Chapter Ten

Freak Camp made Bobby's skin crawl. He didn't visit unless he couldn't avoid it, like now, when a captured demon might have intel on a case he had been working on for the last six months.

He tried never to linger - he'd go in, see what he could get, leave without glancing in the observation windows to see what was drawing out that particular human-sounding scream.

He finished working over the demon - always straightforward, as long as you had a hefty supply of salt, water, and a crucifix - and though he didn't damage the host hardly at all, the smell of burning skin was never a happy one. He had just stepped out of the room, thinking only of the shower he would take as soon as he got out—he didn't like using the showers that the facility provided; they might get the stink of interrogation out from under his fingernails, but he'd just have to shower again later to get the smell of Freak Camp off his skin—when a door opened further down the hall and Dennis Beam stepped out.

"Singer! I didn't know you were in the area."

Bobby took his hand in a quick shake. He'd only run across the man on a couple hunts, but Beam had been full of admiration for Bobby's knowledge. "Only got here this morning, and I'm leaving tonight back to Sioux Falls."

"Well, before you go, let me show you a tool I picked up, great for taking down the freaks with softer nervous systems. Think of it as a thank you for telling me about those iron rounds." He held up a thin, gleaming black cattle prod and grinned wide. "Come check it out." He held open the door, and Bobby reluctantly stepped inside.

Bobby's stomach turned over at the scene he found himself part of. Sam - he could still recognize the monster Dean had pointed out last time they were here in what had become a painfully thin, probably not yet fifteen-year-old teenager - lay on the floor, his hair and shirt soaked with sweat, wrists bound in front of his chest with plastic handcuffs, and two chains stretching from either side of his collar to hooks set low in opposite walls. There was barely enough slack in the chains for him to rise up on his elbows, though he wouldn't be able to do even that with the handcuffs. His glassy eyes didn't move from staring at the ceiling as Bobby came in.

"Look how good this works." Beam stabbed the prod toward Sam's chest, pulling back several inches before it touched him, but Sam's body spasmed violently in anticipation. Beam and the guard - Elmer, known as "Crusher" - roared with laughter. Panting, Sam turned his face toward the wall, though there was no emotion to read in his expression.

"You sick fucks," Bobby muttered. "What did he do?"

Beam looked at him, surprised. "C'mon, Singer, it's a freak. Never knew you were such a softie."

Out of the kid's line of sight, Elmer nudged Sam's thigh with his own prod. A guttural cry ripped from Sam's throat as his body seized, jerking for several moments before falling still again, facing the opposite direction. He choked and gasped for breath, and Bobby realized his collar had half-strangled him. His chest rose and fell so rapidly he looked ready to have a heart attack. But most disconcerting of all was how—even as limbs still twitched—Sam's face had smoothed over again to utter blankness.

"You're a sadistic bastard," Bobby said. He couldn't keep his eyes off the kid on the floor, didn't know when his right hand had crept to where his gun usually was. He forced himself to move his hand away. "What the hell did he do? Whatever it is, he can't possibly deserve this."

"I don't know." Beam glanced at Elmer. "What did he do?"

Elmer shrugged and stepped between the monster's legs. "Getting careless with his teeth," he said.

A shudder worked down Sam's shoulders, but he made no attempt to close his legs, even as Elmer lifted his boot and slowly pressed down on his groin. Sam keened, the sound slipping high and agonized from between his clenched teeth.

"Awww, what are you whining about," Elmer cooed. "Monsters don't need these, do they, Pre—"

"I'm having a hard time telling who the monster is!" Bobby snapped.

Sam's eyes snapped open, and he looked at Bobby - the first thing he had focused on in the room. Bobby saw in his eyes no gratitude, pleading, or hatred - just a curious intentness as he looked at him. Bobby swallowed, unable to look away himself.

"What did you say?" Beam said, face twisting ugly as he took a step forward - though still out of reach.

Bobby raised his eyes and glared back. "You heard me. Bunch of tough guys, going after a malnourished kid with his hands tied. That how you get your rocks off?"

"Well," Beam said, much cooler, "if you're not enjoying yourself, Singer, you don't have to stay."

Bobby glanced back at Sam, but the kid's eyes had gone to the ceiling again, lost and flat. Bobby swallowed, fists clenching, bile sliding up his throat, then glared at Beam. "Lose my number," he snarled. "I don't want to hear from you again, I don't care what you need." He slammed the door behind him.

He swore viciously under his breath with every step out of the complex, barely pausing to sign out and nod at the ever-so-sweet receptionist girl who bade him goodbye by name. As the FREACS visitor's door swung shut behind him, he was dialing his cell phone.

"Hey, Bobby, what's up?" Dean sounded cheerful, oblivious, and it only increased the sick roiling in his stomach.

"Dean," he growled. "You still interested in getting that Sam kid out of the camp?"

"Wh—yeah, of course I am."

"Well, you better start filing the paperwork. I don't think he'll make it another year."

"What?" Dean sounded like he had just been punched in the gut. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said." Bobby hung up, seething too much to trust himself to keep talking. It was stupid on every level, he knew, to get emotional over a monster in Freak Camp. Couldn't end well.

But he wasn't able to just walk out on two sadists torturing a kid and not do a damn thing about it.

Dean stared down at the phone. That was…not what he had expected when he had seen that the call was from Bobby.

The phone was new. It still felt like a reward when someone called him, even though Dad mostly didn't—unless they had to get together—and not many other people had his number. When Bobby called, it was usually to point them in the direction of a new hunt, or sometimes just to say hi. Dean thought of it as "checking up on him," but that didn't mean it didn't feel good to get the call.

He turned to where Dad watched him with a frown on his face. It was one of their rare weeks together, when both of their respective hunts were over—or a different hunt had brought them back together—and Dad sat on the second bed in the hotel room cleaning his guns, getting polish all over the cheap, ratty bedspread.

"That was short," he said. "Singer in trouble?" His tone implied that Bobby could go fuck himself, but his hands, hesitating over the weapon he was cleaning, said that if Dean said the word they would be gone.

Dean liked that, how Dad trusted him sometimes, would pay attention when he brought him new information. Not that Dean ever knew anything that Dad didn't. Dad was still the best, and Dean loved working with him, not just because they were family, but because if John and Dean Winchester went after something, that sucker was going down. It was just a fact of life. Together, the Winchesters could stop anything.

Usually, he liked that more. But then again, usually Bobby had not just told him that he had to get Sam out, get Sam out now, in a tone that Dean had only ever heard before when he was telling some civilian to get the fuck down, it's going for your heart.

Dean took a shaky breath, and then reached for his own guns. "Bobby's fine, I think," he said. "You know how to get a monster out of Freak Camp?"

John Winchester froze and looked up from his gun. "Why would I know a fucking thing like that?"

Because you're my dad and you know everything. "I'm getting Sam out," Dean said. "Figured I would ask you first because you usually know these things, but I can call Madison, or the ASC hotline, and they can…"

John put the gun down, carefully pushing the clip farther away from the weapon itself. "Dean, I thought you were over this."

Dean's mind had been spinning, trying to lock onto something, to find a starting place to actually deal with the problem of getting Sam out. There was always a starting point in research, from which the details of the monster and how to kill it would just start falling into place. Even if this was so much bigger than pulling confirmation of a werewolf attack out of a list of fatal animal attacks, or pinning a string of strange deaths on a shapeshifter. At last, at last, you're going to do it, you're going to keep your promise and stop putting it off like a coward - but he came back to the here-and-now at Dad's tone.

"Sir?"

"I thought you had stopped obsessing over that monster."

Dean blinked and considered. He still thought about Sam. He still thought about him all the time. He still…but no, he hadn't talked about him in a while, not to Dad. Not since the fight at Freak Camp, and the eight week suspension.

He and Dad had had an hour shouting match about appropriate behavior with other hunters and ASC personnel. Somehow the point John had boiled down to had been that everyone ass-kissing the ASC really deserved a brand in their faces anyway, just for being Big Brother assholes, but Dean was still stupid and impulsive to do it. Dad hadn't connected that fight with Sam, and since then Dean had stopped mentioning Sam, because Sam was his, and talking about him just made Dad angry.

Actually, he hadn't talked about Sam much since he turned sixteen. Because everything he had wanted to say about him to John, he had said, even though the man hadn't heard a word.

"Sir, I wouldn't say obsessed." Unless you mean I think about him every day. And I smile when I see M&M's because he loves those, and I think about reading all these books just so I can share them with him. And my heart jumps every time I see thin, pretty boys who look like him.

"Yeah, what would you call it then?" John glanced at him for a second before turning his head away. "I can barely hold my head up in a hunter bar with sonsofbitches cracking jokes about you mooning after that monster kid. Everyone knows, Dean, and you're not ten anymore."

Dean was pretty sure that if he were still ten, the thoughts he had about Sam would be considerably different.

"No, sir, I'm not ten," Dean said slowly. "And I think that means that if I say something like this, it means that I know what I'm doing. Or at least that I've thought it through."

Dad snorted. "You let me be the judge of that, Dean."

The worst thing was that Dean would be perfectly happy letting Dad be the judge of things. When they hunted together—not all the time, but still often enough—Dean let Dad take the lead, ask the questions, form the ideas, send him out to do research or flirt with a pretty girl or boy. Dad always knew what to do, the next step they should take. It didn't make Dean angry, didn't rattle him when Dad barked off orders without listening to his input. Dean had a lifetime of knowing that when Dad said to drop he should drop, when Dad said to run he should run, and at this point it didn't really faze him when Dad told him to do something, because he trusted him.

He trusted him about everything but Sam. Because on nights when Dad had been gone, or too drunk to drive, or unconscious and bleeding, Sam had always been there in Dean's thoughts. He had never been able to fully explain, even to himself, even the night he turned sixteen, what Sam meant to him and why Dean knew he wasn't just another monster. They might have only spent a couple hours together at a time over the years, but Dean was sure about Sam like he was about precious little else in his life. He saw the same expression on Sam's face every time they saw each other, and he saw how Sam smiled at him—whenever Dean managed to coax one out. There was nothing else like it in his life. And while he couldn't put into words what Sam meant to him, Dean knew with absolute certainty what he meant to Sam, and that rescuing Sam from Freak Camp mattered more than any of the civilians he had managed to save.

Sam was his friend. Sam cared without demanding things from him—even though Dean would be willing to give him anything, anything at all—and Sam was not a monster.

"You never ask me what I've thought," Dean said slowly, "so how can you know when I've thought something through?"

Dad paused and looked up at him with something strange in his eyes. "What did you just say to me?"

"I said that you don't listen," Dean said. "I said that I have thought this through."

"This being…?"

"I'm getting Sam out," Dean said. The words echoed strangely in the room, as though the space had gotten suddenly bigger. "And you can help me, sir, or you can get the hell out of my way."

John stared, and then carefully put his gun on the bed. "You're getting a monster out of Freak Camp," he said.

"Yes."

"Are you feeling well? Any dizziness or disorientation, any details not feeling right? Any hesitation at all in making these decisions?"

It made Dean angry that Dad was still convinced that this could be some kind of monster trick. He thought that if Sam had the ability to twist his head around—in some fast, supernatural way, and not just with his smile—then he would have applied all the pressure he could to get out of that shithole earlier, maybe back when they were burning smiley faces into his arm. "Yes, Dad, I feel fine," he snapped. "It's not like this is a new idea."

"Are you telling me that you have been planning to remove a monster from Freak Camp longer than just tonight?"

Just the last six years, Dad. "Yes."

"What—" John's voice broke, but Dean couldn't tell if it was from anger or worry or fear. He cleared his throat and tried again. "What exactly would you do with the freak, if you get him out?"

"Do?" Feed him, for one. Sam looked thinner every time he visited. Dean wasn't sure how he supported the growth spurts that happened just as often. Kiss him, if he'll let me.

"Yes. Do. Do! You can't just want to have a monster with you." John sounded disgusted, confused, almost desperate, like he was trying to make it make sense in his head, he wanted the situation to make sense, but no matter how many times he counted there were still not enough guns, too many monsters, one less salt bag than he had expected. "There has to be a purpose. Give me a reason, Dean."

"Like, so I can stake him somewhere so other monsters will come and try to eat him? Am I fucking hunting deer now?" You think I get off on hurting things, on using evil to chase evil?

"Don't use that language with me, boy. It's a valid question, and if you can't recognize that fact…"

"He's a person, Dad. And he doesn't deserve—"

"Shut your mouth, Dean. Right now, shut your mouth." John was standing now, breathing hard and glaring down at Dean. "There's something that you have to get through that thick skull of yours, something that you should have known a long time ago, but I guess you're just not that bright, or I've been raising you wrong or something. That boy is not a person. He's a monster. A monster, Dean. It doesn't matter what they deserve, or what they don't deserve, any more than it matters what a rabid dog deserves. It should be put down, I don't care if it hasn't bitten anyone yet. Frankly, I don't even approve of the shit that goes down in Freak Camp. Some things are basically impossible to kill, but it would be better, far better, to put a bullet through everything that can be put down and not risk of letting all those freaks back into society."

"Sam is not a freak," Dean said doggedly. "He's just—"

"Dean, Dean, Dean." Dad closed his eyes. "You can't keep saying that. You can't keep…you can't keep being stupid. You can tell me. You can tell me anything, and I won't be ashamed or angry. You want to…to sleep with it? I know you've been going home with men and women, so it's not that I disapprove that much, but you could do so much better than a fucking monster."

"Dad!" Dean turned away. "It's not about that. It's not." Even though it could be. "This is about what's right, and about what I want…"

"You can't just tell me that you want to get a freak out of FREACS and that it's because you want to. That just makes me think you want a pet monster, because I never bought you a dog."

"Sam's not a dog!" Dean snapped, spinning, feeling anger breaking out of his voice. "And he's not a fucking freak..."

"Dean, he is."

"...and I'm getting him out of Freak Camp whether or not you approve. Bobby said I don't have much time if I want to…"

"I'm going to gut Singer," John said abruptly.

"Why do you do that?" Dean asked, moving close enough that he could push out his hands and shove Dad over if he wanted to. For the first time, he kind of wanted to. "Why do you blame people for things that aren't their fault?"

"If Singer told you to get a monster out of camp…"

"He said that Sam might not last much longer, not that I should get him out. God, Dad, don't always blame other people for things that you—"

"Are you saying that it's my fault my son wants a freak as a pet?" John roared.

Dean gritted his teeth and shoved. Not hard, but angry. More of a jerk. Dad's chest against his hands felt the same as any other guy's he'd shoved, maybe a little heavier, maybe a little less give. But there was nothing normal about this. It felt strange, wrong, and right all at the same time. "I'm saying that maybe you should try listening to me for once instead of jumping to conclusions all the time."

John swayed, put his hand to his chest where Dean's hands had been, and stared like he'd slugged him. "I don't listen to you," he said softly, almost shaking, "because then you come up with fucking stupid ideas like this, ideas that will get both of us killed."

"Well, thanks Dad," Dean said, throwing his arms out and stepping back before he really did slug the man. "If I'm that much of a screw up, why do you even hunt with me? You gave me the Impala even though I'm too much of a fuck-up to find my own hunts? When you went off to drink or torture demons or whatever shit—"

"Watch your tongue, or I'll beat some sense into you."

Like you could, Dean thought. "I'm getting Sam out, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

It was a breaking point, for something they had never thought could break, for something they had never thought about very much at all. A man doesn't think about his bones until he feels them on the edge of shattering. The Winchesters froze, staring hard into each other's eyes.

"He's a fucking monster, like what killed your mother," John said at last. "He'll get you killed."

"No," Dean said. Didn't even give a damn what Dad thought he was saying no to. Just…no. No to all of it. No to everything Dad had ever told him about Sam, and a big fucking no to his ideas about what were right for them.

He went to the bed and began shoving things into his duffle. He didn't think about it, he didn't even bother to reassemble the shotgun before dumping it in with old candy wrappers and his spare set of socks. He was waiting for Dad to say something, anything, and at the same time knew he wouldn't say a fucking thing Dean wanted to hear. Dean had thrown his bag over his shoulder and reached for the doorknob when John's voice snapped the silence, as sure and irrevocable as a silver round cutting into a shapeshifter's heart.

"You walk out that door for a freak, don't expect to come crawling back. Don't come back at all."

Dean froze, his hand on the doorknob. "You don't mean that," he said, but his voice wasn't sure, because, in the end, he wasn't sure. Dad had never in his life patched together a relationship, unless it was a dire necessity. When the emotional waters got rough, John Winchester ran like hell and didn't send postcards.

"I damn well do," John said. His voice was rough. Dean could pretend it was tears, but he thought rage was more likely, and the skin on the back prickled in something dangerously like fear. "You can't be my son and a freak-lover, coddling some fucking monster, at the same time."

"Sam's not a monster," Dean said automatically. He couldn't focus on the other words, what he had just heard his own father call him. Couldn't admit he'd heard that, that this is what it had come to. Maybe he was a freak-lover, maybe he was wrong, but he had made a promise and he couldn't, would never, break a promise to Sam.

In that moment he truly realized that this could be the end. That because of Sam, he might walk out on the man who had rocked him when he cried, who had carried him sleeping from the backseat of the Impala when he was a child. The man who had given him his first gun, had taught him to defend himself and everything he would ever need to know about saving people, about caring about others. John Winchester might be a pain in the ass, but he had been the one rock of Dean's life. The one thing to hold on to when blood, death, and monsters—some of them human—were all the world contained, and Mom was nothing but scattered ashes and a cold marble monument.

He realized that he could lose it all, but he still had to take the last step. Because losing Sam would hurt just as much. And if he didn't go now, everything he took pride in - who he was, his identity as Dean Winchester - would be meaningless. A joke.

If John Winchester noticed the moment, if he could feel the same tension in the air that threatened to suffocate Dean, then he didn't pay any attention to it.

"Damn right I mean it," he said. "I would rather see you dead than welcoming a fucking monster into your life and your pants."

Dean tightened his grip on the door and jerked it open. "I'm sorry to disappoint you then, sir," he said, when there was nothing more between him and the night air than the thin hope that Dad would realize what he had said and take it back. Not that Dean expected that. He was John fucking Winchester, after all, and he had never not meant anything he said: not when he threatened a monster's life, not when he had cried over Mom, not when he told Dean that the greatest hope in his life was a dirty, perverted, badly conceived desire. Dean fingered the keys for the Impala in his pocket. "But I'm going, and you can't stop me."

John's face went blank, then he reached back to the bed for his gun. "Damned if I can't."

"You gonna shoot me, Dad?" Dean taunted. He mocked him so that he didn't break down right there. Maybe to beg for forgiveness, or just to cry. He hadn't ever expected Dad to understand. But he hadn't expected this.

"Dean, just close the door and we'll talk about this." But John was still reaching for the holy water and his gun. Dean hadn't hunted with the man for years without recognizing the signs that meant he thought that there was something in front of him worth killing

"You never fucking listen to me, Dad," Dean said, and then he turned and ran.

Ran to the Impala, fumbled the keys into the lock, and was out of the hotel parking lot and speeding for the highway before he dared to look back.

John Winchester stood in the parking lot, staring after him, eyes wide, haunted and horrible. That was the face he wore when he remembered the people he couldn't save, or when he talked about his beautiful, spunky Mary, dead on a pyre. Now that was the face he wore watching Dean ride away.

He shouted something as Dean turned the corner, squealing the Impala's tires trying to get away from the knowledge that he was leaving behind everything he had once thought made him him.

He didn't know what John had said, but he had a pretty good guess.

You're dead to me.

"Well, fuck you too, sir," Dean said to the highway that stretched before him under the moon.

He was proud of how his voice didn't shake at all.

When his cell phone lit up an hour later, Dad's name flashing, he didn't pick up.

Bobby was having a quiet, hot tea moment—with a little brandy in it to reward himself after a long but satisfying hunt—when one of his early warning alarms placed around the edges of the junk yard to make it harder for enemies, natural and supernatural alike, to sneak up on him, went off. The tea went back down to the table, and Bobby grabbed a shotgun, a silver knife, and a flask of holy water—just to cover all the bases—and camped himself out on the porch, trying to look casual while looking everywhere at once.

There were more tripwires and safeguards in the back of the house, including a motion sensor. Unless the thing moved too fucking fast to trigger those, he'd get another warning before anything happened.

He expected to have to wait ten, fifteen minutes—anything that could figure out where he lived was probably smart enough to know that coming after him at his house was going to be a festival of pain for all concerned—but about the time he was thinking that he should have brought his tea out to the patio so that it didn't get cold before the shit went down, the last enemy he expected to see walked, brazen as you please, down the bare dirt driveway.

Dean Winchester looked...rumpled and a little wild, like he'd been invited to hell and jumped out of the basket halfway. His eyes were a little crazy too, like if he kept them wide enough he would be able to see any fucking thing about to jump out at him. He had his gun on his hip and his hand kept straying toward it, as though the junker cars and random machinery could become a threat.

Bobby moved to set the gun down—this was Dean after all—but his hand wouldn't quite let go. Dean didn't quite look like Dean, at the moment, and he knew that the last thing the kid would want, if he was out of his head or possessed or something, would be for Bobby not to defend himself just because the enemy wore Dean's face.

Dean stopped far enough away that Bobby wouldn't want to risk throwing the knife, but close enough that it would be easy work to get him with the shotgun. He took in Bobby's gun, and his mock-relaxed posture, and if anything the crazy look in his eyes got worse.

"You gonna shoot me, Bobby?" he called. It didn't sound like he was joking. It sounded like he was pissed and angry and terrified, and that tone hit Bobby hard.

"Hey, Dean," he answered. "Could you throw your pistol down, kid?"

Dean glanced down, his hand moving to the gun, and then looked back up.

Bobby felt like he'd been socked in the stomach. Was Dean Winchester fucking tearing up?

"Why? Want to me to make it fucking easier? The unarmed ones are always the best, right? You can take your time lining up the sights." Dean's voice was mocking, grating, but he unbuckled the gun and tossed it sideways. Not somewhere that he couldn't get to, and probably before Bobby could shoot him, with a good dive, but far enough away that Bobby could feel some of the tension unknot in his back.

"What the hell are you talking about, Dean?" Bobby stood and put the shotgun down against his chair. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he didn't think that it was going to get better with a cold-iron loaded shotgun. Maybe a little holy water would help, but he seriously hoped not. That meant that the anti-demon possession tattoo he'd had John get the kid wasn't working anymore, and if those weren't working, then a number of hunters Bobby knew were screwed, and Armageddon was probably scheduled for next week. "Come here."

"I figured Dad would have told you by now." Dean didn't look any better, didn't look any more reassured, but he was at least coming closer, mounting the stairs like each step brought him closer to his death. "I just kind of hoped...seeing as you practically fucking told me to..."

Bobby felt a lurch in his stomach, like the porch had dropped out from under him or a ghost had just tossed him. "What did I tell you to do, kid?"

Dean gave him a look. Bobby couldn't have said what was in the look, but nothing good. Nothing that a nineteen-year-old should have in his eyes. Then again, this was a nineteen-year-old hunter. That spelled seven kinds of fucked up right there.

And Bobby had let it all happen.

He couldn't quite stop his hand from twitching for his knife when Dean reached for something in his back pocket. Bobby even had a hard time slowing his heart down when it became clear that it was a piece of paper, just a stupid piece of paper, slightly crumpled from being in Dean's pocket. It looked like a form for a driver's license or maybe a passport.

Dean put it on the table between them, and straightened it absently, like he couldn't quite understand how it had gotten those crease marks.

"I'm getting Sam out of Freak Camp," Dean said dully.

Bobby's world froze, realization creeping up on him the same slow horror as a broken-legged zombie. Dean had acted on his advice, and something had gone wrong. Not that he was really even surprised, it was just that...he'd made that call maybe a week ago. Less.

He tried to think exactly when it had been, but couldn't piece it together. He'd been at Freak Camp, and then he'd gone on a hunt, and then he'd come home...

And now Dean was standing on his front porch looking like something the cat dragged in. Or maybe the werewolf. It certainly felt like something was missing. Usually, even when crap went down, Dean would stand in the middle of it, swinging baseball bats and swearing and holding his own. Not on Bobby's porch looking three steps from sane.

"Dean..." he started.

"You gonna cut me off, too, Bobby?" Dean laughed. "I guess that's what I get for being a damn freak-lover, right?"

Bobby swallowed painfully. That was a horrible sound Dean had just made. And horrible words to go along with them. He knew, right then, that something was seriously wrong with Dean Winchester. And somehow, it was probably his fault. "Who said that, Dean? Who cut you off?"

Dean still wouldn't look at him, his hands moving over where the gun and the paper used to be, as though he had lost something comforting and wasn't quite sure what to do with his hands now that it was gone. "You gotta tell me first, Bobby. What do you think? What do you think now that you know I'm a f-freak-lover and I'm getting a monster out of Freak Camp for my own perverted ends, or whatever the fuck you want to say. 'Cause I'm getting Sam out. I'm fucking getting Sam out and you can't fucking stop me." Dean's head snapped up, and the last few words were practically snarled into Bobby's face.

He resisted the urge to back away from the raw rage and pain on Dean's face. "That's going to be hard," he said at last. "You...you got all the forms?"

From the look on Dean's face, he hadn't expected that. Good. Bobby had the feeling that if he had said anything that Dean had expected, the kid would have gone for his throat, unarmed or not.

Dean took a shuddering breath and practically collapsed into the second chair, the one farthest away from Bobby's shotgun. He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands and just breathed for a long minute. The paper crackled under his elbow.

Bobby breathed out carefully as well, and inched closer, like Dean was a wild animal that might bite if startled. He wasn't going to touch him yet. Until he knew what the hell was going on.

"Who cut you off, kid?" he asked again, easing down into his chair. He needed the answer to that question. And he needed brandy. As soon as he got the one, he figured he'd get them both the other.

Dean didn't even look up, and when he spoke the rage was gone from his voice. Bobby hadn't ever noticed before how much of what made Dean Dean was the humor, anger or cheerfulness in his voice. Now, with Dean's voice void of emotion, Bobby had to stop his hand from twitching toward the holy water again.

"Who do you think?" he replied.

Damn you to hell, John, Bobby thought. Couldn't you have just... And that's where the thought ended, because he had no idea what John could have done differently. John could have done so much better, but Bobby, as well as anyone else, knew that John would have only one response.

"Fuck," he said. Now it was his turn not to look at Dean. "But...I'm here. I'm not..." going to be an asshole like that bastard that calls himself your father, "...going to say a damn thing. I mean, I practically..." He took another deep breath. It was a day for breathing carefully. Too many things were too close to shattering for him to do anything but tread carefully. "It's good to see you, kid. You're welcome here."

Dean's shoulders shook and for a second Bobby thought he was crying. Then he realized that it was laughter, the closest thing a Winchester could get to weeping on someone else's patio. "Thanks," Dean rasped at last, when the shaking had left his shoulders and he was looking up again. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but Bobby couldn't see any sign of tears. Dean forced a smile onto his face, and it was one of the most horrible things Bobby'd seen recently. Not in his lifetime—demons and werewolves and shifters and ghosts had given him some pretty devastating memories—but in the last week or so...yeah. And it hurt.

"So," Dean continued. "You're okay with the...with Sam. And me. Getting him out, I mean that's..." He closed his mouth and shook his head. "I'm all fucked up, Bobby. And it's not Sam's fault!"

"Didn't think it was," Bobby replied. "Yeah, I'm okay with it." Would I have called you if I didn't think that kid deserved better?

"Good." Dean dropped his hands to the paper again, smoothing it again over and over. Bobby figured that Dean was going to have to print a new form before he turned it in to anyone. "Then, would you be willing to...I need another couple signatures to say that I'm...sane, and shit like that, and I'm not sure...I mean there are a few other people, but..." Dean stopped. "If you don't want to, I'll understand. The ASC and the Campbells can be...fucked up. I know that some people don't want to get under their radar."

Like John, Bobby thought. Yeah, he didn't want to mess with the ASC either. But, then again, he also wanted to boot them in the ass, so maybe this could count as both. "Sure," he said. "No problem. Hand me a pen." And if I wasn't such a coward, I would have done this myself when I realized how bad it is. And when I realized that that kid wasn't the worst monster in the room. Not even close.

"Good." Dean nodded his head, and his expression turned into something closer to an actual smile. "Good."

He still looked messed up, but there was a bit more sanity in his face, and that made Bobby feel easier. Last thing they needed was two crazy Winchesters. One—fuck you, John—was more than enough. "You can stay here tonight, if you don't mind. And pull the Impala up. You've still got her...right?"

Dean's mouth quirked. "Yeah, she and I made a fast getaway." He stood, stretching like he'd been in a cramped position for far too long, even though he'd only been sitting in the chair for maybe a minute. "I'll bring her around. Then we can start on the paperwork. Fuck, Bobby, you should see the forms I need to fill out. And I can't even forge them, because ASC is going to background check everything. Fucking bureaucracy."

Bobby thought that worrying about a little paperwork was better than Dean thinking about his life crashing down around his ears. And he could always remind the kid that he had more people in his life than John.

"I'm a big bundle of excitement," he said dryly. "You can crash in the guest room as long as you want, and I'll do my best with the paperwork. And if you need more than just my signature, you might want to try Jim Murphy. I'm sure he'd...understand too." Now that the whole thing was rolling, it made him a little nervous to think about Dean getting a monster out of the camp, being responsible for another life that had been fucked up that much—and might still be dangerous, after all, the kid had been in Freak Camp, and they didn't do that to people for parking tickets—but it was far too late now.

And he'd do his best to keep everyone sane and off each other's throats. Oh, he could see fun times in his future.

Maybe he'd finally shoot John.

That shouldn't have sounded as appealing as it did at the moment.

Crusher ground Sam's face into the wall, his arm twisted almost to the breaking point, and pushed his hips into Sam's ass.

"You think you can disrespect me, freak?" Crusher said. "I know what you say behind my back."

Sam felt Crusher's erection, felt the hand that wasn't holding him against the wall sliding down his hip, and wondered, almost idly, when he would have to take the next step and break the guard's arm. Not that that was a smart idea, or an idea that would let him live past the evening, or even an idea that would actually stop anything, but Sam knew that he wouldn't be able to control forever the freewheeling panic that spun just beneath the surface of his careful, blank calm. There was no way Sam would let Crusher be first. He would, quite literally, rather die.

Crusher's hand found its goal, clamping around his dick and balls, and Sam ground his own face into the wall, twisting his cheek again the rough plaster to keep his whimpering under control.

"You know how long I've waited for you, Pretty Freak?" Crusher hissed. "For fucking ever. Too goddamn long to ride your tight ass."

It's not like Sam deserved anything more than this. It was simply that he could not let Crusher do what he wanted without trying to stop it.

He was just about to do it, throw away all hope, throw away his life in favor of breaking Crusher's jaw and running into the guards' guns, when Karl came around the corner.

"Rosenstein!" he shouted, hitting his billy club against his hand. "Let the freak up."

Crusher eased his hold a little, and Sam took a shaky breath, feeling a few drops of blood slide down his scraped face.

"You stay the fuck out of this, Karl," Crusher snarled.

Karl held up his hands. "Hey, it's not me." He pointed the club at Sam. "Winchester wants him."

The relief that surged through Sam almost hurt. Forty heartbeats ago he had been ready to die, take the last miserable step into death. Now Dean had come at last, at fucking last, had come, not to save him—Dean had promised, but Sam knew how hard it would be to get a monster out, knew that even if Dean tried it probably wouldn't work—but just for those brief moments of...kindness, of touches, of casual conversations that didn't end in pain. When he had to go to his knees just to survive until the next time he could see Dean, he held onto each meeting, the only thing making life worthwhile.

He almost ran to Reception, Dean's name a promise of salvation, if only for an afternoon.

The new guard, Charlie, nodded toward Room 4, and Sam burst through, smiling involuntarily, breathing heavily, knowing that Dean liked to see him smile.

John Winchester turned when he came in.

Sam's back hit the door hard. The cold metal cut through the blind panic—and the instinct to deny that this could be happening, to insist that Dean had to be there—but he was still shaking, trapped, terrified. He closed his eyes, fighting hard to bring himself back to blank emptiness, prepared to submit to any blow or order without a flicker of reaction. After all, John Winchester was a hunter. That was what hunters wanted. That was what hunters—not Dean—demanded, and he had always been able to give it to them before, like a good little monster.

It took too fucking long, already long enough that it might cost him his life. But shit, shit, John Winchester was the last thing he expected—he had come to see Dean, he had run like joy was an emotion he deserved to feel because he knew he was going to see Dean, who wanted to see him smile and look him in the eye. Dean was the only person in the world for whom he would let his defenses down. But for his father...his legendary hunter of a father...no, Sam dared not think about joy in the presence of a hunter.

But given a choice between being trapped under Crusher or being in a room with John Winchester, he would always choose the hunter. It wasn't a question of death or pain, there was no question that the man hated monsters, but he knew John would kill him when he was done, when he stopped being useful. And he would kill him clean. Two things he would never be able to hope for from Crusher. It was better here. Better. But Sam still couldn't stop shaking.

"Sit down." John snapped the order, but it didn't yet carry any promise of pain.

Sam's legs obeyed immediately, thank God, carrying him to the table and chair. He placed his hands palms-up before him, swallowed and closed his eyes as he wished his hands would stop their trembling. Such obvious fear only made things worse, always.

For a long moment, John was silent, though Sam could feel his eyes on him. At last he said, flatly, "That's not what I came for."

Sam took a quick, deep breath, opening his eyes and lacing his fingers together to force them to be still. He didn't know what the proper response could be, so he went for the safe route. "I'm sorry, sir."

John continued weighing him with his gaze. Sam felt it but didn't dare raise his eyes from the table surface. "I'm here," he continued, "to see what kind of goddamn freak hoodwinked my son. Look at me."

Sam's breath stopped for a moment, but he didn't hesitate. He looked up and met John Winchester's eyes for the first time.

His face was nothing like his son's, had nothing in common that Sam could see. It wasn't about physical resemblance; Dean had never looked at him like he was a monster. Dean's eyes searched his face as though looking for what could make Sam smile; John stared at him with the unchanging contempt and hatred that Sam always expected from reals—all of them except Dean. But John's eyes didn't hold the same malice and sadism as the guards' and hunters'. Sam could see that John wouldn't touch any monster unless he absolutely had to. From the way his hand kept brushing the gun in his holster, Sam knew the man would rather shoot him, right now, than touch him in any way, even to administer a punishment.

It made Sam's heartbeat slow until it didn't feel like it was going to pound out of his chest, and he took a deeper, steadying breath. Whatever happened here, he would be okay.

"Well, you look human enough," John said. His voice was flat, his face as empty and hard as a stone jug. "That always makes it harder, when they look human. A vampire has just as much potential for death whether the fangs are in or out, but it's always hard to take off the head when it's a frightened woman staring back at you, or the face of some poor civilian who doesn't know what they're doing. I still manage. So you're Sam."

Sam cringed at his name, eyes falling, and then raising again. The hunter had told him to look at him, so he would. "Yes, sir."

"That wasn't a question." John's voice remained flat, angry. "I came to see you. To see the monster that's going to get my son killed."

Sam felt like he'd been hit in the chest, all the breath punched out of him. His head jerked down until he was looking down at his folded hands, at the scars on the table, anything while his lungs fought for a way to fill again. He couldn't believe it. That couldn't be true. He hadn't done anything to Dean, not one thing, and there was no way that he could be that wrong, that inherently wrong that just talking to him, knowing him, could hurt Dean in any way. Dean who was always strong and good and confident.

But John Winchester didn't say it like he wanted to make Sam bleed inside—the guards had taught him to identify that edge, even when he couldn't build defenses against it. John sounded like a man stating a fact, a bleak, hopeless, clearly evident and proven fact. "He talks to you like you're human, gets it in his head that some monsters aren't monsters, and one day he's going to come up against something that he trusts, and it's going to walk up behind him and slice his spine."

"I wouldn't—" He couldn't stop himself, couldn't break off the words in time.

"Shut up. You know how his mother died, don't you?" Sam nodded, hunching over his hands. "She went out there trying to help people, save the world, and what did she get for it? Cut up from the back by some coward bastard not even willing to show his face. That's going to be Dean: laid out on some coroner's table because he trusted one too many monsters like you."

Sam's nails bit into his skin. He watched, trying very hard not to react, while blood seeped out from them, slowly, like John's words were eating their way to his heart.

"When he falls, I'm going to come back here and cut your fucking head off," John promised.

Sam nodded again, into his hand. "I hope so," he whispered between the fingers.

John Winchester kicked his chair, and Sam snapped up. "What did you say?"

Sam shook his head, violently. "Nothing, sir."

John stared at him, hand resting again on the gun. He was a hunter. One of the best. But Sam didn't fear him as a hunter. The hunters that made him shake were the ones that came in with big grins and toolboxes from the resource room, the ones that enjoyed tying him down, not because he was a monster but because they could. John Winchester hated him, hated all monsters absolutely, but there was nothing gleeful, nothing personal to that hatred. John Winchester would have put a bullet in a werewolf or staked any trickster with the same hatred with which he looked at Sam.

Sam could have almost felt safe—he could kill Sam, yes, but like an electric fence could kill if Sam got too close, it wouldn't hunt down its prey, wouldn't smile listening to the screams—if not for the words.

"I have to keep him safe from you," John said. "You fuck with his head, and I can't lose him. He's all I—" He snapped his mouth shut, and his hand tightened on his gun. "Don't wait for him, freak, he's not coming back. If it's the last thing I do, I'm not going to let some damn pretty monster sink his claws into my son's head and drag him down. I let Mary go. You bastards won't take Dean too."

John Winchester walked past him, and Sam flinched, but the hunter didn't even notice, didn't even hesitate.

Sam closed his eyes tight. "You going to shoot me?" he called. He prayed for that. Better death than a life without Dean. Maybe he would be with Rebecca. Maybe he would vanish into nothing. Maybe he would be in hell. Better any of those than Freak Camp knowing Dean wasn't coming back.

He heard John turn. "What would be the point? I have other monsters to spend my bullets on."

And then Dean's father was gone.

The guards left Sam in interrogation for a very long time. Sam didn't bother to count the seconds. He stared at his hands and refused to think of anything at all.