Good," Dean said unsteadily. "That's, that's good." He took the water when Sam held it out to him, blinked when Sam pressed one of the pills into his other hand.

"For the headache," Sam said, watching closely as Dean tossed it back.

Now that Dean had stopped screaming at her a hint of concern seeped into Lisa's face as she took in what a mess he was. "What happened?".

Dean shook his head.

"Vampires," Sam said.

"Vampires," Lisa echoed, then turned to Dean. "I thought you said they were mostly extinct?"

And wasn't that interesting. Sam waited but Dean didn't volunteer anything more. Just stood there holding his water glass like he had no idea what he was supposed to do with it, no idea what to do now that he'd accepted that Lisa hadn't left, was still here, was right in front of him.

"Not so much anymore," Sam said. "They've been recruiting."

It was too soon for the pills to have kicked in but Dean's stare had drifted towards the floor, just this side of completely checked out again. Sure, Dean was the king of sudden mood swings at the best of times, but this was something else -- and Lisa wasn’t acting like the space cadet version of his brother was new to her.

"Dean," Lisa said, taking a step towards him. She didn't reach out, didn't move to touch him, but her attention had sharpened. "Dean, what's going on?"

"He didn't tell you," Sam realized aloud, the missing pieces of Dean’s estrangement from the Braedens clicking into place. "Right. Of course he didn't."

That got Dean's attention. The same expression he'd worn back in Veritas's lair flooded his face. Pure murder.

"Sam, why don't you get yourself a drink," Lisa ordered, taking them both in with narrowed eyes. "There's beer in the fridge. Take your time."

Right.

part 2/2

~~(part 2 will be live tomorrow! There's one last thing I need to fix and I ran out of time tonight)~~ It's live now!

spn 7.23

amonitrate — Sat, 19 May 2012 04:52:24 GMT

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D