AN: Will this story ever be finished, honestly? No idea. It has been years, guys. Years. Did I have this written and decide to post it anyways? Yeah.
Chapter 7:
"Wake the fuck up," Dean growled from above Sam, and Sam moaned some as he rolled over to stuff his head underneath his pillow. He really wasn't in the mood. Ever since he started the trials, Sam's skin has felt prickly, and his head existed in the constant state of dull throbbing.
"Can we not, today? Please?" Sam mumbled into his sheets.
"Wake up!" Dean demanded, accentuating his point with a hard kick to Sam's bed.
"What the hell, man?" Sam asked, finally blinking up at Dean, bleary-eyed.
"Where's Henry?" Dean questioned, and Sam scrunched up his brow in confusion.
"Who?"
"Henry—your brother. Or did you actually finally manage to forget he exists?" Dean scoffed. There was something bitter in his tone that Sam wasn't quite used to hearing from him when the man was sober. But then again, this line of questioning didn't bode well in favor of sobriety.
"You're my brother," Sam sighed, finally pulling himself up to sit against the headboard.
"No shit, Sherlock. Your other brother."
"What?" Sam huffed, "did you hit your head last night or—?" He was really, really not in the mood for whatever this was. He could already feel the pulsing pain behind his eyes getting worse, and all he wanted to do was curl back into bed and sleep for the rest of his existence. In fact, his vision was still kind of blurry, even though he was well and truly awake now. Sam squinted toward where Dean was standing at the end of the bed, trying to clear away the fog.
"God damnit, you're useless as ever," Dean cursed, turning on his heel and throwing open the motel room door. Sam shut his eyes against the searing sunlight it let in.
Dean was back in a matter of seconds.
"Where are we?" He asked quietly.
"At the motel…?" Sam said slowly, not quite understanding the question.
"Which state, Sam."
"Somewhere in Nebraska, probably. I wasn't really paying attention when you pulled over for the night," Sam answered honestly. His condition had been getting worse as of late, and although he was doing his best to hide it, the last few hours of the ride yesterday were rough.
"Nebraska," Dean breathed.
Sam nodded, not sure if it was a question.
"But we were—we were on the east coast yesterday," Dean mumbled. His brows were knit together, and for the first time since the whole strange conversation had started, Sam began to consider that something was seriously wrong.
"Dean, who's Henry?" Sam asked.
Dean's eyes shot up to meet Sam's own, and he could see something frantic in them.
"You're being serious?"
Sam nodded in response.
"He's—he's our younger brother. You really don't—this isn't real, is it? It's gotta be a nightmare, or—whatever we were hunting, it must have—" Dean was rambling now.
Sam stood up carefully from the bed and approached his brother, hands raised in a mock surrender.
"Hey, man. We're gonna figure this out, okay?" Sam told him. When he reached an arm out to steady him, Dean flinched away. "Sorry," Sam mumbled, taking a quick step backwards.
"I'm in a universe where my brother doesn't exist," Dean said, and the way the word brother curled in his mouth reminded Sam of how Dean used to say it about him. Back before Purgatory. Back before a lot of things.
"Twenty minutes and we're on the road, baby cakes," Sam crooned to a still, noticeably grumpy younger brother.
"I'm ready," Henry grumbled back, picking up his bag from the floor and slinging it over his shoulder. "I've got the flare guns and the doll in my bag, all ready to go."
"Alright then, let's get this show on the road," Dean declared, accented with a sharp clap of his hands. He jerked his thumb toward the door, a silent direction for both Sam and Henry to stop arguing and get a move on.
This time Dean didn't falter when Henry slid into the passenger seat next to him. He needed to focus on the hunt, letting himself get distracted by anything else just made him a liability. He followed Sam's car down to the docks, before parking some ways back from the water.
When Dean got out of the car to grab their weapons from the trunk, he was almost able to imagine he was back where he belonged, if it weren't for the way Sam seemed to keep a careful distance. Dean dug through the trunk and pulled out one of the flare guns, pressing it into Henry's waiting hands.
"If you get a clear shot, don't miss," Dean told him with a quirk of his lips.
Henry rolled his eyes in response, smiling despite it.
"That goes for you too, asshat," Dean called over his shoulder toward where Sam was fiddling with his own gun.
"I told you the thing was blind, Dean, not deaf, so keep it down," the man responded flatly, but there was a quiet sort of fondness in his eyes, like he knew Dean was teasing and was glad for it—finally being included in on the jokes.
"Yeah, yeah," Dean huffed, shoving the trunk closed, "let's get this over with, shall we?"
Henry nodded sharply, bear in hand. "Right, so I'll just dangle its little feet over the water, and we can all sit back a few yards and wait to see if any creatures emerge from the black lagoon."
"That is the plan," Sam stated, and Dean turned at the sound of shuffling to find Sam had brought a literal folding chair to sit in.
He raised a curious eyebrow at Sam.
"What?" He asked, tugging the chair closer to the water before slumping down into it.
"I didn't say anything," Dean said, hands raised in mock surrender.
"You won't be judging me when your feet hurt from standing or your ass hurts from sitting on the hard cement," Sam grumbled.
"I'm not judging!" Dean chuckled, just as Henry was jogging back from the water's edge.
"We're all set?" Sam questioned, the joking demeanor suddenly gone. Dean found that he missed its sudden absence, and realized, somewhat disappointedly, that it had been missing from his own Sam for a while now.
"Yup," Henry confirmed slouching against a nearby light post, "now we wait."
"You got any cards with you Mr. Brings a Damn Lawn Chair?" Dean called over to Sam from where he was stalking back and forth. It had been over an hour with no movement on the water, and his feet fucking hurt.
"Pretty sure that would be a distraction from the task at hand," Sam said simply, seeming completely unbothered by Dean's current predicament.
"Guys?" Henry hissed from where he was still leaned against the light.
"What, like a game of cards would keep us from noticing a big ugly monster emerging from the water," Dean shot back.
"I never said I would be the distracted one," Sam replied, looking pointedly at Dean.
"Guys," Henry repeated himself, a little more urgently this time.
"What?" Sam snapped, throwing his gaze over to his younger brother.
"Pretty sure there's a big ugly monster emerging from the water."