| The Other Son: Chapter Five |
[Jun. 7th, 2007|08:20 pm] |
I've had some people asking about the length of this fic, and I think I said (tentatively) that it would be around 10 chapters. This is an utter and complete lie. I retract the statement completely. In fact, this fic seems to be growing exponentially and is striving to eat me alive. I'm estimating it now at around 20 chapters, but this might change, that's my new (extremely tentative) estimate. I'll let you know if that's going to change, or if I get a firmer idea about length. Thanks for reading, PLEASE review, it does so inspire me (and makes my muse happy and horny ... hem ... I mean, happy and creative...)
Title: The Other Son
Author: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) revenant_scribe
Chapter Five: AFTERMATH
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'.
Status: Ongoing
A/N: AU. This is difficult to summarize fully without also spoiling fully. All I can say is that there is no new Winchester being added into the mix. This is definitely not one of those fics.
Summary: A vision incites Sam to leave his father's side and head to Fitchburg. Without any clear notion as to what he is hunting, and no supernatural signs in the town of any kind as far as he can tell, Sam begins with what little he does know. But it doesn't take long before Sam begins to wonder if there might just be more than one mystery to be uncovered.
Previous Posts: 01. FREAK, 02. SHTRIGA, 03. DEAN, 04. HUNT
Sam kept a close eye on Dean. Three mugs of steaming hot chocolate (Sophia had banned any and all caffeine since it was quite late) had stopped his constant shivering, and had gone a long way in returning some colour into his cheeks. But as Michael’s eyes began to droop and the adrenaline wore-off, Dean started to fidget with a restlessness that was more than just an inability to sit still. Partway through Sophia’s attempt to distract them all (but mostly Michael) from the night’s earlier events, Dean set his empty mug down on the table. “I have to have a shower,” he said, and then pushed away from the table.
“Want me to take you home?” Sophia asked.
“No,” Dean said. “I need a shower.” His confusion was apparent, as if his entire focus was directed to a single thought – that he needed to get clean. Sophia and Sam exchanged a look, both thinking along the same lines.
“Here,” Sam said, holding out his room key. “Go ahead, I’m in 120. You can help yourself to whatever you need.” Dean took the key, nodding vaguely before heading out of the kitchen. “You think he’s going to be alright?” Sam asked, watching Dean go.
“I honestly have no idea,” Sophia said. “But he usually handles it by himself, y’know? When he needs help, he usually asks so that’s what I go by.”
Sam nodded, turning back around and smiling when he caught-sight of Michael, who was slumped at the table, his head resting on Sophia’s shoulder, already half-asleep. “He should probably go to bed.”
“I’ll take him back to my place,” Sophia said. “He’ll sleep better if he’s not in that room tonight, I think. Joanna will probably be by in the morning to check on him, so I’ll come by early and drop him off.” She eyed Sam and then sighed, jostling Michael a little so he’d wake enough that she could get-up and grab a pen and paper from the counter. She jotted something down and then passed the paper over to Sam. “That’s my cell number,” she explained. “If he needs me to pick him up, it’s no problem. If he needs anything…”
“I’ll call,” Sam assured her.
“You also have a mess to clear-up,” she reminded, before ushering Michael out to the parking area after he’d said goodnight to Sam.
…………………………..
Sam cleared-up Michael’s room, taking the body of the shtriga – which by that point was mostly just the battered black cloak – and salted and burned it in an empty garbage canister behind the motel. When he’d stopped into his room to get the salt the shower had been running, and when he returned after everything had been cleaned away it was to find Dean barefoot and still damp at the foot of the bed, dressed in a pair of Sam’s jeans and wearing Sam’s T-shirt, and peering down at Sam’s knife collection which had been unwrapped from the leather pouch he carried them in. Sam’s favourite blade was in Dean’s hand, looking for all of the world like he’d been handling it since he was a kid.
“I always wondered how you killed a ghoul,” Dean said off-handedly, cutting through the daze that seeing Dean so comfortable in and around Sam’s things had prompted.
Sam cleared his throat. “You picked that up from the blade?”
“Sure,” Dean said, flipping it around in his palm. “Last thing you killed with it, right?”
Sam nodded and stepped forward. “Don’t tell me you know all about knives as well?”
“Not a thing,” Dean denied. “Just guns.” Sam watched how Dean casually flipped the knife again, offering the handle over to Sam for him to take. It had been a long, gruelling while before Sam had been anywhere near as comfortable with handling sharp objects. “How do you keep it from getting contaminated, y’know, from what you hunt?”
“They’re blessed,” Sam answered, taking the knife and putting it back in it’s place before rolling-up the leather case. “And I keep all my weapons clean – which means regularly purifying them.”
“Sounds kinda archaic.”
Sam tilted his head from side-to-side, smiling. “It’s a bit of a ceremony, but nothing ridiculous.”
“No chanting? Holy water and incense? No funky robes?”
“Some chanting,” Sam admitted. “Holy water. No incense, and no funky robes.”
Dean’s eyebrows rose and he turned to face Sam fully. “No robes, huh?” Sam grinned and rolled his eyes. “What did you do with that thing?” Dean asked, his attitude suddenly very different.
“I salted and burned it. There’s no way it’s coming back.”
“Good.” Dean wandered aimlessly across the room, scratching the back of his neck before turning. “I borrowed your things. I would have waited and asked, but then I figured you would have just said to go ahead, so I helped myself.”
“You’re so sure of yourself?” Sam teased. Instead of scoffing or laughing it off, Dean blushed a little, his eyes flickering to the bathroom.
Realization dawned slowly, and it took the teasing grin from Sam’s face. Dean picked-up images from objects if the energy attached to it was strong enough, and Sam could recall all too vividly the thoughts he’d been having when he’d showered that morning, and what he had been doing. It was all no doubt imprinted on that cramped space, especially the body wash he’d so graciously invited Dean to help himself to that had slicked the way for Sam’s earlier satisfaction. “Oh,” Sam said.
Dean grinned a little and quirked an eyebrow. “Kinda more kinky than I’d originally pegged you.”
Sam grinned, oddly pleased to hear that. “You mean with a trunk full of weapons, you hadn’t automatically assumed I’d have a few kinks?”
“Well, I haven’t seen your trunk, Sammy,” Dean said, his voice suddenly rough and low with invitation. Sam could feel the pull between them and knew that one step would be all that it would take to set them on a course towards something irrevocable.
Sam hated when people called him ‘Sammy’, it made him feel small and like a child, because that was how his father used it -- as a reminder that Sam was his kid and would always be his kid no matter how old he grew. When Dean called him ‘Sammy’ it had all sorts of implications, and none of them were demeaning. He said it soft and low, and Sam wanted to hear him say it again and again, whispered like that through the witching-hour. Whatever was between them, it was more than what Sam was used to – casual flings to wind-down after a hunt, kept purposely light and easy so he could slip away in the morning when another set of suspicious deaths or disappearances called him elsewhere. Sam wanted nothing more than to take what Dean was offering, wanted to see where it would lead them but wasn’t sure how to answer to express everything he was thinking. Then he realized his silence was answer enough.
“I should go,” Dean said, moving passed Sam to get his shoes. “I’ll drop your things off in the morning, if that’s okay.”
Sam moved without thinking, his hand slipping to Dean’s face as he was walking passed and the touch served to freeze the other man. It took a moment before it occurred to Sam to question whether Dean would be okay with that, whether it was too much. “What are you feeling?”
Dean let out a shaky breath and let his eyes drop closed. “You. Just you.” Sam felt a smile tug at his lips as he bent his head, touching their mouths. He meant it to be brief, just a brush to make sure things were okay, to make sure that Dean wasn’t being overwhelmed and that he understood that Sam wanted this -- whatever it was and for however long Dean was offering. When Sam pulled away, Dean followed his lips -- eyes still closed but mouth seeking -- and Sam thought that there were times when words were necessary and important, but that this wasn’t one.
Dean’s mouth opened to him with a press of tongue and Sam could feel Dean’s hand pulling him close, fingers tangled in his hair as if Sam might move away – as if he could. Another hand was slipping up the skin of Sam’s side towards his chest, and he felt a chill across his skin – wondering when the other man had unbuttoned his shirt but not caring. He pressed forward -- pressed them closer together -- opening his mouth to swallow Dean whole as he kissed him, and they dropped onto the bed like coming home.
Sam worked Dean’s belt free with one hand, the other pushing the T-shirt Dean was wearing up his chest, exposing skin – hot and soft against his own. They shed the rest of their clothes like snake-skin, hands and lips and tongue everywhere, exploring each newly exposed expanse, grinding and gasping at each other until Sam pulled the condoms and lubricant from his nightstand and dropped them on the bed, drawing Dean’s attention.
“Come on,” Dean said, his hazel eyes rising to meet Sam’s, the desire in them as clear as the invitation. “Do it,” he purred against Sam’s ear, sending tickling prickles along Sam’s skin and making him shiver. Sam didn’t need to be told again, he offered-up his hand as Dean flipped the cap on the lube and then shifted to press his fingers against the tight entrance to Dean’s body.
There was a choked mewl as he pressed the first digit in, and Dean tucked his head against the side of Sam’s neck as he shifted his legs further apart, squeezing the back of Sam’s thigh to tell him to continue. Sam worked him open slowly, nipping along Dean’s skin and trading wet kisses along with breath. All the time in the world for this, everything stopped, everything faded to the colour of a sigh, except Dean on that bed, lying –grasping, waiting – and so open for him.
Three fingers, and Dean’s mouth dropped open wide but let-out only a sigh. “Let me hear you,” Sam said, his voice raw.
“I can’t,” Dean said, his eyes pinching tightly closed. “I can’t.”
“Yes you can,” Sam said. “No one else is here.” He pulled his fingers free, rolling the condom on and not pausing as he shifted Dean’s legs and pressed inside him, one slow deep stroke that brought him home. Sam’s head dropped to the pillow Dean was lying on, his nose burying in Dean’s tussled hair. He could smell his shampoo and his soap on Dean’s body, familiar scents mixing with Dean’s own unique smell, and it felt like Dean was his.
Dean bit against Sam’s shoulder as he pushed in -- a last attempt to smother his sounds -- but then Sam twisted his hips, pulled out only to thrust in again and Dean’s head dropped back against the pillows as his body arched upward in Sam’s embrace, a broken groan filling the room that had Sam’s body shuddering in simple reaction to the sound. “Fuck,” Sam groaned as Dean’s hands dropped to grip his hips, pull him in deeper on every thrust.
They were a tangle of sweat-slicked limbs and moans like broken sin, held together only by the other’s desperate grasping-clenching fingertips and searching tongue. Dean came like shattering glass dropping into Sam’s waiting hands, his eyes shining and face flushed, back-lighting his freckles as he sucked in a breath, coaxed Sam on to climax. Sam came like the light at the end of the tunnel, his vision whiting with the intensity.
When the world came back to him, he was sprawled atop Dean, held in place by Dean’s arms wrapped loosely around his back. Sam was staring at a spat of freckles that connected Dean’s shoulder to his chest, and without thinking he turned his head slightly, planting a lazy kiss there. He was too relaxed to do much by way of cleanup, but managed to toss the condom in the trash near the bed before settling back.
“Should I go?” Dean asked, his tone casual if roughened, but his eyes belied his nervousness. Sam tried to formulate words, but couldn’t think beyond ‘mine’. He settled for flinging his arm out to gather Dean against him again, smiling a little as the other man allowed himself to be dragged to Sam’s side, all the while muttering about ‘girly cuddling’. Sam couldn’t help but notice that every fussy shift that Dean made that was intended to seem like protest was actually the man settling-in.
…………………………………
Sam lazily blinked open his eyes when he realized that his heated blanket had been unceremoniously taken from him. Rubbing his eyes, he made the connection that his heated-blanket was actually Dean, and that the man hadn’t left but was sitting up at the end of the bed. In the morning light and naked as he was, Sam had the opportunity to admire Dean’s toned and freckled body in a way their urgency hadn’t let him the night before.
Sleep-tussled, and ruffled by Sam’s fingers, Dean’s hair did resemble a baby duck, but Sam kept that to himself because he didn’t think Dean would appreciate the sentiment, or be placated by the fact that Sam found that unaccountably endearing. “What’s wrong?” Sam asked.
Dean’s body jerked with surprise before he twisted around to look at Sam. “Nothing, I was thinking.” He crawled to Sam’s side, dropping down to lie beside him, biting back a smile as Sam twisted around, leaning-up on an arm so they could look each other in the eye. “What, you thought I’d be all squeamish in the morning?”
“I thought you might leave, yeah,” Sam admitted.
“Did you want me to?”
Sam paused, wondering what Dean might want to hear, but decided the truth was all he could really offer. “Not so much, no.” It made things awkward and complicated in a way that could have been neatly avoided if Dean had left, or they had managed to keep things casual. There were things they needed to talk about. Sam wanted nothing more than to pack-up his things and Dean’s things and to hit the road together. Still, Dean had mentioned his father – and likely his family – and there was also Sophia. He wasn’t sure what Dean wanted, wasn’t sure what the other night meant to him. Instinctually, though, Sam knew that broaching any of this with Dean would be difficult.
As if to prove Sam’s point Dean turned, positioning his body atop Sam’s so he could kiss a trail from Sam’s neck to his belly button. “I was gonna go shower, want to come?”
There was the opportunity to lie and say that he didn’t, or to ask that Dean wait while they sorted things out. But Sam was caught-up in a realization that had come to him with the press of Dean’s body against his own. He had come to Fitchburg entirely on his own, without any plan whatsoever about what to do once he got there. He’d lived every one of his twenty-one years under his father’s direction – learning how to hunt, and hunting – which always involved strategy and planning. Even when Sam hunted by himself it was with an ingrained sense of procedure. When it came to hunting, the strategy was important, sensible – but not for a single moment had Sam known what he was doing with Dean – he’d improvised and went-out on limbs. Maybe that was something he needed to do -- ease-up and see where things went for them without having to sit-down and clarify all the details. Maybe Dean had a point, even if he wasn’t intentionally making it.
“’Course,” Sam said, dropping a kiss towards Dean’s lips, although Dean shied-away.
“Dude, morning breath,” Dean reminded, rolling out of bed and dragging Sam up after him.
The motel shower was not large enough for Sam at the best of times, and it was quite a squeeze with the both of them inside. Sam was pretty certain that there was water all over the tiles, and that he would have bruises from where their manoeuvring had ended-up with a sharp impact with some part of the wall, and sometimes with the shower-head itself. But with Dean’s mouth working around his cock, Sam really couldn’t bring himself to care; he decided he liked improvising, tilted his head back and let out a moan.
……………………………………..
“Dude, where is my shirt?”
“It’s my shirt,” Sam reminded casually as he towelled-off his hair.
“Well, I’m stealing it,” Dean said, crouching down to peer under the bed. “Which makes it mine.” He was in Sam’s jeans and belt again, and Sam took a moment to admire the view, making a mental note that Dean liked to be barefoot. “You were the last one who had it!”
“That’s because it’s mine,” Sam repeated.
“That’s because you ripped it off my body last night,” Dean said. The statement made Sam’s stomach flutter. “You know, I didn’t throw your clothes all over the place, I dropped them nicely onto the floor,” he gestured to the puddles of clothes he’d left. “I didn’t fling your clothes all over the place.”
“I think that’s it,” Sam said, pointing to the ceiling fan where the white T-shirt Dean had stolen was circling lazily.
“How did you even…?” Dean tried to reach it but couldn’t quite. He glared. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t. You can’t resist me,” Sam said with a grin, reaching up and snagging the shirt, offering it over with an innocent look. It was amusing enough that he’d caught Dean attempting to inconspicuously roll-up the extra four inches of pant-leg, mumbling to himself that Sam wore his pants long to spite him.
“Well, I’m sure I’ll learn,” Dean threatened with absolutely no sincerity or certainty in his voice at all. Sam’s grin grew even wider. “I’ve gotta help my dad at the restaurant, but I’ll be behind the bar tonight.”
“When do you get off?”
“Not right now,” Dean said. “I’m busy.”
Sam rolled his eyes and elbowed Dean in the side as the other man pulled the shirt over his head. “Jerk. I meant, what time do you get off work.”
“Oh, early tonight,” Dean said. “Around eleven or so.”
“I’ll come by.”
“No you won’t.” Sam thought maybe he was trying to avoid getting his hopes up.
“Sure I will.”
“Prove it.”
Sam grinned and stole a kiss before Dean could dodge it, a brief press of lips that became a lazy touch of tongues. “Okay,” Sam said with a shrug. “I will.” Dean grinned and then shook his head, shoving his feet into his shoes before heading out, pausing only once to sneak a look over his shoulder.
………………………………
“Sam!” Sophia called as Sam was heading towards the impala. “Hey, wait-up!”
“Hey, Sophia. How did it go last-night?”
“Fine,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder where Michael was climbing into a Jeep, his mom tossing a wave at Sophia before she climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine. “I got Michael back just before Joanna showed. Asher woke-up, apparently, and the other kids as well. Dr. Heidekker didn’t show-up for work, but on the whole, things are looking good.” They shared a grin before Sophia peered around Sam, making a show of looking around. “Dean?”
“He left,” Sam said. “Not that long ago, actually.” She raised an eyebrow and Sam shrugged. “He was fine.”
“Really,” she said, keeping her expression bland. “Fine.”
“Well, there were no side-affects from the …”
“Right, of course.”
“…He slept it off,” Sam said into the waiting silence.
“Slept, good.”
“Okay, stop,” Sam said, which caused her to dissolve into laughter. “I’m not falling for this, there’s no way I’m sharing my private life with you.”
“Your private life? Ooh. Must have been quite a night.” Sam rolled his eyes skyward as Sophia fell into step beside him, jabbing her pointy elbow into his side. “Come on. You can tell me, I’m totally good with secrets.”
“Yeah, you’re the picture of discretion.”
“Where are we going, anyway?” she asked. Sam had unlocked the driver’s side door of the impala and slide into his seat. She knocked on the window and gestured to the lock, sliding in when Sam had unlocked her side.
“I’m going to get some breakfast.”
“Oh, great. I’m starving.”
“You’re pretty pushy,” Sam pointed out with a smile to soften his words.
“My best friend is Dean. Come on! I’ve had to be. You think he just walks around like Suzy Sweetness and Light?”
“Don’t let him hear you call him Suzy, too.”
“Ha,” she said, then shot a sly look over to Sam. “Total baby duck, right?”
Sam couldn’t quite manage to bite-back the smile. Dean had been ruffled and groggy, and Sam had seen with absolute clarity where Sophia’s analogy came from. “A bit, yeah. How did you know about that?”
“Slumber parties,” she explained, as if that was just common sense.
Sam tried to picture it, but found he couldn’t. “By slumber party, you mean you showed-up on his doorstep with pyjamas and a pillow.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
………………………………
They ate breakfast at a diner near the motel, and Sophia didn’t pry anymore into what had happened the night before. After, Sam drove them back to the motel so she could pick-up her car, and was almost back to his room when he recognized the large black pick-up in the lot. Sam had managed to forget for a while that John was on his way to Fitchburg and that he was expecting to find his son waiting patiently with all the information they needed to hunt and kill a shtriga.
There was a part of Sam that could not understand where his father could think, even for a second, that Sam would actually sit around and wait. Based on passed experience alone, John should know better. Still, Bobby had been very clear that John’s headspace wasn’t clear because of Sam’s vision, and because of the subject of the hunt. Sam almost didn’t want to open his motel room door.
With a bracing breath, Sam unlocked his door and stepped inside, eyes going immediately to where his father was seated on the neatly made-up double bed. Not the best of times to remember what had happened on that bed the night before – and that morning -- especially with his father seated on it as he was. “Sammy,” John said with a relieved smile.
“Dad,” Sam said, his voice hoarse. John stood from the bed, hugged Sam somewhat stiffly and clapped a hand on his upper arm.
“Bobby said you’d made some contacts. Have you figured-out who the shtriga is?”
“Yeah, dad,” Sam said. “And I killed it.” There was an awkward silence, rife with the expected tension. Sam took the opportunity to go-over what he would tell his father, and what he would omit – like that he’d had Sophia and Dean help, and that he’d screwed-up and Dean had been hurt as a result.
“I gave you a direct order,” John said, barely suppressed anger in his voice.
“Yes, sir. And if I had waited, another kid would be in the hospital. I had an opportunity to get it. I knew where it would strike next and I caught it in a trap. If I had waited, we’d have no idea where it would hit next.”
“Dammit, Sam!”
“No, dad! Not this time! You’re not gonna turn this on me and make me feel like I screwed-up because I didn’t play by your rules. You didn’t want me to go right from the beginning! Didn’t believe there was anything going on here, and then suddenly I say the word ‘shtriga’ and you’re high-tailing it across the country to come and kill this thing! You have a problem with my visions that I have never understood, but I didn’t bring it up because – like always – I figured you had a pretty goddamn good reason! I’ve hunted on my own before and you’ve had no problem. Why is this so different, huh? Because it’s more than the vision.”
“You watch your tone.”
Sam took a breath and changed his tactic. “You can’t tell me that if you were in my position, and you had an opportunity to end it – like I did – without someone else getting hurt, that you wouldn’t jump on it.”
John shook his head, pacing the room like a caged animal before he ran a hand over his mouth and down his chin. “We’re too much like alike, you and I.”
“I was careful,” Sam said, lying only a little. “And I was thorough, and it’s gone, dad. It’s dead. And I’m fine. But you gotta tell me. You gotta tell me what it is about that thing.”
John nodded his head, settled into the stiff-backed chair in the corner of the room and dropped his head into his hands, his elbows to his knees. “I shoulda known,” he said, and then sighed. “But there was a hunt, and I thought … I thought your brother could handle it. Thought that you’d both be safe and when I got back …”
Sam dropped onto the bed, the breath going out of him. He hated to hear stories about his brother, hated to stir-up old, vague memories of warm laughter and a sure hand he could count on, no matter what. His brother was nothing more than a ghost of a memory who had left behind nothing but a sharp knife and a set of nail marks in a cheap hotel room in Colorado, and a trail of blood that led as far as the door – that, and a host of insecurities and guilt for both remaining Winchester men. John had looked, desperate in his search, but they’d never found him. Sometimes Sam thought he felt something when he woke from a nightmare -- a ghostly touch, a cooling, gentling press of fingertips against his skin to bring him down from the rush of horror – but it hurt to think.
“We were in Fort Douglas,” John continued. “You were both kids -- you might have been around six years old -- but I left him with a shotgun and some food, and you to look after. I knew there was something in the area, and I left you both alone.” Sam forced himself to be quiet, forced the questions and condemnations from spilling passed his lips. “I gave your brother specific instructions – the same I’d always give him, so he’d know what to do if something happened. He wasn’t to leave the room; I specifically said … I shoulda known. I mean, there were signs before but I didn’t want to believe …”
“About what? What signs?” Sam asked. For a moment it seemed like his dad had forgotten he was telling this story to Sam.
John only shook his head. “He left the room, that’s all I know. He left you asleep and alone in that motel, and when I came back he was sitting there in the doorway to the bedroom with a smoking gun in his lap, and that thing was fleeing through the window, and you were lying there on the bed.”
“He didn’t kill it?”
“The gun was filled with regular bullets, they don’t damage something like a shtriga. But his shots drew enough attention that it knew to get out of there,” John explained. “I went straight to you, but you were fine – just a little disoriented. And I was so scared, and angry as hell. I don’t even remember what I was yelling. He kept saying he was sorry, that he just needed to get out of there, just for a minute, I could have smacked him I was so mad.” He sighed and sat back in his chair. “I wasn’t mad at him. It was what I’d done, that I’d left him there alone and when I knew something was in the area. I’d forget sometimes, that he was still just a kid because he was so damned good at hunting.” He laughed derisively at himself and finally raised his eyes to Sam’s. “Those were some of the last things I said to your brother.”
“Dad…” But John only shook his head, so Sam stopped.
“What you did – that was not okay, Sammy,” John said. “You were walking into something unprepared, and if you do that again, so help me, we’re gonna have ourselves a problem.”
“Dad,” Sam said, keeping his tone quiet because he didn’t want to start a fight, he wanted to finish one. “I’m not that little kid asleep in that motel room, needing to be looked after.” It was hard to suddenly have a reason for why John had started always leaving Sam with Bobby, or Ellen, or Pastor Jim. He’d always known – it seemed an obvious conclusion – but now to hear it confirmed, and to understand what had happened just before his older brother had gone missing made it somehow for real. “And dad … I’m sure he knew. I’m sure he…”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” John said, standing from his chair. “You took take care of everything?”
“I salted and burned the remains, just to be sure.”
“Good,” John said. “Then pack your things up. We’ll get something to eat on the way out of town.”
“We’re leaving?”
“I’ve got wind of a nest of vampires, not far from here.”
“Vampires? Dad, are you serious?” Which was a dumb question, because Sam had never known his father to joke about a hunt. Still – vampires?
“Yeah,” was all his dad offered. “Come one.” Sam nodded and stared packing away his things, his had all over the place. Memories of his brother always left him feeling raw, and his father had been barely suppressing his own emotions, choking back tears until his voice was drowning in them. He kept expecting the other shoe to drop, for his dad to turn around and start yelling and raving and throwing things because Sam had so flagrantly gone against his orders, but it seemed as if John was just as shaken from the memories as Sam. Added to that, Sam couldn’t quite reconcile himself with the idea of vampires.
It took longer than usual for Sam to pack his things up, he’d settled into the room without entirely intending to, and that fact had prompted a scolding look from John and a comment that he had ‘gotten lax’. After the impala had been packed-up, Sam had convinced his dad to eat at the same diner he’d had breakfast at, because it was getting close to evening and he was operating on one meal alone. John had taken the opportunity to grill Sam for every minute detail with respect to the shtriga, and it had been difficult to remember which parts he was leaving out. They were on the road by nightfall, and as he followed his dad’s taillights, Sam promised himself that as soon as the nest – or whatever it was called – was killed, he’d return and speak with Dean, he was not leaving him, not permanently. Sam had every intention of returning.
He remembered that morning, as Dean was getting ready to leave, how they had both been so comfortable with the other. How they’d fallen into teasing and touching as if they had been lovers forever and not for only one night. His mind turned to how he had asked when Dean would be off work, how he had intended to come by the Wyvern that night and take Dean home.
“No you won’t.” Dean had said. And Sam hadn’t understood it then, but realization struck at that moment so hard that he almost veered off the road. Dean had been right; Sam wouldn’t be doing either of those things, because he was heading out of Fitchburg, heading towards a nest of vampires. He wondered if maybe Dean had been awake so early because of a vision, that he had seen this coming that morning and was bracing himself for it. That the exchanged blowjobs in the shower, and the lazy sex that had followed had been Dean taking what he could get and saying good-bye because he had known. “I’m coming back,” Sam said, his voice filling the quiet of the car. “I’m not abandoning him.”
“Prove it,” Dean’s voice echoed through his head. A challenge and a request.
On to Chapter Six:
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