A/N: This is meant to be a three chapter-fic, once I'm done with writing the other two. They'll be out soon, though I can't say exactly when.
The title of the chapter belongs to The Eagles ("After the thrill is gone"), the name of the fic to The Rolling Stones ("Sympathy for the devil").
I don't own Supernatural or any of the characters.
After the thrill is gone
"You boys.. You look ready to drop. How long's it been since you last took a break?" Bobby asks in a gruff voice, rubbing his forehead with the hand still holding his trucker cap.
He looks ruffled and tired, his face lined. The kitchen they're sitting in is a mess of bloody rags and discarded tissues, muddy footprints and old post-it's plastered to every available surface.
Dean's still slumped over the kitchen table, freshly stitched arm held high while Sam wraps it. His eyes are barely open, only vaguely aware that there are people around him talking in stern voices.
"You've been at it for weeks, and in case you hadn't noticed, you ain't Duracell bunnies."
"Apocwsh" Dean mumbles, lips smushed against the table top. Sam takes it to mean 'Apocalypse', and feels a stab of annoyance mixed generously with apprehension pound through his belly. Not for the first time he wonders where they'll be in a year from now.
"The Apocalypse ain't gonna come faster just because you two can't stand up straight." Bobby scratches his head, like he's not completely certain where he went wrong with that sentence, but neither one of the boys argue. He seems content that it's gotten the point across.
There's a key on the table, right in front of where Dean has his head. It's old and rusted, and it's got the oldest keychain on it Sam's ever seen.
"You do some maintenance on my cabin, you can stay there. Long as you want. And at the very least until that one can take a shower unsupervised."
He nudges his head towards Dean, who's drooling onto a sheet of paper, having finally given up on fighting sleep.
"And keep him away from the booze, Sam. He's damned near pickled his liver."
"Not his babysitter" Sam mumbles, and Bobby throws him a look so cold he doesn't need to be told which one of them is his favorite. "No, but he's yours."
It rings with a finality that brings back years of cold nights in drafty apartments, Dean as his only company and his only source of comfort. Bobby's eyes are still staring straight into his own when he looks back up again.
The scenery changes slowly, almost in tune with the flipping of cassette tapes. It goes from the regularity of the interstate with signs notifying gas stations and fast food like clockwork, ticking along to Led Zeppelin, a map of intersections and flashing lights on the roads underneath them as they pass them over on their bridges to farmlands and long stretches of nothing while Van Morrison wails out of the stereo. They pass into more rural areas, trees and rocks flashing past with dizzying repetition. The Impala purrs, the engine running as smooth as a whistle in the cool air. The road narrows down, bends and twists, like the art of road building had to give for mother nature and accept more turns and corners. They're climbing, slowly, onto a higher plane.
Dean rides shotgun, his left arm curled up against his chest in an attempt to keep it elevated. It slides down when he goes under, then bobs back up along with his head when he resurfaces moments later. Sam's hands are tight on the wheel, his left leg bouncing on the rubber mat in the footwell. His mouth opens now and again as he draws breath to speak. Then it closes. His fingers tighten convulsively around the black rubber, and the engine roars. Dean bobs under again, finally giving into the exhaustion that's been chasing him for weeks, his arm rocking with the motion of the car against his thigh.
The cottage is a dingy, dark green thing with red window sills at the edge of a forest. Sam doesn't have to go inside to know it's been left alone for years, because the roof with missing shingles and the rotten floorboards on the front porch can tell him that easily enough. Next to theirs are about five similar cottages, different shades of green, one a brave and unfortunate shade of brown, in better states than the one they're staying in. He sighs, shoulders his own duffle and exactly half of the supplies, leaving the rest for Dean. His shoulders are hiked up to his chin in stress and irritation and sheer annoyance from being cramped in the seat of the Impala for hours on end with a brother that can't blink without getting on his nerves. He knows it's unfair of him, but Dean is his brother. His big, childish and reckless brother who's around him 24/7. Always there, always with a fresh comment or a bodily function or a snort/snuffle/snore/cough/sneeze/shuffle.
It just gets to be enough sometimes.
He's wrestled open an uneven door, scraping it against the floorboards and disturbing the striped rug on the floor before Dean manages to shuffle into the room. He looks pale, his skin waxy as he enters on shuffling feet. Sam worries about infection for a split second, pushes it onto his check-list, right after "take a long piss" and "figure out if there's electricity". It takes him another five seconds to realize that Dean didn't take in the rest of the supplies, and that he's in fact shuffling towards the car on unsteady steps. He's holding his body stiff, bruised ribs protected by the less jarring motions.
Sam turns away.
By the time he's made it back, his arms full of a moldy looking tarp and some rope, Dean's spread out on his side of the bed – the only bed – looking dead to the world. The supplies are neatly put away, Sam notices, and the tiny kitchen excavated under the mountain of groceries he dumped there earlier.
Anger flares in him anyway. Unfairly and unwelcome. He doesn't want Dean to try hard to be on his good side again, because it leaves Sam looking like a bastard for not making amends back.
It's still early, but it's cool out, and one of those days where night comes early. Or never left. Either way, it's dark out, the sky heavy with rain. The tarp under his arm crackles as he kicks the bed Dean's sleeping on, and he tightens his hand around it.
"Dean. Get up. We have to fix the roof first."
Dean turns onto his side, rubs a weary hand over his face, squinting up at him.
"Now?"
"Yes, now. You'll be happy when it rains."
"Rain?"
He counts to ten in his head, refusing to dignify Dean's sleepy confusion with an answer.
Dean shuffles away from the bed a moment later, still looking unsteady and totally without interest in the plan Sam's already made to fix the roof. He's already had the argument with Dean in his head. Feels empty now that Dean is pliant and silent instead of obnoxious and belligerent.
He steadies the ladder against the roof, looks down at his brother still holding his arm tightly against his chest. It's only been a few hours since his stitches. The wounds will be warm, throbbing with blood and swelling. The first day is the worst, and then the pain tapers off into itchiness.
"You'll follow me?"
Dean looks uncertain for a moment, his eyes barely flickering towards his arm and where his ribs are bruised under his shirt. Sam finds himself angry again, frustrated that his brother can't just tell him that climbing a ladder right now will hurt like all hell. It's unfair, and he knows that. He does.
"Good." He snaps, starting up the rickety thing. There's a small tug as Dean settles his hands around it to steady it, holding it firm as he shifts his weight to climb from the ladder to the roof rafters. The tarp crackles under his arm as he tries to unfold it without letting go. He can feel the movement of the ladder as Dean starts up, slow and deliberate. Really, there's no need for him to be here. Strictly speaking, he could still be in bed, and Sam would have gotten the tarp spread out over the rotten shingles on his own. He blames the instinct that still has him splitting a can of coke in exactly equal parts, our counting squares on a chocolate bar to make sure they get half each.
He's doing all right on his own, with his brother only halfway up the steps, panting in labored, sweaty breaths. He manages to thunder in a few nails with the hammer in his back pocket like he's tightening the corners on a tent before Dean makes it up. By the time he's got the thing nailed down tightly on the top to stop the impending rain from trickling under the loosely fastened edge, he's wondering where his brother got to.
He looks down the ladder again, having fastened the tarp down well enough to last the one night it'll be needed, only to find Dean still on it, his forehead against one of the steps.
"You all right?"
He can hear the briskness in his voice, but his brother responds with a short head shake that doesn't seem to mind the tone.
"Why the hell did you get up there, then?"
He knows why, but starts looking for a better way down now that Dean has apparently glued himself to his plan A, and finds that if he hangs himself from his hands he can probably jump down without any injuries. It's less than he's jumped before. He'll take the chance.
His feet land with a soft thump, his right ankle smarting only slightly. Dean is still clutching to the ladder, his face white and his hands trembling when Sam's regained his bearings. He's only two steps up, and the moment Sam touches his shoulder he starts sagging downwards, like the only thing holding him up was him waiting for Sam to get there. Sam steadies him until his feet land on the ground, and then he's stomping off towards the cabin again, carried away by what he recognizes as petty anger.
Dean follows him slowly, looking bedraggled. The first drops of rain fall just as Sam enters the cabin, and by the time Dean has followed him his shoulders are smattered with droplets of water.
"What the hell is up with you, man?" Sam starts, the moment Dean has made it indoors.
Dean shrugs, turning away like he's trying to avoid the clinch he knows has been in the air for days. Avoidance. Dean's plan A.
Confrontation. Sam's plan A.
"You.. What the hell is up? I don't.. I don't get it, Dean."
"You don't get it?" Dean asks, frowning up at him through red rimmed eyes in a ghostly pale face.
"You're off drinking demon's blood with that Ruby chick, and.. You don't.. You. Of course you don't."
The anger that flared in him seems to go out like a candle struck by a gust of wind, and as Sam watches Dean closes his eyes tightly, sits on the bed like he weighs a thousand pounds. One hand pulls itself over his jaw, stubbled and prickly from lack of shaving.
"I can save people, Dean! That's what we do. I was dealt this hand, and I'm using it for good. Isn't that.. That's a good thing!" He's pushing it. He knows that.
And then Dean stares at him, like Sam's only understood half of what's going on, and Sam suddenly sucks the righteous anger up and gets it. He gets it. Dean is pissed beyond belief that Sam is drinking blood and lying to him and generally going darkside on his ass, but he's hurt and heartbroken and raw because Sam.. He's..
It's not just Sam Dean is worried about. It's them. Because not only is Sam running away from him to drink blood from a demon. He's..
Sam can't even admit it to himself. Can't shape the words. It's a conversation that means admitting to things Sam refuses to think about, even less than he wants to admit to more than brotherly feelings towards his brother.
What's worse than sleeping with your brother? Cheating on him. Even if it was in death.
His eyes are fastened somewhere in the distance, beyond the physical world, and he hears the door slam as Dean leaves the cottage like it's from far away, his eyes suddenly snapping into action again. Anger bubbles in him, like the demon blood and his humanity are separating. Water and oil. He stomps out, ready to confront Dean out in the rain like they're both in the subtitles of an 80's cop movie, but watches as his brother disappear into the woods without reaching out. His movements are jerky with anger, faster than Sam would have thought him capable when he was stuck up the ladder not ten minutes ago. The car keys jingle in his pocket as he sticks his hand in them to keep them busy, and he figures he might as well go.
Running away. Plan B. Usually follows Plan A.
The ride into town doesn't cool his nerves. It's a solid 25 minutes of sulking, of burning anger in the pit of his stomach. Mostly with himself, for fucking things up. With Dean, for.. For not being dead. He loves Dean, more than anything in the world, but he was dead. Sam buried him. Grieved over him, didn't think he'd ever recover, and then realized that time was still ticking away. Dean's time, in his body. And now that Dean's back Sam is faced with guilt to his eyeballs for having chosen wrong. For having moved on – wrongly. For being everything Dean was scared Sam would be without him, and feeling like he has to move backwards to fix it. Redo all the decisions he made while Dean was away, only with Dean by his side to judge him.
But mostly he's angry with himself. Ashamed, scared. Terrified, even, because he's so far in over his head in this mess. So deep in utter, total shit he might as well be swimming in it.
If he is, he's barely treading water.
He's a boy who grew up in the back of cars and never even knew why until he was nearly an adult. And sure, his father took both him and Dean on hunts. Early on, too, but honestly?
Nothing like this. Never anything like this. However epic the story of his mother's death is, and the reasons for it, they didn't face the Apocalypse in Sam's childhood. They took on ghosts. Poltergeists, maybe. Then they waited out their father while he hunted down Wendigos like they were the devil themselves.
Man, a Wendigo would be a holiday compared to the shit they've been dealing with.
This is uncharted territory, and he went right in without the biggest Jiminy cricket in the world – Dean. Because he's an idiot, and this wasn't supposed to be his life.
His muscles are tightly coiled as he folds himself into a small booth at the only diner in town, the car filled with groceries and the backseat packet with stacks of shingles from the supposedly closed hardware store. It feels so bleak, so heart-wrenchingly sad and broken down that he can't help the smirk crossing his face for a moment. There they are. Grown up, powerful men. Sleeping in a dilapidated cabin that isn't theirs, and his apple-pie life thrown away for an existence of motel rooms and wet forests. And stupid fights over mundane shit like demon blood addictions and cheating and.. Fuck.
"You look like you need coffee" the girl standing next to him says. She's about his height now that he's sitting down. Can't be a day older than fifteen.
"I do." he answers, trying to keep his anger in check, because whatever he has become, he doesn't scare children. Not yet, anyway.
"A lot of it."
His thoughts wander as he waits for his order, the muscles in his shoulders tensing with the rolling waves of irritation he's trying to bury beneath the mundane activities that somehow make up most of their lives, however many monsters they hunt down. "I would want to hunt you.", Dean's voice whisper in his ear.
"Coffee. Enough to drown in" the girls says, planting the biggest to-go cup Sam's ever seen on the table in front of him. He smiles, hands her a bill from his pocket. It's wrinkled. Damp.
"Keep the change" he says, knowing it's the only tips she'll be getting tonight. He's the only one in the place. His steps echo hollowly against the empty booths as he steps out into the rain again.
He'd half expected Dean to be back when he returned, cutting the engine with a roar so loud it makes the sound of the rain almost silent. It's been an hour and a half.
Really, he wasn't half expecting it, either, he was fully expecting his brother to be in bed, an opened bottle of Aspirin on the nightstand and a half drunk bottle of beer on the floor next to him.
Dean's nowhere to be found. There are no wet or muddy boot marks on the floor, no damp clothes haphazardly thrown over furniture to "dry".
Nothing.
He's not suspicious, because Dean does this sometimes. For all his efforts to be easy going, his brother is oddly broody sometimes.
It rankles that Dean doesn't want to come back to him. Not even to get out of the fucking rain.
He kicks a chair, and finally, half full and forgotten bucket of coffee on the nightstand next to him, he dozes off. Still fully dressed on top of the covers.
Still angry.
A little worried.
Morning dawns just as grey and dark as the day before, and if Sam hadn't checked his watch, he'd convinced he'd slept in and reached the next afternoon.
It's just the heavy rainclouds, he finally decides. Blocking out sun and light.
It's still cold, damp and heavy air settling deep into everything and making him shiver through layers of flannel and wool. Fog lies heavy, as if drawn to earth around the trees in the forest where Dean disappeared last night.
Dean himself is asleep, his face so pale and worn it looks almost bruised. He's beneath the covers, but Sam can see his flannel shirt poking out over the dark red blankets. Can smell the damp fabric mingled with fevered sweat. His boots are lying on their sides by the door, covered in damp grass and wet leaves, and the rain has drained off them into little puddles on the floor.
He climbs up to the roof again, ladder exactly where he left it last night, and pokes at the visible rafters under the tarp. He's not a carpenter by far, but even he knows rotted wood when he sees it. Knows that replacing the shingles is one thing, but leaving a rotted roof? Recipe for disaster.
Five minutes out of bed, and he knows this isn't his day.
Instead of waking Dean and getting on with their day, instead of going to town on his own and leaving Dean behind to sleep whatever funk he's in off, he settles on the two-seater couch, legs on the wobbling coffee table and laptop on his lap. His mobile internet plug doesn't work up here, between the trees and out in the middle of nowhere.
He expected that.
The thought strikes him that when Dean wakes up he wants to have been doing something productive, maybe even useful while Dean slept. All he can seem to do is have imagined conversations in his head, varying on the different ways the day can pan out. He plans what Dean will say when he wakes up. His reaction to having fix the roof.
His scenarios start out with him explaining patiently this and that while his brother challenges his every move, but even his own head refuses to believe him.
He comes out looking like a dick in every single one.
Dean shrugs off sleep around eight, which is less than a couple of hours since he came back, Sam thinks. He looks worse off than Sam had expected, anemic and shaky.
"Morning" Sam says, his voice shorter and harder than he'd intended.
The lack of reply has him looking up, but Dean is just getting dressed. Throws him a thin lipped, pale smile that isn't reflecting the fact that Sam is watching him get dressed. There should be a "perv" in there for him somewhere, at the very least.
"We need to go into town." Sam finally says, folding the laptop together and settling both feet on the rug underneath him. It's a puke shade of green, and fuzzy. A 70's relic if Sam's ever seen one.
Dean nods.
"I want Marshmallows. And M&M's."
"Fine. You can get them."
Dean looks at him then, eyes fastening on his face until he notices Sam looking back. Shrugs out a kind of nod. Turns away.
Really, all in all? It's not what Sam had expected.
"Breakfast?" Sam asks, after a tense and uncomfortable drive into town. He's still hanging onto the car keys, still driving. Dean clutches his injured arm to his chest, watches the scenery fly by with a kind of tired detachment.
"Yeah, sure." He sighs, so blandly that it almost doesn't fail to tick Sam off. Almost.
They stop by the shops they need first, Dean getting his candy and sugar fixes from the gas station next to the hardware shop run by an older man, the kind of man who makes sure his garage door works without a squeak and says "Giving someone the finger is always uncalled for, because it leaves three fingers pointed at yourself." like it fucking means something.
Sam hates him with every fibre in his being from the moment he strikes up a conversation, grey beard moving with his words. Dean enters the shop just as the man treats Sam to how he thinks a roof should be taken care of and managed to avoid rotted rafters with an amazingly judgmental tone of voice, when the hollow tinkle of a bell announces his brother's entrance for everyone in the vicinity.
"Yeah, I'm coming" Sam says, almost relieved to be picked up like a five year old at the first day of preschool.
The man waves them out, his frizzy grey hair longer than Sam thinks should be legal for someone with a substantial amount of hairless skull showing at the top.
They're at the car when Sam finally realizes he's left the keys at the counter, and he lopes back while Dean leans irritably against the passenger side door, bag of candy dangling from his healthy wrist. It's not raining yet, only drizzling slightly, and Sam would be grateful to be inside again had it not been for the tinkle of the bell and the amazingly irritating man behind the counter.
His keys aren't where he left them, and the man is busy.
So Sam waits in line, like any healthy American who hasn't been guzzling Demon's blood would, stationed behind an older gentleman with a coat long enough to reach his knees and trousers short enough to reveal that while he's wearing white tennis socks on both feet, they're mismatched and different brands.
"...and you know after Betty passed on he was never that good at keeping up with the house. I'm telling you, you'll be seeing those new folks plenty now they've moved in. Told me there was all sorts wrong with the pipes."
The man behind the counter doesn't look as interested in the story as the teller would have preferred, because his voice rises to new levels of enthusiasm.
"I mean you wouldn't believe the kind of things these young people want to grow out here. Ecological. Ever heard of such nonsense?
He's still pondering the lack of environmental interest Americans take when the cashier jiggles a finger with his keys hooked on the end in his face, so he presses out a smile and hurries out to rescue his brother from the drizzle.
"Pancakes." Dean orders. "Coffee, pancakes, a coke and.. No, that's it."
"Same" Sam mumbles, shifting to get close to the window at the inner edge of their table. Behind him is a lady, her hair grey and rolled up in those tight little rolls older ladies seem to fancy so much. She smells powerfully of a perfume that tickles his nose, and it's all he can do not to wrinkle his nose at her. Instead, he slides about a foot to his left and settles in for an uncomfortable, sneezy breakfast.
"He asked for a glass of water, you know, all grateful and shaky that Denny pulled him out of there, and don't you know he drowned before the paramedics could get there? Right on dry land."
Her voice is penetrating and grating, shaking with age. Her listener gives out a sort of quiet squeak of shock or laughter or.. Really, he should be better at listening in on other people's conversations by now.
"I tell you, it was the strangest thing. We got him out of the pond, and he was shrieking and screaming until we got him in his house! And you know Grant, he's not one for hollering like that. Cool as a cucumber, he's been for near on seventy years."
"Oh my, Sylvia. That's terrible!"
"And don't you know, he went and drowned? Secondary drowning, they told me. But that can't be, he wasn't even choking on water when they pulled him out!"
"Oh, Sylvia.."
The other woman, with a whispery kind of voice that suggests too much smoking and far too many G&T's goes into a lengthy incorrect medical explanation of how secondary drowning works, and Sam looks over at Dean in a fit of humor to lock eyes with him over the complete lack of understanding this lady has of human anatomy when he finds Dean tracing circles in the water his sweaty glass of coke has left on the table top, unaware and deaf to the conversation in front of him.
The drive back to the cabin is no more fun than the drive to town. Dean seems ready to crash, clutching the bag of sweets to his chest with a kind of ferocity that suggests Sam will snatch it away if he doesn't keep close attention, but his head sags on the back of the seat, his eyes slipping closed against the weak light in the car.
Sam isn't surprised, he was out practically all night.
There are planks of wood fastened to the roof of the car, an ancient towel flapping down one side to pretend the varnish from scratches and scuff marks and it's hitting the window on Sam's side with wet slaps when the wind takes it and lets it go again.
The cassette turns to play Mr. Crowley, and Sam slams the off button so hard the whole front of the stereo comes off.
End part 1
