Under a Haystack
By EB
©2006
2. One Shoe Off, and One Shoe On
They'd briefly discussed heading west/northwest before this unexpected development, and Sam's feeling the pressure to get out of town. Hole up someplace, maybe West Texas or Taos or Santa Fe or wherever, until Dean re-grows up, or Sam can figure something out. But he definitely needs to put some space between them and Houston. Blood relative or not, Dean's not his kid, and those displays at their motel might have gotten unwelcome attention Sam just doesn't know about yet. Those kinds of things have a way of coming back to bite you on your unsuspecting ass, so after a fast-food lunch near the highway he piles them both in the Impala and heads out.
But when they start leaving the city behind, Dean freaks on him. They're on a smaller highway, not the interstate, and traffic isn't bad, which is all that saves them. Suddenly Sam's got a lapful of pissed-off kid, grabbing at the wheel and screaming at him to stop, let me out, you ugly piece of shit, and the car tries to fishtail and Sam brings it to a shuddering halt on the shoulder.
"Don't you EVER do that again," Sam roars, adrenaline hitting his veins like pure crank. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"You're not my dad!" Dean screams back. "Now he won't be able to find me! Let me GO!"
It's surprisingly hard to fight Dean in this size and shape; it's like holding onto a pissed-off cat, and Sam feels like a giant in a glass factory, so aware of how delicate those little-boy arms feel in his hands. But he finally manhandles Dean to a standstill, clasps him against his chest and feels Dean's heart going a mile a freaking minute.
"I'm not your dad," Sam agrees quietly, nodding. "I know. And I know you want him back. But he's not here, D – kid, and –"
Dean arches his back, and there's another struggle. Shorter this time; Sam thinks he's getting tired. "Where is he? What'd you do with my daddy?"
"Dean, I didn't do anything! You just woke up like this!"
Dean goes very still, and Sam can hear his fast panicked breathing. "You said my name," Dean says in a low accusing voice, and twists in Sam's arms until he can glare at him. "How'd you know my name?"
Sam nods slowly. "Okay, I'll tell you. But will you just sit still for a minute so we can get off the highway first?"
Dean ducks away, slithering back into the passenger seat, curling into a protective ball.
"Okay." Sam checks the road, pulls them back into traffic. "I think there's some kind of roadside park not too far from here. You okay?"
Dean props his chin on his knees and wraps his arms tightly around his legs.
It's about twenty miles to the rest stop, not nearly far enough for Sam to come up with any kind of reasonable story for how he knows Dean's name, what the hell is going on here. He parks as far away as he can from the two RVs already at the stop, and watches Dean carefully while they climb out. Dean sits on the other side of a concrete table, and Sam sighs and lowers himself onto the seat, leaning forward on his elbows.
"Okay. You know weird things sometimes happen, right? And just because they're weird, just because people say it's just imaginary stuff doesn't mean they can't happen?"
Dean gives a hesitant nod. "Like the thing that killed Mommy."
"Like that, yeah." Sam swallows; it's been twenty-two years for his Dean, but for this one it's practically yesterday, and he can see the wan look in Dean's eyes, the desperate loneliness. "Sort of. And something really weird happened to you, too. Last night."
Dean presses his lips together, then whispers, "Am I dead too?"
Sam exhales loudly, shakes his head. "Oh, Dean, no, man, you're not dead. I didn't mean to make it sound like that. You're fine, okay?"
"But –"
"What's the last thing you remember? Before you woke up in the room with me?"
Dean shrugs. "Dunno."
"Think, okay? Were you at home? Where do you live right now?"
"In Portland."
"Was that where you were? At home?"
Dean nods hesitantly. "I had to practice, and then Dad said he'd be back real soon, and I should keep an eye on Sammy. That's my little brother."
"Did you fall asleep?"
Dean looks down and says, "I didn't mess up. If anything had happened to him I would have known because he was right there with me."
Sam leans forward again, puts every bit of conviction in his voice that he can. "I'm sure you're right, Dean. I know you took real good care of Sammy. So did you go to sleep?"
"Yes," Dean whispers. "Sammy was already asleep, and I was –" He looks away, lips trembling. "I got sleepy."
"That's okay. I swear, that's fine. But you were at home when you went to sleep?"
"Uh-huh." Dean's eyes are starry with tears. "Is Daddy mad at me? Sometimes he gets mad."
There is something terrible about the matter-of-fact quality to Dean's voice, something that burrows into Sam's stomach and burns like acid, and he shakes his head vigorously. "No. No, Dad's not mad at you."
"Are you sure? He didn't come."
"That's what we have to talk about." Sam considers, then gets up and comes around to sit next to Dean on the warm bench. "See, something sort of – magical happened to you last night, okay?" Sam sighs. "You know when I told you my name was Sam?"
Dean nods minutely.
"This is gonna be really hard to explain, but the reason I know your name is because I'm your brother. I'm your Sammy."
Dean gives him a speaking look, and then snorts. "Sammy's just a baby. You aren't Sammy."
"Well, where you were, I was a really little kid, yeah." Sam nods slowly. "But this is much later now, and I'm all grown up. And until this morning, you were grown up, too."
There is absolutely no comprehension in Dean's wide, tired eyes, nothing but confusion and that wandering fear. He doesn't say a word, and gives only a token resistance when Sam takes his hand and warms it between his own.
"See, the last thing you remember, it was about 1986? Was that the right year?"
Dean nods so vaguely it isn't really an affirmation, but Sam takes it as one. "And now," he says carefully, "it's 2006. It's about twenty years later, okay? Somebody – did something to you, I'm not sure what. And it made you get a lot younger, overnight."
Dean starts to cry, silently and without any histrionics. It's a kind of exhausted un-self-conscious weeping that tears at Sam, makes him feel helpless and useless, and Dean doesn't struggle while Sam gathers him against him, strokes his skinny back and rocks him a little. There's no answering clasp of arms around his neck; Dean isn't welcoming it, just enduring it, a fact of life, and Sam isn't sure he's taking any comfort at all from it.
"It'll be okay," Sam says thickly, feeling his own eyes sting more than a little. "I'm gonna figure out how to fix things, Dean. I am. But Dad's a long way away right now, and I don't know how to find him. We've – you and me – we've been looking for him for a long time, and we found him once, but now he's gone again, and we're on our own. Just me and you, all right? Just for a while, until I can make things right."
Dean lays his hot cheek against Sam's shoulder and sighs. He's not really crying anymore, but his weight is limp and Sam thinks, Maybe he needs a nap or something. Is he young enough for naps? "You okay?" he whispers, and feels the pause before a slow nod. "I'm sorry. I know it's scary. I'm scared, too."
"Are you really Sammy?" Dean asks softly.
Sam smiles against Dean's bright gold hair. "Yeah, I really am."
"You got big."
It makes him think of his Dean, of how if it had been Sam who regressed like this, Dean would have known what to do. Sam's floundering, terra incognita, and he stands, awkwardly clasping Dean to him. "Tell you what," he says quietly while he walks back to the car. "Why don't you get in the back and sleep for a while? You sleepy?"
"Supposed to watch Sammy." But Dean's voice is a blurry mumble, and he yawns on the name.
"Well, this Sammy's okay for now, I promise." He opens the back door and slides in, untangling Dean from around his neck and laying him on the leather seat. Revealed, Dean's face is blotchy with tears, and his eyes are already at half-mast. Sam reaches out to push the hair from Dean's forehead and smiles, and Dean's eyes finish fluttering closed.
Sam hopes maybe by the next morning Dean will have reverted back to his grown-up self. It happened overnight; maybe it can un-happen the same way.
No joy. Sam isn't sleepy anyway; too keyed up and a little wary of nightmares, and so he watches Dean instead. Dean as a child sleeps differently from adult Dean; this is a totality of sleep, and after a while Sam stops worrying about being quiet because he's pretty sure Armageddon would only make Dean turn over and sigh, and maybe not even that. The Dean Sam remembers was too vigilant to ever sleep so heavily. This Dean hasn't learned all those lessons yet.
It's nearly two when Sam grabs his phone and hits the speed-dial.
"Hey, Dad," he says, and sighs. "I figure you won't pick this up for a while, like I have any idea when or if you ever pick up your messages at all, but anyway. We got a little bit of a situation here, I guess. I think something maybe – put a curse on Dean. Anyway, I'm gonna see what I can do about breaking it, but I could always use a little help. He's kinda – different right now." He snorts. "And that's putting it mildly." A stab of frustration makes him add, "So if you can take time out of your busy demon-hunting schedule to call me back and maybe give me some pointers, I'm all ears, okay? Okay. Later."
The call doesn't make him feel much better. Dad's the last person he'd trust to know beans about proper child-raising, and it's mostly on the off chance he might know anything about specific kinds of curses than anything else that Sam bothered calling at all. Hell, Dad never showed when Dean was dying. Why would he make the effort if Dean's just a little younger now?
It IS a curse. Must be. Who'd want to go back and relive their childhood? Sam's dead certain he's glad he's done with his own.
Sleep wins out sometime after four, the deadest darkest time of night, and Sam wakes up with a gasp to watery sunlight and the remnants of a dream he thankfully can't clearly remember. He sits bolt upright in his chair, hissing at the soreness in his body from the awkward position, scans the room, but Dean's a motionless figure on top of the sheets, splayed every which way, and Sam relaxes.
He decides it's cool to risk the time for a shower – needs it like air to breathe – and when he comes out of the bathroom Dean's sitting next to the window, wearing the Army tee shirt, staring out at the parking lot.
"You want some breakfast?"
Dean nods without looking at him. "Sam?"
Sam touches his wet hair and thinks about how kids just accept things, don't over-think or dismiss out of hand. Sam has said he's Sammy; Dean believes him. It's marvelous and terrifying. "Yeah?"
"Look." Dean points to a smear on the window and turns wide eyes at Sam.
"Is it dirty?" Sam rubs the towel over his head and tosses it on the mattress before walking over. "What –"
"Looks like –"
"Crap." Without thinking, Sam grabs Dean's arm, sweeps him up against him, backing away until his legs hit the bed. He sits without strength, gazing at the streaked window.
"Somebody put that there?" Dean asks in a hushed whisper.
Sam chews on his lip before he says, "I'm not sure." He can't say what he's thinking. It's on the tip of his tongue: Dean, are you thinking what I'm thinking, only this Dean isn't thinking it, this Dean is looking at him like he has all the answers, knows exactly what to do, just like Dad always did, and Sam doesn't have a goddamn clue.
"Don't go outside," he says, lifting Dean off his lap.
Dean follows him, watches him take out the journal. "That's Dad's," he whispers. "But it doesn't look new anymore."
"Little wear and tear, yeah," Sam agrees absently, thumbing through it, past the yeti and the Scandinavian crap. There. He glances at the window, back at the shaky sketch. Not identical, but sufficiently similar that he's fairly sure he's on the right track.
He looks at Dean, who's still watching him expectantly. Ghuls like children. Like to take them, and eat them. Sam's stomach clenches hard, and he makes himself smile. "Probably just graffiti," he says calmly. "Nothing to worry about."
Dean gives him another doubtful look, but then nods equably. "Can we get breakfast now?"
Sam nods stiffly. "Sure, buddy. Hey, comb your hair, okay? You look like a haystack."
Ghuls are able to travel by day, but don't like it much, and so he's pretty sure this one's just marked the room. They'll be leaving anyway, now that Sam's aware of the threat. No problem, right?
At the diner next to the motel he gets a paper and checks the headlines, but there's nothing about newly missing kids. If it was only a few hours ago, though, it wouldn't have made the front page yet.
A cop car pulls up outside, two uniforms getting out, and Sam has a brief moment of panic, thinking they're after him, something to do with Dean's outbursts yesterday. But the cops are headed for the main motel office, and it feels no better to realize, sharply, that if the ghul is around, there may be someone else's child missing right now.
What would Dean say? We gotta check it out, Sam. That's what we do, remember? We help people.
He watches Dean wolfing down blueberry pancakes, mouth smeared with indigo-tinted syrup, and wonders who would help him if it were HIS child missing right now. Not that Dean is his son. But the fierce shock of fear and anger in his chest jolts him anyway. He wants Dean back the way he was – older, wiser in his own cockeyed ways, aggravating and annoying and so deeply loved it's like the granite that holds up Sam's soul – but until that Dean is here again, Sam will do anything in his power to keep this one safe. Come hell or high water. No ghul or any other fucking creature is getting its claws on this kid.
The waitress sets the check on the table and smiles at Dean. "He's a cutie," she tells Sam. "Gonna be a heartbreaker when he grows up."
"Probably," Sam agrees, and digs for his wallet.
Outside, he walks Dean back to their room and tells him to pack up. "Where are we going?" Dean asks.
"Hang on. Don't open the door for anybody." He waves the key to show Dean he has it. "I'll be back in a minute."
"Okay."
There's a clot of people over near the office, guests and a couple of uniformed employees. Sam sidles up, glances at a potbellied man wearing a wifebeater gone gray with too many washings. "What's going on?"
The man lifts his chin. "Those folks over there, little boy's missing."
Sam feels a chill like cold fingers, sliding icily down his spine. "Jesus."
"Didn't see no kids last night." The guy shrugs and works at the lump of snuff in his cheek a moment. "You?"
"Just mine," Sam says.
"Got two at home. Nine and fourteen. Good boys? How old is your boy?"
"Seven." Sam gazes over the heads in front of him, sees a woman and man embracing, the mother's sobs audible from a hundred yards away. The father looks old and bewildered, eyes circled with rings of white.
"You look young for having kids."
"Stranger things have happened," Sam murmurs. "Excuse me."
He's heard enough. It's too exposed to get out any equipment, but ghuls leave their spoor all over, easy to track if you know what to look for. Most people don't; they think it's dirt, schmutz, just an annoyance. They can't see the jagged, insane intelligence behind the marks. Doors, walls, windows – there will be signs.
He finds them on the lobby window, and on two other guestroom doors, eight and sixteen. And the window of his own room, of course.
He stares at one of the intricate smears, and hears Dean's adult voice next to his ear: "Now that's just nasty."
But when he turns, there's no one there.
Cont. in ch 3