Sam blacked out in the car. When he came to, he was lying on a couch near to a fireplace in Pastor Jim's old cabin. He felt something wet and cold pressed to his lips and reeled, panicking, remembering the blood that that thing had dunked him in, over and over and over.

"It's just water..."Dean took a handful of Sam's hair, gently holding on to it like reigns on a horse's bridle as he put the bottle back to the boy's lips and made him drink the whole thing.

"The doctors said you were dehydrated, delirious..."Dean leaned back.

Sam studied him now. They hadn't seen each other in a long time. He was only a little bit older (Sam suddenly registered that he was 25) but he looked old enough to be God's father in his eyes. Sam wondered what Hell the poor kid had seen in the last 24 months since they'd been separated. He felt a twinge of sorrow for fighting with their Dad over that scholarship, leaving like he did in a huff, shrugging Dean off of him as he tried to grab at him and get him to stay.

"Dean, you saved me...After I've been such a jerk to you..."Sam's eyes filled up with tears.

Dean sighed.

"Sammy, you are gonna have to calm the Hell down, man, and explain to me what happened. Why were you in the middle of a highway outside Seattle when you live at Stanford?" Dean frowned, wondering if Sam had been at school this whole time. He'd never known for sure where he lived, and hadn't had the courage to look beyond tracking his old phone number for a few weeks after he'd left. Up until now, he thought the kid hated him.

Sam pressed his face against the couch and shuddered. Dean took his face by the chin.

"Sam, you need to tell me what happened. Why the Hell are you not at school?" Dean bit his lip.

Sam sat up slowly.

"I-I was at school. I was...I swear...That fight with Dad, all the stuff I said and did_ I honest to God just wanted to go to school..."Sam bowed his head, in tears again. He was fried.

"Sammy, I'm not gonna bite you, okay. Stop crying and tell me what the Hell happened. We can dispense with the girl talk later..."Dean lifted Sam's head by his chin again.

Sam took Dean's arms.

"I was at school. It was going great for me. I had met this girl. Her name is Jess_ I mean she was beautiful and she was kinda in to me? Smart too, ungodly smart...I was falling hard for her, Dean. That's when I started to notice him stalking me..."Sam shuddered.

"Who?" Dean tilted his head, feeling his stomach flop at the thought that Sam had found love and lost it so soon.

"This guy..I swear I thought he was Jess' professor or something, from a different class. I swear, I did not think he was...you know...One of them. But then, then he would always disappear, you know, so I got my, I guess it's like you put it, my Spidey senses were tingling..."Sam frowned, bit his lip.

"Okay, so you were in to this cute girl, a dude starts following you, you get creeped out, then what?" Dean held his hand steadily against Sam's chin.

"Then, Jess invited me to a party. Nothing like wild or anything like you'd be in to, it was like post-midterm therapy party for nerd kids_that's what the other guys were calling it. I went even though I didn't want to because she was gonna be there. And when I left...Well, she left with her friends, so I was by myself...That's when the guy approached me finally..."Sam looked at the roof.

"He called my name. When I turned around, I saw...I saw that he had yellow eyes. He asked me if I knew what he was...I said he was one of the evil sunnabitches that go bump in the night..."Sam was panting now.

"Okay, so he's a monster...Take it slow, you need to breathe..."Dean gave Sam a shake as he was getting dizzy now.

"He tells me then, 'Correct, but not just any old creepy crawly. I'm the very one that killed your pretty little Mama.'" Sam went the color of flour.

Dean broke into a cold sweat.

"Okay, so at that point you try to kill him? If you're my brother, anyway, you tried to rip his lungs out." Dean nodded.

Sam smiled.

"I did, yeah. I punched him in the fricken face. I was moving to curb stomp him when he like...Uh, he um...he vanished. And then I realized that I had also vanished. Like a puff of smoke, like gone, Dean. When I got my bearings, he grabbed me by the shoulders. He was really strong. That's when he wrapped me in like a log chain and drug me inside this church or something..." Sam looked up at the roof.

"Okay, and then...um...then what?" Dean was getting upset now thinking about what might have happened next.

"There was a baptismal in there...It was...umm...it was full of blood? He said it was demon blood...That-That he was a demon..." Sam looked anxiously at Dean now and grabbed his collar.

"Then he said like a lot of things, rapid, crazy, I don't know what. By that time, he was hauling me to the baptismal. He threw me in by the chain and then he held me down until I was choking and swallowing the blood...And...And when I started basically drinking the stuff...I um...Uh...Oh God..." Sam was hyperventilating again. Dean had come prepared this time, with a brown paper lunch sack.

"Okay, so he dunks you in blood, and you start swallowing it?" Dean sounded like an eight-year-old his voice was so tiny and unsure.

"Mmh, yeah...When I did...I...I don't get it, man. It was...Call it like the brown acid or something, I started...I started seeing things..."

"Things...Like visions?!" Dean tilted his head.

Sam nodded, looking down.

Dean felt his stomach lurch to the top of his mouth.

"Okay, like what kind?" He took Sam's shoulders. Sam let a soft huff through his nose.

"Like...uh...like the next 16 years of our lives. Apparently, he...the yelllow-eyed thing...wants to use me to jumpstart the Apocalypse."

Dean reeled suddenly roller-coaster dizzy.