Disclaimer, Summary & Rating: See Chapter 1.
THE SCENT OF YOU
Chapter 7
It was just gone quarter past four o'clock when they went back down into their room at the Lake Meredith Hotel from a quick trip up to the roof garden, having spent the afternoon checking all the suicide locations bar the other two of the three that had died at home, since the victims' families were still in residence; but at each location, the EMF detector had heralded mystical unpleasantness.
Sam shoved the door shut with his boot heel so it clicked firmly. "The question is: what's changed?" he mused. "EMF readings that high and concentrated are either the supernatural equivalent of a violent earthquake or an indicator that whatever's around has been there for a very long time."
"A supernatural 'quake' would have been noticed by someone in our world who would have spread the word," Dean commented as he shucked off his coat and laid it on his bed. "So we're looking at something 'old' rather than 'sudden'."
"But UNT Amarillo's been there for nearly 40 years and before now the closest thing to a violent death on campus was a senior who broke his neck falling down a flight of stairs in 1959. Besides, I did the standard 'what's under your feet check' and the site was nothing but grass until UNT started to build. No Indian massacres or land-theft; no battlefields; never used as a burial ground for criminals or suicides, never used as a meeting place for Ku Klux Klan or pagan covens or the scene of a mass suicide like those crazy cults do." Sam recited. "So what woke it up and made it mad - ?" he broke off and frowned as Dean pulled his T-shirt over his head and unsnapped his jeans. "What are you doing?"
"One of us got no hot water fun today," Dean pointed out, tossing his T-shirt on his bed, "so I'm going to take advantage of all those 'included amenities'." He stepped out of his jeans and pulled on a pair of sweats over his shorts.
"Oh, right." So conditioned to staying in places that started at 'crummy' and went down the scale, Sam had in truth forgotten all about the included-in-the-price goodies, so he likewise put on some work-out gear and sneakers as Dean pulled a gym vest over his bare torso and necklace and pulled on a pair of sneakers instead of his boots and grabbed a holdall for towels and toiletries.
They took the elevator down to the ground floor and walked through to the 'spa-gym' area, which proved to be spacious and well-appointed. Some of the equipment gleamed with the sparkle of new manufacture and Dean would have bet that the owners had pumped in a bit more cash than normal to lure back those put off by the unfortunate spectacle of a man plunging past their room windows to hit the ground like an overripe tomato.
The whole area was open to locally living members and passing trade paying customers as well as hotel guests, but happily whilst there was a respectable smattering of occupants, it wasn't packed solid. As Dean started his warm-up to stretch his muscles Sam noted that most of those present were executive 'dabblers', all with gleaming white Reeboks or Adidas that looked as if they'd just been bought an hour before and brand-name 'work-out wear' in chic pastels that looked as if it would disintegrate if anyone was uncouth enough to perspire on it. The others were younger and all of a 'hewn out of a convenient rock face' physique that proclaimed both their goal to be one of those pectoral-flexing hulking poseurs that had plagued California beaches for decades and long-term steroid abuse. There were a few sidelong glances at the brothers' basic, functional attire that Sam simply ignored.
"I'll spot you," Sam offered as Dean moved to the weights area and lay down on the bench.
"Thanks," Dean shifted slightly and nodded to indicate he was going to start.
It wasn't an arduous task as Dean was careful and not in the slightest showing off for Sam or anyone else. Dean's taunt that night at Stanford about Sam being out of shape had been true at the time. During his first Freshman semester at Stanford, Sam had automatically kept up the rigorous PT routine he, Dean and Dad had always maintained without thinking about it, despite all the other million things he had to pack into the day. It was an ingrained survival mechanism. But one day another student had jokingly complained that "'Dude, you work out like you're training for a war,'" and that had stopped Sam in his tracks. He had determinedly left the Winchester family business for a 'normal' life, and normal people did not work out like they were at a Marine boot camp. He'd sensibly stayed in trim, recognising the advantages of being fit and healthy, but then he'd met Jessica and by the time Dean had come back on the scene he was just an averagely healthy guy, whereas at 18 he could have single-handedly annihilated the entire football team without breaking a sweat.
That had been then; during those first few weeks after the Woman in White and Blackwater Ridge he'd not paid much attention. But when it became clear his hopes of quickly finding John Winchester, killing the demon and retreating to Stanford in time for the Fall semester were unlikely to be fulfilled, Sam had gradually started building up his routine again. With what they did and what they faced merely routinely on an average day, not to do so was utter folly.
The muscles of Dean's belly and abdomen bunched and Sam took the barbell's weight from Dean so his brother could sit up, setting it back on its stands. He didn't miss the startled flicker in Dean's eyes and realised that Dean had momentarily forgotten he was there.
Idly Sam wondered how often Dean had done his PT alone. The manner in which he'd mentioned to Sam about working a voodoo gig down in New Orleans had implied that Dean and Dad had begun working alone more often than together, and presumably for sufficient time for Dean to detect nothing unusual with Dad going off on the Hunt he had not returned from, precipitating Dean coming to Stanford. Unlike Sam, Dean would have kept up their intense training regime faithfully regardless of Dad's absence, and Sam found now he disliked the notion of Dean alone in a series of anonymous, seedy gyms, working out with no company or anyone to encourage him.
Dean moved on to the exercise bikes oblivious, but Sam caught the way the guy at the next barbell smiled smugly and continued to work out; the guy obviously thought that Dean had 'given up' in disappointment at not being able to match his efforts or his beefy, sculpted musculature. Sam merely followed his brother, aware that Dean – and pretty soon he himself once again - could have wiped the floor with Mr Smug blindfold, trussed up like a Christmas Turkey and deep frozen; to apply the old innuendo to Hunting, it wasn't size, but what you did with it that counted. Dean would use all the equipment, but wouldn't concentrate on any particular point because that wasn't his intention.
Unlike Mr Smug, his goal was not to be a bulked-up bodybuilder type, those dudes with wasp waists but a neck like a redwood tree and shoulders big enough to land a Boeing 747 on; nor was his aim like that of the yuppie on the next exercise bike along, doing the bare minimum to ensure tight buns, defined thighs and a 'six-pack' for as long as he could before resorting to cosmetic surgery. The Winchester men's lives depended on their being fit, flexible and fast. Even then, the faint scars that adorned Dean's body, and to a lesser extent Sam's, warned that oftentimes 'fast' was only just enough to keep you alive, never mind ahead of the game.
They finished with a few goes on the punch-bag, Dean showing a scientific knowledge of pugilism rather than merely swinging haymakers, but they didn't go into the small boxing ring. From infancy they had been trained to 'spar' as if it were 'real' and hence a Sam-Dean 'friendly' would appear to be a full-on mutual murder attempt by any frightened observers not in the 'know'. Knives, gun-butts, bottles, bats, nails and teeth had all been used with careless abandon when they got carried away, and it was not in either's nature to tone down for 'public consumption'.
They took a rinse-off shower after putting their gym gear into the small washing machine/tumble dryers available in the changing area, and then went to the pool area; again the owners had been sensible enough to realise that spending more on top-range facilities would reap long-term rewards. Dean dived in cleanly at the deep end, but Sam sat on the side and dangled his legs in first, sighing happily when he realised that whoever was in charge understood that 'swimming pool' was not some mysterious code phrase for 'ice bath' and had turned up the temperature accordingly. The swimming pool and surrounding Jacuzzi/Spa pools were unisex but the steam rooms and saunas were strictly separated by sex, indicating that the Scandinavian tradition of nudity within was followed.
Sam lounged at the shallow end while Dean powerfully did length after length. Waiting his chance, he glided lazily forward and sharply tugged Dean's ankle, not enough to drag him fully under the water but enough to jolt him and have him floundering and spluttering whilst Sam hastily swam away fast, aware of the menace behind him. He allowed Dean to corner him at the deep end and laughed as Dean, his eyes gleaming, flicked water into his face with the edge of his ring hand. Relenting on the punishment, Dean backed away and for five minutes they 'raced' each other up and down the pool, nudging, pushing, tugging and shouldering each other at every opportunity, unwittingly resembling a pair of playful seal pups.
A group of college students came in, all perfect teeth, even tans and designer swimwear. More than one of the girls shot flirtatiously appreciative glances their way, which Dean for once seemed oblivious to as he continued to pretend-race with Sam. But seeing a couple of the boys eyeing his and Dean's 'real deal' honed physiques speculatively, and having no intention of allowing their testosterone-overload to ruin the evening by trying to goad him and Dean into a pissing contest, Sam got out at the deep end and went to an unoccupied spa pool, knowing that Dean would promptly follow him. As always, the two brothers subconsciously projected a zone of exclusivity around themselves; they existed complete and fulfilled in a hermetically sealed universe of two binary stars orbiting each other, and so none of the students, either male or female, approached.
They spent ten minutes enjoying the water in companionable silence until Sam realised it was gone half past six. Going back to the changing rooms they showered and dressed, collecting their gym gear from the tumble dryers and taking it back up to their room, where Sam's stomach suddenly rumbled loudly, making Dean chuckle; they went back down to the in-house restaurant where a table for hotel guests was automatically reserved. Glancing at the Maitre D's book, Sam could see even though it was upside down that the place was booked solid well into the night, which boded well for the quality of the food. It was certainly spotlessly clean and tastefully decorated and they had a good table on the trattoria overlooking the lake.
Sam had barely sat down when Dean, without looking, rattled off an order for a bottle of red wine that made the waiter glance at him in respectful surprise and hurry off with alacrity.
Sam stared at his brother in astonishment, since to his knowledge Dean thought 'alcohol' was a synonym of 'beer'. "You ordered wine!"
"Yes, Sam, I did…and I can walk and talk at the same time, too." Dean quipped as he picked up his menu.
But Sam caught a frisson of an undercurrent in his voice, and as he picked up his own menu, he realised his thoughtlessly surprised comment had hurt Dean's feelings. He looked at the menu without seeing it as his conscience clipped him round the ear.
In one of the Psych classes he'd taken at Stanford, the professor had stated that any major life change or upheaval had the same effect as bereavement. One common factor was 'perpetual pause'. The human brain was like a video tape – or these days DVD – that 'froze' the person's image and personality at the moment you last saw them until you saw them again and your sensory input allowed you to 'update' their 'file' and move the sequence along.
If someone you loved died or if you didn't see a person for many years, the image stayed stuck where it had been. Even though chronologically time passed and you 'knew' this, your brain couldn't 'update the file'; the professor had admitted scientists did not understand why the human brain – so clever at so much – could not seem to adjust to linear time.
Guiltily, Sam acknowledged to himself that he hadn't updated his concept of 'Dean' hardly at all in the last seven months or so. Or more accurately, he hadn't bothered to, because for the first six months he'd been obstinately and churlishly clinging to an inner mantra of 'if we haven't found dad by the next job…I'm going back to my 'real' life at Stanford', and Dean had been irrelevant in that life.
Dean had been 22, the same age Sam was now, when 18-year-old Sam had had that last terrible fight with Dad and left for Stanford, but Sam was the first to admit that he himself at 22 was so utterly different from the Sam Winchester of 18 as to be complete strangers, yet here he was acting as if Dean was too immature or shallow to be capable of the same personal growth. Using the menu to hide his expression, Sam castigated himself. His first weeks at Stanford had been a seismic shock of 9.9 on the Richter scale that could be summarised in two words: no Dean.
When Sam was small, he couldn't understand why some kids thought he would be upset by their taunting of him having no mommy, because he had a Dean, and they didn't. Sure mommies wore pretty dresses and smiled and smelled nice but they were far too obsessed with dirty fingernails and clean ears and they didn't do cool stuff like teach you to climb trees and ride a bike and build dens and play tag in the forest. At Stanford, Sam had been faced for the first time with just how quintessential Dean was to his and their father's life. Dean had been the one who had breakfast and Dad's coffee waiting and provided schoolbooks and gave new clothes. Dean had been the one who made dinner and did Sammy's homework with him and put him to bed before going back to patiently spend hours with Dad poring over obscure esoteric works and helping him sort chaos into patterns and being a sounding board for ideas and theories.
Achieving a 'full ride' scholarship was excellent, but there were certain things still not covered, and during those whirlwind initial weeks Sam had floundered when food wasn't just 'in' the fridge, when toothpaste and toilet paper ran out in the middle of the night and wasn't replaced, when his clothes stubbornly stayed in the bottom of the laundry hamper instead of appearing washed, ironed and folded on the end of his bed, when he overlaid for classes because he'd been up half the night on his laptop without being reminded of bedtime at a reasonable hour, when he'd kept going into the refectory and automatically buying a latte and a flat black only turn around and find there was no-one there to give the latter to, when he ran out of money and by the third week was living on water and packet soup and sugar cubes scavenged from the refectory.
Or when he'd got a shelf-stacking job to buy food money and those three Sophomore jerks had decided to bully and put the squeeze on the lanky Freshman. They'd cornered him near the Quad and though he'd got a few licks in, they'd triumphed because for the first thirty seconds he'd automatically been waiting for Dean to join the fray and kick their butts into the middle of next week on his behalf.
Fortunately the trio had been kicked out of Stanford when they decided to grab and grope a pretty but diminutive co-ed who turned out to be a Jujitsu master – or mistress – and who annihilated them before marching into the President's office and playing merry hell up. Sam stayed silent but several more Freshman students had come forward complaining of harassment and that had been that.
But it had been the turning point, the final shock which had cemented his realisation that in line with the warning of 'be careful what you wish for, because you might get it', he was alone, with no resources to fall back other than himself – Dean was no longer there to bail out his butt from whatever stupid scrapes he got into. He had had to adjust to a life of 'I' after always automatically thinking in terms of 'we'.
Sam instantly saw his choice on the menu, but continued to look as if perusing it as he thought about how much he had grown up in those four years, and how he was still half the time condescendingly acting as if Dean were still frozen at 22; yet the evidence that Dean had likewise endured equally as seismic upheavals in the last four years had been smack in front of his face as if writ large in neon, but also manifested in a myriad of more subtle ways.
An 'obvious' change had been the whole Mary Worthington deal. True, Sam's guilt over Jessica's death had prompted his confession that Mary would come after him, but the fact was it had never once occurred to him that Dean would be able to lure Mary, and so he had never given him the chance to volunteer. But four years ago of course, neither Sam nor Dean would have been able to bring Mary back to her mirror.
A secret where someone died…apart from that one throwaway remark – 'a voodoo gig in New Orleans' – which told Sam absolutely nothing useful, Dean had been as silent as the proverbial grave about his activities over the last four years – such as when had he and Dad started to work alone more often than together? How many Hunts had Dean done alone? Of most concern, Mary only attacked when the deceased was a human being, so who had died and why? Had Dean killed someone? Remembering how Dean had way-too-quickly reached his let's-just-kill-Roy/let's-just-kill-Max 'solution' and with a worrying casualness on each occasion, Sam had to admit he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know the answers.
Much more subtle was that whole Cassie Robinson deal. Now, Sam's stomach twisted as he thought about how he hadn't cared enough to do anything more than take Dean's attitude of flippant insouciance at face value, even when his actions and body language had betrayed how much the opposite was the truth. Indeed, hadn't he acted towards Dean in the same manner, smirking and snickering at the way Dean watched Cassie out of haunted eyes and acted like a cat-on-hot-bricks around her rather than with his usual laidback suavity, instead of doing what Dean had done for him after Jess was killed and encouraging him to talk seriously about how he felt?
He remembered how he'd yelled at Dean over his brother breaking the Winchester family's most stringent rule for a woman he'd self-admittedly dated for only 'a couple of weeks'. Yet even then, Sam knew Dean had been giving off enough of a vibe to make Sam aware of the subtext - if only he'd bothered to look.
That night when Dean hadn't come back to the hotel room, Sam had known instantly why not and where he was. Yet he had lain in bed in a snit, self-righteously impugning Dean's motives as callow and emotionally immature and sanctimoniously decrying his elder brother for being led around by his dick in contrast to Sam and Jessica's 'pure' love.
Inwardly, Sam cringed at his own spite as he recalled only too well how he had railed at Dean for having "'no idea how I feel'" six months after Jess's murder, yet the truth had been staring him in the face had he not been too full of himself to look, because he knew Dean better than anyone, and he should have seen through Dean's devil-may-care attitude to what he was really feeling.
For all his confident practicality and cocky flirtatiousness, Dean was in some ways lacking self-confidence and actually shy…and he would never, ever, under any circumstances, blow the lid on the Winchester family business to a mere short-term 'fling'. Sam swallowed against the bile of self-loathing as he recalled how he had gloated when Dean confessed she had dumped him and how he had taunted Dean about "'you're still in love with her'", but he hadn't been serious because at the time, despite the evidence, Sam still hadn't credited Dean with the ability to experience deep and/or complex emotions, pompously confident that Dean was a slave to his gonads. With sudden but complete certainty, Sam knew that Dean had loved Cassie Robinson as deeply and as genuinely as Sam had loved Jessica Lee Moore…and had been desperately, terribly hurt emotionally.
It was so obvious when he bothered to think about it. Dean had told Cassie the truth because he'd fallen for her like the ton of proverbial bricks. For the first time, Dean had taken the risk of letting himself be emotionally exposed and vulnerable to someone in the world other than John and Sam Winchester…and she'd rejected him.
I know I'm a freak and that sooner or later everyone will leave me…the shape-shifter must have known about Cassie through its psychic link to Dean, but there was no point mentioning her to his clueless victim 'brother'…Sam had seen how Dean kissed Cassie like a starving dog given filet mignon, and far from being Dean just jumping at the chance to get laid, Sam realised that night had meant a lot more to Dean than it had to Cassie, as Dean had proven by his 'never say never' almost-plea to her before he and Sam left Cape Girardeau.
Sam had been raised in the Old School Southern traditions of hospitality, courtesy and respect, where your father was 'Sir' and your mother was not only 'Ma'am' but also the closest thing to a living saint as you were ever likely to meet. Nevertheless, he found himself heartily wishing his paranormal talents included the ability to time travel, so he could send himself back to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and give sassy Cassie a sound thrashing.
Oh, Sam had no doubt that Cassie had meant well. For all his almost comic panting after lush females, Dean was strongly attracted to women who were not just bright, but who were capable, as in possessing both intelligence and practicality, and that was the problem.
Intelligence alone wasn't necessarily a stumbling block – it was possible to have an IQ in the stratosphere and possess less common sense than a gnat, but you couldn't have it the other way around, and have sense but be dim. Dean's difficulty was that he fell for women who were brainy and sensible, and that was where it all went horribly wrong.
Sensible women had strong emotions and were just as passionate, but unlike their feebler sisters they ruled their emotions and their hormones, rather than letting their emotions and/or their hormones rule them, and often it took them all of two minutes to recognise the long-term outcomes of a situation.
When Dean had told Cassie the truth (and once she'd got over the whole 'you're lying/insane' deal), her IQ would have considered all the scenarios likely to unfold from what Dean did, and then her common sense would have pointed out the almost-impossibility of her being able to sustain any meaningful long-term relationship with Dean as long as he was a Hunter…and so sensibly she had decided to excise the wound sharply and cleanly rather than let it drag on and fester and end up in an unholy mess a few years down the road that might even involve kids or a divorce.
Despite never seeing the original version Sam could easily replay the scene in his head, especially after having sat in the Impala's driver seat and watched her face as she and Dean took their leave of each other in Cape Girardeau; her attitude had been regretful and her expression melancholy, but there had been no emotional devastation or indeed deep sadness, for she'd already put Dean behind her as a nostalgic interlude, in stark contrast to the raw expression on Dean's face. True, Cassie had certainly not deliberately intended to hurt Dean...
But she emotionally eviscerated him…hell, if she'd gone Dark Side, grabbed a kitchen knife and physically gutted him from throat to navel she would probably have hurt him less...Shame was a bitter taste in Sam's mouth, and all I did was stand on the sidelines tossing in snarky comments while he did everything bar get down his knees and beg her to love him…
Jessica's terrible murder had ripped Sam apart inside until it felt like every internal organ he possessed had been shredded, but one faint comfort he had was that Jess hadn't left him willingly, she hadn't left him voluntarily. Dean didn't even have that to stop the hurt in the middle of the night when he woke up in bed alone to realise the arms holding him tight were a wishful fantasy.
Dean folded his menu and laid it down on the table and Sam risked a surreptitious glance at him, seeing the tightness around his eyes that lingered still. Part of him wanted to apologise, but he knew Dean enough to know that it would be brushed off with a sarcastic, "'Dude, this is not Days of Our Lives.'" As he acknowledged how selfish he had been over these past months, Sam realised that what upset him the most was not just that Dean accepted these casual cruelties from him, but that he accepted them as quite usual.
Samuel John Winchester, you are a petulant brat…if mom walked whole and alive through those restaurant doors right now she'd disown you on the spot and give Dean the biggest cuddle in the world…
Continued in Chapter 8…
© 2006, Catherine D. Stewart