Dean dreams. At first, it's just flickers of images, like a movie reel. Just as quickly forgotten. Until they aren't.
In his dream, he's driving the Impala down a dark highway. Fog stretches over the road like smoke against licorice. In the backseat is that woman from a case they dealt with months before. Molly McNamara. Highway 41. Her hands are clenched around the Impala's worn leather, her shoulder length hair swaying in the breeze brought by the open back window. She speaks although Dean can't hear what she's saying. Her soulful, sad eyes turn towards the window, her mouth turning down in a pensive frown. Dean tries to ask her what's wrong, what she's trying to tell him, but he can't get the words out. His mouth is full of cotton, heavy and sickly.
Next, a memory. Fleshed out as if brand new. He's at Uncle Bobby's house. Sioux Falls. He's only twelve, but he's already got a side arm and a mouth on him. Even then, Bobby could see their personalities as clear as day-Dean, daddy's good little soldier, walking and talking like John the best he could. Sam, quieter, more reserved, introspective, looking at the world and really thinking about things before he acted. John has left them to go on a hunting trip in Montana. He had said he'd be gone a week. It has been over a month. It's summer, so they aren't in school. Bobby keeps trying to keep them from asking too many questions. Until he can't.
Bobby sits them down in the living room, says, "Boys, your dad's not coming back this time."
Dean screams, calls him a liar, tells him John is too tough to die. He pounds his fist on Bobby's chest, cursing. Sam sits. Quiet. Taking it all in. Too shocked to even move.
Bobby finally snaps. Says things about John he can't take back. Things that no son should ever hear about his father. Says John is an idiot, a damn fool for chasing the thing that'd killed their mom, that they'd be better off having been put in an orphanage after Mary died rather than being dragged around by John.
Dean storms off, disappears into the forest. Even in his dream-state, Dean can still taste the resentment and hatred on his tongue. He's gone for ten hours.
At midnight, Dean returns, standing at Bobby's doorstep, holding John's hand. John had found his son on the side of the highway, trying to hitch a ride to Montana to look for him.
Adult Dean is suddenly standing in an open meadow. The grass is Eden-green and thigh-high to a thrush. Above, the sky is a baby blue, punctuated with fluffy, drifting clouds. Somewhere in the distance, he hears the trinkle of water. The caramel soft scent of spring flowers sways on the wind. Jessica is standing in front of him. She's not the Jessica from Stanford, the one in the too tight Smurf's t-shirt. She's the Jessica from his supernatural hallucination, when that bastard Djinn captured him and fed him that false reality. Mom alive. Sam engaged to Jess. No monsters. No hunting. A perfect little falsity. She's smiling at him. Her blond curls dance around her shoulders, cascading down her back.
She grabs his hands and pulls, twisting around. Just like that painting in the library, the little Victorian family dancing before the blazing hearth. They are spinning, spinning into oblivion.
Jess falls. Dean does, too.
He's in a dim hallway. The wallpaper is moldy and flaky. Festooned on the walls are paintings. Severed heads on golden platters. Hooved men with shiny, sharp horns sticking out of blistering temples. Women's faces drawn with pain, giving birth to abominations. There's a sound, like the buzzing of flies, or the buzzing of bees.
Dean hears laughter from the other room. He tries to ignore it. But it grows louder, more insistent. And he thinks he can hear Sam, too. He turns the corner and peers inside. Jo is sitting in a chair, shirtless. Her pale breasts gleam in the low light. Sam is kneeled between her legs, his mouth latched on a spot above her left nipple. On his head is a crown of dark thorns.
Jo's laughing, running her fingers sensually through Sam's overgrown hair, careful not to cut her wrist on his blasphemous crown. Her eyes are beetle black. Dean takes a startled step back. Jo's eyes snap towards him and she laughs harder, her face twisted in a masked of malicious pleasure. Sam peels his mouth away from her breast. Dean shutters.
Sam smiles. His teeth and chin drip blood. Droplets fall, pregnant, onto the dusty hardwood floor.
"Dean." Sam whispers, reaches for him. Beckoning him.
Jo laughs and laughs and laughs.
Dean runs from the threshold, down another hallway. Down another.
He turns around a corner and is met by-
Destruction.
He's in the middle of a busy street. It's like something out of the Middle East, except it isn't the Middle East. It's Midwest America. People stream past him. Some people are weeping. Most are covered in gray, thick ash. Some people are bleeding. Staggering. Injured. Disoriented. Some are carrying children. Some are carrying bags. All around him are the burnt-out husks of buildings. Damaged cars left to rot on the street. Fire looms on the horizon. Fire is coming. Coming for them all.
"Dean."
Sam's voice. Dean turns.
Sam is standing a few yards away. Dean sees him in flickers through the luxating crowd. Sam is in that funeral suit again, his eyes so yellow they cast a faint glow. In the sky behind his brother's shoulders, Dean can see smoke rising, black and thick.
"Dean." Sam repeats.
Dean wakes with a jolt. Sunlight pours through the window, leaks across the threadbare quilt, across Dean's face. Warm. Dean stares at the ceiling, momentarily disoriented. What day is it? What is he to do today? The animals are back, perhaps he can hunt for meat again. Forage for apples. Ignore the empty ache left by Sam's absence.
Sam.
Everything comes back to Dean in a torrent of emotion. The break-in. The attempted rape. Sammy but not Sammy. The sound of Sam tearing that woman's heart out. Dean is frozen. His heart clenches in his chest. He clutches at his stomach. He's going to hurl in a second, if he doesn't get it together. Bursts of simultaneous grief, worry, fear, and sadness slam over Dean in waves, dragging him into an immoveable state.
Dean lies there for a long time. His heart jackhammers. His palms sweat. He closes his eyes, curses himself for crying. He listens. He thinks he can hear something downstairs. Of course. Sam said he was going to clean up the mess. The mess he made. The mess Dean should have been man enough to stop.
His eyes drift around the room. The door is open, but he's all alone. If the sun is any indication, it's early afternoon. He licks his lips and sits up, resting against the bedframe, running the back of his hand across his eyes. The air smells crisp, clean. Summer air. But there's another fragrance wafting from somewhere below, the fatty aroma of cooking bacon. Dean hasn't felt any less hungry in his life.
He swings his legs off the side of the bed. He glances down at his bare feet. The kerosene lantern is back where it's supposed to be, on the bedside table. The oil is cleaned up. Dean feels a trickling sensation of betrayal and shuttering fear lick up his spine. Sam put him to sleep with a kiss. A kiss. That's it.
Dean has never felt more outmatched.
And…Sam was in the room while Dean was unconscious. Dean rubs the back of his neck. Normally, he wouldn't think twice about it, but Sam isn't Sam anymore. Not…exactly. What if Sam did something to him while he was asleep? Dean shakes his head. No. He can't think like that. He feels fine. Sam didn't…Sam wouldn't.
(Are you sure about that?)
Dean stares at the open door, expecting his brother to reappear any minute. He knows Sam is downstairs in the kitchen. There's the rustling of pots and the hiss of an egg frying (When did Sam learn to cook? More importantly, how the hell is he using any of the appliances without electricity?). Dean lets out a slow breath and readies his muscles. He has only one shot at this.
He slowly, silently gets up. He's tempted to search for weapons in the room but knows there won't be any. The survivors probably looked through every nook and cranny and his favorite gun is God knows where. He makes his way over to the window and unlocks the clasp. He reaches down and tries to slip his fingers between the bottom and the ledge.
Except…it won't budge.
"Shit." Dean murmurs under his breath, straining. The muscles in his biceps protest. He's opened it before. It must be stuck from the humidity. That's all. A totally non-Supernatural explanation.
Dean bares all his weight up, his knees giving their protests of displeasure. After a few more tries, Dean backs up, shaking the soreness from his arms. He glances behind him at the door, then back again at the window, sure Sam will be there any second. He lets out a breath and darts for the kerosene lamp. He pulls his arm back, aims for the center of the glass, and swings.
Thud!
Pain splinters up Dean's arm. The glass doesn't even waver. Panicked (Sam surely heard him that time), he begins to bash the bottom of the lantern against the window.
Bam! Bam! Bam-
"It won't work."
Dean stiffens, stops mid swing. He turns on his heel. Sam is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. He has taken off his suit coat to reveal his white button down. The shirt is pulled up at the elbows, revealing his bare forearms. Underneath the spicy, deep scent of cloves and cinnamon and Sam's natural scent wafting towards Dean is sweat and dirt and the coppery overlay of scrubbed blood.
"That so?"
"Dean, calm down."
"I'll be calm once you stop with your Hellraiser impression." Dean jabs the lantern in front of him. It's ridiculous, sure, but Dean has had to contend with worse makeshift weapons.
"You gonna hit me with that?" Sam asks, his voice suddenly soft and strangely intimate.
Guilt twists in Dean's belly. Could he hit Sam? This fucked up, demonic version of Sam? Sure. Maybe. No.
Fuck.
Sam must see the flash of emotion cross Dean's face; his brother gives him a small, knowing smile, something indistinct flashing in his too yellow eyes.
"Everything is cleaned up. I made lunch." Sam says, jerking his head towards the hallway. "Why don't you come down?"
"What did you do to the window?" Dean retorts. He lowers the lantern.
"Protection spell."
"Protection spell, huh?" Dean raises an eyebrow. "I'd say you're trying to keep me in."
Normally, Sam would swing pleading, puppy dog eyes in Dean's direction. Begging for Dean's forgiveness. He'd try to make it up to him. But Sam just shrugs nonchalantly.
"Like I said, I'm not stupid. I know you." He pushes away from the threshold. "Come down when you're ready."
Sam disappears into the hallway. Dean stares at the dark absence of his brother, waits for Sam to pop his head back in. He doesn't.
Dean has never liked people walking away in the middle of a conversation. He stalks over to the bedside table, slams the lantern down, and storms out of the room. His gusto is torn from him when he's halfway down the staircase, when memories of last night thrust into his skull, when he remembers exactly what Sam did. He slows, grasping the banister. Morning light streams through the whole house. Dean doesn't think the day has any right to be this bright. This stupidly pleasant.
Even if he really doesn't want to, Dean forces himself to go into the parlor. He is hit with the pungent, citrusy odor of lemon cleaner. The furniture has been rearranged. The chair is missing. The Devil's Trap has been scrubbed off the hundred-year-old hardwood floors. An impressive feat, indeed. The hearth is cold and dark, the grandfather clock ticking insistently in the corner. There's no bodies. No blood. There is no indication that any heinous act was ever committed.
Dean recoils. He turns towards the kitchen, takes hesitant steps, letting the dry soles of his bare feet scratch against the wood. There's a low buzzing sound, like bees. He pauses at the threshold. Sam's back is turned to him. He's in front of the stove, slipping fat, greasy sausages from the frying pan onto a wide yellow plate. Beside the plate are two smaller blue plates. There are more plates in a line on the counter. Fluffy yellow eggs. Crisp bacon. Apple slices. Grapefruit. Toast. There's a container of orange juice beside two glasses (How did Sam get OJ?) and Dean is pretty sure that's a basket of freshly picked strawberries behind the plate of toast.
Dean blinks in surprise. The buzzing is from the refrigerator. It's on. Did Sam get the electricity to work somehow? He glances around the small kitchen. The August heat filters in through the window. Dean remembers scar-face breaking in. The little window is wholly broken-the bottom of the glass like a monster's teeth-but the salt that was scattered below on the round table has been swept up. He glances at the floor. The Devil's Trap is scrubbed away from this room, too.
"Do you want a little of everything?"
Dean glances up. Sam is watching him over his shoulder, a fork grasped in his oversized hand. His overgrown hair is pushed away from his forehead, his face flushed from the heat of the electric stove. If Dean looks past the strange eyes, he can see his brother, his lover, underneath. When he doesn't answer, Sam gives him a quizzical look bordering on impatient.
Dean swallows thickly, tries to find his breath. "Sure. That sounds great."
Dean watches in silence as Sam forks scrambled eggs, bacon, a handful of strawberries, apple slices, two pieces of toast, and half a grapefruit onto one of the blue plates. He stretches the plate towards him. Dean moves forward to take it, makes sure their fingers don't touch. He backs away towards the kitchen table, sits down so his back is against the wall, and watches Sam pour two glasses of orange juice.
Dean stiffens when one of the orange juices lifts gently up from the counter and floats its way towards him. He glances at Sam, but Sam is occupied filling his own plate. The glass sits down beside Dean's plate. Dean gnaws on his bottom lip, attempts to ignore that haunting, horrible feeling of failure that's pushing up through his throat.
When Sam turns around with his plate and cup, he has a calm, sincere expression on his face. He sits down across from Dean, hands him a spoon and fork. Dean slips the utensils between his glass and the plate.
"What, no knife?"
Sam doesn't bother to respond to that particular jab.
"Where did you get this food?" Dean asks. If Jerome was right, demons are topside destroying the world and enslaving humanity. It isn't like a guy could pop into Whole Foods or Wal-Mart.
"I have my ways. Don't worry about it." Sam says dismissively, taking a sip of his orange juice.
Dean suppresses a glower. He watches Sam grab his own fork and dig in, stabbing a big piece of scrambled egg on the tines.
Dean's stomach growls. Would Sam hurt him? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, Sam poisoning him. Sam could probably kill him with a thought. The thought of that makes Dean stomach twist uncomfortably. Sam notices Dean's expression because he raises an eyebrow, asks, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, man." He glances down at the heaping pile of food. His stomach gives a lurch. Dean remembers something he'd heard about homeless people once, about eating so much after so long having so little. It could kill a man. Cause his stomach to burst. After foraging on peanut butter and apples, the aroma of so much rich, fattening food is overwhelming.
He sets his fork down. "Sam, tell me what happened."
"After we eat, okay?"
"No," Dean shakes his head. "Now."
Sam sighs, sets down his own fork, and swallows. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Fine. What do you want to know?" Sam says, leaning back in his chair.