1 -Made To Disappear
"He should have been home by now," Dean said, for the third time tonight.
Sam rolled his eyes, glad Dean couldn't see him from the kitchen. "Dad's an adult. He'll be fine. He's after what, a werewolf? He can get those in his sleep." Sam went back to reading his book, not caring at all about Dean's anxiety snit. Part of him wanted to point out Dean was worrying more about Dad than dad had ever seemed to worry about them, but kept it to himself. It'd just end in an argument, and a boring argument they'd had several times before. Truth be told, he would have given anything for a new fight.
Dean paced in the kitchen, continuing to pretend there was something to clean up in there. Dean had been obsessive compulsively cleaning the kitchen and checking his phone every five minutes, waiting for word from Dad, who told Dean to stay behind and watch after him. Which was stupid. Sam was fifteen years old, and sure as hell didn't need a babysittter; certainly not his nineteen year old, reckless asshole of a brother, who often acted more like a Dad - to both him and Dad! How fucked up was that?
Not that Dean noticed. He was still pretending they were a normal-ish family, and that they weren't doomed. Sam sincerely hoped he could escape whatever it was that made the Winchesters so fucked up, although ... no, not thinking about that tonight. He'd gone two weeks without one of those things, and he was going to jinx it.
Sam was so irritated tonight he wanted to start throwing chairs and screaming, but didn't dare say a word, because Dean would probably give him that patronizing "hormonal teenager" bullshit. Just because he was a teenager didn't mean he was flying off the handle for no reason, or that his anger wasn't genuine. They'd been living in Western Washington for almost an entire month, and they'd seen Dad ... maybe six days? Dad had said they were going to live like an actual family for a while, and apparently his conception of that was he was never home, and Sam and Dean did everything. Which, honestly, was exactly how the Winchester family functioned, so maybe his Dad wasn't a complete fucking liar. Just a con man, conning his kids into believeing they mattered for once. Dean didn't see it that way, though, or at least pretended he didn't. Dean made excuses for him - things "came up". As if they were ever going to stop coming up! Dean didn't want to admit hunting monsters meant more to Dad than they did. He probably wasn't ever going to admit it. Sam couldn't help but think of his brother as a lost cause. As soon as he was eighteen, he was so fucking out of here it wasn't funny.
Sam's bookmark fell to his lap, and only when he picked it up did he see it was actually the note he hid in the book at school. Mr. Palmer was a real hard ass about passing notes, as if that was the end of the fucking world or something. Making sure Dean wasn't looking his way - he was not; he was now cleaning out their fridge, like there wasn't a handful of stuff in there, because Dad seemed to forget to shop - he opened the note, hiding it inside his book just in case. It was from Lia, who was the prettiest girl in his English class, and pretty damn smart, too. She turned him on to some great science fiction books he hadn't heard of before. The note, in her loopy cursive, said, "Sam - My sister and some of her friends are going out tonight to see if we can't find the old summer camp. Want to come with us? It'll be fun. We're meeting at the end of Five Mile Road at 11:30. Bring a flashlight! - Lia"
Sam had to ask to find out what this was about. Apparently there were the remains of an old summer camp in the woods - Camp Pinewood, or something as unimaginative as that - and it was a local tradition to go looking for it, while really getting drunk and making out in the woods. Now Sam didn't think this was an invitation to get drunk and make out with Lia, especially since her sister was going to be there, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. Didn't normal kids do stupid shit like this all the time? Just fuck around and do nothing productive, because they were kids? It also might be fun to look for a place just to look for it, not search for werewolves or ghosts or whatever the hell.
He wasn't going to tell Dean, because Dean could have had one of a couple of different reactions, none that were any good. He might tell him no; he might invite himself along (hell no!); he might say he should go, but load him down with salt and silver and all kinds of shit that would have had his classmates looking at him like a complete psychopath within two seconds. He'd have to sneak out, but that was doable. He'd snuck out before.
Finally they heard the rumble of the Impala's engine in the driveway, and Dean jumped up and turned towards the door, but instantly froze. There was a complex and confusing expression on his face, and Sam guessed he'd locked himself up. Did he greet him at the door, or pretend he hadn't been fretting about Dad's late return for the past twenty minutes? Dean's uncertainty had locked him up. Sam shook his head, shoved the folded note in between some back pages, and went back to reading. His brother was so embarrassing.
A minute or so later, there was a mild thump against the door, and while Dean immediately headed there, Dad managed to stumble in the door before he could reach it. Sam looked up, about to make a crack about how graceful he was, when he saw Dad had left a red smear on the door.
Dean caught Dad as he stumbled forward. "Goddamn it! We need to get you to a hopital."
"No hospital," Dad said, putting his arm around Dean's shoulders and leaning against him. "It's flesh wounds. Just sew me up."
"Were you bit?" Dean asked, clearly alarmed. As he should have been, because if he had been bitten by a werewolf ...
"No. He had friends with knives."
"Sam, get the first aid kit," Dean said, helping Dad back towards his bedroom. Although he didn't really want to help - what the hell was he, a dog? Did he follow commands? - Sam still set his book aside and went to get it. Since it was a hunter's house, they actually had more than one, just like they had more than one set of weapons. Always be prepared and all that good, crazy closest one was in the kitchen, so Sam got the kit and walked back to the bedroom, trying and failing to notice the trail of blood drops on the floor. It was selfish to wish they could have been any other family, wasn't it? He still couldn't help it. He still wished they weren't a bunch of fucking monster hunters.
In the bedroom, Dad was sitting on the edge of the bed with his coat off, while Dean was examining his wounds. Now that he could really see him, Sam was shocked. Dad had taken a real beating. One of his eyes was already black, his lower lip was swollen, he had blood around his mouth and nose, and none of that counted the perpendicular slash across his left upper arm that had turned the whole limb crimson. Dean was right - he needed a hospital. But Sam also knew why he wasn't going to go.
"Shit," Dean cursed, wiping at the wound with a towel. It was doing abolutely nothing. Dean met Sam's eyes as he dropped the kit on the bed, and said, "Get the whiskey."
Sam nodded and went to get it while Dean asked the obvious question. "How many of them were there?"
"Uh, five or six."
"Why didn't you bring me along?" Dean asked. "I could've helped."
"I would have if I had known I was in for an ambush."
When Sam returned with the whiskey bottle, Dean was already threading a needle despite his bloody hands. Sam remembered when his home ec teacher was impressed with the fact that he was such an adept sewer, and male, and he wished he could have told her he knew how to do it precisely to stitch up injuries. But of course he couldn't, so he just had to pretend he was the nerd who was good at everything, which made him oh so popular with his peers.
Dean took the whiskey with a nod of thanks, and put down the needle so he could twist the cap off and rinse Dad's arm with it. Dad swallowed a yelp, and gritted his teeth instead, hissing out a breath. Alcohol was a great antibiotic, but it burned like a son of a bitch. Not quite as bad as Supergluing a cut, but it was in the same general territory. Sam wished he didn't know that too.
He stood by, willing to help, but he really wasn't needed. Dean had this. He stitched up Dad's knife wound while he told them the story of how his homicidal werewolf hunt had turned into a fight with some pissed off ghouls, who didn't appreciate him killing a few of them in Eugene last year. Apparently, the whole werewolf thing was a ruse, which was reasonably clever, but Dad managed to get the better of them. Not before getting the shit beat out of him, but ghouls could be pretty rough. They were super fast, and really nasty. Having to deal with more than one of them at once was a nightmare, but leave it to their Dad to walk away from it.
Earlier, Sam had thought that maybe Dad's story about a werewolf was a lie, and he was doing something else, something he didn't want them to know about. Continuing his yellow eyed demon search, most likely. Even Dean was suspicious, though he tried to pretend he wasn't for some damn reason. Did Dean think he was fooling him? Why? Did Dean actually think he hid anything from him? He knew about his secret drinking; he knew about his occasional sampling from the painkillers in the first aid kits; he knew about his nightmares, and his occasional ramblings at night to hunt monsters, raise hell, or all of the above. Neither Dad or Dean was quite as slick as they thought they were.
Sam cleaned the blood off the front door - that was a little too visible for comfort - but skipped the carpet, because it was too much work, and Dean probably had some system for it anyway. Instead, he prepared for bed without actually preparing for bed, going through the motions so Dean would assume he was calling it a night. Early for a Friday, sure, but Sam had been laying the groundwork for this by going to bed relatively early since Wednesday, when Lia gave him the note. What was he, new to sneaking out? Planning was key.
Sam was in bed with his book when Dean came to check on him. "Dad okay?" Sam asked, already aware of the answer.
Dean nodded, drying his hands on a blood free towel. "I still think he should go to the E.R., but he's being a stubborn asshole."
"What a shock."
Dean grimaced, caught between admitting a negative feeling about Dad and ignoring it. "You okay?"
Sam shrugged. "Fine. Hardly the first time Dad came home beat to shit."
"Not what I mean. You've been weirdly quiet all night."
Sam held up his book. "Been reading. It's called homework. You used to do that before you dropped out, remember?" The second it was out of his mouth, Sam wanted to take it back. It wasn't even correct. Dean said he dropped out of school because he hated it, and he surely did, but Sam knew part of the reason - if not all of it - was so he could look after him and Dad and juggle all the monster hunting. It was an impossible set of things to balance before you added classes to the equation. But it also made Sam desperately angry at him too. Why didn't Dean just stand up to their Dad? He didn't have to give away his life to his crazy crusade! Why was he? Dean was a stubborn asshole in every respect but this one. Why?
Dean scowled at him, but whatever evil thing he was going to say, he thought better of it. "Just for that, I'm getting you up early tomorrow for training. Get some sleep."
Sam groaned in disgust as Dean closed his door and left. He didn't need anymore fucking training. Dean was being a sadist now, taking after Dad.
Sam tried to continue reading, but he kept glancing at the clock, and finally gave up and got dressed. He wanted to seem very casual, and not reflect what he was feeling, which boiled down to showing up and shouting, "Please accept me, normal kids! I don't wanna be freak boy anymore!" But he wasn't sure what kind of wardrobe said that, so he stuck with jeans and a t-shirt, and his usual army surplus jacket.
He packed his bed carefully, because a simple pillow under the covers wasn't going to fool Dean. Sam made sure to basically make a lump roughly his size. He was never going to get the shape exactly right, but hopefully it'd be good enough to fool him if he casually checked in later to see if he was sleeping.
Sam went through his flashlights, picking a reasonably small one, as he was sure showing up with a huge one or a camping one would seem too nerdy, and there was no way in hell he was bringing a fucking gun. He did decide to bring a small knife, because he wasn't used to having absolutely no weapons on him, but that itself was troubling. He didn't want to turn into Dean, carrying a million things with him at all times, ready for a sudden demon invasion.
He'd made sure ahead of time that the window made no noise when it opened, and he carefully slid out into the dark, closing the window so carefully you'd think it was a soap bubble about to burst. Couldn't take any chances, not in a house with naturally paranoid men.
Sam didn't allow himself to breathe until he disappeared into the small clutch of woods beside their rental cottage, and was a reasonable distance from the house. With short cuts, Five Mile Road wasn't that far, and nothing at night scared him. He'd seen too many things. Darkness didn't matter all that much. Yeah, monsters could hide in it, but so could people, if they knew what they were doing.
Sam made it to Five Mile and was a little astonished at the number of loitering teens, but fuck it - Greenridge was a very boring town, and beyond this, there wasn't much to do. He saw Lia and her older sister Becky, and Becky's boyfriend Brian, who was some musclehead jock. With them were some of Lia's friends from school - Gabby, Antonio, and Jayna, as well as a girl and a boy he didn't know. he thought he'd seen the girl at the back of his science class, but the boy was a perfect unknown.
Lia turned his way and smiled, running a hand through her short black hair. "Hey Sam, I wasn't sure if you were showing up or not."
Sam shrugged, hoping he seemed casual. "Had to sneak out."
"You got the psycho brother, right?" Brian asked.
Sam's first impulse was to say he wasn't psycho, but of course Dean had to embarrass him during his first week at school. Some of the more sadistic jocks were picking on the smaller, weaker kids and humiliating them after school, and of course Sam wasn't going to stand by and let that happen. He intervened, and got sucker punched in the back of the head by one of those jocks, and it turned into a whole thing. Sam could have fought his way out of it - big or not, they couldn't actually fight for shit - but Dean showed to pick him up, and waded through them like a scythe through a wheat field. One punch put them all down, although Dean didn't do that to the ringleader. He seemed to pick him out right away, and once he was done with his friends, Dean put him in a nasty arm lock and shoved him against the chain link fence, so hard it honestly seemed like his face was going to extrude out the other side. Dean spoke to him in a very low whisper, so Sam didn't hear all of it, but the gist seemed to be if he even looked at Sam or anyone else funny, he was going to sit out the entirety of the football season in a body cast. Dean made him verbally agree to it before letting him go. Not only did the jock show up to school the next day with his arm in a sling - sprained wrist, supposedly - but he had a chain link pattern on his face for the next two days. He was humiliated, and the whole school knew it. People who used to be afraid of him weren't, and it so pissed him off it looked like he was about to explode. He and his friends stared molten death at Sam at school, but avoided him like he was radioactive, which Sam thought was hilarious. And it seemed to raise his social standing. But there was the constant whispering about Sam's "psycho brother". Sam didn't bother to correct anyone, because who cared, right? Besides, let them think Dean was the psycho, so he didn't have to show how psycho he could get too. "Yeah," Sam said, with another shrug.
Lia introduced everyone, and it seemed the boy and girl he didn't know were Tom and Felicia, respectively. They all headed out, down an old logging road that had a chain across it, because spring rains had opened up sizable puddles that were way deeper than you thought, and could easily trap a car. They avoided them, heading for the shadowy pine forest that seemed to go on forever.
Greenridge used to be a logging town, although it wasn't anymore, and part of the old logging forests had been donated to the state as a wildlife preserve. The park service had become one of the town's biggest employers, along with an aerospace firm that had construction facilities in the next county over, but the town was still depressed, and might always remain so. It had been built for one thing, and while it was trying to adjust to something new, it wasn't doing it very well. Sam refused to see a connection between it and him - made for monster hunting, becoming something else- and kept telling himself that a town and a person were two very different things. Which they were. (But didn't he worry?)
It was surprisingly chilly. Sam was starting to see everyone's breath turn into clouds, and he was glad he brought his heavier jacket. Poor Becky was the only one who hadn't dressed for the temperature - a half-shirt? Really? - and looked miserable. Sam was wondering why Brian didn't offer her his coat, and was starting to wonder if he should, when Brian pulled a bottle of schnapps out of his backpack and started passing it around. Sam had a swig to fit in, but god, schnapps was horrible. It tasted too sweet to be enjoyable, but also too rotgut to be enjoyable. It was the worst of both worlds, and this kind, peach, was especially bad. Either have a sweet drink, or have a drink that'd strip paint off a boat - splitting the difference was a terrible compromise. It was warm going down, but he knew it'd be twice as warm coming back up, which it would if you drank too much of it. So he vowed to take one more drink and be done with it.
Somehow, everybody but him knew where they were going. He could see a small path worn into the forest floor - again, this was a boring town and there was nothing to do besides die slow from alcoholism or possibly meth, whatever your drug of choice was - but it still seemed anonymous to him. A dark part with trees. When they got closer, he started to see detritus of people - ripped up potato chip bags, gum wrappers, about a year and half's worth of cigarette butts, crushed beer cans, and the occasional used condom, which was a super nice touch. People were such slobs. No wonder the earth was slowly dying too.
Sam's best guess was they'd walked a quarter mile into the woods, mostly north, and finally stopped at the head of a small incline, that looked down into much denser forest. Blackberry vines were already making walking a hazard, and the farther down you got, the thicker the ground cover. There were some odd shapes, weird shaped shadows within shadows, and once his eyes had adjusted he realized they were parts of old buildings the forest had reclaimed. Maybe an equipment shed or something; no fucking way was it an old camp. They sat in a very loose semi-circle, and Sam had to admit, it still seemed boring, only the surroundings were nicer.
Brian now lit up a joint and started passing it around, and when it came to him, Sam just passed it on. Lia, who was sitting next to him, looked at him curiously. "Don't want any?"
"Pot makes me paranoid," he admitted. "You don't want me freaking out here." Yes, he knew that from sad experience. Dean hadn't yet let him live it down.
She smiled, and a bit of the crescent moon above reflected in her glasses. "I respect a person who knows their limits."
"Limits suck," Brian proclaimed, before downing half the schnapps. If Dean didn't kill him, he might get along with Brian.
There was a flutter of wings, and both Becky and Tom jumped. "What was that?" Becky asked, scanning the trees above them. "Was it a bat?"
"It was probably an owl," Sam said. "This is prime hunting time for them."
"They're not gonna bother us, are they?" Becky asked, still searching the branches. Sam wished her luck, because without a spotlight, you couldn't see shit.
Lia rolled her eyes and sighed at her embarrassing older sister. (Boy, did he know that feeling.) "You're not a mouse, so no, they're not."
"Ain't they the birds that puke instead of shitting?" Brian asked. The joint had made its way back to him, so after asking that, he took a long drag.
Antonio clicked his tongue in disgust. "No. I'm pretty sure they do both."
"Don't all birds puke?" Jayna asked.
"You'd think," Tom said, with a shrug to show he really didn't care.
Silence stretched on, and Sam was beginning to think this was a huge mistake, until he felt Lia's knee touching his. She looked at him with a slightly embarrassed, slightly sly smile, and he realized he was absolutely having the best time of his life.
Antonio took his second hit off the joint and passed it on. After exhaling, he said, "God, this town suuuuucks."
Brian grunted a small laugh. "Yeah, no fucking kidding, I can't wait to get outta here."
And that's when a machete suddenly slammed down into Brian's head, splitting his skull like an overripe melon.