Lies I Never Told
Chapter 14
S s S s S
Dean slurped down the soup and immediately afterwards fell asleep, leaving Sam to slide away and clean off several layers of accumulated mud. The guest bathroom was extravagantly appointed with pink fluffy towels, expensive bars of lavender soap and an enormous whirlpool tub. Prominently displayed on the shelves above the bath were neatly spaced bottles of various colored liquids. Picking a small round bottle filled with a dark green liquid, Sam eased out the stopper and took a cautious sniff. The thin oil in the bottle smelled of warm pine and cypress, it was a heady and rich earthy scent, so unlike the damp lifeless odor of the forest.
Sam tipped a generous amount into the steaming waters and sank into the depths with a contented moan. Five minutes, he would give himself five minutes and just not think, about anything. Sam breathed deeply, the fragrant steam filling his nostrils. He slipped further down into the tub, closing his eyes and tilting his head back until only his nose and chin were above the water. Man, this was probably as close to heaven as he was ever going to get. He stretched out his limbs, floating comfortable in the hot water. This totally had to be the biggest bathtub ever. Sam drifted contently, falling quickly into an almost blissful state of relaxation. His mind wandered; it was surprisingly easy to turn off the jumble of ever present thoughts and worries.
Warm scented water filled his ears and lapped over his eyes, soothing away his aches and pains and numbing his consciousness. Lines of light danced behind his eyelids and as he lay there unmoving, the lines began to form patterns. Circles and lopsided stars flashed on and off, gradually mutating into a more recognizable shape. His eye muscles twitched and the lines shifted again. A face? No, not a face, but something like it, some form he knew he should recognize. Weird. It wavered in the dark, slowly becoming more defined. A strange twisted form with uneven elongated limbs, empty eyes demanding his attention. Like a distorted neon sign against the night, it was the image of the long departed woodland sprite. Sam jerked his head back in surprise, trying to distance himself from his vision, opening his mouth in shock and gulping in the now tepid bathwater. He thrashed around, splashing and spluttering, spitting out water, before pulling himself into a sitting position. He coughed, thumping himself on the chest and flopping over the side of the bath. Sam grabbed a towel, drying his face roughly, the adrenalin burst from what he had seen quivering down his limbs. Things were seriously wrong with his life, he thought wearily, when he couldn't even take a bath without risking near drowning.
He dragged himself from the tub and wrapped himself in the biggest, fluffiest towel he could find and trudged back into the bedroom. Dean was still asleep. Sam collapsed on to his bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. The tree sprite had gone, kaput, finito; expertly dispatched to the big timber lot in the sky. Sam rubbed his forehead. He felt a little spacey; maybe the bathwater had been too hot. So, it couldn't be the tree sprite out there in the forest, bleeding the life from animals and the occasional unwary lawyer. Dean was right about that. So. So. It wasn't the sprite.Sam said it aloud.
"It's not the sprite, because." Dean stirred slightly. Sam ignored him, concentrating. He was missing something. He tried again. "It's not the tree guardian, out there, because..."
"Because tree guardians protect things." Dean was awake and apparently finishing sentences.
Sam froze, eyes wide and then clapped a hand over his face.
"Oh. Fuck," he groaned. God, he was so spectacularly stupid.
He peered at Dean through his fingers. Dean had rolled over onto his side and was blinking blearily at him. There was much more color to his skin now.
"Is there a point to your inane ramblings?" Dean yawned.
Sam felt the immediate and inexplicable urge to confess.
"You look better and I am a total dumbass." Saying so didn't make him feel any better but at least Dean couldn't accuse him of hiding his mistakes.
Dean didn't seem particularly moved or interested by Sam's confession. He rubbed his eyes and bit off another yawn to comment.
"And you've only just figured that out. Wow. Color me impressed. Not." He struggled to sit up, bunching the pillows behind him. "I'm hungry, no scratch that. I'm starving, when do we get to eat?"
"Dean, I'm serious." Sam sat up, clutching his towel tightly.
Dean raised an eyebrow in Sam's direction. "Me too. I could eat a horse. Why are you wearing a big pink towel?"
Sam glanced down at the towel in surprise and then back at his brother.
"Uh, I've just had a bath. Look Dean, I don't know why I didn't put it together before. I mean it's so obvious, but it was a few years ago and a lot's happened since then, so I know I should have figured it out before, but it was my first hunt on my own, so." Dean scowled at him and he hurried on. "The tree sprite, it was dangerous, okay, it was mad. But it was only trying to protect itself and the forest, from what's happening now. I guess it could sense it beginning. It knew something was wrong and it reacted." Sam raised his hand toward the window, palm out, fingers pointing. "And I screwed up, didn't do the research, didn't see it and I burnt the poor sucker."
He dropped his hand, shoulders slumping. "And I'm sorry, you could have been killed, because I made a mistake," he finished breathlessly.
Dean studied him for a few seconds, his eyes narrowing.
"Come here," it was close to an order and in his surprise Sam reluctantly obeyed, moving to the opposite bed.
"Sit." Dean glared belligerently at the pink towel. Somewhat warily, Sam sat; Dean grabbed his chin and pulled him forward until they were almost nose-to-nose, Dean's fingers felt cold on his skin, and then he was pushed back. Sam rubbed his chin.
"Wanna tell me why your pupils are blown?" Dean spoke quietly but there was the hard edge of anger in his voice.
"What? What are you talking about?" Sam drew back. Dean was looking angrier by the second; perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut.
"Your pupils are dilated Sam and you're flushed and sweating. Been smokin' the funny stuff?"
Sam shook his head mutely, not quite able to process Dean's words. What with one thing or another, he hadn't felt like his old self for a few days. It was getting harder and harder to establish a baseline for normal, anyway.
"Yeah, right. Stupid question. Someone around here is beginning to seriously piss me off. Sneakin' around, slipping roofies to my little brother. I hate to tell you this Sammy, but these aren't nice people." Dean threw back the covers and slid from the bed.
"Hey, I don't think so." Sam objected, but Dean waved a dismissive hand in his direction and gingerly made his way over to the bathroom.
"I'm going to clean up and then we're going downstairs and if we don't get any damn answers, we're leaving."
Sam stared as Dean disappeared into the bathroom. Dean never dropped a job like that.
Bathroom. Visions. Shit, not roofies. Sam was pretty sure what was left of his virtue was still intact, but something else. He hurried after Dean. The small bottle was where he had left it, on the side of the bath. Dean was filling the sink and examining a wrapped bar of soap with undisguised hostility.
"Lavender. Jesus."
"We can't leave Dean. Come on, you like Mrs. Hawksworth. You promised her. We're not going to leave them to it, are we? It is kind of my fault. If I had done a better job first time." Sam realized with surprise that he was fighting against the very thing he himself had decided upon earlier.
Dean slammed the soap down next to the basin.
"You were a kid, Sam. You did what they asked. And mistake or not, I don't like people fucking with us. Rudy seems to be in all the wrong places at the right time, don't you think? Somebody, somehow, sent Blaine out there. Must have done. If it's supernatural, we'll deal with it. If it's somebody screwing us around, I'm not risking you… We're not wasting our time. That's the way it's gonna be, Sam. Okay?"
Sam wanted to argue, if for no other reason than he felt he should, but he just nodded. He picked up the bottle of bath oil and offered it to Dean.
"I poured some of this in the bathwater. You could say it was a very relaxing experience. I just thought I was tired, but I guess I did feel a little bit out of it." Sam grimaced, wrinkling his nose at Dean's incredulous stare.
"What?"
"Give me a break. You didn't notice you were high? Didn't college teach you anything?" Dean took a tentative sniff at the bottle still in Sam's hand. "Smells sort of herby. Could be anything. Did it have any other effect?"
Sam shifted uncomfortably and Dean crossed his arms, leaning against the sink, waiting.
"Well, I was in the bath when I figured out the stuff about the tree sprite. It was almost like I dreamed about it, only I wasn't really asleep." Sam admitted sheepishly. "Dean, it was on the shelf. It's too random; no guarantee that I, or you for that matter, would go anywhere near it."
Dean rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"Yeah, still doesn't change the fact that someone around here knows a hell of a lot about hallucinogens, charms and who knows what other stuff. You'd think someone with that kind of knowledge wouldn't need people like us around. Ever get the feeling we're being played, Sammy?"
Sam hesitated, he hadn't thought about it in exactly those terms. The abstract feelings of familiarity and a place off-kilter had skewed his perception of the situation.
"I told you this place was giving me the creeps. Rudy knows something and that sister of his makes my skin crawl." And his head ache, but that information was too closely associated with other issues he preferred not to examine too closely.
"I know. She's got that Morticia Addams thing going on." Dean pulled off his tee shirt. "I'm getting ripe. Go get dressed." He gave the bath a dark look. "I think I'll have a shower."
Sam looked at the bottle in his hand, rolling it over his fingers and looked across the room at the others lined up on the shelf. Dean was in the shower now, steam billowing over the frosted glass door.
He's not fully recovered yet, we're not ready for this, Sam thought uneasily. Dean had missed it. Failing to notice that Sam, late of the John Winchester school of due diligence, had neglected to mention the unusual and ostensibly unique experience of having a vision or dream or whatever. Sam should have voiced his suspicions immediately, because things like that weren't supposed to be commonplace, drug-induced or not.
He wasn't going to be able to keep this from Dean forever. He turned and upending the bottle, emptied its contents into the sink, watching the green liquid slowly circle the drain. A potent little lie hidden in a pretty glass bottle. Sam turned the faucet and let the water wash it away. He watched the oil swirl downward and somewhere in the recesses of his mind, a small connection sparked and an idea began to form.