The Peacock Farm – Chapter 2
Disclaimer: The cat is still beta-ing, but seems to have suffered no lasting ill effects. Oh, and as always, I own nothing but the clothes on my back. The cat owns me.
Rating: T for language. Spoilers abound, post-Shadows.
a/n: I had this moment, see, where Smoking Man came into the frame during Scarecrow and I was shouting at the TV, "Don't trust him, Dean! It's Smoking Man!" Got me thinking: doesn't Dean know who this guy is? Despite this, no prior knowledge of X Files is required to read (and hopefully enjoy) this story.
--
Sam didn't think he could talk Dean into it, then remembered the most effective yet juvenile weapon in his fraternal arsenal: truth or dare. Hey, Dean – tell me something true about yourself, or do this insane thing. Take your pick, man.
Hence, sushi for lunch instead of deep fried chicken, or burgers, or pizza. Sam hadn't had a decent futomaki roll since Stanford and he'd be damned if he'd pass up the opportunity to sample what was rumored as the best sushi this side of the Pacific. Strategic planning was called for, and he sure as hell wasn't ready to tramp around an abandoned movie set on an empty stomach, or worse, with a bellyful of grease. Sam was propelled to action by the fact that Dean was signaling his intention to pull into a – what was that? A Wendy's? A Tim Hortons? What the hell was that? Time for evasive action.
"So, Geddy Lee, mind telling me where you think Dad is?"
Ooh, a hit, if he was keeping track of these things. Visibly flinched. Dean took a deep breath for a distracted moment before glancing at Sam. Still, his brother parked the car and didn't immediately get out. Tim Hortons was apparently Canadian for donut. No fucking way, not on his watch. Give me fresh raw fish, or give me death.
"Somewhere not here," Dean answered shortly, not looking at Sam anymore.
Sam scratched an eyebrow. The long raking cuts he'd carried since Chicago still gave him a bit of trouble, but he'd picked up an aloe plant at an Oregon farmer's market and it was doing wonders. As they'd covered the miles along the spectacular Oregon coast northward, he'd caught Dean admiring his rapidly fading scars. Then caught him breaking off an aloe tendril one night when he'd thought Sam had been in the motel's bathroom, rubbing it on his own cuts. Sam had laughed so hard he'd thought he'd throw up.
Another try, then. "Did you tell him where we're going?" In addition to furtively rubbing aloe on his face when he thought Sam wasn't looking, Dean had been text messaging like it was a dirty little secret.
"Course I did. Man wants to know."
Right, sure he does, Sam thought before he could edit himself. Man wants to know all about us, doesn't he? But that was a learned response, habitual. Man did want to know, had made that abundantly clear in Chicago, among other things. And who, precisely, was avoiding those messy bits of Winchester interrelations? "He text back?" Sam asked, ignoring his own internal sarcasm.
Dean's hand played with the keys in the ignition. Time for the heavy artillery. Before Dean had time to fabricate some false platitude about their father's situation, Sam snatched the advantage. "Don't bother, Dean. Here's the thing – "
"Nope, no thing. Let's eat." Got the door open.
There had been too many miles like that, with Dean quietly thinking ahead, hurting so much he might as well be screaming, shutting off all meaningful communication in the process. Sam stayed put in the car, staring at the maddening promotional photos of Boston crèmes and honey crullers in the Tim Hortons windows, the backdrop of dryer lint blue mountains lending the shabby strip mall an air of exotic curiosity it really didn't deserve.
"You're a big fat chicken, Dean," he challenged quietly, loud enough to be heard and soft enough that Dean would think otherwise.
Dean stuck his head back in, brows all crooked, trying to act cooler than he probably felt, which was plenty cool enough most days. "You were saying?"
"Don't feel like chicken. Or donuts." Gestured with one insolent finger to the bamboo-covered windows of the Hi-Nippon Sushi and Sashimi restaurant nestled between the donut shop and a hardware store. "There." Leveled a steady glare at his brother and raised a brow. That hurt, actually, raising a brow. Still.
"Can't throw a rock around here without hitting a goddamn sushi place," Dean murmured, letting go of one thing and picking up another. "No raw fish for me. I'll try the sashimi stuff, Yoko Ono."
It didn't go well, but it went. Thank god for teriyaki chicken, otherwise Sam would have never heard the end of it. He'd brought in the brochure, still smarting from not figuring it out sooner.
Mouthful of BBQ eel notwithstanding, Sam made himself understood. "I can't believe you actually liked the X-Files. All those tame alien plotlines, cheap special effects..."
Dean wasn't taking the bait this time. "Solid acting."
Solid acting. That was the best he could come up with? "You're serious? Every single episode, it was raining. Didn't matter if they were supposed to be in Arizona or South Dakota – it was always raining. Unbelievable."
"Thought you didn't watch it," Dean responded, unfazed.
Solid acting, my ass, Sam thought. "You thought Gillian Anderson was hot, didn't you?" Certain, of course, that he was right. How old would Dean have been? A lusty teenager with a fixation for red heads. Must have watched it when Sam was asleep, their father out hunting. Either path they were about to tread was going to be good.
"What are the chances the Bender farm looks so close to that one?" Dean chose the information path, as opposed to the squirm path. Chickenchickenchicken. Brought a huge smile to Sam's face, which Dean ignored. He turned the 'Take the X-Files Tour!' brochure around so he could see the listing a little more clearly. "Something's up with this, definitely."
"I remember that Peacock episode," Sam said, looking at the brochure, cutting Dean some needed slack.
"Was it raining?" Dean asked, smirking.
By not responding to the taunt, it lessened its sting. Very zen, Sam congratulated himself. "It was actually pretty scary, I'll give you that. Seriously fucked up Peacock brothers with that mom under the bed." He shuddered involuntarily, setting down his chopsticks. "Based on a true story?" he had to ask, because he saw that expression on Dean's face again, the one that let him know that his brother had been plotting.
"Based on a true story," Dean verified. "C'mon, tuna boy. Let's go see what kind of hillbilly crazy the Benders were part of."
--
Farmland covered the Valley the further away from the coast they drove. Strip malls, big box stores, slow drivers, farm vehicles, semis, open-backed trucks filled with immigrant farm workers. The mountains were never far away, serious mountains that got crisper and more forbidding the closer they got. There was no sense that this was a rainforest; the sun was high and hot, and Sam opened the window again as they drove, despite the sharp smell of manure and fertilizer. The main highway ran east away from Vancouver, which they saw only from a distance, shining by the water like a mirage, cupped by sea and mountain and sky. Goddamn beautiful, Sam thought, banishing memories of dripping rain. It had been cold at the Bender farm, and wet, the mud sucking at his boots on that long walk in the night, after.
What was Dean expecting to find out here? A replica of the Bender place, or some reasonable answer to the question, why them? No reasonable answers existed, not for them, not ever. Eviscerated women in flames on the ceiling, bleeding eyes, shooting rock salt at Dean as though he deserved it. Faith healers. Nightmares. Reason rarely entered into it. Change the subject. Anything will do.
"True story?" was all he had to say to get a response, this time. This, Dean could talk about, because it concerned the wackiness of some other family. Maybe finding fucked up families made Dean feel better about their own, because wasn't he a goddamn genius at it.
Dean had that serious voice, now, sounded like a narrator in a PBS documentary. Sam didn't point that out, never had, because it would be too galling, and Dean probably wouldn't get why it was funny. "Back in the 1960s. Whole farm was some kind of commune – a utopian experiment. You know, the usual megalomaniac guru doing tons of drugs and feeling the love."
"Doesn't sound remotely like hillbillies hunting human prey, Dean."
Dean shrugged, a tiny smile tugging one corner of his mouth toward the window, where he probably thought Sam couldn't see it. "X-Files location manager had to get special police permission to film there. Fifteen commune kids went missing over the course of ten years. The guru disappeared. The kids too; no children's bodies were ever found. But they found a limbless body of a woman under the floorboards of the house. Commune members say the guru was making human sacrifices to the Goddess of the Hunt." He spared a sardonic glance to Sam – get it, kiddo? "No one knows what really happened, but the case is still on the books, apparently."
"What is with you and kids?" Sam asked after a minute, earning a twisted scowl from Dean, which effectively told him his brother wasn't about to answer that at all.
Down a long road, hard-packed dirt, toward the base of the mountains, which rose as though they'd just grown there overnight, Douglas fir and cedar and spruce taking over from the hard-won farmland. The smell changed, was the scent of nature getting behind the wheel. Sam smiled at the thought, though it scared him in some essential way, like the time he'd tried surfing, only to be slapped silly by the waves, scrapes down his chest and sand in his trunks. Nature had a way of smacking you upside the head when you weren't looking. Sometimes even when you were. Boss of you, Sam Winchester. Mother nature and Dean. This time, he laughed out loud, earning another look.
As the Impala turned the corner, climbing slightly, the ridge flattened into an abandoned field, and the white house stood remarkably solid in the clearing, the forest hemming it in, barely contained by a disintegrating fence, trees ready to take over at the least lapse of agricultural vigilance.
Vigilance maintained by a young girl who looked old enough to drive, but not to drink, blond hair in her eyes as she stood by the farm's gate under a handpainted sign. 'Welcome to the Peacock Farm' in big letters, and smaller, underneath, 'entry by donation. All proceeds benefit the Fraser Valley Historical Society'.
TBC