I will eat your children.

Fic: Babylon, SPN, Sam/Dean

coyotesuspect — Thu, 26 Dec 2013 08:23:43 GMT

Title: Babylon
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dean kind of develops a thing for Sam's abs. And then there's a curse. Set late season 1, post Hell House. Allusions to past wincest (though no underage).
Notes: Written for oddishly for the 2013 spn_j2_xmas exchange. I hope you enjoy!
Word Count: ~5200

“You know what sucks?” says Sam.

“You?” deadpans Dean. Sam rolls his eyes.

“Really classy there Dean,” he drawls. “Original too.” He pauses, scratches at his chest and then announces firmly, “Itchy nipples.”

“Dude!” yelps Dean. “Too much information!”

“It’s your own damn fault,” huffs Sam, all scowls and raking at his chest. “Jesus Christ. That itching powder. I still itch.”

“Yeah, well,” mutters Dean, squinting at the water-shimmer mirage ahead of them. “My hand still hurts from your stupid bottle prank.”

“Fuck,” says Sam. Out of his periphery, Dean can see Sam peeling off his layers of clothing and tossing them in the back. He reaches bare skin and suddenly, Sam’s sitting shirtless in the passenger seat, scratching out constellations of tiny welts, leaving white and pink lines in the wake of his fingernails.

It’s kinda gay, and Sam’s little whines of distress are a lot annoying,

“Stop scratching,” he orders, big brother like. Sam ignores him. Typical little brother behavior. Hell, he even scratches harder, ever the bastard, leaves another flurry of marks on his abs.

And. Abs. Jesus. Sam has abs now, actual muscles. Something Dean didn’t notice till after he dosed baby brother’s clothes with itching powder and Sam ran out of the bathroom in a fucking towel skirt.

It bothers him that Sam has abs now; the kid was always either too pudgy or too skinny. And then he was gone. Well, there was the summer, before he was gone, when Sam was still skinny, but in a way that was all collarbones and hipbones, long legs and dark, devastating looks.

And Jesus, Dean’s always promised himself he wouldn’t think about it. He can’t think about that.

Dean tries to remember if Sam had muscles like this when Dean dragged him from the burning apartment, or if they’re a more recent development. If they’re from Jess and Stanford, or from hunting and him. It bothers him that it bothers him, that he cares so much. Thinking about Sam’s abs. Jesus Christ on a tortilla.

“Put a shirt on, college boy,” he says, then changes the subject. “We’ll do the laundry next time we see a town with more than 500 people.”

Sam flips him off casually. But he puts a shirt on. Typical Sam, letting his modesty win out over annoying Dean.

***

“You need a haircut,” says Dean, four days and three motel rooms later.

“I’m not twelve,” Sam bites back, irritation flashing dark in his face,

“It’s gonna get in your eyes,” Dean insists. “You’re not gonna be able to see and you’re gonna get us killed.”

Sam slams shut the book he’s reading and glares.

“I’m not really into the butch look,” he says coolly, and there’s the potential for a full blown piss-off, because what the fuck does that mean Sam? But Sam stands and grabs the car key from off the dresser. He tosses Dean a haughty scowl and stalks out the door.

A few hours later, he comes back with his hair still too fucking long, but a couple of inches shorter. Which, okay. It’s okay.

“Looking good, Sammy,” he calls.

Sam smirks like he knows what Dean’s thinking, and hell, maybe he does, who knows what kind of psychic powers the kid has now. Every day’s a new adventure.

Sam chucks a folded newspaper at Dean.

“Found us a job,” he says smugly.

Dean looks at the circled article and smiles. “Black dogs. Fun.”

It’s not, but they get the job done and they get it done alive. They even save the girl, nineteen and peach-skinned who’s looking at Dean with eyes of adoration. Normally he’d stick around and see where that went, but not now. Fuck, not now.

Sam’s glassy-eyed and bleeding all over the place. Dean doesn’t even give the girl a lift, just shoves Sam into the back of the Impala and drives, drives to the nearest hospital because the gash is at least seven inches and Dean’s hands are shaking too badly to sew stitches.

He half-carries Sam into the ER. They get him in quick and don’t ask too many questions, thank God. Dean spends the next hour cramped in a chair and staring past the freaks who come into an ER at three in the morning.

But Sam comes out eventually. And yeah, he’s sore and a little woozy from blood loss and the happy-drugs he’s one. But he’s alive. He’s alive, and Dean commits insurance fraud beaming.

Getting in the car, Dean smacks Sam upside the head and says, “Should’ve cut it shorter. Would’ve seen the sucker then.”

Sam shrugs and then winces. He winces again as he hooks his seatbelt.

Dean smiles because, yeah, he’s concerned. But mostly he’s just happy because Sam, Sam’s gonna be all right.

***

Dean checks on Sam’s stitches the next morning. He probably doesn’t need to. Sam left hunting for four years; he didn’t get a fucking lobotomy. He knows how to take care of his stitches.

But Dean soldiers past all the reasons he’s being a fucking idiot and moves forward anyway. Dean’s good at that. He lifts his brother’s shirt.

“Looking really pretty,” says Dean, once he’s satisfied Sam’s not, like, oozing pus or anything. And shit, abs again. He shouldn’t be thinking about his brother’s abs and oozing pus so close together. He shouldn’t be thinking about his brother’s fucking abs in the first place.

“Thanks for the bill of clean health,” says Sam, rolling his eyes. He swats Dean’s hand away.

When Sam moves, he moves slow and hesitant. Dean’d get him some of the pain pills, but that shit can be hard to get. They can’t go using it on pussy shit like stitches.

Dean resolves to be an extra nice brother that day.

***

Dean’s not nice enough or karma’s just a straight up fucking bitch no matter what you do, because, two days later, a ghost throws Dean through two fucking doors and he cracks a rib and dislocates his shoulder before Sam puts the damn thing down.

“Shit,” says Sam, crazy-laughing, as he drags Dean’s ass out afterwards. “You were like a – Jesus, Dean. You were like a bowling ball.”

“That a fat joke?” hisses Dean through the pain. “Help me pop my shoulder back into place.”

Sam does the crazy-laugh again.

“We’re going to the ER.”

Dean kicks him. “No. Fuck you. Pop my shoulder back in place and gimme your pills from when you got too friendly with Fido.”

It takes a little more arguing, but eventually Sam does like he’s told. He help Dean pop his shoulder back in place, and doesn’t mention it when Dean nearly faints, vision going white with pain.

He does shove his entire fucking bottle of pills at Dean, though.

***

“Fuck,” says Dean, later, when the pills start to hit and everything goes swimmy-blurry-bright. He sits up. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Sammy.”

Sam looks at him. He’s sitting cross-legged on his own bed, his nose in Dad’s journal. Dean doesn’t know what the fuck he’s looking at that thing for. They just wrapped up a case and they know John’s not dead now. It’s not like they need to scour it like fucking Kabbalists any more.

“Dean, what is it?” says Sam, eyebrows knitting in that concerned, hip with the kids high school counselor way he has. He’s wearing that fucking shirt. The purple one with the fucking dog on it that makes Dean super aware of how toned his brother is now. Dean remembers being with Sam when he bought that shirt. It was right after the fire; all of Sam’s clothes were gone. And the Goodwill in Palo Alto didn’t have many options in ‘giant.’

“Dean?” says Sam, voice pitching high with worry. He puts Dad’s journal on his bed and crosses the divide to kneel on the bed next to Dean. “What are you apologizing for?”

“Keep thinking about your fucking abs,” mutters Dean. He rests his head on Sam’s shoulder. Sam smells like the cheap laundry detergent they use, and it’s a strong enough smell to cancel out anything else.

Sam pushes Dean off of him gently.

“My abs?” he says, looking confused.

“Shit, like, I fucked up,” babbles Dean. “Right before you left, right? I fucking. Yeah.”

He sees comprehension dawn slowly on Sam’s face and waits for the horror to follow. Sam’s mouth twists in a frown.

“You’re fucking high, man,” is all Sam says. He pushes Dean back till Dean’s shoulders are touching his pillows and his head’s resting against the backboard of the bed. “Get some sleep.”

Dean tries to sit up, tries to protest. Because he knows this thing is like a fucking mine between, like the fucking mines countries leave behind after wars, that blow up kids years later. And they gotta, they gotta defuse it. But the room is spinning around him and Dean gets dragged under.

***

He wakes up with a massive headache and serious cottonmouth. Sam’s there as soon as he’s conscious, shoving a glass of water and some ibuprofen into Dean’s hand once Dean’s sitting up.

“Can I get a coffee, too?” asks Dean, sweetly. “Black, two sugars.”

“Shut up,” growls Sam, shoving his (still too fucking long) bangs off his forehead. “How much do you remember from last night?”

He’s angry. Dean can read it in all the lines of him. And Dean’s used to that, the simmering, feverish anger Sam carries with him everywhere. The man’s no different from the boy in that respect. But it’s been a couple weeks since Dean’s seen it. And now he’s fucking set if off again because he couldn’t hold his pills. He’s gonna just grit it through the pain next time.

“Why?” he says. It’s not his best dissemble.

Sam’s nostrils flare in annoyance, which has always been hilarious to Dean. But he’s not laughing now. He feels a little sick, actually. Sam squats down so he’s on eye level with Dean.

“Dean,” he says, voice deep and a little rough and fuck that shouldn’t be – Dean swallows hard, makes himself focus on Sam’s eyes instead of the long line of Sam’s throat.

“Sam.” Dean still has cottonmouth, goddammit.

“You didn’t – you didn’t bad touch me or anything, okay?” Sam’s eyes are sharp, intent, like he’s trying to drill two neat holes into the back of Dean’s skull. And shit – what if Sam develops laser eyes. “I was eighteen. I wanted it.”

“Um,” says Dean. “Okay.”

Sam stares at Dean for another long moment, and his thighs have gotta be burning, then he nods to himself and stands up sharply.

“Good,” he says. “I’m going for a run.”

He leaves Dean on the bed, feeling shell-shocked. Sam said wanted, not wants. Past tense, not present. And that’s the fucking, that’s the fucking big red button between them. Dean’s still sick. He thought four years might be enough to get over it, but apparently not.

And don’t get Dean wrong; he’s delighted, Mary Poppins and rainbows delighted, to have Sam back, even at the cost that he came – dead girlfriend, absentee father, crazy psychic visions and possible laser eyes and all. He’s not gonna fuck it up, not gonna lose Sam again.

But this thing between them, it’s poisonous.

They don’t talk about it though.

***

Dean tries to get Sam to sleep with Sarah. Dean tries really fucking hard. If he were Sam, he would have had Sarah three times and then six times again on Sunday.

It would be best for all parties involved, really. Sarah’s clearly willing, and Sam getting laid would help his mental health, and Dean getting Sam laid would, shit, he doesn’t know. It would help Dean out a lot – vicariously, of course.

But Sam’s a prude, so of course he doesn’t sleep with Sarah. He doesn’t even take Dean up on his very generous offer to maybe swing back and see her again. Which would be fucking romantic, if you ask Dean.

Instead, Sam’s just kind of grumpy. Of course.

“If I wanted your help with girls, I would ask,” says Sam shortly.

Dean rolls his eyes. “No, you wouldn’t. I’m the only fucking reason you had a date to prom.”

Sam glares at him. “And I didn’t ask for your help then either, Dean.”

“Yeah, but you needed it.”

“God,” says Sam, standing suddenly. They’re at a diner, about two hundred miles away from where they left Sarah. Dean stares at him.

“The hell are you doing?”

Sam sputters at him, spreading his hands in the way he does when he gets truly exasperated. “You just – you.”

“I’m just what?” Dean raises his eyebrows and smirks. “Dashing? Rakish? Adorable?”

“Fuck you,” says Sam with a laugh. “I’m going for a walk.”

He storms off, leaving half the diner staring at Dean. When the waitress comes to take his order, she tuts sympathetically.

“Happens to all of us, sweetie,” she says. “Hopefully he comes around.”

It takes Dean a moment to realize she thinks they’re a couple. And that. Fuck that.

***

Sam’s in the motel room when Dean gets back from the diner. And that’s good, means Dean doesn’t have to send out the search party. He throws a greasy bag of food at Sam’s chest.

“Brought you dinner, princess.”

“I’m not hungry,” says Sam sulkily. He tosses the bag onto the nightstand.

Dean narrows his eyes at him. He’s tempted to ask what the fuck Sam’s problem is, but he’s ninety-nine percent sure that’s just gonna result in Sam doing his offended ostrich impression and going, What’s my problem? as if Dean were the one acting like a moody teenage girl.

“You need to eat,” he says instead. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

This is, apparently, the hill he has chosen to die on.

Sam sneers at him and doesn’t answer, just turns and stalks to the bathroom. Because yeah, that’s a great way to solve their problems. And Sam – fucking Sam doesn’t eat any more, and it freaks Dean out, because Dean remembers all the times when they were kids when Sam wouldn’t eat anything. When he was teething and when he was two and hated everything and when he was eight and did it as a kind of moral protest for having to leave the gifted and talented program he liked so much and when he was twelve and just ate protein and spinach because he was kind of pudgy.

Dean turns and leaves, too. He goes straight to a bar.

When he gets back, three hours later, he’s buzzing and bright and feeling generous and forgiving. But Sam’s asleep – or at least doing a good job pretending at it – and Dean’s planned demonstration of magnanimity falls through. Sam doesn’t get enough sleep for it to be worth Dean waking him up.

Still, Dean feels more than a little smug when he sees the mostly eaten hamburger in the trashcan. He won that round, Sammy.

***

They’ve got another ghost next, a seriously pissed off family therapist, ha fucking ha, and its curse hits as soon as they leave the cemetery. One second, Sam's bitching about the hole he tore in his pants when he tripped over a moss-covered headstone. The next, it sounds like Sam's speaking fucking Esperanto.
"The hell did you just say?" demands Dean.

Sam's eyebrows knit in confusion, and he opens his mouth to reply. Whatever comes out definitely isn't English.

"This is a weird fucking joke," says Dean.

Sam looks hilariously affronted, eyes widening and back going stiff. He always does that when he thinks Dean isn't being serious enough. He garbles something at Dean again, hands waving expressively and angrily.

It takes a second for it to hit Dean: Sam can't understand him either. He gestures sharply at his ear, then shrugs. Sam's supposed to be smart, so maybe he can figure the universal gesture for, I've got no fucking clue what you just said.

Sam frowns and then his big chest heaves in a sigh.

Oh, he mouths, and Dean can lip read that just fine.

***

Back at the motel, Dean tries calling their dad. It goes straight to voicemail, which is unsurprising but still disappointing. He shrugs at Sam and drops the phone on the bed, trying to get the point across that Dad didn’t pick up.

Sam rolls his eyes in a way Dean interprets as, “Of course.”

He scowls at Sam. “Dad’s got better things to do than wipe our asses,” he says. “We’re adults. We can figure this out.”

Sam gestures at his ear and shrugs, then smiles. The universal sign for, I've got no fucking clue what you just said and also you’re an idiot.

Dean flips him off. Sam just sneers like he’s soooo fucking superior to Dean and stalks off to the bathroom. Dean sticks his tongue out after him and picks up his phone again. He may as well use this as an excuse to annoy the fuck out of Sam. What's that Sam? I can't understand you. You want me to turn the volume up on Busty Asian Beauties?

And he'll start by ordering a shit ton of Sam's least favorite pizza.

***

"How'd you sleep?" he asks Sam the next morning.

Sam frowns at him and when he answers, Dean still can't understand him. He sighs and flops back on his bed. So the curse hasn't worn off yet.

They eat cold pizza and drink shitty motel coffee while they pack. Sam's got a look on his face that makes Dean kinda grateful they can't understand each other right now. That pinched, bitchy look always precedes some passive ass aggressive comment about how Sam sure didn't miss this or at least this is a better breakfast than what Dad usually got for him. And it drives Dean fucking nuts sometimes, how much Sam doesn't want to be here.

They don't have a destination in mind when they finally pack up. But it doesn't really matter. Dad’s still set to radio silence. All they can do is head off in some new direction, look for a new case, wait for the curse to wear off.

It's going to be a quiet ride, and Dean shoves in a Metallica tape as soon as they get in. Sam rolls his eyes super dramatically.

"Bite me," says Dean.

Sam looks unimpressed.

Sam grabs a pad of paper from the glove department and writes something down. It looks like fucking wingdings. Dean shakes his head, but at least he can read Sam’s answering huff and pout loud and clear.

Most of the day is spent like that. Annoying each other and trying to find some way to communicate. So far, facial expressions and hand gestures seem to work the best for them. They even try to get a gas station clerk to try to translate for them, but it just meant everything the clerk repeated from Sam sounded just as garbled as if Sam said it himself.

And, fuck, it sets Dean on edge, the way that everything that comes out of Sam's mouth doesn't mean anything.

The thing with the clerk had ended with him telling them to go see a therapist. And, Jesus, if only the kid knew.

***

Sam still gets nightmares. Dean just hopes to God he doesn’t get one of his premonitions while they’re going through this whole not being able to talk to each other thing.

But he gets a bad nightmare that night, and Dean wakes up to him yelping and thrashing. He’s over in Sam’s bed in a flash and shakes his brother awake.

Sam’s eyes are wide and horrified when he opens them, the pupils blown wide with terror. He’s damp with sweat and breathing hard. Dean keeps his hands on him, two solid points of contact, tries his best to be an anchor.

“Sam,” he says. “Come on Sam. Look at me, Sammy.”

He hopes Sam can understand the sentiment of comfort, even if he can’t understand the words. Winchesters have always been bad at words anyway.

Sam rakes in a deep breath, as if he’d been swimming for a long time. He grabs onto Dean’s arms tightly, fingers digging in hard. Dean thinks there might be bruises in the morning. His eyes focus on Dean slowly.

“Vision?” says Dean, saying the word slowly.

Sam looks confused.

“Vision,” tries Dean again, more slowly this time.

Sam breathes in sharply through his nose and shakes his head.

“Jess,” he mouths, but it takes a moment for Dean to get it. Sam shook his head, but it looks like he’s saying ‘yes’… And then it clicks for him. Jess. Fuck. Jess.

He pulls Sam to him and holds him tightly. It’s not like anything they would usually do, a level of physical intimacy usually beyond them. But it seems okay then, neither of them able to understand the other, and the night a dark blanket around them.

Sam tenses and then goes slack in his arms, his whole body loosening and pouring into Dean’s.

“M’not gonna let anything happen to you,” he says into Sam’s temple. It’s a promise he’s made before. He still means it.

They stay like that for a few minutes. Dean feels Sam’s heartbeat slow and steady out against his own chest. Sam’s the one who pulls away, and Dean feels a little empty.

But Sam cups Dean’s face then and looks at him. Dean’s eyes have adjusted to the dark by now, but the expression on Sam’s face, washed in gray, is unreadable.

Sam leans in, so that their foreheads are nearly touching. His breath is hot on Dean’s face, over Dean’s mouth. Dean brings his hands up and cradles Sam’s face too, his thumbs pressing gently into Sam’s cheekbones.

They don’t kiss; they don’t do anything like that. They just sit there for a bit, looking at each other, listening to the other breathe.

***

The next day, they act like nothing happened. Which is pretty par the course, really. But as they’re packing up, Sam grabs an old obits page from the back of the Impala and pulls a pen from his pocket.

“What are you doing?” asks Dean, even though he knows it’s useless. Sam makes a face at him like he’s thinking the same thing and then shoves the obit page at Dean. He’s circled a string of letters.

CAN YOU R EA D TH IS ?

“Yeah,” says Dean. He nods exaggeratedly. “Yeah, I can.”

Sam smirks, and then, as if Dean couldn’t fucking understand that, draws an equally sanctimonious smiley face on the top margin of the paper.

Dean can’t be too mad though. He punches Sam in the shoulder, grinning.

“You clever bastard. I guess that college education was worth something after all.”

It’s an imperfect system, but, hey. It works.

***

They kill a swamp monster in north Florida next. A fucking swamp monster. But they manage to do it without speaking. It's all through fucking coded messages in the newspapers and body language. They're a pretty good team, Dean thinks proudly.

And then the Impala gets stuck in the mud.

Dean revs helplessly for a few minutes, but they're not going anywhere. Sam raises his eyebrows at him.

"We're stuck," he tells Sam, panic rising in his chest. Fuck. Dad's gonna kill him if he doesn't kill himself, which he will, if he fucks up his baby. "Fuck." He slams his hands on the steering wheel.

"Fuck."

Sam grabs at his hands and stares at him. Dean stares back, forcing himself to calm down. It's not worth panicking over. He wouldn't be panicking if it were any other car. It's just that the Impala is the one thing he has to call his. Anyone else would be panicking too if their home were sinking in the black mud of fucking Okefenokee.

Dean pulls his hands away from Sam and twirls one finger, indicating their wheels spinning helplessly in the mud. Sam nods and undoes his seatbelt.

"Are you – " Dean doesn't know why he's even asking. Even if Sam could understand him, it's pretty obvious what Sam is doing.

Sam gets out and walks around the car. A couple seconds later, the Impala shudders and lifts a tiny bit. Shit, but Sam's gotten strong. Dean revs the engine again, puts his foot down on the pedal. The wheel's spin in the air for a minute, and then there's a jolt forward - Sam putting his shoulder into it - and the Impala lurches forward, front wheels hitting more solid ground, and back wheels following shortly after.

Dean stops the car and sags in relief, the panic draining out of him.

Sam raps on the passenger window a second later, covered in mud and looking smug. Dean just rolls his eyes. He's got to keep some cool after all, but he doesn't yell at Sam for getting mud on the Impala's seat when he gets back in.

He'll yell at him later. When Sam can understand him. Which'll be any day now, Dean's sure.

It's an hour back to their motel. The swamp monster was really in the fucking sticks, and by the time they get there, the mud's mostly caked dry on Sam.

Dean snorts and looks Sam over.

“You can take the first shower,” he says generously. He still talks to Sam, even if Sam can't understand him. It makes him feel less crazy, and he thinks it's a comfort to Sam as well.

“Wow. How nice of you,” snorts Sam.

Dean freezes just as Sam does.

“Did you?” they both say at once.

Sam laughs loudly.

“Jesus,” he says. “And I thought I’d be lucky enough to never have to hear your voice again.”

Dean laughs and shoves at Sam. “Shut up. I’m the one who’s gonna have to deal with your bitch ass whining all the goddamn time.”

Sam catches Dean’s hand as he shoves at him, and smiles, bright and blinding.

“Fuck,” says Dean, grinning. He pulls his hands away and then shoves at Sam again. “Go shower. You got mud all over the fucking Impala, asshole.”

“Yeah, yeah. Your car’d still be stuck in the mud if it weren’t for me,” says Sam smugly.

He steps away from Dean, pulling his shirt off as he goes.

Dean stares at Sam’s back. He can’t help himself sometimes. Fuck. He’s such a fucking freak.

“Maybe. We made a good team back there, Sammy.”

Sam turns to respond. He catches Dean looking.

“Dean,” he says slowly. Dean looks away, flushed. And fuck if it doesn’t feel good to hear Sam say his name again.

Sam takes a half-step toward him, looking uncertain.

“You gotta help me out here, man,” he says quietly, eyes big and lost.

Dean clenches his jaw.

“Pretty sure you know how to operate a shower, dude. They’ve even got these nifty markings that let you know what’s hot and what’s cold.”

“God,” laughs Sam incredulously. “It’s like you don’t even fucking know what you’re doing.”

Dean’s eyes cut back to him.

“And what am I doing, Sam?” he asks softly. He takes a step forward, crowding Sam.

Sam turns red, and Dean sees the flush spread all the way down to his chest. Jesus Christ.

“You know what you’re doing,” says Sam accusingly. He swallows hard, and Dean watches the movement of his throat.

Dean frowns, upset. They’ve only been able to talk to each other again for two whole fucking minutes, and they’re already fighting.

“I don’t,” he says. “Honest. What am I doing?”

“You – you fucking. Like what you said when you were on those pain meds after that ghost threw you through those doors. And you’re always. You’re always fucking looking at me, Dean.”

Shame floods Dean.

“I know. Shit. I know, Sam. I’m trying. I’m trying not to, okay? I don’t wanna chase you off again. I’m trying –”

“No, you don’t understand,” cuts in Sam. He looks vulnerable and defiant. “I don’t – I don’t want you to, okay? I don’t want you to stop. I mean, I want.” Sam flexes his hands helplessly. He’s staring at Dean, tall and built and still looking like the kid Dean’s worried he’ll lose in WalMart.

“I just want,” finishes Sam, sounding small.

And fuck if this isn’t the worst thing Dean’s ever gonna do.

He touches Sam’s shoulders gently, like if he touched him too hard, he might brand him, or Sam might bolt, horse-like and startled.

“Yeah?” he says, looking up at Sam. His stomach is roiling,

“Yeah,” says Sam nervously. “I thought, I thought that’s why you never called, you know? Because of what happened.”

Dean’s stunned. “I never called because you didn’t call. I thought you didn’t want me to.”

Sam laughs in a way that means he doesn’t think this shit is funny. Dean doesn’t think it’s funny either, but he understands the impulse to laugh.

“Fuck,” says Sam, pressing his forehead against Dean’s shoulder. “We’re fucked up.”

“Nah.” Dean tugs Sam’s face up so he can look at him. “We’re not so bad.”

Sam looks at him, studying him until Dean starts to blush.

“The hell are you looking at?” he demands.

One corner of Sam’s mouth curls up in a smile.

“You’re full of shit, Dean,” he says, and he kisses him.

Dean makes a soft noise and opens his mouth, lets Sam guide the kiss at first. They never really kissed, when they did this kind of thing before. And it's a weird, at first, getting kissed by someone taller than him, but then Sam licks into his mouth gently and Dean groans and goes a little weak at the knees. And yeah, this is okay. This is awesome.

He brings his hand up, grips it in Sam's too long hair and bites down gently on Sam's lower lip, hears an answering moan that sends heat radiating down his spin to pool in his gut. Fuck, who needs words anyway?

His other hand ends up on Sam's stomach, slides over hot skin and hard muscle, and Jesus it feels as good as Dean never let himself think it might. He digs his nails in a bit, leaves behind little crescent moons that'll fade soon enough. Sam grabs his shoulders roughly in response and shoves him towards the wall.

Dean laughs into his mouth and tugs at Sam's hair. "Easy."

He flips Sam around, makes it so Sam's the one with his back to the wall, and he shoves Sam hard against it, gets his thigh in between Sam's legs.

Sam's covered in swamp mud still, though. And Dean's – Dean's hard as he's ever been in his whole entire life. But he's still got standards.

"Take a fucking shower," he says into Sam's mouth, and then steps away.

Sam snorts. He looks completely flustered, face flushed and eyes dark. Dean swallows hard and drops his eyes to Sam’s chest. Doesn’t help his resolve.

"Do I have to buy you dinner, too?"

"Nah, you'd just be paying with my fucking credit card."

"You mean Bert Aframian's credit card."

"Same difference," says Dean, and he kisses Sam again.

This probably isn’t the best idea, but he can’t help it; it feels like four years of everything he’s needed to say pouring out of his fucking chest. Everything feels familiar, and everything feels new.

HP Fic: The Age of Miracles

coyotesuspect — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 03:39:01 GMT

Title: The Age of Miracles
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: technically gen, but intended as pre-Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG
Summary: Sirius keeps suggesting possible cures for lycanthropy; Remus doesn't react well. Takes place during their second year.
Notes: This started as a small, cute idea during the summer and then when it started getting out of hand, I tossed into the void that is google docs, found it again recently, and decided to clean it up and post it. So here we are!
Word Count: ~5500

Homorphus charm?

Sirius sneaks the note under Remus's elbow and slides it up his desk. Then, he sits back. He watches as Remus pauses and puts his quill down, picks the note up. There's a bar of late afternoon light slanting in through the room’s high windows. The light catches dust motes and falls across Remus's shoulders and the back of his neck, turning the curls there golden. Sirius chews on his quill. His "notes" are a splatter of ink and a stick figure drawing of James running into the Astronomy tower on his broom.

Remus's back goes rigid. Sirius stops chewing on his quill and leans forward.

"Everything all right there?" he breathes.

Remus doesn't respond, but he picks his quill back up. Sirius waits for a response.

It doesn't come. Remus's quill bobs along at a steady rate. After a moment, Sirius realizes, disgruntled, that Remus is actually paying attention to the lecture on the Goblin Peace of 1247. He raps his knuckles against his desk once. Twice. Then he leans forward again.

"Remus," he whispers.

No response.

Sirius flicks his gaze up towards the front of the classroom. Binns is droning away, as oblivious in death as he was in life. Sirius returns his attention to Remus.

"Remuuuus," he sing-songs. Evans, seated next to Remus, half-turns in her seat and glares. Sirius casually flips her the bird and ignores the kick James aims at his calf. Remus's back goes rigid again. Sirius tugs sharply on one of his curls.

"What?" snaps Remus, with a flash of white teeth. Something lurches in Sirius's gut and he grins, manic.

"You didn't respond to my note," he sniffs.

Remus scowls and he breathes in sharply through his nose. His expression turns placid, in true Remus Lupin fashion.

"We can talk after class," says Remus, a little stiffly.

"It's a good idea," points out Sirius. Something flickers in Remus's expression and Sirius expects him to scowl again. Two scowls in just under a minute would be a record. Sirius grins a little in anticipation.

But Remus's will power is stronger than his annoyance, and his face remains mild, unperturbed.

"I'm trying to takes notes," he says, as if that weren't already obvious. He turns back around and hunches over his desk. The bar of light is falling across the back of his chair now, landing on the edge of James's shoe. Sirius feels his face goes hot, and he's not sure if he's angry or embarrassed. Remus is ignoring him. Remus never ignores him.

He reaches for Remus's collar. James grabs his wrist, infuriatingly quick.

"What?" mouths Sirius.

James just raises his eyebrows and lets go of Sirius's wrist. He goes back to scribbling whatever it is he is scribbling; it definitely isn't notes. Sirius slumps back in his seat, sulking.

A note lands on his desk. It's from Peter.

What's wrong?

Sirius glares at the note for a second and then writes in hard, angry letters Remus is being a prat. He flicks it back to Peter.

Sorry, comes Peter's response a few seconds later. Sirius scowls harder.

Sorry, he sneers to himself. Sorry.

Shut up Peter, he writes vengefully.

Peter doesn't send him any notes after that.

***

At the end of class, Remus rushes out of the classroom, head down and bag tucked against his side. Sirius nimbly sidesteps Alanna Fawcett and less nimbly sends Atticus Belby sprawling to the floor. Sirius steps over him and catches up with Remus in a few long strides. He's actually hit his growth spurt. He grabs Remus's elbow.

"Where you headed?" he asks cheerfully.

Remus huffs audibly. "To the library."

"Of course you are," says Sirius. He grabs Remus's history book out of his arms. "I'll walk with you."

"I can carry my own book, Sirius."

"I'm just being helpful!" says Sirius defensively. He tucks the book under his arm and drapes his other over Remus's shoulder, effectively closing him off from escape. "But as I was trying to say to you in class, do you think a homorphus charm would work?"

Remus's shoulders slump. "No Sirius," he says heavily. "I don't think a homorphus charm would work."

"Well why not?" demands Sirius. "Have you ever tried it?"

"Don’t you think,” hisses Remus, furiously, logically, “if something as simple as a homorphus charm worked, people would know about it?”

Sirius pauses, and Remus takes advantage of the pause to try to snatch his book away. Sirius keeps a hand on it, and they end up wrestling over it.

“Maybe no one’s ever been brave enough to try!” points out Sirius, grimacing. Remus is bloody strong for someone as underfed looking as he is.

“And you’ll be brave enough to face a werewolf?” snaps Remus.

“Yes!” says Sirius brightly. He grins, still trying to pull the book back. “Just let me know where it is you transform, and I’ll be there tomorrow.”

Remus slams his heel onto Sirius’s foot, and Sirius yelps and lets. Remus darts away and Sirius curses loudly enough for a passing prefect to send him a sharp look. He lets Remus go, the prat.

***

The demon of lycanthropy can only be cured by piercing the beast's hands with silver nails on the night of the new moon.

Sirius's stomach heaves. There are illustrations. A man's face twists into a rictus of pain as nails are shoved through his hands, blood spurting from the wounds. Next to him, a woman kneels, naked, her hands raised imploringly and similarly pierced. Blood streams down her arms and tears down her face. Sirius can't tell if she's ecstatic or in agony.

Sirius shoves the book away.

He is definitely not going to suggest that one to Remus.

He sighs and picks up a different book. He's never researched this much before, has never needed nor particularly wanted to. But this is important. This is for Remus. There are enough books in the library that one of them has to be helpful, even if he has to nick James's cloak and go into the Restricted Section to find it.

There are no nails in this new book, but a ritual instead. Silver and salt, wolfsbane and fire. The half moon. Purification and balance. Sirius chews on his thumbnail. He can get the silver easily enough, just have it sent from home. And there's nothing in the ritual that requires particularly difficult spellwork, only exact timing. Merlin knows James has that in spades.

He pulls out a piece of parchment and writes a letter to Kreacher, detailing the silver he'll need.

***

"Absolutely not," says Remus, the next day at lunch. He’s emerged from wherever he was hiding – it certainly hadn’t been the library, or Sirius would have found him.

"Why not?" demands Sirius.

Remus glares at him. "Because it's stupid and it won't work," he snaps.

Sirius swallows. "You don't know that! Merlin Remus there's no reason not to try."

"He has a point," says James, chin propped up on his hand as he reads over the ritual Sirius copied down. "There's nothing here we can't get our hands on, and it's not like it's dangerous, since it's at the half moon."

Sirius beams. "See?" he says smugly. "Remus I think you're being rather close-minded about all-"

"Stop it! shouts Remus, standing up and slamming his hands on the table. Half the table goes silent, and several heads turn in Remus's direction. Gryffindor, by now, is used to loud outbursts from their section of the table, but never from Remus.

Remus turns bright red.

"Remus," says Sirius consolingly. He pats Remus's hand. "We're only trying to help."

Remus jerks his hand away and glares. "Shut up Sirius," he hisses. "Just," he lets out a loud frustrated noise and grabs his book bag, "just shut up. I am-" It's rare to see Remus mad. In fact, Sirius doesn't know if he's ever seen him anything more than agitated. But he's angry now, and even Remus seems surprised by it. He's red and flustered, grabbing for words. "I am just! Really blo- really tired of you trying to help!" He snatches the ritual out of James's hand and shoves it into his bag. "You're not helping!" He's not looking at Sirius, but at the table, like he's embarrassed at being angry.

"Oh come on," attempts Sirius. He reaches for Remus's wrist. "Remus-"

Remus pulls away before Sirius can touch him. "Stop," he snarls, lifting his head and looking at Sirius now. Sirius jerks back. There's something dark and terrible in Remus's face, not anger, but hopelessness. Sirius lets his hand fall.

"I'll see you later," says Remus tightly, to James and Peter. Peter's eyes are huge and even James looks taken aback. Remus turns and leaves.

Sirius stares after him.

"What the hell did I do wrong?" he demands loudly.

James looks at him pityingly, and Sirius finally, fully understands what people mean when they talk about the "insufferable arrogance of James Potter." He clenches his fists.

"Shove it Potter," he sneers. He stands up. "I'm going after him."

"Oh no you're not!" says James. He and Peter both grab Sirius and drag him back down onto the bench.

"Leave him alone for a bit Sirius," implores Peter. He puts another turkey leg on Sirius's plate as if Sirius were a dog who could be tricked into staying with a treat.

Sirius frowns at the turkey leg and then picks it up and takes a bite.

"I was just trying to help," he mutters, to himself, around a mouthful of turkey.

***

Sirius likes the Owlery. It's smelly and a bit damp and full of hoots and constant, strange shuffling noises. But no one ever goes up there except to mail a letter, except for Sirius. He sits in the windowsill, his legs dangling over the edge of the tower. He is fairly certain this is forbidden. The school definitely doesn't want second years hurtling to their doom. He is even more certain he doesn’t care.

His cheeks sting. Even bundled in his scarf and warmest robe, he's cold, and his breath rises from his mouth like steam. The sky is dark with clouds, heavy with the possibility of snow. The grounds are quiet, and the sun has finished setting.

Sirius is sulking.

Remus had not been in their room when Sirius and James and Peter returned from lunch. Nor had he been there after they came back from watching James at Quidditch practice. He was still missing by the time Peter and James went to dinner. Sirius had stayed behind, waiting in the common room, anxious and annoyed, though he had no intention of apologizing. And then it was almost dark, and there was no way Remus would be coming back. Not tonight.

Fine, thinks Sirius savagely, kicking his heel against the tower. Fine. Remus can bloody be alone.

Somewhere, deep in the Forbidden Forest, something howls. Sirius's skin prickles. It's too early, he tells himself. Remus won't have transformed yet. A tight knot forms in his stomach.

Then Sirius sees them. A tall, silvery figure escorts a small, dark one across the grounds. Sirius catches a flash of white as the smaller figure looks up, towards the tower, towards the direction where the moon will rise. Even from this distance, Sirius can tell it's Remus.

He drops down off the windowsill and crouches, so that just his head pokes up. He doesn't realistically think Remus could spot him from this distance, but he's less certain about Dumbledore, and this is too good of an opportunity to waste. Sirius and James and Peter, well, mostly Sirius, have been trying to figure out where exactly Remus transforms during the full moon. Peter brought up the dungeons, and James figured Remus went home. But Remus refused to say, and shut down the questioning even more quickly than he did Sirius's suggestions of possible cures.

Sirius peers down. Remus and Dumbledore are making steady progress across the grounds, headed, it seems, to the Whomping Willow of all places. Sure enough, they stop just outside range of the Willow's whipping branches. Dumbledore leans down and picks up a long stick. He prods the Willow with it.

The Whomping Willow freezes.

Sirius gapes.

Remus glances up at Dumbledore for a brief second and then walks towards the Willow's trunk. He ducks down, and he disappears.

Dumbledore doesn't stay much longer. He takes a step back and the Willow springs back to life, furious as ever. Sirius waits for Dumbledore to walk all the way back across the grounds and out of sight. Then, he races out of the Owlery and down the stairs of the tower, through the corridors and the Great Hall, no thought of Filch or prefects or Mrs. Norris in his mind.

Sirius is breathless by the time he reaches the Willow. He's played the same game as every other boy in his year- try to get as close to the Willow as you can. And of course he, like everyone else, wanted to know why the Willow had been planted the summer before their first year. It's obvious now. The Willow is hiding something. It's hiding Remus.

He finds the stick Dumbledore used and there, he hesitates. Remus already isn't pleased with him and this won't endear Sirius to him any more. But there's a part of him, twelve and stubborn and sure, that knows if just given the chance he could save Remus.

He prods at the trunk hopefully.

Nothing happens. Sirius frowns. It was impossible to see just where Dumbledore poked with the stick. He tries again and then a third time, at random, to no success. He remembers then, there's a trick Remus explained to him, the first night Sirius and James dragged Peter and Remus out to look for secret passageways. Look at everything like it's a grid and search quadrant by quadrant.

Sirius thought it dreadfully boring at the time, but by the end of the night, it was Remus, smiling shyly and proudly, who had found a passageway, hidden behind the statue of a witch with a hump.

Sirius feels a little guilty using Remus's own strategy against him, but the feeling is quickly erased by anticipation. He pokes a knot in the second quadrant he's drawn in his head. The Willow shivers once all over, and falls still. Something creaks in the tree and an opening, dark and low-ceilinged, is revealed. Sirius darts inside.

The doorway blocks up quickly behind him, leaving Sirius entirely in the dark. He gropes for the wall and feels wet earth beneath his hand.

"Lumos," he whispers, holding his wand out. Silvery light erupts and Sirius finds himself in an empty earthen passageway. Roots dangle from the ceiling, which reaches the standing height of an average man about two meters in. Sirius bites his lip and steps forward carefully, listening. As sure as he is that his plan will work, he doesn't want to be surprised when he happens upon his werewolf.

He hears nothing, and so, advances forward.

The tunnel is longer than he expected. He walks, he figures, for a good quarter of an hour, before he hears the first howl. The noise slices through him and bolts him to the spot. He waits for another, and it comes again after a few moments. It’s nothing like hearing a howl from the safety of the castle grounds. Those are distant and eerie and undergirded with the knowledge that he is safe. But this is different, and the animal part of Sirius shrieks in fear, blood thrumming with the knowledge that a predator is close.

Sirius shoves it down and grips his wand tighter. Gryffindor, he reminds himself, but he goes more slowly after that. The howls are paced longer and longer apart and between them he starts to be able to hear low growls, the sound of things being torn and broken. Which is odd, he thinks. There’s nothing to break inside a dirt tunnel.

Then he arrives at the door at the end of the tunnel. There are some low steps which lead up to it, and the door itself is crooked, wooden, and bolted. On the other side, must be the wolf.

Sirius walks towards it, feeling numb. He’s a foot away. He reaches out his hand. The door shakes, and the wood groans suddenly from the weight of the wolf slamming against it. Sirius pauses, his hand hanging in the air, fingertips inches away from the door.

He trembles. His mouth is dry. The door shakes again. The werewolf on the other side screams. It can smell him, Sirius realizes, human and vulnerable and inches away. It’s Remus, he tells himself. It’s just Remus, his friend who is quiet and bookish and kind.

He presses his hand against the door.

The door bulges forward, there’s the unmistakable noise of ripping wood, the wolf howls with the force of thunder.

Sirius runs. Down the passageway, he trips over a root, goes sprawling and bites his lip bloody in the process, but he gets up, winded, and keeps staggering forward until he’s practically flying. His heart beats hard in his ears. He bursts out of the passageway, into the frigid night.

And a whipping branch slams into his side. He falls, winded again. Another branch slashes at his face. He pulls himself to his knees. There are branches everywhere, grabbing at his robes, his hair, his scarf, slicing at any exposed skin, walloping his back and sides. He lunges forward and rolls and makes it just out of range.

Sirius stares at the sky for a long moment, dizzy. The clouds have cleared a bit, and the moon is yellow, just visible above the silhouette of the castle. He touches his face, and his fingers come away wet. He’s bleeding.

He hears a loud howl and the panicked thought that the wolf may have broken through the door propels him to his feet, and sends him running again, across the grounds and back the way he came, until he makes it, bleeding and bruised, to the portrait of the Fat Lady. He barks the password at her, over her disdainful sniff of, “And what happened to you?”, and collapses just on the other side, panting.

The Prewett twins stare at him.

“You have an exciting evening?” asks one of them amiably. The other is laughing into his sleeve. Sirius wonders just how late it is, that only the Prewett twins are still up in the common room. He stands up and smooths down his hair.

“I suppose,” he says coolly, straightening his robes. The blood on his cheek is starting to turn tacky.

Without another word, he stalks up to the second year boys’ room, chin held high and back straight enough to make even his mother proud.

***

Sirius waits for James and Peter outside the Hospital Wing the next day.

"Come on," he says, holding James's invisibility cloak out. "I want to show you something."

“We promised Remus we’d take notes for Potions though!” protests Peter, but James has already pulled the cloak over himself. Good man, James Potter, always up for an adventure.

“We can nick notes off Evans later,” says Sirius dismissively. He joins James under the cloak, and it’s only a second before Peter joins them as well, never one to be left out.

There’s just enough room to hide the three of them, and they manage to mostly avoid stepping on one another’s toes as they make their way to the entrance. Using the invisibility cloak during the day is trickier than at night; there are many more potential obstacles to run into, but they sneak behind a stream of third years being led outside by Professor Kettleburn, and squeeze through the doors of the Great Hall just in time.

“So where are we going?” asks James. They’re still under the cloak, but with the Care of Magical Creatures class gone in the opposite direction, they’ve no fear of being overheard.

“I found where Remus goes at the full moon,” says Sirius.

James sucks in a breath. “So that’s what you were out doing last night!” He punches Sirius’s shoulder punitively. “And you didn’t ask me along?”

Sirius elbows him in the sternum and then rubs his shoulder. Peter squeaks as he gets stepped on the scuffle and James mutters a perfunctory apology to him while Sirius snaps, “It wasn’t on purpose; I saw him and Dumbledore walking across the grounds and followed them.”

“Yeah, but followed them where?” demands James.

Sirius tries to elbow him again, and James dances away, pulling the cloak up high enough that Sirius’s legs are exposed from the knee down.

“Arse!” cries Sirius. He ducks out from the cloak altogether. “And I’m showing you, aren’t I?”

“Well show us a little faster,” demands James’s voice.

Sirius rolls his eyes but, in deference to James, dashes off. He hears James’s cursing behind him, and then James is running too, at Sirius’s heels. The two of them whoop and race across the grounds, until Sirius skids to a halt just beyond the reach of the Whomping Willow.

“The Willow?” says James skeptically.

“Watch and learn Potter,” says Sirius; he picks up a stick.

“Pete, you with us?” asks James. He watches Sirius with curious, narrowed eyes.

“Yeah,” pants Peter’s voice. His head pops up, hovering above five feet off the ground, and then the rest of his body follows suits. His cheeks are bright red. “Right behind you.”

Satisfied, James nods at Sirius and Sirius leans forward, and presses the stick against the knot. The Whomping Willow falls still, and the entry way opens.

James and Peter both gasp.

“You’re going to let flies in, with expressions like that,” says Sirius, pleased at their shock. He gets inside quickly, and James and Peter follow just before the Willow begins Whomping again.

“Merlin,” says James. “This is bonkers.”

“Wait till you see what’s at the end,” says Sirius, though he’s not sure himself. There’s just a door, and beyond the door, someplace to keep a wolf.

He and Peter walk in silence down the passageway, while James prattles on about the logistics of making a tunnel like this, what kind of spells they must have used, how they should have guessed the Whomping Willow was involved, considering how shirty Remus got when they tried to see who could touch the trunk, that they must nearly be at Hogsmeade by now, this tunnel was that long.

They get to the door.

“Reckon it’s locked?” asks James.

“One way to find out,” says Sirius with a shrug. There’s a minor stir of fear in his stomach. But now, in the day, with no howling wolf behind the door, and his friends at the back, it’s easy to ignore. He grabs the door handle and pushes; it opens inward.

They step inside a dark, musty room. There’s broken furniture strewn about, and in a corner there’s a low, sunken bed. The sheets are stained with some dark liquid, and a queer feeling fills Sirius at the sight; he thinks it must be blood. Remus’s blood.

"We shouldn't be here," quavers Peter. "Remus wouldn't want us to be here."

James and Sirius both ignore him. James takes a look around, and then goes bolting up the stairs. He’s only gone a moment before he shouts, “I knew it! I know where we are!”

Sirius ignores him as well, and it’s up to Peter, face twitching with fear to ask, “Where are we James?”

James emerges back at the foot of the stairs, face brilliant with triumph, “We’re at the Shrieking Shack! This all makes so much sense!”

Peter makes a small terrified noise, and James claps him on the back bracingly. “Think about it! Everyone our year and above says the Shack wasn’t haunted before our first year. And the shrieking’s not all the time. In fact, I bet you if anyone bothered to chart it, they’d realize it was only at the full moon! Dumbledore’s a bloody mad genius! I mean, would have been more of a genius if he’d set up more of this up in advance or had someone come in every once and awhile to make noise when it’s not the full moon, but-”

“Be quiet,” orders Sirius.

James falls quiet. “Did you hear something?” he asks, eyebrows drawing together.

“Just the sound of your endless yapping,” snarls Sirius. He glares at the deep scratches on the wall. Remus made those.

“Excuse me?” says James, drawing himself up and puffing out his chest absurdly. Peter looks nervously between the two of them.

Sirius wheels on him, “I said be quiet!” he yells. “I don’t need to hear your bloody prattling on what a bloody genius Albus Dumbledore is like this is some bloody brilliant logic puzzle for you to figure out! This is our bloody friend you’re talking about!”

James deflates a little. “Merlin Sirius,” he says, tugging at his hair. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Sirius scowls. “Well that’s how it bloody comes across.” He pauses, and scowls more deeply. “You are right about one thing though. Shockingly.” He leans down to pick up a table leg.

“And what’s that?” asks James. He peers at Sirius nervously.

“It’s poor planning to not have someone make noise any time other than the full moon.”

He slams the table leg into the wall. It makes a satisfying smash. Peter and James both wince, but James, at least, follows suit. He grabs a chair and smashes it against the floor. It crunches, and then Peter starts banging his fists against the wall. Sirius runs up the stairs, continuing to slam the table leg into the wall as he does. The upstairs is as wrecked as the downstairs, and he yells loudly. Downstairs, James and Peter start yelling too.

They keep at it for a good fifteen minutes. Sirius smashes his table leg into everything and anything he can, screaming the whole. He keeps thinking about Remus, sitting up here alone, waiting to turn into something he hates, or, worse, Remus when it’s over, lying bloody and small on the bed downstairs. It’s not fair and it’s cruel and it’s wretched and if Remus would only let Sirius help him-

“Sirius, mate,” says James gently, grabbing Sirius’s shoulder. “That’s enough.”

Sirius stops, shoulders heaving. He feels sick. Slowly, he lowers the table leg.

“Right,” he says, lowering the table leg. He doesn’t look at James or Peter. “All right.”

***
Perhaps one of the most interesting facts about lycanthropy is that the subject, once fully transformed into a werewolf, is completely uninterested in animals. In fact, the werewolf can quite comfortably co-exist alongside animals, as well as, intriguingly, sentient magical brethren such as House Elves and centaurs. It is only humans whom the werewolf attacks. Goodall, in his fourth edition of "Beasts with the Skin of Men" posits that this might be due to an evolutionary...

Sirius's attention wanders off. It’s his fourth time reading the werewolf section in Newt Scamander's Beasts of the Wizarding World. He isn't expecting anything new, but he’s hoping he’ll see something in a new way. Insanity Black, he can hear James mutter, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results...

"Shove off Potter," he mutters aloud. He circles the word "animals" thoughtfully. Something’s beginning to niggle at the edges of his brain.

"Talking to yourself again, are we?" says a familiar, cheerful voice. Sirius bolts around.

Remus is standing behind him, face wan above his dark robes, but overall looking healthy enough. Sirius slams the book shut and then shoves it off the table. It lands with a muffled crash. He winces.

Remus raises an eyebrow but elects to comment neither on Sirius's handling of the book nor inquire about its subject matter. Instead he says, looking abashed, "I'm sorry I lost my temper."

"Oh!" says Sirius. A guilty part of his brain twitches remorsefully. Sirius really isn't the one who’s owed an apology. He kicks it aside. "Well," he smiles instead, lounging back against his chair. "Well, well, well."

Remus eyes him warily, as if beginning to suspect this apologizing thing is bad business.

Sirius clasps his hands together. "Shall we forgive him, dear poppet that he is, or shall we make the dear poppet dance for his forgiveness?"

Remus's eyebrows draw together in a frown and he lifted himself to his full five foot two height.

"Who," he asks, "on Merlin's green earth are you talking to?" He frowns harder. "And what happened to your face?"

"My face?" says Sirius, feigning indignance. He can feel a blush lurking. That won't do; he’s a Black, and Blacks only blush when they want to put their opponent off guard. His back itches uncomfortably at that. Perhaps he shouldn't be thinking about how to manipulate his friends, but he shakes the thoughts off, like a wet dog.

"Yes," says Remus, "your face. You’re all bloodied up." He bites his lower lip and draws closer. Sirius can make out the familiar, silver scar on his cheek, prominent against the paleness of his skin. There don’t appear to be any new scars though, at least not on his face. Sirius stares at Remus's robes critically. Then, suddenly, abruptly, quite without warning, Remus's fingers slide up along the side of Sirius’s face and through his hair to rest lightly against the back of Sirius's skull.

"Hwargh!" protests Sirius. His chest feels suddenly tight.

"Mmm," says Remus amiably. He lets go of Sirius's head and takes a step back. "Well it all looks minor enough." He looks calm, but just beneath that Sirius can see a faint shadow of nausea. He wonders if it’s the moon, or Sirius's own injuries. "I shan't ask why you haven't been to Pomfrey. No doubt you earned those injuries in any number of exciting and illegal exploits."

"It was the Willow!" blurts out Sirius.

Remus goes very still.

Sirius curses himself silently. He hadn't meant to say anything. It was the way Remus asked without asking. Sirius can survive any amount of James bouncing on his stomach and bellowing his demands, can ceaselessly endure Peter's whining and begging and sniffling. But he absolutely cannot withstand Remus's kind and mild curiosity.

Or perhaps it’s the guilt.

"The Willow?" squeaks Remus eventually. "Not the... Whomping Willow."

Sirius shifts. "Er," he manages. He swallows hard and flaps his hands. He isn't used to being at a loss for words. "I sort of saw you and Dumbles - accidentally! I was up in the Owlery - last night, walking across the school grounds..." He trails off.

Remus stares at him.

“And you followed us?” he asks, voice strained. “You went to the Willow?”

They’re questions, but there’s a flatness to Remus’s tone which means Sirius doesn’t have to say anything; the answer’s already written in the bruises and scabs on his face. Remus is very, very pale and for a dizzying moment, Sirius thinks Remus might be about to hit him. He doesn’t flinch. He deserves it.

But Remus doesn’t hit him. Instead, he takes Sirius’s wrist and holds it gently, examining the bruises on Sirius’s forearm.

“Well,” Remus says, biting his lip. “It’s a good thing I’m not shit at healing charms. Necessity and all that. Be a pain to explain this to Pomfrey.”

Sirius gapes, and then he lunges up from his chair and hugs him.

Remus makes a startled noise like a disgruntled cat, and Sirius presses his nose into Remus’s hair for a second. He smells like boy and too-strong soap and something vaguely medicinal. There’s no hint of wolf or blood or musty earth. It’s just Remus, who is Sirius’s friend, who accepts with dry courage the fact that he must know healing charms out of necessity, who spends one night a month locked alone in a room as a monster.

Remus shifts awkwardly. “Sirius,” he says into Sirius’s armpit, with all the dignity he can muster. “I can’t heal you if you’re squashing me.” But he raises his arms and pats Sirius on the back. ‘

Sirius pulls away. His heart and mind are racing. He wants to help Remus, and he will help Remus – Remus just has to accept that – and even if he can’t cure Remus, he can make sure at least Remus isn’t alone anymore.

Remus lifts his wand to heal Sirius’s wounds, and Sirius thinks about the word animals circled in Scamander’s book.

He has an idea, and he can feel it start to bloom.

AN: Thanks for reading! Remember, feedback is good karma. :)

Harry Potter Fic: Hogwarts Kitten Nightmare

coyotesuspect — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:08:01 GMT

Title: Hogwarts Kitten Nightmare
Fandom: Harry Potter
Summary: James decides to train a kitten circus to impress Evans. Things do not go as planned. MWPP era. Remus/Sirius pre-slash.
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Warnings: Ridiculous crack.
Word Count: ~2600
Notes: Written for familiardevil as part of our series of World Cup bets. I love you bb. Thanks to cherie_morte and scorpiod1 for the encouragement and hand-holding. Title from the similarly titled song Paper Kitten Nightmare by Margot & the Nuclear So and So's

It’s Sunday afternoon, edging into Sunday evening, and nothing has exploded all weekend. Which should, Remus realizes later, have been a tip off. But he’s been too busy studying for OWLs lately to have anything on his mind other than potions and charms and Merlin help him he is going to fail everything and be sent to live in the wilds of the Forbidden Forest and his only comfort will be that Sirius will probably drop out of a school on a lark and join him and oh god how will they survive?

Still, it shouldn’t be as much a surprise as it is when he opens the door to his dormitory to find James’s four poster bed entirely covered in…kittens.

He takes a step back, closes the door, and opens it again.

James’s bed is still covered in kittens. Kittens in clown costumes. It’s not the strangest thing he has ever seen in this room, but it certainly makes the top five.

“Er,” he says, announcing himself to the room at large. “Hullo?”

A wild-haired figure leaps up from the mass of kittens. James. He’s looking rather more manic than usual, glasses hanging skewed off one ear and his hair resembling a bush that’s had an unfortunate encounter with a blind and clumsy gamekeeper.

“Moony!” says James, with rather more force and cheer than Remus thinks is sincere. “Exactly the chap I wanted to see.”

“That doesn’t bode well,” says Remus truthfully. “And what in Merlin’s pants are you doing?” He considers casually pointing to his Prefect badge, but decides against it. Even throwing his Prefect’s badge at James head wouldn’t do any good once James has set his mind on something.

“Two words,” answers James dramatically. He pauses and adjusts his glasses, then fixes Remus with a somber gaze as he enunciates carefully, “Kitten. Circus.”

Remus stares at him.

“I,” he says. He frowns. He looks back at the kittens on James’s bed. They seem to be trying to escape. Or organize. It’s hard to tell. Either way, he is probably going to be killed by kittens in his sleep tonight. He looks back at James. “What?”

“It’s brilliant!” says James, gesticulating wildly. “It will be the most impressive thing anyone’s ever seen. You’ve heard the expression ‘herding cats;’ think how magnificent it will be when I have them doing somersaults!”

Remus doesn’t need to ask who “anyone” is. There can be only person James would try so hard to impress.

“Now help a bloke out,” commands James. “Lola here’s being rather uncooperative.”

James turns around. There’s a kitten clinging to the back of his robe, a look of grim determination on its tiny face.

“Prongs,” says Remus, more calmly than he feels, “are you sure this is a good idea?”

He reaches tentatively for the kitten. It hisses at him and lets go with one paw to swipe at his fingers. He retreats.

“Of course I’m sure!” cries James. “Evans loves kittens.”

Padfoot gives a disgusted snort. It’s the first time Remus has noticed him in the room, but he sees him now, curled up on the edge of Remus’s bed, the one farthest away from James, and eyeing the kittens distrustfully. That’s also when Remus realizes someone is missing.

“Where’s Wormtail?”

James turns around, half-dancing in an attempt to get the kitten off. He looks guilty.

“Prongs,” says Remus warningly.

“He, uh, didn’t appreciate being used as a treat for good behavior.”

“James!” shouts Remus.

“I wasn’t actually going to feed him to them,” protests James sulkily. “He was just, you know, an incentive.”

Padfoot barks in disbelief. James glares at him.

“Well no one asked you,” he snaps. “Besides, I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas.”

Padfoot lifts his head imperiously. There’s a shimmer and a shift, and the dog is replaced by dark haired, equally imperious fifteen year old boy, sitting crosslegged on the bed.

“I don’t need to come up with any bright ideas,” he says. “I’m not suffering from the pangs of unrequited love.”

James can barely repress a smile at that. “Liar,” he shoots out.

Sirius’s face darkens. “I admitted that under duress. You said you wouldn’t bring it up.”

“All’s fair in love and war, etcetera, etcetera,” replies James serenely.

“What?” interrupts Remus, feeling suddenly and unaccountably annoyed. “You’re keeping secrets now, Padfoot?”

Sirius swears and looks everywhere but at Remus. “You’re a manipulative bastard, Potter.”

“A manipulative bastard who’s about to be the ringleader of a kitten circus.”

Remus glares at them both. “Fine,” he snaps. “You two have your fun. I have to go study.”

“Moony!” protests Sirius as Remus storms back out. “Don’t-” Remus slams the door before Sirius can finish whatever he’s saying, but, after he pauses on the doorstep, he does make out a muffled, “Wanker,” followed by a sharp yelp of pain that could only be one of the kittens biting James.

***

Remus spends the next two hours bent over his Charms textbook in the library. It’s quiet and pleasant and the Hufflepuff couple he finds making out in his usual study place are considerable more impressed by his Prefect’s badge than James or Sirius will ever be.

He’s filled about a foot of parchment with notes and is just beginning to get hungry when his solitude is interrupted.
“I’m going to kill him,” announces Sirius dramatically. He drops into the chair next to Remus, one hand thrown across his forehead. “It’ll be a great service to mankind really. God help the world if James Potter ever spawns.”

“You didn’t have to help him. Just let out whatever this big secret is of yours and he’ll have no power over you.” Remus steadily ignores looking at Sirius, concentrating entirely on the text before him. Memory charms.

“Let loose the secret of the love of my life?” says Sirius with wide, mock-scandalized eyes. “And ruin my unsullied reputation as a swinging bachelor? Moony, you ask too much. I prefer to suffer in agonizing silence. It’s more poetic.”

Remus sighs, the annoyance from earlier trickling back in. “Why are you here Sirius?” he asks. “I’m studying.”

Sirius presses his forehead against Remus’s shoulder, a placating gesture. “What are you studying?” he asks. “And why? You’re going to ace everything regardless.”

“Your confidence in me is truly a comfort and an inspiration,” says Remus dryly. He taps his quill against the pages of the book and winces as a blot of ink wipes out a word. “I’m reading up on Charms.”

“Excellent!” says Sirius brightly. “This will give you a chance to practice.”

He thrusts his arm out to Remus with a sorrowful look. It’s scored with tiny red marks. “Those kittens are mean.”

“Of course they’re mean. You’re making them do somersaults; it’s unnatural.”

Sirius amps up the sad puppy look. “It’s all Prongs’s fault,” he pouts. “And he kicked me out of the room after I jinxed two of them into waltzing.”

“You’re an awful person,” says Remus, wrapping his hand around Sirius’s wrist; he can feel the rapid flutter of Sirius’s pulse beneath his fingers. “This is animal cruelty. I hope you get rabies.”

“But then who will sacrifice himself to Prong’s madness?” demands Sirius. He’s gone very still, is watching Remus intently through lidded eyes. Remus feels himself flush. It’s not like he’s going to fuck a simple healing charm up. Sirius’s scratches are very minor, something Remus has been able to heal since his first year at Hogwarts. He’s got a deft hand at healing charms, but it’s more out of necessity than any real knack.

“If I go frothing at the mouth mad, James will just enlist you as his number two and your poor prefect Moony brain will explode from all the rule breaking you’re forced to do.”

“You’re already frothing at the mouth mad,” replies Remus. “And I break nearly as many rules as you do, Padfoot. Thank you very much.”

Sirius’s smile is dark and slanted. “Yeah,” he agrees softly, still unnaturally still. “But you don’t enjoy it nearly as much as you should.”

Remus flushes even deeper. He has no idea how to reply or what Sirius could even be implying, so he doesn’t say anything. He lays the tip of his wand against the inside of Sirius’s elbow and mutters the incantation. Blue sparks shoot out, spiraling over Sirius’s elbow and down his arm. The scratches turn to pink then white then fade away entirely to the natural color of Sirius’s skin. Remus continues to hold onto Sirius’s wrist, longer than he should.

Finally, Sirius pulls away.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. Then, impatiently: “Now come on.” He stands and grabs Remus by the collar of his robe, dragging him to his feet. Remus barely has time to grab his Charms textbook and stuff it in his bag. “James is, er, presenting at dinner. I don’t want to miss it.”

***

Most of Hogwarts is already seated by the time Remus and Sirius arrive at dinner, but James is nowhere to be seen. They do find Peter, looking rather disgruntled at the end of the table. He smiles when he sees them though, and Remus is relieved that James’s shenanigans haven’t put the poor guy into too foul a mood. Merlin knows James would be waking up in drag on the Quidditch pitch if he’d tried to feed Remus to a swarm of kittens.

“How’s Prongs?” asks Peter immediately. “Is he still…” He flaps a hand in the air, which Remus assumes means something along the lines of completely out of his mind.

“Spot on Wormtail,” says Sirius with a quick, jaunty salute. He throws an arm around Remus’s shoulder, casual and familiar, and leans across the table to speak in a stage-whisper. “He should be making his grand entrance any moment now.”

A moment ticks by. Lily Evans laughs halfway the table. Remus steals a roll from Sirius. Peter looks nervous. No James appears.

Then the doors of the Great Hall open slightly, and James slips through. He scans the Gryffindor table, gaze lingering momentarily on Evans, then brightening when he spots the three of them.

“Some entrance,” remarks Remus when James finally sits down next to Peter. James winks at him.

“All in due time, Moony. Have a bit of patience.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a kitten. Remus thinks it’s the same one that had clung so stoically to James earlier, but he can’t be sure. If it is, it’s much meeker now, a folded note gripped tightly in its mouth.

“What’s the note say?” asks Peter as they watch James place the kitten gently on the table.

James shrugs; he’s not really paying attention to them. Instead, he taps his wand gently against the kitten’s back and mutters a short word. The kitten shivers all over, just once, then perks its head up and begins trotting happily in the direction of Evans.

It stops once it reaches her and drops the note directly onto her steak and kidney pie. Her friends surrounding her all immediately start cooing at the kitten, one of them even swiping it up in her hand and cuddling it to her chest. Lily just eyes it suspiciously, smart enough to know better than to trust strange animals in a place like this. But she opens the note.
She mouths the words as she reads them to herself. Look up.

Suddenly, Remus hears the flapping of wings.

Through the window of the Great Hall that the owls normally enter, there is a dark, purring cloud.

Remus’s eyes bug out. “Why would he give them wings?!”

James howls with glee and jumps to his feet, punching the air. Next to Remus, Sirius goes slack with laughter, one arm still around Remus, but the other pressed against his stomach as he doubles over.

The kittens fly in formation. They swoop three times around the Great Hall, and an audible shock goes up from the students. There’s chaos at the teacher’s table already as McGonagall wrestles with the year’s DADA professor for his wand, apparently unwilling to let him shoot down a kitten. Their purring sounds like a Muggle aircraft, and, after the third loop is completed, they come to hover over the Gryffindor table, in perfect view of Evans as she gapes up in shock.

For a brief and glorious moment, they spell out the words, “Date me, Lily Evans?”

And then all hell breaks loose.

From somewhere, and Sirius will swear on the Map later it comes from the Slytherin table, specifically Snape, a jinx comes hurtling into the kitten crowd. Miraculously, it manages to miss all of them- further proof, Sirius cries later, that Slytherins have notoriously poor aim, but it’s enough to set them howling. Then they do more than just howl.

They begin to divebomb the table.

Evans shrieks in dismay and James looks suddenly horrified at the sound. He remains frozen for a brief second. He sprints off to save her. Peter makes an aborted move to follow him, but ends up staying behind. He stares at Remus and Sirius.

“What do we do?” he asks, voice quavering. A kitten goes swooping by Remus’s head. He curses and ducks while Sirius jumps onto the bench, swinging his arm at the kitten in an attempt to knock it out of the air.

“Padfoot!” hisses Remus, tugging at Sirius’s robe. “Sit down! You can’t hurt them! They’re kittens for God’s sake.”

“They have razor sharp claws and wings. They’re not defenseless,” points out Sirius, but he sits down all the same. Peter has disappeared.

The rest of the school seems to be battling with the same moral dilemma. No one wants to shoot a kitten out of the air, but no one wants a face full of clawing, hissing animal either. Most seem to be coping with the issue by fleeing, and a great bottleneck has sprung up at the entrance.

Sirius dives under the table and pulls Remus down under with him. Distantly, Remus can make out the sound of James shouting in pain.

Sirius sighs. “I really fucking hate cats,” he mutters.

Remus nods his agreement and shifts awkwardly. It’s cramped under the table, and suddenly his proximity to Sirius is more important than the tiny, furry death currently threatening them. Sirius is laying half on top of him, one palm spread protectively over Remus’s collarbone.

It takes Remus a moment to realize what he’s doing.

“Are you shielding me with your body?” he demands, outraged.

“Uh,” says Sirius. He smiles, chagrined. “Yes?”

Remus shoves him off. Sirius yelps as his head smacks into the bottom of the table.
“Wanker,” fumes Remus. He pulls his wand out of his pocket. “This is ridiculous,” he adds tartly. “We’re Gryffindors, and we’re hiding under a table from kittens.”

“Razor sharp claws,” reminds Sirius. “And teeth. Also, they have wings.”

“Somehow, I think we’ll survive,” says Remus. He gets ready to roll out from under the table. “Let’s go then. There’s the House Elf entrance in the back we can use to get out.”

Sirius makes a face at him. “I’m only doing this because you’re prettier and more charismatic than Prongs is.”

“Most people are,” says Remus cheerfully. He throws himself out from under the table; Sirius follows.

They charge.

-End

AN: Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading. :)

SPN Fic: a light to lead you home

coyotesuspect — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:20:37 GMT

Title: a light to lead you home
Fandom: Supernatural
Summary: Two months after Dean makes his deal, he and Sam go investigate a haunted lighthouse. In Iowa. S3 casefile. Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers through early S3; incest.
Word Count: ~6,900
Notes: Incredibly late fic for yanyann at the . My eternal gratitude to familiardevil for the beta and hand holding and for cherie_morte and scorpiod1 for the support and encouragement.

There is a lighthouse in Iowa.

It stands ninety-feet tall, presides over a green sea of soybeans and corn, and, according to popular belief, is one of the most haunted structures in America.

They drive through the night to get there, fresh off an exorcism. Dean’s still adrenaline twitchy, but Sam falls asleep quickly, spent time alone with the demon before Dean could break down the door that separated him from his brother. Sam had already exorcised the thing by the time he made it through, and was checking the no longer there pulse of the host.

The sky is peach-colored ahead of them, lavender behind, when Dean finally decides to sleep. He wakes Sam up then and they switch seats. Sam is a silent and solemn figure next to him, hands steady as he navigates them into morning.

Dean dreams nothing but black, and he wakes about four hours later. The Impala is parked. Sam's seat is empty. For a disorienting moment, all Dean can see is a gray strip of asphalt running parallel to an angry blue sky.

After a second, he spots Sam striding towards the car, a white bag held in his hand, and the world rights itself. They’re in a McDonald’s parking lot.

“Breakfast,” announces Sam, opening the passenger door and handing the bag to Dean. “You good to drive again, sleeping beauty? We’re still another four hours from the lighthouse.”

“Should have driven faster then, Sammy,” says Dean, sliding over to the driver’s seat. He digs out two egg McGriddles, leaves the other two for Sam and hands the bag back.

“Some of us don’t enjoy baiting the cops,” says Sam dryly. “We have enough fun hunting ghosts for a living.”

“That’s just because you’re a seventy-year old woman,” says Dean. He takes a bite of his McGriddle and grimaces. "Just once," he says mournfully, "I'd like a home-cooked meal."

Sam's quiet for a long moment, and Dean thinks his brother has decided not to answer. It’s something he’s doing more and more these days, wrapped up in his thoughts and whatever foolhardy plans he’s got to break Dean’s deal.

Then Sam says, mock-thoughtful, "I guess we could wrap up a couple baked potatoes in aluminum foil and throw those into the engine block along with a couple of steaks. Give it an hour, and there you go. Home cooked meal."

"Very funny," says Dean, grinning in spite of himself. He pats the dashboard. "But she's a lady, not an oven. And I will haunt your ass if you treat her like one."

Sam really does go quiet after that.

“Hey,” he says, “I didn’t-”

“I should get some more sleep,” says Sam, cutting him off. He slouches down in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. Dean considers talking anyway, but he knows Sam well enough by now to know when he shouldn’t pick and when he can get away with it. He even puts Johnny Cash into the tapedeck instead of Metallica. Sam’s had plenty of practice falling asleep to both of them, but he’ll have an easier time with Ring of Fire than Enter Sandman.

Dean’s just a damn good brother that way.

Nebraska rolls out ahead of him, empty and flat and bright, sunflowers leaning against fenceposts and cows wandering lazily in the fields. The night before, Dean had the stars and his still riled fear for Sam to keep him company; now he’s got nothing but his own thoughts.

He wonders idly if he should start making a list. Things he’d like to do before he dies. Fill it with the maudlin and the mundane. Most people, faced with a time limit like his, want to do things like go sky-diving, see Paris. Dean has no need for cheap adrenaline, no desire to travel more than he has. He just wants to keep working like always, keep his brother from killing himself.

It’s a deadend line of thought, and a dark one, and Dean’s left with nothing to occupy him besides a sleeping brother. A lifetime on the road and he still hasn’t found anything more entertaining. He switches over the cassettes then, and at Robert Plant’s first wail, Sam twitches and blinks awake.

“Asshole,” Sam mutters, rubbing at his eyes.

Dean smiles victoriously. “Morning sunshine! Let’s play eye spy.”

“Four,” says Sam. “You’re four.” But he sits up straight and glances out the window before gritting out, “Something yellow.”

They skip lunch, driving straight through the noon hour and Dean watches the sun wobble from its center position and start slipping down westward. It’s mid afternoon by the time they pull into town. It’s easy enough to find the lighthouse. Even if it weren’t the tallest structure for miles, there are signs everywhere pointing the way, playing up the haunted angle and advertising the one reason someone might want to stop in this dusty corner of the state.

To Dean’s surprise though, there are at least a dozen other tourists milling around the keeper’s house turned giftshop and keeping an eye on the “tours start here” sign.

The tour guide appears soon after Sam and Dean do. She’s an ever-smiling woman with a thick, gray rope of a braid and liverspots nestled among the creases of her constantly moving hands.

"Only six at a time," she chirps to the crowd at large. She waves them apart into knots of six and Sam and Dean find themselves attached a blonde couple with a towheaded toddler and a surly teenager whose expression becomes a little less surly once she spots Sam.

They’re lucky. The tour guide- her name tag reads Cynthia- favors them with a nod and a wave of her hand. They shuffle out behind her, Sam shooting Dean a bemused look as she launches into her spiel.

“The lighthouse,” she says, as they enter the structure- Dean looks up and up and up at the shell-like spiral of stairs that await them- “was built in 1847 by one of the founders of this town, Samuel-” Dean smirks and elbows Sam in the side; Sam calmly steps on his foot, and they begin the ascent up the stairs- “Towson, who built it in honor of his dead wife, Jean. Jean and Samuel were members of the underground railroad. Jean was especially ardent about the abolitionist cause and was known as the Lady of the Lantern-” air quotes- “by the people she helped.”

“She’s the one people keep seeing as a ghost?” interrupts the blonde mother. She’s flushed slightly, panting a bit as they all round another curve of the lighthouse stairs. Dean’s thighs are even beginning to feel a slight burn, and they’re all pressed tight together. Sam’s ass is right in front of his face and Dean thanks God that he’s not claustrophobic, and aims his gaze past his brother’s hip.

“That’s right!” says Cynthia, incredibly cheerful for so morbid a subject. “As the story goes, Jean would hang lanterns off her back porch to communicate with those traveling along the railroad. One lantern meant safety, two meant danger. And one night, while Samuel wasn’t in, one of the lanterns fell and set the house on fire.” Cynthia pauses. Her voice goes low and hushed like she’s imparting some dreadful secret, “Cynthia perished that night, but, really, some say she’s never left.”

Dean rolls his eyes at the drama. The story is nothing he hasn’t heard already. He and Sam did their research. He zones out the rest of her speech, a history on the building of the lighthouse and a noting of various historical facts of interest. He’s concentrated mostly on his breathing, trying to keep it relatively steady as the flight of stairs continues to not fucking end. He must huff anyway, because Sam shoots him a smirk over his shoulder and asks, all innocence, “Getting a little breathless there? Maybe you should take a break.”

“Maybe you should take a break,” sneers Dean in response, flipping him off. But Sam’s already turned away and finally, finally, they clamber to the top.

Cynthia immediately points to a glass case near the mouth of the staircase. It’s awkwardly located, and Dean nearly bumps into Sam when he stops to avoid it.

“And that,” she says proudly, “is Jean’s journal. It miraculously survived the fire and has been of great historical importance to historians studying the workings of the underground railroad.” She emphasizes each syllable of “great historical importance” loudly and precisely.

"So when the house burned down," says Sam to Cynthia, interrupting her continuous chatter, and doing a far better job at looking sweetly curious than Dean would have managed, "Jean's body would have burned up too, right?"

"That's right," says Cynthia cheerfully in response. "Jean's body was never found, though her husband did put up a rather nice tombstone in the town cemetery. In fact, we had some 'paranormal investigators' 'round here a couple years ago who said the lack of a body might even be what's keeping her here." She gives an exaggerated shiver. "Gruesome stuff."

"Huh," says Dean. "Paranormal investigators. Wonder how you get a job like that?"

Sam elbows him less than subtly in the side and Dean responds by punching him in the shoulder. Cynthia reacts to them with a wide and toothsome smile.

"I mean," says Dean, satisfied that Sam is rubbing his shoulder. "How often is Jean seen?"

The blonde family is eyeing them suspiciously now, but Cynthia hasn't dropped her smile.

"Every few months or so," she says. "Mainly by the janitorial staff. We generally don't allow people in here after dark, and that's when sightings are most common."

"So that means the lighthouse isn't actually in use," says the father.

"Oh, Lord no," laughs Cynthia. "That would..."

Dean wanders away from the small group to go stare out over the crop fields. A placard informs him that, on a clear day, he might be able to see all the way to Illinois.

"I don't know how you'd be able to tell," he says, when Sam comes to stand behind him.

"Tell what?" asks Sam, low-voiced. Dean points at the placard.

"Tell where Illinois even is," he says. "It's all just crops."

Sam puts his hand on the small of Dean's back and Dean wonders if Cynthia and the family can see it, or if Sam's body is blocking the view.

"So we're thinking it's the journal?" asks Sam.

"Do you even have to ask?" mutters Dean dryly.

The tour’s another fifteen minutes after that, the six of them wandering through the top of the lighthouse, examining the equipment and admiring the views. It’s the same view from every angle. More crops and the endless arc of the sky.

“Hey,” says Sam, still entirely too close to Dean, has been following him like a puppy all throughout, “I can see our house from here.”

“Yeah, asshole, the car’s right there,” bites back Dean, gesturing downward at the parking lot far below, the late afternoon light reflecting white off the Impala’s black polish.

Sam’s smile is half a grimace, and he doesn’t say anything in response. But he still keeps close to Dean when they finally go back down the stair. Tight turn after tight turn and Sam’s hand has moved up to the space between his shoulder blades, like he’s ready any moment to grab onto Dean’s shirt should Dean stumble.

“So that was helpful,” says Sam, once they’re outside. “What time should we head back over?”

“Late,” says Dean, “once the janitors are gone.” He shrugs, “Midnight?”

Sam nods, and they both move to head out, when Cynthia speaks from behind them.

“Now boys,” she chides gently, “you’re not running away without me letting you take your picture, are you?”

Sam’s smile has just as many watts to it as Cynthia’s, but it’s more obviously forced.

“No thanks,” he tries, but Dean cuts him off, slinging an arm around Sam’s shoulder and keeping him tied to the spot.

“We’d love to have our picture taken,” he says. Cynthia beams at him in response and raises the camera.

“You two are the cutest couple,” she says brightly, just as the camera flashes. Dean doesn’t choke at the words, but he feels Sam flinch slightly beneath his arm.

“You’re too kind,” replies Dean demurely. He lets go of Sam but first pats him comfortingly on the back, and the camera groans and rattles as it spits out the picture.

The image is still black when Cynthia hands the photo to Dean, and he stares down at it, waiting for the picture to bloom. It comes slowly, the white of their faces and their hands, followed by the solid blocks of color of their clothes, and then the details finally settle into place, Sam’s dimples and the cut of his eyes, looking not at the camera, but at Dean.

“You all right there, Dean?” shouts Sam, and Dean looks up. Sam’s ten yards away, snuck off while Dean was waiting for the image to materialize.

“Patience is a virtue,” he remarks dryly back. It’s a good picture, shame he doesn’t have anywhere to put it. There’s no Winchester family mantle. He turns to face Cynthia. “I owe you anything for this?”

She shakes her head. “Photos are courtesy of the tour,” she says, and then her voice drops into a low and conspiratorial tone. “You know,” she says, “they say in some of those pictures, you can actually see Jean’s ghost lurking in the background.”

Instinctively, Dean looks at the photo again, but there’s nothing there except him and Sam and the base of the lighthouse behind, the late afternoon light washing everything to golden. He smiles.

“No such luck this time,” he says, sticking the photo into the back pocket of his jeans. “But thanks again.” He jogs after his brother.

“I saw a diner,” says Sam quietly, brushing his hand against Dean’s shoulder, when Dean catches up to him, “about a block away.”

Dean nods and he and Sam walk shoulder to shoulder through the broad, flat streets of the town. It’s gone evening, which means the quiet buzz of tourists stopping to see a roadside attraction has died down completely. It’s just locals and Sam and Dean now.

The diner is wide-windowed and clean-looking, advertises that the food is “Just like Mom made” in bold, white letters just above a Help-wanted sign.

Dean asks for the kid's menu "for my little brother here," and Sam, as if to prove Dean's point, sticks out his tongue in retaliation. The waitress indulges them though, and brings over the paper kid's menu along with a cup of broken crayons.

"What kind of color is burnt siena anyway?" asks Dean morosely as Sam beats him the second time at tic-tac-toe while they wait for their food.

"The color of the crayon isn't the reason you keep losing," says Sam smugly, marking his victory x.

Dean rolls his eyes and snags the menu away, starts drawing a hangman's platform over "Bridget the Badger's" head.

"No, the reason you keep winning is that you cheat," shoots back Dean, counting up the letter's in the phrase.

"Sore loser," mutters Sam. He props his head up on his hands. "A."

Sam ends up guessing 'Sam Winchester wears women's underwear' before he gets hanged, but the epic scowl he levels makes it a victory for Dean all the same.

Dean eats pot roast and mashed potatoes and green beans, and who knows, maybe someone’s mom even made it. He remembers Mary cooking, an image of her standing at the stove and singing along softly to the radio. But if he’s being honest, he’s not sure if it’s a memory or just something he imagined, something he stole, maybe, from some long ago and otherwise forgotten tv show.

Sam kicks him under the table and steals a spoonful of mashed potatoes. He smirks at Dean from around the spoon, and Dean smiles, kicks him back.

He studies Sam from across the formica table, tries to see him the way someone like the blonde teenager would. He just sees his brother, the dark circles under his eyes that mean he hasn’t been sleeping well, his hair getting too long and tangling in the back, the broken skin on his lips from not drinking enough water, and the healing bruise on his cheekbone from a poltergeist the week before.

He’s just Sam, tired and vulnerable and his.

“Take a picture. It lasts-” says Sam, fidgety under Dean’s gaze, and then he groans as Dean smirks.

He whips the photo out of his pocket and lays it flat on the table. “Still don’t believe that we’re related,” he says. “I’m much better looking than you.”

Sam flips him off with one hand, gestures for the check with the other.

The waitress points them in the direction of a motel, and even though it, like everything else in town, is within easy walking distance, they swing by the lighthouse to pick up the Impala. It’s still too early to go looking for the ghost.

The motel is clean and neat as everything else in town, and the boy who checks them in could be Cynthia’s grandson, has the same wall of teeth. Maybe there’s something about being in the middle of nowhere with nothing but crops and the boundless sky that drives people to overfriendliness. Nothing to keep and hold their interest but each other.

It’s just past sunset by the time they drop their duffels on the motel floor. The light which comes in through the crease in the curtain is reddish, and paints the wall in bright and dying hues.

“Dean,” says Sam. He steps too close to Dean, too close in the darkening room and his hand hovering over Dean’s arm.

Dean turns to face him. It brings them even closer, so that he has to tilt his head back to keep his eyes steady on Sam’s.

“Sam,” he says amiably, like a greeting, and more calmly than his intentions should allow. “We got a couple of hours to kill before our usual breaking and entering.”

Sam’s eyes widen, flicker through confusion and shock and wariness before settling into an emotion Dean’s never quite been able to read, something that’s caught between pleasure and fear.

Sam’s hands are large and gentle as they frame Dean’s face.

“You sure?” he says softly, like he hadn’t spent the entire tour hovering over him, breath on the back of Dean’s neck. His thumbs brush along Dean’s cheekbones and Dean’s spine shivers.

Dean wraps his fingers in Sam’s shirt, but doesn’t make a move to either close or lengthen the distance.

He’s not sure why he’s decided to start this up now. This thing which is new and fragile between them. He kissed Sam, or he let Sam kiss him, night that they killed Yellow Eyes. Sam holding onto Dean with the fear of losing him and Dean clinging to Sam with the relief of keeping him.

They hadn’t done much beyond kissing, Dean pushing Sam into the wall, Sam wonderfully alive beneath his hands. It wasn’t a sex thing. Dean still looks at Sam and thinks brother before anything else, not his fault that that’s a more complicated word for him than it is for most others.

He’s trying to figure out a language that’ll make it possible to explain Sam why he did what he did.

That Sam’s always been what marks Dean’s way home.

“No,” he answers finally, detangling his fingers from Sam’s shirt. Sam drops his hands and nods, chewing the bottom of his lip.

“All right,” he says. “Okay. I’m,” he stutters on the word. “I’m gonna go for a walk.”

Dean nods, feeling dizzy, and sits down on the nearest bed.

“Don’t be out too late,” he says, hearing his voice distantly, and he’s sure ‘going for a walk’ means something more like read a book Sam shouldn’t have or call a contact Sam shouldn’t know in an attempt to break Dean’s deal. “We have to-”

Sam closes the door midway through Dean’s sentence and Dean goes quiet. He’s left in the empty motel room, the light fading fast around him. It’s July, and the days are already getting shorter.

He turns on the TV, nothing better to do, and there’s not much more they can learn about the ghost. He considers calling someone, but the only one he’s certain would pick up is Bobby, and Bobby’s the last person in the world who Dean wants to tell about his relationship problems with his brother.

He ends up falling asleep to the nightly news, to news of something awful happening somewhere far away to people Dean will never be able to help.

It’s pure black outside when Sam shakes him quietly awake. The room is all monotone, gray and shadow, and Sam a slightly darker shadow looming above him.

“Get your beauty sleep?” Sam asks, teeth white and brief as he flashes a smile.

“Don’t need it,” says Dean with a yawn and a stretch. “We discussed this at dinner. I got all the pretty genes in the family, Caveman.”

“You’re just jealous of my manly virility,” deadpans Sam. He pulls at Dean, hands on his arms, getting Dean onto his feet and into Sam’s immediate personal space, like Sam has two settings these days- faraway and Siamese twin.

“You ready to go?” asks Dean, stepping neatly away from Sam and ignoring his comment, “Or are you gonna stand around and talk all night?"

“Funny, you’re funny,” sneers Sam. He shoves Dean towards the door.

“And you’re funny looking,” says Dean cheerfully. He steps out of the motel and into the mild night air, Sam once again glued to his back.

The lighthouse is visible even at this distance, even unlit in the dark, a ghostly pillar running perpendicular to the black horizon.

Dean disables the cameras and alarm while Sam picks at the locks, and it’s the work of twenty minutes to get inside.

“These goddamn stairs,” grumbles Dean.

“Getting old,” smiles Sam, and then the smile falters.

Dean shoulders past him. “Whatever,” he snaps. “Can still beat you to the top.”

Sam’s smile makes a tentative return. “That a fact?”

Dean doesn’t bother with a proper answer. He tosses off a smirk and goes running up the stairs. The ghost knows they’re here, or she doesn’t, and all the noise in the world won’t make a difference. And winded or not won’t make much of a difference in Dean’s ability to shoot a salt bullet or burn a book.

Sam’s boots are heavy and loud behind him, the sound of their running echoing and tripling in the hollow spaces of the lighthouse. He hears Sam stifle a gasping laugh and starts laughing himself. It makes him even more winded and breathless and Sam grabs at his ankle and tries to drag him back.

“Hey!” protests Dean. “Cheating!” He kicks ineffectually at Sam with his free foot and hears Sam laugh more openly this time. Dean balances precariously on the ball of his trapped foot.

“For the last time,” says Sam smugly, moving his grip to the back of Dean’s jeans and holding him in place as he moves up the steps and carefully past Dean, “I don’t cheat. You’re just awful at everything.”

Dean holds very still while Sam maneuvers around him. Then, right when Sam slides past him, reaches out and yanks at lock of his hair.

Sam yelps with pain. It’s enough of an advantage for Dean to shove past

“Too bad,” he calls back, “because I do cheat.”

He makes it to the top first, heaving with silent, breathless laughter. Sam’s just behind him, equally out of breath. He punches Dean in the shoulder and mouths a smiling, “Jerk.”

Dean mouths “Bitch,” back at him, and they stand there for a moment, catching their breaths and grinning like moondumb idiots.

The ghost is completely silent. There’s no warning to her sudden presence, no crackle of static electricity nor shift in the temperature that Dean’s used to. None of the dawning sense of dread.

She’s just there, a flickering apparition of a thin, pale woman, her eyes hollow and dark. She lifts her arm to point at them, mouth opening around a soundless word. Dean bolts at her, shotgun raised. Sam levels his own shotgun and takes a step back to aim.

He goes tumbling down the stairs.

Dean shouts, wordless and loud. He has the presence of mind to blast some rocksalt, to no effect, before swinging around in one fluid movement and rushing off after Sam.

Sam’s only about ten feet down, managed to catch himself after a short tumble. He’s crouched, grimacing, one hand on the railing, but definitely not dead or wounded.

“Fucking idiot,” mutters Dean, hauling Sam up to his feet. “Literally fell head over ass.” He skims his hands down Sam’s body, making a quick, instinctive search for injuries. Sam bares his teeth in pain and clutches his head, but he’s fine. He’s fine. Dean’s heartbeat slows down to a little more close to normal.

“I’m the idiot,” mutters Sam, leaning a little more on Dean than is probably strictly necessary. “You’re the one who ran head on at the ghost.”

“Wasn’t a ghost,” says Dean tightly.

Sam’s head jerks up. “What?”

“Rocksalt didn’t affect it, and you noticed how it didn’t feel like a ghost?”

“So what is it?”

Dean shrugs. “Let’s go find out.”

The woman is still there when they get to the top. She’s in the same position, with the same expression of nothingness as when she first appeared. Dean and Sam watch as she raises her arm slowly in the same gesture, mouth making the same soundless word. She lowers her arm. The apparition remains there for a long moment, flickering. And then disappears.

Sam glances at Dean. “A death loop?” The apparition pops back. Cycles through everything again.

“Wouldn’t it be her dying then?” says Dean. “She’s just….pointing.”

“And you’re right,” says Sam, studying her. “She doesn’t feel like a ghost”

Sam strides forward, straight through the ghost, and Dean watches light ripple across his brother, the woman’s shape distort.

“Not a ghost,” says Sam decisively, stepping to the side. The woman appears again.

“It’s a projection,” says Dean, dumbstruck. “She’s just…She’s an illusion.”

“So, where’s she coming from?” says Sam, wondering aloud. He looks at the projection and then around the room.

“The journal,” says Dean abruptly. Sam gives him a curious look. Dean shrugs. “It’s at the right angle. And it makes sense for the glass case to be there.”

Sam nods and hmms in response, and goes to bend down in front of the case. The ghost disappears, and Sam’s chest lights up with the projection.

“Well, jinkies,” Sam says dryly. He looks back at Dean. “Looks like we’ve found ourselves a clue.”

Dean groans. “Jesus Christ. What kind of amateur hour shit is this?”

Sam stands up and steps away; the projection flickers back.

“So we both know who’s behind this, right?” asks Dean flatly. He eyes the “ghost” with distaste.

“I don’t know Shaggy,” says Sam, all mock-innocence and round eyes. “Could it be old man Wilson?”

They dismantle the glass case easily, disarming the alarm beforehand. Dean picks up the journal and, sure enough, it’s hollow. A projector peering out from inside it.

“I wonder if this Jean lady ever existed in the first place,” says Sam.

Dean shrugs. He’s irritated. “Who the fuck cares?” he says, and smashes the projector.

***

Cynthia’s home isn’t too hard to find.

Dean bangs on the door and rings the doorbell in quick succession. Sam stands nearby, looking uncomfortable.

“Dean,” he hisses, “this isn’t necessary. It’s not a ghost and you already smashed the projector.”

Dean ignores him and bangs on the door again. Somewhere in the house, a light flickers on. Dean hears light footsteps, and then the door opens a quarter-way with a soft snick. Cynthia peers out warily, a wedge of light falling across the doorstep.

Dean sticks his foot inside, to keep her from closing the door on them.

“Cynthia,” he says before she has the chance to speak. He bares his teeth in a grin. “You remember us from earlier today?”

Cynthia, to her credit, doesn’t back down. She fixes an equally cheerless smile on her face and throws her shoulders back.

“Of course,” she says. “Something I can do for you boys? Did you leave something in the lighthouse?”

“No,” says Dean, “but we’re pretty sure you did.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” sniffs Cynthia, but her mouth thins out in displeasure and there’s a defensive edge to her voice that makes Dean suspect a lie.

“There’s no ghost,” says Sam softly, breaking into the conversation. Dean frowns at him, wanted to trap Cynthia in her own words, but Sam ignores him. “It was a projection. And either you or someone else were using it to scare people into thinking there’s a ghost to, I don’t know, attract tourists.”

Cynthia hesitates, trying to figure out to lie or confess.

“Was?” she says eventually, stress on the past tense.

“We smashed the projector,” says Dean.

Cynthia looks suddenly miserable, mouth turned down and shoulder sagging. “No one was getting hurt by it,” she says defensively, her voice high and trembling.

“My brother-” says Dean angrily, at the memory of Sam falling down the stairs, and Cynthia’s eyes go wide and flick between them.

“Your brother?” she says.

Dean remembers then the impression he and Sam gave, the impression he purposefully reinforced, the impression that is no longer entirely false. He doesn’t blush, has a lifetime worth of training to lock down any emotion he doesn’t want to show or have, but it takes him a moment to find his voice.

“My brother,” he repeats savagely, “nearly killed himself when your ‘ghost’-”

“Dean,” says Sam tiredly, tugging on Dean’s arms “She’s right. No one was getting hurt by this except for tourists getting bilked out of a few bucks. And it’s over. It’s done.”

“But you did almost got hurt,” snaps Dean, rounding on Sam. “You fell down those fucking stairs.” And how the fuck is Dean gonna be able to die peaceful if he can’t even trust his brother around fake ghosts and stairs?

Sam shrugs wearily. “That’s because we have a damn stupid job, Dean.”

Dean knows that, wants more than anything for his sacrifice to mean something beyond Sam going through the same shit they’ve been doing the past two years. Sam’s the only one who ever stood a chance at normal anyway, and it’s one more thing Dean doesn’t think he’ll make his brother understand.

“Dean,” repeats Sam, one hand wrapped around Dean’s bicep, the other on Dean’s back, pressed between the shoulder blades again. “Come on Dean. Let’s just head back to the motel.”

Cynthia’s been watching the two of them with wide, darting eyes, a shell of a person without her gleaming defense of a smile. She’s ancient-looking like this, the fragile kind of old with transparent skin and arthritic bone, her gray hair lank around her shoulders. Dean sees her suddenly as just that, an old women trying to drum up revenue and interest in some absurd offroad tourist attraction, the story only a threat to those who went out of their way to make it one.

He sags into Sam’s grip, and Sam realizes he’s won the battle. He nods at Cynthia.

“Sorry ma’am for the trouble,” he says politely, pulling Dean away. “We’ll just be going now.”

Cynthia stares at them all through the walk down the driveway and as they get into the car. But Dean doesn’t think she’ll call the cops, so that’s something.

“Fucking waste of a day,” he snarls, angry all the same, as soon as they get inside the Impala. It’s still relatively early, enough to catch five or six hours of sleep before pointing the Impala to their next destination.

Sam makes an annoyed noise, and Dean glances at him.

“What?” he says, disgruntled. “It was.”

“So there wasn’t a ghost,” says Sam, and there’s definitely a peeved edge to his voice. “It just means we’re out of the gas it took to get us here.”

Dean frowns. “No,” he snaps. “It means we wasted a day doing something that didn’t help anyone. We chose this hunt over that manticore in Wisconsin Sam. What if it’s decided to move on from cows and started going after kids? I’ve got-“

He’s got ten months. And he’s angry, suddenly, his general irritation with the day and his residual panic over Sam suddenly flaring up and hot. He’s gt ten more months to do something worthwhile with his life.

“You’ve got 297 days left,” says Sam, voice hard and heavy as a stone, a damning finality to it. “And you know something Dean?” The stony reserve cracks, and Sam’s voice pitches sharply and suddenly upward, the way it’s always done when he’s furious. “I don’t care that there wasn’t a ghost, and I wouldn’t have cared if there was, I-”

He cuts himself off, lips curled in a snarl, hand fisted against the window.

“What,” insists Dean, and he shouldn’t be pushing at this. Today isn’t Sam’s fault any more than it’s Dean’s, but two years of just the two of them on the road together and they’ve trained themselves into taking advantage of each other. Sam’s the only person he can take his frustration out on. “What are you trying to say Sam?”

“I’m saying,” says Sam darkly, “any day we don’t get you out of the deal, is a waste of a day. I don’t care how many people we save along the way.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a waste then,” Dean snaps back. “You’re not going to break the deal Sam. I’m not gonna let you.”

The drive back to the motel is completely silent.

Sam slams the Impala’s door when he gets out, and the whole car shakes from it.

“Hey!” yelps Dean, scrambling out of the car.

Sam turns to face him. His shoulders are tensed and high, hands fisted at his side.

“What?” he snarls, and it’s clear that the drive back was just enough time for him to build his anger to a roar. Sam’s always been like that, pointed to far inward and always getting tangled in his own emotions.

“Just,” says Dean, and the drive had the opposite effect on him. He’s just tired now, wants this day done and behind them, and for all that it was a waste, it wasn’t such a bad day on reflection. “Just be careful with her, all right?” And then because he’s never been able to stop himself when he needed to, not when it comes to Sam, “She’s going to be the only thing you’ve got left here pretty soon. I gotta know she’s in trustworthy hands.”

Sam visibly wavers, and for a moment Dean isn’t sure if his brother is going to come over and strike him or cry. Sam walks away instead, headed to the motel door.

Dean licks his lips, tastes salt and, in the back of his throat, the drying taste of fear.

He darts forward, in front of Sam, and blocks him at the door.

“Dean,” snaps Sam, and Dean holds up a hand, places it on Sam’s chest. Remarkably, Sam goes silent, but he still eyes Dean angrily.

“Hey,” Dean says, “I’m…” and there’s nothing he can say. Today isn’t something he and Sam are ever gonna agree on. He reaches up and grips the back of Sam’s head, fingers curling in his hair, and pulls Sam toward him.

“You really need to look before you leap, okay?” he says, when their foreheads are touching.

Sam can’t hide a smile then. He rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to snap something back, and clearly the day’s saved. Sam’s just regular annoyed and amused with Dean.

So Dean kisses him.

It’s different from the last time; Sam doesn’t respond immediately. Dean wonders briefly if that’s his fault, if he’s frittered away the chances given him. Then Sam moves against him, tongue licking into Dean’s mouth.

Dean pushes him against the door, and Sam’s hands are wide and greedy as they slide up Dean’s sides. It’s a bruising kiss; Sam’s all teeth, nipping at Dean’s lips. Dean shoves his thigh between Sam’s legs for support, feels that Sam is getting hard already. Sam’s hands find skin, and Dean shudders at his touch.

He breaks off the kiss then, but he doesn’t move away this time.

“We should,” he says, panting. And he’s doing this. He’s doing this. “We should go inside.”

“Okay,” agrees Sam breathlessly. He doesn’t move. “If you weren’t,” he says, all hesitance, “you know, would you, would we…”

Dean shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he admits honestly. He’s doing this because it’s Sam, and he keeps almost losing him, and Dean doesn’t know how else to show Sam that he’s the one thing Dean needs to keep.

He thinks this is just going to backfire. That it’s just going to make Sam cling to him all the more.

“That’s,” says Sam, pained expression crossing his face. “I don’t know either,” he says, blurting out the words. “You’re just. Fuck.”

“I know,” laughs Dean. They’ve started rocking against each other, forming a steady rhythm, and Dean bites his lip as Sam’s thigh presses against his cock. “But really we should-”

“Yeah,” says Sam, and there’s just enough light to see that his pupils are blooming outward.

Dean pulls the motel key out of his pocket, fingers brushing against the photograph, and then fumbles with the doorknob.

He opens the door, and Sam pulls him through it.

***

Sam wakes up before Dean does the next morning. There’s the smell of coffee but no Sam. Dean finds the coffee- cold at this point, as if Sam expected him to wake earlier- on the nightstand, but no note from Sam, which means his brother is nearby. Probably.

The clock reads 11:13, and Dean realizes then that Sam’s let him sleep in. He must have woken up before the alarm, then turned it off to slip away.

Dean gets dressed quickly and does not panic. It’s bad enough to wake up and not find Sam on a regular morning, Sam with his history of sudden departures, but even Dean wouldn’t blame him at this point.

He should be freaking out about the sex, instead he’s just worried Sam has left, either taken or disgusted or even just figuring that the best way to save Dean is to not be distracted by him. But all of Sam’s stuff is here, his duffel bag neatly packed and his cellphone on the table. That doesn’t mean Sam’s safe, necessarily, just that he hasn’t run off of his own volition.

He does what John would do, a perimeter search of the motel. He finds Sam sitting crosslegged by the vending machines, nose in a book. It reminds Dean, ridiculously, of Sam as a kid. Twelve or thirteen and he would wander off somewhere, “for a little privacy,” he’d snap, and Dean would find him a couple hours later, engrossed in some novel.

“Whatchya reading?” he asks now, nudging Sam’s leg with his foot. He’s pretty sure it’s not a novel.

Sam startles, clearly having been oblivious to Dean’s approach. But his expression of surprise quickly switches over to one of defiance. He snaps the book shut and stands, ignoring Dean’s outstretched hand of assistance.

“A book,” he says, and Dean gets a glance at the book before Sam hides it behind himself. The word Demon is part of the title, written in an ornate golden script. He frowns, but he’s not going to start the day with an argument. It’s funny, he thinks, how last night didn’t change anything, different kind of tension that’s setting them at odds with each other.

“Well come on,” he says brusquely, “we’ve already wasted half the day.”

Sam glares at him, but he doesn’t disagree.

It’s short work to get packed and on the road, and as Dean reaches into his pocket of the jeans, same pair of jeans he wore yesterday, his fingers brush against the photograph again.

He pulls it out as soon as he gets in the car and looks at it. Sam watches him narrowly.

“Here,” Dean says, handing the photograph over to Sam. It’s crinkled and slightly creased, but still good. “Something to remember me by.”

He tries to say it jokingly, but the words fall flat even as he says them, create something awkward and ugly between them. Sam takes the photo from Dean anyway, spends a few moment smoothing out the wrinkles and staring down at it as Dean drives them out into the highway.

“No,” Sam, says, five minutes later and startling Dean. Sam rolls down the window.

“No what?” demands Dean. He looks over at Sam, and Sam, face set, tears the photo into four neat squares, half and then half again.

“I’m not going to need it.”

He tosses the squares out the window, and they flutter away, into the dust and the sky of the road behind them.

-End

AN: Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.

SPN RPF Fic: A City in the Desert

coyotesuspect — Sat, 29 May 2010 12:52:24 GMT

FML FML FML I have three hours of sleep and I have to spend all day volunteering at an art festival. I am going to die. I am not even sure I liked this. I have finals. I hate myself. I hate everything. I'm pretty sure I even ripped myself off writing this. Someone kill me.

I'll just leave this here then.

Title: A City in the Desert
Fandom: Supernatural RPF
Summary: Jared's the movie star, but Jensen's the dramatic one. He's also Jared's manager, or at least he likes to pretend he is. J2 AU Jensen/Jared, background Danneel/Genevieve.
Rating: NC 17 for language and sex
Word Count: ~8200
AN: Cheerfully ripped off of the TV show Entourage, with Danneel as the admittedly inimitable Ari Gold. Thank yous to familiardevil for listening to me whine, and cherie_morte for pushing me through this.

His cell phone goes off at six-fifteen in the morning and, on three and a half hours of sleep, Jensen’s immediate thought, borne of a lifetime spent living in west Texas, is holy shit tornado sirens.

Then he flails, falls off his bed, and remembers he’s in LA.

He finds his cell phone on the nightstand next to his bed; it’s still shrieking and buzzing even on the sixth ring. Which means it’s Danneel, the same person who threatened him with castration if she ever had to listen to his outgoing voicemail message again, and the only person who would call him at this time of day.

Jensen doesn’t even look at the caller ID.

“Someday,” he says to Danneel, “a house is going to fall on you or someone is going to dump a bucket of water on you and all of munchkinland is going to celebrate.”

“Why Jenny,” coos Danneel, “does that make you Glinda? I always knew you were a fairy.”

“Witch,” corrects Jensen automatically. “Glinda was a good witch.”

“Either way Jenny-bean, you wear a lot of pink and sparkle. And speaking of,” Danneel’s voice drops from her normal playfully acidic into a calm as false and ominous as that of a hurricane’s eye, “why does my cover of the Star feature Jared groping you all over the courtside seats at last week’s Lakers game?”

It takes a moment for Jensen to process that, and when he does finally figure it out, he snorts.

“Jesus Christ Dani, did you really wake me up at six in the morning to yell at me at some sadsack manipulation? Just have Morgan call them and threaten to sue for libel.”

“Morgan is already here,” says Danneel. “And you should be here too, if you actually care about Jared’s career and not just sucking him dry of all of his money. I will see you in thirty.”

She hangs up. Jensen sighs and sticks his tongue out at the cell.

There’s a girl asleep on one of the couches when he stumbles through the living room five minutes later. She’s dressed which is something. Jensen shakes her awake and she comes to slowly. Jensen doesn’t remember Jared coming home with a girl last night, but he doesn’t actually remember coming home himself last night. Jared’s been hitting the nightclubs pretty hard lately, bored and maybe a little desperate from a three month dryspell of no work.

And Jensen, as always, has been following him.

“Hey,” he says to the girl. “Hey, let’s get you home”

She groans a little bit and, after a little coaxing, finally gets up and agrees to follow him to the car.

The girl lives in the Valley, half an hour out of the way and he needs a cup of coffee too, so it takes Jensen an hour and fifteen to make it to Danneel’s. He doesn’t really care; Danneel did, after all, wake him up at the crack of dawn to bawl him out for what is probably a badly photoshopped manipulation of him and Jared.

The girl’s sweet. She’s a chemistry major at CSUN, which makes Jensen feel less bad somehow. He always hates meeting the girls who came in on a bus from Ohio with vague plans of stardom. She gives him her number when she gets out of the car, still wobbling from alcohol and her five inch heels, and asks him to give it to Jared. Jensen nods and smiles.

He throws the piece of paper out the window as soon as he’s back on the freeway.

***

Aldis is his normal smiling, smooth self when Jensen trudges up to Danneel’s office, but he shoots Jensen a warning look that gives him pause.

“Anything I need to know about?” he asks, fist hovering over the door.

Aldis’s permanent smile dims just slightly. “Not really,” he says. “But she’s been here since five,” which means Aldis has too, and Jensen fully intends to petition the pope to grant the poor man sainthood someday. “I think she’s still torn up over, you know.”

Jensen nods, he does know. And a distressed Danneel means a Danneel who’s stopped sleeping or eating or doing anything one might consider necessary for basic human survival. He swears the woman could survive off spite and the fear she inspires in others.

“So all I’m saying is,” cautions Aldis, “is gird your loins.”

“I always do,” says Jensen. He knocks, and the door is yanked open immediately.

“Ackles,” hisses Danneel. “That was not thirty minutes.”

“Where’s Morgan?” he says, scanning the room and not seeing Jared’s PR anywhere. If Danneel’s going to disembowel him, he at least demands there be a witness.

“Damage control,” she says grimly. She fish-eyes him. “He’d be here if you could actually tell time.”

“He wouldn’t have to have been here at all if you weren't as hysterical as my thirteen year old cousin."

Danneel sneers at him magnificently and stalks to her desk. She picks the tabloid off her desk and shoves it at him. He looks.

“I’ve been busting my ass off, trying to get your boy a goddamn script, because who the hell wants to work with someone who’s just disappeared to Texas for half a year to star in some indie ass darling?”

Jensen zones her bitching out. Danneel’s been coming up with excuses for not getting Jared any decent scripts for three months now, and Jensen’s getting tired of it.

The photo’s not a manipulation. But it’s not whatever damning evidence Danneel thinks it is, either. It looks like a hundred photographs his mom has at home, of him and Jared from elementary school all through high school. Jared’s always been an affectionate person, and Jensen’s always been receptive to that affection.

In the photo, Jared has his arm wrapped around Jensen’s shoulder, another arm extended as he points something out. Their faces are very close together, cheeks almost touching and they’re both smiling. Jensen’s smile is wide enough that he may even be laughing.

He doesn’t remember the exact moment the picture was taken. Most of the game was like that, Jared hanging off of him like every basketball, football, or cheerleading expo they’d ever been to. It’s just how they work, and it’s not Jensen’s fault Brittany hasn’t shaved her head recently and everyone’s tired of the KStew manufactured baby drama.

“So?” he says. “Jared touches people a lot. This isn’t exactly news.”

“Are you illiterate?” demands Danneel, eyes wide. “I am asking a serious fucking question here Jenny. Can you goddamn read? I know basic technology baffles you, but-”

“Yes Dani,” he snipes. “I understand what they’re implying with the giant, bold, bright yellow Jared’s secret boyfriend? And I’m saying it’s not true, and Jared not understanding personal space is nothing new.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true or that the two of have you been eyefucking since you were six,” cries Danneel, throwing up her hands. “For fuck’s sake, you already live with the guy. People in the industry already talk, you want the rest of the world talking too?”

“Yeah,” argues Jensen, “but he also lives with-”

“No one,” says Danneel, cutting him off, “believes anyone is sleeping with Chad Michael Murray.”

Jensen can’t argue with that. He crosses his arms over his chest and prepares for his last stand.

“Even if he were,” he says, “I don’t see what the big deal is. You and Genevieve went out for months and no one cared.”

Danneel stares at him expressionlessly from across her desk. Jensen wilts.

“I’m going to enumerate all the ways that is a completely idiotic,” she says sweetly. She ticks up a finger, “One, my entire career and the careers of all my bloodsucking friends- aka you- isn’t dependent on my appeal to Middle America. I can march in all the gay pride parades I like. Two, you are now implying to me that there was something about our relationship to begin with. And three, and most importantly, you are not to mention her name in my office.”

Jensen shrinks back. “Fine!” he snaps. “I’ll talk to Jared about it.”

“Do that,” she says sharply. “And Jensen?”

There’s a shift in her tone that causes Jensen to pause on his way out the door to look back at her.

“You may need to have more than a conversation about respecting personal boundaries,” she says drily. “You’re two grown ass men. Don’t you think it’s strange you’re living together?”

He shrugs. It’s just, it’s Jared. Everything about his relationship with Jared is strange.

He tells her as much, and she stares at him for a long moment and then sighs.

“On your head be it then.”

It’s an ominous note to end on, but he wasn't lying when he said Danneel has all the dramatic flair of his eighth grader cousin.

Jensen refuses to let it bother him.

***

There are two kinds of people in Piper, Texas. Those who make it out, and those who do not. Those who don't end up out in the oil fields, working twelve hour shifts beneath the frowning blue bowl of the sky until their faces turn to charcoal.

The entire town had always known Jared would make it out. He was, from the first day Jensen met him, four feet of sunshine and dynamite. Later, much later, Jared had been six and a half feet of sunshine and dynamite, homecoming king and star wide receiver and the lead in almost every play Piper High’s Drama Club put on for three years. Jensen had followed him through this; been the best friend, a decent but unremarkable running back, the Horatio to Jared’s Hamlet.

Jared ended up at UT on a football scholarship, and Jensen had ended up there (and been accepted to Rice and Georgetown, but he never told Jared that) because he actually paid attention when it came to class.

Jared dropped out midway through their junior year, had already conquered the theater department by then, went back to Piper to pick up Chad to keep him company, and then headed straight to LA in his older brother's pick-up on, as legend had it, one and a half tanks of gas.

Jared dropping out had been the first big fight he and Jensen ever had, and the first time Jensen ever refused to follow Jared somewhere. The next two and a half years were two and a half years that didn’t happen, when Jensen first admitted to himself that he wasn’t straight, when his first really serious, maybe this is love relationship started and then self-destructed, when he graduated and got his first real world job pencil pushing for a corporation out in Houston.

Jared called him constantly, leaving him messages.

I got a cast in a commercial Jen. It’s my first break. Think the folks back home’ll care that I’m on TV shilling dental floss? I miss you. I’m gonna make it any day now. You should come out here. You’ll like the palm trees and the ocean.

Jensen listened to Jared’s meteoric rise via answering machine. He got a part in a TV show, it became a recurring part, half a season, he was part of an ensemble cast in a heist flick, he was playing opposite Mandy Moore in some sappy romcom, he missed Jensen, hadn’t he graduated by now? Was Houston really so much better than LA?

Houston wasn’t. Jensen finally broke and called Jared after he kicked out Alex, the guy who wasn’t Jared and who couldn’t be. He didn’t say Alex was a guy though. Jared knew more about Jensen than anyone on the planet, but that was one other thing Jared didn't know.

“Look Jen,” Jared said then, after Jensen had spent an hour explaining the whole wonderful, miserable past nine months, “it sounds like you need me right now as much I need you.”

So, Jensen went. He followed Jared to LA.

***

It’s still early by the time Jensen gets back to the house, before noon and he’s already spent two hours in the car. Got stuck in the morning rush hour, and it gave him time to think even if it wasn’t any good for his blood pressure.

He cracks open a few eggs into a bowl, begins beating them as he searches through the refrigerator for things to add. He’s in the mood for an omelette and figures he'll make one for Jared while he's at it, since Jared, no matter how late he went to bed the night before, is always up before noon. He finds half a bellpepper, a block of cheddar cheese, and some left over Hawaiian pizza he can cannibalize for the ham.

He’s humming quietly to himself, mostly successful at having put Danneel’s tirade out of his head, and halfway through the omelettes when Jared pads into the room. He’s sleep mussed and smiley, and Jensen ducks his head, pretends he’s concentrating too hard on cooking to notice Jared.

“Morning Jensen,” beams Jared. He wraps his arms around Jensen’s waist and rests his chin on Jensen’s shoulder. Jared’s typical morning greeting. It’s just the way Jared is. He touches people, and Jensen can’t bring himself to pull away. It’s not like the Star has a camera pointed through their kitchen curtains or anything like that.

Jared ends up being the one who breaks contact. He wanders over to sprawl out in one of the dining room chairs, still smiling sunnily.

“Hey,” he says, “did you see Christina around anywhere?”

“Christina?” says Jensen, vaguely remembering the name of this morning's girl. “I dropped her off this morning. I found her sleeping on the couch.”

Jared raises his eyebrows. “Is that why you’re dressed? You know it’s not really your job to drop off my dates…”

“Danneel wanted to see me,” says Jensen, grimacing at the memory. “I just offered Christina a ride home. She wasn’t out of the way.”

“Danneel have anything important to say?”

Jensen knows this is the part where he should say something, but as it turns out it’s pretty hard to say Hey, so, the tabloids think we’re gay so you need to stop touching me so much. It’s not really the kind of thing you tell a guy.

“Nope,” he says.

Jared nods. “All right,” he says, clearly believing Jensen. “But damn, I wish you hadn’t dropped Christina off. I didn’t even get her number.”

Thankfully, the omelettes are ready then, and it spares Jensen having to lie about that as well.

***

Jared takes him to dinner that night. It’s been a more and more frequent occurrence lately, even as Jared’s cash flow slowly dries up. That’s what he gets for making a movie for only 60,000 dollars. So Jensen turns it into a working dinner.

He goes over Jared’s options, lays out the (very few) scripts he’s been offered recently, and ignores the nagging voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Danneel.

He can tell he’s not keeping Jared’s attention very well. He keeps frowning at Jensen and trying to shift the topic to something else.

“Look,” snaps Jensen, the third time Jared brings up ‘escaping to Napa for a few days,’ “we need to talk about this stuff, okay? You don’t have to care about your money. That’s what you pay me for, but this is important.”

Jared snaps to attention like a schoolkid caught talking in class. He looks at Jensen guiltily and manages to keep focused through the rest of the meal. He’s got some smart things to say, he always has. Jared only comes off as all looks and muscles because people let him. But Jensen can tell Jared’s answers are still only desultory. Which means there really is something else on Jared’s mind, and now Jensen’s going to have puzzle that out.

He lets Jared’s attention wander away towards the end, once they’re both halfway through the dessert. The waitress is tiny and brunette, Jared’s type, and even though the clientele is young Hollywood, she’s clearly smitten to be serving Jared Padalecki.

“Can we get the check?” Jensen says finally, interrupting the flirting between the two of them. “Sorry,” he adds, when Jared glances at him, “but I have a meeting with Morgan first thing tomorrow.”

“And you didn’t get much sleep last night,” says Jared, with a frown, attention dropping away from the waitress immediately. “Don’t go killing yourself because of me.”

“Nah,” says Jensen, smiling. “You just need to pay me more.”

Jared laughs heartily, and the waitress shoots Jensen a glare that could kill a man unaccustomed to Danneel’s. Not like Jensen cares, he’s too full of the warm, glowing feeling that always accompanies him making Jared laugh.

“You headed out to the club?” he asks.

Jared gives him an indecipherable look. “No,” he says. “I think I’ll stay in tonight. Maybe play some Halo?”

Jensen nods, still caught in the bubble of Jared's laugh and half-forgetting that they didn't manage to decide anything. "That sounds great."

The house is empty when they get back. Chad’s actually managed to catch and keep a girl’s interest for more than a week, and who knows where he is.

Jared grabs a couple beers from the fridge while Jensen sets up the x-box. He loses layers as he drifts back into the room, until he’s standing next to Jensen in his t-shirt and boxers, holding out a cold bottle to him. It’s like being roommates in college again, only the beer’s some microbrew from up north instead of Natty Ice and the TV’s 50 inches instead of 12.

They play Halo and drink beer until past midnight, when they both just collapse. Jensen turns on the satellite, and they flip through channels until they find the night’s second run of the Colbert Report.

“This is much nicer than dinner,” says Jared sleepily, after a few minutes of watching Colbert faking rage and gesticulating wildly. He’s mostly lying down, head near Jensen’s thigh and long legs hanging over the edge of the couch. There’s plenty of space to sit in the room, but he and Jensen are separated only by a few inches. “I don’t know why we couldn’t just chill like this there.”

“I’m your manager. We needed to talk business,” says Jensen with a shrug. “You’re busy; it’s hard to get you alone for an hour or two to discuss things.

Jared props himself up on one elbow and stares hard at him.

“You’re also my best friend,” he says quietly. “Anytime you need to talk Jensen, you just have to ask. But it’s just,” he pauses, frowning at Jensen, “sometimes, like tonight, I just want to talk to you, not my manager.”

***

The meeting with Morgan goes smoothly enough. He doesn’t mention the Star cover, and he’s got a bead on getting Jared to headline a charity event in a couple weeks. There’s a reporter who’s been calling, asking to do a profile piece on him for the Rolling Stone, and they both agree it’ll be a good idea soon as Jared gets his next project lined up. There's been some buzz about the project he just wrapped up with Misha fucking Collins, but no one, not even Misha fucking Collins himself knows when that'll be done. And no publicity agents wants his client squandering his buzz too soon.

It’s on the way back that Jensen runs into trouble. He doesn’t even make it out of the lobby before a familiar voice cries “Jensen!” and he freezes in his tracks.

He turns slowly, and sure enough, Genevieve Cortese is beelining toward him, looking flawless in four inch heels and a pencil skirt.

“I thought I’d run into you here,” she says, smiling warmly and tucking her arm into the crook of the elbow. “Walk me to my car?”

***

Genevieve unsettles him. Hollywood agents in general unsettle Jensen. It’s a tough field, and to get to the top, you generally have to be willing to gut a man stone cold. It’s also a boy’s club. Which means to get to the top as a young, attractive female means you have to be willing to gut at least ten men stone cold.

But Genevieve is just so nice, even if she did break Jared’s heart.

“I didn’t break Jared’s heart,” she says, amused smile flickering around the edges of her mouth.

Jensen narrows his eyes at her. It’s entirely possible that Genevieve made it to the top of the Hollywood mountain by being a mind reader.

“Jen,” she says kindly, “you’re just very predictable and you’re very protective of your boy. It’s sweet, and I admire your loyalty. It’s a quality I look for in clients.”

It takes Jensen a moment to parse that one out.

“Did you just compliment me on my loyalty and at the same time imply I should jump ship from Dannel to you?”

“You caught that?” says Genevieve, smiling brightly. She sounds like a proud mother. “You are getting better at this.”

They're in her office. It's smaller than Danneel's, but that doesn't mean anything. Danneel is all grand gestures, but Genevieve is understated, subtle. Of all the agents Jensen knows (and he knows quite a few), she's by far the least bombastic. It's part of what makes her so unsettling.

Jensen crosses his arms across his chest. “You still broke Jared’s heart.”

“I did not,” she says, waving a dismissive hand. “Jared just got confused because he liked me as a person and not just for my perky ass. I may have wounded his pride, but his heart is still intact. Besides,” she adds, pinning him with a sudden, sharp stare, “Danneel had as much a role in that as I did. And you’re still with her even though, what, Jared's last offer was for Polly Pocket: The Franchise?”

“Michael Bay wanted him for Legos,” he admits grudgingly. He adds, a little shrilly and a little defensively, “But it’s a good offer. He’s made Shia millions.”

Genevieve arches an eyebrow. “Jared already has a franchise. He doesn’t want another one. He wants to act. You know that, and I know that, but does Danneel know that? If he keeps getting offered crap like Legos, he’s going to go make another movie with that tortured artist friend of his.”

Jensen scowls at the coffee table. “Fucking Collins,” he spits out of instinct.

“My sentiments exactly,” says Genevieve smugly.

Jensen glances up at her, and then leans back, crossing his hands behind the back of his head. It’s a move that’s meant to look casual and bored.

“So do you have anything to offer him?” he asks. “Danneel’s been good for him.”

There’s too much triumph in Genevieve’s smile for Jensen’s liking.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she says, reaching into her purse and pulling out a thick stack of papers. A script. She drops the script on the coffee table. “Bigelow wants to make another movie.”

Jensen pauses mid-reach to the script.

“Bigelow?” he says sharply. “Kathryn Bigelow? Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow?”

“The one and only,” says Genevieve. She leans back, crossing her hands behind the back of her head and smirks up at him.

“This isn’t going to end up with Jared on a surfboard in a Nixon mask, is it?” he demands.

Genevieve huffs a laugh. “Read the script, Jensen,” she says gently. “Have Jared read it, and then get back to me. I don’t need you to make any promises now other than that.” She pauses. “And it’s based on the book Three Cups of Tea. It’s about mountain climbing and building schools in Afghanistan.”

Jensen loves that book.

“All right,” he says, after a long moment, picking up the script. “I’ll read it. If it’s good, I’ll let Jared read it. But,” he pauses. “What is this about? You like us, but I know sure as hell you don’t like us that much.”

Genevieve purses her lips. “I do like you,” she admits finally. “And I like Jared, and I think in a couple years, if he doesn’t squander his talent working for hacks like Bay, he could win the Oscar one day. But you’re right, this isn’t about you. This is about Danneel.”

Jensen looks at the script in his hands.

“Do you really think,” he says slowly, “stealing all of Danneel’s clients and ruining her company will make her fall back in love with you?”

“Well, um. Yes. Actually,” says Genevieve.

Jensen shrugs. “Fair enough.”

***

Jensen has been Jared’s manager officially for nine months. Unofficially, he’s been managing Jared’s life for one way or another since they were six and scrape-kneed. Jared has the ideas, the guts, the talent, and, inevitably, the glory. But Jensen’s the one who keeps him from getting himself killed, from keeping Jared out of the streets and the tabloids and talent numbing franchises based on children’s toys. It’s a partnership, and it works.

It started to fall apart last year, after he talked Jared into taking the lead in a crappy action movie over a crappy horror remake. The movie made twice as much money as everyone projected, largely on the strength of Jared’s performance. So the studios are already looking to make a sequel to hit theaters sometime in summer 2012.

So Jared bought Jensen a car, and himself a plane and then went looking for something "respectable."

He found Misha fucking Collins, and his script West by West, set out in the oil fields of Texas, and so personal and poignant, and, Jensen will admit, a fucking genius script.

(Though, in retrospect, Genevieve had been the one to give Jared the script, in a bid to woo him away from Danneel, and that had been the start of the whole Jared/Genevieve/Danneel clusterfuck love triangle that ended with Danneel and Genevieve in an explosive love-hate relationship, and had Jared rushing headlong into Misha fucking Collins' tortured genius of a movie.)

Jensen had advised against it. The movie was barely paying anything. No one was going to see it. He needed to build on his buzz at this point and not drop off the face of the earth.

So Jared said, "You're my manager, and I understand what you're saying, but I have to do this."

And Jensen said, “You’re not paying me, and you’re not listening me, and you have the nerve to say I’m your manager?”

That was their second big fight.

It climaxed with Jared and Chad and Misha fucking Collins on Jared's private plane, and Jensen on the runway. Because they may have been fighting, but he was still Jared's best friend.

He'd just stopped following.

But then, Jared turned the plane around.

He still made the movie with fucking Collins, but he officially made Jensen manager and started paying for the privilege of not listening to him first.

***

“You’re back late,” says Jared, concerned, when Jensen finally makes it home. Jared’s wet, and he smells like chlorine, which means he’s been swimming laps in their pool. His shirt clings wetly to his chest, hair still slick against his head as he pulls a bottle of water out of the fridge. Jensen looks away. “You and Morgan really have that much to talk about?”

“Genevieve kidnapped me,” he bitches.

“Oh?” says Jared.

“Yeah,” says Jensen with a grimace. “But she had a script.”

Jared slowly raises an eyebrow at him. “What kind of script?”

“The kind that’s directed by Kathryn Bigelow,” says Jensen. “I skimmed it on the way back-” he did, too, one hand on the wheel, the other wrapped around an iced coffee and the script balanced on his knee as he navigated through the midday rush hour “-it’s a good script. It’ll raise your profile and show your range. It sure as hell is a lot better than Legos.”

“This would mean ditching Dani though,” points out Jared. He's looking thoughtful rather than defiant though, which means some of the conversation they had at dinner stuck in his head.

Jensen shrugs. “Look, fact of the matter is, no one has any clue what West by West is going to look like. Collins hasn’t let anyone see the edits. So until then, you need to do something. And Danneel hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with new scripts lately.”

Jared nods warily all through this, as if he were agreeing with Jensen against his will.

“But Bigelow?” he says, a weak protest and he knows it.

“She directed the only decent movie last year,” points out Jensen.

“Hey,” butts in Chad, coming into the room, his arms loaded with two bags of groceries. “Avatar was-”

“Avatar was a pile of shit covered in candy,” snaps Jensen. “It was fucking Ferngully with extra bestiality.”

“You would have liked it if Jared was in it,” says Chad sulkily.

“It would have been good if Jared was in it,” says Jensen. “At least he can act.”

“Sam’s a good guy,” says Jared mildly. He scrunches his eyebrows at Jensen. He looks caught somewhere between amusement and concern.

“What?” says Jensen irritably.

“Nothing,” says Jared. “It’s just that sometimes you sound like Danneel.”

Jensen groans. “Fantastic,” he says. “Now excuse me while I go shoot myself in the face. Chad,” he says, turning to face the man. “Congrats, you’ve been promoted. You’re Jared’s manager now.”

He turns as if to stalk away, but Jared grabs him by his arm and pulls him to his side, laughing.

“And people say I’m the dramatic one,” he grins, looping his arm around Jensen’s waist, and Jensen can feel the damp spreading into his shirt. He finds he doesn't care.

“You are,” says Jensen, disarmed as he always is when he’s this close to Jared. Which is pretty often and pretty much all his life, which means he’s spent most of his waking moments in a daze. “You made a plane turn around for me.”

Jared goes very still. “Yeah,” he says, smiling slightly. “Yeah, I did.”

Chad’s glancing back and forth between the two of them, features pinched even more so than usual. Jensen and Jared continue to smile into each others' eyes.

“Holy shit!” he shouts suddenly. “The Star was right! How haven't I seen this before?”

Jensen’s eyes feel like they’re about to bug out of his head. He takes a hasty step away from Jared. Jared just looks confused.

“The Star?” he says, looking at Chad. He waves a vague hand around in Jensen’s direction, trying to pull him back towards him, but Jensen steps out of reach.

“Yeah, shit. Shit,” says Chad, going to rummage through a grocery bag. He pulls out what Jensen recognizes to be his least favorite tabloid and thrusts it triumphantly in Jared’s face.

“I saw it at the store and bought it because I thought you’d get a laugh out of it,” says Chad, mouth running a mile a minute. Jensen can only watch in horror. “But shit. Shit goddamn fuck. You guys really are fucking.”

Jared laughs then, a great, ringing laugh.

“We’re not,” says Jensen, panic stealing over him thick and nauseating, “and we wouldn’t. Just because. We won’t.”

“Chad,” says Jared, still looking at Jensen. “Could you disappear for a bit?”

Chad, the treacherous coward, disappears.

Jared's examining the cover closely, a small smile tugging at his lips. He glances up at Jensen. "Is this what Danneel wanted you to talk to you about the other day?" he asks.

"Yes," he admits, caught. "She thinks you're too...touchy. Which. I mean, she might have a point. You’re all over me in public and sooner or later, people are going to start thinking something’s there.”

Jared looks like he’s rifling through several possible starts to this conversation. Finally, he says, “Jensen, I know you’re gay.”

Jensen starts at that. It is not the tangent Jensen was expecting Jared to take. “How’d you-”

“I’m your best friend,” explains Jared disapprovingly. “You should have told me. I can kind of get why you didn’t. But, you haven’t had a serious girlfriend since high school. And it was kind of obvious you were hiding something about Alex.” He shrugs. “I just know.”

Jensen’s shoulders sag. “I just didn’t want it to be awkward,” he says miserably.

Jared is, quite suddenly, very close, warm hands aligned along Jensen’s jaw and lifting his head up. This is either a great dream or a waking nightmare.

“And I don’t want you feeling like you have to hide things from me,” says Jared softly.

Something flickers in Jared’s expression, a hardening to it that means he’s made his mind up about something.

Jensen opens his mouth to speak, but Jared kisses him. It’s gentle, tentatively exploratory. Jensen is still at first. He feels Jared begin to pull away, leaving a small disappointed sound against Jensen’s lips.

It spurs Jensen to action. He kisses Jared back, hard.

Jared reacts fast, licking into Jensen’s mouth with brutal precision and there’s the hard knock of teeth as they adjust their positions.

Jensen tangles his fingers in Jared’s hair, bites at his lips. Jared whines, a high, keening sound that starts in the throat and that Jensen feels shock through him. And then Jared’s slamming him forward, lifting him up so that he’s half-sitting on the counter. He slides a large, warm hand up Jensen’s shirt, stops to thumb at one of his nipples. Jensen hisses and slams his head back. It bangs hard against the cabinet, and he curses, slumping forward.

“Shit Jensen,” breathes Jared with a nervous laugh. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Jensen, and that’s all Jared needs to hear. He’s a hot mouth at Jensen’s neck, a steadying hand gripped bruising tight on his hip, the other hand flicking open the buttons of Jensen’s shirt.

“Christ, Jen,” whispers Jared into the crook of Jensen’s neck and shoulder. “If you knew what you looked like…”

He doesn’t finish the thought. He’s got Jensen’s shirt all the way unbuttoned now, and he latches his mouth onto Jensen’s collarbone and moves down. Jensen bites back on a moan and leans his head back, more carefully this time, so it rests against the cabinet. He squeezes his legs vicelike around Jared’s waist.

He’s hard already, painfully so, cock pressing tight against his jeans. He ruts against Jared’s chest, searching for friction, and Jared pulls away slightly. Jensen clings to him, hands clenched in his t-shirt.

“Let me,” says Jared, shooting him a quick, desperate smile. He gets his hand on Jensen’s zipper and pulls down. Then his hand is in Jensen’s boxers, gripping him tight and hard. His hand is large, callused in different places from Jensen’s. His strokes are firm, surprisingly even, and Jensen’s lost, he’s dissolving, fucking into Jared’s fist.

It’s been, well. It’s been a long time. And it’s Jared. Jensen comes with a stifled cry, bucking into Jared’s hand, Jared’s mouth wet and perfect against his neck.

He doesn’t ride the comedown as much as he’d like. He slides off the counter, pushing Jared away as he does so. And then he grabs Jared, whirls him around so that he’s the one pressed against the counter, and drops to his knees.

“J-jensen,” stutters Jared, looking down at him. His lips are red and wet from kissing, irises eaten to black.

“Shut up,” says Jensen, trying hard to breathe, trying hard not to think about all the nights he's thought about doing this. He presses his hand against Jared’s crotch and Jared jerks into it. Satisfied, Jensen unzips his pants and Jared helps them get them shoved halfway down his thighs.

The tip of Jared's cock is poking through the slit of his boxers, leaking precome. Jensen steadies himself with a breath; he jerks Jared’s boxers down.

Jared’s cock is hot and heavy in Jensen’s mouth. He licks along the shaft, probes the vein on the underside. It’s been awhile since he’s done it, so it’s wet and a little messy, but Jared doesn’t seem to mind. He’s scrabbling at Jensen’s hair, trying to get a grip and finding none.

Jensen pulls away and Jared moans his frustration; Jensen presses a light kiss to the tip, then he swallows as much of Jared’s dick down as he can in one smooth motion. Jared cries out, fucks shallowly into Jensen’s throat. Jensen can tell he’s taking all his self control not to fuck harder.

“J-j-en,” he cries, a shaky warning. Jensen pulls his mouth off, and gets a firm hand on the base of Jared’s cock. He gives it three hard strokes and then Jared’s coming, shuddering through it with a long and wordless moan, face going slack with pleasure and hands ceasing their frantic dance on Jensen’s head. He slumps against the counter and Jensen rests his head against Jared’s thigh. They stay like that for a long, peaceful moment.

Then Jared tugs at the collar of Jensen’s shirt, pulling him up so they’re both standing, chest pressed against chest.

“Hey, Jen, Jensen, you with me man?” asks Jared, framing Jensen’s face with his large hands and looking searchingly down at him.

Jensen feels the aftershock sweep through him, back into shaky panic and the feeling of rising bile.

He just had sex. With Jared. His best friend. On the kitchen counter.

“Jensen?” tries Jared again.

Jensen has two choices. He can kiss Jared again. Or he can flee.

It turns out, he’s as good or as bad a man as Chad is.

He flees.

***

The thing is, the thing is, this is twenty years of friendship on the line.

He has a spare change of clothes in the car, there for times when he spills coffee on himself before an important meeting. He changes into it now, and tries to calm his racing mind and heart.

He can only be so many things to Jared; at some point, he's going to fuck up in one of his jobs (manager, best friend, whatever that was), and then everything will fall apart.

Thankfully, Chris is in town.

***

He’s known Chris since college, when Chris and his band drove into Austin in a 1991 Ford Aerostar with the backseats removed to play a few gigs on the bar circuit. Jensen had been working as a bartender at one of the bars on said circuit. They’d hit it off after Jensen successfully managed to duck the bottle of Jack Daniels one of Chris’ bandmates had flung at his head, and been good friends since.

Chris is the only person in all of the sprawling concrete mass that is LA who doesn’t see Jensen as Jared’s manager, and possibly the only person in the world who doesn’t see Jensen as Jared’s best friend. So it makes sense that it’s Chris who Jensen runs to now.

Unfortunately, musical talent, a laidback personality, and the ability to consume large amounts of alcohol seem to be Chris’ only good traits. Sympathy sure as hell ain’t one of them.

“Are you done?” says Jensen exasperatedly when Chris finally finishes laughing.

“Jenny-bean,” Chris says, still amused. “In your four years at UT, how many girls did you sleep with?”

“Three,” grits out Jensen.

“And how many guys?”

Jensen glares at him.

“My point exactly,” says Chris. “So tell me, is this a gay thing, or a Jared thing?”

Jensen still doesn’t say anything.

“Jensen,” Chris sighs. “Why did Thom throw a bottle of Jack Daniels at your head?”

“Because he’s a homophobic asshole,” says Jensen promptly.

“Exactly,” says Chris, smug like he’s just won something. “That’s why we kicked him out of the band.”

“No, you kicked him out of the band because he was a horrible musician.”

“That too,” says Chris, looking reflective.

“So what do you think I should do?” Jensen says, bringing the conversation back around to the point at hand.

“Jensen," sighs Chris, actually managing to look and sound somber, "you’ve been in love with Jay since longer than I’ve known you.”

“Exactly!” cries Jensen, though he cringes at the word love. "I can't screw this up."

Chris rolls his eyes. "Stop being such a coward," he orders. “Suck it up and suck him off,” orders Chris.

Jensen groans and buries his face in his hands. “I hate you,” he says. “I hate you so much. Fuck you and fuck my life. Fuck my goddamn life.”

Chris pats him on the back.

“You smell like sex,” he says. “Now get the fuck out of here and get your man.”

***

He goes to see Danneel. It is, in all probability, a suicidal move. But, if he dies, then at least all his problems will be solved. Or moot. Or whatever.

Aldis shakes his head at Jensen as Jensen approaches. The poor guy looks exhausted, and he can only summon a glimmer of his usual smile.

“I wouldn’t,” he says, when Jensen stops at his desk. “I really wouldn’t. Genevieve’s showed up and went in there awhile ago. And-”

He’s cut off by a sudden loud bang and a wordless yell. Aldis winces, and Jensen winces with him.

“I can’t,” he says apologetically. “I have to go in.”

Aldis stares at him, mouth agape. “What,” he sputters. “Dude! What could possibly be so important to risk your life like this?”

Jensen squares his shoulders and faces the door.

“True love,” he says dramatically, and he knocks.

A moment passes in which Jensen swears he can hear some clock ticking down to his death knell, and then, finally, the door jerks open. Danneel stands there, looking flushed and annoyed. Her shirt is unbuttoned to the third button, revealing a lacy bra and enough cleavage to make Jensen fondly remember his high school and early college days of pretending to be straight. Her hair is a messy cloud around her head, and, behind her, Jensen can see Genevieve sitting on Danneel’s desk in a similar state of disarray.

“Jensen,” says Danneel, arching an eyebrow. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Genevieve smirks at him from over Danneel’s shoulder and Jensen feels a cold shudder pass through him. Genevieve and Danneel are terrifying apart, they’re even worse when they’re together. Still. He’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. Or die trying.

Dear God, but he hopes he dies trying.

He shoulders past Danneel and crosses defiantly into the middle of the room. Danneel shuts the door swiftly behind her, but he still catches a glimpse of Aldis’ horrified, sympathetic expression. At least he has a witness to say he died bravely.

Danneel crosses her arms across her chest, which only succeeds in pushing her breasts out and making her look even more like every schoolboy’s dream of the naughty teacher. To her credit, she still manages to look as if she could and would kill him with her stiletto.

“Jared saw the Star cover,” he says.

“And?” says Danneel. “Look Jensen, I know you don’t quite understand how to use a phone, but even that mouthbreather Chad would have been able to figure out to leave a message with Aldis.”

“And it’s not happening,” he says bravely. "Jared doesn't care."

Danneel narrows her eyes.

“What do you mean it’s not happening?”

“I mean,” he says. And then he fails. He cannot explain what just happened between him and Jared to Danneel. He just cannot. He stands in her office, mouth hanging open, mind completely blank.

Danneel’s eyes go very, very wide.

“You fucked him!” she shrieks, all accusation and no question. Then she does something amazing. She sits down and slumps forward pressing her face into her hand. “Christ. It was only a matter of time. I always knew this day would come. You have any idea how hard it is to have a meeting with the two of you in the room at the same time? He is always goddamn staring at you.”

Jensen gapes. “What? What are you-”

Danneel waves him away, face still planted squarely in palm. “Go have your Hollywood happy ending,” she says, completely ignoring his half-articulated question. “I’m just going to-”

“You’re just going to be fine,” breaks in Genevieve with an exasperated sigh. She finally slides off the desk and goes to stand behind Danneel. She begins rubbing the back of her neck. “We’ll get Morgan on this and we’ll have a sitdown with the boys later and we’ll lay out some ground rules.”

“We?” asks Danneel, arching back like a cat into Genevieve’s touch, eyelashes fluttering.

“You and I have some things to talk about Dani,” says Genevieve. She smiles at Jensen over Danneel’s head and mouths call me.

Jensen nods and takes it as his cue to leave.

Now all he has to do is go back and face Jared.

***

Jared is waiting for him when he gets back. He's sitting on the couch, Genevieve's script open on his lap.

"You're right," he says, when Jensen steps guiltily into the room. "It is good." He looks up at Jensen, expression perfectly blank."I don't know if I'm good enough for it."

Jensen sits down next to Jared. There are days when he thinks Jared could fly if he wanted to. But he just says, quietly and firmly, with all the strength of a lifetime of devotion, "You're good enough."

"You're also biased," says Jared, but the barest hint of a smile is creeping into his expression. He puts the script down on the coffee table. "So this means we'll need to meet with Genevieve."

"She was, well, I stopped by Dani's, and the two of them were, uh. You know. So, I don't know what's going on there, but we might have to wait and see for a bit." Jensen sits in embarrassed silence for a moment as he waits for Jared to process that.

"Ah," says Jared, and the embarrassed silence becomes a regular awkward one. Then Jared says, "Wait," and twists to look at Jensen straight on. "You went to Dani's?"

Jensen blushes. "Yeah, I wanted to tell her that we. That we're. You and I, we." He still can't bring himself to say it, but the broad smile that breaks across Jared's face means his point has gotten across anyway.

"So you're- I didn't scare you off? Jesus Christ Jensen, you fucking terrified me you bastard," laughs Jared.

Jensen ducks his head, still blushing. "Sorry," he mumbles. "I guess I kinda freaked out there. I just want to know," he lifts his head to look Jared in the eye, "why?"

“Jensen,” says Jared, huge smile still plastered on his face. “You’ve been passive-aggressively cockblocking me for months now. Either I’m sleeping with you, or I’m having a string of emotionless one night stands again. And, honestly, I’d much rather sleep with you.”

“Is that,” says Jensen, after a long pause, during which he comes up with and discards a thousand possible things to say, “supposed to be romantic?”

“Well, no,” says Jared. “But buying you the car was supposed to be romantic. Turning the plane around so you’d come back to Texas with me was supposed to be romantic. Calling you up every day for two and a half years and asking you to move out here with me was supposed to be romantic. All those dinners I’ve taken you to were supposed to be romantic. This is just me being honest.”

“And fucking me on the kitchen counter?”

“Well that was an act of desperation,” admits Jared.

“We’re gonna have to talk about this,” says Jensen warningly, fighting back the giddy feeling unfurling within him. “I can’t be your manager and your best friend and your boyfriend.”

Jared huffs a laugh and reaches out to palm Jensen’s face. “You make us sound codependent when you say that.”

“That’s because we are,” deadpans Jensen. “But you know I’m being serious.”

“I know,” says Jared. “So you’re in?”

“Yeah,” says Jensen, smiling back and letting the giddy feeling win out, sweep through him.

“I’m in.”

He kisses Jared then, mouths slotting neatly together. They stay like that for a moment, Jared's hand still on Jensen's palm and Jensen's hands curling in the hem of Jared's shirt.

It's a sweet kiss, but not a chaste one.

“So when did you…” Jensen waves a hand between the two of them as he finally pulls away, “figure it out?”

“When I got on the plane and realized I cared more about you being on it than the script or Misha or being an actor or any of that, but I guess,” Jared draws his brows together, "even before that, when I first moved out here, I knew you being around would make everything better." He looks at Jensen curiously. "What about you?"

Jensen just gives him a look, and Jared smiles, chagrined. Jensen’s been in love with Jared since he was thirteen, aware of that fact since he was nineteen.

“So I’m a little slow,” Jared admits. “But I got here in the end.”

“It’s all right,” says Jensen. He slides a hand up Jared’s neck and cups the back of his head. He smiles, brilliant enough to match Jared's own. “It’s about time you followed me for a change.”

-End

AN:I'm not really sure if I like this. But, hey, at least I finished something!

Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.

SPN Fic: Sinew, Marrow, Bone

coyotesuspect — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:47:55 GMT

Title: Sinew, Marrow, Bone
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG 13
Summary: The ghost is gone by midnight, sent up in fire and smoke. The demons take a little longer. Mid season 4.
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Dean, Ruby, minor Castiel. Gen with acknowledgment of Sam/Ruby
Word Count: ~5800
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers through season 4; violence, language
Notes: Huge thank yous to little_missmimi and cantarina1 for beta'ing. Thank you as well to familiardevil for looking this over and for being my reason for writing it.

She has an eggshell skull. It's fragile between his hands as he tilts it up to look down at her. Her lips are dark and her eyes are darker, gone full black as she smirks up at him.

“You satisfied?” she coos, different voice from the old her, this one full of an entirely different kind of promise. Sam's used to Ruby lying, and he's not sure why he trusts her now, but he's used to Dean lying, too.

She tries for a kiss. Enough human left in her, maybe, to feel affectionate. But half the time it feels more like she's watched a documentary on how to interact with people, that she's got a list of dos and don’ts. Sam's fucked up, all kinds of fucked up, and he's drawn this line and crossed it before, but he likes to pretend, sometimes, that he can step back.

“No,” he snaps, and he's not sure if he's responding to the question or the action, but Ruby draws back anyway, looks almost hurt, then amused.

“Well, that's all you're getting tonight,” she says. She cocks her head, voice dropping into a lilt, play-seductive and mock straight-faced. “Unless you'd like to stay awhile, honey bunches. Sure does get cold and lonely on these winter nights.”

Sam shakes his head and steps toward the door. There's blood on his mouth, still clinging copper-bitter to his lips. He licks them absently. He's got a flask in his pocket full of more, and he burns from stomach to skin to drink it. But he doesn't know the next time he'll see her.

“Well,” she says, and she sounds almost disappointed as Sam reaches for the door. “Good night, then. Thanks for stopping by. You've been a real charmer.”

He shakes his head again once he's outside. It's less a belated answer and more an attempt to clear his mind. He can't remember if Ruby drove him here or if he walked.

Doesn't matter. He's got too much pride to go back inside, even if he didn't have enough strength to keep from coming at all. And there's no way in hell he's calling Dean at this hour, after what he's done.

It's midwinter in the desert and it’s colder than most people would expect. Ruby's hotel is on the edge of some old mining town. It’s a few hours from Flagstaff and has more ghosts than he and Dean could chase out in a lifetime. But they got a few today, and sometimes that's enough.

The sky is Jackson Pollock'd with stars, and he remembers, suddenly, being twelve, a hundred miles east of El Paso in the deep scrub of west Texas. Dean was sixteen and moodier than usual, and Sam followed him out of the campsite they were in and into the sage brush and cacti, got himself lost along the way.

Dad had been convinced they should be able to tell their way back by the stars, but there'd been too many; Sam had to wait for full sun up to find his way back.

He doesn't think Dean's ever forgiven himself for Sam getting lost like that, doesn't matter that Sam didn't have to try and follow him.

Sam's breath billows out over his face like a veil, head tilted back to scowl up at the heavens. He doesn't feel the chill at all. He's warm even, too warm, feels almost feverish, mouth parched. There's no moon, but everything's washed out the same kind of silver-pale. Sam's pretty sure that's the demon blood at work. Makes it easier to see in the dark, and that's good and bad in his line of work. Means it's easier to hunt what lives there, also means he's closer to becoming what he hunts.

He and Dean are staying in a nicer motel than usual, compliments of the woman whose husband's ghost they destroyed earlier this evening. They sent him up with fire and salt, were efficient and civil while they did. The tension stretching between them has gotten almost tangible, and Sam knows it's gotten heavier because they've started smiling more. Neat, polite smiles, all teeth. He's not even sure what he's mad at his brother for, this time. What's one more thing to be mad about in a lifetime of Dean driving him crazy?

The motel's more toward the center of town, looking worn around the edges, but nicely kept up. People care about it, and in the summer, he's sure it's full of happy motorists passing through, families with kids who play in the green depths of the pool, alive with the smell of chlorine and sunscreen.

It's just him and Dean and an old man who rents the single efficiency there now though. As Sam passes the lobby, he sees the woman's son, maybe seventeen, propped up bored at the desk and reading what looks like a textbook. It's not exactly a familiar sight, but it strikes a note of kinship in Sam. He wishes the kid better luck than he's had.

He pauses at their door, room 105. The 5 is gone and only visible by the pale lack it left behind, defined by its absence rather than its being there and Sam knows exactly what that feels like.

There are voices leaking out into the night air. Sam doesn't think he'd be able to hear them normally, but the demon blood has made all his senses sharper. There's his brother's voice, deep and curt, instantly recognizable, and an answering one, harder to place. But there aren’t a lot of people it could be. After a second, it all slots into place.

His brother is talking to angels again.

He slides the key in quietly and opens the door even more quietly, but it doesn't matter. The conversation drops off instantly. Dean's voice rises up, whiplike and angry, a scolding mother.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Sam glances from Dean to Castiel. Castiel's expressionless as always, doesn't seem bothered by Dean's stance, gone angry and possessive, doesn't seem bothered by Sam’s either, jaw clenching instantly, fists curling. In the back of his mind, Sam almost hopes this is going to be the snapping point.

It's like a piece of art, tableau in fucked up human relationships, looked over by the angel of no mercy.

He turns to face Castiel instead, and the moment passes. The tension slides back below boiling, and Sam understands the word simmering more than he ever has in his life.

“I don't think I've ever thanked you,” he says, the words blood-bitter in his mouth.

Castiel's expression doesn't even flicker, but out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Dean's face fall into a scowl.

“Thanked me for what?” asks Castiel.

“For saving Dean,” says Sam. It feels like a reckless thing to say, an admittance of something shameful. Sam has nothing against angels, not really, and he'll never stop being grateful for having Dean back. But there's a part of him, small and childish, curled beneath the gratitude that's jealous, hates that this stranger could save Dean when Sam could not.

Castiel blinks slowly at him, eyes wide and empty. Sam knows he's wearing someone's body same as Ruby is, and probably less kindly, but it's one more thing he can't bring himself to care about.

“He is doing God's work,” says Castiel simply. Sam's not sure if he believes that, if only because he believes in a God whose work is less brutal.

But Dean is his brother, first by blood, twice by fire, and now by grace.

“I am done here,” Castiel tells Dean, Sam a forgotten figure in the room. Sam supposes he should be upset that the angels don't like him, but that's even more childish. Besides, it's only confirmation of something he's suspected for a long while now.

Castiel's gone, no good byes, just a simple erasure from the room and the sound of wings fluttering. It makes sense; in the long run of things he doesn't mean anything for the enduring Winchester tragicomedy.

Dean's face is twisted angry, gone thundercloud and feral, and Sam thinks tonight is going to be more tragedy than comedy.

“What did he want?” asks Sam, cutting off Dean before he can launch into whatever older brother rant he has frothing at his lips.

Dean shrugs, and moves away from Sam in short, jerky moments. There's a half empty bottle of scotch on the table, and Sam's beginning to realize that his brother might be drunk. If he is, it won't be surprising. Feels like Dean's drunk more often than he's sober these days, and that's not a fair thing to think at all, but Sam can't help it.

“Same as usual,” says Dean caustically. “More seals are breaking, we're not doing enough, he can't be around to babysit all the time.”

Sam's read the Bible. He shouldn't really be surprised that angels are such dicks. But he understands why Dean's upset, Dean whose ideas of angels came from their mother and who had those ideas burned away from him. He's used to angels being benevolent but nonexistent, doesn't know what to do with asshole ones that do exist.

“You know,” finishes Dean quietly, repeating himself. “The usual.” He looks defeated, tired, and it's meaningless that Sam remark upon it, because it's been years since Dean hasn't looked that way. It’s not hard to mistake his tone though. They’re losing the war.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” says Sam quietly. The words hang between them like a lifeline.

Dean frowns at him.

“No, Sam,” he says, and it's a more gentle refusal than he's used to. “I'm more okay with the world ending bloody than with you ending that way.”

That would mean more if Dean didn't try to kill himself over every woman with a sob story and a ghost, every family in over their head. Sacrifices don't mean as much when you're willing to do it for everyone you meet, and maybe there's a parable in that.

“I don't think you're gonna have much choice in either,” Sam answers eventually, almost lightly, and goes to pick the bottle up, puts the lid back on. He's got nowhere to stash it that Dean won't find it, none of the secrets between them physical. It hangs from his hand uselessly. Dean's eyes flicker to it, and then to his face.

“You cutting me off, bartender?” he asks, voice rough.

“Yeah,” nods Sam, and he steps past Dean to put the bottle under his bed.

He wants to ask Dean what he's drinking about now, if it's his memories or his guilt or his worry. Dean's got lots of reasons to drink, and Sam's the only reason for him to stay sober. But Sam figures them worrying about each other was never enough to keep the either of them from doing anything.

“We got a new hunt?” he asks, instead. They’ve hit seven states in two weeks. Dean acts like he's trying to break some kind of record, get the two of them into Guinness for most ghoulies wasted in a month. It's okay, sometimes, with nothing but the sky behind them and someone to save ahead of them. It's almost enough to forget the world is ending.

“Might be something in Blythe,” says Dean with a shrug. Sam notices he’s still got his boots on. They’re stained red with dirt from the grave they dug earlier, didn't bother to kick them off between coming back and starting to drink.

Sam wonders what time it is, what they're both doing up this god unearthly late. Time doesn’t work quite right for him anymore, hasn’t since the incident with the Trickster, six months of his life that he lived through, and then hadn’t. Dean’s been to Hell once, but Sam’s lived through losing him like that twice.

But he knows it was just past midnight by the time they staggered back from the ghost, and Dean had clapped him hard on the shoulder and shot him a smile that was all white teeth and promises he couldn't fill.

Sam had said he'd needed to take a walk, and maybe that's the problem. Dean's always gonna be waiting for him to walk back through the door, and never quite believes that he will.

Sam's tired. Bone tired, soul tired, tired the way the dead must feel, stuck watching people make the same mistakes they themselves did too many years ago. But he's not sleepy, and he doesn't think he's up for another night staring at the water stains that look like things he's killed, listening to Dean breathe as he does the same.

There's a knock at the door then, like a benediction, like something sent from Heaven, our Father who art in, and deliver us from tedium, etc, etc.

But angels don't knock. Dean's at the door first, peering through the peephole and then swinging it open. It's the kid from the lobby, skinny and smug as he shoves past Dean and into the room. Dean spins around, a step behind the kid, and already reaching for a knife, as if he's really gonna gut some high school junior in their motel room.

“Sam Winchester,” smirks the kid. Sam opens his mouth to respond, and the kid’s eyes flash black. “We got a friend of yours, if you care to come pick her up.”

Sam thrusts out his arm, has his hand leveled at the kid, and he feels the familiar surge of power, raw and furious, and channels it so it's no longer a useless storm inside him.

“Hey!” shouts the demon, grimacing. “Do that and you've lost your demon-whore.”

Dean's quicker on the upbeat than Sam is.

“Like we care about Ruby,” he snarls. Why should he when he's got the demon-killing knife and God on his side? He’s got the knife out already, about to plunge it through the demon's chest.

Sam doesn't understand that, doesn't understand why killing the kid is the better option when they could save him.

“Dean,” he snaps. He doesn't know if there's any actual force behind it, the power trembling just beneath his skin, but Dean takes a step back, eyes flashing wide and angry.

“You have Ruby,” Sam says tersely to the demon.

The demon twists the kid's expression into a smirk. He smacks his hand open-palmed against Sam's chest, and Sam catches the paper that flutters down when the demon pulls his hand away.

“She's there,” he says simply and then throws his head back, mouth open, and escapes.

Dean glares at Sam as the black smoke billows out above them, and Sam thinks, vaguely, they really need to start salting the door and window all the time. He looks at the paper. It's soft and greasy, feels like it had been carried in someone's pocket for awhile. There's an address written on it in pale graphite.

“You're not going after her,” says Dean, voice big brother flat. He’s leaning over the kid, checking his pulse. Must find it, because he hauls the kid into a sitting position and props him up against the TV stand.

“I am,” says Sam, and it's not fear, exactly, that he feels. He doesn't care enough about Ruby to care about her dying, but something in the pit of his stomach pulses with need all the same. He can't have Ruby die, and that's a simple fact. Intellectually, he understands this is how heroin addicts must feel about their dealers, but heroin addicts aren't saving the world.

Dean shifts his stance slightly, and Sam knows he's considering a fight. Hold Sam back physically because it's been years since Sam's been willing to listen to him just because.

“This isn't an argument, Dean,” he hisses furiously. “I'm going. And I'll walk if I have to.”

Dean wavers.

“I'll drive you,” he spits out finally. “Like I'm gonna fucking let you walk into a trap on your own.” He grabs the keys off of the dresser. “You do know this is a trap, right?”

“I'm not an idiot, Dean,” snipes Sam, following his brother out of the hotel room. It's almost right for a moment, bitching at each other like this, and Sam doesn't think about what they're doing.

“Oh really?” drawls Dean, “Because you could have fooled me.”

Sam gets a better idea of just how drunk Dean is as he follows him across the parking lot. Dean's got a high alcohol tolerance, a remarkable ability to cover when he's drunk, but he's swaying slightly now, which, for Dean, means he's only a few shots short of comatose.

“You're drunk,” says Sam when they get to the car. He slams the driver's door just as Dean opens it. “You're not driving.”

“I've driven drunk before,” Dean sneers in response.

“Not this drunk,” says Sam.

He remembers doing it himself after Dean went to hell. The way he could only concentrate on the yellow lines stretching out into infinity in front of him, his mind blotted to darkness. He'd been in Oklahoma, just outside of Tulsa, and the road had curved and he hadn't curved with it.

There had been the slide, the jerk, and the crash, and the only thing he'd felt beneath his worry that Dean would kill him for fucking up the car was relief.

“I'm driving,” says Dean, and he shoves Sam hard and away. Sam backs up a few steps. He'll give Dean this one. This is a partnership. They compromise.

He gets in passenger side, glares at Dean as he starts the car.

“You know where the fuck this party is?” asks Dean. His eyes are dark, road-oriented, and the car doesn't shake or wobble at all. Dean's good at this, faking a normal state of mind, a modern day miracle man. But Sam doesn't think he'd mind, really, if they slid off the side of the road and didn't get back up this time.

He's spent his entire life letting his brother drive him off cliffs.

He gives Dean the address, and they don't know the town well enough to know where it is, but there are directions helpfully jotted down, complete with a little smiley face with horns.

They drive in silence after that. Sam only breaks it every minute or so to tell Dean when to turn, and Dean grunts in response.

They end up at what looks like an abandoned warehouse- stereotypical demon behavior to headquarter in a place like this- at the edge of town and not too far from where Ruby was staying. They pull up about fifty yards away, behind a rusted over propane tank. It probably doesn't matter; the demons are already expecting them.

“So,” says Dean, a smile scrawled across his face, “you got a plan?”

Dean's still angry; Sam can see it crackling at the edges of his brother's smile. And he's still drunk. And this still isn't the stupidest thing either of them have ever done.

“No,” says Sam. He's smiling too, can't help it. There's a reckless, expansive feeling in his chest, and he's punch drunk maybe. “But it's just demons, right?”

Dean slides him a look, all humor gone for a moment, as his eyebrows flash downward over his face, mouth thinning out.

“There's holy water in the trunk,” he says. “And we still got salt in the shotguns. None of your...” Dean trails off. He's always had a hard time naming Sam's thing, his power. Sam hears the word freak in his head and doesn't flinch.

“All right,” he says softly. It's as much a promise as Dean'll be able to get from him tonight.

They get the guns and the water from the back. There are no demons in sight. Sam doesn't think anything of it; it means either they haven't been spotted yet, or that they have and the demons are just biding their time.

He doesn't think Ruby is dead. He's not even sure if they have her; demons lie and all that. But demons are demons, and either way, they need to be dead.

“Go through the front?” asks Dean, the smile back on. It's stupid, risky. Perfect. Maybe neither of them care tonight as much as they should. Worse ways to go out than in a hail of smoke and gunfire, brother at your side.

“Works for me,” says Sam, grinning back. He can hear his heartbeat drumming his skull, has been able to hear it since he left Ruby's. It beats faster now, thrilled at the prospect of death or glory. Sam's never been an adrenaline junkie, not exactly. Never been quite like Dean, drawn to fast women and faster cars, drawn to things that are as likely to shatter into a million pieces as they are to keep whole. But he feels it now, the familiar warm burst of possibility singing in his veins. These aren't the nights he lives for, but this is the kind of night he'll die in.

Dean goes through first, of course he does. He jogs ahead of Sam and kicks the door down. It's Action Hero 101, here to rescue the damsel. It doesn't matter that the damsel's someone Dean would soon as kill himself. Maybe that's family more than anything else; putting up with each others' stupid decisions.

There are two at the door, more at the side door, like they were expecting for the Winchesters to be clever. Not happening tonight, and Dean gets the first through the throat with a knife. Sam elbows the other in the nose, sprays it with holy water next. He vaguely recognizes it as the librarian who dragged out the decade old newspapers for them that morning. Blew the dust off of them and fixed them with a suspicious grin.

Dean surges past Sam just then, stabs the librarian just below the ribcage. The demon's eyes shudder white with light and then the body falls.

The rest of the demons have their attention turned to them now, and Sam can see Ruby behind the mass of them. She's tied to a chair, head lolled sideways on her shoulder. He can make out a pale crescent of face behind her dark curls. He can't see if he's bleeding, but he knows she is.

He hears his heart beat faster.

Dean and him are back to back, moving gracefully. Sam shoots, sprays water. Dean stabs. They work in tandem, efficiently, brutally. There are maybe a dozen demons, and all of them stupid enough to attack at once. None of them are strong enough to try and knock Sam and Dean around any other way than physically.

And then Dean takes a blow to the head and drops to the floor like a hawk in a dive.

There's a sharp crack as his skull hits the concrete floor, followed by a clatter and a din as the knife goes skittering across the floor.

There are four left, one of them hanging back by Ruby, the other three mobbing Sam. He hits one in the face with the butt of a shotgun hears the sick crunch of cartilage as the nose breaks. He whirls around on one leg, knocks the legs out of the other two and follows that with a spray of holy water.

They're all three snarling like feral cats, and there's steam in Sam's eyes.

Dean's still on the floor.

Dean hasn't moved.

Sam pins the one with the shattered nose, arm outstretched. It's the fastest he's ever been able to do this. The demon screams once, shudders all over and then its whole skeleton lights up phosphorescent.

The host drops. He's bleeding heavily. Sam doesn't think he'll live.

One of the others rushes him, hits him hard in the jaw, and Sam feels his jaw click and snap, the sudden pain that bursts brilliant and excruciating across half his face. He ignores it. Returns the blow with a sharp hook of his own, pain flaring across his knuckles as they connect with bone. The demon's head snaps back. Sam's arm is out again, palm spread wide.

This time it's even faster.

That leaves two. He kills the third one just as quick; it's still thrashing on the floor from the holy water.

His nose is bleeding and his head pounds, begins pulsing bright with pain at odd intervals from the pain in his jaw.

The last demon is still standing next to Ruby. It has the knife in its hand.

“I'll kill her,” says the demon simply. Its eyes are black, and that always distorts the host's features. But Sam can still tell that this girl is pretty. Young, too, no more than nineteen or twenty, and she looks familiar.

After a second, Sam realizes whose body the demon is wearing. She was one of the waitresses at the diner he and Dean ate at that morning. Not the one who served them, but the one who made moon-eyes at Dean from across the linoleum. Dean hadn't noticed, and Sam hadn't pointed it out. He wonders if the demons purposely picked people he and Dean would recognize, or if there just weren't enough people in town for the demons to have much to choose from.

“And then I'll kill you,” says Sam. It's an effort to talk.

The demon smiles, chill edge and grim. “You're gonna kill me no matter if I kill your whore or not.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that beforehand,” points out Sam.

“Maybe,” it acknowledges, and then flings the knife at Sam. It's got a good aim. Sam has better reflexes. He dodges the knife, and it slices past him. He turns just in time to see the smoke blowing out of the waitress's mouth and to watch her drop to the floor.

Her skull makes the same resounding cracking noise that Dean's did.

The warehouse is silent after that, and Sam is halfway between Ruby and Dean. He checks on Dean first. His brother's breathing is shallow and fast, but at least he's breathing. When Sam pulls him into sitting position, his eyes flutter open and almost focus on Sam's face.

“We win?” he asks. His voice is hoarse.

Sam bites back a grin. “Yeah,” he says, dragging Dean to his feet. “We won. No thanks to you, dumbass. Decided you'd take a nap on me.”

“I like to let you do things on your own every now and then,” says Dean, grimacing as he stands. He's unbalanced, probably concussed, and Sam checks him instinctively for other injuries. “Build your confidence, you know.”

“Thanks,” mutters Sam dryly. “You're a great guy.”

“Damn straight I am,” says Dean right back. The conversation stutters to a halt. Dean stares at him, then scrubs his hands against his jeans. “So, uh. Is she all right?” He jerks his head in Ruby's direction, face and voice emotionless.

“I haven't checked,” admits Sam.

“Oh,” says Dean.

Sam picks at a loose thread that's come unraveled from his sleeve. “I'll do that. You...” he waves his and vaguely around the room, at the bodies that litter the floor. “See if anyone's...”

“No problem,” says Dean. He doesn't move. “So you didn't use the knife on all of them?”

“Well,” answers Sam, turning his back and walking toward Ruby. “You kinda dropped it.”

Dean doesn't reply, and Sam lifts up Ruby's head up. He doesn't bother checking for a pulse. He knows he won't find one.
“Ruby,” he says.

Her eyes snap open, full black.

“'Bout time you showed up,” she says mildly, eyes sliding back to doe-eyed and brown. There's blood on her face, on her arms, on her neck. Sam's mind reels at the smell of it. His nails dig white into his palms.

“How'd you get yourself caught?” he asks, voice low as he bends down to untie the knots that bind her. The chair is in the middle of a Solomon's trap; he scratches that out as he steps away.

She doesn't answer at first, rubbing her wrists instead and frowning down at the floor.

“There were about twelve of them, Sam,” she says finally. “I don't know if you noticed.”

Ruby gets to her feet gingerly, and Sam doesn't help her. Her mouth is curled in distaste as she looks over the carnage.

“Rabble,” she spits disdainfully. “Like Lilith would even be willing to acknowledge them.”

“Yeah?” challenges Dean, voice rising from behind Sam. “They still managed to kill eleven people tonight.”

Ruby cocks her head, and the motion causes a droplet of blood to fall from the edge of her lip onto her shirt.

Sam watches the fall.

“Wasn't the demons that killed them, Dean,” says Ruby. “That was all you and Sam.”

“Should have known better than to come save you, bitch,” sneers Dean. “Come on Sam. We're going.”

“Not without Ruby,” says Sam. “I don't think she can make it back.”

“She's a demon, Sam,” snaps Dean, prelude to an argument they've had a million times before. “She'll find her way home. They're like cats that way.”

“No Dean,” says Sam. He turns to face Dean, notices that he's half carrying the waitress. She's the only host to have survived. “Ruby goes too.” He jerks his head at the unconscious girl. “She'll take her into the ER.”

Dean's grip on the girl tightens almost defensively. “Like I'm letting some demon-bitch alone with a civilian.”

“Christ,” drawls Ruby. “I thought we were over your little girl temper tantrums, Dean. I didn't do anything to your precious angel girl, did I? When will you learn you can trust me?”

Dean's smile is vicious. “When you're dead,” he spits.

“Dean,” snaps Sam. “Ruby.”

They fall silent, both glaring at each other, like children across the schoolyard.

“We should get going,” says Sam firmly. “Ruby, you take her into the ER with you. Dean, I'm driving.”

“The hell you are!” snarls Dean, “I'm-”

“Concussed,” finishes Sam flatly. “And you're still drunk.” He strides across the floor, away from Ruby, and pries the girl from Dean's arms. She moans slightly but doesn't wake. “Let me carry her,” he says. “You're going to fall and kill yourself.”

Dean relinquishes the waitress grudgingly. “You better fucking know what you're doing, Sam,” he says, and Sam can't decide if he means that for the rest of the night, because they've already won, for a definition of winning that involves eleven people dead who shouldn't be, or for the rest of his life, which he's pretty sure was declared a loss a long time ago.

The sky's still dark by the time they get out, no dawn yet lightening the horizon. Sam thinks maybe it's four or a little after. But he's tired and it's hard to tell, 130 pounds of survivor in his arms that keeps him from checking his watch.

Ruby gets in the car first, Dean scowling at her the whole time, and Sam tucks the waitress in gently after her. He waits for Ruby to prop her up and for Dean to slide in passenger side before getting into the Impala himself.

Dean falls asleep on the ride to the hospital, a full forty minutes away in the next town over. But Ruby stays awake. Her eyes dark but not black as they watch Sam in the rearview mirror.

“You know,” she says as he pulls into the parking lot, “that's the third time I've been tortured because of you, Sam.”

“I know,” he says. “Maybe you picked the wrong side.”

Her mouth lifts into a smile and then drops into a frown before evening out emotionlessly.

“Maybe I did,” is all she says.

“You should leave,” he suggests.

“Thanks,” she says, getting out, and he can't tell if she's being genuine or facetious. She pulls the waitress out after her, semi-conscious now, and shushes her. “I appreciate you coming to get me.”

Sam doesn't say anything, and she shrugs, then shuts the door.

“I really hate,” says Dean, after a moment, after Sam has pulled back onto the highway, “that thing riding in my car.”

“I thought you were asleep,” says Sam. He doesn't say, 'I was worried. You shouldn't sleep when you have a concussion. Maybe I should have brought you into the hospital too.'

He thinks it though, all of it swirling inside his head, clenching in his gut. It would be just like to Dean to die right next to him and to do it quietly, ruin all of Sam’s hard work so far. He’s trying to save the world, yeah, but part of saving the world is saving Dean.

Sam’s half convinced himself Dean was immortal. Every time he’s lost or almost lost Dean, something’s brought him back, but Sam’s tired of forever waiting for someone to bring his brother back to him. His solution is simple, logical. He kills Lilith, he saves the world, and Dean dies at age of eighty-four, in a hospital bed after a wife, two kids, and one too many hamburgers.

“Faking it seemed the better option than watching you two make eyes at each other,” grumbles Dean.

Sam wants to say, ‘I'm not sleeping with her.’

He wants it to be true.

The whole car smells of her, of her blood.

“You almost died tonight,” he says instead.

Dean shrugs and shifts around. There's the squeak of leather on leather as his jacket drags against the seat.

“I almost die a lot of nights,” he says. “Why's tonight got to be any different?”

“You don't even like Ruby,” insists Sam, not sure why he's making such a point of this. “Why'd you come?”

Dean doesn't say anything, and the silence stretches too long for it just to be a considering one. Dean's decided not to answer. Sam glances over at him to see if he has fallen asleep this time. But Dean's eyes are open, fixed beyond the dashboard and on the horizon.

Sam fumbles at the radio to fill the silence, even though that's always been more Dean's impulse than his.

“You’re an idiot,” says Dean quietly, finally.

Sam nods. He still turns on the radio, finds what sounds like the local NPR station. A voice in soothing Middle American cracks the silence between them.

Sam listens for a moment. It's a program about the Voyager space probes, now at the edge of the solar system. They’re farther from Earth than anything else created by man.

They’re two small objects, spinning off into darkness and eternity.

AN: Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.

SPN Fic: Odysseus, American

coyotesuspect — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:12:48 GMT

Title: Odysseus, American
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: NC-17
Summary: He finds Peter O'Toole's recording of the Odyssey in a bin marked “Audio" in Casa Grande's only used bookstore. The place smells like cigarette smoke and old books and reminds him of Sam. Stanford era. Sam/Dean.
Word Count: ~10,000
Spoilers/Warnings: General series spoilers.
Notes: Many thanks to my two fabulous betas, locknkey and cherie_morte, without whom this would be a much poorer fic. Thanks as well to scorpiod1 for pushing me through this and to familiardevil for the hand-holding.

Finally, a huge thank you to glasshouses, who purchased this fic from me at help_haiti. I hope you enjoy.

2/24/2013: THIS HAS NOW BEEN PODFICCED. Go here to download the wonderful podfic by zempasuchil. :)))

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all the ways of contending,
the wanderer

i. how he is brave

Dean spends three weeks wandering the desert.

He’s looking for a chupacabra, and the damn thing’s tricky. It has a nasty habit of doubling back on him. A string of livestock winds up dead to the west of him just as he thought he’d driven it east into New Mexico.

He’s not particularly concerned by it though, mostly just annoyed. Dad said he’d start letting Dean handle his own cases, and Dean had hoped that would’ve meant more than just chasing after goatkillers.

It’s high summer, and the Impala shimmers like a mirage, like a distant promise. The heat settles over everything like a blanket. It’s honey thick and makes him move honey slow when he’s outside. It’s as if Hell is blazing just beneath the dusty, parched earth, the heat pressing up against the soles of his feet as he interviews one farmer after another. A few of them have seen something- and the details tend to vary- but enough to confirm Dean’s initial belief.

The towns out here are like islands. They rise suddenly and disappear just as quickly, most of them just a cluster of houses around a gas station-slash-convenience mart. Dean sees more cacti most days than he does people. He camps out a couple nights, when he thinks he’s getting close to the thing. There are more stars than there is sky, and out there, at the edge of everything, Dean can’t help but feel alone.

During the day, his skin burns and peels, then freckles over. His left arm becomes tanner than his right, sunbrowned from all the times he’s left it hanging out the window. He gets bored. There’s no one to talk to, and even though John calls every few days to check on how he’s doing, his father’s gruff, terse questions over the phone hardly qualify as conversation. Not that John was saying much before. The months after Sam left are twilight-dim in Dean’s memory, one case blurring into another and neither him nor John willing to talk. Dean still isn’t sure who he blames more- Sam for running off, or John for chasing him off.

It’s been months since he’s talked to Sam; his absence is an injury that never quite healed right, the pain constant and nagging and dull, flaring up occasionally to burst bright and jagged across Dean’s consciousness.

His family is coming apart. He always thought their quest would be enough to bind them together, inexorable and irresistible as gravity. But everyone’s shuttling off, leaving him to follow his own shadow through the dusty southwest.

Once he starts thinking like that, he figures he needs something to distract him during the drives. He loves his tapes, but they’re too familiar. Sing along to them loud as he likes, they don’t do the trick anymore. Besides, he’s skipped over Going to California on Zeppelin IV enough times that he’s worried he might have done permanent damage to the tape.

He finds his distraction in a bin marked “Audio” in the back of a used bookstore in Casa Grande. The place smells like cigarette smoke and old books and it reminds him of Sam.

It's an audio book of the Odyssey, read by Peter O’Toole. Dean likes the art on the box- three half naked women sitting on an island of rocks and skulls, a slender boat in the background cresting on a dark purple wave.

The woman who rings up his purchase is cotton-haired, her skin tan and wrinkled from the desert sun. She smiles at him with yellowed teeth and doesn’t know anything about the livestock disappearances that have hit the area the past week or so. Dean thanks her politely and goes on his way.

He doesn’t get very far into the Odyssey. The invocation, the first book, Telemachus adrift in his own home, child of a distant father. Yeah, Dean can relate, but it’s not exactly gripping. He entertains himself by casting the characters. Athena’s Angelina, hot, but she’d probably stab you as soon as look at you. And Penelope’s Demi Moore. Getting up there in age, but still a stone-cold fox.

Then he gets to Freeman, and he learns that a little girl’s gone missing.

It’s not unheard of for a chupacabra to turn, but it’s not common either. They get cocky sometimes or an opportunity presents itself. From what Dean can find out, it was probably the latter this time. Guadalupe Cisneros was playing outside, didn’t come in when her older sister called her for dinner.

The sister, Sandra, is practically catatonic. She was supposed to be babysitting Lupe when she disappeared, and blames herself. As far as Dean can tell, she didn’t see anything.

He promises to find her sister though, and Sandra presses his hand tight and breathes, “Gracias, gracias.”

Dean leaves the Impala parked about a mile off a tiny gravel-track that calls itself a highway on the map. He hates to do it- and he hates what the sand is doing to his baby- but it’s easier to track a chupacabra on foot.

There’s not much left of Guadalupe when he finds her. He’s been hiking for a couple hours when the reek of death slips familiar across his path. She’s lying about ten yards away in a dry creek bed, a crumpled heap of bloody, mangled bones, the flesh still clinging to some of them. There’s nothing even recognizably human about the remains, and the only reason he knows it’s her is the pink tennis shoe that lies, overturned, next to the body.

He sits down then, a few feet away, on one of the desert’s wide, granite rocks and avoids looking at the mess of a person that was left behind.

He hears a loud, rattling hiss behind him, and stands and turns. It’s the chupacabra, probably come to finish what was left of Guadalupe.

Or maybe it never left, thinks Dean. He wonders if he’d just been a little faster, if he would have been able to save her.

The chupacabra skitters at him. It has wide, lamplike eyes that take up most of its face. It’s large for its kind, maybe five feet when standing on its hind legs, like it is now, and looks like the ugly bastard child of a monkey and a dog.

It leaps at Dean, teeth bared and mouth foaming.

He rolls away and does it badly, grimacing as he bangs up his shoulder. He ignores the pain and rises to his knees, whips out one gun and levels it at the monster.

Chupcabras, at least, are easy to kill. Pump it full of enough lead, and it’ll go down same as a man will. The chupacabra scurries toward him, hissing and spitting. Dean levels his baretta and fires in quick succession. Three bullets lodge into the thing’s brainpan, and it drops, viscous black blood leaking out onto the earth.

Dean staggers to his feet. He’ll have to burn the monster, and then call the police to report that he’s found a body- Gaudalupe Cisneros’ body- out in the scrub that surrounds the town.

He doesn’t stick around after making the call, just hikes his way back to his car and drives. It’ll be someone else’s responsibility to tell the Cisneroses what happened. He doesn’t let himself think. The adrenaline wore off on the hike back, but the hike also left him tired, so he rides the exhaustion into numbness, keeps driving until it gets dark and then gets darker.

Dean’s in the middle of nowhere when he finally pulls over. He keeps blinking, and, when he opens his eyes, finds more time’s passed than he thought, that he’s drifted over into the next lane. There’s no one around, so it’s not like he’s endangering other people, but he has a well enough developed sense of preservation to not want to crash and kill himself because he’s nodded off.

He turns off the ignition and climbs into the backseat, kicking off his boots as he does so. Dean’s slept in the car before. He doesn’t really mind. It’s cramped, but he prefers to think of it as cozy. He stares up at the ceiling for about three minutes before he digs his cell phone out of his pocket. Now that he’s stopped, he finds he’s not yet willing to sleep.

He calls Sam, and Sam- miraculously- picks up.

“Dean?” says Sam, sounding bitchy but wide-awake. “What the hell man? It’s two in the morning.”

“Clearly you’re awake,” says Dean. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have answered. Are you nocturnal now? Sleep through all the times I call you during the day?”

Sam’s silent for a moment; then he sighs. It’s a familiar sound to Dean, though not one he’s heard going on a year now. Exasperated, annoyed, my brother is an idiot kind of sigh.

It makes Dean smile to hear it.

“I have a midterm tomorrow,” says Sam. “And you never call this late. I was…”

He doesn’t say worried, but Dean hears it anyway. “Midterm?” he scoffs. “Dude, it’s July.”

“And I’m taking summer classes,” says Sam drily, as if it were obvious. “What did you think I was going to do this summer?”

Dean had hoped he would have come home, let Dean and John pick him up at Stanford. Dean doesn’t think he’d mind this college thing so much if he at least got to see Sam a few months out of every twelve, instead of never at all.

“Yeah, well,” he says gruffly. “It’s not like you go out of your way to keep me informed.”

“Dean, you did not call me at two in the morning to bitch me out for never calling,” says Sam, disbelief rising in his voice. “I’m gonna hang up.”

Dean wants to tell him No, stay on the phone, I just want to know you’re all right. He wants to say a little girl died today and I think it might be my fault. But he’s not that much of a wimp.

“Take care of yourself Sam,” he says instead, and he hangs up on Sam before Sam has the chance to do it to him.

He wakes up the next morning feeling stiff and cold. He drove north, and the temperature dropped as the elevation rose. He thinks about seeing the Grand Canyon. He’s spent close to a month in this damnable state; he deserves it. He’s probably not far from it either. But John calls him while he’s brushing his teeth on the side of the road, tells him about a possible haunting in San Antonio and then asks if he’s finally tracked down that chupacabra.

“If I’d known you’d have this much trouble…” growls John.

“It’s taken care of, sir,” says Dean quickly. “I’ll be in San Antonio in a couple days.” He doesn’t elaborate, and John doesn’t ask him to. Dean puts Arizona in the rearview mirror behind him.

He doesn’t really want to see the Grand Canyon alone, anyway.

The sun is dead center in the sky by the time Dean realizes he’s been driving in silence all day. He switches on the tape player and it takes him a moment to figure out why it’s talking instead of singing. Memory snaps into place then, and the words start making sense. O’Toole’s voice rolls over him, steady and deep as an undertow, pulling him straight into the story.

He drives through the Cyclops and the Sirens and blind Tiresias, through Odysseus’s defeat of the suitors, his triumphant return home.

It’s past twelve by the time he drives into Lubbock and the final tape clicks to a halt. Dean realizes with a start and a growl of his stomach that he hasn’t eaten all day. He finds an all night diner across from a motel with a vacancy sign, and eats soggy fries and a lukewarm burger in the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights. He’s still caught up in the story. It’s something easier to think about than everything else that’s going on in his life. When he finally staggers into the motel room and passes out, he pretends it’s a day spent on a ship and not a day spent driving that makes it seem like his body is still in motion.

He buys a copy of the Odyssey the next day. It’s another used bookstore, and the cover of the book is plain. Just a ship on the sea. He can’t read it while he’s driving, but he reads it in the evening. He’s curious about what he missed listening; it’s an easy enough way to pass the time between dinner and the time the bars open.

The pages are thin and slippery, browned with age. There are markings in the margin, most of them in pencil and too faded to read. Probably a college student, Dean thinks. He wonders if Sam’s had to read the book for some class, what he might have written in the margins.

Dean doesn’t write anything. He doesn’t have anything to say. It’s not a case, just a story.

He does underline though. Digs out a black ballpoint pen that he bought in a pack of twenty at a dollar store. It’s just a line, but part of him feels guilty about marking up a book. He doesn’t have the same reverence for the things that Sam does, but he does kind of respect them.

For rarely are sons similar to their fathers, he underlines, most are worse.

ii. how he is shrewd

He uses a picture of Sam as a bookmark. It’s one of the few photos of Sam that he has; their childhood is recorded more in scars and the Impala’s ever upward ticking mileage than in Polaroid and film. The picture’s from the July the summer before Sam left, a year ago now. Sam had bought a cheap Kodak disposable camera with a mumbled excuse about using it to remember stuff with.

Dean hadn’t been sure at the time what Sam was going to need to remember. The only change happening in their lives was that now that Sam was out of school, they’d have even less ties to a place. They’d be able to cover more ground, save more lives, and Dean had it constructed it exactly in his mind- a perfect family hunting unit.

Dean stole the camera from him one day when they’d been at a river. John had left them on their own for a few days, off working a case a couple counties over. The camera was lying forgotten in a pile with their t-shirts, and Dean took the picture on the sly. Sam had just gotten out of the water and was sitting on a rock, his hair clinging to his head and his chest bare. He was in profile. Face tilted up, eyes closed, smiling.

It’s a good picture.

“Did you take this one?” Sam asked after he got the photos developed. He held the photo with two fingers, his nose wrinkled.

“I was bored,” snapped Dean defensively, snatching the picture away. And then, driven by curiosity, “What about the ones you took? Cuz they’re all great art, right?”

Sam looked sideways, and shuffled slightly away, holding the packet of developed photos behind his back. Dean feinted right, and when Sam moved to block, darted left and forward, grabbing the pack from Sam’s hand, his momentum propelling him into the next room.

He poured the photos out onto the coffee table, ignoring Sam’s bellow of, “Dean!” behind him.

It took a moment for Dean to realize that all the pictures were of him.

~~~~~

He and John meet up not long after he finishes reading the Odyssey to work a poltergeist case together. It’s pretty cut and dried, nothing too memorable about it, but the oldest daughter of the unlucky family is working on college applications. John mentions with pride that “My younger boy, Sam, he goes to Stanford.” The daughter goes moon-eyed at that, and the father, already respectful, becomes practically deferential.

Dad keeps bringing it up after that- “Sammy had a 4.0 GPA all through high school, was on his school’s soccer team, too.” He doesn’t mention that Sam was on three different schools’ soccer teams, didn’t join more because a run in with banshee had his leg in a cast for half his junior year.

Jerry, the father, remarks on John’s obvious pride. And Dean just wants to shake his dad, yell at him for not showing this pride sooner, say it’s all his fault that Sam ran off, that he refuses to come back.

But Dean’s already lost half his family; he has no intention of losing the rest. He keeps quiet.

The poltergeist overturns a bookcase in the living room onto Dean, right before John finally blasts the damn thing with one of the new rocksalt bullets Dean dreamed up. In the process of digging himself out, Dean finds a copy of the Odyssey. It’s a different translation, and a nicer copy, hardback with a green cover, the word Odyssey embossed on the side in neat gold lettering.

He pockets it. It’s not like he ever asks for any kind of compensation, and, besides, this copy looks like it was bought and never read; the Odyssey is the kind of book you’re supposed to have sitting on your bookshelf, next to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and lurking behind some school pictures of the kids.

~~~~~

“They’re all of me,” Dean had said, stunned, after pouring the pictures onto the coffee table.

There was a picture of him doing the dishes, head bowed over the sink, his shoulders a broad, straight line. From the angle, Dean could tell that Sam had been seated at the dining room table when he took it. There was another, taken in profile, of Dean cleaning the guns, eyes lowered and brow furrowed in concentration. In a third picture, Dean was asleep, passed out on the couch, with his arms folded over his chest and his boots on the headrest. It was odd to see himself asleep; he looked peaceful.

Sam stood in the doorway, eyes wide and terrified but his jaw held tightly, defiantly. He nodded and didn’t say anything, then strode across the room in a few steps. He kneeled down on the opposite side of the coffee table from Dean and began gathering the photos up. His fingers brushed against Dean’s hand, and they both jerked away, looking shocked.

Sam shook his head slightly and began picking up the photos again; his face was slightly red.

Dean reached out and trapped Sam’s hand beneath his own.

“Sam,” he said. “I…Why?”

Sam stared up at him furiously.

“It doesn’t matter,” he hissed, trying to jerk his hand out of Dean’s grasp. Dean held onto it tightly.

“Sam,” was all Dean said. It seemed like it was the only word he knew. Sam frowned, and lowered his gaze back to the coffee table. It made his eyelashes stand out prominently, a dark, sweeping curve against his cheek.

For a moment, Dean didn’t see his kid brother, gawky and coltish. He saw Sam’s wicked mouth, his high cheekbones and dark curls, his lean body. It was an experience that had been happening with increasing frequency, leaving him momentarily thoughtless and breathless. Sam was becoming an adult, someone he could no longer take for granted, a constant, bright figure in his life, the fact of him as obvious and necessary as sunlight.

Dean let go of Sam’s hand. Sam didn’t snatch it away; he lifted it slightly and reached toward Dean, as if he were going to touch Dean’s face. He didn’t. His hand hovered between them, like a physical manifestation of the tension that hung in the air. Dean was torn between wanting Sam to close the final distance and wanting him to drop his hand.

It was the kind of moment, Dean knew, in which no matter what happened, their lives would be different after. It was only the shape and color of that difference that was left to be decided.

Sam lowered his hand.

“I’m leaving in a couple months, Dean,” he said slowly, tortuously. The words sounded like they were coming from very far away, like Sam wasn’t actually saying them. “I’m going to college.
Stanford accepted me.”

He held up the stack of photos dejectedly, “That’s why I took these. You’re what I want to remember.”

iii. how he is faithful

If the roads and railways of America are its veins and arteries, unfurling across all the country’s varied landscape, then Chicago is its heart. It pulses in the center of it all, violent and vibrant. Dean’s in the city in late March, hunting for a succubus. Six men have died in the past two weeks, and Dean gets in town in time to try for lucky number seven.

He’s in the bar three of the previous men disappeared from, nursing his second beer and keeping an eye on the crowd. Succubi go after men with a lot of pent up sexual frustration, take the appearance of whatever it is you desire most. So Dean hasn’t slept with anyone in a whole week and a half, and he’s grumpy enough for it that he’ll take killing something as a substitute for sex. He’s also got his eye out for any hot brunettes; even Dean Winchester has a type.

That’s why it takes him completely unaware when a familiar, shocked voice says, “Dean?” about two feet to his right.

He nearly falls over when he sees who it is.

“Sam!” he says, turning his flail into a smooth slide off the barstool. “Jesus Christ, what are you doing here?”

“Spring break,” says Sam with a broad smile. He looks good, a little taller and more filled out than he was before he left, his hair curling around his ears. He thumps Dean on the shoulder, a friendly greeting. But his hand stays there, palm spreading over Dean’s chest. “What about you? Working a case with Dad?”

“Working a case, yeah, but not with Dad,” says Dean, but he’s having trouble remembering what the case was. His mind feels adrift, his body loose and light. He’s stupid and high happy, like his brain’s just been pumped full of the good kind of chemicals.

It’s odd. He hasn’t had that much to drink.

“Dad’s letting you work cases on your own?” asks Sam, eyebrows rising.

“Dude, I’m twenty-five,” says Dean scornfully. He narrows his eyes, “And what are you doing in here anyway? You don’t turn twenty-one for another couple months.”

Sam smirks, a familiar twist of his lips, eyes lighting up. “Like I forgot everything you and Dad taught me.” He looks around, seems suddenly shy, and when he looks back at Dean, his smirk’s been replaced by a soft smile. “Look, my friends disappeared awhile ago. You wanna get out of here?”

“Yeah!” says Dean. “Of course.” He’s smiling so wide, and been smiling for so long, that it’s beginning to hurt his face. But he doesn’t care. Of all the bars in the world, his little brother’s shown up in this one. “I was just…” His mind fumbles, goes blank. He was doing something. Can’t remember what.

“Well whatever it was, it can’t be that important, right?” asks Sam. His hand’s on the small of Dean’s back as he pushes Dean toward the door. It’s a bright point of contact, runs a line of heat straight up his spine and bursts electrical in his brain. “Otherwise you would’ve remembered it, right?”

“Yeah,” agrees Dean amiably. They get outside, the air cool and wet from the spring rainstorm that had blown through all fury earlier in the day. It’s still overcast, the clouds reflecting dirty orange light back at them, but it’s not raining. Sam doesn’t move his hand, and Dean leads him to the car.

“So how’s California?” he asks, once they get to the Impala. Sam hovers behind him. Dean’s chest feels flooded with heat. His mouth is dry. “I mean, I’m sure you miss me, but at least the chicks are hot, right?”

He turns around. Sam’s right up against him. Too close, Dean thinks, entirely too close.

“It’s all right,” says Sam, eyes pinned to Dean’s face. He’s smiling slightly, edges of his mouth turned up. “But yeah, I miss you.”

Dean swallows and attempts a cocky grin. “Not surprising. I’m hard not to miss.”

“You still talk too much,” chuckles Sam. His voice has gone low, a deep rumble through his chest that Dean can feel, pressed as tight as he is against his brother.

“So you’re gonna make me stop?” challenges Dean, and the cocky smile comes more naturally now.

His heart’s gone jackhammer loud and fast, but he can do this. This is just Sam.

Sam kisses him, hard and brutal, and Dean arches into it. He fists his hands in Sam’s jacket. There’s a lot of teeth, the slide of tongue, and Dean’s getting hard already. Sam runs his hands up Dean’s sides, bites at his lower lip.

Dean swears and pulls away, wards off Sam with a hand pushed against his chest.

“Back of the car,” he pants. His blood is thrumming, a swift staccato in his veins.

Sam smiles at him, all white teeth in the night. He pushes past Dean to get in the car, pulls his shirt and jacket off as he goes.

Dean, for a moment, stands swaying in the parking lot. Secretly, sometimes, he blames himself for being the reason Sam left. The closest they ever came to this was the time with the photos, but Dean would be lying if he said he hadn’t wanted even before that. He thinks sometimes, in his worse moments, that it’s the reason Sam ran away. Dean lost Sam because he wanted too much of him.

But Sam is here. Now.

He follows Sam into the car.

He pauses again once inside. His head aches, a dull, insistent pounding behind his eyes that makes it hard to think. But something’s sitting uneasy in his chest. He was doing something, he remembers. Something important. A hunt, maybe.

“Dean!” snaps Sam, a high whine to his voice that immediately snags Dean’s attention.

Dean looks at his brother. Sam’s sprawled on the backseat, naked from the waist up. He’s long lines and hard muscle, but Dean can still see the lean teenage boy he was. His head is tilted back, throat bared. It’s suddenly hard for Dean to breathe, a hot, tight feeling suffocating him.

He climbs over the divide and into the backseat. He’s slept with girls back here before, but Sam’s a lot larger than any girl. It’s a close fit. Dean wedges himself in between Sam’s legs and wastes no time in getting his hands back on Sam’s body. Sam kisses him eagerly, and they thrust against each other.

Sam turns his face away, and Dean’s mouth is suddenly on Sam’s jaw. He can work with that. He traces his lips along the line of Sam’s jaw, feels Sam shiver beneath him.

“You’re wearing too many layers,” gasps Sam into Dean’s neck. He clenches his hands in Dean’s jacket and nips at Dean’s neck at the same time. Dean hisses with pleasure-pain at that and draws back slightly. He throws his jacket off and then works on the buttons of his front shirt. Sam doesn’t do anything to help, just gets his hands on the skin of Dean’s stomach as soon as he sees it.

Sam’s hands are large and slightly rough, but still softer than Dean’s, his calluses worn down from lack of use. Sam runs his hands up Dean’s sides, almost reverentially, and Dean suppresses a groan.

Sam arches forward and kisses him again, tongue sliding into his mouth. They just kiss for a minute, soft, wet noises in the dark. And then Sam starts moving, an undulating slide and roll of his hips that causes white light to start bursting behind Dean’s eyes.

“Jesus Christ Sammy,” he says, breaking the kiss. His voice sounds shredded even to his own ears. “Where’d you learn to move like that?”

Sam smiles at him, cheeks dimpled, his lips red and swollen from all the kissing. “You learn a lot of things in college, Dean,” he says.

Dean sneers at that, and a sick, dark part inside him rages at the implication that his brother has done this with other people. He wants to mark Sam as his. Blood and history should already make it obvious, but apparently even Sam didn’t know that well enough not to run away.

He shoves his hand in between them, yanking down the fly of Sam’s pants in a swift motion. Sam grimaces in pain and Dean ignores it. He palms Sam through his boxers, and the grimace turns into a moan of pleasure.

Dean pauses to look at Sam. His mouth is half open, eyes closed, his head tilted back; he’s all shadows in the darkness, except for where fuzzy light from a nearby streetlamp shines through the fogged windows, illuminates his face.

“Jesus, Dean, I don’t have all night,” says Sam, breaking through Dean’s thoughts, eyelashes fluttering open. He shoves his hand between them as well. He tugs down Dean’s fly, more gentle than Dean was and pulls him out. “Besides,” he adds, grinning wickedly, voice dropping low. “I want to bend you over the dresser later.”

He squeezes Dean hard and tight as he speaks, and the combination has Dean gasping, all the breath expelled from his lungs as totally as the thoughts are from his head. Sam smirks at him, and then begins to tug on Dean’s cock.

Dean starts back up too; they work in unison. Dean’s getting close, caught on the bright edge of pleasure. He feels the orgasm building, gets ready to ride it through, and then Sam smiles.

Something’s wrong. Sam’s teeth don’t look right. It’s an odd thing to think; Dean almost brushes it off. But the observation nags at him, the sense of unease he had before creeps back in. Sam’s teeth are too long, look sharp.

“Sam?” he says, kind of stupidly, pulling away.

Sam looks at him, eyes round. But it’s not Sam. He’s going fuzzy around the edges, like the body doesn’t fit right. Dean realizes that Sam’s hands, spread wide and possessive on Dean’s thighs, have long, sharp nails on them, equal to his teeth.

As the victim comes closer to climax, Dean remembers reading when he reviewed his notes on the case, the succubus begins to reveal its true form.

The fog lifts.

“Dean,” says the succubus. Its voice doesn’t even sound like Sam’s now; the tenor is off. It slides one claw up Dean’s thigh, and Dean shudders with repulsion this time. He kicks away, and the succubus hunches back toward the door. It looks hurt. And that gives Dean pause. It still has Sam’s face, has his kicked-puppy look down perfectly, the eyes wide and soft beneath drawn over eyebrows, the downward shape of the mouth.

And then Dean sees that the thing’s pupils are slit. He pulls out the silver knife he has in his boot and shoves it into the succubus’ chest. It’s eyes go wide, slit-pupil expanding and contracting. And then it explodes in a shower of red blood and a billow of dark smoke, a high-pitched shriek and it’s gone.

Dean sits up slowly. Even “Sam’s” discarded shirt and jacket have disappeared.

He breathes in deep and shaky, concentrates only on that for a moment. Tells himself he didn’t just kill a thing that looked just like his brother.

Didn’t just try to sleep with it either.

He presses his forehead against the cool leather of the front seat. He’s still hard. He grips himself tight and jerks off with slow, steady strokes. He doesn’t think of anything at all.

~~~~~

Chicago has a million used bookstores, same as any big city. He gets another copy of the Odyssey at Powell’s, finds himself lost for a few minutes or fifteen as he wanders through the stacks. There’s something intimidatingly mazelike about the place. But he finds the Classics section eventually, and gets a translation in prose.

He’s not sure if he likes the difference. He likes the rhythm that comes with it when the translation is in poetry, but prose is more what he’s used to. It reads different, at any rate.

It hits him this time though that Odysseus only spends three years wandering. The rest of the ten years, he’s stuck on an island with Calypso, but almost all of that is passed over in a few lines. There’s nothing to say about someone in stasis.

Dean can think of worse fates than being stuck on an island with a hot and horny nymph, but Odysseus is apparently not a fan, too wrapped up in what- his wife? His kid? Ithaca?

Dean’s not really sure why any place would be so important to anyone.

iv. how he is long-suffering

He calls Sam more often than he’s willing to admit. Sam never picks up, and Dean spends a lot of time listening to the sunny California warmth of Sam’s voice as he prompts Dean to, “uh, leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.”

“Hey,” Dean’ll say. “This is,” and he’ll leave a name though never his name; Sam knows who he is, “just checking up on you.”

Dean spends a lot of time coming up with names for when he calls Sam. Names of presidents and the real names of rock stars, then he goes through a whole string of names from the Odyssey. Dean figures he butchers them, but picturing Sam grimacing as he listens to Dean’s awful pronunciation makes him laugh.

This is figuring, of course, that Sam actually listens to the messages Dean leaves.

He doesn’t call Sam for a couple weeks, is tracking a couple of harpies through the woods in Wisconsin and can’t get a damn cell signal anywhere. Not that it really matters; John knows where he is. If he doesn’t hear from Dean in a few more weeks, he’ll figure something is up and come looking.

But once Dean is out of the woods and back into something resembling civilization, in a motel room with a warm meal inside him, he checks his cell and sees four missed calls.

They’re all from Sam.

He calls Sam back immediately, visions of his brother in the hospital, in jail, in some kind of awful trouble, and Sam picks up almost as soon as Dean finishes pressing ‘1’ on his speed dial.

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” breathes Sam furiously. “Where have you been?”

Dean wonders, for a moment, if while stuck in the woods he somehow managed to wander into some kind of alternate universe where Sam waits for him to call.

“I was on a hunt,” he says slowly. “I didn’t have a cell phone service.”

“You hadn’t called in awhile,” says Sam. He still sounds angry. “You could have been dead.”

“Why do you care if I call?” asks Dean dumbly. “You never pick up.”

“Yeah,” says Sam softly. He doesn’t apologize or explain.

Dean sits down on the motel bed.

“So,” he says. He’s desperate to keep Sam on the line. It’s the first time he’s actually talked to his brother in over a year. “How are things?”

“They’re good,” says Sam carefully. “I’m good. School’s, uh, good.”

“Good,” says Dean in response. He clears his throat. “I’m glad to hear everything’s…good. So, uh…” he searches for some possible topic to discuss, hates that the person most important to him is someone he can’t even have a simple conversation with. “How about girls?” he settles on finally. “Got a girlfriend? A boyfriend?”

“Fuck you,” laughs Sam. He pauses, “Yeah. Maybe.” There’s another pause, and then Sam continues, sounding slightly embarrassed. “There’s this girl; we’ve gone out a couple times. And I think…” he trails off, but there’s a tentatively optimistic ring to his voice.

“Good,” says Dean, and he immediately feels like an idiot. He lies down on his bed and closes his eyes. It’s nice to just hear the sound of Sam breathing on the other end. “What does she look like?”

He can almost see Sam rolling his eyes. “Tall, blonde. Pretty.”

It’s not a lot to go on, but Dean can picture her vividly, some California beach babe with soft curves and hair the color of sunlight. Then another image flashes through his mind, just as vivid- Sam kissing the girl, his large hands spread around her waist. The Sam in his fantasy is naked from the waist up; the muscles in his back flex and shift as he deepens the kiss, moves his hands lower on the nameless girl’s body.

Dean’s breath hitches and his own hand moves, almost of its own accord, upward along his thigh.

“Dude!” says Sam, sounding scandalized at the shift in Dean's breathing. “Are you watching porn?”

Dean knows the smart thing to do now would be to lie.

“No,” he says. His voice is husky.

There’s a pause, and then Sam says simply, “Oh.”

“I should… go,” says Dean lamely, unable to come up with any kind of excuse.

“No,” says Sam quickly. “Stay. Are you really…”

Dean licks his lips; they’re suddenly dry.

“Yeah,” he says. He hears Sam let out a short huff of disbelief. He’s not sure if it’s because Sam doesn’t believe him, or if because Sam doesn’t believe the situation they’re in.

“Are you alone?” asks Sam. His voice has dropped low, tinged with a morbid fascination.

Dean opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. A car passes through the parking lot, throwing the room into light and Dean gets a brief glimpse of a water stain on the ceiling. It looks like some state whose name he can’t remember. He’s sure he’s driven through it all the same.

“Yeah.” He closes his eyes again. “Are you?”

“Yes,” says Sam. “I’m in my room.”

“What are you doing?” asks Dean.

“Nothing,” says Sam. There’s a beat of silence. “I’m just sitting on my bed, talking to you.”

Dean nods, despite the fact that Sam can’t see it, and his hands slides higher up on his thigh. The calluses of his palm rasp against the denim of the jeans. He has no idea what to say next. He’s done this before, with girls he said were his girlfriend but who he never called again after leaving town. But this is Sam; Sam who is skittish and his brother.

Thankfully, Sam takes over.

“So you’re,” Sam sucks in a breath. “You’ve got a hand on your…”

“Yeah,” says Dean. “How about you? Got your hand in your boxers?” he asks. He smirks, more for his own benefit than out of any actual sense of amusement. He’s damned, he thinks to himself. This is his damning moment. He should hang up. He doesn’t hang up. “You getting hard, Sammy, thinking about me whacking off?”

He hears a hiss of indrawn breath and then Sam says, “Yeah. I’m getting there.”

“How do you like it?” asks Dean. His heart is doing eighty-ninety-a hundred miles per hour in his chest, screaming past all the speed limit signs. "Slow? Rough? What?"

“Rough,” admits Sam. “Hard.”

“Stroke it slowly then,” orders Dean. “Draw it out.”

Sam snorts and Dean hears him shifting around on his bed.

“All right,” he says. There’s a slight tremor in his voice. “I’m doing it. What about you? What are you doing?”

Dean ignores the questions. His own cock is pressing hard against his jeans. He undoes the button and unzips with one hand. His dick immediately pokes out, tip already red and leaking.

“How’s it feel?” he asks. He presses his palm against his cock but doesn’t begin stroking. The pressure is enough for now.

“Feels good,” says Sam, slurring the words slightly.

“Now close your eyes,” Dean says. “Imagine I’m the one touching you like that.”

There’s a hitch in Sam’s breathing that makes Dean stiffen even more.

“Okay,” says Sam. “I’m-” his breath catches again- “doing that.”

Dean grips himself tight then, begins jerking off in slow strokes that he imagines match Sam’s own.

“What do you think about usually?” he demands. “When you’re jerking off?”

“Girls,” says Sam instantly. “You,” he blurts, a second later. “I think about you a lot.” He laughs, short and humorless and adds, almost as an aside. “Have since I was sixteen.”

Dean sucks in a sharp breath. “What do you think about me?” he asks.

“Your mouth,” says Sam. “I think about your mouth. I think about you sucking me off.”

Dean’s strokes become increasingly erratic. “Is that what you want, Sam?” he asks. “Me on my knees getting you off? And then what happens?” He lowers his voice. “Would you let me fuck you?”

There is the smallest of pauses, stretching taut between them.

“Yes,” breathes Sam.

Dean shudders. “Jesus Christ,” he says. He’s on the edge, he realizes. They both are.

“Speed up,” he barks. “Harder.”

Sam moans then. The sound runs straight through Dean. He jacks himself furiously, thrusting into his own hand. Two thousand miles away, he thinks, Sam is doing the same. Dean closes his eyes, pictures Sam on his bed, hand moving swiftly between his legs, lower lip caught between his teeth, getting off on the sound of his brother’s voice.

Dean’s orgasm builds inside him. The blood rushing through him reaches the sound of a roar.

“Sam,” he gasps. He says it like a curse, Sam, his brother, Sam, who got up and left and took all the best parts of Dean with him.

He hears Sam come with a wordless yell, and he follows a few seconds later, everything bursting out at once, leaving him feeling hollowed out and stranded.

The roar in Dean’s ear subsides slowly until there’s nothing but the sound of his thick, heavy breathing, of Sam echoing the sound.

“Look, Dean. I have a – a- thing,” says Sam, after the silence blooms and dies between them.

There’s still a faint tremor in his voice. “I should probably get going…”

Dean doesn’t remind Sam that fifteen minutes ago, he was planning on going to sleep. But he does want to tell Sam about how big the country is, about the way the road looks at midnight with no one else on it. He wants to tell Sam how small it is inside the car, so that he feels like the only soul in the world, slipping through the blackness.

But these are all things Sam knows, things he’s given up.

As always, he wants to tell Sam that he misses him.

He lets Sam hang up this time.

He doesn’t think he’ll be calling Sam again anytime soon. He doesn’t think Sam will mind.

~~~~

He keeps buying new translations of the Odyssey. Not in every town, and not after every case, just whenever he’s missing Sam more than usual.

Sam actually worked in a used bookstore, for a couple months while they were staying in the Twin Cities area. Dean would come in after he got off work and just lean on the counter and spend a couple of hours annoying Sam.

The owner- a plump, pleasant middle-aged woman- had caught him by the elbow one day just as he’d come inside and given him a wide smile.

“I know Sam would just blush if I mentioned it,” she said, “but I think it’s the cutest thing that you visit your boyfriend every day.”

She let go of Dean immediately after saying that and tottered off, leaving Dean gaping after her, too shocked to correct her.

Later, he wondered why Sam had never bothered to tell her Dean was his brother.

Now, every time he’s in a used bookstore, he heads straight to the Classics section. It’s automatic. There are always a couple copies of the Odyssey. Dean’s grateful for it, but he’s never quite understood how you could discard something so easily. You’re only ever given so much; you should cling to it. Maybe he’s just bitter though; everything he’s ever tried to hold onto has been torn away.

Dean has a whole shoebox full of Odysseys. He keeps the box in the back, not hidden with the guns and weapons, but on top with his duffel bag. Clothes and a car and seven copies of the Odyssey, the only normal things he owns. He doesn’t even read all of them anymore, just a hundred pages or so to get the sense of how the translation differs. He’s amazed to see how one story can be told so many different ways.

Peter O’Toole, however, sits on the passenger seat. He’ll occasionally turn off his music and shove in one of the O’Toole cassettes. He’s familiar enough with the story now that he can just tune in whenever. He has his favorite parts, has listened to Odysseus vanquish the suitors at least a dozen times, but he finds he doesn’t mind wherever the story picks up.

It’s a simple story, really. Odysseus is just a man who wants to get home.

v. how he is triumphant

New Orleans is deserted. It’s only been a week or two since the hurricane hit.

He slips into the French Quarter more easily than he should, does it while the sky is black and the water is blacker, no moon overhead. Dean keeps a steady hold on his shotgun. Ghosts keep flickering in and out of sight. A young girl. An old man. A woman with blood down her face and chest, her blouse ripped open, hands raised imploringly. She doesn’t just disappear like the others do, but lurches toward Dean, voice howling to match the wind.

He shoots her. There’s a blast of noise and salt and then she’s gone.

The silence that follows is even deeper, a calm, considering kind of silence. Then the world seems to explode, everything billowing out at once. Dean collapses to his knees, and puts his hands over his ears, dropping his shotgun in the process. It sounds as if the world is shrieking, feels like the earth is bucking and shuddering beneath him. But nothing is happening. Nothing physical at least.

The ghosts flicker in even faster, layering over each other in a ghoulish collage. Dozens of them, and they don’t go away. There’s more than Dean’s ever seen in one place, maybe more than all the ghosts he’s seen his entire life. It’s too much spiritual energy, packed together too tight, and reality twists because of it.

He hears a voice, a deep woman’s voice shouting in a language he doesn’t understand- which is really any language that isn’t English or a smattering of Latin. The ghosts begin to disappear, first one at a time, and then in pairs, and finally in groups, until none of them are left.

Dean’s still on his knees, and when he looks up, he sees a woman coming towards him. She’s tall. When he stands, it’s obvious that she’s almost as tall as he is, and her hair is flyaway and silver.

“Dean Winchester,” she says in a deep, somber voice. “That was a very stupid thing to do.”

“How do you know who I am?” he demands, picking up his shotgun.

She gives him a long, amused look. It makes him uncomfortable, an intensity to the gaze that feels like the worst kind of scrutiny, as if she could read his thoughts like words inscribed on stone.

“Because your father is a very stupid man as well, and that is exactly the kind of thing he would try to do.”

“You must be Madame Augustine,” says Dean, the reason he’s here. John called him a few days earlier to say, hurricane or no hurricane, he needed Dean to find her.

She inclines her head gravely. “I am,” she says. “Your father send you?

“He did,” acknowledges Dean. Augustine gives him another long look, and Dean realizes that she’s blind. Her eyes are cobweb pale, no hint of a pupil anywhere.
It makes it seem even more likely that she actually is looking inside his head.

“Well, come along then,” she says with an exasperated sigh. She turns around; Dean has no choice but to follow. They walk down the road to a narrow house, kudzu covered and set back from the street.

“This is Dean Winchester,” she announces to the house as they enter. There are two people inside it, a woman of about thirty and a young girl. They’re seated at a table, bent over a box of crayons and some paper, a candle flickering at the woman’s elbow.

“This is my daughter, Eliza,” says Augustine. “And that is her daughter, Amelie.”

Dean nods at both of them. Amelie’s a child of four or five, and she looks away shyly when Dean smiles at her.

“She’s shy,” says Eliza, apologizing for the girl. “It’s good to meet you Dean.”

“She’s also up late,” sniffs Augustine. And for a moment, Dean is able to see her as a grandmother and not a scary-eyed psychic his father has sent him to speak with.

“She couldn’t sleep, Mama,” says Eliza, wrapping a protective arm around her daughter. “There are too many ghosts around.”

“She’ll have to learn to be less sensitive,” reprimands Augustine, “if she’s to follow in my footsteps.”

Dean feels like maybe he’s been forgotten, pushed aside by the family drama. But Augustine turns briskly on heel to face him. “Follow me,” she orders, walking past him and into the next room. Dean just catches the scowl Eliza levels at her mother’s back as he turns to follow.

The second room is almost pitch-black. Dean hears the familiar snap of a match, and a light flares up in Madame Augustine's palm, then gets transferred to a long white taper.

“Your father wants you to ask me something,” she says calmly.

Dean shifts uneasily. The light of the candle is just enough to illuminate them both, and darkness presses in at all sides, flickering like black tongues at the edge of the light. It makes him feel claustrophobic.

“Yeah,” says Dean. “But he didn’t tell me what. He just said you’d know.”

Augustine tilts her head at him, a birdlike gesture. She places the taper on the edge of what looks like a shrine, the kind people keep in their houses to remember dead relatives by.

“Your father always was an unhelpful man,” she mutters humorlessly. She busies herself over the shrine. A few more candles flare up. Something burns, the scent of the smoke sharp and acrid.

She speaks in the same language as she did by the car, her voice deep and sonorous. Dean shivers with awareness of something. There’s a crack of light and sound. Augustine shouts, and then, nothing.

Madame Augustine steps away from the shrine.

“Hmm,” she says, drawing out the syllable. She turns to face him and stands silently for a moment, giving every indication that she’s studying his face despite her blindness. She gestures suddenly at the amulet on his chest. “Your amulet. May I see it?”

“Um,” says Dean. He grips his amulet protectively, and then lets go. It swings back to rest against his chest, the weight warm and familiar. “I guess,” he says warily. “I’m not taking it off though.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” answers Augustine, almost sweet. She plucks the amulet off his chest with a frail hand and closes her eyes.

“Your brother gave this to you, didn’t he?” she asks after a moment.

“Yeah,” says Dean gruffly. “When we were kids. It was a long time ago.”

“Word of advice, Dean. Never accept a gift,” says Madame Augustine, opening her eyes. “A gift means a person has power over you.”

He has to laugh at the implication that all Sam’s power over him comes from the amulet. She thumps him on the chest in response, two knuckles a sharp rap against his collarbone.

“Don’t laugh Dean,” she orders. “You and your brother are more tangled up in each other than either of you know.” She frowns at him some more. “There are things I could tell you,” she says, “but it doesn’t seem like you’d believe me.”

She turns away, striding back toward her daughter and grand-daughter.

“That’s fine by me,” Dean says agreeably, “but the old man’s not going to be happy with that. He wanted-”

Madame Augustine whirls on him, looking like she’s grown a foot in height.

“I know what your father wants, Dean Winchester,” she booms. “And you tell him I don’t know anything. You tell him if he keeps this quest of his up, it’s gonna end with the both of you in Hell.”

Dean takes a step back instinctively, and Augustine shrinks back to a normal size. She touches her throat gently, expression troubled.

“That’s all,” she says quietly but firmly, “That’s all I’m gonna say on the matter of your father.” Her eyes flash as she looks up at him. “But you tell him that means our balance is even.”

The walk back to the car is silent, even though Eliza and Amelie come with them this time. Amelie looks troubled, and Dean wonders about the girl following in Augustine’s footsteps. It seems like a heavy destiny for a small child.

They stop about twenty feet from his car, the water murmuring softly in the background.

“You remember what I told you,” says Augustine firmly, her mouth set in a grim line.

“Drive safe,” says Eliza with a soft smile.

Amelie doesn’t say anything at all, just regards him solemnly.

“Well, um, thanks,” says Dean tentatively. He gives them all a nod and turns away. Something doesn’t quite feel right though. The sense of static has returned. The temperature has dropped.

Ghost, he thinks, and he turns- just in time to watch one flicker into existence in front of the women. Augustine raises a hand, looking almost bored. But the ghost is quick. It swoops forward, and disappears into the water.

It drags Amelie in with it.

Eliza screams; Dean doesn’t even think. He dives. The water envelops him almost silently. It’s impossible to see anything, the water too dark and too murky. So he closes his eyes and stretches his hands out, swims forward because there’s nothing else he can do.

His fingers brush against something and he clenches his hand around it. It’s cloth he realizes, and his knuckles bump against something soft and dense. Amelie. He pulls the girl into his arms and kicks upward, surfaces with a gasp. She’s limp against him and he wills her to breathe as he swims back. Eliza snatches Amelie away from him as soon as he gets close enough and lays her down on the warped cobblestones. Dean pulls himself out of the water a second later, and Eliza wails, a sharp, high sound that pierces his chest.

“She’s not breathing!” she cries. Madame Augustine grips her shoulder tightly.

“Hush,” she says sharply. “Let Dean see.”

Dean kneels next to the girl. Eliza’s right. Amelie’s not breathing. But he’s known CPR since he was ten, when John threw a six year old Sam into a motel pool reeking with chlorine, on the expectation that Sam would flail around and learn to swim.

Sam sank. And Dean dove after, dragged his brother to the surface.

It was the first time he was ever truly furious at his father. John explained CPR to him afterwards, a kind of apology. If Dean ever needed to save Sam, he’d know how.

Amelie jerks up suddenly, after about thirty seconds of chest compressions, spitting water from her mouth. She coughs, a deep throat cough, coughs until she’s crying. And then she sits up fully and looks up at Dean.

She breathes.

“God!” cries Eliza, shouldering past Dean to embrace her daughter. Dean shuffles aside and stands up. Augustine is watching him with her unsettling silver eyes.

“You’ve saved my granddaughter’s life Dean,” she says. “That’s a gift.”

“So what’s my present?” asks Dean. “A kiss?”

Augustine snorts. “Please,” she says. “I was kissing prettier boys than you long before your father was even born. No.” She gazes at him somberly. “I’m giving you the gift of prophecy.” She raps him on the chest, but more gently than she did before. “So pay attention. You’re going home soon, Dean. Remember that.” Dean opens his mouth to protest- he doesn’t have a home- unless you count the Impala. Even he could tell you he was headed back to her pretty soon.

“Shush,” says Augustine, cutting him off. “The second thing you need to remember is, at some point, you and your brother are both gonna be asked to make a choice. There’s only one right answer. Make sure the two of you pick the right one- the same one.”

They’re both fortune cookie vague, unhelpful enough that Dean begins to doubt this whole exercise. He’s pretty sure Madame Augustine is crazy, but up until now, he was also pretty sure she was actually psychic.

She smiles gently at him.

“You don’t believe me,” she says. “But that’s two gifts I’ve just given you. It’s up to you how you use them.”

“That means I’m down one,” says Dean. He’s not sure he likes this continual balance sheet Augustine has running in her head. It reminds him too much of the way he and Sam used to run prank wars. “I don’t have anything to give,” he says honestly. “Unless you want a gun. But considering what you just survived I really don’t think you need one.”

“People are entirely different creatures from hurricanes,” says Augustine coolly. “But you’re right. I don’t. Gifts don’t need to be of value, though,” she adds. “Just of value to yourself.”

Dean thinks about it. He knows she’s asking after his amulet, drawn to whatever mystic power it’s never been able to manifest. Sam told him ages ago that it was, ‘real special.’ But it’s also the one thing in the world he’s not willing to give up.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he promises. He walks to the Impala and pulls open the passenger door. The gift is in the front seat. He walks back a little more slowly, the box feeling unusually heavy in his hands.

“Here,” he says, pressing the audio book into Augustine’s palms. She takes it with a curious expression. “It’s a recording of the Odyssey,” he explains. “I figure since you’re, you know…”

Dean trails off, and Augustine breaks into a wide smile, the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth deepening.

“Clever boy,” she says, still smiling. “I know this is one more thing you won’t believe, but you’re a better man than your father.”

Dean shakes his head, but he thanks her all the same.

It almost feels like he’s been released from a spell. He digs through his box of cassettes once he gets back to the car, finds Zeppelin IV. He figures next town he stops in with a used bookstore, he’ll be dropping some things off.

He sticks Zeppelin IV into the cassette player, but doesn’t press play. He calls John first, doesn’t really expect him to pick up, and isn’t surprised when the voicemail crackles through.

“I talked to Madame Augustine,” he says, driving through the deserted streets of the city.

“She’s a little crazy-cakes. You know that, right? But she said she couldn’t help you with whatever it was you wanted.” He pauses, not entirely sure what to say after that. He considers tacking on the part about whatever John’s doing ending badly, but he’s not sure he believes her. He knows John won’t. “See you in a couple days,” is all he adds, and he hangs up.

Dean knows John’s working a case in Jericho. So once he makes it out of the city, he turns the car west, towards California.

He can’t help but think Sam after that. California. Sam.

And then, he can’t help but think home.

He presses play.

End Notes: All lines from the Odyssey taken from the Robert Fitzgerald translation, aka the translation I stole from my parents when I left for college. Also, as far as I know, no Peter O'Toole recording of the Odyssey actually exists. ETA: But apparently an Ian McKellan audio book does!

Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.

This is not the fic you're looking for.

coyotesuspect — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:03:31 GMT

While finishing up my fic, I started ranting to familiardevil about the Vast Ocean of Angst that is Dean Winchester's soul and how, after nearly 10,000 words, I feel like I've barely even begun to scratch the surface. (Yes, I did just mix my metaphors there, thanks very much.)

He has daddy issues! Mommy issues! Abandonment issues! ... Wait a minute this list looks familiar! After some digging, I realized I'd written out the same list in an abandoned work in progress from September.

The premise of the fic was that Dean does actually call Jo after Born Under a Bad Sign, and then continues to call her because talking to Jo is cheaper than therapy. Platonic BFFship ensues, and meanwhile Jo starts hunting with Kat (the blonde girl from Asylum).

So without further ado: 861 words of a fic that will never be completed:

The surprising thing is, Dean actually calls her. The really surprising thing is, he calls her again. And again. And again.
It’s been about twenty-four hours since Sam tied her to a post.

“He was possessed,” says Dean, by way of hello.

“Really?” she says dryly. “I hadn’t noticed what with the black eyes and the howling when you doused him with holy water.”

“Funny,” he grunts, and there’s a long silence.

“You’re okay?” he asks finally, gruffly.

“Yeah,” she says, after a pause. And she is. It was scary, but no scarier than any hunt she’s been on, probably less scary than when she was kidnapped by the ghost in Philadelphia. She hates the feeling of being physically overwhelmed, but it’s one she’s felt before, and she knows she’ll feel it again. She’s a hunter, and a woman, and it’s an unfortunate result of those two facts.

It was just that it was Sam. It was just what he said about their dads.

“I’m quitting though,” she adds, because she’s not really sure what else there is to say. “I want to get back on the road.”

*****

So Dean Winchester can sometimes be a gentleman. That’s surprising, but not terribly so. What’s really surprising is, he calls her again.
It’s a few weeks later.

“Just wrapped up a hunt,” Dean tells her. “Werewolf in San Francisco.”

“Really?” says Jo brightly. “I just saved this blonde girl from a werewolf. She says she’s a hunter, but she seems like an amateur to me.”

“You know,” says Dean patronizingly. “It doesn’t count as saving someone if you’re just saving yourself.”

“Oh fuck you,” snaps Jo. “She says she knows you. Name’s Kat?”

“No,” says Dean, after a beat. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Haunted asylum?” tries Jo, recalling the details of what Kat had told her.

There’s another silence, longer this time, and then Dean says. “Oh. Blonde girl. Good shot. Stupid boyfriend. I remember.”

There’s something off in his tone, a sudden aloofness that means he’s hiding something.

“Something happened there?” she asks.

“There was… it was…” Dean sighs. “Sam…said some things. He tried to kill me.”

*****

She’s up to her elbows in troll guts when she gets a third call from Dean.

The thing about Dean is, he has Issues. Capital I, italicized issues. He has daddy issues, mommy issues, brother issues, abandonment issues, self-esteem issues, intimacy issues, and a probably a few more she doesn’t know the name of.

She’s beginning to realize that Dean is less a person and more several mini-universes of grief and rage and guilt and fear, all bound together in fragile stasis by the overwhelming gravity that is his love for his brother.

Lacquer over a smirk and some bravado, and you have yourself a Dean Winchester.

So she no longer wants to date him. But she’d really like it if he’d see about getting some therapy.

But then, she supposes therapy is the reason Dean keeps calling.

She’s not sure what the reason is she keeps picking up.

*****
“Sammy died,” he says, before she can get out so much of a hello. “I made a deal,” he adds, spitting out the words fast, like they burn.

She sits down on the bed. “Oh,Dean,” she says, because she can’t think of anything else to say. Kat gives her a sharp look, and Jo ignores her.

Dean breaks down over the phone, and she sits there for fifteen minutes, listening to him try not to cry.

*****

“Would you ever make a deal like that?” asks Jo, later. They’re in a bar, and she’s pretty sure Kat’s trying to get her drunk.

Kat thinks about it. “I don’t know,” she says thoughtfully, after a moment. “I love my parents, but…”

“I don’t think I’d do it for my mom,” says Jo, with a sick feeling in her gut, the hot-nauseous realization that she was thisclose to losing Ellen too. And if she had, she’d still be doing this. Getting drunk in a bar with Kat, not on her knees at some crossroads. “And I don’t think she’d do it for me.”

“That’s probably healthy,” points out Kat. “There’s such a thing as too much, you know?”

Jo nods. “Then again, I’ve never been in love.”

Kat makes a face and picks at the label at her beer bottle.

“Yeah,” she says, frowning. “Me neither.”

*****

He leaves her a voicemail on Christmas. He’s singing, horrible and offkey, Silent Night, and he sounds drunk. In the background, she can hear Sam laughing. Occasionally, he joins in.

*****

“Something’s up with Sam.”

Jo rolls her eyes. “Something’s always up with Sam,” she says. “He’s your favorite topic of conversation.”

“He is not!” scoffs Dean, and normally that would be enough to get him rushing down some other line of conversation, talking about his other great passions like food or his car, but apparently something really is up with Sam, because he’s right back onto that topic. “Really though,” he insists. “Something happened in Florida, and he won’t talk about it.”

“Am I really the one you should be talking to about all this?” she asks.

SPN Fic: Origin Stories

coyotesuspect — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:03:30 GMT

Oh god, I've finished something. In fact, this is the longest thing I have ever finished.

Title: Origin Stories
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG 13
Summary: Sarah's willing to accept that ghosts are real. She's a little more skeptical that a string of suicides in Albany might be the work of one. Sarah, Jo, extremely mild Sarah/Jo

Word Count: ~8200
Spoilers/Warnings: No warnings; spoilers through season 2.
Notes:Written for bellatemple for the fic exchange. Thanks to familiardevil for looking it over

Two days after Sam Winchester blows out of town with his brother, Sarah thinks about calling him. She has his number, the memory of the stupid-giddy way he made her feel, and his solemn insistence to "call if you ever need anything."

But that's the problem. She doesn't exactly need anything, and she's smart enough to think that Sam, for all his good qualities, isn't exactly the best person to start a relationship with.

Of course, he doesn't call her. She's kind of disappointed about it, and she's kind of relieved.

Two weeks after Sam Winchester blows out of town with his brother, she reads about a couple mysterious murders a few counties over. Two violent, bloody deaths, both of young men, and in both cases, the room they were found in was locked.

She considers calling Sam then. It seems like the kind of thing he and his brother would be interested in. She even picks up her cell phone, scrolls down to where his name sits between Sam Matthews, one of her work contacts, and Sasha Kendrick, her roommate from her freshman year of college.

But she doesn’t call. It’s just a couple of bizarre suicides, she thinks. Or a very clever murderer. It’s not easy to convince herself, but it’s a better thought than the alternative. The human mind is remarkably resistant to change.

But she still dreams about little girls with long knives.

There’s a third death a week after that, another young man, and apparently three times is the charm. The police begin floating the idea of a serial killer after that. But it’s also the last death, and everyone figures that whoever the killer was, he’s moved on. The deaths are consigned to dusty files in the Albany police department.

Sarah doesn’t rest easier after that, but she feels a little less guilty.

&*&*&

Winter comes like a fog; she wakes up one morning and it’s there. Her breath is clouded on her bedroom window, the leaves on the ground shiny with ice. The house fills slowly with the sounds of her dad’s morning rituals, the way his knees crack as he walks down the hall, door opening and closing as he goes to get the paper, the tea kettle whistling.

Sarah lies in bed and counts the number of hours she slept the night before. It’s never very many. She gets up. She goes to work with her dad, argues with art houses half the day, and spends the other half smiling at customers. Occasionally she even goes on dates or out with friends.

For the first time in her life, she realizes that her dad is getting old. His memory’s getting poorer, and he walks a little slower every morning, complains more about the pain in his back. His temper is as sharp as ever, but she knows it’s only a matter of time before he retires. And just like that, she sees her whole future unroll ahead of her: taking over her dad’s place, marrying someone, settling down, having kids. It’s a neat existence, tidy, comfortable, a life with no place for ghosts or the men who hunt them.

Sarah is not the woman she meant to be. She was a pretty child, and smart, her adolescence no more or less awkward than anyone else’s. Good parents, good grades, ambition. She was going to be an artist, and she spent her first two years of college realizing she was a bad one, the next two years majoring in art history.

So she didn’t stray too far from her parents’ path. But she didn’t intend to go back. Her mom had connections in LA, and Sarah intended to strike out west, live among the palm trees and sunshine, selling overpriced paintings to newly minted movie stars searching desperately for class.

It was a good plan, a little cynical, and she’d been in LA for a month when she got the call about her mom.

It was nothing less than an inversion of her entire life. She moved back home, into the bedroom she’d had as a child, held her father’s hand throughout the funeral arrangements, and started taking on her mother’s responsibilities at the gallery. She’s been putting herself back together ever since, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever make it back to LA.

The winter passes like that. Her friends say she works too much, and maybe they’re right. But she’s happy, has come to terms that her life will be consigned to the neat parameters her parents lived by.

And then the deaths start back up again.

Thomas Steinert dies bloody and alone in the attic of his parent’s house. He was twenty-two, about to graduate college, and he dies the same way the other three boys did- wrists slit, room locked.

It’s a small article, tucked onto the margins of the third page, Albany just far enough away for this to be of note, but not near enough for it to be overly worrisome. Sarah only sees it because she has a habit of reading the news carefully every morning. She tells herself she wants to make sure she doesn’t miss any art shows or estate sales, but she only got in the habit of reading so closely after she met Sam.

She cuts the article out and sticks it to her corkboard, a tiny piece of newsprint amidst a clutter of to-do lists and postcards from friends. She doesn’t forget about it after that; it sits in the back of her mind, a nagging voice like when she’s putting off an important phone call.

She thinks putting off an important phone call is exactly what she’s doing.

Sarah picks up the phone a week later when she finds a slightly larger article on the second page of the morning paper. There’s been another death, a kid named Adam Tam, and someone’s finally connected it to the deaths from last autumn. The working theory is a suicide pact, even though, as the paper admits, none of the boys knew each other.

There’s also a brief interview with the family, bewildered and grieving, and the boy’s picture. He had just been accepted at Cornell, was popular and well-liked and ran for his school’s track team, and “There was no reason he would do this. None at all.”

It’s the obvious grief that finally gets her, speaks to a similar ache in her own chest. She knows what it’s like to lose someone suddenly, but at least she was able to know the reason behind it.

She calls Sam, and he picks up on the third ring. He sounds honestly surprised when he says her name. It’s been months since he passed through her life, so she’s mostly just glad he remembers who she is.

"Hey Sam," she says in response. "I, um, had a question to ask you."

She hears Dean's voice muffled in the background, and Sam gives her a terse, "Hold on."

"It's Sarah," she hears. He sounds tired, tense, and Dean, for all his humor, doesn’t sound much better off when he replies.

"What? She making a booty call? We're not that far from New York."

She snorts, and Sam's voice is clear again when he says, "Sorry about that. Dean's being...Dean. Is everything all right?"

"Yeah," she says. "Everything's fine. I was just. Um."

She pauses. She just wanted him to drop everything, come by and right the world, to tell her that the deaths are just normal tragedies, horrifying but mundane. And if they’re not, she wants him to fix it, quietly and quickly and slip out of her life again.

"You said you had a question?" presses Sam.

She’s beginning to realize that she’ll never be able to stop her bad dreams.

“I did?” she says, feigning confusion. “Oh. I, uh, must have forgotten.”

But she might be able to stop the deaths.

There’s a beat of silence, and then Sam says, sounding concerned, “You sure everything’s all right, Sarah?”

“Yeah,” she says. And then because she doesn’t think the first time was forceful enough, “Yeah. You take care of yourself Sam.” She smiles into the phone. “I’ll see you around,” and she hangs up.

Sam calls back twice over the next few days, but she doesn’t answer. She googles ‘ghosts’ when she’s supposed to be writing e-mails, buys more salt than she and her father will use in months when she goes grocery shopping, clears out her weekend schedule.

Sam doesn’t try to call a third time, and she figures that's the last she'll hear from him.

&*&*&

By Friday, she’s in Albany trying to figure out, why, exactly, she decided not to tell Sam about the murders. Because it’s increasingly beginning to look like they’re exactly Sam and Dean’s kind of thing.

She’s been playing dress up as an insurance agent all day in black heels and a power suit. She doesn’t feel powerful, but she doesn’t feel like Sarah Blake either. Adam Tam's father had looked at her suspiciously through grief-stricken eyes and she’d coolly told him that she had graduated with honors from Wharton.

She never acted in college, was too scared to even though she always thought she’d like it. But she’s acting now. It seems like an easier fear to face than the one her brain is still skirting around; she still hasn’t convinced herself of the real reason she’s here.

She’s good at faking being an insurance agent though, been dealing with them since she was a teenager and her parents started making her do more work for the gallery, and then with an entirely different set of insurance agents after her mother passed. She knows their cool sense of sympathy, their polite inability to yield.

“I had no idea my sister’s insurance company had so many attractive agents working for it,” says Adam Tam's uncle, letting her out of the house after she finishes interviewing the family.

“Excuse me?” she says. She arches her eyebrow for effect and tries to project frosty disapproval. The uncle grins sheepishly.

“You and that little blonde girl who stopped by yesterday,” he explains. “She was really young and pretty too. Though I don’t see why you couldn’t have come at the same time.”

“Our company policy mandates that we be thorough in our investigations, sir,” she says with another icy stare. He backs off, waving his hands apologetically, and she walks back to the car she borrowed from one of her father’s dealers. It’s black and sleek and small, and looks much more the part than the sunny yellow VW bug she normally drives.

There are three messages from her father when she checks her phone. They become successively more anxious and she sighs and calls him back as she pulls off the shaded cul-de-sac that Adam Tam lived and died on.

“I’m in Albany for a piece,” she explains, as soon as her father picks up. “Matthew said there was a prospective seller here with something we might be interested in.”

There’s a beat and she can picture her father struggling for words, trying to decide if guilt or an apology is the proper option. Her father’s never so thoughtful with strangers, and rarely was with her. But things change; family becomes more important.

“You could have left a note or told me,” he says stiffly.

“I did Dad,” she lies, and lying to her dad about something so simple hurts more than all the lies she told the Tams. “It was on the fridge. Maybe it fell?”

She hears her father shuffle around the kitchen and then his voice crackles through doubtfully, “I don’t see it.” But there’s an implication of trust beneath that, that if she says she put a note up, then she must have.

“I’ll be back by Monday, Dad,” she promises softly, and it’s the only thing she’s said in the entire conversation that’s been true.

&*&*&

Sarah stops by the house of the other recent death after she gets off the phone with her dad- Thomas Steinert. His family is just as shell-shocked as Adam's, the death still new enough to not yet have scabbed over, let alone scarred.

She’s a journalist this time, figures that even if the family isn’t yet over the initial grief, the insurance company- if there was even a policy- will have already been by to console and gently break the news that self-inflicted deaths aren’t covered.

The parents are stone-faced, even when she brings up the earlier deaths.

“There’s a connection,” she insists to Mrs. Steinert, but the woman shakes her head and asks once more for her to leave. “All of these boys can’t just have chosen to commit suicide in the same way.”

It’s not a complete loss though. Just as she’s getting into the car, she hears someone shout, “Wait!”

Thomas’s young sister slouches up to her, long bangs hiding half her face, but it’s clear that she’s been crying.

“Yes?” says Sarah. She steps slightly away from the car, molds her features into an expression of eager interest. She’s a reporter, hoping for a big story, wants to get her name on the front page.

“Um,” says the girl. Her hands are shoved into the pocket of her hoodie, her face wan and wary. “You really think Tom didn’t kill himself?”

Sarah nods. “I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

Tom’s sister tilts her head. It’s a birdlike gesture, a fragileness to it that’s common to teenage girls everywhere, and she bites her lip before nodding. It’s more of a nod to herself than to Sarah.

“I agree,” she bursts out. “I think…I think someone killed Tom.”

“Luisa!” shouts a voice from inside the house, and Sarah recognizes Mrs. Steinert’s voice. Luisa flinches, eyes going sideways to the house.

“I should go,” she says hurriedly. “But if you. If you really think something killed Tom, you should come by tomorrow after three. I’ll talk to you then.”

There’s another sharp-toned “Luisa!” from the house, and Luisa flinches again then rushes away. Sarah watches her go, a sense that she might actually be able to do this rising within her.

&*&*&

Sarah’s sitting on the hotel bed, her heels kicked off but her panty hose still rolled halfway down her calves, when someone knocks at the door. She finishes pulling off her hose and mutes the Law & Order rerun she’s had on for the past five minutes, zoning into space instead of changing into her pajamas.

She doesn’t peer through the eyehole first, has no reason to. But the woman standing on the threshold when she opens the door is definitely not the maid.

She’s dressed same as Sarah, pencil skirt and a neat, black suit-jacket, in dark glasses and practical heels. Her hair is blonde, pulled back into a loose braid, and she’s tiny in a way that makes Sarah feel large and lumbering. But the woman carries herself like she’s a six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than she actually is.

“Are you Sarah Arnette?” demands the blonde, using the name Sarah gave the Tams and the Steinerts. At Sarah’s nod, she flips open a leather wallet, flashing an id card. “Joanna Portman, FBI. Mind if I come in?”

Sarah nods jerkily, stepping aside. Fraud’s a crime her brain babbles at her. The agent brushes past her, closing the door behind her with a sharp click. She spends a moment examining the room before turning to face Sarah, pushing her glasses onto the top of her head in the same moment. She’s young, terribly so, and can’t be older than Sarah is. Sarah wonders where the girl’s partner is. All FBI agents have partners. At least, she thought they did.

“So why is it,” says the agent idly, “that a reporter for the local paper is staying in a Holiday Inn?”

Sarah freezes. Her mind stutters through three or four excuses, none of them exactly plausible. The panic must show on her face.

“Relax,” says the agent. She looks amused. “I know you’re not a journalist. Good thing I’m not FBI.” She holds out her hand and Sarah takes it instinctively. Her mind’s frozen, completely baffled by the woman.

“I’m Jo Harvelle,” says the not-agent.

“Sarah Blake,” says Sarah automatically.

“You working the suicides case?” asks Jo. “I tracked you back from the Steinerts. What are you thinking? Spirit? Has all the signs of one.”

Her cadence is straight out of the Midwest, reminds Sarah of the way Sam spoke, and it hits her then that the girl isn’t crazy, she’s looking into the deaths same as Sarah is.

“So you think it’s a ghost too!” she bursts out. “I’m not nuts.”

Jo raises an eyebrow at her. “Um. Yeah,” she says. “Well,” she pauses, pursing her lips, “I can’t speak to you being sane, but it’s almost definitely a ghost.”

“Sorry,” says Sarah, shaking her head and grinning. It’s a great stroke of luck to run into someone who actually knows what she’s doing. “I’m kind of new at this.”

Jo’s expression shuts down, smile dropping from her face and eyes narrowing. “New at this?” she repeats. “Look. Sarah. This isn’t amateur hour. You’re-”

She’s about to launch into a speech, and a rehearsed sounding one at that. There’s a tenseness to her pose that indicates this is a conversation Jo’s had with herself a hundred times before.

“I know what I’m doing,” she snaps, interrupting Jo mid-word. “I find the body. I salt it. I burn it. I’ve just…never done it on my own before.”

Jo scowls at her. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.” Sarah doesn’t say anything in response, just continues to glare right back at Jo.

“But I guess everyone’s gotta start somewhere,” mutters Jo, turning away.

&*&*&

Jo tells Sarah to meet her at the library in the morning, and Sarah shows up just as Jo’s getting out of a large blue pick-up truck. Jo’s in flannel and jeans, trucker casual, and Sarah’s beginning to wonder if it’s some kind of hunter dresscode.

“We’re looking for similar deaths,” explains Jo, setting a stack of papers going back to 1985 on the table between them. Sarah stares at them; she hadn’t realized how much of hunting was research.

Jo flips open the first paper, her tone didactic. “Young men, ages 18 to 26, suicides or unexplained deaths. The first death will probably be the one doing it. Any of the papers that don’t list a similar or related death, just put in a separate pile. Check obits first, then front page, then work your way through the rest of the paper. You’ll be surprised at where shit like this gets mentioned. I’ve figured out cases from articles in the third page of sports.”

“Wow,” says Sarah. Jo glances up, mouth quirked in a vague expression of curiosity. “You’re really into this teaching thing, aren’t you?”

Jo flushes faintly, and she looks back down at the paper. “Just trying to be helpful,” she mumbles.

“Thanks,” says Sarah earnestly. “Really. I appreciate it.”

Jo flushes even harder, and Sarah smiles at that for some reason, but she doesn’t say anything else. She bends her head over her own stack of newspapers. They spend the next couple hours in companionable silence, the occasional murmur and the constant switch of pages turning to mark the passage of time. Sarah’s head begins to hurt after awhile, the text blurring in front of her. She’s used to digging up old information, but she hasn’t done anything as intensive as this since studying for finals at college. Her back aches and her butt hurts from sitting so long, and, around noon, even Jo seems to be getting fidgety.

There’s nothing useful until the early nineties. Your average amount of suicides for the area- or at least Jo assures her it’s a usual amount, Sarah just never knew how many people killed themselves, but nothing that really matches their parameters. Then a teenage girl slits her wrists in 1992, and in 1994, a young man slits his wrists in his bathroom. Jo lets out a triumphant yelp at that, earning them a glare from the librarian.

“Robert Sears,” she says to Sarah, smiling wide. “Looks like he’s our guy. We’ll go dig him up tonight and be done tomorrow.”

“Great,” says Sarah, and it sounds forced even to herself. Jo raises an eyebrow.

“You have some kind of problem with wrapping things up so quickly?” she asks.

“No,” says Sarah slowly. And she thinks she’s reluctant just because she doesn’t want to dig up someone’s body. Ghost or no ghost, it seems indecent. The dead deserve respect.

But that’s not quite it either. Something’s not sitting right with Sarah. There’s something too neat and obvious about it. Sam and Dean had guessed the wrong ghost when it came to the painting, and she and Sam had both almost died because of it.

“I just think we shouldn’t be so quick to assume it’s him,” she says slowly, remembering her conversation with Luisa the day before. “I’d like to talk to Luisa first.”

“Steinert’s sister?” asks Jo.

Sarah nods, and Jo gives her a skeptical look before shrugging.

“All right,” she says. “It’s almost definitely Robert here, but talking to the girl can’t hurt.” She pauses, frowning down at the newspaper before her, then smiles up at Sarah, a quick, proud smile. “But first things first, let’s get something to eat.”

It’s only then that Sarah realizes she’s starving. They grab lunch at the deli across the street and eat on the benches outside the library. Neither of them talk, both too absorbed in their sandwiches for words. But when there’s nothing left but the paper wrapping, Jo tips her head back, hair gold-colored in the spring sunshine and clears her throat in a way that suggests imminent conversation.

“How’d you find out about ghosts anyway?” she asks, mixture of casual and curious.

Sarah thinks for a few minutes before replying. She’s never told anyone this story before, but it’s an important one to tell.

“One of the paintings at my dad’s gallery was haunted,” she explains slowly. “It was killing the people who bought it.”

“And what?” interrupts Jo. “You somehow figured out that it was haunted and destroyed it?”

Sarah laughs. “Right. Because the logical leap from dead art patrons is ghosts.” She shakes her head, smiling slightly. “No, there were a couple brothers in town. They were pretending to be art dealers, but I guess they’d heard about the deaths and figured there was a ghost. They needed me to get them access to the painting, and I, uh, kind of got dragged in from there. I heard about these deaths last winter, but didn’t even consider ghosts until a week ago.”

The last part is partly a lie, but the rest of it is true, even with everything she leaves out. It seems like such a small thing when she puts it like that, more of an accident than anything else.

Jo’s frowning, eyebrows drawn tight over her face, and then she asks, “These brothers weren’t named Sam and Dean by any chance?”

“Yeah!” says Sarah, excitement crashing across her voice. She grins. “You know them? Have you talked to them lately? How have they been?” She knows she could have asked Sam all this when she called him, but she has a feeling that, no matter how much he likes her, he wouldn’t have been as forthright with her as he would be with another hunter.

“We’ve met,” says Jo warily. “Last I heard the FBI was after them.”

“Oh,” says Sarah, feeling the conversation shrivel and die. Jo clearly doesn’t want to talk about Sam and Dean. But the FBI thing certainly explains why they both sounded so stressed. “I. Okay.”

There’s a silence, awkward and strained between them, and then Jo leaps into another topic. “You know there’s more than just ghosts?” she asks. “There’s demons, too. Vampires, ghouls.” She smirks. “Chupacabras.”

Sarah sucks in a breath, and no, she didn’t know. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that there was more in the dark than just ghosts. Ghosts at least made some kind of sense, had been people at one point.

She wasn’t expecting monsters.

She’s not sure whether to be angry that Sam didn’t tell her, or relieved that he at least left her that much peace of mind.

“No,” she says, voice small. “I didn’t.”

Jo doesn’t say anything, and there’s another silence. Most of Sarah’s interactions with Jo so far seem to consist of silence.

“It’s almost three,” says Jo eventually, “You should probably go talk to the sister.”

&*&*&

Luisa lets Sarah in with a wary look up and down the street, as if she were expecting her parents to jump out from behind the neighbor’s holly bush. She leads Sarah past the hallway and living room- both painted in a cheering yellow- and into her bedroom. Sarah sits on a neon pink comforter while Luisa stares at a Johnny Depp poster tacked to the wall.

“It wasn’t suicide,” says Luisa firmly, looking away from the poster and picking a picture off the dresser; Sarah sneaks a look and sees that it’s one of Luisa and Tom. It looks a couple years old, and they’re somewhere sunny and bright, both wearing sunglasses and smiles. “I don’t care what everyone says. Tom wouldn’t’ve done it.”

“What else could it have been?” Sarah asks. “He was alone in a locked room. There were no signs of forced entry or struggle.”

Luisa’s mouth thins out, and Sarah leans forward eagerly. She knows enough about reading people to know when someone is trying to hide something.

“Luisa,” she says. “Did you see something?”

Luisa shakes her head quickly, but she doesn’t meet Sarah’s eyes. It’s almost too easy, all the classic signs of someone lying. Sarah realizes then how young this girl is. She’s in high school, seventeen at the oldest, and she’s just lost her older brother.

“It’s all right,” she says, pulling back. She feels vaguely ashamed of herself. It doesn’t feel like she’s helping people. They already know who the ghost is; Sarah’s just prying now. “You don’t have to say anything. I…I should go.”

She gets off the bed and walks toward the window, tucking her notebook back in her bag. She’s prising up the latches when Luisa stops her with a quavery, “Wait. I- he.” She spits it all at once as Sarah turns around, her face pinked with embarrassment. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“I don’t know,” lies Sarah. And maybe it’s not a lie. There’s a difference between belief and knowledge. “Do you think a ghost had something to do with this?”

Luisa looks at the floor, but her jaw is set in a tight, determined line as she speaks.

“All I know is, Tom was in town to see his girlfriend and on the way back, he told me he almost crashed his car. Said there was a girl in the road, but she disappeared.”

“A girl?” asks Sarah sharply. “Are you sure?”

Luisa looks taken aback. “Yeah,” she says. “He said he saw a girl, and I,” she hesitates, and then pushes on. “A couple hours before he died, he asked me if one of my friends was visiting. Said he’d woken up in the middle of the night and saw a girl about my age standing over his bed. Creeped him the fuck out.”

“And you think it was a ghost?” asks Sarah gently.

Luisa shrugs, voice sad and wondrous. “What else could it be? Tommy wasn’t crazy.”

&*&*&

“Tom Steinert saw a girl before he died,” says Sarah on the phone to Jo later.

“Okay,” says Jo. “Cryptic much, Sarah. I need a little more than that.”

“A girl ghost,” explains Sarah. “He saw a ghost, and unless Robert Sears was a teenage girl, the ghost wasn’t him.”

Jo draws in a breath, audible even over the phone. “So you think it was that girl who killed herself? Back in, what, ’91, ‘92?”

“Probably,” says Sarah. She checks the dashboard clock, reads 3:42. “Look, Luisa said Tom saw his girlfriend the night before he died, so I’m going to go talk to her to make sure we didn’t miss anything else. Can you look up the name of the girl? The library shouldn’t close for another couple hours.”

“Sure thing princess,” says Jo. “How about we meet back at my motel when we’re done?”

“Yeah,” says Sarah, and Jo rattles off the address. Sarah writes it down on a pad of paper, and it sits there in her rounded penmanship beneath the name and work address of Tom Steinert’s girlfriend.

&*&*&

Sarah tracks down Tom’s girlfriend at the firm where she works as a legal assistant. The girl’s name is Mandy, and Sarah catches her just as she’s getting off work. She’s pretty, with wavy brown hair and cream-colored skin, but there’s a bruise across the side of her face, just beginning to yellow around the edges.

“And what?” asks Mandy caustically after Sarah introduces herself as a reporter from the Times-Union. “You wanted some sappy quote about what a great person Tom was?”

“Uh,” says Sarah.

“Well talking to his ex seems kind of like an odd choice,” continues Mandy, talking straight over Sarah. She speaks in sharp, clipped tone; it’s an aggressive mannerism, but Sarah recognizes it as also being a defensive one.

“His ex?” says Sarah, clinging to that. “His sister said you two were still dating. She told me he was in town specifically to see you.”

“He was,” says Mandy shortly. She’s clearly unhappy to be talking about Tom, but she’s not leaving either. “I’d called to tell him I was pregnant, probably from the last time he was here over the weekend, and he came by to tell me to get rid of it. I told him to shove it. He gave me this,” she taps the side of her face, the edge of her bruise. She shrugs. “Seems pretty obvious we were over after that.”

“So that’s why you think he killed himself,” says Sarah softly. Something’s shifting in the back of her mind. A theory’s developing, just out of reach of articulation, the edges of it becoming visible.

“Probably,” says Mandy, finally opening her car door. “He just hit his pregnant girlfriend who works for the largest law firm in the city. Not exactly a brilliant move on his part, and once I’d filed legal action.” She shrugs again, face shut down and bitter, and then opens the car door.

“Look,” she says, stepping inside, expression shifting into one of contrition. “Don’t print any of that, all right? He was a good guy overall. He just…he had his problems.”

“Oh, totally,” says Sarah, hastening to assure Mandy. “It’s all off the record. Just,” she hesitates, and she can’t really explain why she’s compelled to ask. “Had he ever hit you before?”

Mandy stares at the steering wheel. “That was the first time he did it while sober,” she admits finally. “But I wasn’t going to let him do it to the kid.”

&*&*&

Sarah recognizes Jo’s car when she pulls into the parking lot of the Motel 6 Jo’s staying at. It’s dingier than the hotel Sarah’s staying in for the weekend, the parking lot almost glimmering with oil stains and crushed soda cans littering the hallway outside the rooms.

It takes a moment for Jo to unlock the door after Sarah knocks. She’s dressed in sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt, her hair down around her face. It makes her look even younger than before, and Sarah’s stomach turns over slowly and uneasily. She wonders why a girl so young as Jo is so alone; she’s said nothing about family, made no indication of what she’s doing so many miles from home to look into the deaths of some men she’s never met.

“The girlfriend have anything to say?” asks Jo, leading her into the room. She sits down on the single bed in the room and Sarah sits down next to her. Jo has clothes and weapons scattered around the room; the place looks wrecked and something about it strikes Sarah as vaguely unprofessional. Whatever Jo’s reason may be for hunting, Sarah’s beginning to think she hasn’t been hunting for very wrong.

“Not much,” says Sarah. “Just that Thomas was an asshole.”

“Huh,” says Jo. “Well I got something a little more helpful. Name of our ghost.” She pulls out a slightly crumpled piece of paper and hands it to Sarah. It’s a scan of an obituary, slightly smeared. A young girl stares up at Sarah, dark eyes and dark hair. Christina Freedman.

“She’s young,” says Sarah softly, figuring out the girl’s age from the birthday and deathday listed in the obit. “Nineteen.”

“A lot of ghosts are,” says Jo. “They’re angry that they died so young. And that anger keeps ‘em here.” She nudges Sarah’s shoulder with her own. She smiles, proverbial cat with canary smug. “Anyway, you ever dig up a body before? Because I also found out where Christina’s buried.”

&*&*&

The skeleton is fragile-looking, delicate, the bones smooth and frail. Jo doesn’t pause to look at it, but Sarah’s caught by the frailness of it.

“This is it?” she asks. “This is all that’s keeping her here?”

“No,” says Jo calmly, pouring salt out of a carton and onto the skeleton. “Like I said earlier, it’s her anger that’s keeping her. This is just what’s letting her.”

“What’s she so angry about?” asks Sarah, collapsing onto the ground next to the shovels. She’s exhausted to the point of nausea, her muscles feel like they’ve seized up and she’s completely covered in dirt and sweat. She smells bad even to herself.

Jo is just as grimy as Sarah is, but doesn’t look even half as exhausted. She hoists herself smoothly out of the grave and then picks up the lighter fluid they left by the headstone. She pours some over the skeleton and then steps away.

“Now we all have to do is-” everything goes cold suddenly, a bone-numbing cold and Sarah sits up instinctively, skin prickling tight like she’d been shocked by static electricity. There’s a figure materializing behind Jo, and Sarah recognizes it as a ghost first, as Christina second.

“Jo!” she shouts. Jo ducks and rolls, the movement sending her sliding back into the grave, and there’s a sick crunch as the skeleton crushes. Christina howls with anguish, tears streaming down her face and blood streaming down her arms. Sarah’s paralyzed, and it feels exactly like what happened with Sam, the ghost advancing, herself powerless.

Christina swoops, and somehow that breaks Sarah’s paralysis. She ducks out of the way, and then yelps as a sharp pain pierces her wrists. She’s bleeding, she realizes distantly, shallow cuts forming on the inside of her forearms.

Jo clambers out of the grave then, less graceful this time. Her hair is wild, a stormcloud around her head, and she grits her teeth as she flicks on a lighter, throws it onto the skeleton.

Christina flies at Sarah again, shrieking, and the pain gets sharper in Sarah’s arms, the cuts deeper.

And then Christina screams, full throated and horrible, the way cats howl at night when they’re fighting. She disappears in a fury of fire and light, the scream echoing beyond her second death.

“That was…” Sarah trails off, mouth gaping open. It’s no more or less dramatic than the last time she saw a ghost go up all flame and glory, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a person could ever get used to.

“Anticlimactic?” suggests Jo with a grin, and maybe Sarah was wrong. Jo’s teeth shine white through the grime. “They normally are.”

“Not the word I was going to use,” says Sarah, grinning shakily back. She moans and falls back onto the grass. “Jesus Christ. My wrists.”

Jo’s expression switches to concerned, and she leans over Sarah. “Come on,” she says, placing a gentle hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Let’s get you bandaged up.”

&*&*&

“So now what?” asks Sarah while Jo’s driving her back to her hotel. Her wrists are bandaged pretty heavily, but Jo decided she wasn’t in need of any medical attention. “That’s it? We just burn Christina’s body and leave?”

“Pretty much,” says Jo. “There’s really not much to it. Show up, get rid of the problem,” she smirks to herself, a sour twist to her lips, “kiss the pretty girl, leave.” Sarah can’t tell if Jo likes it that way, or if she’s pleased with it, her tone too neutral for Sarah to read it.

“But what about why she did it?” asks Sarah. “What about those guys’ family members? Don’t they deserve to know what happened?”

Jo slants her a look. “None of that really matters,” she answers flatly. “Christina’s not going to kill anyone else, so we’ve done our job.”

Sarah thinks about Luisa, her tentative belief that her brother was killed by a ghost. If anyone deserves to know, it’s her. Sarah says as much, tacks on a thoughtful, “Learning about ghosts kind of screwed up my life for awhile. But I think if Sam and Dean had explained more to me, maybe I wouldn’t be so frightened all the time.”

It’s a hard thing to confess to another person, let alone to herself. And once the words are out there, it’s easy to admit that they’re true. She’s been scared ever since Sam left, about as scared as she was after her mother died.

“You’re gonna be waiting a long time if you want the Winchesters to come and kiss your boo boos, if that’s what you’re asking after,” says Jo dryly. “Most hunters are more into the saving business than the fixing one.”

“You don’t think it’s better to know?” asks Sarah. “You don’t think that’ll help fix things?”

Jo stares grimly through the windshield, jaw and hands clenched.

“No,” she says tersely, after a moment. “I really don’t.”

The rest of the car ride passes in silence, and Jo parks curbside when they get to Sarah’s hotel.

“Look,” says Sarah, before sliding out. “Thanks for all the help and for, you know,” she raises her wrists in indication of the bandages. “It was really good to meet you,” she concludes quietly. It’s a stupid thing to say, but she can’t think of anything else. She’s not sure she likes the way people pass in and out of her life.

Jo doesn’t say anything, just looks at Sarah with solemn, considering eyes. Then, she leans across the divide and tucks her hand under Sarah’s chin, tilting her head up. She kisses Sarah, soft and clumsy, and brief enough that Sarah doesn’t have much time respond before Jo pulls away. She’s left breathless and gaping, and Jo’s face remains in neutral as she starts the engine.

“It was good to meet you too,” says Jo, no trace of irony to the words. “You take care of yourself Sarah.”

Sarah nods numbly, automatically, and gets out of the car. Jo spares her one more look in the rearview mirror and a wave, and then she’s gone, riding off into the dawn.

&*&*&

Sarah sleeps into early afternoon, and when she wakes up, every muscle in her body aches, two motrin and a hot shower only enough to make walking feel slightly less like torture. She realizes it’s the first time she’s had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in months.

But there’s an estate sale listed in the newspaper, with the kind of last name her father’d send her out to check up on anyway. It’s still only Sunday, and she figures she can go to this and pick up a piece, and still make it home sometime tonight and keep her promise to her father. The night before seems like a dream or a distant memory, everything washed out in her mind’s eye. But there’s plenty of physical evidence to prove it happened. Her aching muscles, the dirt-stained clothes, the bandages around her arms.

She gets to the estate sale only a couple hours before it closes, but there are still some promising pieces left. Her shirt has sleeves long enough to cover her arms, but the son of the estate owner seems more intrigued by her chest anyway. He’s a heavy set man with no interest in his dead mother’s art collection and even less idea of what Sarah’s talking about. She’s growing increasingly frustrated with him when she sees a flash of yellow hair and familiar figure out of the corner of her eye.

“Excuse me for a moment,” she says politely to the man, and turns around and leaves.

Jo’s standing by an umbrella stand with a plate of cheese in hand. She’s dressed in her insurance agent outfit, slightly wrinkled, and Sarah wonders if that’s the only nice outfit Jo owns.

“What are you doing here?” she whispers, and it comes out as more of a hiss than she intended.

Jo looks up at her and smiles, though there’s too much of an edge to it for smile to be the proper term.

“What? Is it so shocking to believe that I’m interested in art? I went to college, too, you know.” Jo pauses, head tilted like she’s reconsidering that statement. “Well,” she amends, “I went for a couple months at least.”

Jo glances around the room, eyeing the other buyers distastefully. The son is slowly circling back to Sarah, and Sarah gets the uneasy impression he plans on asking her for her number.

“And you thought you’d just drop by, pick up a painting to hang up, in what, your truck?” She realizes then with a sinking feeling that she has no idea where Jo lives, where she’s from, why she’s a hunter.

Jo shoves away from the wall and meets Sarah’s eyes for the first time in the whole conversation. She’s glaring hotly.

“I have a home,” she cries, voice cracking around the final word. “If that’s what you’re asking,” she tacks on, voice dropping into sullen.

“Sorry,” says Sarah hastily. She’s not sure why they’re arguing, if this is some weird leftover tension from last night. She reaches a tentative hand out and places it on Jo’s arm. Jo doesn’t move away or flinch, and Sarah feels some of the tension drift away.

“So what?” asks Jo, gone back to not looking at Sarah. “You’re here to buy some dead woman’s stuff? Isn’t that a bit morbid?”

“Any more morbid than what we were doing last night?” asks Sarah.

“So this is your day job?” asks Jo instead of answering the question. Her tone is as frustratingly bland as it was the night before, and Sarah can’t gauge whether she’s being mocked or judged. But Jo just looks vaguely interested, even though her hands are wrapped around her elbows like she’s uncomfortable being there. She notices Sarah studying her, and drops her arms to her side, relaxing into a more casual pose. The smile she flashes doesn’t look forced, but Sarah’s beginning to figure out just how good an actress Jo is.

“Yes,” answers Sarah, looking at a nearby painting. It’s overpriced, which isn’t unusual, and she absently figures out how she would haggle down. When to push and when to pull back; people are delicate. She twirls her pen between her fingers and glances back at Jo. Jo’s watching her. “Family business, I guess. It’s what my dad does. What my mom did.”

“Did?” asks Jo.

“She died a couple years ago,” says Sarah carefully, still not used to the words.

“Hence the past tense,” mutters Jo, smile gone. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she adds, a little stiffly. “My dad’s past tense too.”

“You think this is what your mom would want?” asks Jo abruptly, after another lull drags between them.

“What?” says Sarah with a small laugh. “Being an art dealer or hunting ghosts?”

“Both, neither. I dunno. I’m just trying to figure you out,” says Jo, shaking her head slightly. She’s talking sideways at Sarah, refusing to answer questions by asking her own. “Most people have some horrible tragedy in their past that makes them hunt. You’re just, what, moonlighting?”

Sarah frowns. “I’m helping people,” she explains. “I found out these- these things existed, and I couldn’t just let them kill people.”

“Murderers exist,” points out Jo calmly. “Rapists exist. You didn’t become a cop. You’re Batman without the Joe Chill.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware this was some kind of elite club,” sneers Sarah, angry and low. “So what’s your big dark secret?”

Jo stares at her, face flushed a bright pink, and then she smiles again. It’s a different smile from before, more a warning than a mask.

“It’s what my mom does,” she mimics. “What my dad did.”

“Is this what your dad would want?” Sarah asks. It’s a cruel thing to say, she knows.

“Honestly?” says Jo, with the same teeth-baring grin. “Probably not. It’s definitely not what my mom wants. But I don’t think it really matters what he would have wanted.”

She touches Sarah’s arm, hand stopping just above where the bandages are hidden beneath Sarah’s sleeves. “But it’s my job to protect civilians. And you’re one of them. You’ve got good instincts, but I almost let you get killed last night.”

Sarah wants to tell her that all it takes is practice. Practice long enough at something, and you’ll get good at it. But she’s a failed artist, and she knows that’s not true. And hunting isn’t baseball. The price of experience is blood.

“So you just came by to tell me I’m an amateur?” she says instead, same flare of anger she felt when Sam tried to shut her out of the case. “Thanks, but you’ve already told me that. Didn’t stop me earlier.”

“No,” admits Jo. “I. Honestly, I wanted to tell you I found some of the other victim’s girlfriends.” Jo’s mouth is thin and taut, tension visible in every line of her body. “As near as I can tell, they were all assholes. Kendrick hit his girl, too. Molina cheated on his girlfriend, broke up with her over text message, got back together, and then cheated on her again. And Jefferson was just an asshole.”

“And Christina’s boyfriend?” asks Sarah softly.

Jo shrugs. “Couldn’t find anything. None of her family’s left in the area. Doesn’t seem likely that he was a great guy though, considering the pattern.”

“So she was knocking off guys who reminded her of her jerk boyfriend,” says Sarah. The theory that’s been hovering at the edges of her mind clicks neatly together. Girl kills herself over something her jerk boyfriend did, then spends her afterlife killing jerk boyfriends.

But it’s not anything conclusive; it’s just a theory. And it irks her, that the story is only half-finished. Some people are just born twisted. Some people just die too young. But none of it really explains why.

Jo smirks. “Vindictive bitch. Can’t say the douchebags didn’t deserve it though.”

Sarah thinks back to Luisa, how obviously distraught she was over losing her older brother. “I don’t know,” she says slowly. “Isn’t it kind of fast to judge someone on one aspect of their life?”

Jo looks at her disbelievingly. “Are you serious? These guys were capital A assholes. But,” she shrugs, “not for us to judge, I guess.”

“It’s just,” says Sarah, struggling for words. “There’s always more, isn’t there? More to the story.” She lapses into silence.

“That’s why it sometimes better not to ask,” says Jo. She squeezes Sarah’s shoulder and then lets go. “But you wanted to know. So I found it.”

Jo leaves then, her heels clicking across the hardwood floor. Sarah counts five seconds before turning around.

Jo’s already out the door, a flash of gold hair in the window.

&*&*&

She doesn’t buy anything, and she doesn’t talk to Luisa again either. The latter’s a much harder decision than the former.

Luisa will realize eventually that it wasn’t a ghost she saw, that maybe her brother was crazy after all. She’ll grow up, move on. People die, and everyone else gets used to it.

It’s not a fair decision, not even really Sarah’s decision to make. But she figures she’ll be taking something away from the girl as much as she’ll be giving something to her. She toys with that idea as she drives through the city- the transmission of knowledge as an act of violence.

She tells herself that she couldn't take Luisa's innocence away like that, and she can also accept it as an excuse.

Then, with a jolt, she realizes that the sun is setting, the rays of the sun splaying red and gold across the highway. She has to shield her eyes with her hand as she turns, and then the sun drops to just behind her shoulder and the highway stretches out ahead of her. It’s a straight and narrow path from here to home.

She has Jo’s number though, nestled safely in her contacts list. She thinks she’ll probably call.

People die, and there will always be more ghosts.

Fic: light enough to draw the stars

coyotesuspect — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:55:06 GMT

Title: light enough to draw the stars
Fandom: Supernatural
Summary: Seven things Sam Winchester loves about Jessica Moore. Sam/Jess
Rating: light R
Word Count: ~420
Spoilers/Warnings: None
AN: Written for

kiwiana who requested "something Jess-centric" for the drabble meme, posted because I haven't posted any writing this month and because I actually like it. (Also, familiardevil enabled me, as she always does.) Title from this poem.

(One) The clean cotton scent of her, reminds him of white sheets hung to dry, the Midwest sky vibrant blue around them. Peaceful, neutral smell, Dean nodding off in the front passenger seat, their father singing low to Johnny Cash. (Two) Her body- not just the legs (but he loves her legs, golden and long and toned, that squeeze tight around him and hold) but also her hair, also long and golden, tangled and twisting and soft. Her nipples, peaked and pinked, soft-taste of them in his mouth, and her freckles, dusted brown and red across her face, her back, her arms. Her arms-long and slender, the fine hair that dusts them. (Three) The way she chews her thumb without thinking about it. Her habit of humming Christmas carols in March. That she leaves her bra crumpled in a ball on the couch. Her gracelessness when she’s drunk. All the things about her that should bother him, nervous tics and bad habits, and it’s a cliché that he finds them endearing. (Four) Her confidence. She asked him out, friendly, direct. We should see a movie, she said, maybe grab some dinner, and they did, and she kissed him outside her the door of her room, tasted like curry, smelled clean, like cotton. (Five) The way that confidence extends to him. Her belief, solid, unwavering, that he could take the moon from the heavens and use it for coin tricks if he wanted to. I shouldn’t let you edit my papers, he whined once. You never have anything constructive to say. And she smiled. Maybe you shouldn’t write such amazing papers then. (Six) That she still manages to keep him earthbound. Give your essay to Becky, she added later. Your introduction might be weak, and she’ll tear it apart. Sly smile, pugnacious. Her eyebrows arched with meaning and her face expressive. Amused, but mostly concerned when he’d tried to get another part-time job on top of everything else. Cool your jets, Superman. I can’t have you dying on me before you’re twenty five. (Seven) Home. She’s home. At night, their bodies curled into each other, long legs tangled with his, he awake, and she sleeping, her thumb near her mouth, looks fragile even though she isn’t, and his heart blooms expansive. It feels sometimes like he’s crossed the continent just to find her, ran away from home and found it, and the darkness of the night, and the solid four walls of their bedroom, and the smell of clean sheets, all of this, surrounds them.

SPN RPF Fic: Love Beyond the Color Spectrum

coyotesuspect — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:21:55 GMT

Title: Love Beyond the Color Spectrum
Fandom: Supernatural RPF
Summary: Jared's fabulous, oblivious, and straight. Jensen's just gay. Also- they're totally not dating. J2 AU. Jensen/Jared
Rating: NC 17
Word Count: ~5500
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
AN: Mainly, this is schmoop.

On Thursday, he’s helping Danneel sort through a stack of rough drafts when she touches his wrist and says in an odd tone of voice, “Hey Jared, when was the last time you went out on a date?”

“Um,” says Jared, because Danneel’s nice and all, but he’s an intern and she’s one of his mentors, so he’s pretty sure this line of conversation can only end up in the zone of sexual harassment.

Danneel must see the panic in his eyes, because she makes an impatient tsking noise and says, “I’m not asking you out for me, you giant lump. I was hoping I could set you up with a friend.”

“Um,” says Jared again, because he’s still pretty sure this falls somewhere under sexual harassment. He hedges. “It’s been awhile, I guess.”

Since he almost married Sandy, he thinks. So at least seven months.

Jared doesn’t do break ups well.

“So you won’t mind going out to dinner with my friend this weekend,” says Danneel brightly.

“Who’s your friend?” asks Jared, in lieu of actually answering Danneel’s question.

There’s a pause, and then Danneel smiles. It’s a smile that makes Jared feel like a wolf who’s just been spotted from Sarah Palin’s aircraft, that is to say, doomed. And right then, he knows he’s going to agree.

“Jenny,” says Danneel finally. “Their name’s Jenny.”

*****

So that’s how Jared ends up at an Italian restaurant he probably can’t afford to eat at, waiting for his blind date. He feels sort of stupid. He doesn’t even know what “Jenny” looks like. Danneel had just smiled and said, “Don’t worry. Jenny will find you.”

Which was not at all comforting. But at least whatever girl Danneel tries to hook him up with should be less… herpes-positive than the ones his roommate Chad keeps throwing at him.

He’s been idly flipping through the menu for about ten minutes, when he feels a tap on his shoulder. He half turns in his seat, and there’s a guy kind of leaning above him, young looking and nicely dressed.

“Jared?” says the guy, a little hopefully. Which is kind of weird, because why would he be hopeful that Jared was Jared? But he knows his name, which means the dude’s definitely not the waiter. “You’re Jared, right?”

“Yeah…” says Jared warily. He wracks his brain, trying to remember if he’s seen this guy before. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t, because the guy has the kind of face it’d be impossible to forget: huge green eyes, amazing lips, slightly crooked nose, freckles. And okay, that’s even weirder, because Jared never notices a guy’s features. It’s just not his thing.

The guy smiles, looks relieved. “Hey,” he says, holding out his hand. “I’m Jensen.”

Jared continues to stare at him blankly, and the guy drops his hand.

“Danneel’s friend?” says Jensen tentatively, and it all clicks.

“Wait,” says Jared. “You’re Jenny?”

Jensen cringes. “Did she really call me Jenny?” he asks plaintively.

“Yeah,” says Jared. And oh God, he’s going to kill Dani tomorrow. “I mean, I kinda thought-”

Jensen’s eyes go big, well, bigger, and he swears softly under his breath.

“You thought I was a chick,” he says.

Jared nods. “Pretty much. Jenny’s kind of, you know, girly for a nickname.”

“She’s the only one who calls me that,” says Jensen dryly. He fidgets and eyes Jared’s shirt. “You’d wear that to a date with a woman?”

“It complements my complexion,” says Jared defensively. “And pink is very in right now.”

“Yeah,” smirks Jensen. “If you’re a four year old girl.”

Jared manages to glare at Jensen for about three seconds, and then he bursts into laughter. Jensen laughs too, and it makes his whole face light up.

He has a nice laugh, thinks Jared.

“So this is awkward?” he says. “I’m not alone in thinking this is awkward?”

Jensen nods. “Very awkward,” he agrees. He glances at the door. “I should probably just…”

“No way,” says Jared, waving at Jensen to sit. He beams up at him. “We’re both here. Might as well eat, right?”

Jensen looks like he wants to say no, face twisting up, and Jared gives him his best puppy dog eyes. It always works on his girlfriends, and it works on Jensen now. He can tell the second Jensen gives in. His shoulders sag a little and he stops looking like someone who’s about to tell you they ran over your dog.

“Why not?” he says ruefully, taking the seat across from Jared.

Jared grins and leans across the table. “So, I was thinking I’d order the risotto, but-”

It turns out that Jensen’s awesome. He’s a Texas boy like Jared, and a middle child with a younger sister and an older brother. They spend a lot of time talking about that, and then Jensen tells him that he and Danneel have been best friends since college. So then they talk about college. And it’s…it’s just nice. Jensen’s smart with a dry wit, and he listens sympathetically when Jared tells him about Sandy.

And Jared never tells people he just met about Sandy. He’s also pretty sure it’s not kosher to talk about exes on a first date, but then again, it’s not really a date. Jared’s honestly a little glad Jensen turned out to be a guy. It’s too soon after Sandy for a girlfriend, but a guy can never have too many friends.

Jensen even tries to split the check in half, despite the fact that Jared ordered an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert. But Jared’s momma taught him better manners than that, so he thanks Jensen and then kindly tells him to shut the hell up. Because when two-thirds of the bill is your fault, you don’t settle for paying half.

“Hey,” says Jared, after they’ve paid and tipped the waitress. “Give me your number.” He pulls out his phone. “We should hang out again sometimes.”

Jensen looks like he wants to say no again, and Jared’s too hurt to try the puppy dog eyes. He wonders, vaguely panicked, if he came across as a dork or an asshole, if Jensen’s been sitting here the entire time in a tremendous amount of social pain. He seemed like he was having fun- Jared was- but then he remembers Jensen mentioning something about acting. He could have been acting. Jared bets Jensen’s a great actor.

His emotions must show on his face, because suddenly, Jensen’s relenting. He takes Jared’s phone and flips it open to program in his number.

“You really gonna call me?” he asks, expression somewhere between worried and amused.

“Oh, absolutely,” says Jared, taking his phone back from Jensen. He smiles slyly. “You gonna pick up?”

Jensen laughs and nods, and they stand up. Jensen goes for the handshake, but Jared’s not really a handshake kind of guy, and besides, he really likes Jensen. He pulls Jensen in for a hug. Jensen’s stiff for just a second, and then he relaxes and kind of awkwardly pats Jared on the back. He probably doesn’t get a lot of hugs, which Jared thinks is pretty sad. Hugs are awesome. But maybe hugging’s impractical when you’re gay; other guys might see it as a come on or something.

He pulls away, but keeps his hands on Jensen’s shoulders.

“Thanks,” he says, with his biggest, most blinding grin. “I had a wonderful evening.”

“Yeah,” nods Jensen, looking slightly dazed. “Me too.”

*****

The next morning Jared has work, and as soon as he drops off the edits Kripke’s been bawling for, he marches into Danneel’s office to glare at her.

Her eyes go round as soon as she sees him, and her mouth pinches in like she’s trying to swallow a laugh.

“So,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. He looms above her, just a little bit. For effect. “My date last night.”

She nods. “Your date last night.” She sounds kind of breathy and choked, definitely holding back laughter then. “How’d it go?”

He breaks into a smile and eases back, lulling her into a false sense of security. “Really well, actually. ‘Jenny’ and I had a great time. We’re probably gonna hang out again this Friday.”

Strictly speaking, that’s not exactly true. Well, not yet at least. He hasn’t asked Jensen if he wants to hang out this Friday, but he plans to. And he’s, like, ninety percent positive Jensen’ll say yes.

“Really Jay?” asks Danneel. “That’s… that’s great.”

Some emotion flits across her face that takes Jared a moment to name. Hopeful, he realizes. She was honestly hoping he and Jensen would click and go have lots of gay sex and live in Iowa and adopt little Chinese girls. It almost makes him feel bad for what he’s about to say to her next, but first he has to collect his thoughts after they scattered from the mental image of Jensen and gay sex.

He blinks, and then remembers what he was doing.

“Yeah,” he says, throwing his hands dramatically into the air. “Too bad I’m not gay Dani! I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that.”

Danneel’s expression reels back in to its normal state of superior and vaguely amused. She arches an eyebrow at his Chucks. They’re magenta, and they add an awesome splash of color to his otherwise drab work outfit. Slowly, the corners of her mouth lift up in a smirk.

“Oh, whatever,” he says prissily, and he stalks away.

“I dunno!” she shouts after him. “Those shoes definitely say flaming homosexual.”

Jared flips her off over his shoulder, just on the principle of the thing.

*****

He texts Jensen that evening after he gets off work. He knows there’s some rule about waiting more than twenty-four hours to contact someone after a date, but he and Jensen didn’t actually go on a date. So he figures he’s good.

Hey he texts.

He waits.

Jared?

Yeah. :)

Hey man. What’s up?

N/m. Wanna go out Friday?

There’s a pause, longer than Jared thinks it should take for Jensen to reply. But maybe he’s busy doing something else. Talking to someone. Or something. He wonders if Jensen’s on a date. But, no. That’s stupid. Jensen wouldn’t be texting if he were on a date with someone. He didn’t look at his phone the whole time he was with Jared.

Not that they were, technically speaking, on a date.

Out?

Like to a bar or sumthin.

Another long pause, and Jared shifts uneasily in his chair, waiting for Jensen to reply. Finally, he gets an answer.

Sure.

And he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

*****

The rest of the week drudges by as he waits for Friday to come. He’s impatient at work, snapping at the other interns and he’s bitchy to Danneel when she asks him to bring her coffee, which as an intern, is kind of his job. She normally gets coffee herself, but she’s been working late on a new ad campaign, and the stress is clearly getting to her. So it’s a wonder she doesn’t just bite his head off when he slams the coffee on her desk with a sullen, “Enjoy.”

“Jesus Christ Padalecki!” she snaps, hastily moving the sketch she’s working on away from the coffee that sloshes over the side of the cup. Jared winces. “What the fuck’s your problem?”

“Jared Tristan Padalecki, actually,” he attempts, hoping humor will save him from his imminent castration.

She glares at him, and he feels his kidneys start to fail.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, bowing his head. “I’m just… I got this thing on Friday, and I’m kinda... nervous.”

He didn’t realize he was nervous until just this moment, but now that he’s said it, he realizes it’s the proper word to describe how he’s been feeling since Monday night.

Danneel’s whole body goes still, and slowly, she tilts her face up to look at him. Jared kind of freezes. Danneel has this expression that always reminds him of a shark, and she’s wearing it now.

Blood in the water, his mind gibbers, panicked.

“This thing?” she repeats, mouth curling upwards around the words. “Why Jared, you didn’t say anything. Got a hot date?”

“Yeah,” he blurts, before he can think his response through. But Danneel does that to him sometimes; it’s a fight or flight response, really. He can’t be held accountable for his actions. “Going out with Jensen.”

Her eyes narrow into slits.

“But not like that!” he backtracks hastily. “We’re just going out. As friends,” he adds firmly.

Danneel throws her head back and cackles.

*****

And suddenly, it’s Friday, and Jared has no idea what to wear. He dithers in front of his closet for half an hour, and when Chad walks by and calls him a pussy for the second time, he ends up just grabbing the shirt directly in front of him. It’s pink, but a different one from last week.

He stares at his wardrobe for another second. He does have a lot of pink.

Jared gets to the bar about five minutes after he told Jensen he’d meet him there. Jensen’s already seated at the bar, clearly uncomfortable, and Jared feels bad about that. Jensen’s a pretty cool guy, but he doesn’t really seem like the type who’s comfortable being alone in an unfamiliar place with a lot of strangers.

“Hey,” says Jared, sliding into the seat next to Jensen. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Hey,” says Jensen back, body language immediately relaxing. He smiles genially. “It’s cool man. I figured you were just being a girl about your wardrobe.” He casts an amused look at Jared’s shirt. “Pink again, I see.”

“Your jealousy is so unbecoming,” sighs Jared. He orders an appletini from the bartender. Hey, he’s six foot four and a hundred and ninety pounds of muscle. He can drink anything he wants without his masculinity being called into question.

Jensen doesn’t seem to agree though. He snorts and orders a lager, then says with bright, fake interest, “So tell me Jared, what sorority were you in during college?”

“Phi Beta Sigma,” replies Jared promptly, equally bright and perky. Jensen laughs, and there’s a lull in the conversation, though not an awkward one.

“Danneel was in a sorority,” says Jensen after a moment. “You and her…” He stops, quirking his mouth up as he thinks over what to say. “I mean, she’s pretty…” He waves his hand around, searching for the right word. “Pretty,” he finishes lamely. “Are you and her…”

Jared represses a shudder.

“No,” he says forcefully. He laughs. “She kind of scares me, to be honest. But…” He considers it for a moment, wrinkling his face thoughtfully. “I guess she’s all right. I mean, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

Jensen stares at him.

“What?” asks Jared, a little nervously.

“Dude,” says Jensen, shaking his head. “If you’re into that kind of thing? I’m gay, and I’m pretty sure I would still sleep with Danneel.”

“Yeah,” mutters Jared, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “No accounting for taste, I guess.” He half turns away from Jensen and glances around the bar. It’s mainly just other twenty-somethings, in groups and pairs, enjoying a Friday night out.

“He’s cute,” he says suddenly, pointing across the room at a dark-haired guy with a group of friends.

Jensen blinks at him. “What…”

“That guy,” presses Jared, stabbing his finger in the dark-haired man’s direction. “He’s cute, yeah? Want me to go chat him up for you, be your wingman?”

“My wingman?” repeats Jensen dubiously.

Jared nods enthusiastically, “Like on How I Met Your Mother. Barney’s straight, but his brother’s gay. And black, but that’s not really important. And they help each other get dates and stuff by hitting on people obnoxiously and then the other one comes in ‘for the rescue.’ Except it’s kind of ironic because in real life Neil Patrick Harris is gay, and Wayne Brady- that’s the brother- is straight, and-”

Jensen starts laughing and Jared trails off to a halt.

“Dude!” breathes out Jensen, head shaking with mirth. His eyes are squished up, and Jared can see little crinkles around them. They’re kinda cute.

“Sorry,” he says, cringing. “I babble. It’s a thing. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Jensen, straightening up. He shoots Jared a shy smile. “But none of this wingman crap, okay? I was kinda just enjoying hanging out with you, you know?”

Some warm, pleasant feeling swoops through Jared’s gut.

“Dude,” he says affectionately, punching Jensen lightly on the arm. “I gotchya.”

*****

Jensen drives Jared home at the end of the night, even though Jared lives within walking distance of the bar.

“You know,” says Jensen, as Jared’s getting out. Jared looks back at him, and Jensen clears his throat, fingers tapping against the steering wheel. “A couple of my friends have a show next Saturday. If you’re interested…”

Jared smiles. “I’d love to,” he says, and Jensen blushes adorably and looks away.

“Great,” he says. “I’ll pick you up around eight.”

*****

If anything, the next week is even slower than the last one. But Jared’s excited rather than anxious this time around, and he floats through the office, cheerful even for himself.

“Well you’re in a good mood,” says Danneel on Tuesday. “Guess you and Jensen had a good time.”

“None of your business,” sing-songs Jared, gathering up the rejected color schemes to bring them back up to the fourth floor.

Danneel smirks knowingly after him.

*****

True to his word, Jensen picks Jared up at eight, and they go out for dinner before heading over to where Jensen’s friends- Chris and Steve- are playing. They spend most of the time talking about music, and Jared gets the impression that Jensen’s friends aren’t gonna play his type. But he likes spending time with Jensen, so he’s not really that put out.

The place Chris and Steve are playing is out and out shady. But Jared’s an optimist by nature and a (soon to be) ad man by profession, so he tells himself that it’s colorful and has character.

He mentions that to Jensen as they find their seats, and Jensen shoots him an amused glance. But he doesn’t have time to say anything, because Chris and Steve are getting on stage. And pretty soon, it’s too loud to really hear anything. Jared was right. It’s not his type of music. But it is Jensen’s, and Jared likes just watching him. Jensen’s really into the music, head swaying slightly and hand tapping the rhythm out on his thigh. He’s got on a tiny half-smile that he seems unaware of, and Jared kind of wants to take his picture.

“What?” half-yells Jensen, midway through the set when he finally realizes Jared’s been paying more attention to him than Chris and Steve.

“Nothing,” says Jared, shaking his head. He leans toward Jensen so he can talk without having to shout. “Hey, what would you do if I requested Freebird?”

“Oh fuck you,” laughs Jensen. “I’d break your fingers.”

*****

They start hanging out a lot after that. Once or twice a week, going to bars after work, or trying out different restaurants Jared’s heard about, and even just playing video games at each other’s apartments. They switch off apartments. Jared’s is bigger, but he shares it with Chad. He doesn’t mind Chad, but Jensen’s reaction to him is some bastard offspring of horrified and fascinated, like a small child with a particularly nasty looking bug.

On the other hand, Jensen’s apartment is seriously tiny, basically just a room with a bed, stove, and TV shoved into it with a tiny bathroom off to the side. And when they play, the only place to sit is on his bed. Jared thinks it should probably be awkward, but it isn’t. It’s just Jensen, who’s pretty much the coolest guy Jared’s ever met.

It does get awkward one evening, but it’s only that one time, after Jared finishes kicking Jensen’s ass at Mario Kart.

“Victory!” crows Jared, raising his arms above his head. “Victory for Zim!”

“Yeah,” grumps Jensen. “Whatever.”

“Hey,” says Jared smarmily. He drapes his arm over Jensen’s shoulders. “Don’t be sour just cuz I’m better 'an you. I’m sure you have some kind of talent too. Just,” he smirks, “not video games.”

Jensen squints at him, and then he jumps up. Jared’s arm falls off of him.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” says Jensen. He opens the door to his closet and reaches up to the shelf that runs along top and pulls out a guitar.

Jared watches with interest as Jensen settles himself back onto the bed. He sits crosslegged, across from Jared, and strums his fingers almost reverentially across the guitar's strings. At first he just picks out chords, but slowly, Jared begins to distinguish a melody, something slow and sweet. Jensen begins singing along with it, voice soft and low, and Jared can’t really make out the words.

Jensen has a nice voice though, a soothing voice, but for some reason, it makes Jared’s heart speed up, and his breath gets lodged in his chest. Jensen doesn’t notice; he’s concentrating on his guitar, eyes half-closed and expression angelic. He looks radiant, touchable. Jared just wants to lean across the slim divide between them and-

He twists his head away from Jensen, and lets out a deep breath. “How come you don’t get yourself a bigger place?” he asks, getting his breathing back under control. Jensen has a pretty good job. He’d be able to afford it.

The room goes silent, and Jared nearly flinches.

“Dunno,” says Jensen thoughtfully. “Guess I haven’t found a good enough reason to move yet.”

Yeah. That’s the only time it ever feels awkward to Jared. The rest of the time, him and Jensen get along swimmingly.

*****

“Epic party going down this Saturday,” says Chad one Wednesday, popping his head into Jared’s room. “You coming, bitch?”

“Can’t,” says Jared. He’s lying on his bed, phone in hand as he texts Jensen. “Imma help Jensen move into his new place.”

Chad’s face wrinkles unattractively. “Jay,” he whines, disapproval ringing in his voice. “You’re always hanging out with that homo these days.”

Jared scowls at him. “Chad!” he practically yells. “Don’t fucking call him that.”

Chad holds his hands out in front of him, a placating gesture.

“Dude,” he says, eyebrows arching. “Chillax. I say shit like that all the time. S’never bothered you before.”

Jared’s scowl remains fixed on his face.

“Yeah,” he growls. “Well don’t do it anymore, all right? It’s fucking disrespectful.”

“Whatever,” says Chad, rolling his eyes. He slinks away. Jared’s pretty sure he makes out a disgruntled mutter of, Fucking fairy, but he’s not sure if Chad’s referring to him or Jensen, so he decides to let it slide.

*****

“That’s the last of them,” announces Jared, dropping off a box of what he thinks are DVDs onto the floor of Jensen’s new living room. He collapses onto the couch that he and Chris dragged up the stairs about four hours ago and wonders if he could convince Jensen to order a pizza instead of going out for dinner. It’s been a long day.

“Chris and Steve leave?” asks Jensen, wandering into the living room. He’s been in the bedroom for the past half hour or so, probably setting the bed up. Jared gets that. No one likes sleeping on the floor.

“Yeah,” nods Jared, stretching out on the couch and yawning. His shirt rides up, and he catches Jensen glancing at the strip of skin it reveals before his eyes flash back to Jared’s face. It makes Jared feel warm and kind of odd, but it’s not exactly an uncomfortable feeling. He’s not really sure what it is.

“Yeah,” he says again, soft this time, and it sounds like he’s answering a different question. He cuts his eyes away, not sure what to do with the sudden tension, and glances around Jensen’s new apartment.

“It’s bigger than your old one,” he remarks.

“Guess I finally found a good enough reason to move,” replies Jensen, and Jared whips his head around to look at him.

Jensen’s eyes are round and scared, but his jaw’s set tightly and he looks determined.

“I’m not crazy, am I?” asks Jensen softly. “There’s something going on between us, right?”

Jared wavers. He stands up and faces Jensen, because this doesn’t feel like the kind of conversation he should have while sprawled out on Jensen’s couch.

“Jensen,” he hedges. “I ... I mean, I’m straight…”

Jensen kisses him. It’s hot and wet and open, and Jared kisses back more out of surprise than anything else.

And then he kisses back because, hey, Jensen’s kind of an awesome kisser. He slides his tongue past Jared’s teeth, and Jared steps closer into him. They’re pressed together, chest to thigh, and Jensen kisses Jared like this is the only chance he’ll ever get. It’s searing and perfect, and Jared wraps his hands around Jensen’s hips and arches his back.

They stagger backwards, and the back of Jared’s legs hit the couch. He drops onto it, and Jensen falls with him, into his lap. Jensen grinds against him, erection pressing into Jared’s own.

“Fuuuck,” groans Jared, head falling back. Jensen mouths along his jaw and neck.

“Still straight?” asks Jensen, smiling against his ear. His voice has gone low and husky. Jared shivers.

“Y-y-yeah,” he says, unsteadily, fisting his hands in Jensen’s shirt and rutting up against him.

Jensen gasps, then says, “You sure?” He wedges a hand between them and cups Jared through his jeans, squeezing lightly.

“Nrrgh,” manages Jared. He presses his eyes close, sees sparks as Jensen undoes the zipper. “Bi-curious maybe.”

Jensen bites his neck, gets his hand wrapped around Jared’s dick. He gives it a short tug, and Jared jolts up with a bitten back moan.

“Definitely bisexual,” he pants, and Jensen kisses him again, laughs into his mouth.

“You just keep sliding down the Kinsey scale, don’t you?”

Jared nods and Jensen pulls away, stands up.

“Hey!” protests Jared, reaching for Jensen to pull him back down. Jensen swats his hands away.

“New couch,” he tells Jared primly. “Don’t wanna stain it.”He jerks his head at the bedroom and arches his eyebrows suggestively.

“Gotchya,” says Jared. He clambers up after Jensen and follows him into the bedroom, pulling off his shirt and kicking off his shoes and pants as he does so.

Jensen’s only got his shirt off when he gets to the bed, and he freezes at the sight of Jared standing in the doorway. He stares.

“What?” says Jared, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

Jensen shakes his head. “Nothing man. It’s just…” He bites his lip, already red and swollen from the kissing, and Jared finds himself staring at Jensen’s mouth. His cock pulses painfully, and fuck. Jared’s never gonna live it down if he comes all but untouched.

“You got no idea how long I’ve wanted to see you like this,” says Jensen finally.

“Oh,” says Jared. He blushes all over and smiles, pleased and embarrassed. And suddenly Jensen’s on him, pressing short, frantic kisses to his mouth and neck

“Your dimples,” says Jensen between kisses. “Jesus Christ, I love your dimples.”

Jared mumbles something into Jensen’s neck, and Jensen pulls away to look at him. “Huh?”

“Freckles,” clarifies Jared. “I feel the same way about your freckles.”

Jensen smiles, slow and stunning.

“Bed,” he says. “Now.” And Jared thanks God Jensen took the time earlier to set the bed up. It even has sheets on it. He crawls onto the bed, lying on his back, and wriggles out of his boxers and socks. Jensen opens the bedside table and pulls out a condom and some lube.

“Very classy Jen,” snorts Jared. “Bet those were the first things you unpacked.”

“Boy Scout motto,” leers Jensen, pulling off his pants and underwear in one fluid motion. “Be prepared.”

“You were never a Boy Scout,” scoffs Jared, and the last part comes out sort of high and breathy, because Jensen gets onto the bed and straddles him. And they’re finally together, bare flesh against bare flesh, cocks rubbing against each other, velvet and hot. Jared tips his head back, breathes through his nose.

“Says the former Girl Scout,” murmurs Jensen. He runs his fingers up Jared’s stomach and chest, pausing to brush his thumb against the nipples, and Jared shudders at the sensation.

“Jay,” says Jensen, voice wheedling. “Come on Jay, open your eyes. Want you to look at me.”

He hears the small pop as Jensen opens up the lube, and he opens his eyes. He almost wishes he hadn’t, because the sight of Jensen crouched over him, eyes blown wide and lips lush and shiny is almost enough to make him come right there.

Jensen smiles at him, and drizzles lube over his right hand, then leans back as he reaches back behind him. Jared’s eyes go wide.

“Are you-” he hesitates.

“Want you inside me Jay,” moans Jensen, fucking himself back onto his fingers, and Jared’s mind sparks white at the sight. Jensen tears open the condom with his teeth and free hand, and he pulls it over Jared smoothly. Jared jerks up at the touch.

“Fuck,” he swears. “Not gonna last much longer Jen.”

Jensen nods. And then he rises onto his knees and slams himself onto Jared’s cock. Jared gasps. Jensen’s tighter and hotter than any girl Jared’s ever been with, and he slides himself up and down the length of Jared's shaft, jerking himself off, head tilted back and showing off the line of his throat. He rolls his hips in way that makes Jared’s whole body thrum.

“Gorgeous,” babbles Jared. “Fucking gorgeous. Feel so good Jen, fucking riding me.”

He thrusts up into Jensen, fucks into him as Jensen rides him. Jensen goes unsteady, muscles beginning to clench around Jared’s dick, and Jared realizes Jensen’s about to come. He reaches his hands up, grips Jensen’s hips tightly and fucks him hard and deep.

“Jesus fuck,” yells Jensen, eyes opening wide, and then he’s coming, spurting across Jared’s stomach and chest.

Jared feels his own climax build up inside his chest, spiral up white and hot inside him, and he's losing it, hips stuttering into Jensen as he shouts wordlessly, vision going black, going white, and he’s just seeing Jensen, face still open and shining from his orgasm, and he’s going up and up and up-

and-

he’s gone.

*****

““Still say you’re not gay?” asks Jensen later. He’s snuggled up next to Jared, looking smug.

Jared rolls onto his side so that he and Jensen are facing each other, foreheads almost touching.

“I dunno,” he grins. “I think we might have to try a few more things before I’m sure.”

Jensen smiles, slow and wicked, and he slides a hand up Jared’s side. “Well,” he says. “Put it that way...Let’s get started then.”

“Wait,” says Jared, a thought occurring to him. He pulls away and sits up. “So earlier, when I was talking about how large your apartment was, were you- were you gonna ask me to move in with you?”

Jensen sits up too. “Yeah,” he says, staring down at his lap. He rubs his hands together. “About that… It… It wasn’t really a plan. More of a, you know.” He makes a vague gesture. "Half-formed thought?"

Jared laughs, and Jensen gives him a nervous glance.

“You’re kind of adorable, you know that, right?” he says, leaning forward and taking Jensen’s face in his hands. He tilts Jensen’s head up and kisses him. It’s good, warm and lingering and less frantic than the kisses from before. Jensen’s breath hitches softly and he leans into the kiss, lips parting.

Jared pulls away again.

Jensen makes a frustrated noise. “What now?”

“Dude,” says Jared, eyes round. “I owe Danneel, like, the best fruit basket ever.”

-End.

(Overly long) AN: Yes, I’m aware I ripped off an episode of 30 Rock. But to be fair, I didn’t realize I was being a filthy plagiarist until I was already a couple hundred words in.

‘Sides, my version ends in gay sex. So clearly mine is better.

Danneel’s line about Jared’s shoes, however, is pretty much a direct lift from the 30 Rock episode. My apologies to Tina Fey. And also to NPH and Invader Zim.

Um. I never intended to write this, but I had the idea at dinner that fabulousbutnotgay!Jared should go on a blind date with gaybutsadlynotfabulous!Jensen, and since my last four fics have been on the serious side, I thought I’d unwind with some schmoop. Things just ballooned from there, and I ended up writing this instead of sleeping. So. That’s good life choices for you.

Jared’s more frat boy and less fabulous than I wanted him to be, and I’m sad that even coming in at over 5000 words, I didn’t manage to include Misha. Oh well. NEXT TIME.

Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.

OH LOOK. THE SUN IS UP. HELLO SUN!

SPN Fic: Arson

coyotesuspect — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:59:45 GMT

In celebration of my monthiversary here on lj, have some porn.

Title: Arson
Fandom: Supernatural

Summary: In the end, they decide to burn the warehouse down. PWP Sam/Dean, first time, car sex, dirty talk. Sam is 16.

Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~4200 (3/4ths of this is porn.)
Spoilers/Warnings: incest, underage; no spoilers.
Disclaimer:

In the end, they decide to burn the warehouse down. Turns out Elizabeth Klein wasn’t the only young girl murdered here and not the only pissed off ghost. They don’t have time to track down and dig up the others, so John makes the call to let it burn. Dean finishes pouring the lighter fluid out and Sam finishes with the salt just as John drags out the unconscious body of the guy they were just in time to save.

“You boys finish up here,” barks John. “Then peel out in the Impala. I’m gonna take our friend Tim here to the ER.”

“Yes sir,” snaps back Dean, shaking a match into his hand. Sam tries to grab it from him. “Rendezvous at oh eight hundred?”

John nods, patting Tim down for the keys to the guy’s car. He finds the keys and nods at Dean again, then takes off. Dean watches him go, and when he turns around, Sam’s staring at him with a determined expression.

“I want to light the match,” he says, holding out his hand.

“Nuh uh,” smirks Dean. “Didn’t I ever teach you not to play with fire?”

“Rock, paper, scissors,” demands Sam, holding his fist out, and he softens his expression to one of pleading. Dean swallows.

“All right,” he says roughly, and he picks scissors and loses in quick succession. “Best two out of three,” he tries, but Sam just laughs at him and snatches the match out of Dean’s hand. He lights it against his jeans, and Dean feels a familiar liquid warmth roll through his stomach at that, quickly accompanied by the equally familiar nauseous twist of guilt.

Sam throws the match into the warehouse, then steps back as the fire blossoms up. It dances angrily, red and orange, sends flickering shadows across Sam’s face. And it hits Dean then like it’s been hitting him for the last year that Sam is gorgeous. He keeps telling himself that he means it objectively, that a stranger would see Sam’s slanted eyed and wide mouth, his long limbs and feral-pretty features and think Sam attractive.

But he’s having a hard time breathing when Sam looks at him and says, voice breathy and urgent, “Come on Dean, we need to get outta here.”

Dean nods, and they get into the Impala, leave the burning building behind. Dean tries to gauge how long they should let it burn before calling 911, and Sam unrolls the window and sticks his head out into the muggy night air to watch the flames.

Dean hears Sam laugh, high and hysterical, and when Sam pops his head back into the car, he’s smiling moon-bright and sickle-sharp.

“Jesus Christ,” says Sam delightedly, and he’s twitchy and shaking in the passenger seat.

“You’re in a good mood,” snorts Dean, his own adrenaline starting to drain out of him. He’s beginning to feel heavy and sated, his own good mood buoyed up by Sam’s. It’s rare that Sam smiles these days, let alone laughs.

“I just committed a felony Dean,” says Sam. “Fuck.” He sounds breathless and nervous and gleeful, and Dean slants him a smile.

“You’re such a pyro,” he says.

“Yeah,” scoffs Sam. “Cuz you’re not,” and then he’s beaming again, pounding his hands against the dashboard and saying, “Seriously Dean. Holy fuck. Holy fuck.”

Dean laughs, light, soaring feeling in his head and chest as he navigates through the empty streets. It takes him a second to realize that Sam’s crept across the front seat, one hand on Dean’s shoulder and the other on his thigh, and Dean jerks away.

“What the fuck Sam?” he says, and Sam smiles up at him, child-wide and mischievous.

“Pull over Dean,” he says. “I want to watch the fire.”

“The fire?” repeats Dean dumbly, and he glances at the side mirror. Sure enough, he realizes, he’s driven them onto higher ground, and the street they’re on looks down at the warehouses below. The one warehouse is blazing, flames merry and bright against the flat black of the August sky. Dean pulls over, still watching the flames in the mirror, and he feels terribly young.

“Shit,” says Dean quietly, and then he feels a familiar rush of exhilaration. He grabs Sam and headlocks him, tangling his fingers in the soft curls at the nape of Sam’s neck. “Job’s not so bad now, is it sparky?”

“It’s got it perks,” agrees Sam, punch-drunk and giddy, and next thing Dean knows, he’s got a lapful of squirming little brother.

“What the-” he starts to say, but Sam seals his mouth over Dean’s, messy and determined. Dean’s brain shuts down for a second, blown wide open with shock and panic. He pushes Sam away and wipes at his mouth.

“What the hell are you doing?” he explodes, scared, nervous energy shooting through him. Sam makes a face and wriggles in his lap, and Dean grunts without meaning to, his body beginning to react to Sam’s.

“Come on Dean,” says Sam, eyes huge and bright and wild. He licks his lips and Dean can’t help but watch. Then Sam tips forward into Dean and mouths at the spot where his stubble meets his necks, sends shivers through Dean’s spine.

“We burned down a building,” says Sam, soft and crafty. “We should celebrate.”

He kisses Dean again, and Dean’s mind blooms out like a clusterbomb, swell of terror and lust in his gut that his brother wants this too. Part of him always hoped that he was the only Winchester brother fucked up this bad, ignores the way Sam sometimes glances sidelong at him with narrowed eyes and a sly, sharp smile.

“Want you so bad,” says Sam into his mouth. “Please Dean.” He grinds down against Dean, and Dean instinctively presses back against him, feels the sweet burn of friction and pressure. He swears softly and feels Sam smiles against his mouth, press into him harder. Shit, thinks Dean. Shit.

He pulls back.

Sam stares at him. “Wha…”

Dean’s always been weak.

“Backseat,” growls Dean. “And take your goddamned shirt off.”

It takes a minute for what Dean’s saying to hit Sam, and when it does, Sam grins impishly and complies, stripping off his shirt in a second and tossing it on the floor, before climbing into the backseat. Dean follows and ends up straddling Sam. He takes off his own shirt and tosses into the darkness of the front seat.

“Come here often?” asks Sam, grinning up at him.

“Course Sammy,” smirks Dean. “This is where I bring all my dates.”

Sam wrinkles his nose. “What the fuck Dean?” he huffs, like he wasn’t begging for it moments earlier. “I sleep here.”

“Yeah,” murmurs Dean, bending down so his lips are pressed to Sam’s ear. “Bet you’re gonna be thinking about that next time we’re in the car and you’re back here, huh?” He licks his lips and his tongue flicks against the shell of Sam’s ear. Sam shivers. “Gonna be thinking about me fucking some girl, wishing it were you. Gonna get you hard Sammy, and you’re not gonna be able to do anything about it, just sit here and squirm.”

“Full of yourself,” says Sam, but he’s breathing hard, face flushed and eyes rounded like coins.

“Guess I’ll just have to show you,” grunts Dean, and he leverages himself back up so he’s straddling his brother again. He stares down, frozen for a moment. Sammy’s laid out before him, all long rangy lines, his eyelashes sweeping dark and thick against his cheeks and his mouth pink and shiny with spit. Dean wants to mark him up, suck bruises into his neck and leave bitemarks on his collarbone.

Dad’ll see those, he thinks with a peculiar, distant clarity. And at the thought of Dad, at what he and Sam are doing, it’s enough to make Dean stop, sick burn of guilt and shame in his gut. He doesn’t know which is worse, that he was gonna touch Sam or that he was gonna let Sam touch him, compound his sin by dragging his little brother into it. And he’s in stasis, completely paralyzed, blood pounding in his ears like the sea.

But then Sam wriggles and jerks up, erection pressing into Dean’s own, and he snaps, “Jesus Dean. I’m the virgin. Are you gonna do something or what?”

And that snaps Dean back to the present with his little brother cracked open and begging for it like every other wet dream Dean’s had for the past six months. He doesn’t dignify Sam’s challenge with a reply, just arches down and presses his tongue flat against Sam’s nipple, swirls his tongue around the tight bead and then scrapes his teeth with sharp intent against his brother’s skin. Sam’s whole body jerks and shudders like he’s been electrocuted.

“Fuck,” he says, and Dean smiles against his skin, dragging his mouth and tongue down Sam’s body, finding the ridges of scars, the sharp curve of the ribs and the indents of muscle. He bites at Sam’s bellybutton, knows he’ll be okay if he leaves a mark there, and Sam jerks and flails again, still not used enough to his new body to be able to properly fight with it, let alone fuck with it.

“I gotchya Sammy,” murmurs Dean, hand creeping up to unzip Sam’s jeans, and he can feel his own hard-on pressing tight and painful in his denim. He grunts and ignores it. There’s a thicket of dark, wiry curls and then Sam’s dick is poking out of his boxers and the vee of his pants, red and already leaking at the tip. Dean gives it a few experimental strokes.

“Whaddya like?” he asks. “Harder? Slower?”

Sam’s head is tilted away from him, but Dean can see the muscles Sam’s throat and jaw work as he clenches his teeth and grits out, “Harder.”

Dean nods, and then he shimmies back up so that he’s lying pressed against Sam. He gives another few jerks, still ignoring his own erection, and then he feels Sam fumbling at his zipper. It catches on Dean as Sam unzips, and Dean winces and hisses.

“Jesus Sammy. Careful.” he says, and Sam lifts his head and smiles at him cheekily.

“Sorry,” he says brattily, eyes heavy-lidded, and then he pulls Dean out, and Dean stifles a moan. His brother’s got a soft, warm grip, his calluses a rough and pleasant contrast, and his tugs are short and steady.

“A little faster,” breathes Dean, voice gone low and rough. “Twist your wrist more.”

The air’s beginning to get thick and humid, and a sheen of sweat’s broken over Dean’s skin. He and Sam rock into each other, and Dean realigns himself so that his cock is pressed sidelong against Sam’s. Sam moans and Dean thumbs hard against his slit, trying to drag the moan out, and it works, Sam’s mouth stretched wide and shapeless. And then Sam does the same thing to Dean, but harder, just like he’s been doing since he was a kid, copying whatever Dean does and trying to do it better. Dean hisses with pleasure.

“Always were a quick learner,” he says appreciatively.

“Top of my class,” says Sam, mouth quirking up into a smirk.

“Cocky son of a bitch,” laughs Dean, and he grips Sam tighter, quickens his pace, and Sam gasps and copies Dean again. They’re both panting, thrusting into the other’s fist, and strokes getting quicker and dirtier. Sam’s got this expression on his face, mouth serious and eyebrows drawn tight, and it’s the same expression he always wears when he’s concentrating hard on something, tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, the very picture of determination.

And fuck. Dean’s fucked, he’s so fucked. He wants to wipe that expression off his Sam’s face and keep it there forever, just him and Sam rutting against each other, dicks slipping slick and hot against each other, and he wants to kiss his brother and fuck his brother, suck his brother off and bite at the crease of his thigh, the deadly angles of his hipbones. And Dean’s never been more thankful that he doesn’t believe in God, cuz there’s no way he wouldn’t go to Hell for this.

He scrapes his teeth against Sam’s nipple again and follows it up with one last sharp tug on Sam’s dick, and the two in combination have the desired effect. Sam swears loudly and fluently and bucks and shudders against Dean, falling to pieces, and he comes all over himself, sends thick white ropes of come over his stomach and chest. The look on his face, wide-eyed and wondrous, mouth slack, sends Dean over the edge, and he rides his orgasm out just as Sam ends his own, marks his brother filthier with his own come. When he’s done, he collapses on top of Sam, and he lies there for a moment, the both of them breathing loudly, and Dean’s mind fizzed to a warm blankness.

Then Dean pulls himself off, grimacing at the wet smacking sound as his chest peels off Sam’s. Sam stares at the mess of semen on his torso, and Dean expects to hear a whine or complaint. But Sam just smiles, dark, sensual edge to it, and slides a finger through the mess. He sticks his finger in his mouth with a pop, and his cheeks indent around it as his eyelashes flutter, and he arcs up, sticking a second finger into his mouth, and there’s a flash of pink as his tongue flicks at the juncture between the two.

“Dean,” moans Sam around his fingers, and he writhes some more. Dean’s still straddling Sam, and it’s too soon for another round, but Dean’s cock still twitches with interest. And if Sam doesn’t stop his moaning and sucking soon, it’s only gonna be another minute before Dean’s got him on his stomach and is fucking him open.

Dean closes his eyes, and leans back. “Jesus Christ,” he says, voice completely wrecked. “You’re gonna be the death of me Sammy.”

He edges off his brother and gets out of the car; Sam half sits up in attempt to follow.

“Where are you going?” he asks plaintively, and Dean shakes his head.

“Just getting into the driver’s seat,” he explains. “We gotta go get cleaned up Sammy. Can’t go back to Dad looking like that.”

And oh shit, he thinks, Dad. He pushes the thought firmly out of his head. First things first, he’s gotta get Sammy cleaned up. He frowns down at his own bare chest. He could probably use a wash too.

Dean slides into the driver’s seat, trying to think of someplace he and Sam can rinse down. His mind flashes to the river he and Sam went swimming in a few days ago. It’s placid and fairly shallow where they swam, and Dean spent the afternoon half hard and on edge, watching Sam splash golden and happy through the water. It only got worse when Sam got out, trunks hanging baggily off his wiry frame, showing off his hipbones and the trail of hair that ran from his bellybutton down. It would have been everything Dean wanted to just push his brother down into the pebbly shore and...

The river, he thinks giddily. They can go to the river.

The drive to the river is murder. Dean keeps glancing in the rearview mirror to see Sam staring back at him, eyes dark and hooded. Sam’s still got his fingers in his mouth, sucking on them slowly and sliding his tongue in and out. His other hand trails down his chest and down into his pants.

“So fucking good Dean,” he moans, stroking himself slowly and tilting his head back to show off the line of his neck. Dean glances at the road, then back at Sam. His mouth is dry.

“I’ve been jacking off to you for ages,” says Sam dreamily, still touching himself. “I’m so fucked up over you Dean, you know that?”

Dean doesn’t say anything. He looks at the road. Sam’s fucking with him, the little bastard. Dean should’ve expected his brother’d be a complete cocktease. He ignores the moans Sam keeps making, these exaggerated pornographic ones. But then Sam makes this high-pitched whimper that actually sounds real and Dean hears a soft, “Oh,” from the back of the car.

He looks back at the rearview mirror. Sam’s hand has dropped from his mouth, but the other’s still pushed down into his pants, but it doesn’t look like he’s got his hand around his dick anymore. So Dean doesn’t… Oh, he thinks suddenly. Sam’s eyes are huge with pleasure and surprise, and he tilts his hips up, making another high-pitched whimper that goes straight to Dean’s cock.

“Are you,” Dean’s voice cracks. “Are you fingering yourself?” he asks.

Sam catches his eye in the mirror, and his smile is all teeth and shadows.

“Yeah,” he slurs. “S’good.” He closes his eyes and presses down onto his hand, groaning and shuddering. “God Dean,” he says. “I want you to fuck me.”

Dean jerks the steering wheel and nearly sends them into a ditch. He swerves away last minute and says, “Jesus Christ Sammy, you can’t… you can’t say that.”

“Please Dean,” says Sam, and it would sound like he was begging, but there’s a smirk wound up tight in his words, goading Dean and laughing at him.

“You got any idea what you do to me?” demands Dean, and Sam’s answering smile in the mirror says he does.

They reach the river then, and Dean gets out of the car with quick, jerky movements. He pulls open Sam’s door with a harsh tug, then reaches in and pulls Sam out of the car and onto his feet. Sam makes a confused noise and tries to cling to him, and Dean shoves him away. The sun’s beginning to come up, the sky pale and pearl-gray.

“You need to get yourself cleaned up,” Dean says roughly.

“Dean,” whines Sam, and Dean ignores him in favor of checking out the backseat.

“Jesus Christ,” he says. “I gotta fucking clean up here too.”

Sam huffs indignantly, but he doesn’t try to get Dean to pay attention to him again. Dean hears Sam stripping off his jeans as Dean goes back around to the front of the car and finds some napkins stuffed into the glove department. A moment later, he hears the splash that means Sam’s gotten into the river.

He uses the napkins to wipe up the mess in the back, though Sam really did catch the most of it, and then he drops the napkins on the ground for some poor schmuck to find later and goes to take his shoes off.

He steadies himself against the hood of the car and stands on one foot, taking the boot off his other foot. He switches feet, and when he’s done, he turns around to go join Sam in the water, but Sam’s right there in front of him, dripping wet and smiling like the cat who ate the canary. Dean didn’t even hear him get out of the water.

“Nearly gave me a heart attack there,” jokes Dean weakly.

Sam ignores the comment in favor of pushing Dean against the car, and then he drops to his knees in front of him. Dean never bothered to zip his pants back up, and it’s a second’s work for Sam to tug Dean’s dick out of his boxers and lay his mouth to it.

“Sa-a-mmy,” chokes out Dean, and he’s been half-hard since his dick was first able to sit back up and take notice of the proceedings, but he’s instantly, blindingly hard as soon as Sam gets his mouth on him, all wet, sweet heat. Dean flails and tries to get a grip on Sam’s hair, but Sam’s hair is water slick, and Dean’s hands slide through it. He sets them against the Impala instead, bracing himself as Sam goes to town.

It’s clear that Sam’s never given a blowjob before. He’s all mouth and tongue, the painful scrape of teeth, enthusiasm and no finesse. Dean grips him by the back of his head and jerks him back a little.

“Easy tiger,” he says, and Sam nods, goes back to it and does a better job at keeping the teeth to himself. Dean tries hard not to think about how hot it is that is little brother’s never given a blowjob before, and he feels a flash of jealous rage like a lightning storm at the thought of Sammy doing this to someone else, kneeling in some alley and opening his pretty mouth for a stranger.

Dean thrusts into Sam’s mouth then, and it’s hot and soft and silky. Sam chokes then readjusts his position, slurps at Dean’s cock, tongue pressed to the tip and greedily licking at the precome, and then he’s licking along the underside, probing at the thick vein there.

“So fucking gorgeous,” groans Dean, and he realizes he’s babbling. “Sucking my cock Sammy. No idea. You drive me fucking crazy, all the damn time.”

Sam glances up at him from between his bangs, cheeks hollowed and eyes smirking. He’s beautiful and it’s perfect and this hot, tight feeling hits Dean in the chest and spreads out in a wave of warmth and ecstasy. His brother, his fucking little brother, and Dean lays a hand against the side of Sam’s face, stroking at his cheekbone with his thumb.

“Love you,” he sighs. “Love you so fucking much.” And then Sam hums around his dick and Dean’s coming, jerking into Sam’s mouth, shouting out God and Jesus and his little brother’s name. Sam tries to swallow, then gags.

“Gross,” he laughs, voice a little hoarse. There’s come on his chin and lips, and he wipes at it, manages to only spread it across his face. His mouth is red and swollen, and he smiles slyly up at Dean, fucking pleased with himself.

Dean leans down and scoops Sam up, slams him onto the hood of the Impala in one smooth motion. Sam yelps in pain as his back hits the metal, but it turns into a thready gasp when Dean licks his face, broad swipes of his tongue starting at Sam’s chin and following the path Sam’s hand made earlier. He tastes the bitter-salt of his own come and the taste of river water and Sam’s skin beneath that.

“F-fuck Dean,” stutters Sam, arcing up against Dean like he’s trying to push him off, fighting against Dean even now. Dean reaches down and grabs Sam’s dick, and it’s hard and warm in his hand. His grip is on the painful side of tight and he jerks his brother off with short, brutal strokes.

“You like that?” he hisses into Sam’s ear. “Next time I’m not just gonna jerk you off Sammy. I’m gonna bend you over the car and scissor you open, fuck you raw. Bet you’re looking forward to that.” He chuckles darkly and twists his upstroke, and Sam slams his head against the car and thrashes wildly. “Tell me you want it,” he orders.

Sam lifts his head back up, eyes glazed and irises eaten black. “Dean, fuck,” he says.

“Say it,” presses Dean, tightening his grip and Sam hisses in pleasure-pain. “Didn’t have any trouble saying it in the car you little bitch.”

“I want you to fuck me,” whines Sam, pleading and honest, and Dean slips the thumb of his free hand into Sam’s mouth. Sam’s lips instantly close around it, tongue swirling along the pad and then probing at the base. It’s almost as good as having his cock back in that wet-hot suction. Dean fucking loves his brother’s mouth.

“That’s what I thought you slut,” says Dean fondly, and he loosens his grips, turns the strokes longer and smoother, drags it out for Sam. “So fucking desperate for it. Can’t wait to spread your legs for me, can you Sammy?”

Sam groans deep in the back of his throat, and Dean knows his baby brother’s not gonna last much longer. He takes his thumb out of Sam’s mouth and kisses him, tongue-fucks him and swallows his moan, then twists his upstroke again, and Sam’s gone. He keens, high and loud, and his whole body trembles and shakes with the shock of his orgasm, and he shoots his wad like a champ.

He collapses, limp, and Dean takes a step back. Except for Sam’s come on his hand, he’s clean, but he knows they both smell of sex, and Dad’ll be able to tell.

“Come on Sammy,” he says, hooking his clean hand under Sam’s arm and dragging him to his feet. “Need to get you cleaned up again.”

Sam’s head lolls forward, and the poor kid’s dazed and fucked-out. Dean sighs, adjusting his stance so he’s supporting most of Sam’s, and he starts walking them back toward the river. Dean’s not in great shape himself, trembling from the after effects of the hunt and his second orgasm of the night. His mind keeps sparking with half-formed thoughts, and he’s sated and he’s guilty and he really wants to do this again.

“It’s all right Sammy,” he says, stroking his thumb against Sam’s neck. “I gotchya.”

Sam sighs and mumbles something incoherent, and they walk into the river together.

AN: Damn, I think this is the fastest I've ever written 4000 words. So anyway, I've never written porn before, and I never read weecest. So I'm really not sure where this came from. I blame insomnia, but regardless, I'm pretty sure this confirms my seat in a very special hell.

Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.

SPN Fic: Flightless Bird

coyotesuspect — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:10:01 GMT

Title: Flightless Bird
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG 13
Summary: No one ever has to write an essay on Paradise Regained. Three Sam ficlets connected by theme. Pre-series through early S1. Sam/Jess, Sam/Dean.
Word Count: ~1300
Spoilers/Warnings: No specific spoilers. Wincest.
Disclaimer:

Death itself is a music.
-Mary Oliver

He wakes up, sheets sticky, dream still rattling in his head, a girl with soft hands and hair like sunshine, and the alarm clock glows red and mean at him: 3:32. Morning, but just, and he’s awake, cognizant that his sheets are sticky, and he can’t go back to sleep like that. So he drags himself out of bed, and his sheets after him, Dad and Dean still off somewhere, killing something and him with a test tomorrow that he couldn’t miss, that he had to study for. Holy hell of a fight because of it. Tight jawed Dean and their dark eyed father and the whole of Sam incandescent like a firework, like a paper set to flame, trembling in his rage.

Sheets are in the washer and there’s nothing in the house to eat. Sam’s hungry. Teenage boy hungry, his stomach hollowing itself out, and he opens cupboard after cupboard after cupboard until he finds two boxes of Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints, and he thinks, ‘Huh, Dean wasn’t kidding,’ when his brother left during the argument and came back two hours later, shouted through Sam’s door, “I bought you Girl Scout cookies because you’re such a girl.”

He pulls out a sleeve of Thin Mints, cool dark circles of chocolate and mint, and eats them at the kitchen table. The light’s yellow overhead and moths flutter at the window, attracted to the light, and his book is open in front of him. Paradise Lost, and why did he take AP Lit in the first place? The teacher’s crazy and he’s finished the damn book but there’s that damn in class essay tomorrow, and he flips through Milton looking for quotes to press into his brain and wondering vaguely about the sequel. The way everyone talks about Paradise Lost; no one ever realizes there’s a Paradise Regained, and the moths still beating at the window to get in, trying to beat their way into the light.

*&*&*

He’s hanging awkwardly around the edges of a kegger, a year into this and still too damn unsure, red, plastic cup of Heineken gone lukewarm in his grip, doesn’t like the bitter piss taste of it anyway, and he’s pretty sure he’s gonna give up to his roommate’s disdain and go conjugate German verbs until he falls asleep with er fiel du fielst ich fiel wir fielen booming through his brain. Except then she’s there, long fall of yellow hair and her chest pushed out like the prow of a ship, tight beneath her faux-old Led Zeppelin shirt. She’s not the kind of girl Sam usually stares after- he likes brunettes, slender girls with dark eyes and small breasts- but she grabs his lukewarm Heineken and downs it, then smiles up at him (but not very far because she’s tall for a girl) and purrs, “Howdy stranger, I’m Jess.” He thinks dizzily that if he kissed her then she’d taste like Heineken and it wouldn’t be so bad.

Milk and honey, he keeps thinking as they talk, and they’ve hit it off immediately and maybe it’s the drink (he hasn’t drank much) and maybe it’s the music (he’s mostly tuned it out), but he’s pretty sure he’s leaving with her tonight. Er fiel du fielst ich fiel wir fielen. Milk and honey. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert and then it was the land of milk and honey.

He knows her type: California retro-hip with flat top converses and 70’s throwback T-shirts, ironic nostalgia. Back in her dorm, her Led Zeppelin shirt’s crumpled black on the ground, and there’s a neat stack of books on her desk. She reads Wolfe and Hunter S. and Vonnegut, same kind of books his brother used to throw at his head with a Here geekboy, got you a present, and he tells her that with her lipstick smeared on his face, their pants unzipped and their bodies arching like parentheses. It’s a sudden, brutal point of realization, of real nostalgia, except all nostalgia’s fake and she laughs at him with her small, white animal teeth, too cynical to be naïve, too idealistic not to want to be.

“Do you believe in God?” he asks her the next morning and the sheets are sticky and she answers, “No, but I want to,” as if faith had anything to do with desire, as if it were a why and not a because. But her hair!- you gotta understand- her hair was like sunshine. Sunshine. It was like, it was like… It was like milk and honey. The land of sunshine and honey, the land of honey and milk, the land of milk and sunshine.

*&*&*

It must be the collision that wakes him up, the actual jolt and judder of it, the bump and squeal and the hard-soft sound of the body hitting the car and Dean’s harsh, sudden cursing, swerving to the side of the road somewhere in the middle of Sam doesn’t know where, the moon that awkward, oddly deflated shape somewhere between half and full that poets never write about and Sam’s mouth dry as summer, dry as the grave as he asks, “What’s going on?”

“Go back to sleep,” orders Dean, and Sam doesn’t. He follows Dean out of the car.

There’s a fox. They hit a fox. Dean hit a fox.

“Ran into the middle of the road,” says Dean sharply, “couldn’t brake in time,” angry like it’s the fox’s fault (and it is and it isn’t, but it certainly isn’t Dean’s), but Sam knows really angry at himself. Dean loves animals, animals and children. Big wounded animal of a man himself, same look in his eyes, and a bundle of twitching neuroses and half-aborted impulses.

But the fox. The fox’s not dead. Not yet, at least. It’s in the middle of the road, slick-shimmer black of its blood gleaming in the dimlight and it’s keening. Harsh, high, wretched noises, onandonandonandonandon. Eeeeeeee and eeeeee and eeeeeeeee, and Dean reaches into the trunk for a shotgun, for a mercy killing, and he pulls the gun out with his jaw set tighter and tighter, tin-soldier tight.

Sam’s brother is going to kill the fox. Sam’s brother who he just wants to throw all his anger and fear and bewilderment at, his hatred of this life and the sick long burning pull in his gut that’s his need for revenge and his dreams of fire. Just take it all and shove it at Dean with This, this is why I can’t talk to you. Sam’s brother with his wide, strong hands horned with calluses that catch on Sam’s skin in the night, the slip and slick and rough and sigh of those nights, arching and the breath soft-soft, quick-quick, Dean leaning forward and biting his name off Sam’s mouth. The night has teeth, and that’s one more thing they never talk about.

Sam’s brother with his shotgun, about to kill the fox on the empty stretch of highway, bleak and merciful the way angels are supposed to be, the oblong moon lighting the whole tableau up in grayscale, and Sam says, “I’ll do it,” and he takes the gun.

The fox shuts up then like it knows, and Sam looks at it looking at him, its eyes yellowed and damning, and he thinks, 'I’m sorry, but that’s just how it fucking is.' The bitter gall and unfairness of it all, and you deal and you hope with every insignificant atom of your being that God- his god, the one he believes in- watches over His imperfect creations and gets it, that even though He’s not benevolent, He’s merciful. And the fox just looks back at him like it knows, not that it’s gonna die, but like it knows the all of it and the whole of it, thisclose to death and it’s blood leaking and leaking and Sam and Sam and Sam and Sam-

He shoots the fox in the head.

End.

AN: Wrote this at a Jamba Juice in LA while waiting for my friend to get off work. Paradise Regained is, of course, the sequel (more or less) to Paradise Lost and widely considered inferior. I’ve read Paradise Lost (which is ostensibly about Adam and Eve's banishment from the Garden of Eden, but is really about Satan being a complete badass). But I have not read Paradise Regained. According to the wikipedia article, Paradise Regained is about Jesus resisting the devil’s temptation while wandering through the wilderness for forty days. (Not to be confused with the Israelites wandering through the desert for forty years after escaping from their slavery to the Egyptians.) The German verb Sam is conjugating is “fell.” I used German because I took German in high school, but I still had to use an online translator. Considering I graduated in May, I’m not sure if that’s a sad commentary about me, my teacher, or public schools in general. Title of the story is from the Iron & Wine song “Flightless Bird, American Mouth.” Opening quote is from the poem “Straight Talk from Fox” by Mary Oliver, which ~~I will probably post on Tuesday~~ is posted here, and which is weirdly similar to this story considering I wrote this a couple hours before reading the poem.

Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading.

SPN/RPF Fic: Kripked!!

coyotesuspect — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:14:20 GMT

Title: Kripked!!
Fandom: Supernatural RPF
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kripked: (verb) to have events in fic or fanon validated by new canon, reflecting the frequency with which SPN canon confirms SPN fanon. Kripke, Misha, (very) mild J2 slash
Word Count: ~1600
Spoilers/Warnings: Crack, some mentions of wincest.
AN: Essentially, this is a 1600 word riff off the term Kripked that can best be summarized by the emoticon XD and the words “you’re silly.”
Disclaimer:

Kripked: (verb) to have events in fic or fanon validated by new canon, reflecting the frequency with which SPN canon confirms SPN fanon.

“In a certain subculture, my name is a verb,” mutters Eric.

Jensen looks at him askance. People have been doing that to Eric for years, so it doesn’t really bother him anymore.

“Have you been on livejournal again?” Jensen asks.

“No,” lies Eric. It’s just that the place is addictive. It’s like everyone there mistook crack for sugar and put it in their morning coffees. And some of them have these little icons that offer him their souls. Which, Eric never considered himself the kind of person who would ever be offered someone’s soul. So it’s pretty cool.

And does JJ Abrams have anyone offering him their soul?

No. He doesn’t fucking think so.

Gaiman has soul-offering icons though. But Eric gets that. He’d offer Gaiman his soul if it didn’t already belong to Joss.

Maybe, he thinks, he could offer Gaiman his soul plus some of the fangirls’ souls in exchange for writing an episode of Supernatural.

He files that thought away to examine more closely at a later date. A February episode by Gaiman would be perf-fucking-tastic.

Eric maybe got a little confused with what word he was going for there. But bottom line: Gaiman episode= total awesomesauce.

Anyway, Eric’s up in Vancouver for a few days for the start of the season. He always likes to be on set for the first episode of the season and the last couple, to help set the tone. And he’s been thinking about a few things. Thoughts which may or may not have been prompted by spending the plane ride up here reading fanfiction about how his show’s stars are fucking like bunnies.

And really, if the fans think Jared and Jensen are secretly fucking like bunnies, then they should actually see the two. Eric is honestly not sure if he’s ever seen two people more in love in his entire life. When they moved in together, he was sure he’d lost the when will they get together? bet to Carver, but when the writing staff actually turned up en masse to visit the place, it turned out not to be Jared and Jensen’s House of Big Gay Canadian Love, but Jared and Jensen’s Manly Texan House of Mutual Platonic Affection.

Still, as Carver pointed out (sourly, because he’d lost the bet), it was probably more their Vancouverian Love Shack of Unconsummated Pining.

He doesn’t say any of this aloud though (well, maybe the part about souls and JJ Abrams), and after a moment, Jensen moves away to go congratulate Jared on knocking a particular scene out of the park. And he did. He was great. He was totally tapping into the Essence of Sam, and Kripke tells him that, or close enough. He says something that sounds a little less nutzoid.

But Jared doesn’t hear him. Because Jared is staring deeply into Jensen’s eyes, one hand on Jensen’s arm, and laughing at something Jensen said.

Jensen, for his part, is smiling up at Jared like he just found out Jared was singlehandedly responsible for doublestuffed oreos, lazy Sunday mornings, and everything else that is good and pure and wonderful in this world.

Yeah, so Jensen and Jared- totally and completely gone for each other.

It’s kind of embarrassing, really, that they’re the only ones who don’t see it.

And now Jensen is moving out of their Vancouverian Love Shack of Unconsummated Pining. The pining, as far as Eric can tell, still unconsummated.

Which leaves Eric with quite the conundrum on his hands. He has two costars who are obviously deeply and stupidly in love with each other, who don’t realize it, and who are playing brothers on his TV series. He has a bet (now worth 726 dollars (American), a semi-nude picture of Sera, and all of Edlund’s baby teeth) which he can win if the J’s get together during the final season. And he has the final season.

He also has a kind and benevolent nature. Mostly. Sometimes. When he feels like it.

So, clearly, his only option is to play matchmaker.

It’s a great idea. No, it’s an awesome idea. Right up there with the plan to secure Neil Gaiman as a guest writer. This season is going to be epic. People are gonna write sonnets about it.

But he needs a plan.

He just wishes Kim were still around so they could plot together.

He does the next best thing and talks to Jim instead. Jim looks at him like Eric’s been drinking demon blood and says, “You do know they’re real people, right? You can’t just jerk them around like you do your characters.”

“So you won’t help me?” asks Eric.

Jim rubs his forehead. He looks pained. “No. And I’m not really Bobby. You can stop coming to me for advice.”

“I know,” scoffs Eric. And he doesn’t move. “Could you, uh, say it for me anyway?”

Jim sighs. “You idjut,” he grumbles.

Eric grins and moves on. He could ask Sera. He knows she’d be down, but he has a feeling her plan for getting Jensen and Jared together would involve writing an episode with a lot of alcohol and a Sam/Dean threesome. And then they’d have to get Misha’s wife on as an official threesome counselor and… it would just be awkward for everyone.

Come to think of it, he read a fanfic along those lines once. The Sam/Dean threesome lines, not the Misha’s wife lines. It was actually pretty good.

To be honest, he’s read a couple fanfics along those lines. But he can’t help that he has magnificently talented fans. Secretly, he wonders if Sera might be behind some of those fanfics. She’s the one who sent him the url to livejournal in the first place. omg eric, look at this place!

But he’s never asked, and he never, ever will. There are some things that should just remain secret.

Still, he needs a partner. A Sundance to his Butch. A Patroclus to his Achilles. A Sam to his Dean.

He also needs to come up with some less gay metaphors. Then again, considering the nature of his mission, maybe not.

He decides he wants a partner who will be on set, to manage things from up close while Eric’s down in LA. That means all the writers are out, not just Sera.

He decides to talk to Misha.

Misha’s meditating in his trailer when Eric finds him. It’s not weird. Well, it’s kinda weird. But Misha does a lot of weird shit. Meditating is very low on the Weird Shit Misha Does scale.

He explains his mission to Misha.

“Hmm,” says Misha, unfolding himself from lotus position. “Your heart is sound, Grand Master Kripke. But you need a plan.”

“That’s why I came to you,” says Eric. He knows it’s dangerous. Misha interacts with the fans more than anyone else involved with the show, and there’s no telling if his plan will involve his minion army. Eric really doesn’t want people knowing the Js have gone from banging each other in internet fiction to banging each other in real life.

“But you need to be discrete,” he adds. So Misha knows that he, you know, has to be really fucking discrete and not twitter this while he’s also twittering about the velociraptor he stole from Area 51.

Then again, if Misha did twitter that the J’s were really a couple, it might convince people that they weren’t, considering the LSD-addled nature of Misha’s tweets.

Reverse psychology. Or something like that. Whatever, it would be fucking with the fans’ minds. And there’s little Eric likes more than mindfucking the fans. Doublestuffed oreos, he likes better. Maybe.

So he’s not kind and magnanimous all the time. He’s more like the Old Testament God. All rainbows and doves one minute, then BAM! all the firstborn sons are dead the next. Jesus Christ, but God’s kind of a dickass.

“Hmmmmm,” says Misha again, interrupting Eric’s thoughts. His eyes glow very briefly and very brightly, this intense vibrant blue color. It’s really pretty frickin’ awesome. Eric wonders if he could convince Misha to do that with Castiel. Secretly, Eric thinks Misha might be an escaped government robot. You know, like a mandroid.

“Give me two days and three boxes of cake mix,” instructs Misha. He thinks for a moment. “I’ll also require a feather duster, sparkly gel pens, and complete control over the PAs.”

“Done,” says Eric. He's not really sure if he can swing the PA thing. He'll have to talk to some people. “And let me know if you need anything else.”

He holds out his hand. Misha takes it. He has a firm, commanding grip. The kind of grip that says, “I am an angel of the Lord and I am the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.” Eric appreciates that in a grip.

They shake. It’s a gentleman’s handshake, and when they’re done, Eric says, “Give me two hours, and I promise you’ll have everything you need.”

Misha nods, and he and Eric stare at each other. It's an affirming moment. Two friends and allies recognizing each other as they prepare for the field of battle.

And then Eric leaves to track down some cake mix.

He feels buoyed up. He knows what he’s doing will improve his karmic balance and bring a little more joy and love into the world. Deep down, he's really just a guy who wants to tell a story about how love and family can save the world. He's a cuddly guy, he swears. All ~~suicidal~~ teddy bears and candy hearts.

Plus, he thinks gleefully, fandom’s gonna fucking explode.

AN: Definition of "kripked" lifted from the supernatural fan wiki. The line about Misha’s wife stems from the fact that she apparently wrote a book about threesomes (can’t find relevant link at the moment.) Also, I have no idea how an episode of Supernatural is put together, other than it's filmed in Vancouver and written in Los Angeles (I think). Obviously my ignorance shows. I also did no research on Kripke beforehand, because that would have made me feel icky and creepy. Originally, I was going to write out how Kripke and Misha actually got the Js together, but realized I couldn’t come up with a suitably hilarious plan and that 1000+ words spent inside Kripke’s head was long enough. I had a really hard time writing “Eric” all through the fic instead of “Kripke.”

I apologize for nothing.

Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading. Also (and finally) I'm new here, so if you'd like to friend me, that would be a Gaiman-writing-an-episode-of-Supernatural level of awesome.

SPN Fic: The Burning of Paper Instead of Children

coyotesuspect — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:26:25 GMT

Title: The Burning of Paper Instead of Children
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The human body is mostly water. Mary, John, assorted others.
Word Count: ~4000
Spoilers/Warnings: Massive spoilers for 4.03 In the Beginning, some dark themes.
Disclaimer

No matter what the specific historical origins are for self-immolation, there is a definite connection between fire and the act of sacrifice.

The human body is mostly water.

*****

Her father told her a story once about a hunter who swallowed a rosary and blessed himself. After that, whatever he pissed on was sanctified, and any evil thing he spat on burned. No demon could ever posses him, and after the first one, no demon ever tried.

Her father told her the story while they were sitting around a campfire. It was a small campfire; they didn’t want to tip off the manticore they were tracking. Her mother, who would have smacked her father with a spoon had he told that story at the dinner table, just rolled her eyes and laughed. The rules were different when they were hunting, but even then, Mary knew this wasn’t the life she wanted.

*****

The human body, along with water, also contains iron and salt, but not enough of either to keep a demon out.

*****

After her parents die, she takes John to the hospital. He’s confused, disoriented, and she tells the staff he fell and hit his head, that he’s still a little messed up from the war, that they shouldn’t believe anything he says.

Then, while they’re looking him over, she finds a payphone and calls her uncle. She tells him what happened, or the important parts of it anyway. She tells him where her parents’ bodies are.

When the hospital gives John back to her- he’s fine, hale as a horse and nobody’d believe he’d been dead three hours ago- she asks to go back to his place.

He says okay, but when they get there, he’s still got questions on his face, so she puts one of his hands on her hip, the other on her breast, and he doesn’t ask any questions after that.

She wakes up the next morning, an orphan and naked.

John still has questions though, fuzzy memories of what happened. She slips something into his morning coffee, mumbles something her grandmother taught her. After that, he doesn’t remember anything about the day before. He’s shocked and pleased to see the car he bought.

“I can’t believe I’d forget buying a beauty like this!” he crows with a wide, boyish smile, running his hands over the Impala’s sleek lines.

The smile turns sly and he slants a glance at Mary.

“Why, she’s almost as pretty as you.”

She laughs then, tremulous but real.

That afternoon, she reports her parents as missing.

The police never do find them.

*****

They get married two months after that. John thinks they should wait, but Mary convinces him not to. It’s a small ceremony, and her uncle walks her down the aisle. The dozen or so hunters that show up she passes off as cousins. John and his relatives smile uneasily at them, but no one pulls a knife at the reception, so Mary considers it a success.

Two months was just about the amount of time it took for Mary to sort through her parents’ possessions and put them in the basement. She doesn’t like the idea of having those kinds of things in her house, but she likes the idea of parting with them less.

John moves into her parents’ house with her, and it has enough charms and protections to keep most anything out, iron and salt laid into the foundations. But that thing got in, so she knows her house isn’t as strong as she’d like, and she knows in ten years, it’ll be back.

John jokes awkwardly about her parents coming back, walking in and shocked to see the two of them having set up house.

Mary never smiles at that, and after awhile, John stops saying it.

******

There was never a moment in her childhood when her parents sat her down and explained the truth about the world. It was something she always knew. Her name was Mary, Dad was a Republican, and monsters were real.

Her parents didn’t start training her until she was six, didn’t start taking her on hunts until she was nine. Before that, her father would leave for weeks, usually with her uncle. Sometimes her mother would go, and Mary would be sent to stay at her grandmother’s.

She met a lot of hunters when she started going with her parents, in bars and roadside diners and occasionally hunting with them if the prey was large enough and scary enough.

Some of them said, “This is no life for a kid, Samuel.”

And some of them said, “Good. She’ll grow up knowing how to protect herself.”

*****

“Have you ever considered having a funeral for your parents?” asks John one night, two years into their marriage. He has black grease smeared across one cheek.

Mary looks up. She’s sitting at the dining room table, studying. She’s taking classes at the university, hoping to become a teacher.

“No,” she says sharply.

John packs a picnic lunch the next morning and convinces her into the car with him. They drive west, into the prairie, until the only thing she can see is the flat, gold earth and the great blue arc of heaven. She always liked it out here; you could see a threat coming a mile away. She thinks maybe that’s why her parents moved to Kansas in the first place. If you know what’s coming, it’s easier to stop it.

John stops in the middle of a dirt crossroads and gets out. Mary follows.

He has a flask in his hand and he raises it to the sky.

“To Samuel and Deanna Campbell,” he says somberly, pouring some of the amber liquid onto the dirt. Then, he tips his head back and drinks from the flask.

He wipes his mouth when he’s done and hands the flask to Mary.

She stares at him, and he stares back with a solemn, level gaze. She turns away.

Then, she lifts the flask up.

“To Mom and Dad,” she says, and her voice is strong. It doesn’t waver or crack. She tips the flask down and watches more of the alcohol pour out and darken the earth. She drinks from it and it burns going down, but she doesn’t cough.

She’s never allowed herself to grieve for her parents, but she does then. She drops her head and sobs, great, body wracking sobs, her arms held tight to her sides, sobs that make her body shake, that make her throat hurt, that make her nauseous.

John wraps his arms around her and doesn’t say anything. He just holds her, steady and close.

*****

John’s not really a religious man, but Mary was raised in the faith. Her family went to church every Sunday, unless they were on a hunt. On those Sundays, they would sit in a circle together, heads bowed, as her father read from the Bible in his harsh, hard voice. Her father had a voice like iron.

After she finds out she’s pregnant, she makes John start going to church with her.

“This is important to me,” she says, placing a hand on her still-flat belly. “I want my baby growing up knowing they’re protected.”

“They will be protected Mary,” sighs John. “You think I’m not going to look after my own kid?”

But he starts going with her anyway.

*****

At five months pregnant, she starts laying salt down again. When John catches her at it, she tells him she’s nesting.

*****

John has nightmares sometimes, from the war. He always drinks too much the day after he has a nightmare, and she worries about him.

“Maybe you should get help,” she says. “Talk to someone.”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine Mary,” he says gruffly. “They’ll go away eventually.”

“Well maybe you shouldn’t drink so much,” she says.

“This is the only time I ever drink,” he tells her, and his eyes are hollow, dark. “You know what it's like to watch someone die?” he asks.

She does, but she knows she’s not supposed to say so. He’s allowed to talk about what he’s seen, but these are the only times he ever does.

He shakes his head to clear it, then stands up.

“You’re right though,” he says, and she can see him mentally locking the memories away, forcing them back and her own John coming back to her.

She hides the whiskey and knows she’s lucky that he came back so normal.

*****

First time she ever saw someone die, she was thirteen. She and her family were working with some other hunters to clear out a vampire nest in Kansas City. One of the hunters got his neck snapped. It wasn’t a clean, swift sound like a bullet or an arrow, but a meaty k-k-crunch that reverbed through Mary’s dreams for months.

Second time she saw someone die, she was sixteen and holding her grandmother’s hand, watching the light ebb out of her grandmother’s eyes. Her grandmother had cancer. She weighed 87 pounds at the time of her death, a frail husk of a woman.

Mary realized then that there was no good way to die.

A year later, she killed a shapeshifter in Kentucky. It looked like her mother.

“It seemed human,” she said, looking down at the corpse with her mother’s face. “You’re sure it’s not a human? Just one with…” She grasped for the word, “powers?”

“It was just a monster,” said her father, clasping her on her shoulder. “You did the right thing Mary. I’m proud of you.”

She never really stops dreaming about the dead shapeshifter with her mother’s face. Mary never saw her mother’s body, and when she closes her eyes and imagines her mother’s death, the shapeshifter is what she sees.

Both times, she was responsible for the death. The demon wanted her.

*****

She spends seventeen hours in labor with Dean. He weighs 8 pounds, 3 ounces.

She names him after her mother because she still hasn’t forgiven her father.

She loves him more than she’s ever loved anything, but she knows he isn’t the one the demon will want. Angels are watching over him.

Giving birth, she thinks with Dean’s small, rosy mouth on her nipple for the first time, is a lot harder than killing someone.

*****

She decides to quit her job as teacher aide in a third grade classroom to take care of Dean.

“It’s almost the 80s,” says the teacher, Ms. Langdon. She’s practically a child herself and has bright pink lipstick and feathered hair. “You can be a mommy and have a career, Mary.”

Later, Mary realizes Ms. Langdon’s probably just a year or two older than she is.

*****

There are things she could teach Dean. Charms she could sing as lullabies, special powders she could teach as recipes. She could tell him the truth, before he’s too old to be afraid of it. There are a lot of things she could tell him. She wonders if making him aware will keep him safe, or drag him into a life she doesn’t want for him. She wonders if she needs to teach him how to protect himself; she knows she can’t wish away the dark things in the world. But most people live their whole lives without being touched by the supernatural. It’s the unlucky and unwise who have to worry.

He’s her baby boy, she decides eventually. She’ll tell him when he’s older, old enough to understand.

But when he’s two and just talking and tells her monsters are under his bed, she checks.

“You shouldn’t humor him,” sighs John. “Just tell him monsters aren’t real. You don’t want him growing up afraid of the dark, do you?”

*****

She has a loving husband, a beautiful son, a large house, and a college education. She has a wonderful life, and she’s very, very, very happy.

*****

She and John met at a community softball game. She was pitcher. She liked softball because it made her feel normal. He was umpire because he knew all the rules and didn’t mind people yelling at him. But also because he was a tiny bit bossy. She didn’t mind though. She chewed him out after the game for making a bad call that almost made her team lose. And he just smiled at her and said, “Well, how about I buy you a coke and we’ll discuss it?”

John was just that way. Sweet, always willing to listen to what she had to say.

*****

John mouths at her breasts. “A little girl, one of each.” Lips at her sternum: “Or another boy, a brother for Dean to play with.”

She twines her fingers in his hair and tilts his face up.

“Dean’s enough,” she says.

She is very careful.

*****

After she finds out she's pregnant, she drops Dean off at a friend’s while John's at work and goes to the Planned Parenthood clinic. She picks up some pamphlets and talks to a nice lady with dyed red hair.

“It’s legal now,” the woman says earnestly. “So it’s much safer than before. And you don’t have to tell your husband if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

The woman holds her hand as she cries, and in the end, she leaves the pamphlets behind.

“Dean,” she says later, after she’s strapped him into his carseat and is sitting behind the steering wheel. “How would you feel about having a little brother or sister?”

She watches her little boy’s face bloom with excitement in the rearview mirror.

*****

It might be a Rumpelstiltskin thing. Fairytales often hide deeper truths, and names really do have power. She finds the demon’s name, maybe she can find his weakness. She sees the threat on the horizon, so she has time to prepare. Her parents’ books are dusty in the basement, but she doesn’t bring them upstairs in case John finds them.

She enrolls Dean in preschool, and from 8 to 12 every morning, Monday through Thursday, she brings a lantern downstairs and reads.

She calls up hunters her parents knew, people she hasn’t spoken to since the wedding. They say she thought she retired. She says she did, but there’s one more thing she needs to do.

No one’s ever heard of a demon with yellow eyes. They give her more people to call. She winds her way through the hunter phone-tree, and, one Tuesday, has Dean stay late for the afternoon preschool and drives across town to a woman people say is psychic.

The psychic is a disappointment. She takes one look at Mary, standing hopeful-faced and five months pregnant in the doorway and says, “There’s nothing I can do for you miss. That child you’re carrying has a destiny you’ll have no control over.”

She invites Mary in for tea though, but Mary says no, thank you. She has to go pick up her son.

*****


She hears about a man who's becoming an expert on demons. She wonders what kind of tragedy would lead a man to do that. She thinks she knows. When she finally gets in touch with him, she doesn’t ask him about his demons, she asks him about one with yellow eyes. He promises to call back in a few days.

He calls back as promised, and Mary darts for the phone, but John picks it up first.

John listens for a second, and then he looks at Mary.

“It’s for you,” he says. “Guy named Bobby?”

She understands what he’s asking and says in reply, “He’s an old friend of my parents.” Which isn’t strictly true, but is pretty close.

John sighs. “Mary,” he says. “I don’t mind you having male friends. It’s all the secrets that worry me. I don’t even know what your parents did that they know so many people.”

“I need to take this call,” she says, and takes the phone.

“Of course you do,” grumbles John.

“Mary Campbell?” says the man on the telephone. She’s been using her maiden name, doesn’t want to drag John into this. “It’s Bobby Singer.”

“Bobby,” she breathes, “any news?”

“I’m sorry,” says Bobby, and he sounds it. “But whoever this bastard is, I can’t find him. Either he hasn’t been topside in awhile, or he keeps a hell of a low profile.”

“Thanks anyway,” she tells him politely and hangs up the phone.

John’s staring grimly at her when she turns to face him, and she’s already on the jagged edge of tears. She breathes in deep and steadies herself against the counter. She doesn’t want to have this fight.

“Mary,” he begins.

“John,” she cuts him off. “I’m sorry, but half the time I didn’t know what it was my parents were doing. They were pretty secretive people.”

John visibly deflates at that. He looks tired, worn out. He’s been working extra hours at the garage so he can take time off after the baby is born. He rubs his face.

“I guess that’s one way you take after them,” he says dully.

“I guess so,” she echoes back.

*****

She always liked domestic chores as a kid. Doing the dishes, sweeping, folding the laundry- things like that. They were more pleasant than the other kinds of chores- cleaning the guns, sharpening the knives, gravedigging. The kinds of chores that always ended in fire and blood and death.

All chores have the same result though, the same impetus: purification.

******

At seven months pregnant, Mary lugs the books up from the basement. None of them say anything that can help. It takes her an hour to get all the books up stairs, and then she has to rest. Then another half hour to get them all into her car.

There’s gasoline in the garage, but she doesn’t want John asking questions if he realizes some is missing. She buys a couple gallons.

There’s a place she and her parents used to bring bodies of things they killed in town. It wasn’t used very often- a werewolf when she was eleven, a family of redcaps when she was fifteen, a zombie the year before she met John.

The firepit’s still there. Scorched and blackened, but usable. She drags the books into the pit, then douses them with gasoline. She lights a match. She throws it in.

And she watches the books burn.

“Mommy!” cries Dean when she comes to pick him up from preschool. He runs up and attempts to hug her, then tips his head back and wrinkles his nose. “Mommy,” he whines. “You smell like smoke!”

She smooths her hand over his hair. “I know baby,” she says. “Don’t tell Daddy, okay? This will be a Mommy and Dean secret.”

Dean stares at her gravely and nods his head.

“Okay,” he says. Then, brightly: “Can we go to McDonald’s? I want a Happy Meal!”

*****

Her second child is two weeks early, and she’s in labor with him for twelve hours. He’s smaller than Dean, weighing in at exactly 7 pounds.

He’s quieter, and she loves him, but it makes her uneasy.

“You’re what the demon wants,” she tells him. “I don’t know why or for what. I’m sorry.”

This child, she knows, has to know the truth from the beginning. He was doomed before he was born, and she’ll have to teach him how to protect himself.

She names him Samuel. After her father.

Sam.

*****

Her father loved her. She knows that. He just didn’t understand her.

“Mary,” he said, when she told him she wanted to go to college. “Can’t you see this is more important than anything else you could do?”

This had included the car, the haunted forest all around them, and the black and silent night.

******

“This is your baby brother,” she says to Dean when they bring Sam home. “You’re his big brother Dean. That means you have to look after him.”

His eyes are very big and very green and very solemn when he promises he will.

*****

“We should get them baptized,” she tells John, when Sam’s a month old.

He gives her a confused look. “I thought we were going to wait until they were older and could decide for themselves,” he says.

She shakes her head. “I changed my mind.”

John looks like he might argue, half a decade of regular church going hasn’t turned him into a religious man.

“I dunno…” he says.

“Please,” she begs, and he gives in.

She calls a friend of her father’s, a priest, who she knows will do it, who she trusts to do it. He drives 900 miles in a day and a night, and she remembers what kind of devotion her family name inspired.

“It’s good to see you Mary,” he says when they meet him at the bank of the Kansas River. Dean and Sam are dressed all in white. John still looks uneasy.

“Are you sure Sammy can handle this?” he asks Mary in an undertone, then turns to the priest. “How do you know my wife again?” he asks, knowing Mary never told him.

“Samuel will be fine,” says the priest, answering the first question. “Newborns are natural swimmers. Their original environment was water.”

He favors John with a thin smile. “It’s just as we grow older, we forget.”

Dean’s submerged first, and Mary’s heart clenches when he goes under. John grabs her hand and holds tight. Dean pops back up with a gasp.

“Cool,” he shouts, clamoring out of the river. “Can I do it again when Sammy’s done?”

Sam wails, sharp and loud, when Mary hands him over to the priest, and she almost takes him back.

“Shh,” says the priest, shaking his head at her. He tweaks Sam’s nose. “Shhh.”

Sam calms down, and the priest walks into the water with him.

“Samuel Winchester,” says the priest gravely, holding Sam up and looking him in the eyes. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

He pushes Sam into the water, and Mary almost screams.

The priest’s eyes look yellow.

They aren’t though. It’s just her head, a trick of the light, and right behind that thought is a worse one, brief and terrifying: She hopes he keeps holding Sam under.

Because she knows what’s coming, and she thinks it might be kinder just to kill her baby now.

*****

That night, when Dean and Sam are asleep, John follows her into the shower. The tiles are cold against her back, and she follows the line of his shoulder with her mouth. She tastes the salt of his skin, and it clings, slick and bitter, to her tongue.

*****

She could take Sam and run away, leave behind the man she loves and her eldest son to protect the youngest. She could give Sam to hunters, to friends of her parents, people who would raise him and protect him and teach him. She could abandon him, knowing that all children with destinies eventually find their way home. She could tell John the truth, all of it, everything she’s hidden the last ten years, and they could all leave. Go somewhere far away and safe, or keep on traveling, always staying ahead of the threat.

But it’s a demon, and a strong one, so she knows none of those plans will work.

This is her home and her family, so she’s going to wait. In the end, she knows she will meet it.

*****

She lies awake late into the night now, listening to the baby monitor, listening to her baby breathe.

*****

The war was something she never really thought about, even though it lasted most of her childhood. It was something that happened to other people, in a distant land, too far removed from the blood and smoke reality of her own existence.

There was one photo that stood out though, from when she was a child, before the fighting had even really begun. It was of a monk, sitting in the street, who had set himself on fire.

Self-immolation the caption said, and the word always stuck with her, that and the expression of serenity on the monk’s face, the way the fire seemed to embrace him.

There was another picture that stayed with her. This one was taken years later.

There was no fire this time, but napalm, and the children running down the street, screaming.

*****

The human body is mostly water.

But it will still burn.

End.

AN: Title taken from Adrienne Rich poem of same name. Though I like to think Mary was a lot happier than the speaker in the poem, other than the whole demon thing. I took great liberties with the rite of baptism. As far as I understand it, Catholics don’t practice full immersion (submersion) baptism, and sects that do generally don’t baptize children. Probably because they, like John, suspect there’s something dangerous about dunking an infant underwater. The opening quote I took from this site, which has to do with the monks who self-immolated themselves during the Vietnam conflict. The photos referred to in the story are here and here respectively.

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