A little gift on my birthday for whenever yours is! -KHK
Scary Movie
K Hanna Korossy
Dean: "What do you care, you don't even like scary movies."
Sam: "Well, yeah, Dean, our life is a scary movie."
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Dean followed the news with an interest Sam found morbid. The Bender farm was being completely dug up, and the amount of bones they were finding was staggering. That and the personal effects the Benders kept had already led to nine victims being identified, with many more sure to follow.
"I don't know why you're reading about that," Sam protested after his attempt to draw Dean's attention to a legitimate hunt failed. "It didn't end up being our kind of case."
"They were still monsters, Sam," Dean said, absently rubbing at his shoulder where the burn was just starting to heal.
"It's over," Sam persisted.
Dean looked up at that, and fixed him with a surprisingly transparent look. "Yeah. It almost was."
Sam shut up after that. He still remembered the flood of relief in his brother's face when he caught sight of an alive Sam in that cage.
00000
Friday the 13th
Sam disappeared into the water with a mighty splash. He didn't resurface.
"NO!" Dean hollered, racing toward the lake shore. They'd underestimated how strong the water nymph was on land, and it had knocked him down hard. "You're not getting him, you bitch!" He heaved through the water then, when he was deep enough, dove.
They both had iron blades that could kill water nymphs, and Dean fisted his even as he swam deeper. The lake was murky, and this deep he might as well be blind.
He knew Sam's hair the minute his hand swept through it, though.
Dean groped lower, found Sam's jacket, and got a tight grip. He expected resistance as he pulled; the nymph had already drowned two adults in the lake. But Sam came easily, if limply: deadweight. Dean prayed as he towed Sam upward.
There was still no sign of the nymph as they broke the surface…but there was a bloom of dark, oily blood around them. Attaboy, he would have said if he'd had breath to do so. The shore was only a few strokes away, so Dean didn't bother with triage until he was hauling Sam out onto the sand. Then he dropped to his knees beside his brother.
It only took pressing on Sam's chest once to bring him to life, jackknifing with deep, spluttering coughs, brackish water and nymph blood spewing down his soaked clothes. Antibiotics for sure, Dean managed to think through his relief, his reassuring refrain.
"You're okay, you're okay, just breathe, Sammy, you're good."
Sam finally subsided into a gasping, drowned heap, eyes fixed on Dean. He'd gotten a grip on Dean's sleeve, Dean realized when he went to wipe a hand down his face and Sam's arm came with it. He patted the white-clenched fingers with his other hand.
"Dude. We are never hunting at a closed summer camp again."
00000
Chucky
"Dean, you really think this is necessary?"
Dean squirted another few streams of lighter fluid on the pile, then stood back before he looked at Sam. "Oh, it's totally necessary."
"The ghost had nothing to do with the dolls." In fact, now that they'd figured out the ghost was the original innkeeper's daughter, and her elderly sister had joined her sibling in death, there really wasn't any salt-and-burning they had to do. The ghost's niece had moved out of the inn with her own daughter, and the building was scheduled to be demolished.
But Susan hadn't taken all of the inn's contents with her. Like the roomful of dolls.
Dean struck a match, watched it burn a second, then tossed it onto the doll pile. All the old clothes and synthetic hair went up with a whoomph.
Sam and Dean automatically stepped back.
It was a creepy sight, Sam had to admit, all those staring dolls, their features slowly melting, their painted mouths silently crying. The flames gave them an illusion of movement. Grimacing, Sam turned away.
"See?" Dean eyed him knowingly. "Necessary."
"Yeah, okay."
00000
Hell Hazers
"Next on Dead of Night Theatre, it's Hell Hazers II: The Reckoning!"
"Nope," Dean said, and turned off the TV.
00000
Nightmare on Elm Street
"You should've told me."
Sam snorted at the top of Dean's head. "Dude. You hadn't slept in, like, two days. You were asleep on your feet."
Dean glanced up, expression outraged. "I wouldn't have been if you'd told me what that son of a bitch did to you!"
It wasn't really that bad; Sam had had worse beatings than the one he'd suffered in his dreams at the hands of dream-master Jeremy. But he was pretty sure he'd killed Jeremy in the dream—and in real life—and that meant Sam could've died, too. And Dean had never taken that possibility well.
Nor Sam getting injured. The bruises Dean was palpating along his legs were impressive, Sam had to admit, and hurt whenever he moved, but he was pretty sure Jeremy hadn't managed to break anything. It had been totally worth it to save Bobby from his dream-root nightmare.
"Lift up your shirt."
Sam raised an eyebrow at that, but at Dean's unamused look, he complied. There was the one bad stretch of dark blue where Jeremy had first hit him with the bat, but it wasn't deeper than bruised muscle, Sam had checked. Still, he let Dean feel him up to his heart's content.
Dean muttered something that would have been very dangerous for Jeremy if he weren't dead already, then he lowered Sam's shirt with careful hands. "I'm gonna get some ice. We're stayin' here until you heal up."
"Dean—"
"You seriously want to cram those legs into Baby right now?" Dean asked pointedly as he stood.
Well…no. Sam gave a longsuffering sigh and eased gingerly back up against the headboard. "Bring lunch."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean mussed his hair for good measure.
And Sam stayed awake until he got back…just in case.
00000
The Omen
"Dude."
"Hmm?" Sam didn't look up from the book he was reading.
Dean threw a piece of popcorn at him, and the nerd looked up with a frown.
"What?"
"I was just thinkin'—"
"Keep practicing," Sam said, going back to his book. "You'll get the hang of it."
Ass. Dean reached across the couch with a socked foot and kicked him.
"Ow! What, Dean?!"
"If Jesse Turner was the antichrist, and Jack's the son of Satan, who do you think's stronger?"
Sam stared at him. "Seriously?"
Dean shrugged, glancing over at the TV, where Lee Remick was just about to take a bad fall.
"Uh, I'm pretty sure we don't want to find out. "
"Hmm. Wonder where Jesse is these days?"
"Australia," Sam said, already buried in his book again.
"What?" Dean frowned at him. "How do you know?"
Sam darted a gaze up and then gave his book a little too much attention. "When Michael was… I tried everything I could think of."
Oh. Dean chewed on that. Then offered Sam the popcorn bowl.
Sam rolled his eyes but took a handful.
Okay, so his brother was kind of awesome.
And they were never, ever taking Jack to Australia.
00000
The Exorcist
Sam's eyes were so dry. Which was weird, because they still kept filling at odd times.
Like when the demon had screamed at him that Dean hated him for dragging this on so long, for not letting him go, for torturing him. He had a point, considering he was spitting out those accusations with Dean's mouth.
Sam had done everything right. He'd restrained the possessed man as safely as possible, tied to the mattress on the floor with broad strips of cloth to minimize chafing and pulled muscles and dislocated joints. He hadn't let the demon get to him, working the case like any other, trying to track down one obscure exorcism after another once the regular ones didn't work. He'd called every possible contact, talked to Bobby hourly, emptied the Impala's trunk of reference books.
And still Dean writhed on the floor in front of him, bindings stained with blood, black eyes only turning bloodshot green to beg Sam to let him go, pathetic attempts at copying his brother.
Sam gritted his teeth and went on to the next ritual.
It was something Bobby said together with a picture another hunter texted that finally gave Sam the break he needed, two and a half days in. He'd searched Dean's body for a binding sigil like the one Meg had once used on him, of course. But he hadn't thought that maybe the demon had somehow carved one inside Dean's body.
It only took a small location ritual to find it: Dean's right hip, the blue glow just under his skin. Bracing himself, Sam made a cut with a sterilized knife while the demon howled and threw Dean into a frenzy.
There it was, a design scraped into the bone. Sam would wonder later how the demon had done it, when, if it had hurt. Now, all he cared about was rocking his knife across the sigil's whorl, breaking its lines, and its power.
Dean whiplashed off the mattress with a hoarse scream that became a cloud of boiling black, fleeing the sinking ship.
Not so fast: Sam had set up the devil's trap on the first day. The demon thundercloud pressed against the ceiling, unable to flee. Wailing, mouthless, as Sam read the ritual he'd already secured, the one that pierced the black with a brilliant white that burned away the demon until it was ash on the ceiling.
Sam's arms dropped back to his side. Dean's body dropped against the mattress, so very still.
"Dean!" Sam was sawing at the bindings with one hand while he felt for a pulse with the other.
He was still breathing, faintly, hammering heart slowing. Alive, thank God, but okay?
"Dean. Hey." Sam patted down the filthy, damp clothes, then back up again, finding plenty cause for concern but none for panic. Nothing but his brother's lax, white face, the loll of his head. Sam cupped his cheeks, rasping against stubble. "Hey, man. C'mon, open your eyes. Please."
The lashes trembled, cracked open. Even half-lidded, they revealed everything: confusion, pain, shame, relief, fear. Dean was unwalled.
Sam managed a trembling smile, ready to be his walls for him. "Hey. You done lying around now?"
Dean's cracked lips moved a few seconds before he creaked out, "'am." Then he squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing.
Sam let his smile and his head fall, forehead against sweaty forehead. "Got you back. I got you back, man. Just…hang on to me, all right?"
He actually got a shaky nod for that.
Sam sat up without letting go. "Okay. Okay. Gonna get the painkillers and some water. Then we'll get you cleaned up, try some soup later, okay?"
Dean opened his eyes again, and Sam leaned in close to hear him.
"…no' pea soup."
Sam sputtered a laugh, tears lost in the dampness of his brother's face. "No pea soup," he promised, hanging on just as hard.
00000
Paranormal Activity
Dean was so focused on his laptop, he didn't even hear Sam come into the Dean Cave.
"Hey."
Dean snapped down the lid of the laptop and ran a quick hand through his hair, looking totally innocent.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Well, at least you're watching porn in here instead of in the library."
"The library's full of strangers," Dean pointed out.
"They wouldn't be strangers if—"
"Yeah, Chief, tell me it doesn't bother you, too." Dean gave him an I dare you look.
Sam looked like he was trying, then gave it up with a sigh and half-shrug. "They're not gonna be here forever," he said wearily. "Some of them have already moved on." He looked around the room, and Dean saw his eyes linger on the hot plate, his latest addition. "It won't be much longer," he said more softly.
Dean eyed him. Drowning in Michael had been, well, the worst thing he'd ever gone through after Hell. It was easy to forget that Sam had had a tough time of it, too, searching for Dean while trying to lead a bunch of refugees. He took a breath, then canted his head. "You wanna watch a movie or something?"
Sam gave him a wan but fond smile. "Another monster marathon?"
Dean shrugged. "Whatever." He knew Sam had declared the Dean Cave and Dean's room off limits to their visitors, but he was pretty sure Sam had no such sanctuaries.
"Thanks, but I gotta—" Sam hitched a thumb back toward hunter central.
"Yeah, okay. Offer stands."
"Thanks."
He watched as his little brother changed back into Chief, shoulders squaring, softness in the eyes vanishing, before he walked out the door. Dean hadn't even bothered asking why Sam had come down there, already knowing.
The door clicked shut, and Sam's footsteps faded. Only then did Dean reopen the laptop balanced on his knees.
He'd repurposed the British Men of Letters' bugs and cameras to keep an eye on key parts of the bunker, especially when Jack first arrived. One of the cameras was aimed at Dean's door.
Dean watched now the scene it had recorded the night before, the same thing it recorded every night: Sam silently opening the door and standing there for long minutes, motionless, just watching Dean sleep.
00000
Cabin in the Woods
"No, Dean, Rufus's TV dying and wi-fi being out in the whole cabin does not mean we're in a horror movie."
00000
Final Destination
Atropos blinked, and she was in a different place. A mortal place: subterranean, gray walls, sigils that had no effect on her. She turned slowly, taking it in. Regarding coolly the man who'd summoned her and stood watching.
"Samuel Winchester. What do you want with me?"
"Dean's gone," the man said. His voice was emotional, like mortals so often were about mortality. "Is he dead?"
She gazed at him without sympathy; the work he and his brother had given her over the years! The revisions to their own entries alone… "That's not for me to say."
"So…I can get him back?"
"Here's where he's meant to be," she said stolidly.
The man flinched, and Atropos fleetingly wondered what he was thinking. "But I won't be messing with Fate then or something?" he finally said more quietly.
She raised an eyebrow. "Since when has that stopped you?"
"I don't… Dean's pulled me out of Heaven and out of Hell. I want to make sure I don't do the first one, you know? But I can't leave him in the second one, either." He held his hands out like he was pleading.
"Perhaps you should ask your demon king friend then," Atropos said, unmoved.
"I will." His voice had turned firm, his eyes so hard that she actually looked away. "But I just wanted to make sure I wasn't messing with cosmic balance or something. That you won't take him if I get him back."
"I corrected the past," Atropos pointed out despite herself. "I don't decide the future." Even her sisters didn't have that kind of power, and especially not over those such as the Winchesters for whom great things were planned. She would not tell Samuel that, though, no matter how pathetically human he looked at her. Nor where his brother really was.
"Okay." He drew himself up. "Okay. I guess that's…thanks. I know you didn't have to come."
Her other eyebrow went up at that. He knew his summoning hadn't compelled her? Perhaps he wasn't as blind as most mortals were. It softened something in her despite herself. Atropos hesitated, then said, "Your brother is not suffering in Hell." What he was undergoing in Purgatory was another question, but she had been asked and deigned to answer. She owed this Winchester nothing more.
Samuel took a deep breath, closing his eyes. She did not stay long enough to see him reopen them.
Other souls, other threads, awaited.
00000
Night of the Living Dead
Dean could not get enough junk food: burgers, milkshakes, dusty vending machine candy, even the box of Lucky Charms he claimed he'd bought for Sam. Honestly, it all made Sam a little sick. But then, he'd kinda been sick ever since Dean had disappeared in Dick Roman's lab. And his brother's return hadn't helped as much as Sam would've expected.
"You wan' some?" Dean asked with a charmingly full mouth, offering Sam the half-empty bag of potato chips.
Sam grimaced and shook his head, trying to focus again on the paper he was skimming. His research skills had apparently gotten a little rusty, too, during his year of civilian life.
Dean shrugged and pulled out another handful. Then paused, hand halfway to his mouth. "Wait. What happened to the gray gunk Sucrocorp was putting in food? It's not still in here, right?" He eyed the chips suspiciously.
"Right, because I'd just sit by and let you turn into a zombie from that stuff," Sam muttered as he kept reading. At Dean's silence, he looked up finally to see an opaque expression on his brother's face. Sam sighed. "I turned Sucrocorp in."
"You…" Dean frowned. "To who?"
To whom, Sam's brain amended, but he didn't say it; things were screwed up enough between them right now without worrying about grammar, too. "The press. I got together everything we had, the stuff from Frank, some samples from the lab, and sent it to the New York Times. There were hearings, indictments, the whole nine yards. Pretty sure someone got a Pulitzer out of it, too."
Dean looked a little stunned. "Huh. We just blew up the Croatoan virus supply."
"That was one warehouse, Dean. Sucrocorp had factories around the country."
Dean slowly nodded. He pursed his lips as he studied Sam. "So, was that before or after you hit the dog?"
"Before," Sam said wearily, recognizing the veiled accusation. Would Dean ever forgive him for not looking for him in Purgatory? "It was the one thing I could do. It didn't bring you back, but it was…revenge, I guess."
Dean was still eyeing him, but he didn't look hostile anymore, just speculative. "Well…good call. It would've sucked to come back and only be able to eat fruit and green crap."
Sam smiled. "Yeah, that's why I did it. So you could stuff yourself with junk when you came back." Of course, if he'd had any reason to think Dean could or would come back, the last year would've gone very differently.
Dean didn't answer, but he did get Sam a couple of chicken Caesar wraps at their next pit stop, and Sam could also recognize the peace offering for what it was.
It wasn't everything, not even close, but it was a start.
00000
Halloween
Sam sat in stony silence in the passenger seat as the Impala sped through the night.
Dean glanced over at him a few times, torn between sympathy and amusement. "C'mon, man, it seemed totally like our kind of thing."
No response.
"You were the one who figured Lionel came back every year on Halloween to kill someone from his old gang. Wanna bet his buddies weren't exactly Friends of the Year?" he wheedled.
Sam stared straight ahead, his arms crossed.
"And I tried to find someone who was close and could take care of it, but no dice. Even called Louie, and you know I don't talk to Louie if there's, like, any other way."
It was downright frosty in the front seat.
"How was I supposed to know Lionel wasn't dead, just demented?"
Sam's jaw tightened a fraction, the only proof of life he gave.
"Dude," Dean said, exasperated. "It was so not my fault he always wears his Halloween costume to kill people. Or that when they first locked him up as a kid, he was dressed as a clown."
Sam's eye twitched.
Dean sighed and pressed the gas a little harder. Yup. Yet another awesome Halloween.
00000
Poltergeist
The two men stood on the front lawn, staring up at the house.
"New front door," Dean said conversationally.
"Well, yeah. You chopped down the other one."
Dean shrugged. "You ready to go in?"
Sam sighed. "As I'll ever be." He hoisted the bag in his hand and followed Dean into the only true home he'd ever had.
Missouri Moseley had kept an eye on their old house for them. Even though a few years before they'd purified the poltergeist—and met Mom's ghost—a place that had been touched once by the supernatural tended to become a magnet for the paranormal. It hadn't been a big surprise when Missouri had called to say it was happening again. But it hadn't been a good one, either.
Dean unlocked the door with the key Missouri had gotten from the new owners. Shockingly, Jenny and her kids had moved out not long after Sam and Dean had been there the last time: go figure. When the Bradleys started calling the electric and gas companies to try to figure out the issues they were having, Missouri took notice and got them out of there into a hotel while "a crew fixed up the place." From the type of activity, it hadn't been hard to guess they had another poltergeist on their hands.
Enter the Winchesters. Again.
Just inside the door, they stopped, looking around. It was only familiar from the last time for Sam, but he was keenly aware of the different eyes Dean saw it with. He might've only been four when the demon entered their lives, but he had memories here Sam never would. Sam no longer envied his brother so much for that.
"We should probably split up," Sam said, fingering the two bags of herbs and dirt in his pocket.
Dean was staring up the steps he'd once carried his infant brother down. "Yep."
"I don't want to."
"Nope."
The two glanced at each other, then Dean pulled a hatchet out of his bag.
"Might as well start here."
He crouched down by the northern wall to the right of the door and chopped a hole in the drywall with a few whacks. He pulled in a breath, then stuffed a bag of his own into the hole, deep out of sight.
A door banged upstairs in the empty house.
"Hurry," Sam said quietly.
Dean did, taking a few rapid steps to the west-facing wall to their right. Last time, they'd made an effort to use walls on all three floors of the house, but research had confirmed that wasn't necessary, and it was a lot less safe. Even as Dean stashed a second bag, the ceiling above their heads creaked ominously and every door in the house started slamming shut, one after the other.
Dean turned and ran back across the foyer, into the living room on the left, sliding the last foot on his knees to the eastern wall. As he broke through the drywall, the windows started rattling, and Sam silently pulled out the two metal trash can lids they'd collected on the way to the house, holding them up as shields against any missiles that came their way. You couldn't shoot a poltergeist, or ward it off with salt. Sam was there just as defense while Dean got the job done.
"Bag," Dean barked, and Sam was already dropping one of his into Dean's waiting hand. They'd each taken two, just in case.
The third bag in place, appliances started to come on all over the house. An alarm clock buzzed upstairs, and the TV beside them turned on, the screen filled with static.
"They're he-ere," Dean sing-songed as he passed the TV, heading into the kitchen.
Every single machine in the kitchen was on, and the refrigerator and oven doors slammed open and shut. The drawers shook threateningly.
"Watch out for cords," Dean warned.
"And knives." Sam gripped his makeshift shields more tightly, one covering Dean's head and upper back, the other in front of Sam.
Dean checked for a stud, started to chop through the drywall next to it, and the kitchen went crazy.
Food came flying first, glass jars and Tupperware containers flung out of the fridge. Sam warded them off with effort, only a little scratched by flying glass.
The silverware was next. Forks, spoons, and knives indiscriminately targeted them.
Sam struggled to hold off the onslaught, the thin metal of the lid warping, pierced by a few steak knives. A bowl of some kind came whipping by his head, and Sam cursed, ducking, tightening the perimeter around him and his brother.
He'd already passed Dean the sachet. Sam only knew his brother had placed it when, just as a big pot slammed into the lid hard enough to numb his arm, the kitchen was suddenly filled with a brilliant flare of light and a voiceless wail. Dean dragged him down in a crouch, and they huddled together as the poltergeist fought to stay and lost, a brief storm whipping through the room before all fell silent and still.
Sam dropped the shield, massaging his suddenly aching arm.
"Y'all right?" Dean was eyeing his arm, then him.
"Great. Can we go?"
Dean glanced around the wrecked room and snorted. "I'm cleaning up." He stood, and pulled Sam up with him. Another look around, and he was nodding. "Not bad." His gaze lingered on the stove.
"So, Mom was a lousy cook, huh?" Sam said with a half-smile.
Dean grinned wistfully. "She made good PB&Js," he offered. He knocked shoulders with Sam and headed out the door.
Sam nodded and followed his brother out. "Like mother, like son," he murmured.
00000
All Saints' Day
"Now we return to our Midnight Matinee, All Saints' Day."
"Yeah, no." Dean changed the channel.
00000
The Amityville Horror
"Can't believe we did that. I mean, how many ghosts do you think we cleaned out of there?"
"I don't know," Sam said quietly. "Hundreds."
Normally, they would've been celebrating after a successful hunt like that. Normally, they'd have been riding an adrenaline high as they gathered their stuff and walked back to the car. But nothing was normal when they were working on turning Dean into a bomb.
"I always wanted to hit Waverly Hills. Well, after Morton House. And, dude, how have we not gone yet to the Winchester House?"
Sam just looked at him, and Dean's animation disappeared in realization. They wouldn't be going anywhere together again.
Dean put the last of the bags in the trunk in silence, and they climbed into the car. Then sat for a moment, staring at the now-peaceful old sanitarium.
"I'm glad we did this one together," Sam finally broke the quiet.
Dean gave him a relieved look. "Yeah. Me, too."
He started the car, and they drove back to the bunker, and Rowena's kamikaze plan.
And a month later, after Dean was back, after Sam got away from the British Men of Letters, and with Mom in tow, the three Winchesters went to visit the Winchester House.
The End