Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: see Chapter 1
FALSE MEMORY
Chapter 12
Dean sighed, "Stop it, Sam."
His voice, clear and without any slurring hint he had been anywhere near approaching somnolence, the still lump that was Sam asked in obvious confusion, "Stop what?"
"Thinking," Dean groused, shifting slightly to scratch an itch on his belly where the elasticated band of his boxers irritated the skin. "I can feel your hair follicles throbbing from over here. I'm surprised your scalp hasn't ignited from all the heat put out by that brain whirling."
"What the hell else am I supposed to do?" hissed Sam in a distraught rather than angry retort. He unerringly turned his head to 'look' straight at Dean so that had it not been the middle of the night and black in the room bar the clock's LED display, they would have made instant eye contact.
"Sam…" Dean turned his head with equally precise reflex. Like Sam, it was something he did beyond thought; 'personal space' was an artificial, modern psychobabbler's construct unknown to the brothers, who had spent a lifetime growing up unknowing and uncaring of mainstream cultural norms – and prejudicial strictures.
They had shared the same cramped rooms and often the same bed into their teens, not out of some prurient deviancy, but because they were mostly flat broke and after typical days that started in the small hours with a fitness regime that would have fazed a Marine and followed through usually hard slog across unpleasant terrain and being used as a Piñata by the paranormal bogeyman of the moment, the only fantasies either teenager had had about beds was of being able to spend more than a couple of hours at any one time cuddling mattress. Between them there were no boundaries, no off-limits, no 'Private! Keep Out!' or, 'Here Be Dragons!' signs.
"Don't try and sugar coat this Dean," Sam cut him off sharply, "or try to make out that you are not completely freaked out. I saved her, Dean. I reached out with the power of my mind and threw a protective force field around a total stranger who was over four hundred miles away at the time! And I just did it without even thinking about it…"
"Yeah, I'll admit to a certain sense of being suddenly whacked upside the head by a brickbat," Dean conceded, "but Dean Winchester doesn't do freaked out, little Sammy. The serenity to accept what we cannot change, yadda yadda yadda…Whatever happens, we'll deal."
Sam made a noise that sounded like a hybrid of a sigh and a sob. "Dean…I'm terrified of me, yet you're not just the slightest bit apprehensive of me?"
"Nope."
"Not at all."
"Nah, for one very good reason."
"Which is?"
"Whatever happens, you're my baby brother, Sammy."
"That's it? You're not worried about being at Ground Zero of me turning into a circus sideshow feature because I'm your brother?"
"Younger brother, and yes."
"That's all? I'm your brother?"
Dean gave a deliberately exaggerated sigh; for someone with an IQ slightly higher than the orbiting International Space Station, Sam seemed to be having difficulty grasping this simple concept. "That's all I need to know, Sammy. It's all I've ever needed to know." Then aware of the chick-flick moment trying to edge into the frame and lure them into actual Baring of the Soul grossness, he sniped, "So can we please go to sleep now?"
"You started it," Sam retorted with impeccable logic.
"Did not -"
Dean was literally blinded by the light as the bedroom's main light was suddenly switched on. Reflexively throwing up his arm to shield his eyes he peered through the watering orbs around the barrier of his forearm to where Missouri stood resplendent in a sky-blue terry-towelling dressing gown and furry slippers gripping a large wooden baking spoon in one hand.
"Ah can hear the pair of you mumblin' away like a pair of gossipy ole men," intoned their irate hostess, "and it's drivin' me nuts. I swear, if you make us overlay for church tomorrow I will cut a birch switch and tan both your hides so hard you won't sit on your butts for a week. You hear me?"
"Ma'am, yes ma'am." Both responded instinctively to the tone of maternal ire.
"Good, now hush and let a body get some sleep!" The light was switched off and the door closed with ominous finality leaving the room once again plunged into Stygian gloom.
A demon hunter feared nothing…except a woman with a frustrated mother complex and access to spanking implements. Knowing that his brother was grinning broadly in the opposite bed, Dean nevertheless closed his eyes and determined that he would not move, even though he would never faaaaaaa…….
…aaall asleep. But yeah, here it was the am and he was yawning his way out of Morpheus' sweet embrace as he heard Sammy moving around in a definitely 'up and alert' rather than 'up but still zombified' way.
Something caught Dean's eye and he glanced across at the other now empty bed, a chuckle breaking out of him as he saw that Sam had somehow managed to fold a piece of paper in half and set it on top of the bed like a name-place setting. In big letters on the side facing Dean's bed were the words: DID TOO.
Continued in Chapter 13…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart
