Remembering his brother's expression and mannerisms when he killed Magnus, his wild, unrestrained blood frenzy as he killed Abaddon, Sam expects Dean to make some kind of move towards reclaiming the First Blade to facilitate that euphoria again within the first week.
Seven days pass without so much as a knock at the door or a peep from Crowley. Sam catches wind of two possible cases in that time, and contacts nearby hunters to ask them to check things out. Everything is very quiet. Cas is a pretty inefficient researcher but it is, to be perfectly honest, tremendously helpful to have somebody else present just to get Sam out of his own head every now and then.
By the end of the first week Sam is going stir crazy. They haven't found anything useful. The tomes Sam has dug up on demon summoning have pretty consistently held that you have to know a specific demon's ritual in order to summon it but have been frustratingly vague regarding how such a thing is actually developed. He figures even if he could summon Dean, he wouldn't come to him willingly. He said it himself—he wants to put as much distance between them as possible. But Sam realizes he was counting on Dean being desperate to reclaim the Blade.
He has to have extrapolated that Sam gave the Blade to Crowley, and Sam suspects he knows that going straight to the King and demanding he disclose the weapon's location isn't the wisest course of action. Still, he thought Crowley might have caught wind of… something. And if he does, it would follow his usual routine to come crying to Sam about it.
Dean's body remains in his room, and Sam checks it every day, but its condition never changes. And now, angel warding has been added to the markings scribbled on the floor and the door of the room—by Cas's specific request. In his words, "There is really no reason I should need access to anything in that room, and most angels hate Dean. If they could, they would destroy his body; I am certain of that. Any steps we can take to make that difficult for them, we should."
By day eight Sam is desperate enough to call up Crowley. As expected, the King of Hell did not previously know that Dean is out in the wind and is not pleased to hear it, and Sam listens to him splutter and curse angrily for a full ten seconds before he composes himself enough to ask, "What is it that you need?"
"Any info you've got on a way to summon Dean," Sam responds readily and intensely.
"That's gonna take quite a lot of time. And you know those things aren't perfunctory, right? He'll feel the tug, but if he doesn't want to come to you, he won't."
Sam grits his teeth. "You got any better ideas?"
Silence on the other end. A silence that Sam doesn't like—a silence full of truths unspoken. Then, "I'll poke around. Keep in touch; I get so lonely when I don't hear from you, sweetheart. If I didn't know any better I'd think you were using me."
Crowley hangs up, and Sam sits there blinking for a moment before he rolls his eyes.
It's two weeks later that Cas finally convinces him to leave the bunker. He's found a potential case less than an hour away, and it's obvious he's pretty proud of this accomplishment—as he should be. Sam's impressed, to be honest. It's a pretty straightforward one, as it turns out—vengeful spirit—but it does feel good to be out and about, actually doing something useful. Not as good as Sam might have hoped, because there's always that voice in the back of his mind reminding him every second he's being useless to Dean, but he's able to stifle it at least for a little while. Cas even gets him to swing by the grocery store on the way back, and that night they have a small barbecue rather than eating dinner out of the microwave like Sam has been defaulting to every time he realizes he's too hungry to focus.
Crowley calls during the afternoon three days later claiming to have found a spell that will locate Dean. He texts Sam with an address, and an hour or so in the Impala later, Sam and Cas arrive at a five star hotel. Naturally, their destination is the penthouse.
"I don't like this," mutters Cas under his breath as they wait for a response to Sam's knock at the door.
"I never like this," Sam mutters right back, referring broadly to the general situation of working, in any way, with Crowley. "But I'm kind of even more out of options than I've been in the past."
The door opens wide, and there stands the King of Hell, dressed all in black, looking exactly the same as he always does. "Moose. And Not Moose Version 2. How nice of you to drop by." He turns and walks back into the enormous area he's presumably stolen from some poor sap, leaving his guests to close the door and follow. Sam steps inside first, his eyes performing a quick sweep of the area. The walls are mostly glass, affording a beautiful view of the city as the sun begins bleeding out over the sky in its steady descent towards the horizon. The furniture is spotless, the wood floors polished to perfection. Sam's eyes come to a stop on the body lying in a puddle of blood in the kitchen to the left.
"Abaddon sympathizer," Crowley briefly explains as Cas shuts the door. "Though he had splendid taste."
Sam shakes his head, dismissing it. "All right, this spell. What does it entail?"
Crowley heaves a dramatic sigh. "Never had any interest in foreplay, did you, Moose?" He heads towards the kitchen area, stepping carelessly over the dead man's head on his journey to the table. Sam and Cas follow, avoiding the body entirely.
Spread out over the table is a map of the United States, and next to it, a large bowl of exceedingly suspicious-looking liquid. "Took a little while to get a hold of this spell," Crowley comments, though there's something unsaid in his voice that Sam's not sure he likes. "Here's how it works, and try to follow along: I pour, map burns, you go to whatever's left. Got it?"
Sam blinks, not sure he does, but he throws out his hand in a gesture that says go ahead. "Just do it."
Crowley's eyes widen in feigned exasperation, and he picks up the bowl, turning it carefully sideways so the strange greenish fluid covers most of the map and hardly spills over to ruin the table, though it definitely will leave some spots, at the very least. Once that's done he sets the empty bowl on the counter behind him, pulls out a matchbox, removes and strikes a single match, and tosses it down to the middle of the huge stain on the map.
The paper ignites easily, but curiously, the fire spreads out to the edges before it starts destroying it. Sam watches in fascination as from there, the flames eat away at the map, centralizing on two states: North Dakota and Kentucky. Two sparks land in them—the north and smack in the middle, respectively—further specifying the locations.
"Two different places?" Cas says, a knot formed between his brows.
"Impressive that you can count that high, Feathers," Crowley observes. "All right, here's the deal: this is a location spell for the Mark of Cain. I was a bit concerned that it would just latch on the actual Mark, which is, according to what you told me, still on the arm of the original body of your black-eyed brother-slash-compatriot, but fortunately it doesn't seem to have gone that way. It's given us two locations because there are now two Marks. When Cain gave it to Dean, he wasn't moving it; he was, essentially, copying it."
"So one of these is actually Cain," Sam murmurs. "And we don't know which."
Crowley nods. "I also want to emphasize the importance of haste; these are their locations right now; by the time you get there, they could be gone. It doesn't help that Dean knows this spell exists."
Despite what he's just said, Sam doesn't move as he just stares at the demon, eyes narrowed. "This is what you used to find Cain when he first got the Mark. Isn't it?"
Crowley shrugs, and holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "You caught me. Yes, I knew about this when you first called. But I didn't have it at the ready. Needed to go back to the home of the woman who gave it to us, dig around there, then actually find the ingredients, which was something of a hassle on its own, not to mention some personal issues that have come up recently—nothing you need to concern your pretty, shaggy head over. Just go, find him, and take care of it. And bring these with you—when you're getting close to the Mark, they'll let you know."
Sam snatches up the two pieces of burnt paper and places them gingerly into his breast pocket. He casts a sidelong glance at Crowley. "You won't be investigating this?"
"Hell no. It's a fifty-fifty shot. Dean Winchester or the Father of Murder. I have no reason to want to be within a mile of either of them."
So Crowley's afraid of Cain, Sam notes. Trying to hide it for obvious reasons, but something interesting that may be useful later. Though probably not.
"We may need this spell again," Cas says, shaking Sam out of the tangential thought.
"Don't fret about that. I've enough extra portions of the ingredients to do it again fifty times over. You fail this time—and you'd better not—just give me a ring."
They have to be fast. There's hardly any time to formulate a plan—something they desperately need. They have two destinations and have to operate under the assumption that they have no time at all to get to either. And then there's the other can of worms that is the mess of practical complications that come with somebody's extremely skilled hunter of a brother being turned into an incredibly powerful demon.
Sam nods to Cas, and they both head back the way they came in.
"You're welcome," comes Crowley's obnoxiously indignant voice shortly before the door closes behind them.