Djinn and Tonic
K Hanna Korossy
They didn't split up anymore if they didn't have to. It was a lesson hard-learned and still often tossed aside as situations demanded, but the brash invincibility of youth had worn off years ago. They'd died too many times since then. Worse, they'd seen each other die too many times.
So Sam hadn't left his brother's side since they'd arrived at the abandoned store where they were pretty sure the djinn was holed up. And Dean, after one glance at Sam's tight expression, had wisely not suggested otherwise. Not with a djinn, not with their history.
For all the good it had done. Turned out the djinn had learned a few tricks its predecessors hadn't, too. Like how to booby trap its lair in case it was found by hunters. Sam was less than five feet from Dean when the floor opened up beneath Sam's feet and sent him plunging into darkness.
Alone.
He rolled when he hit bottom, just like he'd been taught, and the drop wasn't far. Besides being winded and bruising his shoulder, he was fine. The flashlight in his pocket was, too, and it didn't take long for him to figure out he was in some kind of small storage room in the basement, locked from the outside. The trap door above him had swung shut again, and there was an ominous lack of sound from above.
"Dean!" His voice echoed back to him. The floors were probably soundproof.
Sam set his jaw and started looking for a way out, trying not to think about what was happening upstairs.
It only took him about five minutes to find something suitable to pry off the hinges. The djinn either wasn't as smart as it thought, or it had only needed Sam temporarily incapacitated. It was the latter thought that urged Sam to quickly find the stairs. He took them three at a time; he'd been gone maybe seven minutes total when he skidded into the room where he'd last seen Dean.
Long enough.
Dean was down, limp on the floor but unrestrained, face slack and eyes dull. Sam still saw that expression in his nightmares sometimes, when he reached his brother too late and found him drained of blood, or too far gone in the djinn's fantasy to find his way back.
The djinn was crouched over its victim, eyes and fingers still glowing blue. It looked up and snarled at Sam's arrival, and Sam had a fleeting moment of recognition: the clerk at the ME's office they'd talked to just the previous afternoon, unremarkable features and bald head now overlaid with swirling tattoos. Sam didn't know if the djinn recognized him; it didn't bother with pleasantries before lunging at Sam.
He was prepared, though, unlike Dean had been. Fighting for his brother instead of shocked to find his brother had disappeared. Djinns were strong, but Sam only had to duck two blows before finding an opening to shove the blood-coated stake into the thing's chest.
The djinn's eyes flared twice before they closed and the creature crumpled. Sam paused only long enough to shove its falling body away before dropping to his knees beside his brother.
"Dean. Hey."
Dean's head lolled at the shaking, eyes unblinking. Still lost in the djinn's spell.
"Hang on," Sam said shakily and patted his pockets looking for the syringe he carried, just in case.
The wet spot and crunch of glass against his chest told him it hadn't survived the fall as well as Sam had.
Grimacing, Sam tore through Dean's pockets instead. There, in the right side of his jacket, a twin to the djinn anti-venin Sam had carried. He paused only long enough to pull off the cap and check to make sure there weren't any bubbles, then he jammed it into the vein in Dean's wrist.
Four seconds: he counted it in his head. Dean blinked once, then drew a sharp breath.
"That's it, that's it, come on," Sam chanted, sliding a palm between the cold face and the colder floor. "Dean?"
More blinking, and then Dean's brow furrowed as he tried to focus. His hand flailed up, knocking against Sam's leg. "Hmm. 'am?"
"Yeah, man, it's me. You with me?"
Dean squinted at him. He lifted his head, giving the room a groggy look before returning to Sam. "Wha' happened?"
"Djinn. Remember?"
He did. Sam saw it when the memory clicked into place. Dean's fuzziness vanished like a wall of steel had come down. In a way, it had. "Yeah," Dean muttered, shoving at the floor now. "Get me up."
Sam did half the work, but only had to hang on a few seconds before Dean found his balance. Still, he felt oddly reluctant to pull away. Dean's eyes had life and awareness in them again, but also a haunted look that was too familiar.
Dean spotted the djinn's body and, face darkening, gave it a hard prod with his boot. "Dead?"
"Yeah. I think it was the dude from the ME's office."
"What?" Dean was distracted, gaze sweeping the room but coming back again and again to the dead djinn.
"Never mind. You wanna go back to the car while I toast the body?"
Dean shook his head. "Get the lighter fluid."
He didn't want to leave Dean with the djinn. Technically they hadn't even swept the place to make sure the creature was alone, but that wasn't really why. Still, Sam chose his battles and went to get the supplies, rushing to return.
Dean had towed the body away from the walls, to the middle of the concrete floor by the time Sam returned. He watched impassively as Sam doused the djinn, but Dean was the one who dug out the matches and lit the pyre. Then stared at it until it had burned down enough that Sam was convinced they wouldn't set the building on fire.
"You ready?" Sam asked quietly.
"Hmm?" Dean wasn't quite with him, even when he dragged his eyes Sam-ward.
"To go home," Sam clarified.
"Yeah."
But he didn't argue, didn't even really seem to notice when Sam was the one who slid into the driver's seat. Dean just took the passenger side in self-contained silence, gaze turned inward.
They were ten minutes out of town, and Sam was still trying to figure out how to start the conversation, when his brother surprised him by speaking up.
"It was different this time."
Sam didn't need to ask; he'd been wondering just that, if this djinn had given Dean a different dream world. Or if this Dean, six years later, post-Purgatory and Bobby and Sam's Cage, had a different deepest desire.
Dean didn't look at him. "We were on a beach, you an' me. Just…hanging out. Beers, coupl'a pizzas, radio blasting. I helped a kid with a sand castle. You had a pile of mysteries."
Of the hundred reactions running through his mind, Sam picked the most benign. "Sounds nice."
"Mom wasn't there this time. Or Dad." Dean glanced at Sam for the barest of seconds. "No Jessica, or-or Carmen." Sam heard the catch, and thought about the beer ad Dean had secretly carried around in his wallet for years after the first djinn, until it had been replaced by a picture of Lisa and Ben. "Not even Bobby, or Charlie."
There was a silence, and Sam debated briefly if he was supposed to just listen, or if he could say something. But he did have something to say. "Okay, so…sounds like just a more realistic wish, right? Instead of going back and starting over, or loved ones coming back from the dead, this is what you long for now." He looked over at Dean, really looked. "Right?"
A long pause. "Yeah, I guess."
"And…that's okay, right?" Sam was really feeling around in the dark now.
Dean snorted. "I get my fantasy life, and it's sitting on my ass on a beach somewhere? Hey, you head west on 80 up here and we'll hit the Cali shore in a coupl'a days."
"With me reading mysteries and you building sand castles instead of looking for a job or for a way to close Hell?" Sam said gently. "Seriously?"
Dean rubbed his eyes, looking small. "You really think we can do that someday?" Sounding small, barely daring to hope. "Just hang up our guns and sit around getting tans?"
"Well, you'd burn, and get a million more freckles…"
"I don't have freckles," Dean muttered petulantly, as expected.
"But yeah, man," and Sam didn't even have to lie. "That light at the end of the tunnel, that could be sun on the beach." He was still a little sick from the first Trial, but they only had two more to go, and Kevin was working on it. If they succeeded, Dean's dream could still happen.
"Y'know, 'Sex on the Beach' is a drink," Dean murmured, more asleep than awake now. His posture had uncurled from slump to sleepy sprawl. "Mm, Cal'fornia girls…"
Sam shook his head and smiled. Because he hadn't missed that the only other person Dean needed in his dream world was Sam.
And Sam's own greatest wish, ultimately, was a happy ending for his brother.
The End