This was written for Jeanne Gold's Blood Brothers 5 fanzine, released in May of 2011.
It's set after the season 5 finale "Swan Song," but is completely AU from season 6 and later. In this story, Sam and Adam were both freed from Lucifer's cage about six months later, but don't know why or how it happened. The story picks up about four months after they "escaped."
I don't own anything. Special thanks to Jeanne, geminigrl11 and Phx for their work in editing.
Dedicated to my friend Tamar, who dared me to include as many Ghostbusters references as I could in a SPN story.
SPN SPN SPN
Haunted
Winston-Salem, NC
"I hate this house," Annette said, leaning against the door to the old study. "You know that, right?"
"Yes, honey." Ted smiled back. "You've only told me ten times this week. But Alex would have wanted us to finish what he started. Besides, as soon as we finish the renovation, we can sell it and move anywhere you want."
Annette scoffed. "Like anyone would buy this monstrosity."
The century-old Victorian mansion was three stories high—five, counting the attic and basement—with more rooms, halls, stairs, and closets than Annette had ever seen crammed into one place. Vintage 1890s stonework graced the outside, with actual Victorian-era bedposts creatively converted into railings and fences. Tall, copper-roofed turrets at the corners of the structure housed the bedrooms, and honest-to-God gargoyles stood watch atop the thick oak doors. It was more like a castle than a house, built by some obscure Hungarian architect.
Inside, ornate wood paneling graced every room, making it look both warm and daunting at the same time. Keeping it clean was a nightmare, and Annette figured the original owners must have had servants. It had taken them weeks to find their way around, the multitude of halls and rooms, closets and crawlspaces making it a veritable labyrinth. It was the last kind of house she had expected to find in North Carolina, tucked away in a thick tree grove in the suburbs, away from most prying eyes.
Maybe no one had ever found it to tear it down, she thought sourly.
Her late husband Alex had bought the house expressly for the purpose of fixing it up and flipping it. They spent most of their savings in the process...and then the economy tanked, and their prospects of even finishing the project, let alone making any money off it, seemed remote.
She could have lived with that, except the damned house had cost her husband his life. Once the market sank, Alex had laid off the crew he'd had helping him, choosing to soldier on alone.
"I'll do one room at a time, if I have to," he'd said.
But as he worked, he'd become more and more obsessed. He'd spent hours in the basement, knocking out walls and replacing the floor. Sometimes his choices didn't seem to make sense, but he assured her they would eventually.
Finally, one night, she'd come into the very study she stood in now to let him know dinner was ready, only to find him hanging from the exposed rafters. The police wrote the whole thing off as a suicide, but Annette still wasn't sure. There was something about the house, something that made her nervous…scared her.
Ted had come down from New York after that, leaving his carpet cleaning business in receivership to finish his brother's work and help Annette raise her son, Ian. Things had been better for a while, and with Ted's help and her salary from that deferred bonus, she'd somehow made ends meet and kept Ian enrolled at his expensive day care service so he wouldn't lose his place on the list.
But then the noises started. Ted had resumed the renovation work, starting where Alex had left off, and a few days later, they were woken by horrendous sounds from that part of the house. Annette had heard stories about haunted houses, but she'd never really believed until it was happening in hers. What was worse, the disturbances seemed centered around the old study where Alex had hanged himself.
The police came, searching the grounds, but found nothing. Annette had a friend on the force who'd been willing to place a cruiser outside for a few nights if it came to that, but in the end, the authorities had no answers.
"Alex bought it," Ted murmured.
Annette blinked, torn from her reverie. "What?"
"Alex," Ted repeated, looking up from where he was measuring a two-by-four. "He bought this place. If he was interested, others will be, too. Might take some hard work, but we can do it."
She smiled. "I wish I shared your optimism."
"I can be optimistic for both of us."
"Oh, so corny. The schmaltz police are probably on their way."
"I try." Ted grinned before turning back to the wooden beam he was working on.
Annette sighed. "I think I'll go for a walk. Come to think of it, that's one nice thing about this place. It's so big, you can get all your exercise indoors."
"That's the spirit, honey!" Ted called as she moved out into the hall.
The long, oak-paneled hallways were dark, even in daytime, so Annette had taken to keeping the lights on all the time. There were so many twists and turns that simply opening curtains wasn't enough.
The first floor was more or less finished, Alex having completed most of it before he died. On the second floor, only two of the high-ceilinged bedrooms—in the turrets closest to the front of the house—were done, the rest of the sprawling space remaining in various stages of renovation. The third floor was by far the biggest challenge. More guest rooms, an old library that had been sealed and walled-up at some point, and a sunroom waited up there. Most of the glass in the sun room was cracked, and would need replacing, and the wiring was shot.
Annette sighed, heading down the winding east stairs to the first floor. It was a lot of work, and without a crew, would take them a very long time to finish.
She reached the bottom of the stairwell and entered the large, well-adorned den. Ted didn't need her help with the heavy woodwork, so she decided to watch some television.
It was cool outside, so they were making regular use of the house's huge fireplace. The fire crackled loudly as Annette settled onto the sofa and started flipping channels. She stopped on Headline News, but started to feel cold.
Standing, Annette moved to place another log on the fire, but halfway to the hearth, the air temperature in the room seemed to plummet. The image in the TV screen began to break up, the sound first becoming garbled and then silent as the signal completely stopped and the screen went blue.
Without warning, a ball of fire erupted from the fireplace, smoke and cinders blasting out into the room. Annette yelped and stumbled back toward the sofa. Then she gasped.
In the flames and smoke, something took shape. It wasn't solid, but it seemed to be taking the form of a man. The apparition stepped toward her, extending a translucent arm in her direction.
"Soon…." The deep, unearthly voice came from everywhere, echoing in her head.
Annette screamed and scrambled out of the room. "Ted! Ted!"
She lost sight of the intruder as she bolted up the stairs.
SPN SPN SPN
Two Days Later
High Point, NC
The room was too bright.
Dean grimaced and turned his face into the pillow, trying to keep the light away. He slowly became aware of his throbbing head. The light wasn't helping it at all.
Neither was the click-clack sound of fingers on a keyboard. That was too loud.
Ignoring it was an option, and Dean tried his best, but the sound continued, stopping and starting, stopping and starting, and every click and clack echoed through his skull like a drummer laying into cymbals. He tried, clumsily, to pull the pillow over his head, but either his arms weren't cooperating or the pillow was fighting back.
God's honest truth was, Dean couldn't be sure which.
The maddening click-clack click-clack paused—once, twice, a third time, longer that time—and Dean wondered hopefully if it was gone, but then it returned.
"Arggghhh." Dean rolled onto his back and forced his eyes open, careful to keep one hand between them and the window. He raised his pulsating head to seek out the offensive noise. Adam Milligan sat at the motel room's small table, a mug in one hand, a pen in the other, and the laptop open. "God help me, you better be looking at porn."
Dean's youngest brother glanced over at him, a smirk teasing the edge of his mouth. He wisely controlled his facial muscles, opting for a more innocent expression. "Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."
"Not that there's any good reason to be awake at—" Dean glanced at the clock between the beds. "Seven-thirty? Seriously, that'd better be porn!"
"Just looking for a hunt. You told me to pick one."
Glaring at the younger man for a moment, Dean suppressed a decidedly vulgar remark and rubbed his eyes. It was still too bright in there. "Don't remind me. You couldn't sleep?"
Adam's face tightened for a moment before he forced a shrug. "Didn't really want to."
"Nightmare again?"
Another shrug.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not—not particularly, no," Adam replied, not unkindly. He had been tight-lipped about his problems since returning from the Pit, just as Sam had. It was something they had in common. That didn't stop Dean from trying though, with either of them.
"I am a great listener, kid. Don't let this hunter's façade or these stunning good looks deceive you. I could have been an excellent psychologist. I love helping people."
Adam smirked. "You just want a job where you can get girls on a couch."
Dean blinked. Deflecting, as usual. "I didn't say there weren't any other benefits."
"Would you two please shut up?" Sam's groggy voice rang out from beneath an undulating mass of pillows, clothes, white sheets, and flowery comforter on the other bed. A disheveled mop of hair popped out near the foot of the bed, revealing one glaring, bloodshot eye.
Dean grinned, then grabbed his drool-damp pillow and sent it spinning across the room.
It smacked his brother right in the face, producing a satisfying "oof," and a very offensive, mumbled retort.
"Rise and shine, Sammy."
"Ugh…I hate you both," Sam grumbled as he displayed a serious lack of coordination while trying to extricate himself from the pile of bedsheets.
"You two are really pissy when you're hungover," Adam observed quietly, clicking something on the laptop and jotting down a note in the journal Dean had picked out for him.
"Sammy's the only pissy one. He can't hold his liquor."
Sam's mumbled retort was decidedly immature.
Dean grinned; it was nice to know he could still bring out the "adult" in his kid brother. He turned back to Adam. "Racing down Main Street with that Mustang was pretty cool, though."
Adam eyed him for a moment. "That was a dream."
Dean frowned. "No, we raced. I remember."
"Trust me, I was driving last night, we didn't race anybody."
"It was only a dream?" Dean asked. He was beginning to question all of his recollections from the night before. Adam just nodded, which made Dean frown deeper. "How do you know what I was dreaming? Sam's the psychic one."
"You were talking in your sleep."
Dean blinked. "Oh. Um…and I suppose that me bringing that dancer from the Tiki Club back here was only a dream, too?"
"Or a hallucination," Sam added helpfully.
"You'd better hope it was one of those," Adam admonished, grimacing. "That place was nasty."
Dean shrugged. "Eh, I've done worse."
"Seen worse," Adam corrected absently, scribbling some more.
"No, he means done," Sam countered. "I know what you mean about weird dreams, though, Dean. I dreamt we were in the car, and we kept passing this gigantic set of dresser drawers over and over."
"No, that was real," Adam replied, turning away from the laptop. He gestured at Sam. "Stanford over here couldn't read the map, so we circled the hotel about five times. That dresser is a few streets over from us. It's some kind of local landmark. This is a furniture town."
Sam was frowning now, looking skeptical. "It had a giant pair of socks hanging out of it…"
Adam nodded. "Yeah…it's a little creepy, if you ask me."
"Why did you let Sam read the map, anyway?" Dean asked. "He was wasted."
"Because you were already passed out in the backseat." Adam sneered lightly. "And I don't think it's a good idea for the designated driver to have his head buried in a map while he's trying to drive in the middle of the night."
"Oh." Dean scratched behind his ear. The previous evening really was a blur. "Yeah, well, it was all worth it."
Dean glanced over as Sam groaned and pulled the comforter back over his head. He yawned and stretched his shoulders. Unlike Sam, he wouldn't bother trying to go back to sleep with the headache hammering inside his skull.
They had more than enough reasons to drink, and they took every chance to do just that. The past few months had been hard. Sam had been successful in putting Lucifer back in his cage, but at the cost of jumping in himself. Worse, Adam had been dragged into the Pit with him when Michael, who was possessing him, couldn't let go.
For Adam, it was the worst possible case of "wrong place at the wrong time," but they'd both suffered horribly. Sam took the brunt of it, but Adam was a close second. They'd spent six months in the deepest parts of Hell with two very angry archangels to keep them company.
Six months—from Dean's point of view. He knew all too well that time moved differently down below. Dean's four months had been close to forty years. Lucifer's cage was somewhat different. Dean assumed about sixty years, but from what little he'd gotten out of Sam, he suspected that it might have been considerably longer.
Your Hell is gonna make my tour look like Graceland. You want me just to sit by and do nothing?
From the intensity of Sam's nightmares in the months since, Dean was pretty sure his prediction had been correct.
Then, suddenly—mysteriously—Adam and Sam had both been rescued and returned to Earth, and no one, including Castiel, seemed to know why or how. Lucifer was still locked away, battling his older brother for eternity. The world had been saved from the Apocalypse. That should have been fantastic news, but it came with a whole new set of problems. The underworld's pecking order had been disrupted. With the Devil and three of the four Horsemen out of commission, the lesser demons, fallen angels, and a host of other monstrosities were vying for power, both in Hell and topside.
Castiel was having trouble reining in the chaos in Heaven, following Michael's loss and the dissolution of Zachariah's cadre of traitors. Archangels were jockeying for position up there, and Heaven's army on Earth—sent down to fight the planned Apocalypse—had been halted, leaving the world in the limbo of a tense cease-fire.
All of which was well above the Winchesters' pay grades, and normally, they would have exited stage left and been done with it, but things were never that simple. Sam was on Hell's Most Wanted list. Some saw him as an escapee who deserved to be punished, some saw him as competition. Adam was viewed by some rogue angels as the reason Michael fell or, at least, a defective vessel that needed to be eliminated. Dean…well, neither side was happy with him. The Enochian protective sigils Castiel had burned into all their ribs was the only thing that kept them off the bigger bad guys' radar, and they had to lay low to make sure nothing else noticed them.
Situation normal, basically. Dean frowned. His relationship with Lisa was on the rocks; his own inability to move on with his new, post-hunting life had been bad enough, and then was made worse when Sam and Adam had reappeared. Not that he'd have given his brothers up for anything, but the sad truth was, their return had made a bad situation with Lisa worse, and finally, she'd walked away.
Yeah, they had more than enough reasons to drink.
But they couldn't just lay low. Staying in one place was dangerous, and if they had to keep moving, the least they could do was help some people along the way. Sam had come back more committed to hunting than ever, and more inclined to seeing things in black and white than when he was younger. He still researched and planned as methodically as ever—not even Hell could beat that out of him—but there was a lot less wringing of hands and a lot more shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later.
In some ways, Dean felt the change was good. Scary on occasion, but good.
Adam was a different case. He had no home to return to with his mother dead, and his pre-med days at UW were over. His absence from school, and the circumstances surrounding it, created too many questions he couldn't answer—without fear of being institutionalized. On top of all that, his nightmares were about as bad as Sam's. The kid had nowhere to go, and despite some misgivings about him becoming a hunter, Sam and Dean weren't going to turn their half-brother away. Family was too hard to come by, and they'd sacrificed so much in the name of it…so they took him under their proverbial wings.
Which brought Dean back to the present, and Adam's big day. He'd been training with them for a few months, and was a quick study. It was time for him to take the lead on his first hunt. If they could find a low-risk, low-visibility one. They'd decided to let Adam handle searching for and choosing something that caught his eye. Subject to their approval, of course. The experience would be good for him.
"So." Dean turned away from Sam—who seemed to be rethinking getting up and was burrowing deeper into his bed—and faced Adam, who was draining his coffee mug. "Big day."
"Yeah." Adam smiled nervously.
Dean could see the excitement beneath the tired surface. He remembered his first hunt, and knew he'd been the same way. "Find anything yet?"
"Um, well maybe. I have a list." Adam held up a legal pad covered in scribbled notes. There appeared to be several pages of them.
Dean raised his eyebrows, smirking. "Look at that. Sam's rubbing off on you."
Sam muttered something from beneath the covers, which Dean couldn't decipher, but it sounded positive, so he left well enough alone. He looked back at his youngest sibling. "All right, you have choices. Let's hear 'em."
"Okay." Adam glanced at the pad. "I shied away from anything that sounded like a possession or, you know, Biblical. Figured we don't need that kind of heat right now."
Sam said something that sounded like "Good call."
Dean ignored him. "Uh-huh."
"So, I narrowed it down to hauntings and the like. We, uh, have one in a Manhattan police station, the 53rd Precinct. Report says the walls were bleeding."
"That one could be a couple of things," Sam piped up, head suddenly above ground again. "Haunting, demon, poltergeist…."
It made Dean antsy. "Eh…police station, security cameras, I dunno. Two of the three of us are legally dead, ex-fugitives. Last thing we need is some cop with an unsolved mysteries fetish running our faces. I'm gonna say no."
Sam thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, that's a no. What else you got?"
"Okay. Some city workers went missing in an underground sewer line in Baltimore. I thought it might be a shapeshifter, but a body showed up a few days later with a pretty big bite mark in it. I checked in Dad's journal, and if the marks are the same, I think it might be this…" He handed Dean the open book, pointing to a picture and its accompanying notation.
Dean read it aloud. "A large and moving torb."
"Ugh," Sam groaned.
"What's a torb, anyway?" Adam asked. The journal's notes were sparse on the subject.
Dean scowled. "Well, it's a—" He looked at Sam, who was shaking his head in disgust. "Well, it's this big, round— It's hard to explain, but let's just say that it's easier to kill the unmoving kind."
"Moving on." Sam motioned for Adam to continue.
"Um, okay… Camp Waconda, New Jersey. A man was attacked by a bear."
"What's so odd about that?" Dean asked, frowning.
Adam looked up at him. "The bear was already dead."
Dean glanced at Sam. "Uh…"
"No."
"Why not?" Adam asked.
Sam and Dean spoke at the same time. "We hate camping."
Adam rolled his eyes and flipped the page. "All right. I see this is going to take a while…."
"What was that?"
"Nothing. Moving on."
SPN SPN SPN
Finding Adam's first official hunt was going to be harder than Dean thought. He and Sam had vetoed all of the younger man's first six potential choices. It wasn't all that unexpected, really.
A hunter's first solo job needed to be simple, uncomplicated. First day jitters could make some desk jockey's work stressful or embarrassing. On a hunt, they could get someone killed. That meant finding some relatively straightforward haunting or poltergeist, maybe a slow-moving, dimwitted monster that could be tracked down and blown away with shotguns in one day's work.
For Sam's first hunt, it had taken weeks to find the perfect situation. But Sammy had been a lot younger than Adam, and they'd had the benefit of their dad's keen eye to choose for them. Adam was older, but virtually new to the whole hunting world—despite being murdered by ghouls and resurrected by back-stabbing, manipulative angels in the past couple of years. The kid had merely been a target before. Now he was learning how to fight back.
None of which was helped by the depressing fact that they all were on some form of Most Wanted list after the Apocalypse. Life just wasn't simple anymore.
"Thank God breakfast still is," Dean murmured to himself.
"What?" Sam asked, glancing over the edge of the newspaper he was reading.
"Nothing."
They were crammed into a tight booth in the back corner of a very crowded IHOP, waiting for their food to arrive. Whatever else could be said about a town that seemed to take pride in being the home of a singer named after a Disney movie, built giant, mildly creepy furniture monuments, and sported a hospital that looked like it came straight out of Star Trek…it had an IHOP. Dean couldn't disapprove of that.
What he could disapprove of was the condition of his younger brothers.
Sam was in bad shape after his time in Lucifer's cage. On the outside, few could see anything wrong. He joked, he bantered, he hung out, but Dean knew it was a front. Hell tore big holes in someone—Dean knew from experience—that didn't heal overnight. Or necessarily at all. Sam drank about as heavily as Dean had when he'd first gotten out, and any time he didn't, he was plagued by intense nightmares that were slowly taking their toll.
Dean saw it sometimes. Sam would be shaving, talking, reading, and just suddenly seem to go blank. Flashbacks. Other times it was more subtle. He would lose his train of thought when talking about the simplest of things, or forget how to draw a Devil's Trap. From Sam's point of view, it had been many torturous decades since that day in Stull, and life hadn't exactly been Oktoberfest before that. Sam had taken a few bad hits to the psyche before Lucifer possessed him, as well.
Trouble was, Sam refused to talk about any of it. He professed to want to put it all behind him, but they both knew that was impossible, especially when hunting was about all they could cling to. It wasn't exactly a lifestyle that helped people forget their demons.
Adam had faired a little better in life, but was having similar nightmares about Hell, and was surely still messed up from being eaten alive by ghouls and then resurrected for Zachariah's treacherous game. Dean knew he wasn't sleeping much, like Sam. The younger man had decided to stick with his brothers, though, for some reason Dean couldn't determine. He wasn't sure he would have done the same, given half a chance.
The younger brother in question was sitting across from Dean, eyes closed, perched over another coffee. His fifth of the day, from what Dean had counted. Adam was a little easier to fix, though, compared to Sam. He just needed a big brother to look out for him. Fortunately, he had two.
"Hey! No sleeping!" Dean swatted at the kid's elbow lightly, jolting him awake.
"There's a short stack coming with your name on it."
Adam didn't keep his eyes open. "Fine. Wake me up when it gets here."
"You know what your problem is?" Dean began sagely, winking when Sam glanced over at him. "You don't get enough exercise. No energy."
"I get plenty of exercise. If I don't have any energy," he crooked his thumb in Sam's direction, "it's because this giraffe took me on a six-mile run yesterday afternoon, before you two decided to take all night emptying out every bar east of this town's main drag."
Sam chuckled, not looking up from his newspaper. "And all on the eve of your first hunt, too."
Dean was glad Sam was playing along. "Was that this week? I completely forgot."
Adam cracked one eye open and glared at him. "Is this your idea of hazing? 'Cause, you know, I can take it, but I'd just like to know what we're doing."
"We don't haze people," Sam stated categorically, still perusing the headlines.
"No, absolutely not. This isn't some fraternity."
Sam's newspaper lowered again. "Well, technically…"
"You guys suck." Adam closed his eyes again.
"But we don't haze," Dean confirmed happily.
Sam looked contemplative. "You did take Castiel to a brothel once."
"That was different."
Adam looked up again. "You took an angel to a brothel?"
"It wasn't as bad as it sounds."
"That's not what Cas told me," Sam said quietly.
"What—?" Dean looked over at Sam. "Wait. What did Cas tell you?"
The waitress arrived before Sam could answer. She was short and plump, with just enough gray hair to suggest that she'd been in her job far too long, but she was nice and kept their coffee mugs topped off without being asked. Dean intended to leave her a big tip. She also liked to flirt with younger men, which should have bothered Dean more than it did.
"Special with bacon for you, Sweetie." She lowered Dean's plate in front of him. "And two short stacks."
She arranged Adam's and Sam's plates, then counted their mugs. "And coffee, coffee…coffee. Be right back with the pot."
"Thanks, Angie!" Dean grinned merrily as she moved away. "I like her. She's nice."
Adam dug into his pancakes like he hadn't eaten in days. The workouts Sam was inflicting on him were really increasing his appetite. Dean, for one, was happy Sammy couldn't make him exercise that much. Being the eldest had its perks, besides Dean didn't need a drill instructor. For all Sam's resentment of their Marine-style, semi-boot camp upbringing, he certainly had taken their dad's PT ethic to heart.
Sam had put the newspaper aside but, as often of late, was only picking at his food. Something else Dean would have to address sooner or later. Alcohol intake up, appetite down: that was a recipe for trouble.
"You find anything in the paper?" Dean asked, watching Sam chew a small forkful of pancakes with obvious disinterest.
The younger man shook his head. "Nothing. Maybe we can call Bobby. He's bound to have something we can look into."
"Looks like my initiation will have to wait," Adam added, smirking around a mouthful of syrupy pancakes. He had Sam's taste in food, and Dean's table manners.
"Don't give up so soon, kiddo," Dean chided. "Sometimes hunts just fall into your lap."
Angie returned to fill their mugs, and Dean watched past her as two uniformed police officers entered the restaurant and settled at the table right across the aisle from them. Judging by their uniforms, one was a local High Point cop, the other an apparently off-duty Winston-Salem patrol officer. Winston-Salem was the next town over, if Dean remembered his maps of the state.
Dean surreptitiously eyed them, as he did all cops, and casually tuned in to listen for any sign of trouble. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam doing the same thing from behind Adam. The officers, however, seemed interested in only food and some private gossip.
"…so what are you going to do?"
"I don't know, Charlie. Annette's convinced her house is haunted. We've been all over the lot and the house, and there's nothing there. No sign of forced entry."
"But she's hearing noises?"
"Screams, moans, scraping. Hell, it's a regular Halloween story, man."
"You think it's a prank?"
"I think she misses her husband."
"Is this that same old mansion…?"
"Yeah, the one off Maplewood, near the hospital. Creepy place. I'm surprised it wasn't torn down years ago and turned into an apartment complex."
"Heh, like there aren't enough of those around."
The cops chatted until Angie swung by to take their orders. Dean looked at Sam, who was looking back with raised eyebrows. Apparently, Adam had tuned in, too. The kid was a fast learner.
"Fall into our laps, huh?" Adam asked quietly.
Dean smiled. "Sometimes, it's just that easy."
They finished eating, and headed out.
Dean left a hefty tip for Angie before swiping at Sam's arm on the way out the door. "Seriously, dude, what did Cas tell you?"
SPN SPN SPN
It's just a piece of scrap metal. Sam kept telling himself that, but it wasn't working. He was sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala, waiting for Dean to come back from buying his lottery ticket. He'd felt fine a moment ago…before the glint of sunlight from the ground had caught his eye. Then he'd felt anything but fine.
He could feel it. The blade. It cut skin and muscle easily, snagged a little on tendons. The demons with talons or teeth were bad enough, but the ones with blades…they could make a person beg. Not that begging ever worked. Usually, it all just got worse when he begged. Sam could feel the blade, pulling down his side, the blood flowing out, warm and heavy against his too-cold skin—
A hand wrapped around his shoulder from behind, shaking him. He jumped, snapping his head around. Adam frowning at him wasn't what he expected to find, but it was better than the alternatives.
"You hear me?"
Sam blinked. "What?"
"I said it's only a piece of aluminum, Sam. It's not a razor."
He released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and turned back to the open car door. Sure enough, it was just a scrap of an old can someone had left behind. He shot a questioning look at Adam, wondering if maybe that psychic crack Dean had made at the motel held some water.
"I saw that same look in the mirror a while back. Remember, when I didn't shave for a week?"
"Oh. Right."
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Sam tried to loosen the knot of tension that had developed in his shoulders, and made a point to stare in a different direction than before. Pulling all the memories back and stuffing them into the corners of his brain where he'd been keeping them wasn't easy. Some days it was impossible. Those were the times he professed to having migraines and stayed in bed. That wasn't really an option today, so Sam just tried to focus on something else. The cold breeze, the sounds of cars rushing by on the street, the chattering of a pair of college-age girls nearby.
Anything.
"You should talk to Dean."
Sam turned again. Adam was watching him from his perch against the rear passenger side door, eyes filled with sympathy. No, not sympathy, Sam reminded himself. Empathy. Adam had hung beside him the whole time.
"He notices it, you know? He's not stupid."
"I know that," Sam rumbled, vaguely annoyed. Don't you think I'd talk to him if I could? He wanted to say it, but shook his head instead. "He's got enough problems without worrying about mine."
Adam didn't answer, just shifted his view out the window. The weather was in that odd phase between winter and spring. The sun warmed everything, making the inside of the car hot while the air outside was still chilly. With the Impala, that meant rolling the windows down when she was parked, otherwise they'd be drenched in sweat after only a short while.
"Have you ever talked to him about it? Your stuff, I mean." Sam turned the argument around on the younger man. "Your nightmares are still bad."
"Not really," Adam muttered, eyes far away. "I don't really— I mean, he's my brother, but I barely know him. Not the way you do."
Sam smiled faintly. "You've known him as long as you've known me."
"You know that isn't exactly true," Adam mused, cocking an eyebrow but still staring out the window.
Sam knew what he meant. He and Adam had spent...well, Hell was different. Sam knew, without any doubt, that he'd been down there a little over six months. He'd seen calendars, read newspapers, he knew that was true.
Yet, in his mind, he felt ancient, rather than just shy of his twenty-eighth birthday. That dichotomy alone was gnawing at him. He should ask Dean how he'd kept from going crazy just thinking about that. How could you know precisely how old you were, yet literally feel decades older? How could you justify being gone only six months, with the memory of decades of pain and torture filling your brain?
"Don't get me wrong," Adam continued as if he hadn't just sent Sam's mind spinning off into a metaphysical knot.
Sam realized he'd completely missed part of their conversation.
"Dean's great. I wouldn't give either of you guys up for anything. I never had brothers before. It's just…hard to get used to."
"It can be a blast," Dean cut in, dropping suddenly into the driver's seat. "Once you get used to Samantha's PMS." He playfully jabbed a bottle of water into Sam's side.
"Thanks." Sam sneered back, twisting the cap off the bottle while Dean handed Adam's Gatorade over the seat.
"What were you guys talking about? Looked pretty deep."
Dean's expression was carefully neutral, but Sam knew he was probing. For a moment, he wasn't sure what to say. He didn't want to lie. There'd been too many lies. All that belonged behind them.
Adam swooped to his rescue before Sam could answer. "Sam's buzz is just wearing off, and he's gettin' all depressed."
"Ah." Dean nodded, shifting the Impala into gear. "Been there, man. You know…I, for one, am going to miss this town."
Sam frowned at the non sequitur, glancing over. "Why?"
"It's one of the few places we've been where we can get socks in your size, Sasquatch." At Sam's perplexed look, he added, "I saw them in that dresser."
Adam laughed behind him.
Sam glowered. "Jerk."
SPN SPN SPN
According to the map, the route between High Point and Winston-Salem should have only taken twenty or so minutes. Unfortunately, a state trooper was up ahead, causing every car to slow to well below the speed limit. Sam cracked his window. The heat was building up, despite the vents being open.
Adam had fallen asleep in the backseat, the caffeine wearing off and his long night catching up with him. Sam eyed him in the side mirror. He could tell a nightmare was starting. Sucks that one would start so soon.
"Should we wake him up?" Dean asked, glancing into the rearview.
Sam shook his head, picking at the label on his water bottle. "It doesn't look too bad. He'll be okay, for as long as we're going to be on the road."
They rode in silence for a beat before Dean spoke again. "How about you? How're you holding up?"
"I have to pee," Sam deadpanned.
Dean looked at him in momentary surprise, then laughed. "Of course you do. You guzzled that entire bottle of water in five minutes!"
Sam grinned with him. It felt good. Just being. He'd give anything to spend the rest of his life like this, and sometimes, irrationally, Sam wished the road in front of them would never end. He wanted to stay just like this, free of his past, free of everything. But it never worked out that way.
Not liking where that line of thought was leading, Sam shifted in his seat. "So, uh…do you think this is going to be anything?"
Dean considered him for a moment, then shrugged. "I dunno. People think they see ghosts all the time, but it doesn't always mean anything. That cop said this woman lost her husband. Could be her imagination."
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Well, we should find a motel first, just in case we end up staying."
"Yeah. You find out where we're going yet?"
Sam pulled out his cell and used the GPS. "There's going to be an exit for a mall once we get into town. Take that one, go right, and we should be able to find the street easy enough."
Dean nodded. "We should scope the town out a little, see what cover we can use."
"You getting bored with the FBI again?"
"Well, from the sound of it, this seems kinda small for the Feds. I'm thinking we might want to be more creative."
Sam glanced over. "Like how? Gas company? City inspector?"
Dean shrugged. "Yeah, something like that. Besides, we're going to need to make new IDs anyway. We've never been here."
That made Sam smile. As mundane as it might have been, he knew Dean loved making fake IDs. A glove box full of them, and yet his brother got positively giddy building a new cover.
Dean seemed to read his expression, since he was smiling, too. "It's the little things, bro. What'd Bobby say when you called him?"
Sam squirmed a bit. "I told him about the case. Told him what we know."
"Yeah?"
"He asked if we're in kindergarten."
Dean huffed. "It's Adam's first hunt!"
Sam grinned ruefully. "He also said we're babying him."
"Well, you are, maybe, but not me."
"I am not!" Sam shot back, keeping his voice down. "Besides, Bobby said it was you."
Dean glanced at the backseat, then lowered his voice, too. "Well, I would remind Mr. Tough Love that Adam wasn't raised in the life like we were, and his introduction to it wasn't the most pleasant experience in the universe, so we need to take this slow."
"You'd never say that to him," Sam said, shaking his head.
"Yeah, I would."
"No, you wouldn't. You're scared of Bobby."
Dean glared at him. "I am not scared of Bobby."
Sam held out his phone. "Call him and tell him what you just said, then."
Eyeing the phone, Dean shook his head. His tone grew haughty. "I wouldn't want to interrupt whatever he's doing with something so ridiculous. But that doesn't mean I'm afraid of him. I'm not afraid of anything."
Sam stared at him a moment, then nodded once. "I agree. You're not afraid of anything."
"Glad we got that settled."
"Except Bobby."
TBC