Thanks again everyone for the awesome reviews! I'll be very interested to see the reactions to this chapter.
Dean isn't there.
He isn't there, but the evidence of him is all over the room. There's a pair of motorcycle boots lying abandoned by the doorway and mud-encrusted jeans slung haphazardly over a chair. Dean's duffle is open, spilling boxers and socks onto the floor – not the chaos of a struggle or a sudden retreat, but the simple clutter of Dean's everyday existence. A small stack of empty pizza boxes has accumulated next to the trash can, which is full of balled-up take out bags. There's a warm, half-drunk beer on top of the mini-fridge, and inside, Sam finds half a case of the same beer and a takeout box from Los Sombreros.
It's almost like Dean's just stepped out, like he could be back at any minute, but the food smells like it's been there for at least a week, and when they look through the case files Dean's left spread out on the little wooden table, they find scribbled, dated notes on the hotel stationary that don't go past October 14th, the night before he was at Georgina Moret's house and, later, at the diner.
If Dean was planning to hook up with that waitress, and Sam doesn't doubt he was, he'd have headed back here to shower off the grime of the hunt and grab a change of clothes. He also sure as hell wouldn't have gone out for a night on the town without giving Dad a call to tell him that he'd finished the case, unless he got distracted by something pretty damn big.
The distributor cap is right where Sam knew it would be, but there's no solid evidence that Dean actually came back here after the diner, and even though Sam doesn't want to believe it, he's starting to suspect that Dean never did.
He says as much to John.
"Could be," his dad agrees, looking up from where he's zeroed in on Dean's case notes.
"We won't know for sure until we check the security footage," Sam tells him, even as he's striding purposefully out of the room toward the front desk.
Hotels like this often have policies that anyone can demand to see security footage, so it's pretty easy to get access to it. Of course, even if the hotel didn't have a rule like that, Sam doubts they'd have any trouble. He'd had it trained into him long before his Psych 101 course at Stanford that people would believe and do just about anything if you presented yourself with enough authority.
A little under an hour spent huddled in a dim room, squinting at the security footage, confirms Sam's fears. They can't find any indication that Dean came back here, either Saturday night or Sunday morning.
"Damn," John mutters from his place beside Sam. He stretches, cracking his jaw.
"We need to find out when he was last here," Sam says hollowly.
John gives him a speculative look. There's a sort of restless unease, a nervous tension, that's been coming off of John since he picked Sam up from Stanford, and it's even stronger now. Sam figured it was worry about Dean, but now he's not so sure.
Before he can snap at John, demand to know what else their father could possibly want to be doing with his time besides scouring this tape for a glimpse of his son, John is rewinding the tape and Sam is forced to turn his attention once more to the screen.
"Stop," he whispers after what feels like an eternity. "There."
Sure enough, at 8:13 on the morning of October 15th, there's Dean. Sam watches as he saunters down the hall and out the front door in a casual stroll, carrying a small duffle that Sam knows must contain a few choice weapons, maybe some spare IDs and first aid supplies – anything he might need while he's driving his stolen wheels around New Orleans. They hadn't found that duffle in the room or in either car. Wherever Dean is, it's likely with him.
There's barely thirty seconds of footage. Sam rewinds it and watches it again, leaning closer to the screen. Dean looks perfectly normal: no worry, no misgivings, just… sauntering. There's no indication on the video that anyone or anything is paying him untoward attention, either.
Sam rewinds, lets it play again.
This is the first time he's seen his brother in years, but Dean looks the same to Sam, all swaggering steps and casually swaying arms, his mouth relaxed into a flat line, but with a little quirk at the edge, like it's waiting to be drawn into a smug grin. He's still got his dirty blonde hair styled in the same Dad-approved crew cut he's had since Sam was a kid. He's still wearing Dad's old leather jacket too, though Sam thinks maybe it's a little more worn around the elbows and the collar; it's still just a little too big for him. Sam can see the brass pendent he'd given Dean all of those years ago swinging from the leather cord around his neck. He feels like his insides have been hollowed out with a spoon.
He rewinds again, presses play.
"Dead end, Sammy," his father says, reaching over to cut off the tape, and for a single moment, Sam hates him.
He sits back, pinches his eyes closed, and breathes through his nose. This changes things. It means they have to backtrack again, have to reevaluate their timeline, starting back at the diner. All of the hope he'd felt after finding the Impala and Dean's room is going fast, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness.
"Come on, Sam," John says, winding a fist into the shoulder of Sam's jacket and giving him an insistent tug.
Sam follows him in a daze. He's trying to think about what their next step needs to be, to turn over everything they know in his head to see what they've missed, but his brain is sluggish and uncooperative. The headache is back in full force, pounding behind his eyes and making him feel a little woozy.
His Dad leads them back to Dean's room. Sam sinks into the chair, scrubbing a hand over his face and then up into his hair.
"We gotta call it a night," John says.
Sam can't bring himself to argue; there isn't a lot they can do from now until sun-up.
"You take first shower," his dad orders. "I'll grab the bags from the truck."
Sam lifts his head to stare at him.
"You want to stay here?"
John looks nonplussed.
"Room's already paid for," he points out. "We're sure as hell not gonna find anything better in this town right now. Just have to take the bed in turns."
Sam doesn't know where to begin to react to that. Sure, John's logic is sound enough, but Sam wonders if his dad has any idea what he's asking. The remnants of Dean are all over this room, and the idea of staying here, surrounded by the ghost of his missing brother, is almost physically painful. Sam would rather stay anywhere else. He'd rather just sleep in the truck, but he knows that making his dad understand that would be like beating his head against a brick wall, and he just doesn't have the energy.
He nods, gets up without a word, and goes into the bathroom. After a moment, he hears the click of the motel door closing. Sam turns on the shower, pulling off his clothes while he waits for the water to heat up. He balls them up and tosses them onto the lid of the toilet, then gathers up the towels littering the floor. They're dried stiff and crunchy, and Sam knows that's because Dean left them sopping wet on the floor, just like he'd insisted on doing his entire life, no matter how many times Sam complained about it. Sam stuffs the towels under the bathroom sink where he won't have to see them.
He isn't going to do something stupid and girly like sobbing over Dean's toothbrush, but that doesn't mean he's going to give himself the chance to dwell on it, either.
He'd been half-hoping the shower would wake him up enough to justify pushing John into the first sleeping shift, but it really doesn't. He's just plain exhausted, and even as he's trying to adjust their plans for tomorrow to this new development (backtrack to the diner, try to find out where Dean went from there, maybe check for security footage from neighboring businesses…), his vision is dipping and swimming. His head feels heavy, much too heavy to concentrate, so he finally lets go of the need to plan and just stands there under the spray, thinking of nothing.
Dean's still using the same crappy shampoo Dad always bought, he notes absently; same toothpaste and deodorant, too. Sam is totally going to make fun of him for that later, he thinks, as he rinses out his hair.
If there is a later.
He pinches his eyes shut against the thought, taking a deep breath. He runs another hand through his wet, tangled hair and leans to the side a little, pressing his temple against the cool tile.
He's been trying so desperately to tell himself that Dean is okay, that Dean is alive. If he doesn't keep on believing that, he's pretty sure he'll crack up, but it's been nine days now since his brother was last seen by anyone, and he knows what that means. If this were a case, if he were talking to someone else who'd had a loved one missing without a trace for this long, he'd be prepping them for disappointment, all soft words and tender looks and "We have to brace ourselves for the worst," but this isn't just anyone. This is Sam and Dean, and the only way Sam knows to keep himself together is by telling himself that he will find his brother, that Dean will be okay, no matter what Sam has to do to make sure of that.
Dean can't die, not when he still thinks Sam meant all of that crap he said during their last fight. He can't die thinking that Sam doesn't want to ever hear from him or see him again. He can't die not knowing how many times Sam wanted to track down Dean's newest number and apologize and didn't because he was too proud and because he just didn't know what to say and maybe because deep down he was afraid of what Dean would say back to him.
He lifts his head up into the warm spray, letting it run down through his bangs and over his eyes and into his mouth. He stays like that until he has to breathe again, and then he shuts off the tap and gets out.
When Sam emerges from the bathroom, John is sitting hunched over the table, sorting through a pile of Dean's scribbled, doodled-over case notes and copying them into his own journal.
"Shower's free," Sam says unnecessarily.
John grunts in acknowledgement, eyes still trained on his journal.
Sam takes the moment to grab his pajamas and toothbrush from his bag. After he brushes, he puts his toothbrush into the cup next to Dean's. When he pads out of the slightly damp room in his t-shirt and sweatpants, John is waiting for him at the door.
"You take the first shift," his father orders, just like Sam knew he would. "You look like you're about to keel over."
Sam just nods in tired acceptance.
He straightens the sheets out from where Dean's left them crumpled at the foot of the bed, before collapsing into it, pulling the covers up to his chin and turning his face into the pillow. He lies there for a long moment, listening to the muffled sound of the shower running.
The bed smells like Dean.
The pillow smells like Dean's stupid hair gel and his shampoo, and Sam can pick up faint traces of Dean's preferred brand of cheapo laundry detergent on the sheets. He turns his head away, taking long whiffs of the clean air and finds himself blinking away tears. He had been right before. This hurts.
John isn't trying to be cruel. Sam's pretty sure John never tries to be cruel, but this is too much to ask.
Sam thinks about going with his first instinct and sleeping in the cab of the truck, but he doesn't think he even has the energy it would take to get out there, much less the will to have the knock-out drag-out fight with his dad that would surely follow.
He rolls over again and wills himself to relax. He can do this. For one night, he can pretend Dean isn't missing. He can pretend that the smell is just Dean, sleeping beside him, even if they haven't done that in years.
They'd shared beds all the time when he was growing up, countless double motel rooms with Dad in one bed and Sam and Dean in the other. It'd been a necessity with the way they lived, at least until Dad left on another hunt and Dean could move into the other bed. Sam didn't particularly care either way. It was just the way things were. He knew from TV and movies that most kids had their own beds - just like he knew that most kids had moms that gave them homemade lunches in brown paper bags and houses with manicured lawns and friends they'd known since kindergarten - but that life had never been his, and even as he grew to resent the pressure of constantly changing school and the endless stream of skeevy motels and the ever-present threat of danger, he could never really bring himself to resent sharing a bed with Dean.
Then the summer of '98 came and brought with it a hunger that never seemed to go away and a constant fatigue and awful pains in his legs that woke him in the night and left him muffing whimpers into his pillow that still woke Dean more often than not. (His brother would grump and moan under his breath even as he pushed Sam onto his back and dug his fingers into Sam's calves to work the pain out.)
Sam had grown a full five inches that summer, finally surpassing all of Dean's hand-me-downs and forcing his big brother to sell, barter, buy, and steal bigger and bigger sizes of pants and shoes in nearly every town they'd set up camp in. He'd grumbled about it the entire time and put off buying Sam non-essentials for so long that Sam's flannel pajama pants looked like capris and his t-shirts rode up on his belly and strained at the shoulders, and when Dean had finally stopped finding the sight so damn amusing and Sam's growth spurt had thankfully slowed down, Dean had pawned everything they had left that neither of them could wear off on the local thrift store in one go and handed Sam the meager proceeds with the air of a great benefactor granting wealth to the masses so that Sam could replenish his wardrobe.
In the aftermath of that summer, sharing a bed had become way too uncomfortable for Sam, and he'd complained about it enough that John had just started carrying a sleeping bag around in the trunk.
The only times they'd really shared after that had been at Uncle Bobby's, because his guest room had a big king size bed and because he'd looked at Sam standing on his porch with the sleeping bag tucked under his arm, rolled his eyes, and told him that he and Dean were sharing a bed without complaining or he'd whup 'em both.
Not that Sam would ever complain. The room where they slept at Bobby's was nice – nicer than most places they stayed. It was a big room with a high, pointed ceiling, floral wallpaper, and a big bed with a soft, cool sheets.
Of course, when Sam got older, he'd realized that the "guest room" he and Dean shared had all of the marks of having once been the master bedroom. His father had told him that Bobby had become a hunter for the same reason John had – because something got his wife. Sam figures he just couldn't stand sleeping in that bed without her next to him, and he gets that. Hell, their dad had abandoned their entire home after their mom died for the same reason. He'd abandoned the whole town.
(Sam never had a home that he shared with Dean, and if Dean dies, all Sam will have to give up for him is crap motels and greasy diner food and gas stations with rusty pumps and long stretches of dusty asphalt that seem to wind on forever, and it won't be enough, not even by half.)
But the visits to Uncle Bobby's had gotten less and less frequent the more he and John had begun to bicker, and eventually Dad had stopped leaving them there altogether, and Sam and Dean had stopped sharing beds entirely.
There had been one more time, when Sam had been barely eighteen, fresh out of high school and hiding his Stanford acceptance letter in the lining of his duffle bag, constant feelings of frustration and excitement and dread roiling in his stomach. John had taken all three of them on a hunt – a vengeful spirit bent on making her ex-lover suffer by killing his family one-by-one. They'd split up, John heading to the cemetery to salt and burn the bones and Sam and Dean to the guy's home to protect the family for as long as they could. They'd herded the parents and their two kids into a big salt circle in the den, brandishing iron fireplace accessories at the flickering ghost pacing outside. She'd screamed, sudden and awful, and the youngest girl had jumped back, startled, and smudged the salt line. It was just a tiny break, but it was enough. She was dead before Sam had even realized what happened, the blood from her slit throat splattering his face. Dean had immediately elbowed in front of him and closed the circle, and seconds later, the woman's spirit had gone up in flames.
They'd left the family sitting on the floor of their destroyed den, the mother clutching her daughter's body to her chest, sobbing open and ugly. It hadn't been a win.
"You can't save everybody," John had said later, just like he always did.
Sam couldn't bring himself to say a word all the way back to the motel, and that night he lay curled up on his side in the bed, shaking. He started a little when Dean slid into the bed behind him.
"S'cold," his brother had said simply.
Sam made a muffled noise of agreement and let his brother use that as an excuse to settle against his back and wind an arm over Sam's body. He'd rubbed his knuckles against Sam's chest absently, pressed his forehead into Sam's neck, and Sam had turned his head into the pillow so that they could both keep pretending that he wasn't crying.
Dean had stayed in the bed until Sam had fallen into an exhausted, post-cry slumber, and when Sam woke up to go to the bathroom at four in the morning, he'd still been there, sleeping soundly with his palm tucked up against Sam's heart. When Sam had come back, Dean had shifted in his sleep to sprawl across the whole bed, and Sam had just taken the sleeping bag instead, knowing Dean would be testy and embarrassed if he woke up and had to deal with the aftermath of that kind of chick flick moment, or worse, if he thought their dad had noticed.
Having Dean there like that had been nice, though, no matter what the circumstances, and Sam curls on his side like he had that night, imagines Dean's comforting presence against his back, and prays for a dreamless sleep.
He feels something warm and wet drip onto his forehead, and his eyes snap open.
A sick swoop of horror tears through his stomach at the sight in front of him. Jess is plastered to the ceiling, her stomach split open, her mouth open in a soundless scream.
"Jess!" he shouts frantically.
He has to do something, something, but he doesn't know what, he doesn't know how to save her, and then she's igniting, flames spreading out with alarming speed, engulfing her body, and he screams again as he watches her burn before his eyes.
"No! Jess, no!"
He shuts his eyes tight against the blaze of fire, and when he opens them, he's back in the motel. He breathes deeply for a moment, trying to find his center after the nightmare, and then he feels that same wetness dribbling down onto his face. He turns in slow, dawning horror to look at the ceiling.
Dean is staring back at him, his face frozen in that same dead-eyed, silent scream.
Sam tries to move to help him, tries to call out to him or to his dad, but he can't make his body move. He's frozen, staring up at his brother, unable to do anything but watch.
Dean doesn't burn; he just bleeds. It pours from from his wrists, sluices from his neck down the cord of his necklace. Sam can make himself move away as Dean's blood pours down over his face, into his open mouth, forcing him to swallow thick mouthfuls even as he tries to make his mouth work so that he can scream out, so that he can say something, anything (i'msorryiloveyoupleasepleasedo n'tdie).
He finally manages a gurgled, wordless scream, and it's that sound that finally wakes him.
Sam finds himself lying once more in the motel room, tangled sweaty and panting in the sheets. He turns quickly to stare at the ceiling, but it's as blank and white as ever. He sits up, pressing his palms against his eyes as he tries to calm his pounding heart.
"Sleeping pills are in the medkit," John rumbles from the battered table against the wall.
Sam turns to stare at his father. John is steadily not looking at him, hunched over his journal, pen in hand. His hair is still wet. Sam can't have been out for long.
"I'm fine," he says, shoving a hand through sweaty, sleep-tousled hair and trying to block out the image of flames and silk and sticky, insistent splatters of blood. "I don't need pills."
"Second time today, Sammy," John notes, not absently. Nothing his father does is ever absent, but there is a studied nonchalance in John's voice that doesn't carry to the set of his shoulders or the scribble of pen against the smooth, worn pages of his journal.
"It was just a nightmare," Sam tells him.
John glances up and fixes him with a stern look.
"You won't be any good to Dean running on empty, son."
Sam huffs.
"I won't be any good to him unconscious, either."
John stands up, strides over to the medkit and pulls out the pills. He pushes the bottle into Sam's hand.
"Half," he says. "Just enough to get your head on straight. I've got the phones."
Sam stares at the bottle for a long moment.
"Yes, sir," he reluctantly agrees.
He'll hardly be able to help in the search for Dean if he's so tired that he's seeing double. He breaks one of the tablets in half and swallows it dry. Sleeping pills have always been effective on him, and he can already feel his body starting to give in as he settles back into the bed. He doesn't try to fight it, lets his eyes slide closed and his brain shut down without a fight. The last thing Sam is aware of before he slips out of consciousness is the sound of John once again turning pages in the book, scratching out strangely hurried-sounding notes.
When Sam wakes up six hours later, his father is gone, leaving behind only a note scribbled on the hotel stationary and rubber banded to the worn, amber leather of his journal.
There are a hundred different things John wants to say to Sam that never make it into the note he leaves.
How he's sorry for the things he's said. For the things he's done. For the life he forced his boys into. For the hell he had to put them through so they'd grow up strong, so they could go on without him.
He knows he won't survive this. Knows that by continuing his crusade, by fighting this fight he's signing his own death warrant. Hell, he probably signed it back in Lawrence, by refusing to let sleeping dogs lie and badgering the truth out of a Kansas palm reader.
But someone had to. Someone had to believe their eyes, to fight back against the things that went bump in the night.
The things that took everything from him.
Sam will be fine without him. He's stayed sharp, still the hunter John raised him to be. And with that knife-edged focus trained on Dean... Well, if there's anything left of Dean in this world, Sam'll be the one to find it. He'll find his brother, and they'll be fine without him. Just like John taught them to be.
In the meantime, he has a Yellow Eyed Son of a Bitch to find and a score to settle.
