Chapter title is from song by Lynard Skynard.
43
Simple Man – Lynard Skynard
The World's Largest Ball of Twine was smaller than he remembered.
He picked Toby up so the kid could see across the top of the big twine ball without craning his neck.
Toby squinted with concentration, and asked the question that Sam had asked years back.
"Why?"
Why did anyone make a giant wad of twine thirteen feet high? Who knew?
He set Toby down and shrugged. "Because they can? You should see the one in Kansas."
Toby's eyebrows shot up, like enormous twine balls were popping into existence all around him.
"The ball of string in Weston is more interesting." Sam injected.
Dean felt his own eyebrows ratchet up before he glanced at Sam. "I thought you hated it."
Sam looked away, eyes skimming over the world's biggest cat toy in front of them, not directly answering. "The Weston one is more solid. Plus it's made of pure mailing string, not twine,—so it'd take longer to make. And it's dense enough to stop a bazooka round."
When did Sam become a twine ball snob? It couldn't be because he dragged Sam to see them all—the one in Darwin, the barbed wire balls, the giant yarn ball (musty), and of course the big mailing string ball, although they might have gone to that one a few extra times because it was in a pub and that waitress Chrissie was …
Sam coughed.
Dean glared at his brother, because he hadn't been thinking out loud and it wasn't his fault Sam could read his face.
Toby tugged on his hand, distracted by something across the way.
"They've got a vampire killing kit!"
He'd forgotten about that—and the way Toby would fasten his attention on it. It wouldn't work, anyway—the garlic and the wooden stakes, and before he had even finished thinking that, Zee said as much.
"That stuff won't work. You have to cut their heads off. And you're too short for that."
Unfazed by the curt discouragement in her tone, Toby frowned.
"Then what do I do?"
Run and hide was on the tip of his tongue, when Sam's voice cut in, flat.
"Dead man's blood."
What the hell?
He glared at Sam again. What was Sam doing? And Mr. Soccer-instead-of-bow-hunting stared right back at him, the kid should know.
Toby looked over at Sam, his attention caught, and Sam lectured on.
"Dead man's blood. It's like vamp poison. It won't kill them, but it'll make them very, very sick, and it'll slow them down enough for you to get them."
As Toby filed that away in his head Dean had to scramble to get his bearings. WTF? Exactly when did Sam turn into Dad? Where was Toby going to get his hands on dead man's blood anyway? He saw that exact question forming in the kid's eyes, and before Toby could ask, Dean glanced around the room, looking for something, anything—
"Hey. Hey, come on. Let's go have a look at that two-headed calf."
Dean started in on him as soon as they got in the car.
"You want to explain yourself?"
"What?" Sam looked out the window, though he knew perfectly well what.
"Dead man's blood." Dean snapped. "It'll slow them down enough so you can get them." Dean mimicked his tone before yelling. "HE'S EIGHT, SAM."
Sam glanced down at his hands, and said quietly, "We won't always be there to look out for him, Dean. He's going to need to know how to take care of himself."
Dean gaped at him before Dean gave him a hard stare.
"He's eight, Sammy." Dean repeated firmly, as if it meant something.
Sam glanced out the window again, at Branson's passing main drag, before answering.
"Dad taught us how to shoot when we were seven."
"WELL MAYBE DAD SHOULDN'T HAVE!"
"You taught him how to shoot."
"A SHOTGUN WITH ROCK SALT. SO HE COULD DEFEND HIMSELF!"
"And WHERE ALL do you think this is going, Dean?" He snapped back. There was no periphery to the life, no clear edges. There was no half-in, half-out, and Dean knew it. They'd lost people because of it.
Dean glared at him.
"Look. It can't hurt for him to know some stuff. I mean, he may never run into vampires. For all we know, he may quit the life when he grows up. But in the meantime," Sam turned his hands over, staring at the veins standing out on the back of them. Veins that had throbbed with heat and grace, stark against Kevin's forehead. Sam closed his eyes sharply against the memory. "In the meantime, it can't hurt him to know a few more things. What to look out for."
Dean shot him a sharp glance.
"I thought you were all in favor of normal, Sam."
"I…" Sam started and stopped, before he sighed. "Some people don't get normal, Dean. We didn't get normal."
Hurt flashed across Dean's face, quick and gone.
Sam opened his mouth, and closed it again.
Because they'd been here before, hadn't they? The Motley Crue concerts, the wacky roadside sights gleaned from all those cheesy pamphlets Dean was forever picking up from motel lobbies.
The sign for "Lynard Skynard Tonight!" flashed in large bright letters just up ahead. Dean glanced at it, then at him, Dean's lips pursed tight. It was a horrible idea in so many ways—mixing in a crowd, and his brother, the demon—, and they should just avoid the whole situation and call it a night.
"Are we going or not?" Dean asked brusquely, as if he didn't care, leaving the decision in his hands.
He skewed a sideways glance at Dean, for all the places Dean had dragged him to, because I'm bored and it's sunny outside, Sammy, come on.
Sam swallowed the lump in his throat.
"Yeah, alright. We should go." He met his brother's eyes. "We'll go."
The hex bag would have hit Dean in the chest had he not reached out reflexively to catch it when Zee tossed it at him across the table the next morning. He had a millisecond's thought that catching it might not be the best move—because some hex bags burned—but this wasn't one of them. The minute it hit his hand blessed silence fell all around him, like a blanket dropped down muffling all the thinking going on around him in the restaurant. It hadn't been bad, but it took a little concentrating to shut that shit out, and the background static had been grating at him since he activated his people finding power.
He turned the leather pouch over curiously in his palm, where it rested cool against his skin. Near as he could tell, it was having about the same effect as the iron cuff, minus the skin stripping, earth-tethering part. He switched hands and looked more closely at his palm. Nope. No burns.
Huh.
How did she know?
She was unnecessarily getting Toby settled in at the table, not looking at him, not saying anything. Her hair fell over one shoulder as she reached down for something, and like a sensory blast of memory, he remembered the clean smell of it, from last night, when he'd been standing next to her, between her and Sam, at the concert. Safest place for him, between the overlapping efficacies of their two hex bags somehow muffling the crowd, and safest for everyone else if he suddenly lost it between songs and went postal.
So maybe he'd been standing a little closer to her; not touching, but close enough that his breath ruffled her hair. It was crowded. She had stayed so absolutely still he didn't think she'd noticed.
Except, clearly, she had.
He pursed his lips, and it wasn't a pout. It was a frown. It was a frowning pout. He looked at the hex bag in his hand again.
What exactly was she saying here?
"Don't you like it?" Toby's voice interrupted his thoughts. "I have one too."
He stared at the bit of leather in his hand again, because now that he thought about it, having it was completely illogical. He was a friggin' demon. Did demons carry hex bags?
And because Toby was still staring at him expectantly, he forced himself to answer.
"Yeah. Sure. It's good."
Toby smiled widely at him and returned his attention to the menu, thinking no more of it. It wasn't that simple though, and Sam knew it too, because Sam was zeroing in on him, with that What haven't you told me now? look on his face.
He flipped the pouch from one hand casually to the other, his eyes on the hunter across the table. Unbreakable devil's trap under her house. Demon wards every two feet. A hex bag on her that was stronger than Sam's.
"Dean."
Sam cut into his thoughts. Patience laid over impatience, glaring at the bit of cowhide in his hand.
Dean cleared his throat again before answering.
"Being able to find people. Like I said, it's loud."
As in, he could hear everyone around him, all the time, even when he wasn't looking at them. Babble, babble, babble; every transgression, every sin, and the Mark itched to slaughter them all.
"Your hex bags kind of, I dunno, damp out the noise."
Sam's eyes narrowed on him, and he could see Sam mentally reviewing where he'd been standing the past few days. Sam remembering what it meant when he saw people. Sam's lips tightened unhappily.
"Dean. You know, maybe we should…"
Head back to the bunker. Go somewhere safe, as in safely isolated, as in somewhere where the only person he could hurt was Sam, his warden and his keeper.
His hand closed around the small pouch. Toby looked up again, catching on to the serious drift in Sam's voice. Beside the kid, Zee was intently perusing the menu, despite the fact she only ever ordered coffee each morning.
He cleared his throat again.
"No, Sam. I'm good. This works." He stared at the hunter across the table from him again before he repeated. "This'll work."
For the rest of the day and into the next, Dean Winchester gave her a wide berth, and by wide berth, she meant a wide berth, like the boundaries of her personal space had grown to the size of a room, like he was in a huff and a puff with his panties in a bunch about the hex bag. Well, fine. Maybe Sam was used to finding his brother no more than six inches away from him on a daily basis, but she wasn't. It hadn't been exactly hard to figure out what his problem was—this had only really started when he'd gone after Toby.
When he used his powers.
And she figured, since she broke it, she should fix it.
He was eying her from across a parking lot again, questions upon questions in his eyes she wasn't about to answer.
"Zee?"
She looked back over her shoulder at Sam.
"No, nothing for me, thanks."
They had stopped off at some smoothie joint, Sam's suggestion, although no one could be talked into the wheat grass thing Sam was having added to his power drink.
"Will it make me tall like you?" Toby asked.
"Uh, not exactly." Sam admitted reluctantly. "But it's good for you. And it doesn't taste half bad, I promise."
One of Toby's eyebrows crooked up skeptically.
"I'll just have the strawberry, if that's okay."
"Sure."
She turned towards the counter to pay for Toby's drink, and stared at the menu while they waited for the drinks and the change.
When she turned back the parking lot was empty.
"Sam."
Sam pivoted around, tensing up. He did one quick sweep of the small lot with sharp eyes, left to right. Sam's voice stayed impressively even when he said, "I'm sure he'll be back soon." and handed Toby his drink with a fair imitation of calmness. "But we should get back to the cars. In case."
They were halfway there when Dean just appeared in front of them. Sam let out a strangled yelp then hissed: "DEAN!"
Frantically Sam looked back at the window of the shop, but they were blocking any view. Or at least, the giant-ness of Sam was blocking any view.
"God! Don't do that!" Sam paused for breath and went back to fussing. "What if someone saw you?"
"Oh, relax, Sam. No one saw. I was just…" and the look Dean leveled at her was directed. "…checking some stuff."
Checking that he could still teleport, checking that the hex bag wasn't a trap. The thought had crossed her mind—it was a bit of an occupational hazard—but she'd left those ingredients out. He saw the awareness in her eyes, and his answering not-a-smile was narrowly grim.
Sam was still pitching a fit, however, staring at the cups of coffee Dean was holding in his hands.
"Coffee? You teleported just to get COFFEE?"
Dean made an impatient cluck and looked pointedly at Sam's green drink.
"Coffee." Dean said firmly, holding onto the two cups. "Because unlike you, not everyone wants to drink the lawn."
Over the distance of five feet Dean thrust one of the cups stiffly out at her, his arm maximally extended, locked straight at the elbow and still two feet away, patently expecting her to do the same. Personal space, as requested, like two wingspans of it, and that was fine. She reached out for the coffee at a full arm's length, maintaining the five foot gap between them, ridiculous as it looked, and as her fingers touched the paper he let go, and the coffee cup slipped.
There was a thing about reflexes, having them, not thinking about them and just moving. In hunting, staying alive pretty much depended on having good reflexes. So he moved forward when she did, two hands trying to catch the same falling object, with him trying to call it like it was a fly ball in the outfield.
"I got it. I got…"
She was closer, but he was faster so it was kind of a tie, her fingers slipping around the cup when his fingers went around hers, and he looked down at their not quite entwined hands before finishing the sentence an octave lower.
"…it."
His larger hand wrapped over hers on the cup, warm and firm, steadying, skin sliding against skin, the slow smoothness electric. A thin layer of paper separated the steaming liquid from the touch of her fingers, and her hand felt delicate and fragile clasped between his hand and the cup, and he was too close, a foot away, heavy-lidded eyes on her sharply indrawn breath, sharp because of the heated strength all around her, curling her toes over the nothing of a touch, nothing, while her instincts jumped to the conclusion her mind had been avoiding.
Safe.
No.
No.
This was insane. This wasn't real.
She jerked her hand back, ready to let the coffee splatter to the ground, except he held on to it, the cup, not taking those damnably keen green eyes off her face. She pulled a steadying breath in through parted lips, dry lips, which automatically she corrected by licking and his eyes pulled straight to the motion.
Fuck.
Insofar as it was possible to snatch a cup of near boiling liquid out of someone's hands she did so, reaching forward again and positively filching the coffee from him, trying to do it all without breathing. She said come on, Toby without making any sound, and was forced to clear her throat and try again, making an utter cake of herself before she could croak out the words in a voice that didn't sound like her voice.
"Come on, Toby. Let's put the drinks in the car."
Instead of, you know, drinking them, like Toby was logically doing, sucking on the straw of his strawberry shake when she said this, and he looked reasonably confused, but complied by coming to her side anyway. She started walking towards the Durango, and she may have skewed her footsteps a little to the left to avoid walking right into Dean's electrified orbit again, but the car was that way anyhow.
It really was.
He stared after her as she strode off, feeling the illusion of his heart beating too fast, and tried to scrape his jaw off the floor.
What was that?
Unfortunately, he didn't have as much time as he wanted to ponder it, savor the deliciousness of it against his lips, maybe replay it in his head a few dozen times, because he had an extremely nosy and critical audience.
"Not everyone wants to drink the lawn? That's your line?" Sam drawled as Sam came up beside him, that damned Sam-smile playing around Sam's lips, like Sam was amused because Sam saw way too damned much.
To avoid answering, he took a sip of his coffee.
It was kind of tingly. And warm.
Tingly? Did he just use the word, tingly?
Dammit.
Glaring at the traitorous cup in his hand, he shifted where he stood without trying to be obvious about it, settle down, settle down, except it was hard to breathe normally when you didn't need air anyway. To distract himself he glanced at the icy green stuff that was in Sam's hand.
"Lawn." He repeated firmly. "What's in that crap, anyway?"
Sam sniffed. "Apples. Wheat grass. Organic spirulina."
He backed up and gave his brother a narrow-eyed look.
"Well, I'll be damned." He paused, then tacked on: "Crowley was right."
Taken completely aback, Sam sputtered, "What? Right about what?"
And since Sam totally deserved what was coming, Dean felt no remorse about keeping a straight face as he delivered his parting shot.
"You ARE a Moose."