Up Ahead

by Rahmi

Sam and Dean deal with their new family when demons come calling. Sequel to Secure the Blessing, non-Wincest, normal warnings apply.

2. Chapter 2

John's puttering around the kitchen.

Not that he actually putters, but. Pacing, maybe. He can be pacing. Real men pace, not putter, even if they are pacing over the thought of their boy coming home for the next few days.

Mary and Abby should be back soon, he hopes. They're both out shopping for groceries, if he's not mistaken, though he thinks Abby's more out because she's hoping that by some miracle she'll miss Dean coming if she's not home when he arrives.

Mary's got a cherry pie ready for the oven as soon as lunch's started, and there are potatoes already peeled, waiting in a bowl on the counter top. The girls'd had to run out to grab some green beans. Dean's favorites. Well, not so much the green beans, because his boy doesn't stand by anything green, but the pie. If there's anything his boy loves, it's pie.

John's job is to start the barbeque at noon. Steaks are his domain, and he's gonna cook them up rare and delicious just as soon as he has to, but that's something like a good two hours away though, so, for right now, he paces.

He'll be glad to see Dean. He really will be.

He'll be less glad to see Sam/James/whatever else he calls himself. The detective'd said that Sam/James wasn't dangerous, and John wants to believe that, but at the same time, the kid's a tall fucker. He's obviously got Dean wrapped around one of his massive paws and that doesn't sit right in John's stomach, especially not now that he knows the both of them are lying to him about something.

The front door opens just as he's working himself into a respectable temper. He's not gonna just come right out and demand to know what the kid's name is (at least not in front of Mary), but confronting Sam when he shows up with Dean? Getting the kid alone and asking him who the fuck he is?

He might just do that.

"Hey Dad!" Abby calls from the hallway.

He hears her toe off her tennis shoes, because Mary's ingrained into all of them that shoes belong outside only. Dean's the only exception, along with his Sam, because she never could get the boy to take off his boots for anything short of going to bed or showering.

"Mom's gonna grab something we forgot and then she'll be home," Abby continues. Her voice gets closer as she walks towards the kitchen, "She should be back in a--what the fuck?"

"Language."

There's the sound of scuffling in the hallway, and then Abby screams.

John recoils from the sound of it, because he's heard his girl shout in every state of mind imaginable, angry and happy and frustrated and pissed, and he's never heard anything like this. It sounds like something scratching across the chalkboard, like a dog howling in concert with a police siren. It's wrong.

It goes on for longer than it should, longer than a human throat can sustain a note, and John's just frozen up against the counter top because there's a dual tone to that scream, like something deep and unhappy has laid itself over his daughter's voice.

The screaming stops, not abruptly, but gently. There's a breath of silence, where John's starting to convince himself that he's going senile, that, obviously, he needs to start taking some kind of medication like the goddamn doctors after 'Nam had tried to get him on.

Then: "Winchester. I'm going to rip your fucking throat out."

The voice sounds like Abby. But it isn't.

There's another thump, like something hitting the floor, and the voice comes back. "Johnny, 'm gonna getcha, I want your liver," Abby singsongs from the hallway, "I'm at your door."

The chill that'd been patiently waitin' while Abby'd screamed finally crawls down his spine. It leaves all his nerves on edge and his fingers twitching for the gun he'd gotten rid of when he'd found Dean hiding it under the bed fifteen years ago. He feels like he's back in the jungle, enemies on the left and dying friends on the right, and he can't breathe.

That's his daughter out there, heckling him.

"Johnny!" she shouts, "Let me out of this or I swear to God, I'm gonna tear apart your family. All of them. Starting with little Abby here. You think she'd survive if I ripped open her wrists?"

John's banging out of the kitchen before he can stop to think about how weird it is hearing his daughter threaten herself in the third person. But he knows it's not his fuckin' daughter and he'll be damned before he lets anything hurt her.

Even herself.

"Ah, there you are!" she says brightly as soon as she sees him. She's got one wrist up to her mouth, perfect white teeth (John'd paid for the braces, he thinks a little hysterically, they'd damned well better be perfect) hovering over the artery under her thin skin. "Really, John, you shouldn't keep a girl waiting like that."

John just stares mutely at her.

She blinks black eyes at him. Real black eyes, not a regular black eye, not a bruise. But eyes that look like they're just... soul sucking, nothing in them but wrong, and John's falling back a step and struggling to remember his Hail Marys before he can think about it.

The thing tsks at him. "You were a lot more formidable before, you know," she says. When he continues to stumble over Latin, she sighs and crosses her arms with something that John recognizes. "That's not gonna work. You're saying the wrong thing, for one. And very, very badly, for another.

"Now, why don't you break this circle like a good little boy and maybe I'll let Abigail live through all this, huh? After all, she's not really a Winchester. Not the right kind, anyway."

That's something to latch onto, something that almost feels normal. John's opening his mouth and blurting out, "You shut your mouth."

It smells like burning matches. Sulfur, John identifies.

The thing, Abby, not-Abby, she just reaches up to push her hair out of her face, one hand cupping her elbow. John's seen that move so often that it aches. She's moving like Abby and she's talking like her and John's vision spins a little dark around the edges. Fucking ridiculous dream is what it is.

"Not that it matters," she says, "But, no, your Abby really isn't a Winchester. That's kind of like saying a hotdog is a hotdog is a hotdog, when really, everyone knows that the only thing that's an actual hotdog is a Oscar Meyer Weiner. She's just a pale imitation, baby."

John's spinning around like he hasn't got an anchor, and all he can think is that he's crazy. He's crazy or he's dreaming or there's some logical reason that his brain's decided it wants to hallucinate an encounter with his daughter being his not-daughter.

"Pay attention, John." The thing snaps her fingers, reaches down to pull up the center of the rug, exposing the edges of the permanent marker drawing Dean'd inked into the floor years ago. It's glowing, something John's never seen before in his entire life and he sure as hell wishes he weren't seeing it now. His hands twitch for a gun and he tucks them into fists to stop it.

"See, this thing is kind of cramping my style here, John-boy. You're gonna get rid of it for me."

"You're a..."

"Demon. Jesus, you Winchesters are sort of pathetic without the demon hunting, aren't you?" she says. She rocks back on her bare heels, staring up at him with her black eyes, and John's. "I mean, we thought it'd be a little bit of a challenge still, because, hell, Winchesters. But you're just a regular little human now, aren't you? Not even any fun to torment."

He's thinking that demons aren't real, anymore than there's a God or a Santa Claus. Demons don't happen.

"Johnny, I'm gettin' a little impatient here. I'm sure Mommy dearest is feeling the same way."

Mary, John thinks with a sick feeling. This has to be a dream, because only in his head would something be fucked up enough to possess his daughter like some kind of badly written Exorcism movie and threaten his wife at the same time. It's. Not. Happening.

John turns his head a little bit, closing his eyes. When he opens them again, she's still looking at him, black eyes and Abby's pale blonde hair. He doesn't know what to do. This is out of his league, and he knows it, and goddamn the demon (fuck), but she knows it too.

He needs a priest. He needs a doctor, to check his sanity.

In the kitchen, John can hear the door open and close. The (fuck, oh God) demon hears it too, cocking Abby's head to the side with a narrow eyed look. "Now, who could that be?"

"That'd be us, bitch," Dean's voice says.

John's eyes snap to the side, trying to see without taking his eyes off of the thing in his girl. Dean swaggers right on by him, boots tracking mud through the hallway. Mary'd throw a fit if she saw that, John thinks; the mud and Dean's boots and her floor.

"Hey there," Dean leans in to look at Abby (the demon), carefully making sure all of his body parts stay outside of the faintly glowing circle she's standing in the middle of, "You ready to go back to hell?"

Sam's a quieter shadow slipping by him then, not a sound.

Abby snarls as soon as she seems Sam. John can relate. He feels like he's missing something important, something vital, when she hisses out, "Winchester," like it's a vile curse.

"Damn straight," Dean says. "You picked the wrong damn family to mess with. You got this one, Sammy?"

"Yeah," Sam says. His voice is deeper than John's used to it being, darker, like there's something lurking under the damn surface, and that's just what he needs on top of everything else. He'd better be dreaming.

Sam's voice goes even deeper, if that's possible, when he starts to recite something. It sounds Latin, John thinks, dazed and being thrown upside down again. It sounds Latin and it sounds like something a priest would say, and there's a sudden breeze whipping up from out of nowhere, stirring through the house.

In the circle, the demon looses her sneer. As Sam's voice rises and falls, a look crosses her face, like pain, and John's moving forward before he can think about it.

That may not be his daughter in there, but there's some instinctual part in any parent that won't let you stand by when your kid is hurting.

Before he gets more than a few inches from the position he was in, Dean catches his arm. When John pulls, Dean just tightens his grip, hard; fingers digging into John's biceps with surprising strength.

"You let Sam do what he needs to do," Dean says quietly when John turns to look at him with furious eyes. He squeezes his hand once, still too hard, and John's gonna have a bruise tomorrow if this isn't all a dream. "That's not Gayle in there right now, Dad. That's a demon and she's gonna be pissed if you fuck this up and let her out."

"Winchester," Abby hisses again. She leans forward a little bit, talking over the sound of Sam's voice, and smiles. "You're breaking the rules, Winchester."

Sam stops for a second. The wind fades a little bit around all four of them, Dean holding John's arm and John watching Sam watch not-Abby. "I'm sending you back to hell," Sam says, "Not killing you. That was the deal."

"Oh, and wasn't there a little part about you demons leaving us the fuck alone too?" Dean butts in. "I seem to remember somethin' like that."

Abby looks at them, tilting her head to the side, like a bird. John's stomach drops out from his guts. "We don't all play by the rules. Take you, for example. Dead men usually can't make wishes."

The Latin picks up again before John can figure out what the hell that sentence was supposed to mean. This whole thing is confusing and unreal and he'd pinch himself, if Dean wasn't doing a good enough job of it.

Sam's voice hits a high note, holding it perfectly, before it goes low again.

Abby jerks back like it hurts.

Her face whips to the side once, almost too fast for John's eyes to catch. She blurs before his eyes, becoming something iother/i for a half beat, and any misgivings John may've had vanish, just like that. Nothing in nature can do that, nothing alive. There's no disease that can. It's a demon. An honest to God, demon.

The second he stops pulling towards her, even subconsciously, Dean lets up a little on the bruising force he'd been using.

Dean's watching the demon pant, eyes narrowed. "Bring it on home, Sam," he says, and Sam nods once, voice rising and falling with the pattern of his words.

John can get his mouth open, but he words get tangled up on his tongue and break up on the back of his teeth. He wants to ask what the fuck they think they're doing, he wants to shake Dean and ask him if he goddamn iknows/i about what's got Abby, if he knows about idemons/i, but he can't get past the sound of Latin rolling off of his son's boyfriend's tongue.

Something about the words are tickling his brain, like he's heard them before, in another place. He can hear Dean lisping them childishly, but there's another voice joining in, and for half a second, he's sure he's got two boys instead of a boy and a girl.

"We've still got Mary," not-Abby gasps. "We've still got her and we'll make you pay, Winchester."

"Sweetheart," Dean says, "You can try."

John takes his eyes off Abby, still jerking in ways that aren't physically possible, and looks at his eldest. He's in the twilight zone, because not only is Abby possessed, but his son's boyfriend is chanting something that they seem to think will help and his son...

Dean looks dangerous. For the first time in his life, John wonders just what his son could get away with, if he really wanted to.

"But you see," Dean says, and he talks right under Sam's voice, leaning in close to where Abby's panting and twisting in the circle, "I'm gonna hunt every one of you little bastards down. And then I'm gonna send you back to hell."

He twists, letting go of John's arm, to look at Sam. "Or, hey, if Sammy's feeling particularly pissy, I'm sure he'll let you skip that step and just die."

Sam blows his bangs out of his eyes, still looking incongruously harmless to John. "Shut up, Dean," he says on an exhale, picking up the Latin without pause as soon as he's said Dean's name.

John wants to tell him to watch his goddamn mouth when he's talking to his boy. He saves his breath. He's barely getting enough of it as it is. All of the air in the room seems to be sucked out, sucked towards where Abby (demon) is snarling silently, head hanging while she pants.

Dean makes a scoffing noise at Sam and turns back to Abby.

Abby's head snaps back as soon as Dean's eyes turn back towards her, like she was waiting or like Sam'd timed it just right. John can't tell and he can barely breathe and his sight goes dark around the edges, a little dim, because that's smoke pouring out of his daughter's mouth, like they've just lit a fire inside of her. He expects flames to come licking out of her mouth and he's reaching forward too quickly for Dean to react at all, head full of visions of women on fire, their blonde hair crisping to black.

He catches Abby just as she starts to slump over. Her head tucks under his chin just like it did when she was newborn, eight, twelve and missing her brother like a lost limb, and she fits. She'll never not fit, he knows, not matter what the hell's been done to her, inside of her.

"Daddy," Abby whimpers. It's more a reflex than anything, 'cause she's out against him, splattered out against his shoulder. "Daddy."

John tucks her into his chest and makes the same nonsense shushing sounds he'd made when she was a baby. "It's alright, baby girl, I've got you, it's alright."

"Sam," Dean's voice warns.

There's an edge to it John'd love to decipher, but he's got his girl in his arms like he'd wanted to do since he'd realized there was something wrong with her and he just doesn't give a good goddamn what's in Dean's voice right now.

"It's gone, it's fine," Sam says back.

"Flew the damn coop?"

"No," Sam says, hoarse. "I've got it. Gimme a minute and I can..."

"You're not doin' anything else today, Sasquatch. Sit your ass down."

John glances up from Abby's hair and watches Dean guide Sam down to the floor, murmuring quietly under his breath the whole way. Sam leans heavily against Dean as he goes down, like whatever the hell he did just took a good chunk of energy, and John rubs a hand across Abby's back, feeling both grateful and confused as all hell.

Dean's got no such feelings. "See, this is why you shouldn't hide shit from me. Oh, no, my visions don't hurt anymore, Dean, I've just always got a fucker of a headache anyway," he says, and Sam just snorts, tilting his head up a little to shoot what even John can see is a half-hearted glare at Dean.

John looks back down at Abby for a second, just checking, making sure that that's really his girl slumped quiet in his arms, and when he looks up, he wishes he hadn't. Dean's crouching next to Sam now, having lowered them both to the ground. One hand's on top of Sam's head, fingers ruffling for a brief second, and John feels like a goddamn intruder in his own house.

With his face tucked into Abby's hair, he can't smell the sulfur that's been permeating since Sam first started chanting.

"Sammy, man, hope to hell that's part of your plan."

"It is."

John reluctantly lifts his head again, just to see what the hell's got Dean sounding tense all over. They'd just banished what amounted to a demon from his daughter. John can't see how anything could possibly top that.

There's black smoke hovering over them all.

As John watches, stunned, speechless, and horrified, it makes a sound like sand scouring bone. It looks like it's trying to get away, feinting left and right as it pounds tendrils of black against something invisible. Sam's looking at it, eyes pinched and tired, but Dean's got one hand on Sam's shoulder, watching him instead.

"Hey," Dean says, nudging Sam a little. "You good to do... whatever it is you need to do to that to make it go poof?"

He's gone gentle, John realizes, and unconsciously touches the back of Abby's head. He's gone gentle just the way he'd used to do with Abby and that causes something to twist and turn in his gut. Aside from the feelings already twisting there. He's gonna throw up before this is all over, mark his words.

"Yeah." Sam sounds half dead, but determined, and Dean gives his shoulder two quick pats before he stands from his crouch and heads over to John.

John takes his eyes off the shifting mass of black above them and watches the toes of Dean's boots edge up to the circle inked onto the floor. It's no longer glowing, just the straight lines and the curves Dean'd penned there almost twenty years ago. John can remember nights spent scrubbing to try to get it up, Mary sitting on the stairs and watching with her chin in her hands.

He feels the bile start up in his throat at the thought that Dean, his Dean, four years old and strange, had known enough about what was out there to set a trap for it.

Dean's watching him when he looks up from the circle. "Let's get out of here, Dad," he says softly. "Sammy's gonna take care of the demon."

How, John wants to ask. How the hell is one tall, skinny floppy-haired boy with big puppy eyes going to take care of a demon, how'd they get it out in the first place, how'd they know what it was, how did Dean know what it was, how. There's too many questions crowding behind his teeth, though, so instead he gathers his feet underneath him and pushes up.

When Dean reaches forward to help him support Abby, John catches himself wanting to slap his hand away and belt him in the face. Abruptly, he's angry, holding onto his girl and without a goddamn clue where his wife is, just the rambling viciousness of a demon for any kind of help.

He cradles Abby against him, finding his balance, and turns away from Dean's outstretched hands. He's gonna get his daughter settled somewhere, somewhere he can watch her and make sure she's safe, and then.

He's got one more how question for Dean, once he gets his tongue back.

How could you have known about things like that and not told us?

---

Sam can see Dad and Dean staring at each other out of the corner of his eye. Dad's got that look on his face, that intimately familiar look that says one of them has screwed up, and bad, and Sam spares a thought for how fucked up his life is that he iknows/i that look, even if he's not, technically, his father's son this time around.

Then it goes weird, because Dean lifts his chin in silent denial of whatever he's seeing in Dad's eyes, not backing down, and Sam's reminded that everything's idifferent/i now.

For a second, he's got the disconcerting thought that this was what it was like being Dean in that other life, seeing Dad seethe and Sam lift his chin, from the outside.

Then he rolls his head against the wall to shake the thought loose and concentrates on the pissed off demon hovering in the air above the devil's trap.

It's not bound by the devil's trap, not anymore, because the devil's trap's mostly used for one time exorcisms. It needs time to recharge, to collect enough energy to hold another demon, and in the meantime? Sam's the lucky one who gets to act like a human lock.

He could just let go and the demon would be pulled into hell (Sam can feel it tugging at the edges of his power, like something's put a fist in the demon and is warring with him for possession of it), but he wants answers. Failing that, he wants it dead.

He didn't make that deal, live through his entire family dying, to let a demon fuck it up now.

The demon twists into itself. Sam watches it detachedly and braces himself. A second later, the demon lashes out with all its energy, battering at the mental walls Sam's holding it with.

To Sam, it kind of looks like colored sand splattering all over a very clear window.

His head feels like it's going to fall off any second now, or maybe like there's a trio of little men with picks inside it. He's not used to having two visions in a day, and the exorcism, with the demon screaming in the back of his skull the entire time hadn't helped all that much.

He's trying to work up the energy to fry the damn thing. So far, it's not working real well.

"Sammy," Dean says, and Sam blinks open eyes he doesn't even remember closing. He's tired.

Dean's crouched down in front of him again, looking him over with critical eyes. "You're about ready to keel, aren't you?"

"I'm good."

"Uh-huh." Dean reaches out and pokes him in the shoulder. Hard. In the seconds it takes Sam to process this, he's already falling towards the floor.

Dean catches him before he can smack his head against the hardwood. Above the devil's trap, Sam's pretty sure the demon's snickering at him. He shoots it a nasty look and it subsides, meekly pulling into a ball before slamming itself against the box he's got around it.

"You're a mess," Dean says. "I wouldn't trust you with a gun at this point, Sam, let alone that freaky ass brain of yours." He looks up and narrows his eyes at the demon still twisting in the air. His lips press together, pissed off, but he looks back at Sam and rocks back on his heels. "Let it go."

Sam gets a hand on the ground, pushes himself upright, and bats Dean's fingers off of his head. "I can do it."

"Well, great." Dean pushes himself to his feet, using Sam's head as leverage like he used to do when Sam was way smaller than him. "'Cause I gotta tell you man, that whole falling over thing? That inspires confidence, it really does."

"Bite me."

His brother's an ass sometimes. No two ways about it. But then Dean leans over to give him a boost up, because they both know Sam's not gonna talk to this thing sitting on his ass, and Sam's forced to admit he's not so bad.

He might have even missed him when he wasn't around.

Dean nudges his arm a little. "Dad's not gonna stay tucked up there with Gayle forever," he says.

"Yeah."

This time, he knows that the demon is speaking directly into his skull, because he's got to twist his mind just so, pull up all the fragments of that Yellow-Eyed bitch he'd absorbed so that he can tune into it. A burst of cussing screeches across his brain. It's not in English and it's not in Latin, it just is, and it feels like chewing on tinfoil.

"Your face is gonna get stuck that way," Dean says laconically. "Sammy bitch original." Right before he leans over so Sam can brace his shoulder against his brother's. Alright, he'd missed Dean.

The demon's staring at him when he looks up again. "Think you're so smart, so good," it says, "We're going to cut you Winchesters out of existence."

"Why?"

"Because." The demon shifts a little testing the boundary he's holding it to.

"Because isn't an answer," he parrots back at it.

Dean, leaning against the wall next to him and iwatching/i, even if he's trying to be discreet, snorts a laugh under his breath. That'd been the mantra of Sam's first childhood. iBecause isn't an answer, Sammy; why'd you stuff the cat's eye shells up your nose?/i

"Answer enough for you."

Sam tilts his head to the side a little, trying to get his hair out of his eyes. It's time to let Dean chop an inch or so off, but he's not going to bring that up anytime soon. "You know I can kill you, right?"

"Death or hell, Sam," the demon murmurs. It strikes out again at the hold he's got on it and recoils once it realizes exactly what's waiting for it if he lets go. "Not much of a difference to me. What about you?"

Almost against his will, Sam's eyes slide over to look at Dean again. What would he choose? It depended on a lot of things. Would he be alone in hell? Would he find his brother if he died? Or would he be able to make a demon deal to make sure neither of that ever happened?

The demon laughs, whisper of menace curling like smoke from ashes. "You chose him, yes. Was that a smart choice, do you think, Sam? Dean over death. Deal with the devils."

"Smartest thing I ever did," Sam says simply.

Dean bumps his shoulder, hard, says, "Frickin' dumbest thing you ever done, and that's sayin' a lot."

He's not an idiot and he still doesn't agree with Sam having done any of this. Sam couldn't care less about that opinion. He would have preferred it if Dean didn't go off on a mini-meltdown rant about it every few weeks, but, the decision was still a good one. For the most part.

There's a tug on his mind, like the call of hell's winning out over his hold. Both he and the demon wince, but that doesn't stop it from opening its metaphorical mouth. "What about mommy-dearest? Would you make a deal for her?"

The cold truth of it is that he wouldn't. He loves Mom like he loves Dad, like any child loves their parent, but neither of them are as essential to him as his brother is. The fucker knows it too.

"Where is she?" He can probably track her down. Maybe. After his head's finished trying to fall off his shoulders and after the buzzing in his skull dies back down into mostly silence.

"Getting acquainted with the reasons why no one should marry a Winchester."

Not good enough. Sam finally squeezes his eyes shut and grips the demon, flicking it just so. He can't explain what he's doing to it, but it's got to hurt like nothing else. The demon recoils in pain, an offended screech of horrified noise in his mind, and settles down, panting, when Sam stops.

"Where is she?" he asks again, and this time the demon answers.

It's more a series of pictures, nothing really concrete. It's a suggestion of a place, not there and there, and Sam thinks that the demon doesn't even know where she's going.

You can ask and ask, but if the thing doesn't know, it's not going to tell you anything. And Sam doesn't care how evil the things are, he doesn't feel right torturing answers out of them.

So he switches questions. "Why'd you break the deal?" Sam asks.

Dean reaches into his jacket and pulls out his flask of holy water. The demon's watching him, whatever passes for its eyes fixed on Dean's hands, and Sam wants to laugh.

Dean's not planning on flinging that into the demon. Not unless Sam makes himself pass out and Dean feels vindictive about it. Mostly, Sam figures Dean's rolling it around because he needs something to do with his hands. He's gotta be bored with this, Sam knows, bored and on edge, because he can't hear the demon anymore than he can feel the pressure of a released vision still puttering around inside Sam's body.

His brother's as psychic as a post. One that's been buried in two feet of mud. It's more a blessing than a curse most days.

The demon's attention flicks back to him when Sam reaches out for it again. His head is killing him.

"Why, Sam? Why not?" It swirls again, rolling over itself, and does something that the dead demon in him recognizes as a smile. "Not all of us are so forgiving of Winchesters, you know. We're going to make you wish you'd never been born."

It twitches in his grip, feebly, and Sam can feel the both of them weakening. Demons didn't do well for long without a body to rundown. "You can tell me, or you can go to hell. Your choice." He lets up on his hold for long enough that the demon can feel the pull, the Latin still working even if Sam's fighting it for the time being.

All he's got to do is let go and the demon'll go to hell. Bone and blood and fear, Meg had said to Dean a lifetime ago. Hometown of demon stock everywhere.

He's never met a suicidal demon before, but damned if that doesn't work on it. This demon tucks up into itself, petulant, and says, "Daddy dearest had more than two children, Sam. Think of this as vengeance."

As soon as the demon says it, Sam can feel the demon in him resonate with it. Appalled, he snuffs it out, clicking off whatever it is the demon remains does that lets him hear demon speech. When he opens his eyes again, the demon's nothing but a weird pile of smoke to him, no words coming from inside the mass and no weird connection trying to bloom.

There's just Dean, playing with his flask of holy water like he really wants to unscrew the top and fling the entire contents on the demon.

"Deal's a deal," Sam says softly.

He wonders, if he could still hear it, if the demon would be reconsidering right about now.

The demon snuffs out of existence like it'd never been there in the first place. There's no ash, no ectoplasm, no smell of sulfur. One minute, Sam's holding it like he's got a mental fist full of sand, and the next it's just... gone. Slips through his fingers to disappear in mid-air without even a noise.

It burns just as well as everything else. Maybe a little better.

Sam's got the incongruous thought that if mankind just harnessed demons to burn, they'd have clean, efficient energy in no time.

Then he slumps against Dean's supporting shoulder and concentrates on not passing out.

Dean jostles his head a little bit, just enough that Sam stops thinking it really is a comfortable place to lose consciousness. "You get what we need?" he asks.

"Not really."

There's a long pause. "And you just roasted it?" The disbelief in Dean's voice is enough to rouse Sam a little more, but not much.

Sam winces. "Didn't know anything."

So far, Sam thinks his brother is keeping it together pretty well. Sam doesn't know Gayle or, hell, Mom and Dad all that well in this time, but he knows that the only thing keeping him from freaking is how tired his brain is feeling.

The opposite arm from the shoulder he's leaning on comes up to pat his chest. "How's your demon radar these days?"

hr

Dean's not really surprised when Sam decides his shoulder's the most comfortable spot he's likely to find and promptly conks out against it. Still standing up and everything. Sam's always had that particular talent.

He's not surprised, but he is a little pissed, because no way is the fucker going to leave him to talk to Dad by himself. No. If they're gonna get their asses chewed out, than Sam had damn well better be awake to hear it too.

That doesn't really explain why he stands there for a couple minutes and lets Sam lean.

Dean crosses his arms (careful not to jar Sam's head), and widens his stance a little, taking what weight Sam's managing to slump against him instead of the wall. And he thinks.

His family's in trouble. His family's in trouble and once again it's a goddamn demon at fault, and if he didn't know it knocked Sam on his girly ass to torch the bastards, he'd have gone hunting for them a lot earlier than this, Sam's deal be damned. He hadn't made a deal.

Now they're here, missing Mom, with Sam almost dead on his feet, and Gayle waking up from her bout of possession and Dean's head is thinking about spinning.

He can't say it's a nightmare comin' true for him, because it isn't. His nightmares tend to focus on one person and a revolving door of monsters, spirits, and witches that try to hurt them. Three guesses as to who that person was, and the first two didn't count. It sure as hell wasn't Mom.

Doesn't mean that this isn't one of the worst things he's ever thought about late at night, though.

Thing is, he knows they'll find Mom. Aside from Sam's freaky demon finding skills, they've got thirty years of hunting on their side and demons were never all that bright. Besides, they're the brothers Winchester, like the brothers Grimm, only cooler. They'd won against that Yellow-Eyed son of a bitch (Bob, his mind supplies helpfully, we named him Bob) and there's no way in hell they're gonna lose to his second-rate kids.

Explainin' that to Dad, though, was gonna be a whole 'nother ballgame.

And Sam's trying to get his way out of having to do his fair share.

The house is creaking in a distinctive way Dean's learned over a lifetime meant someone was coming downstairs. Two different creaks, because of course Gayle was up and walking; she's like a whitewashed Sam; more innocent and cranky, with all of Sam's stubbornness and none of his common fucking sense, so of course she'd follow Dad downstairs to get answers.

He's a little proud of her, truth be told, but she's not his in the way Sam is. For one thing, he's pretty sure Sam never wanted to gouge his eyes out and spit on his grave. Pretty sure.

Anyway, Dad's coming downstairs, so Dean figures Sam's had enough of his powernap. "Hey, sleeping beauty," he says.

Sam doesn't respond, already trailing drool down into Dean's collar, so Dean? Dean decides now would be a good time to prove he's a good big brother.

He could use a laugh anyway.

He lifts his shoulder up high enough that Sam's head slips down towards his bicep and then ducks out of the way.

Most of the time, Sam's got a built in radar for when he does this; he'll start to slip and he'll jerk awake, sway on his feet a couple of times, and then right himself before his swaying can make him take a header. He'll blink for a couple seconds and slide sideways again. The second time he catches himself, he'll actually wake up most of the way, and then he goes deep red and apologizes, profusely, to anything and everything in range. Even the potted plants, the bed, the bathroom, hell, the wall.

Yeah, Sam doesn't really wake up all that quick unless he's having a nightmare to begin with.

It's one of the dumbest things Dean's ever seen, and he once saw a pair of high "Ghostbusters" who thought quoting B-horror movie dialogue at a ghost'd make it leave them alone.

True to form, Sam starts sliding as soon as he doesn't have Dean to lean against. Dean starts to smile, to relief a little of the tension that's still crawling up his spine, because, oh, God, Mom, but then Sam goes totally off script. He jerks upright, glares blearily at Dean, and shuffles a few steps over so he can drop his head back onto his shoulder.

There's a mumble, something that might have been a half-plaintive, whiny, "Dean," once. It comes out slurred and drooly, Sam's mouth hot against his shoulder, and Dean's got flashbacks to when Sam was three and used to whine until Dean let him sprawl all over him.

Dean stands very still.

Great. Another Sam-action that's different from before. He pats Sam awkwardly on top of his fuzzy, shaggy head and purses his lips. He'd really, really like it if his little brother could go back to being exactly what he'd lost.

Of course, that's when Dad comes down the stairs and sees the both of them.

Dean sort of thinks the world's out to get them. Not only do his parents think he's boning his little brother, they also always manage to catch him in one of the rare, touchy-feely moments. All the time. He doesn't even know how that's physically possible.

"He okay?" Dad asks gruffly. He's got one arm wrapped around Gayle's shoulders, like he's scared she's gonna fall apart or maybe just turn into something she isn't.

Dean knows the feeling. He tousles Sam's hair a little bit more, pulling it up into tuffs and whirls that make him look like a fluffy dog who'd just had a bath, and then he pats his brother on the back and steps back for real this time. "Just tired."

He props Sam up when Sam goes to lean against him again and gives him a little shake for good measure. "Up and at 'em, Sammy. Daylight's wastin'." Fastest way to wake Sam up has always been saying his name. He never did learn the trick of doing it when he was touched, because for the most part, Dean and Dad'd made damn sure nothing ever touched him in the night.

"'m awake," Sam slurs. Sam's eyes blink open, still bleary, but he's standing on his own two feet, and that's a win in Dean's book. He turns to look at Gayle.

She's shivering. She looks tiny and scared and traumatized in the curve of Dad's arm; skittish. Sam'd looked like that after Meg got finished with him the first time around, before they'd met her again.

But she's also got that look in her eyes that Dean'd recognize anyway. Winchester stubborn, he notes with something approaching pride. She's a Winchester through and through, no matter that she wasn't Sammy.

She'll be fine.

Dad gives the two of them a nod and guides Gayle into the loveseat next to the window. He doesn't even bother to move away, just sits down next to her and opens his arms again; Gayle crawls almost into his lap, which should look ridiculous, but doesn't. She's eighteen years old, like she likes to point out, but she's still tiny compared to Dad and she fits into him like a child.

"You boys wanna have a seat?" Dad asks, weirdly formal.

Dean snags Sam's arm when Sam just stands there blinking a little stupidly, brain still offline even if the rest of him is up and running. He pulls his brother over to the couch and pushes him into it. A smile threatens to form when Sam actually falls onto the sofa, feet getting tangled with themselves even though he's sitting.

One look at Dad and that smile dies pretty quick.

Dad looks like he's gonna skin the both of them. Weird feeling. Dean'd managed to get away from getting that look for twenty-two years in this life. He sort of missed it.

"You're gonna tell me what that was," Dad says, and it's not a question.

Sam's still looking a little out of it, but he's coming around. Looks like Dean'd have to field this question. That's alright; means he gets the easy-peasy questions and Sam gets the hard ones.

"Dean?" Dad demands.

Dean sits down next to Sam, leans back and puts his feet on the coffee table. If he were Sam, he'd go into an explanation about what, exactly, a demon was. He is not, however, a pansy little girl, so he goes for the short and sweet answer.

"Demon," he says.

"A demon," Dad echoes, like he hadn't just seen one with his own two eyes.

Dean's not really sure what to make of that. He's still, after two decades, thinking of his dad as he'd been in that other life, not like he is now. It's downright freaky looking at a John who's skeptical over the existence of demons.

Doesn't help that Gayle's tucked under his arm, looking pretty much like a textbook perfect "after possession" picture.

"Yeah, Dad. A demon. You know: possession, raising hell, barfing pea soup, that sort of thing."

"You watch your mouth with me."

"Yessir." It slips out automatically, conditioned, in response to the drill-sergeant voice. It's not until he's said it that he realizes that, once again, he's fucked up his present timeline with his past one, because as far as he can remember, Dad's never used that tone around him. Here. There. Whatever.

Beside him, Sam wakes up a little bit more and narrows a slightly confused look his way. Poor kid's brains were probably getting ready to ooze out of his skull and Dean's gotta be confusing him.

Dad's looking at him a little funny too. "A demon," he finally says.

Gayle curls into him a little more, resolutely pressing her lips together. Dean's willing to bet she wants to whimper, and he feels a wave of affection almost knock him on his ass. He loved his little sister. He just maybe needed his ginormous fucker of a little brother that little bit more.

Sam stirs again, sits up straight finally and blinks at all of them. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and takes over. "That was a demon; pretty much everything you've ever heard about them is true. They come from hell, like to cause havoc and mayhem here. To do that, they usually possess a person. Now, sometimes it's for a specific reason, but a lot of the time it's not."

Dean's sort of grateful. He's not real good at telling people what's out there, even (especially) if it's his family that needs to be told. He's more of a shoot it and show 'em the corpse kind of guy.

"I'm guessin' that there was a real specific reason this time around," Dad mutters. "I let you in this house and I let you get away with tellin' me damn near nothing but lies. And you brought this to us."

He pins Sam with the kind of glare that the other Dad (fuck, he keeps confusing himself) wouldn't have used on Sam no matter what he was doing. The kind that said you're bad news and you're going down, without even a corpse left for someone to mourn.

Next to him, Sam shrinks back a little bit, his shoulders hunch into that familiar, absent slouch. Dean can't believe he thought he missed it, because it's like a punch to the gut. He's pushing himself to the edge of his seat before he can even think about it, leaning forward so he can glare, hard, at Dad.

"Don't you yell at him. It's not his fault," he grates out.

Sam shifts again and Dean's drops his feet from the table, casual like, and slams the heel of his boot against the toes of Sam's sneakers. Sam hisses under his breath, but Dean doesn't even turn to look at him, still staring Dad down.

Little bitch better not try to contradict him on that. It wasn't Sam's fault and it wasn't his fault either, no matter how much his insides keep trying to twist it around so it is: nobody's fault but the damn demon's.

He doesn't drop Dean's gaze and Dean can't find it in himself to drop his either. Sam's his goddamn responsibility and he'll be fucked before he lets one of the only people that matter to him tear him to pieces. It'd been different when it was actually Dad doing it, because Dad had known Sammy, known when to stop short and when to keep pushing, even if he sometimes ignored that instinct. This Dad though...

Gayle ends the stalemate. "Dad," she says, "Sam's the one who... the thing, the demon, it was scared of Sam. He got it out of me." Her voice wobbles a little when she says it, all over the place, and Dean wants to hug her.

He thinks Dad might shoot him if he gets off the couch, though, so he settles for bumping his shoulder against Sam's when he leans back against the couch again. Manly hug.

They take a second for Gayle to rearrange herself against Dad's side again, and then Dad's talking. His focus is off Sam though, and that's really all Dean wanted, so he's good to go.

"You knew about this stuff," Dad says next. "The drawing on the floor...?"

"That's a devil's trap," Sam says. Right after Dean's gotten all the attention off him. He's a friggin' retard is what he is, and Dean sighs and kicks Sam's foot. Sam kicks him back, out of view of both Dad and Gayle. "It traps demons and makes them powerless."

"And you knew how to do this. At four." Dad's voice is skeptical at best. At worst? He's probably wondering if Dean's possessed himself.

Which, awesome to have healthy paranoia alive and all, but so not the time for it. "Yeah, well, I'm a quick study," he quipped, grinning. Dad looks like he's thinking about setting Gayle aside and getting up to kick his ass. Dean has that effect on most people.

"There's something going on here," Dad says, "And you're both lying to me about it." Dad says it like he used to say "date" when it came to Gayle, like they're some kind of scum crawling on their bellies for the express purpose of hurting his baby girl.

Dean's not sure if that hurts a bit or not. Probably. Somewhere where he wasn't concerned about Mom and Gayle and what this whole clusterfuck would mean for Sam.

Sam cracks his neck, like he's always done when he's nervous, and Dean relaxes a little with the familiar gesture. Some things, he doesn't mind returning. The hunched shoulders? He sort of wants to hit Dad for. It's a good thing neither of them had lived long enough for Sam to turn into some kind of giant hunched-back monster from all of that slouching.

Dad just narrows his eyes at the both of them, one hand smoothing Gayle's hair back from her face for a second. Just like Sam's, it falls right back into her eyes, Dean can't help but notice. They've got the same cheekbones too, the same wide smile, though it's a toss-up over whose smiles are rarer.

She's got Mom's stubborn streak and Dad's way of digging his heels in, but then, so does Sam. For a second, Dean thinks that Gayle's just Sam. With tits. Then he shakes it loose in horror.

Dad's voice jolts him out of that contemplation, thank God.

"I know you've been lying to us," he says. He nods his head at Sam in particular, though his look is for the both of them. "About pretty much everything, so why not this too?"

When Sam just looks confused (Dean can feel the drawn eyebrows, even if he can't see them), Dad elaborates with, "You're not Sam, are you? Does Dean even know that?"

"What?" Dean blurts out before he can help himself. Not Sam? Was Dad insane?

"James Taylor," Dad says, like it's some kind of twisted victory, and okay, how the freakin' hell had they gone from discussing demons to discussing Sam's kind of stupid ass wrong name? Dean's confused and says so.

"And that has... what to do with demons?" he asks. Sam rolls his eyes next to him. For a guy who'd been passed out on his shoulder ten minutes ago, Sam's kind of bitchy at him.

Then he remembers that bitchy's Sam's default setting and settles into the couch a little more.

Dad's winding up for something, maybe, opening his mouth again and Dean's just about to point out that they should be talking about how to get Mom back, not getting distracted on whatever weird thought is running through Dad's head, and then Gayle sits up a little bit.

"It called you Winchester," Gayle says faintly. She's got her head pressed into Dad's chest, her blonde hair fanned across her face, and Dean's heart just about stops right there. "It called you Winchester, Sam, like you're one of us and it hated us because of you."

Dean can hear the blame in her voice and he bristles at it, all instincts. She's got no right laying that all on Sam's feet, like Sam's to blame for everything going on when he isn't.

It wasn't Sam's fault that the damn demons wanted their family.

Sam's frozen next to him. Across the room, Dad looks like he's speechless, eyes wide and a little crazy around the edges.

Dean's never really gotten why Sam thought it'd be a good idea to have a family somewhere that didn't know fuck all about what's out there, but even he feels a little sick to his stomach. There's a whole host of problems that might crop up with this, not the least of them being that Dad's more likely to blow a gasket than believe them and, even if he did accept that Sam was a Winchester, he'd want to know where the fuck he came from and Dean's...

Dean's not really ready to try to explain that other life to his family.

In the meantime though, Gayle's looking at them both with big, wounded eyes and Dean hates it.

"It called you Winchester," she repeats.

Sam's looking down at his hands like they're gonna tell him what to do. Dad's looking at him, mostly frozen, trying to process, and Dean opens his mouth.

Dean doesn't say, "That's because he is." He doesn't say that Sam's name is Samuel James Winchester, that he's his little brother and has been for two lifetimes. He doesn't say that the demons would have had a hard-on for this family with or without Sam, because sometimes he looks at Mom and sees the same not-quite-right brightness he's learned to recognize in Sam.

But he wants to.

Instead, he says, "Yeah, demons? Not so much on the sanity thing. I think it's all that time in hell."

Gayle sends him a furious look, full of anger and betrayal from underneath her lashes and behind her hair. She's going to clam up again, Dean can see it now, and he's just moved himself from marginally bearable, if still a crappy brother (and, man, that hurts, because he's a freakin' fabulous brother, even if only Sammy knows it), to number one on her shit list.

Dean can't bring himself to care all that much.

Sam's secret. Their secret.

He's not too sure Dad wouldn't freak and tell them to get lost if he found out about it, and right now? They really can't afford that. At the very least, him and Sam have got to have enough of Dad's trust for him to listen to them when they tell him how to keep both Dad and Gayle safe.

Dean's not bad at keeping secrets in the face of something like that.

You could ask Dad. He's good at keeping secrets. Even from the people he loves.

---

John's always had a sixth sense about people lying to him. Always. He'd known when he was eight that his daddy wouldn't be comin' back, no matter what his momma tried to feed him, and he'd known for months that this Sam kid wasn't what he looked like. He'd known that Dean wasn't quite normal, no matter how much he'd tried to reassure himself that he was, and well.

He damn well knows that Dean's lying though his ass right now.

"You can tell the truth," he tells Dean, low down and hard, like he's only ever used when one of his kids was gonna hurt themselves doing something stupid, "Or you can walk out that door right now. Your call."

Dean straightens on the coach, Sam straightening right along with him, but there's stubborn making Dean's spine rigid, not fear. John doesn't know why his boy shrugs that voice off his back and that's odd in and of itself. The few times he's snapped at Abby in that voice, she'd jumped and looked at him with tears in her eyes.

Dean just looks at him like it's a part of everyday life and gettin' more boring the more he uses it.

"I don't know what you think we're lying about, but we need to focus no more important things." Sam says, easily. John's noticed he does that, takes over for Dean and talks to him whenever John demands answers from his boy. It's disconcerting.

"Yeah, like savin' Mom," Dean pipes up. "So do we really need to play show and tell with our feelings right now, or can it wait until never?"

John has the strange, alarming urge to hit his son in the face for that crack. "You've got no business bringin' your mother into this, Dean Michael, and you know it."

Dean ducks his head a little, finally, looking slightly ashamed of himself, but then he just lifts his face up again and says, "Someone's gotta bring her up, Dad. And you're sure as hell not doing it. The longer you keep me and Sammy here, the longer it's gonna take to track her down."

Sam moves a little on the couch, rubs his forehead with the heel of his hand. If John's a judge of anything (and he is), the boy's gonna get somewhere even vaguely horizontal and check out for at least twelve hours. Which meant that anything Dean was sayin' about finding Mary was just air out of his ass, and John was ipissed/i that his son had kept this from him for goddamn fucking years.

If he'd known about it, if he'd been aware, he could have protected them better. Made sure Abby didn't ever have a reason to whimper like she'd done upstairs and that Mary couldn't have disappeared from the grocery store with a thing ridin' shotgun.

Abby shifts next to him, still glaring and mumbling under her breath about lying bastard brothers, but John's not really paying attention to her. He's looking at Dean, just looking, because sometimes he feels like he doesn't know this boy he raised in the slightest.

Sometimes, he remembers that Dean woke up screaming at four and wanted his Sammy something fierce. And then he thinks about Abby calling Sam a Winchester, one of his kin if nothing else, and he looks a little harder at Sam's face to try to pick out familiar features before he can catch himself.

There's Dean's hazel eyes, he realizes with a shock, Mary's eyelashes and John's dimples peaking out of that grimace. He'd seen it before, when he'd first met the kid, but now that he's looking again, actually checking for features in common, he can see a certain tilt to his jaw, a way of holding himself that Dean and even Abby are echoing. Holy fuck.

"You related to us somehow?" he directs at Sam; he doesn't want to ask that question, doesn't want to think that question, because he's been nothing but faithful to his wife and he's the last of his side of the family and so is Mary. The kid's eighteen if he's a day, no older than Abby and definitely younger than Dean; John doesn't have a clue about how you'd explain his genetics.

He's not missin' any days, hasn't been drunk off his ass in almost twenty-five years, and he knows Mary gave birth to only a girl because he'd been in the delivery room with her.

But Sam'd come from somewhere and Abby'd sounded so sure, so ready to believe that Sam's a Winchester somehow, and he can hear the echo of the demon's voice calling them all Winchesters and staring at Sam as it'd said it.

He doesn't know how, but he knows that it's true. In some way.

"No," Sam says, without hesitation. He's lying. John knows it as soon as he says something. His eyes have gone sincere and trustworthy and he doesn't know how, but John knows that whenever Sam looks like that he's lying his ass off.

"No, I'm not." His mouth twists a little at the edges, like he's swallowing something sour, and he reaches up to brush some of his hair out of his face.

"I've got a brother," Sam says, finally, "But no other family."

Dean's mouth opens enough for him to mouth something to himself, curling up in a satisfied grin. John's not a hundred percent sure of it, but he thinks he makes out, "damn sure," rolling off Dean's tongue and that just seals it for him.

"You're lying again," he mutters. He'd have known it even if it wasn't looking him straight in the face, side by side with his son, and how could he have not seen it before? They don't look alike, not really, but... enough. Enough to make an observant person think and John's tired of being the unobservant one.

"What gave you that idea?" Abby pushes herself off of him, stubborn personality asserting itself. "They're lying about everything, Dad. But," she says, pausing, "They're not lying about Mom. That demon. It's got her."

"And we need to focus on that right about now, Dad, not Sam." Dean reaches over, crashes his fist into Sam's shoulder with enough force that Sam rocks with it, grimacing. The move looks practiced, nothing short of brothers giving each other a hard time, and if there hadn't been a demon in his house twenty minutes ago, he'd think he's crazy.

Sam's got some of their DNA swimming around in his veins. John's sure enough to make a bet of it and if he's got a choice, he only ever wagers on a sure thing.

John's not sure how he could have ever believed they were lovers.

"Fine. But you boys, the both of you, you're gonna give me an explanation afterwards and you're gonna tell the damn truth when you do. Is that clear?"

He's not sure why he uses that voice again, military tough. Sam and Dean, the both of them, utter quiet "Yessirs," without missing a beat, in stereo, like it's the most natural thing in the world. John feels a chill go down his spine and tries to shake it loose.

"What do we know?"

Sam's the one who starts talking. "Demons like to hide out for a while, make sure they've got a good grip on a person's body," he says, "It'll probably go to ground with Mo--Mary for a few days and then come out swinging."

Weird almost slip of the tongue there, John notices. The cold feeling attempts to claw up into his skull, give him more of a headache than he's already feeling, and Dean just looks him in the eye and dares him to say a word about it.

"The... the." Abby stops, shudders, draws a deep breath. Her chin goes up and her shoulders go back, sitting up ramrod straight like she's been taught to do for speeches and presentations, and John can see her confidence oozing back in. Good girl.

"The demon," she gets out, "It didn't know where Mom was. But it knows that she's going to come back here. They wanted to..." her voice trails off, just ends, and she goes white.

John doesn't need her to say what they want to do. He'd heard it with his own two ears, and so had everyone else in this room.

"It can damn well try," Dean says, "We Winchesters are hard to kill, though. Trust me."

Abby scoffs, loudly, at him. She tucks her hair behind her ears and spreads her hands on her knees. Dean can see them shaking a little bit.

Dean doesn't respond to that.

He's looking down at his fingers. John looks too, and they're twitching like they're aching for something, like his used to do when he woke up from a nightmare after 'Nam. Dean glances over at Sam for a second, and they trade glances, a wealth of information John doesn't even have a hope in hell of understanding, and then his boy's back to staring at his twitching fingers.

John's still trying to stomach the idea that there might be a kid out there, sitting in his living room, who shares genes with his two kids. He doesn't need to think about his son having held a gun before, let alone having held one long enough to develop an instinctive ache for it.

"We're not gonna let it hurt anyone," Sam murmurs at Abby.

She's still pissed to hell at the both of them, though she softens a little in Sam's direction. That crush is a major working factor in it, John thinks, and sees Dean grimace to himself in agreement.

John used to think the hidden grimacing and chortling was because his son was dating the man Abby had a crush on. Now he's wondering if it's because Dean knows something they don't, and he thinks the ugly word incest like it's a bullet across his brain.

"Oh, shit," Sam says suddenly.

John almost jumps, because he's sure as hell never heard Sam say a swear word in this house.

Sam's not paying any attention to him, though. He's turned slightly to dig his hand into Dean's jacket pocket, regardless of Dean's raised eyebrows. There's a second of stunned silence, and then Dean says, "Ah, dude?" and Sam makes a triumphant noise and pulls a phone out of Dean's pocket.

"Lily," he says at Dean, like that explains anything, like that explains why he's willin' to put finding Mary on hold. The boy starts dialing numbers on the phone like he's in some kind of race.

Apparently, to Dean, that one word did mean something, because he leans back and bangs his head against the couch cushion with a swear of his own.

Sam gives them all a quick smile, pushing numbers on the keypad fast enough that he looks like a blur. John can see Abby leaning forward out of the corner of his eye, but he's still watching Dean. Who's still hitting his head on the coach and mumbling around his breath about rain.

"Hey, it's Sam," Sam says into the phone. There's a pause where all three of them listen to him before Sam smiles a little and says, "Yeah, I know, and, no, he's not a kidnapper. Thanks for telling me though. No, no, he's really alright. He's... Dean. It's okay."

John's eyebrows start to climb into his hairline.

Dean slams his boots back up onto the coffee table and mumbles a little louder. It's all turned into indistinct swear words, though, so John tunes him out and leans forward a little more, trying to hear whoever it is Sam's talkin' to.

There's another tinny sound from the phone. Sam grimaces a little, deep dimples appearing on his cheeks, and says, "That sucks. Mr. Tinkles okay? Good."

"Look, I need a favor," Sam murmurs into the phone. "Can you get away for a few days and be in San Diego on the..." he stops and rubs his forehead, reaches over to tilt Dean's arm up to look at his watch.

Abby makes a disparaging comment about incest of all things, and John puts an arm around her shoulder and tells her to hush. Dean allows it for just long enough for Sam to apparently get the date from it, then pulls it back with a muttered, "Bitch."

"The eighteenth, I think," Sam continues. "No, it's the eighteenth. I saw it on the waitress's notebook. Yeah, I know, it's kind of a weird thing to go off of but if you--Scott. Let me finish, alright?"

On the other end of the line, Scott apparently takes a breather and lets Sam get through what he needs to do.

"You're going to look for a girl named Lily," Sam says. "She's got long blonde hair, hazel eyes, likes the eye shadow thing that's in right now." Sam pinches the bridge of his nose and his face screws up into something resembling pain. John's got no clue what the hell's going on, but he's starting to get that creeping ice feeling up his spine again.

That's stupid, he tells himself, because for all he knows Sam's just letting this Scott person know to meet a girl he's gonna have to bail on. He might have gotten upset over that if he still thought Dean was dating the boy, but he's leaning more and more towards the crazy conclusion that he keeps recognizing Sam's expressions because he sees them in his wife and daughter everyday, so.

Sam's talking again when he pulls himself out of that hole, eyes squeezed shut. Dean's leaning forward on the couch, not so much watching Sam as hovering expectantly. John can't blame him. Boy looks like he's gonna take a header into the table. "She's going to be wearing, ah, a red long sleeved shirt with a black tank top on top. Jeans, I think. She's got these high-heeled boots, you can't miss them."

That's officially edging into creepy territory right there. Sam doesn't seem to care and Abby's just watching him with something like dawning comprehension in her face.

"No, I don't know her. Just, look? You gotta get there before the eighteenth. She's gonna kill her girlfriend on accident and you've gotta stop it. An address? Hold on a second, okay?" Sam abandons pinching his nose, tucks the phone between his shoulder and his ear, and just shoves the heels of both hands into his eyes, hard.

His face goes an interesting shade of gray-white before he takes a deep breath. "It's the Olive Garden on Carmel Mountain," he finally mutters. "Looks like it's the evening rush, so around five."

Dean puts his hand on Sam's shoulder and eases the phone out from under his face while Sam kind of whimpers under his breath. "You got all that, Sparky?" he asks tightly, and then hangs up the phone while someone's still talking on the other line.

John's hands are startin' to get itchy with just sitting here and it's really starting to sink in that Mary's gone. She's out there somewhere and he doesn't have the faintest fucking clue where she is.

He's going to start beating people soon. He's not too sure that Dean wouldn't beat him back if he touched Sam, though, and he's not about to hit one of his own kids. He tucks his hands under his thighs and takes several deep breaths, listening to Dean berate Sam.

"What's wrong with him?" Abby asks. She makes some kind of token effort to get the blatant hostility out of her voice. John leans a little harder on his hands. If she can do it, so can he.

"He's an idiot," Dean returns shortly. His voice is low and furious, but his hands are gentle on Sam's biceps, and he leans forward to say softly, "Hey, how about you go get in the car, lie down in the back?"

"'m fine, Dean," Sam says. He bats inefficiently at Dean's hands and when Dean just snorts at him, he lets his head loll back against the couch. "Head feels like it's gonna explode though."

"Abby," John interrupts, "Go get him some aspirin." No way in hell are either of them getting out of his sight until he's got more answers, a concrete way to get Mary back. A second later, though, he's got time to think through sending Abby anywhere by herself and so does she.

She's gone white again, fingers gripping the cushions hard enough that they creak.

John's relieved when Dean lets out a curt, "Won't help," in response to his suggestion. He doesn't want his baby girl out of his sight either.

"Got some Excedrin, Sammy," Dean offers a second later, "You missed your coffee this morning 'cause you puked like a girl when that first vision hit."

"Don't say puke," Sam whispers.

Dean snorts out a half-laugh and goes digging through his pockets. When he said he had Excedrin, he wasn't lyin', John figures. The bottle of pills comes out of an inner pocket, the childproof lid replaced with what looks like plastic wrap held on with a rubber band.

"Visions," Abby repeats flatly.

Dean's not really paying attention to her, since he's wrestling his plastic wrap off the bottle and handing Sam a flask of... something at the same time. John hopes to God that's water he's handing over and not whiskey.

"Visions," Dean says when he's got the "lid" off. "Knock you on your ass, see the future type deal. Like in that show about that pansy-ass vampire detective guy. Only Sam's not as pretty as the chick who had visions in there."

Sam downs the flask and the pills with a mutter of that sounds a lot like, "Jeez, why don't you just Christo me and get it over with."

Dean gives him a quick smile and leans around him to stare at both John and Abby. "And I swear to God if either of you says something about how we should have told you, I'm gonna start swingin'."

"I couldn't care less what's wrong with him," John says, and, alright, he's lying, because there's still that same old feeling of weirdness invading the room, but goddamnit, Mary was out there somewhere and he didn't have time to pick apart secrets he didn't really want to know, "Just tell me what we're gonna be doing and you guys can get gone."

He almost sounds like he's kicking Dean out of the house. He sees Dean notice it too, squeezing Sam's shoulder and ducking his head a little bit, but John doesn't try to take it back. After the day he's had, he figures he can get away with one or two rash decisions.

Abby smiles next to him. He can see it out of the corner of his eye and he swallows hard. God, his girl could hold a grudge. And his boy was stupid. All she needed was a fucking hug, an, "I thought about you while I was gone," and she'd melt into jelly and be his forever.

"Tough crowd," Dean says instead.

"Mary's gone to ground," Sam says softly. He's still got his head cradled in his hands, breathing heavy through his mouth, and he's leaning against Dean like he can't support his own weight. "We've got a few days to figure out how we're going to find her."

"Not good enough," John snaps at the both of them.

At the same time, Abby says, "We can't just leave her possessed by one of those things!" She's got her arms wrapped around herself again and John's hurting to think of his Mary still under the control of something that'd shaken Abby so much.

Sam shifts like he feels guilty. Dean just looks at him.

He's not backing down, but he's not really defiant either, just some unholy mix of the two. He's got his shoulder slightly in front of Sam's, like he's iprotecting/i the other kid from John; like there's something in John he sees that makes it worthwhile to protect Sam from. That just makes John want to hit the both of them.

"It's gonna have to be, Dad," Dean says simply.

---

He's never actually tried to call a vision back, so he thinks it's pretty understandable when after watching Dad and Dean duke it out in the living room, he shambles towards the kitchen, calmly checks to see if the garbage can has a bag (it does, go him), and throws up in it.

He's tall enough to even reach the top of it while slumped on his knees. That's not really an accomplishment, because he's a ishrimp/i compared to how tall he's going to be, but he'll take what he can get right now. Up to and including being vaguely, sickly proud that he can reach the garbage can without standing up.

Sam lets out a weak little chuckle around the bile in his mouth.

Then he throws up some more.

"Easy," Dean says from behind him.

Sam wants to tell him that he can take it easy himself when his head feels like it's going to explode; however, he's still vomiting into the trash and Dean's hand is sort of soothing on the back of his neck. It squeezes once, just the right amount of pressure. Sam swears he can feel the urge to barf retreating because of it.

Unfortunately, the headache doesn't go with it. He's managed to puke up his pain pills too, if the half-digested white blobs he can see floating in the green-yellow pile are any indication.

He cuts his eyes away from the vomit before he starts up again.

Dean, big brother of the century, let alone the year, hands him a glass of water (where'd he get it from?) and helps him to his feet while he swishes a mouthful around. The taste lingers at the back of his teeth even after he spits, but that's something he can live with.

Dean hands him two more pills and another glass of water. Sam wants to care about how he seems to be pulling those out of nowhere, but his head fucking hurts and he just wants it to stop. No more vision-forcing.

Sam goes to throw the pills back when Dean stops his hand.

He squints blearily at his brother and decides that whichever one of him is real, his best brother of the century award is getting taken away. There are weird colors starting to spread across his vision; Sam's had enough concussions to know that's really not a good thing. He wants his drugs and he wants the Impala.

Preferably with Dean running the engine so it rumbles at him.

"Take three," Dean finally says. He pries open Sam's hand (he's got a deathgrip on those pills), shakes out another pill into his open palm, and folds his fingers back over it. "Think you can get those in yourself or you need me to get a spoon of jelly?"

He's not six. He hadn't had anyone to give him medicine with jelly when he was six, anyway. Except that Dean'd done it for years, until he was twelve and he got sick while Dean was out having fun with some girl and Dad told him he was old enough to swallow pills whole now.

That didn't happen in this life though, and great, there goes the confusion setting in. Just like Abby didn't happen in that other life.

"Guess not," Dean mutters.

Dean can go to hell. His head throbs and for a second he's looking at the Olive Garden sign in San Diego, with a clear view of the street sign in the background. It would have been nice if he'd gotten that from the vision the first time around.

"Jesus, Sammy, focus here."

Sam cracks open an eye, sees the swirl of weird, molten colors that might represent Dean if he's inclined to really squint and tilt his head sideways. Which he's not. Because he wants to keep down the water he's managed to swallow.

And the pills Dean's pushing into his mouth with an exaggerated mumble about... something under his breath.

He closes his eyes and swallows them dry. Dean guides his hand around a glass, then pushes the glass up towards his face with a huff when all he does is sort of hold onto it. Even his arms are aching at this point, like his head's decided to share the wealth.

"You need more water?" he hears Dad rumble from somewhere close by.

Before he even thinks about it, he mumbles, "No, 'm good, Dad."

The silence that follows that feels pretty good. He sways on his feet, reaches out for the nearest stationary object, and thinks about maybe going to find the Impala.

"Dude," Dean says after a few seconds.

His voice is right next to Sam's head, maybe standing behind his shoulder. Sam lets out an unhappy noise when Dean's voice bounces around in his head, merging with the dying gutter-wheeze of Lily's girlfriend, and shifts away from him slightly.

The room does a spinning move that leaves Sam thinking of puking again.

A girl's voice next, over to the left: "Dad?" She sounds pissy. Abby's always that way, even if Sam's kind of fuzzy on who, exactly, Abby is at the moment. Lily's screaming in his head. It hurts.

"He's confused," Dean shoots back.

Sam winces harder, squeezing his eyes shut again. "Need to lay down, Dean," he mutters.

"I kind of got that, man. You hallucinating? Dead give away."

He scrunches his eyes together, offended. "I'm not hallucinating," he says and even he can hear the whine in his voice. He always gets like this with headaches or head wounds.

"Yeah, you sort of are."

A hand catches his shoulder (he really hopes it belongs to Dean) and steers him gently. He manages not to trip on his feet like Dean's always accusing him of doing. He decides that's a point for him and tells Lily to be quiet.

---

Maneuvering six feet of drowsy, confused, babbling little brother down some steps is never Dean's idea of a good time. Especially when said six feet of brother has just landed them so deeply into Dad's suspicion they're never gonna get out again.

Sam makes a pathetic noise under his breath when Dean leans him against the porch railing. He's gotta take a minute, tackle those steps in his head before he's willing to try it with Sam's goofy, accident prone weight. He shushes his brother absently while he plots it out.

"I can help you with that, son," Dad says from behind him. It sounds almost like a peace offering. Almost. But it sort of also sounds like Dad might just let Sam bounce his head on the cement a few times just because.

Dean's not real keen on letting Dad anywhere near Sam right now. After that slip in the kitchen and another rambling anecdote on the merits of pill taking with jelly versus dry swallowing, he's not sure that's a bang up idea.

Dad's probably hoping for more little insights into the way Sam's mind works and he's already suspicious as fuck about where Sam comes from.

Thing is, though, that Sam's not exactly light, even if he looks like a famine relief poster at this stage of the random ass growth spurt that should be hitting any day now. And dragging his brother down those steps is sort of daunting, even in his own head. If he doesn't have to do it by himself, he doesn't really want to.

Sam mumbles something under his breath that might be, "ribbons," or maybe he's babbling about monkeys. Dean doesn't really know. He nudges Sam's shoulder a little bit, just enough to get his attention and make him shut up.

His brother turns his head towards him, but doesn't open his eyes.

"Yeah," Dean says after he realizes that. Getting a mostly comatose Sam down some stairs with his eyes closed, by himself? Not gonna happen without serious injury or dragging. "Could use the help."

Gayle, hovering in the background with her arms crossed, looks about ten seconds away from crying despite her best efforts whenever she gets more than a few feet away from Dad. So he'd have two more people helping. Maybe. He's not sure she wouldn't cop a feel, belief in Sam being related to them or not.

Weird kid. If you're gonna commit incest, Dean's definitely the hotter choice.

"You are not," Sam says.

Fucker. Dean knew he could read minds if he tried. Dean hopes it gives him a worse headache. "Alright, gigantor, up," he says, and heaves Sam back upright.

Dad tucks himself under Sam's other arm. Sam's head turns his way, a little, and Dean can see his eyebrows scrunch up in consternation. "Dean?" he asks softly, "Dad's dead. Who's...?"

"You have got to keep your big mouth shut, Sam," Dean sighs. He's not gonna play damage control anymore. They can go sack out in their motel room and hide from Dad until a random memory spell takes this whole goddamn day from him and Gayle both.

Sam quiets down after that, leans his head a little more towards Dean and hisses under his breath every other step. Gayle trails behind them like a dog on a leash.

Dean realizes he might have inadvertently called his sister a bitch just as they've reached the Impala.

"Front or back, Sam?" he asks. He's thinking the back seat would be best for him, but damned if he's gonna fight Sam on it if he really, really wants to sit in the passenger side.

Dad looks at him like he's insane. "He doesn't even know where he is right now, Dean. Or who he's with," that sounds a mite desperate to Dean, but who's he to stand in the way of denial, "And you're gonna give the boy a choice?"

"Sammy gets a little pissy if you force him into doin' stuff. Even if it's for his own good." Dean's thought about explaining that to Dad before this, of course. It's just that last time he'd given serious thought to it he was about four years older than he is now and had a hell of a lot more scars on him.

"He's kinda like Gayle," he offers when Dad just gives him a suspicious look.

Then he thinks, 'Oh, shit. Yeah, Dean, good call there, bringin' attention to how much your sister and your secret brother from another lifetime/universe/thing have in common. Awesome.'

Sam says, very softly, "Backseat."

"Good choice, Sam," Dean grunts. Sometimes, Sam shows that he's got the good sense God gave little green apples. Not that apples had good sense or anything.

His brother takes a deep breath and leans further towards Dean. He takes that as his cue to nod a little frantically at Dad, because Sam's heavy, the fucker, and he doesn't want to hold onto all his weight for long.

"Can you get the door?" he asks. He drops his arm from Sam's shoulders to around his waist, hitching him up as he starts to go a little more boneless. "Kind of got my hands full, here."

Which is true. Sam's putting almost all of his weight on him now, bony shoulder and hip jabbing uncomfortably into Dean's skin. He could, he supposes, push him over to lean on Dad, but he doesn't think Dad'd appreciate it all that much.

Plus, Sam? Would totally pitch a shitfit if Dean tried to make Dad hold him while he opened the door. He's a little out of it. He'd probably think Dad was a shapeshifter or a zombie with their luck and hurt himself trying to go for the gun in the back of his pants.

"I got it," Gayle mutters.

She shoves her way in between him and the Impala's backdoor, managing to elbow Dean in the guts while she's at it. He has to hand it to her, she's kind of bitchy. Like, Sam bitchy even. Even though Sam knew enough to put something behind an elbow to the gut if he wanted it to hurt.

The minute the door creaks open, Dean finds his hands full of suddenly eager, struggling little brother. What the hell? He knows Sam's got a sudden, healthy, wonderful fascination with his car, to the point that he's even offered to wax it once or twice, but trying to ditch him in favor of his baby? That's a little cold.

Dean simultaneously raises an eyebrow and grapples to keep his dingus brother upright.

Sam manages to pull away completely away from Dad with little more than a tug. Yeah, Dean's real glad he asked for Dad's help. Friggin' useless is what he is. Then he feels terrible enough for thinking that that he's automatically turning a little bit to shoot Dad an apologetic look and Sam manages to hit him with one bony, flailing elbow in exactly the way Abby had been aiming for.

The breath rushes out of his lungs in one long, violent exhale. Somewhere behind him, he can hear Gayle make a surprised, pleased little chuckle. He's gonna strangle her. Mean girl. Dean didn't help raise her to be such a little twit.

While he's thinking that, Sam takes a swan dive into the backseat of the Impala.

Dean figures he deserves the headache that sparks. He twitches his arm, the one not currently protecting his middle as he tries to wheeze in some air, and slams the back door on Sam's whimpery little moans before he can start to feel sorry for the little bitch. His own damn fault.

He curls around his middle and rests his forehead against the door of the Impala. The paint's hot under his head, but that doesn't really help him breathe. No panicking, he reminds himself. You and Sam'd done this to each other for fun when you were younger. Wait for it.

Stupid Sam. "No patience," he wheezes out with the first precious lungful of beautiful air.

Dad's got one hand flat on his back, the other on his chest, over his diaphragm. Not that Dean doesn't appreciate the sentiment, but he could have used the help keeping Sammy still in the first place. He bats Dad's hands away with a breathy sound.

A breathy sound that almost sounds like girl sex noises. Huh.

"Fine, Dad," he grunts. When he hears Gayle snort again, he turns his head to the side a little and narrows a glare her way. "You be quiet," he growls out.

Her eyes widen a little bit and he belatedly remembers that he'd never talked to her like that.

Fuck it, he needs to leave before he says or does something he's really gonna regret. Like telling Dad that he's looking at his son like he's the Anti-Christ when they just saved Gayle's goddamn life. Or he makes Gayle stand in the corner like he'd done when Sam was bad when he was little.

He pats Dad on the shoulder (very manly), gives Gayle a kind of grimacing smile that he really hopes doesn't look as homicidal as he's feeling towards her and her girly attitude problems, and walks around to the driver's side.

If he walks fast enough that it almost qualifies as a run, well, Sam's sort of out of it in the back seat, so it's not like he's gonna hear any shit from him about it.

"Dean," Dad calls.

"Yeah?" Dean looks up from the mad dash (fine, he admits it) he's got goin' for him.

Dad's leaning against the top of the car, hands folded on her hood. Dean knows enough to see himself in that pose, Sam too, if he's perfectly honest, and that's his family, right there. Right here. Gayle glowering over Dad's shoulder and Sam in the back, trying not to hurl.

And something's got his Mom.

"You take care of yourself, alright?" Dad says.

"Always do," Dean tells him. "We'll be back in a few days."

It's an outright lie, because like hell is he gonna let something come get the family he's got left, even if it's riding around in his mother. He and Sam are gonna track that thing down and exorcise its ass before it can get anywhere near Dad or Gayle again.

That's just facts. Doesn't mean Dad would see it that way.

Dad nods like it means something and taps the hood of the car twice. That's something else Dean can recognize and it makes his throat feel suspiciously lumpy. Growin' up with a girl? Really had made him into a squishy princess G.I. Joe doll.

Dean opens the Impala's door and climbs on it. He hadn't gotten the keys out of his pocket before he sat down, so he has to spend a good minute wiggling around like a retard trying to fish his keys out of his back pocket. He doesn't even know why he put the damn things there anyway; they stab him in the ass when they're in that pocket.

When he starts up the engine, three things happen at once. Dad backs up, puts his arm around Gayle and stands there looking two inches short of devastated. Dean's throat clamps up a little tighter. And Sam lets out this sound, the same kind of noise he'd made when he was little and he'd just crawled into bed and put his cold feet all over Dean's warm legs.

Satisfied, maybe. Happy.

Guess which one of those three things he focuses on.

"You good back there, Sam?" he asks.

There's a vague mumble from the backseat and a slightly clearer, "Drive."

Bossy shit.

---

Sam likes to curl up in the Impala. Not really for the reasons Dean thinks he does, although that's part of it. He likes the way the Impala rocks and rumbles, likes the car no matter how much he bitches about it. She'd been his cradle in his last lifetime, his battle ground with Dean when he'd been a teenager, arms and legs cracking into each other hard enough to leave bruises when they'd fought over the front seat hard enough that Dad put them both in the back

He turns his face into the leather seats, presses it hard between the cushions in an attempt to get it to stop hurting. Doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt either and the cool leather feels nice against his skin. Even if it does start to heat up as soon as he touches it. It doesn't really smell like it should, not as much blood and sulfur and holy water spilled in it, but it's still home.

If he concentrates really hard, enough that he can feel the headache getting much, much worse somewhere in his near future, the Impala will give up her memories to him. It's nothing really concrete, just sounds and some sights.

Metallica on this occasion, when Dean had his head resting on the steering wheel, looking two minutes away from either crying or ranting furiously to himself. Something soft and soothing when Mom's driving her, two car seats in the back seat even though Dean looks murderous at being confined to one and is whining that classic cars aren't even supposed to have seatbelts, anyway.

He doesn't get many memories of Abby, like the Impala's just decided arbitrarily that she's not someone that's going to be riding in her often. Sam smiles a little into the seats when he gets an image of her. She's a little under twelve, maybe, with blonde hair and the habitual embarrassment of having doting parents and a big brother that was obsessive about keeping her safe. She seems sweet, Sam decides, up until she tells Dean that she didn't need him and he was a freak, and wouldn't he just leave her alone?

Sam'd said things like that sometimes. Once or twice he'd even meant it, but that was before he understood how stupidly fragile Dean was when it came to him. And, yeah, there's a little bit of hurt glimmering out of his brother's eyes before he hides it, but there's no real devastation.

When he gets tired of coaxing memories out of the Impala, he gives her some of his to make it even. He only ever does it when he's so tired he can't sleep or when he needs something to take his mind off his hurts, but. There it is. He twines the memory of eighteen years of loneliness and determination into her seats and follows it up with all the little things that had made it bearable.

It's not making his headache better, but he's feeling it less. The Impala rumbles under him like she's alive, just an extension of Dean's overprotectiveness as his brother turns down his music and hums softly along. Sam smiles a little bit more, feeling drowsier than he'd been in the living room back there.

He gives her the memory of seeing the Grand Canyon when he was thirteen, a detour he made specifically for Dean, because they never had done it in that last lifetime. They're supposed to do it soon in this one, and he's sure she'll store that memory somewhere for them too.

He shows her Jess, sixteen years old and freckled, hitting the shoulder of one of her brothers while Sam walks behind her and smiles. There's a thousand and one good things that have happened to him in this life, but he finds himself starting to feed her the other memories too.

They're kind of yellow with age in his head, full of the holes that come after the events been in the past for a lot of years. But they're still there. Dean saying he was proud of him, Dad saying that there had been a college fund once, the way Mom had fought a poltergeist off for them, gorgeous and strong even when the fire came again. The hundred and one things he'd been thankful for in that lifetime, most of them beginning with D and ending with N.

Dean's not psychic at all. But Sam's communing with the Impala in the backseat, and Dean suddenly gets this little smile on his face, like he can feel it, and he starts humming just that little bit louder. Sam presses his face harder into the seat and wonders if she's going to take this memory for herself too, something to share later when Sam's feeling down.

He wishes, sometimes, that he could share this with Dean. He'd love it.