Part Two
It's been almost a year in the twisting corridors of Stanford when Sam meets Jessica for the first time and she's perfect. Her green eyes gaze at Sam in a familiar way that sends electric pulses over his skin. Shiny white teeth sit in a shiny lip-gloss smile and he expects her to be made of soft skin, silken and supple.
Instead she's full of angles and hard muscles that jolt against Sam limbs and lips that drag along his skin in swirling wet patterns. Sometimes he holds her like china because she's so small in his arms and sometimes he throws her to the bed, wondering if she can break. Jessica just laughs and reaches out, calling the devil into her arms.
Sam's twenty when he meets Jessica and she's perfect. They build a life together, a construction of textbooks walls and hidden memories, filled with cracks that they plug with fast food and black-and-white movies. They have a small flat and in the bathroom their elbows bump together as they place their toothbrushes side by side like fallen trees.
Sam leaves in the morning before Jessica's awake and he's home hours after her, but she just gives him an easy smile and stands on tip-toes to kiss his cheek. The days roll by in a haze of work and no play but Sam wants to give his mother the perfect son.
And Mary, Mary screams and screams and screams and screams. Mary's there when the day ends and when it begins and when Sam doesn't know whether it's day or night, the confusion's because Mary's screaming too loud. When he starts to forget his name, he picks a bar and picks a fight and picks out the glasstoothbone embedded in his fist. Only then is Mary quiet enough to for Sam to think.
It's when Sam's punching a faceless figure and Mary's screaming with every blow, that the ache, the desperate need for his brother's strongest. It's that continuous 'Dean, need Dean' that's Sam's backbone. Some days it will suck away everything else, drain every emotion until all that's left is Dean. Then some days Sam will wake, eat, dress, smile, laugh, live because one day he'll see his brother again.
When Dean's all that exists in Sam's thoughts, then Mary screams the loudest.
Dean's twenty-four and he's forgotten how to live. Dean's twenty-four and he almost forgot but there's a voice mail waiting on his phone when he shakes off the hangover enough to check it. Dean's twenty-four and he would have forgotten but his brother's voice wishes him happy birthday from light years away.
Days are passing like thoughts thrown away on trivial questions. In time they all blur together until a week has gone and Dean can't remember what he did. There's nothing except hunts and booze and a pliant body to complete the circle. There's no lather rinse repeat.
Just repeat.
And repeat.
And repeat.
He drinks to wake up. He drinks to fall asleep. He drinks to shoot straight. He drinks to solve a hunt. He drinks to cure a hangover. He drinks to see the endless road. He drinks to make the smiles come easier.
He drinks so he doesn't spend his days thinking, 'Sam, Sammy left me.' Then, when he has drank too much and fucked someone behind the bar, he collapses into a motel bed and rolls his brother's name around in his head until it's just a sound echoing through his dreams.
And Mary, Mary's everywhere. She sits in the backseat of the Impala, eyeless sockets somehow still watching Dean in the rear-view. She's crucified on trees and splattered across ceilings. Everywhere she goes, a bread-crumb trail of rotting flesh stretches out behind her.
In the mornings she's waiting for Dean as soon as he's coherent. In the motels she stands at the end of the bed, pus and blood dripping from her fingertips to soak into the carpet. When he's sleeping in the Impala she presses her hands against the window, leaving skin handprints stuck to the glass.
In those days when it's worst, when Dean can't open his eyes without seeing Mary, when she's imprinted on his eyelids, hunting's the only thing that keeps him functioning. It's the adrenaline charging through his veins, the metal weaponin his hands, and the slow spread of red blood on the floor. It's the screaming of someone, something dying as Dean stops it's black heart.
Some days Dean thinks he must be insane but people always say that insane people think they're sane. So he's probably sane but if he thinks he's sane then maybe he's insane. But then… Mary laughs at Dean as he spins in orbits. Eventually he just gives up and knocks back another shot.
Sam would know. Sam would be able to make Dean sane. Sam would be able to fix him. Dean downs another bottle. He wakes up with blood on his hands and it's not his. Sammy would be able to save him.
Sam's twenty-two and he can feel the contractions of his brother's muscles under his hands. There's a heavy weight resting on him. It presses his body into the floor until the world's suddenly solid around Sam and how long has it been since his world was real? How long has it been since Sam's feet felt the ground underneath them?
Mary's screaming and screaming and screaming and Sam doesn't hesitate, just noses under his brother's leather jacket and sink his teeth into skin. Mary's gone. She's not just quiet. She's gone. For the first time in too long, the world's silent.
And then a voice breathes in his ear, hoarse and soft and perfect. "Sammy."
He let's go, shifts his weight and bucks up, flipping them over until Dean's the anchor and Sam's the ship. Arms automatically wrap around his back, a steel cage to protect him from sharks, fingers digging into his skin. Blocking out the world, Sam buries his face in his brother's neck and lets the smell of 'Dean, Dean, Dean' calm the moon's roaring tides.
They stay like that for a long time and perhaps it's forever or perhaps it never happened. The world's still moving but they're standing still or perhaps they're moving too fast and the world's standing still. Perhaps they've fogged up the glass and the world has simply fallen away beyond the mist. It doesn't matter, nothing matters anymore.
Dean's twenty-six. His fingernails are digging into his little brother's skin and he's never letting go. Every pole's slotting into place, north and south, east and west. Sam is his arrow pointing the way, his map to find the world's edges then fall over into no man's land. That's where they exist, in the shadows where the rest of the world can't quite see them.
All too soon Sam's gone. He's standing over Dean so much taller than he remembers. His hand's warm when Dean takes it, warm and calloused and real. Their shoulders jostle and they fall against each other as their calibrations reset and they get their balance back. They've been apart for a long time, too long, but still they snap together like muscle memory, remembering every axis that their other half's plotted on.
Then Sam asks the question that Dean doesn't want to answer. "What're you doing here?"
It's not a short and snappy answer. It's long and complex and he doesn't really have an answer, not one that he can say. He's forgotten what it's like to feel something that isn't drunk or lost. Sam's drawing back at the blank look on his face and Mary has appeared at his side, dripping on the perfectly clean carpet.
Light floods the room, banishes their world of shadows. There's a blonde woman standing in the doorframe, dressed in less rather than more. Her eyes are emerald green and she's beautiful and Dean has been replaced. Sam has a picture-perfect Barbie doll and Dean no longer belongs. They're talking about him and he has been slotted into Sam's life as another half-lie. Then Sam's moving over to her. Sam's leaving Dean and Mary's sliding into the gap left behind with a toothless smile of bleeding gums.
Jessica's looking at Dean with curiosity whilst Sam's still asking, 'why are you here'. Quickly he spins a story that he knows will fit into his brother's new life, a tale of an absent father, half truth, half lie. Sure enough, Sam doesn't looked horrified, just annoyed and the Barbie looks concerned about a father she has probably only heard momentary mentions of.
Then Sam looks down at her and Dean realises the truth. He knows that look. He knows it from years of keeping his little brother safe, watching over him when angels were too busy. He knows that look because that's how Sam used to look at him. So now Dean understands.
Mary glides in behind the two lovers and for just a moment Dean can see her smiling proudly at her youngest son. He understands. This is the apple-pie life. This is what a mother prays of for her child. This is what Sam dreamt of when he was young and curled up in a bundle on the backseat of the Impala, pressed up against Dean's side like a precious creature to be protected.
Dean understands. This is Sam's perfect life. He won't let his own feelings get in the way of his brother's happiness. It only takes him a moment to stutter out a contradiction, an excuse. It's the hardest thing he has done since his brother left him in to vomit in puddles at the empty bus-stop. Barbie looks oblivious. Sam looks confused. Mary smiles wider and a slice of her cheek crackles, blackens, burns in invisible flames.
They walk downstairs together, steps, breath, heartbeats perfectly in sync. Everything's tightening inside, clenching together as he prepares for the agony of leaving Sam again. It was easier when he wasn't the one looking in the rear-view. It was easier being lost in the kingdoms conjured by alcohol.
It's crowded in the tiny corridor. Dean can feel Sam's breath against his cheek and the 'drip, drip, drip' of Mary's blood on his hand. The light from the street lamps paint pictures on Sam's face, throw their bodies into shadow. He opens his mouth to say goodbye, really, he's only going to say goodbye, but the words never come in time. Sam's warm in his arms, nose pressed against his ear, tears wet on Dean's skin. For a moment the eldest Winchester's sure he can hear Mary screaming.
An hour later Dean leaves Palo Alto and Sam is in the passenger seat next to him.
It's just for one hunt, that's what Sam keeps saying. It's just one hunt and then he has to go back to his dream. There's a Barbie doll waiting for him and a lawyer's school taking interest in his 'A's. There's a golden path set out under his feet and Mary's smiling through the motel window, hand pressed against the glass.
It's nothing new when Dean asks for twin singles. It never changed, even when Sam wasn't there. Sometimes Mary would sleep on the bed instead, half her face left spread out on the pillow in the morning. There's no room for her now, not with Sam filling Dean's world. Tonight she's pressed against the window and Dean won't let her in.
The hunt's over too quickly, too easily. There's barely time to breathe before the white lady's gone and Dean has protected his little brother like he always promised. They're grinning at each other, adrenaline smiles and near-death touches, the reassurance that they defeated another monster from under the bed.
Dean reverses the Impala out of the wreckage, blood pulsing in time with the heartbeat suspended between the driver's seat and the passenger's. There's something else though, the itch of a world being just a little bit off. Sam's shifting in his seat, running his hand mindlessly up his arm, making all the hairs stand up the wrong way. Mary's standing beside the car and somehow she looks worried - or as worried as one can look when they're missing their flesh.
"Sammy?" He doesn't need to say anything else. When their blood's pulsing with the rush of violence they only need to speak in names. Sam reaches out and hooks his finger into Dean's pocket, tugging lightly, not quite meeting his brother eyes.
Dean understands. Silently he pulls out the book of matches and holds it out. The smile that splits Sam's face is devastation and destruction. It's the spark of a fire and the kiss of flames. It's broken and terrifying and so goddamn beautiful that Dean thinks he will die if he looks too long, but he doesn't. Sam can't hurt him because he's a part of Sam and Dean will never let Sam get hurt so really, he's protecting himself.
The house's old and rickety. She creaks with the wind and threatens to fall. The flames eat the house's bones and cough her ashes into the sky. Her death's blistering and bright, yellow and red dancers leaping in Sam's eyes, highlighting the curves of his face and Dean's little brother is perfect.
They sit together on the hood of the Impala, sides pressed together, feeling hot skin through the layers of clothing. Sam's laughing, head thrown back to stare at the smoke wisps in the sky, fingers tangled in the cord of Dean's amulet. It's intoxicating, his happiness, his body beside Dean, and Dean has to keep pinching himself to know that this is real. This isn't a dream. His Sammy's sitting next to him.
He wraps an arm around Sam's back and laughs with him, head falling back to knock on his shoulder. Dean's little brother has grown so tall. When he's conscious of the world other than Sam and the cracklesnappop of fire, he sees Mary. She's standing a few metres from the car and she's smiling and she's beautiful. Her skin's milky smooth, hair golden curls, nightgown billowing white and she's complete and she's whole. Sam presses closer and a strange lightness takes over Dean's body, something he hasn't felt in years, something good, something safe.
The fire's so bright, the most beautiful thing Sam has seen since green eyes in the morning, blinking away sleep in motel rooms. As the fire burns, the house screams and creaks and crumbles like white cliffs falling into the churning ocean. This house is not quite a demon screaming in a meat suit or a man shouting through a bloodied nose, but it's close enough.
Everything feels settled under his skin, likes bugs he didn't know were there have fallen out and scuttled away. His body has tipped back onto the right axis and Sam can breathe properly. Dean's head drops onto his shoulder, laughter bursting forward to join Sam's and it's the most beautiful sound he can hear over the 'snap crackle pop'.
For a second something catches Dean's eyes and he's looking at some place Sam can't reach. Whatever he sees, it's good. Sam can feel his brother relax, all his muscles easing out tension he probably never noticed was there. It's like a wave rolling through Dean until his body's falling against Sam's, fitting to his awkward growing angles in a way that Jessica could never quite manage.
It's then, as Sam curls closer around the solid warmth of his brother, that he hears the laughter. It's gentle and soft, a woman's voice. With it comes the perfect smell of Mary, flowered perfume caught in the scent of a kitchen and something that Sam just knows is his mother. The smell twists into the laughter until they are smoke wisps on the wind, a distant comfort from a life half-remembered.
Sam stops thinking then, forgets Jessica and dreams of a lawyer. As long as he has held that path, walking between the dotted lines, keeping his fingers dragging through the American dream, he has never heard Mary laugh. He dips his head, noses Dean's shirt aside and digs his teeth into his brother's skin. The storm inside cools, calms, drops away. The storm he had never noticed until it was gone.
A nose nudges into his hair and Sam can feel Dean's smile as his brother's fingers bite into his waist. Ship and anchor, safely lost at sea.
Words don't really pass between them, no ideas suggested. They talk in looks, names and touches as though they're still hunting and perhaps they are. Sam fingers the book of matches and his chocolate brown eyes ask Dean for permission. A smile runs like a crack across the older Winchester's face and it's poison in a look, a smile etched in destruction.
"Sammy," he says, voice hoarse with anticipation. The Impala rumbles under Dean's hands, his metal steed carrying them to the end of the world and beyond. The wheels knock over the centre line, once, twice. Sam looks over at him and laughs as they roar down the left wing of the highway. It's then that Dean decides there's nothing he'll not do for that laugh.
Pinprick lights appear from around the corner. A hand grabs Dean's arm, not holding him back but silently daring him on. It's chicken at 70 MPH, night whipping past the windows and ACDC is the drum-driven pulse that'll never flat-line. They're seconds away from death and Dean can't breathe. His brother's fingers are pressing bruises into his skin shaped like cigarette burns. The world's made of black tar, dotted lines and Sam.
The pinpricks grow until they're floodlight across the windscreen. Sam's laughing and at some point Dean started laughing too. He can already feel the crunch of the car-crash second in time. He can already feel the finality of the end, coming in the blaring of a horn. The world's so small and Sam's pushing into his legroom until he slots into that Sam-shaped space that's always next to Dean.
When there's a heartbeat left, the chicken veers to the side in a screech of wheels, desperate and erratic, fishtailing into the dark. Sam spins his head around, wild hair brushing against Dean's cheek, to watch the lights fade behind them, crisscrossing in the dark. He falls against Dean, a thousand meaningless phrases and neologisms tumbling from his mouth in excited gasps. The Impala growls and runs along the centre-line. Next time the chicken will be dead.
In the rear-view mirror Dean can see Mary sitting in the backseat. She's almost perfect except for the eyeball melting in its socket. Dean pulls his little brother closer.
Neither of them is sure how long it takes to get to Palo Alto, not in hours anyway. Constructions of time disappear when they collide. Hours pass in minutes and minutes are years so there's no telling how long their days are. Instead they measure time in motel rooms and destruction. It takes them three rooms, five car crashes, two police chases, one fire and a hunt to get to Palo Alto.
The police chases are probably Dean's fault if you really want to place blame - and Sam decides he does. There's something in Dean that won't let him drive under the speed limit. Just call him Maverick. The fire, however, that's completely Sam's fault of course. His puppy-dog eyes can't quite hide the spark in his heart so Dean finds an abandoned house to burn. That's where the hunt came in and come on, how's Dean to know that the creepy ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere is as haunted as houses can come?
They salt and burn and salt and burn again. The curling breathes of the second wandering spirit have only just faded into the night when the vampire appears.
"Really Dean?" Sam doesn't hold back the disbelief in his voice. "Of all the places you could find, you found the only house in the world with two ghosts and a fucking vampire."
"We could make that into a song," Dean says with a smirk as he hefts the machete in his grip and watches the Vampire approach. "On the second day of Christmas, Sam's true love gave to him, two ghosts a-haunting and a Vampire in - where are we anyway?"
"You know," Sam mutters, half-amused, half-annoyed. "That makes you my true love, asshole."
"Aw, Sammy," Dean snickers and widens his stance as the vampire darts towards them. "I didn't know you felt that way."
Sam's reply's lost in the wet squelch of the vampire's head parting ways with its body. Blood splatters thick across Dean's face, the metallic tang flooding his senses. Wild electric pulses through his body, running high with the explosive laugh that tumbles from his mouth. Without thinking he cleaves the body in two before it can collapse on the ground.
"Dean," Sam whines reproachfully, nose wrinkled. "We still have to bury that and I'm not stuffing its guts back in place." Dean cocks his head to the side, studying the mess. His little brother has a point. Neither of them are going on an intestine treasure hunt. Sam gives him a pointed look, forehead lined like a disgusted puppy.
As the Impala peels away from the triple-score haunted house, yellow and orange flames burn across the rear window and the lumpy sprawl of a vampire's splayed across the lawn. Sam wasn't happy leaving the corpse to rot but Dean placated his brother with a new book of matches and fingers buried in his shaggy hair. Nothing had burned brighter than Sam's eyes.
They evade the police for the last time and then they're in Palo Alto. Sam's pressed against the passenger door, body turned to face Dean, grinning wildly. Blood's pumping through their veins and sirens whine in their ears. Dean grins back, watching Sam more often than the road, eyes tracing the flashes of street-lights that highlight every dip and dive on his brother's face.
A turn emerges from the left and Dean takes it, stopping in the middle of the unlit side-road, white dotted lines cutting the car in half. Inside the Impala shadows swallow the two brothers until they can barely see each other but they don't need the light. Dean twists around in his seat until he has one leg up on the bench, one still in the driver's well, staring expectantly through the dark.
"We'll burn it, Dean." Sam's voice's soft as he answers the unspoken question. "We'll burn the world down so it's just us."
"Don't you want-"
"Fuck you." The words are sharp and cold, a buried malice seeping into Sam's voice. It's not directed at Dean, never against his brother. It's boiling anger and regret for the fake life he's lived for four years. It's shame and distaste for how long he has been caught in someone else's dream. It's the way every single atom of his body aches at the thought of leaving his brother again.
They don't speak after that. Dean just reaches across the seat and wraps his hand around Sam's neck, so tight there'll be bruises there in the morning. There'll be purple and yellow flowers, a perfect handprint on his skin for anyone to see. Sam doesn't pull away, doesn't find violence or malice in the press of muscle. Instead he pushes back into his brother's hand, looses himself in the skin against his and the sweet smell of the Impala's leather.
Eventually Dean lets go, ignoring Sam's disappointed noise and presses his foot to the accelerator. Somewhere a switch flips and suddenly the air between them is electric, tight and tied up in the instant excitement of blood and heartbeats and flames. Sam turns to grin at his brother and Dean can see sparks in his eyes.
Framed by the rear-view mirror, Mary's sitting in the back seat. Her porcelain smooth skin glows in the strips of moonlight banded across her face. She smiles and her teeth are white marble tombstones. Mary's perfect and whole and beautiful and Dean needs to see something burn.
At first Sam didn't know what it was about fire that set his heart beating so fast, tremors across his skin and that desperate aching need for his brother. At first he didn't understand why the fire burned as brightly in the world as it did under his skin. He always figured it was just because he was broken, insane, driven to the sweet burn by the never-ending screams in his head.
And maybe he is, maybe that's why he craves the screams of someone, something else. Maybe something in him snapped off and got lost in the fire that started his life. Maybe his insanity's made of thundering waterfalls and creaking forests that crave the slow sweet burn. It doesn't matter though, not really, because if Sam's insane, then so is Dean.
The match reflects in Dean's eyes, giving him cat-like slits in the dark and bathing his skin in orange. For a moment Sam thinks his brother has swallowed the fire and he's going to curl at the edges, but Dean just grins at Sam and spills the last drop of whiskey from his bottle. Wetting the grave. They douse the world in gasoline, light a match and watch everything burn.
Fifteen minutes later the Impala roars onto the highway like a black mare charging across the world. Sam and Dean are shouting and whooping and Mary's laughing with them. In Palo Alto an apartment building burns to the ground and black-eyed men watch with charcoal grins.