The Audience With Forever – Chapter 2
Notes: Where are the brakes on this thing, I ask? Seems that there are none! Still, thanks for your very kind reviews and I do hope someone continues to enjoy this odd story o' mine. Also, there is Elricest smut in this chapter.
"Okay, here we go!" Al chirped, the very top of his head, the odd strand of hair that stuck up at a strange angle similar to his brother's, all that could be seen of him behind the canvas bags. He set them down at the kitchen table, letting little post-it notes flutter and the epidermis-thin pages of their father's journals rustle and hiss. "Beer, chips - hey, Noa, I got some chocolates for you!"
"She has to watch her sugar intake." Edward didn't look up from his notes and blindly reached for the bag of chips.
"And she does!" Al peeled off the gold wrapper. Noa smirked, her eyes alight, warm and mischievous, like her youth.
"Finally." Dean tossed Sam a bottle.
"And that is why I had to fight with the cashier." Al wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving melted chocolate all along the pockets.
"Can't blame the guy." Sam took a sip. Cold. Perfect. "Fake ID?"
Noa motioned Al closer, and closer, and he thread his small fingers through her grey hair as she whispered into his ear. She touched his bare shoulders with some degree of familiarity.
"Ah, I see." He hummed as he turned away, then suddenly planted his palms on the table and leaned playfully between Sam and Dean. "Then again, Sam, you would know all about fake IDs, wouldn't you?" He smiled cheekily, and turned that cheeky smile to Dean, and went back about to putting away groceries.
Sam could only have it in him to laugh, dimples clear in the buttery sunlight of the kitchen, against his new-shaven face. He laughed, freely, at the quirk of Dean's eyebrows and his brother's resolution to focus on a well-deserved beer.
"Stop flirting with them and help me." Ed ground out between his teeth, shoving a stack of papers at Al's general direction.
"I am NOT - really, Brother, you are horribly unreasonable at times." Al said, snappily, as he sat himself in a chair cross-legged and began to scan the notes, the typical softness of his voice going high, and a distinct taste of an English accent filtering through mostly American pronounciations. "Just because you have all the social graces and interpersonal skills of silica nitrate does not mean anyone else who happens to talk to their guests wants to-mmph!"
Ed uncurled his fingers from Al's collar and playfully pushed his brother back onto the chair. Al's lips still stained in an almost innocent flush from the harsh and abrasive kiss Edward had given him, soft, utterly pliant adoration gentling his eyes in the face of Edward's mischivious, brash grin.
Dean put the bottle to his lips and tilted his head back, swanlike, and emptied the remaining beer in one powerful swing. With a 'clunk' amidst the rustling of paper, he set it down and reached across Sam for a second bottle. "I need this." He said, bluntly. Sam handed the bottle over, without a word, unsure of where to look.
"Emerald Tab-" Ed started to say.
"What time is it?" Al said, suddenly.
"Check out line four -"
"What time is it?"
Dean flicked the old leather cuff of his jacket off his watch. "Nine twenty-seven."
"SHIT!" Al shot right up from his chair as if he'd been burned. "I mean, oh, darnit -"
"Alphonse, pay attention. Ow - " Ed snarled in pain when Al grabbed him by his ponytail and jerked his head back to look up and away from his notes.
"Caltech." Was all Al said, and Ed's eyes widened.
"Shit. Shit! Al, what time is it?" Ed nearly knocked his chair over in his rush, his footsteps heavy on the staircase.
"Nine twenty-seven!" Dean yelled up after him, and shrugged at Sam's questioning look.
There was a crash and a yelp, and then more running.
"At least put on deodorant!" Al yelled upstairs from somewhere in the livingroom.
"Where the fuck is my shirt?" Ed roared, the man sure had a pair of lungs if he could be heard from the second floor.
There was a whirlwind of Al through the kitchen and the french doors that lead to the laundry room, some muttering, socks flew from the doorway and landed on the table, a pair of clean boxers sliding across the kitchen floor, only to be snatched up by a playful dog. Noa complacently nibbled a piece of chocolate, and lifted, clumsily, her tea mug to her lips.
"Here! In the laundry room! I'm ironing it!"
"Fuck ironing." Ed's footsteps thudded unevenly as he hastily decended the stairs, fumbling with his belt, neatly stepping over a kitten as if it was all old hat. "Where is it?"
"Here, here, oh, Guinevere, scoot!" Al gently toed said kitten away as he held open his brother's shirt. Ed slid one arm through, and Dean stared, mouth agape, Sam a mirror of confused disbelief.
It wasn't the scars covering Ed's chest, spread over and twisting his skin like disease. They wouldn't be hunters worth their salt if that was it.
The sunlight skittered and gleamed off the smooth, finely-crafted metal, into the crevices where wire, blue and yellow and red, twined, hidden, deep beneath the plates formed in a rough mimic of a human arm. Edward ended at his ribs and the slope of his shoulders, over where his right shoulderblade should be, the skin against metal tough and hard, almost plastic.
"It's like the fucking Terminator."
Ed looked up and glared from where he was struggling with his shirt buttons, and Al did the same from where he was finishing the last securement of Ed's tie.
"It's rude to comment on people's appearance, you know." Al said, snottily, as he finished Ed's tie and unkindly slapped Ed's hands away to finish his buttons himself. A jacket came after, and a suitcase, Al ushering Ed out the door with the reminder to 'drive carefully, tickets are expensive!'
From the open window of the sleek, black car, Ed yelled "Love you!" and Al smiled demurely, leaned against the doorway, every image the lovesick fool, casting his brother a fond look as he watched the car pull through the wrought-iron gates.
Upon turning to the kitchen, Al looked at Dean's wide eyes, and Sam's mouth working around a bottleneck of questions. He set his hands on his hips and exhaled through his nose, a frustrated sound, round cheeks puffing comically. "Oh, bugger."
Even the sway of the trees outside seemed to still. Alphonse refused to sit down, and Sam and Dean had come to their feet, planted easily apart, as confident lions, it seemed. Al knew that posture, he held it himself, between them and Noa, who watched, unreadable.
Al finally sighed, in that little adaptation of femininity, and fixed them with a stony expression, ill-matched to his cherub face. "We can keep this little showdown as long as you want, but I'm not saying a thing until Brother gets back home."
"I am so FUCKING SICK OF THIS." Dean finally roared. "Brother this, Brother that, can you do a single goddamn thing without -"
"Dean." Sam hissed.
"As a matter of fact, no." Al said, a waver in his unbroken voice, a tick at the corner of his lips. "I trust his judgement."
"Oh, well that's just cute." Dean mocked, pacing, stepping on scattered notes and laundry strewn over the terra-cotta tile. "We're WASTING our goddamn time here, Sam! Clearly, immortality has made this 'Professor Elric' INSANE and his little bitchboy here ain't doing us no favors -"
"Dean, that's enough." Sam said, firmly, stepping in front of his brother to intercept his agitated, almost caged pacing. He knew that look, that look with too much green and white in his eyes, that part of it where Dean was likely to say something utterly hairbrained and compulsive and blow it all to shit.
"We are running out of time, Sammy." Dean made himself broad and strong in the cross of his arms and the fray of his hair between his blunt fingers as he scratched at his scalp, frustration coloring his voice unpredictable. "We are running out of time and I can't fucking pretend we're on a goddamn hunt much longer."
"A hunt?" Al's asked, sharply, and shifted -
"No, no, it's not what it sounds like." Sam turned on him, and smiled, open face, honest, open palms, basics of interpersonal communication, shit he'd read on at Stanford, good to know when talking circles around the courtroom, shit he already knew from watching his dad gather intel from grieving families. "I think we all need to just calm down and -"
Thing is, that shit didn't work on Alphonse, if the coquetteish tilt of the boy's hips and narrow of his eyes said anything. Hell, it didn't work on Noa, the patiently amused look she gave him bone-gratingly condescending. Didn't work on Dean either, because his brother twisted his lips into a mocking sneer and turned away, roaring into the empty livingroom, "They find out about this, that bitch, Sam, you DROP DEAD - this shit ain't worth it - tell me" Dean turned on Alphonse. "this is how it is? You bend over for your crazy-ass brother for everything, don't you?"
"DEAN!"
"What do you mean, a hunt?" Al said, clearly, his voice piercing between the extremes of Sam's appeal and roar of Dean's frustration.
"The deal - " Sam looked at his brother, his lips a thin line of frustration. " - the deal Dean made with the demon, he tries to get out of it..." He shifted his center of gravity, and lowered his voice. "...he tries to get out of it, I die. The deal's undone and I die. So we're pretending -" He looked up, to nothing, frustrated at the inability of words. " - pretending we're hunting. You."
Alphonse said nothing.
"See, there. Look, I told you the truth, right? So then -"
Al looked away from him, to Noa, and the dotty old woman looked up from flipping through a goddamn magazine to nod her verification.
"-so then I owe you something?" Al shook his head. "You came to us for help, Mr. Winchester, it's your objective to supply us with the information we will need. The equivalency of the exchange we will reciprocate is at our descretion."
"So, basically, you can tell us to FUCK OFF and DIE." Dean yelled to the wallpaper.
Al frowned at Dean's tense, broad back. "It's saddening how little you think of me, Dean." He said, quietly, his voice quite small. "I do want to help, and Brother does too, maybe we don't fit into your definition of human but I am." His fingers trembled, barely, and Sam caught it. "I am."
"Oh, really?" Dean laughed, and Sam turned away to rub his temples, the circles of their standoff dizzying.
Al turned back to the mess of a kitchen table, fingertips trailing over the valley and hills of notes and books, picking up ones with worn leather spines and faceless covers, journals. "I think..." He held the journals as if they were a lover's hand as he turned to them. "I think I can tell you about what we know is Truth."
"Speak slowly and use small words." Dean said, sarcastically.
"That's not what I meant."
"You meant without your Brother here." Sam said, surely, and Al didn't protest. He sat down, put himself at a vulnerability, and looked up at Al across the table. He saw the odd way Al stood, his elbows tucked in and his feet properly together, the gentle way he held and moved. No boy he'd seen, and fewer girls, were so dainty and careful the way he was. "Are you scared of him, Al?"
In retrospect, he'd seen very little of Edward's dynamic with Alphonse. They contradicted each other and bickered when they weren't talking on the same thought in an almost eerie telepathy. Edward snapped and snipped at Alphonse like a dog at the heels of a young lamb, and held the boy with frightening strength, the shape of his fingertips clear on the skin of Al's arms. Still, Al only smiled.
Smiled at Sam and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. "No, I'm not scared of him."
"Well." Dean only sat when Al sat, resting his elbows on his knees, his hair askew in every direction from agitated gestures, his voice weary. "You gotta see it the way we do."
"I am at a loss when he isn't here." Al said, easily, and undid a bone and leather clasp on one of the journals. "It's not that I fear him, it's that he is the other half of the way I think, and I'm unsure in how to approach this without him." He looked up at them, and smiled a little. "You two are, after all, the only ones we've decided to help in this particular respect. I'm not at all sure how to go about this, you understand."
"I see."
"I know he's brash and rude, believe me." Al neatly straightened the notes and pens and journals. "I know what it looks like, but he is a very good man, and he has helped a lot of people, and despite the way he snaps at me, he does love me." Al opened a journal, a journal with circles in the intricate creation of symbols and geometry, the old rust of long-forgotten words. Dean leaned closer to take a look, but not too close. Right before Al spoke, in careful words, and basic terms, he looked at Sam, and the understanding there set a rock sinking into the sudden instability of his core.
Sam let his fingers linger over a page unremarked, somewhere in the middle, ignoring the odd little illustrations of small, featureless men sketched into sperm diagrams, images he'd seen in the now two-dimensional aspect of outdated Alchemy he'd come to know. Beside them, an unfit parallel, the bold lines of a dragon in ink, with off little wings and a strong, gaping maw, the tip of his tail curving around to his mouth. The Ouroboros.
Sure, he'd seen the symbol before, in assortments of Phoenix and Fire, from China and from Medieval Europe and the Middle East, for Eterinity, for Cycle, for Death and Rebirth, and never in the well-memorized, stark, bold lines he'd seen, almost modern in their design.
It was unsettling, the ink unfaded, pages which had been tucked away from the light of lamp or sun until now. The roughness of his fingertips meant nothing against the still-smooth India ink, and he memorized carefully this last resort.
"No." Al whispered, suddenly at his side, and reached out to grab his hand and move it away. "No. Please don't think that."
"Noa good?" Dean asked, out of politeness, than anything. Her frail shoulders had drooped and drooped as if they carried the weight of the entire mistrust. She had complained, in a thin voice, when Al insisted she go to bed.
Neither heard him.
"But you said -" Sam found his voice thick, like the smoke of his apartment and his nursery.
"I tried. We tried. We created a monster."
"Dean- "
"We didn't think our mother could be, either." Al hadn't let go of his hand, small and warm and strong and holding him firmly to place, palm flat on the worn, gleaming table. "There were others. Sam, please, this has hurt enough people. There is another way."
"I know, but - say, if it doesn't work -"
"Then Dean would be better off dead." Al said, small in the starkness of his factuality. Sam inhaled sharply and looked away, his fingers curling under his palm, despite the weight of Al's hand.
"Might wanna rethink that." Dean leaned back, poising confidence in the rickety old chair he'd easily claimed as 'his' seat. "Hell eats you away. Leaves you nothing."
"Noa said your dad survived it."
"I ain't my dad. I'm not half the hunter he was." Dean replied, slowly, startled to see the slight glimmer in Al's eyes.
"Then you would be a physical demon." They had to strain to hear him. "Homunculi don't have souls either."
"It says that they wanted to become human." Sam stared at the sleek, bold shape. "This 'Lust' woman, she died helping you, didn't she? From what I can garner of the documentation -"
"Lust was a victim of a horrible war. Her grieving lover tried to bring her back, and it played a part in the decimation of nearly an entire culture." Al whispered. "She wanted to be human, but she hated and was so afraid of what it meant. We - our mother, or what was meant to be our mother, tried to kill my brother. They don't have souls. They are the face, and fragments of the original memories, perfect in every way except without a soul, they have no sanity, no grounding force in their minds. I actually felt sorry for them sometimes."
"Why?"
"Wrath was permanently a child, until he decided to die. He was always afraid of losing his mother, although he hated his real mother, and filled with such anger." He turned to look at Dean, as if in condemnation. "He may remain, physically, but there will be nothing left that means anything."
"You manage it." Sam's voice was vague, lost almost.
"I am not a homunculus." Al said, softly, in a delicate manner of soothing wounds and illness.
"You and your brother - you live forever, never age, never get sick, I presume? And you say you aren't homunculi, when they live forever too, ageless." Dean's voice rose with each word, setting cold in the hush of the table.
"We're not sure how Brother and I manage it. I know I would have killed myself before becoming one of those things."
"Life is life."
"They devour life to live." Al said. "You know the Philosopher's Stone and the Red Elixer from silly little superstitions and fantasy stories, but something capable of being so powerful needs an equally powerful force to fuel it. Human lives."
"You created a homunculus -" Sam spoke in an even tone, a familiar one, just fact and reality and none of those vague little ends that slipped between their fingers.
"We created the raw materials to form a homunculus, Sam, it's very different, and we spent five years undoing our mistake, as best it could be undone. We didn't refine Sloth into what she was. The sacrifice we had to give -"
"Edward's arm."
"In a way."
"An arm is still not a life." Sam backed up, and remembered the gaping maw of Changelings and the emptiness of innocent ghosts. "Dean -"
"I'm not, and I cannot say anymore without my Brother here." Al's eyes were wet, and he lifted his hands to hug himself, and said, softly. "I wish Noa didn't let you keep that other gun."
"What the hell are you." Sam held his gun, hidden before between his pants and his skin, warm in is hand. He couldn't find it in himself to undo the safety. Dean was at his side, glancing at the cabinet, where his gun was stashed, hidden.
"I'm human." Al said, fiercely, and looked up at him in some misunderstood, incomprehensible pride.
"We're the first you decided to help, and why? So you can devour our lives? Or offer them to your crazy brother?"
"I knew I shouldn't have said anything until Brother came home!" Al cried, seemingly unpreturbed about the gun, looking beseechingly to the wooden front door. "I wanted to help you because my brother died to save my life too!" Al set his lips and looked aside. "Do you know how rare that is? How horrible most people are? Their loved ones are sick with cancer, or injured and braindead, dying, and there are - you know there are! - ways to bring them back, but people just die because people just refuse to move on and keep walking and instead sit and grieve! That's normal, isn't it? That is the cycle, but - but the ones who come knocking at our doorstep? The ones who grovel to my Brother, don't even look at Noa, much less speak to her, as if she's some lesser being because she's old, they're the ones who find us.
"They have pictures of their children in the wallets they carry all their goddamn money in, money they have the gaul to put on MY kitchen table, and they never say a word about them! Each and every one!" Al stopped, panting harshly, wiping fiercely at the tears in his eyes he refused to outright shed. "But you, you didn't come here with ego, or money, or blackmail. That's why I want to help."
"Spirits lie." Sam's voice wavered, the gun dipped down, just a little off-mark. "I'm sorry, Alphonse, but demons lie, and so do spirits."
"Exorcise me, then." Al lifted his chin and straightened his spine, righting the ferocity of his previous words. "Make me drink holy water, make me breathe sage smoke, have me cross a line of salt."
"Dean."
From his coat pocket he took that small bottle of holy water, shook it, and all Alphonse did was blink at it landed on his face and clung to his hair. The sage smoke made his eyes water, made him cough, but he didn't flicker or flee out of the bluish curls and earthen smell. His bare feet easily stepped over the carefully-erected salt threshhold, and his open, honest eyes looked up at Sam, the gun set squarely between them.
"I - Dean."
"I don't know either. Fuck."
"I don't have the mark of the Ouroboros." Al whispered, and Sam remembered the crude shapes of men and women with rough, red circles where the mark was located on them. Above the heart, on a woman's breast, in the palm of a hand, on a thigh, in pencil and ink and plain, red marker -
"Shit." Sam's eyes narrowed over the gun, and all the gentle little taunting smiles and hazy wish-wash of Alphonse's odd little trail-manner of speaking disappeared into those wide, childlike grey eyes. He worked his teeth, letting them creak reassuringly in his mouth, set his jaw, his nostrils flared. "Dean, hold this."
"Jesus, Sam -" Dean took the gun, and stepped into Sam's place, easy like rainwater.
"You really will do anything for him." Al brought his hands to the collar of his own shirt. Looked up at him through his eyelashes, in a manner which screamed sensuality, unsettled Sam, made Dean's grip white on the gun. Al stepped away, a light little side-step, and Dean followed sharply. "I won't make you do this, though."
"Why?"
Al blushed, red at his cheeks, as his pajama pants pooled around his feet, and he kicked them off, picking at the buttons of his shirt. "I don't have the same conniptions about nudity as others do." One bare shoulder, then another, and a sudden expanse of skin as the shirt fell about his waist. Sam wished he could reflect the coldness in Dean's stoic set of face.
Al kept his hands demurely in front of him, the shirt sleeves looped around his wrists, gathered in his hands, letting it climb his waist and display the smooth and supple skin of his hips and thighs. Knees together, elbows tucked in, Alphonse's body was far from the gangly, half-child half-man youth common for his face. Feminine, masculine, muscular and soft, full thighs and hips and a small waist and muscle making itself known whenever he so much as shifted his weight. He watched Sam, carefully, as Sam circled him, once, twice. He laughed when he sat on a chair and Sam grabbed his foot to look at the sole, a childlike giggle in irony. Spread his legs to show the milky inner skin of his thighs, umarked save for a pale, brown mole close between his legs where his shirt barely kept some sense of modesty.
'And this is what Edward wants.' Sam thought, as he circled to Al's back, unsure why he thought that, why he spent the better part of the last two days not thinking anything of it. Al's skin was soft and supple beneath his fingertips. His hair long and fine, entangling with his fingers as he pushed it aside.
"What's this?"
Immediately, Dean lifted the gun, and undid the safety. The metallic click rang louder than it should have.
"It's my brother's mark." Al reached up to touch the criss-crossing rough-hewn lines, his back having arched just a little when Sam carelessly touched over the length of it, the shirt slipping low over his thighs. "It's part of him saving me. It's nothing like the Ouroboros, is it?" Al turned to look at Sam over his shoulder, smiling, proudly, and whispered. "When he first drew it, he did in his own blood, and I've been his ever since."
"Is that part of it? Cheating death?"
"I'm not sure."
Al held still, and let Sam look. The shape of a crude child's finger drawing eternity in his own blood.
Sam let Al's hair fall back into place. "Get dressed."
"Oh." Al sighed, gratefully, and began to button up his shirt again. "I'm glad this can be resolved." He stood, and the sheer cotton clung to his thighs. "I'm not going to say anything else, though."
Ed's glasses clattered amidst the coffee cups and beer bottles and pens on the table. He loosened his tie, letting it draped, half-knotted, over his shoulders, his eyes dark at the midnight hour. "It's like chasing a retarded chipmunk."
Al stood behind him, his hands warm through Ed's wrinkled dress shirt, slowly circling his brother's shoulders, the hard lines of Ed's neck and chest as he carelessly undid the tie and let it fall to the floor. "Retarded chipmunk?"
His brother waved a dismissive hand. "Yeah, sure, why not? Mm - geeze, Al." Still, he leaned forward to give Al's strong hands room to sooth his back, tilting his head aside to let Al rub his lips and tongue against the stubble along his jaw.
"Brother." Al sing-songed, hitting that spot just beneath his right shoulderblade with the firmness of the heel of his palm, that spot which ached from the automail, hard to reach and usually ignored.
"What do you want?" Ed grunted, and wiggled into the firm touch like a dog with an itch.
"What makes you think I want something?" Al's lips traced the shell of Ed's ear.
"Instinct."
Al didn't respond, the gentle press of his lips against his brother's neck became wet, open, intimate, pressing himself firmly against Ed's back. He sighed over the distinct shape of Edward's cheekbone. The flat of his palm, hot and soft. Ed reached up with his flesh hand, his fingers rough over the bridge of Al's nose, to find his lips, wet and full.
"C'mon, fuck -" Ed hissed when Al languidly suckled on his fingers. "Alphonse -"
Al nuzzled his brother's wrist with a delicate little sigh, and leaned close to whisper into his ear. "I think I should tell you something, before Noa tattles on me."
"Oh?"
"Mm-hmm..."
"What?"
Al kissed his cheek. "Sam and Dean -"
"Oh, geeze, research, done. Right? Ghostbusters, asleep, and now -"
"Sam and Dean -" Al said over him, and bit that one place that he knew went straight to his brother's quirks. "- saw me with very little on."
Ed scowled. "Walked in on you showering?"
"Nope. Took off my clothes."
Ed started to laugh, but when Al only smiled at him, he sat upright and narrowed his eyes. "What?"
"Mm." Al lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug, regarding his brother through low eyelashes.
"Alphonse -"
"They thought I was a homonculus." Al casually reached out and tugged at a strand of his brother's hair. "I showed them I didn't have the Ouroborous."
"And couldn't you have waited for me to come home?" Ed ground out between his teeth.
"A waste of time." Al said, glossily, dismissively.
"Fuck."
Al draped himself over Ed's tense shoulders. "You know I don't want them."
"Shut the hell up, you've been flirting with BOTH of them -"
"Flirting? Maybe. It's really funny to see them try not to freak out."
Ed glared at nothing, straight ahead, his brow heavy and his hands making the worn wood of the armrests creak.
"They're not exactly my type." Al carelessly toyed with the button on his shirt. "Sam touched my blood seal."
Al gave a startled gasp as he was shoved up against the wall, pinned firmly, a hold he could easily break. He flexed his arms and tested his brother's haphazard grip and found it lacking.
"He what?" Ed had gone far past 'irritated, jealous lover' and into the same near-manic state he had when fixated, like a dog about to attack, all flashing teeth and wide, dialated eyes.
Al tilted his head back against the wall, just a little bit insolent. "He touched my blood seal. I didn't mean for him to. Your blood seal, I mean."
"Damn fucking right." Ed spat. Al ignored it, nearly trembling at the strength of that hold, near-crushing. Pushing against Ed's grip, he leaned close and kissed his brother's curled, white knuckles.
"You're hurting me." Al whispered. Ed immediately let go of him, letting his fingers rest lightly on the skin he'd bruised.
"Sorry. I -"
"It's okay."
"Alphonse, damn it." He stepped close, his hair brushing over Al's upturned face, his over-long bangs across the bridge of Al's nose. "If you want -"
"Yes?" Al looked up at him, his fingers curled into the skewed collar of Edward's shirt, swaying oddly when Ed shifted from heel to heel. He tried not to smile at the tense lines at the corner of Edward's mouth, lines he did want to kiss, the furrow of his brow he wanted to touch. He inhaled, deeply, Ed smelling of machine oil and beer and human, male musk.
"If you want to, you can." He finally said, his lips barely moving, his throat pulsing with them, adam's apple quivering, his very physique refusing to move the words. "I know you won't leave. It's not fair to you."
Ed began to grip him tightly again when Al looked up at him, silent, his breathing shallow. He pressed close and kissed his brother, soft and seemingly affectionate. "I'm going to bed. Is there anything you want?"
"Huh?"
Al gave him a look that said 'Idiot'. "Food? Drink? Help with your work?"
"No."
His brother was so cute, eyes downcast, voice soft, warm, strong hand gentle on his shoulder, voice so soft it hardly left his mouth, thin lips and rough skin Al leaned close to kiss sweetly. "Okay. Good night."
Ed could barely manage to let him go, his hands hovering at his sides even as Al stepped back and climbed the stairs without a word. He saw his brother, in a distinct sort of knowledge, fiddling with a drink he wouldn't sip anymore, sitting in an undignified slouch, sulking and not.
To his right was Noa's room, and the canaries beside her bed sung sleepily when he cracked the door open to check on her. He was careful and brief about it, Noa was a light sleeper, probably knew he was there anyway. Further down the hall he could hear Sam and Dean conversing in low voices, the hissing deep of their words filling the dark hall in half-sylables.
Their bedroom was sparse, bare-bones and comfortable, a meager step above the Amestris military barracks. The carpet, pale and soft against his feet, the walls pale with moonlight, he opened a window and the cool night air filled the picture-less and impersonal expanse of the room. He didn't turn on the lights, and thought nothing of removing his clothing, letting them slip into the hamper tucked into a corner from an inattentive hand.
As he ran the shower water, in the bathroom with plain white tiles and old brass fixtures, he saw the bruises of Edward's hands on his arms in the mirror above the sink. His breath caught, not from the cold of the open window or the stark contrast of the hot shower, and paid particular attention to the back of his neck and the ache of the darkened shapes of the skin of his arms. Soap slid over his skin and rested on his eyelashes, bubbles popping delicately over the marks of his body.
He was disappointed to see the bed empty when his shower was done.
Still, he wrinkled the smooth sheets as he climbed into bed, kicking the duvet off with his heels, keeping the sheer sheet, rolling onto his chest to open the side-table drawer and found the lubricant. Wasn't much else in that drawer, anyway.
A lot of hotels had Bibles in their bedside tables.
Al laughed to the bare walls, letting the bottle fall to the sheets, damp hair snaking to cling to the pillows. He quieted, and listened to the sporadic sound of cars in the street, the dogs barking at each other, at those walking late at night.
His knees slipped on the bedsheets as he turned onto his stomach, lifted his hips, sighed with the warm flush taking his skin, already aware of that pleasant weight at the pit of his stomach to the backs of his thighs. He reached for the bottle and wet his fingers, licked his lips as he touched the insides of his thighs, leaving them wet, and pushed his fingers between his legs. Al could practically feel his brother's hot tongue and sharp teeth against his skin.
He tilted his hips up and pushed deeper, adding one finger, then another, opening himself with just a little pain that set the word 'Brother' at his lips.
Suddenly the bed dipped. Al opened his eyes enough to make out Ed's hazy image. Finally, his brother's hands on him, the flat of his flesh hand sliding over his back.
"Brother -" He pushed against the matress, about to sit up, lean back, press close. Edward's hand on his back became firm, and pressed him down. Al gasped at the skinwarmed slickness of the sheets against his cheek and nipples, pushed back when he felt metal and flesh cup his ass, let his fingers slowly slide from inside him.
Another firm hand, between his legs, trapping his wrist there and firmly guiding his fingers back into himself, deeper and deeper to the knuckles. He exhaled, sharply, his hair skating across his lips and cheek. Ed slowly pulled at his wrist, and pushed Al's own hand close to his body again, guiding him, his automail hand pulling him apart and open. He pushed back into it, unaware of the shaking, despirate way he drew breath through his mouth as he lifted his head and looked over his shoulder.
Edward knelt behind him, fully clothed, and watched him, brazenly, shamelessly. Al spread his legs and tilted his hips and whined, outright offering himself to his brother. An offering Ed accepted, casually placing Al's hand out of the way, sliding his fingers along the creases of Al's inner thighs, pressing his palm flat between his legs.
"Hurry." Al whined, childishly pitched. "Hurry." He said again, arching his back impossibly, his teeth grit in frustration as his brother fondled him, combing his fingers through the trimmed patch of hair between his legs.
Ed leaned over him, to the side, and Al curled his spine upward like a cat, lifted his head to rub his cheek against the hard lines of his brother's musculature, his back pressed firmly against the skin-warmed shirt Ed wore. When Ed sat back upright, Al nearly followed, wanting nothing more than to sit on his brother's lap and -
"No." Again, Ed firmly pushed him back to his hands and knees. Al couldn't exactly see, but heard Ed open the bottle and wished he could watch, or better yet, put the lubricant on with his own hands, maybe after wetting him with his mouth -
Al's fingers curled tightly into the bedding as the bed shifted, Ed lifting himself to his knees. He pulled at the sheet with his brother's hand on his ass, baring him. The sound he made was inarticulate and pathetically high-pitched as he felt the heavy, wet head of Ed's cock pressed against his scrotum. His thighs trembled as Edward slid it higher between his legs, behind him, rubbing back and forth over his ready opening. "Damn it-" Al whined and tried to push back. The hand Ed placed on his ass held him still. "Brother - you jerk -" anything else was lost in a wavering, insecure cry when Ed pushed in, slowly, steadily, and filled him.
Ed held him in place, watching Al tilt his head back back to free his mouth, listening to his raw, throaty gasps and watching his brother's mussed hair tangle about his shoulders and back. Ed stared, he always did, at those pretty, trembling limbs and the wet, red look of Al's lips and mouth.
Out of instinct, he pet the base of Al's spine, down to the dip of his rear and back up again. He pushed forward and Al spread his legs even more. Ed could only grin to himself, knowing the erratic pattern of Al's breathing, knowing the pretty blush of Al's shoulders which made the blood seal stand out in the sheen of Al's sweat.
With one hand, he held Al's thigh firmly against himself, and braced himself with his automail, his chest to Al's back, his sigh ruffling Al's hair and revealing a line and curve of the blood seal. Al's hips began to rock unsteadily, his muscles tight around Ed's cock, working it mercilessly, the tense lines of his limbs and artistic curvature of his ribs and spine screaming for more. He gripped Al's leg harder, and harder still, and Al just tightened and trembled around him, trembled as Ed used his teeth and tongue to reveal the blood seal.
When he bit it, Al cried out sharply. He kissed the pinked, round shoulders beneath him, shared a breath with his brother as he pressed his cheek to Al's soft one, tucked his face into the crook of Al's neck and breathed heavily and listened to Al purr for him with little, hitching breaths. He opened his eyes to see the blood seal glowing rosily with Al's blush, lifted his hand to touch it, completely, and spoke his little brother's name into Al's ear.
It was a warning, and it excited his little brother terribly, the tremble of Al's thighs moving to his arms and the quiver of his breath. Ed moved, at a slow, controlled pace, thinking of fingers not his own touching that mark whenever Al looked up at him like that, or tried to fuck himself against Ed, making the bed and sweat bitter with the thought of it, bitter enough for that modicum of control.
Ed grinned wolfishly when he suddenly stopped the brutal, fast pace, the slap of skin against skin ceasing, and resumed a long, easy slide into his brother. Al's high-pitched, gasping, almost-hyperventilation rose into a frustrated wail. He actually had to snicker, despite the ache of his hips and thighs, when Al curled his hand into a fist and punched the mattress out of sheer frustration.
"It's - it's not funny-" Al flicked his hair out of his face and lifted himself on his elbows to glare at his brother, ineffectual with the flush of his cheeks and haze in his eyes. "- you jerk." His back arched sharply when Ed slammed into him at a near-brutal pace, barking out a yell. "You jerk!"
"Just taking my time, little brother." Ed pet him, mockingly. "Two weeks away and those boys taking up all your - our - time -"
"Shut up and fuck me." Al snapped, and Ed's eyebrows raised. He could count on one hand the amount of times Al talked remotely dirty during sex, the majority of them while he was drunk. Despite himself, he picked up the pace a little, making Alphonse groan into the pillow. There, he thought, as he angled himself just right and saw Alphonse curl his fingers tightly into his own hair and the sheet beneath it. He knew every bone and ligament in that small, white-knuckled hand
"If you don't hurry up I swear - damn, Edward, I swear I'll hurt you."
"Oh?"
Al twisted his hips up against him, practically hissing his discontent. "Yes. I'll kick your butt."
"Fine." Ed kissed his spine in a way that made Al temporarily forget his irritated state, pushing up into the battle-chipped teeth and against the hot tongue of his brother's mouth. "Fine." He whispered into the dip between his shoulderblades. "One condition."
"Anything."
"Promise."
"Brother - yes, yes, I promise, damn it -"
"Okay." Ed slid himself in, deep, deep enough to make Al wail softly and tremble, bit the blood seal and suckled it and left another mark on top of his mark, rough and ugly in comparison. Grinding firmly against him while doing so, leaving no doubt in his pretty brother's mind just who was fucking him. "I'll fuck you the way you want." Al pressed up against him, uttering a breathless coo over Edward's hoarse voice. "But you only come when I tell you to."
Ed didn't miss the way Al's knees and toes dug into the mattress and the way his eyelashes fluttered.
"Well?"
"Yes. Yes, I'll c-come when you say - " Al blushed heavily and stuttered innocently. "-please, hurry -"
Ed's grunt of relief was almost animalistic as he set himself to the pace he'd been wanting since he walked in on his brother. The eager little gasps and high-pitched moans Al uttered went straight to his nerves.
He never expected how fucking incredible it would be to hear Al beg his permission to come.
"So this is what I get for 'cheating' on you?" Al said breathlessly, in the early-morning hours as he reached back and braced himself on Ed's knees, letting his brother's hands guide the firm and quick rocking of his hips.
"Christ, Al - " Ed pushed up into him, pulling him down at the same time. "You knew I'd do that."
"Something like that." Al exhaled sharply, letting his head fall back and closing his eyes, utterly lost in sensation. "A nice perk to it, really." Ed squeezed his thighs, curling his fingertips in. "Harder."
"You manipulative bitch."
"I wouldn't have to be a manipulative bitch if you'd man up once in a while." Al grinned in mischief, breathing hard, upsetting the chaotic, wet disarray of his hair.
"Man up? What would you call this, then?" Ed's scowl lost its edge with the high flush of his cheeks, the tremble in the wide veins of his broad hands. He slid his hands over the sweat-slick curves of Al's thighs and hips and along the gentle definition of his stomach.
"Exactly what I want." Al smiled, satisfied, when Ed dug in and ran blunt fingernails across the back of his ass.
"I don't like treating you this way."
"Yeah, you do."
"Al -"
"It excites me." Al said, thickly, and leaned forward to deeply kiss his brother, lick the stubble of his chin and breath the sharp gasps he exhaled. "You excite me."
"You're such a freak." Ed spoke, hushed, between wet kisses.
"If you only knew."
"Oh?" Ed nudged Al's face to the side with his cheek, giving him access to mark the gentle slopes and always half-formed adam's apple of Al's neck. "Something I don't know about you? That's just wrong."
"Isn't it?" Al sat back up and pressed himself down firmly against Ed, watching him through lowered eyelashes.
"You suck." Ed's hands settled naturally back on Al's hips, then up to fondle the dark and pert nubs on Al's chest, making his little brother squirm deliciously on top of him, and back down, down between his brother's legs, heavy and hot in his palm, sticky from previous orgasms, and Al's voice wavered in a high, relieved cry. "Is that why you delete your internet history? Ow!" He scowled and rubbed his nipple ruefully, still smarting from Al's downright mean pinch.
"Do not overthink when we're having sex." Al pulled demandingly at his flesh hand. "I can always go down the hall if I'm boring you."
"I can always ask Noa about your little fetishes."
Al pouted, but damn if Ed was gonna fall for that. Not even when he bit his lip like that, or whined in the back of his throat that way, or spread his legs wide so he could see or slid his small hands over the musculature of his arms and chest and stomach and sighed with all that appreciation and bit his lip and looked at him with those - oh, hell.
It was only the persistant weight of Sam's hand that kept Dean from jumping over the table and shoving his fucking fist into Edward's face. The man had the fucking balls to traipse on down to the kitchen, easy as you please, wearing a diabolical grin as if he'd just scored with Heidi fucking Klum and said - "Sleep well?"
"Bet Alphonse did." Words out before logic could wrangled them back in. Edward narrowed his eyes, the wrinkles at the corners making him look old. Shit, the guy could be damn intimidating, highwater pajamas, sex-hair and come-stained stomach all.
"Snored like a rhino since three in the morning. Or was it six? Gee, you know, it's so difficult to keep track..."
"See, now, that's where your wrong. The girls like a guy who's one-hundred percent there, so, keeping track? Never been a problem for me."
The smug smile on Ed's face became strained, more of a mask than anything, before it cracked and every irritable pre-coffee morning disposition came forth like a summoning. "Alphonse would wear your sorry ass the fuck out in ten seconds, boy."
"Again, not a problem, considering I don't fuck scrawny prepubecent kids who - Sam, get your fucking hand off me, it's creepin' me out."
Sam jerked his hands back and Dean hunched his shoulders forward and away.
Any reply - or physical retort - Ed was about to fire off was interrupted by the creak and dry hiss of the elevator door, the soft squeak of Noa's wheelchair. Her blue nightgown hung off her bones in some amophorous shape, and yet her smile bared the small, brown teeth she had left.
"Please don't fight, it doesn't accomplish anything." Alphonse toed down the stops of Noa's wheelchair, kicked open the trash can to empty overnight coffee grounds. "I mean it, Brother." He said without looking, and Ed shut his mouth with an audible 'click' of his teeth. With an old plastic spoon he poured measures of coffee into the perculator. "And that was a very mean thing to say, Dean. Not - " He placed the coffee pot and the little red light turned on. "- that my brother hasn't instigated it. Please go get showered now, Edward, it's impolite to be in front of people like that."
"Look at him naked again and I will rip your eyes out." Ed snapped in a rush, held his palm up to his brother, and turned to the stairs. "Now I'm going."
"He always has to have the last word." Al muttered, setting a pan onto the stove to heat, butter starting to melt and run. Noa hummed a sandpaper sound in vague agreement, watching the morning birds hop and skip away from supine cats through the window. It was silent, as Al stopped his hurried domesticity to watch her, with a timid sort of understanding.
Finally, he cleared his throat and turned back to his task. "Did you two get a chance to review the research?"
"Um, yes!" Sam spoke, hurriedly, glad to focus on something which did NOT involve memories of Alphonse's delighted squealing through the thin walls of the old house. His hands jerked like undecided sparrows as he undid the clasp of the folder. "So, um, this 'Equivalent Exchange' law Alchemy abides by, obviously, demons don't keep to it -"
"Equivalent Exchange is for purely physical things - mass, weight, compounds, so on and so fourth. I'm afraid soul and life have no scale to judge exchange by, unless..." Al looked at him and quirked a brow.
"Not that we know of." Sam sighed. "There ARE accounts of judgement of the soul, the Egyptian Feather of Justice, the Christian Rapture-"
"- Heaven's little black book."
Sam and Al both snorted in amusement, and Dean quirked a sideways smirk. Noa did not look in the least bit impressed, still watching the window and the odd ripples of light, her lips moving to nothing, and Al cast her an apologetic glance. It went unnoticed.
"I'll put in a call to a friend, see if he can come up with something."
"As interesting as weighing the value of a soul might be - and pretentious - Sam, we're not dealing with science, we are dealing with evil spirits. It is completely different currency, and simply can't barter something or someone else in place of Dean."
"True. I hear I got me quite a reputation in Hell."
"Must be your stunning wit and charm." Alphonse spoke in perfect monotone. The bacon sizzled, smoke curling high. He briskly turned away to the stove. Sam stood and plates clattered as he awkwardly set the table, plates misaligned and askew, forks and spoons and knives criss-crossing each other, making the quirky mismatch of coffee mugs seem chaotic.
"Is he sulking?" Dean whispered to his brother. "Really?" His hands were overly frank in the manner he straightened the forks and knives and spoons, setting them properly at the sides of plates.
Sam looked at the table, then back at Dean, holding a tangle of forks and knives in one fist.
"What?"
"Since when - " He gestured, vaguely, at the half-set table.
"Well, chicks dig a guy who knows his way around a kitchen."
"Dean, you know your way around the Denny's midnight breakfast menu."
"Ah, well." Dean smiled a little, a bashful smile. His callouses and the dirt of his hands made the gleaming silverware cloudy as he nudged them into place. "When we were kids, Mom used to invite Dad's parents over every weekened when he was stationed. Gran'd pay me in baseball cards if she got there and I helped mom finish setting up. Feels kinda wrong eating from a nice and proper table with your stupid set-up."
"You keep any of them?" Sam said, awkwardly, and tried to mimick the order of Dean's setting.
"What? Naw, man, I had shit taste as a kid."
"True. Just didn't think it mattered."
"Bet it matters to prissy over there."
Both snickered, and snorted inelegently at Al's very patient sigh.
"Hey, Al, where are the glasses?"
"Rightmost upper cabinet, second shelf." Al said, his back turned to them. His hair was dark and blond, straight, but he favored the same over-long shirts and thin shorts. Except Stanford's rigerous schedule never left them much time to set a table proper.
Alphonse served the typical breakfast fare, and a neat stack of papers alongside a platter of fruit. "These are your copies." He said, taking a seat across from them.
Sam set the haphazard binder between him and Dean, and both leaned over. It was thick with old words and carbon-copy new penmanship, printed web pages and photocopied illustrations, black and white and grey, tied together with neatly color-coded tabs and reference tags.
"It's a miracle. It actually makes sense." Dean said, in fake wonder.
"Of course it would make sense." Al's voice had a rusty and rare-used edge to it.
"No no no." Sam flipped between a diagram of Sulfur of the Tria Prima and one recent demonologist table of demonic possession, then a Latin prayer, Vencti, Sancte Spiritus, the Holy Spirit. "Most hunters, they pull their stuff together like a bad scrapbook. Cover their trail."
"Why?"
"Different reasons. Mainly so normal people don't pick up a hunt and get killed doing shit they don't know about. Also, in case we get arrested, don't want our stuff going into evidence."
"Mostly 'cause there ain't much time on a hunt to put together a damn thesis." Dean said, around a healthy bite of bacon-egg-biscuit sandwich.
"Don't speak with your mouth full." Al leaned over and wiped crumbs from Dean's stubble, Dean scrunching his face in reluctant allowance. "Why would you be arrested? Illegal weaponry? Trespassing?"
"That, and we tend to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Al didn't miss the quick, hessitant look Sam gave his brother. His brow furrowed, silvery eyes unsettlingly clear.
Sam swallowed his food quickly, and feigned a casual perusal of the research compilation. "When did you have time to do all this?"
Al picked at his food, dainty in the way he held his fork, as if it were made of porcelain. "Some time after Brother and I were finished." His voice was feigned casual, although a light blush touched his cheeks, and he slipped a glance at Dean. A demure, mischievous smile followed as Dean coughed and fumbled with his glass of orange juice. He inhaled, sharply, a tell-tale chuckle when Sam stared at the bright cuts of fruit on his plate.
Edward's footsteps rang loud and uneven on the wood floor, a towel draped haphazardly over his head, eyeglasses half-fogged from the shower. "So, what do they know?" He snatched a piece of bacon from Al's hand and sagged, gracelessly, into the seat.
"I explained the basic principles to them." Al turned to face him, holding the fork perfectly still, half-in a strawberry. "Equivalent exchange on the basis of matter. We've also found corellations, albeit rough ones, between esoteric and common spirituality and alchemy. It's fascinating, Brother, how closely they mirror each other, in a distorted sort of way. How come we never thought of looking into it?"
"I don't feel like being damned as an amoral dishrag every time I crack open a book. Anyway, good, can't ride a bike without balance." Ed slurped his coffee, loudly, his bare metal hand screeching over the slick mug.
"Exactly, basics, useless as it is for what we're trying to do. Still, they know the basic principles, if not the details for an actual transmutation -"
"-which would be useless anyway."
"They also know about human transmutation in the context of creating a homonculus."
"Sacrifice, red stones, the whole damn thing?"
"Yes."
"Well then. Breakfast." Ed turned to the table with resolution, cracking the vertibrae in his neck as he settled to the very serious business of eating. "Noa, you want some?"
Noa waved a hand vaguely at him, still staring out the window, her eyes half-closed and distant. The cat which had curled in her lap, little more than a kitten, a perfect companion in the dappled morning light through the trees.
"She okay?" Ed scooped more jam onto a piece of toast than was reasonable.
"She's fine." Al snapped, the tines of his fork piercing through the strawberry and grinding over the scratched plate. "What do you mean, 'Well then, breakfast'?"
"Well, that's it, isn't it? That's every damn human transmutation anyone knows of."
"Oh, you lazy idiot!" Al cried. "No it positively is not. How do you explain Scar's arm? Dad and Dante - "
"Sittin' in a tree?" Ed smirked.
Al stared at him in utter disbelief, his fork dropping, with a clang and clatter, onto his relatively bare plate. "Why do I sleep with such an irreverant, immature jerk?"
"Oh, I know the answer to that one!" Ed wiped his mouth, leaving a good smear of jam on his chin. "You love a good - "
"BROTHER."
Ed turned back to his breakfast, snickering in a theatrical manner.
"Anyway." Al said, through gritted teeth, beginning to mince his fruit with the tines of his fork into small, even pieces, with no intent of eating it. "Dad, Dante, Scar - all matters of the physical body, perhaps of anchoring the soul itself, but not the soul - as are homonculi. Unfortunately for us, we don't know soul alchemy - " He held up a finger to shush his brother. "In whatever means it would take to help Dean, and no, I sincerely doubt being able to possess inanimate objects would help in the least."
"It's a step."
"It's a step I was walking blind since I was restored, Brother, you know that. I can't begin to explain how it worked. It was like - like breathing, in a way. Which is why we need you to explain."
"Goddamn, Al, I've told you so many times." Ed threw his napkin clear across the table. It barely cleared Dean's shoulder. "I'd see the damn arrays in my head and just take it from there. It's too multifaceted to even start anywhere. I'd have better luck teaching astrophysics to a-"
"Retarded chipmunk?" Al said, drolly.
"Yes. Exactly." Ed pointed at him in enthusiasm, disconcertingly close to his face.
"So basically, we've just wasted our time because you think we're too stupid to understand it?"
"I never said that! You remember what it's like." Ed's voice dipped into a gentle softness. At this, Al's brow furrowed, and it seemed his eyes turned inward, clouding over without focus, and he inhaled a sharp breath.
"Ow!" Al reached up and pried his brother's hand out of his hair, strands of dark blond tangling into the joints of his automail.
"You can sit there for years and try to figure it out."
"So we've spent the last two fucking days getting nowhere?" Dean snapped, not caring for decorum or polite conversation.
"Yes." Ed smirked, and Dean stood halfway, his chair skidding across the kitchen floor. Sam held him in place, but his silence was unsettling, the way his throat trembled as he looked at Al.
"No." Al said, quickly, and turned to level a glare at his brother. "No. I'll keep looking. I'm sure I can figure out a way to dissect it, at least on a superficial level - maybe putting it into actual words will help -"
"Yes, of course, Alphonse." Dean spat, bitter words. "Dear Diary, today I brought someone back to life -"
Edward barked his laughter, loud and sharp, enough for Noa to look up suddenly, her earrings, hanging low, bell-dull in her hair.
"Must you be such an ass?"
"Who?" Ed smirked.
"BOTH of you!"
"Really? Sam and I are held fucking hostage here, chasing something that's apparently so fucking above us lowly idiots you won't even bother - "
"Dean."
"So we're supposed to, what? Sit around here and play motherfucking pool while you two may or MAY NOT find a way to fix this shit between rounds of obnoxiously loud marathon sex? And while I'm on that - "
"Dean."
"Might I remind you, we are running out of TIME and if it's between kicking some demon ASS or, hey, you know, GETTING some ass or chilling in the International House of Jailbait -"
"DEAN!"
"What, damn it!?"
Sam raked his fingers through his hair and hissed a deep breath, then reached out and forcefully turned his brother by his shoulders to face Alphonse.
Edward's amused smirk, wide and taut and gloating, unreasonable, was overshadowed by Al's soft determination and the open way he held the clip and gun, grip-out, to them. In silence and shuffling footsteps, Dean slowly reached out, and sighed in relief as he felt the familiar cool and weight of it in his palm. Al let his fingertips trail over the barrel, touch the tip and away.
"I didn't know either of you when I said that. I didn't know it would take this long."
"You still don't know us." Dean slipped the gun into his belt, and the clip into his pocket.
Ed resumed eating breakfast with a single-minded relish, while Al just smiled and circled around the table, gently touching his brother's arm, unnoticed. He picked up the compiled research and closed it with a final, crisp snap, and held it out to them. "You can leave. From there, it's up to you."
In the sun and shine of that magazine kitchen, the entirety of it misplaced between Noa's droopish napping and the clink and clatter of Edward's utensils, Sam took the binder with an odd weight of finality in his hands.
"Um, well - thanks." Sam lifted the binder, and let it drop to his side, held close, when Al said nothing. "I mean, it's been a pain, yeah, but, you know -"
"Not alone, Sam." Al stepped to a small table and lifted a cell phone, a sleek, modern model. The screen glowed and the buttons beeped, then Sam's pocket began to ring. Al turned to face them with almost childish enthusiasm, holding the phone up with a small grin. "I know you can easily ditch this number, still, I will call you if I find a solution."
"Don't worry, he hates phones. Won't talk on one unless it's unavoidable." Ed waved a fork idly at them.
"So we can just leave?"
"Yes, Dean." Al's voice hissed exasperation.
Sam shifted the weight of the research between his two hands, turning from Alphonse to his brother.
Dean turned to the door, looked at Sam, and slouched, drawing the broadness of his shoulders in. "Maybe -"
"I think we should."
"Really?"
Sam sighed, glancing up at the molding running all along the ceiling, a plain anchor. "Yes."
"I'll go get Dad's journal."
Al watched, with a tilt of his head, as Dean ascended the stairs. Edward set his fork and knife aside, his hidden glances easing into a lazy observation, and Noa shoo'd the cat off her lap to watch in the reflection of the windows.
The book in Dean's hand was old and worn plain leather, lined paper, parchment, news clippings peeking out in haphazard lengths in some facsimile of order. "Seems like we're about to teach you guys a little somethin'." He grinned.
"Oh?" Al stepped closer, just enough to lean over and peek at the image of a sketched face and flat, black eyes. "'Warding Against Demons'?"
"Just in case."
"In case of what?" Ed wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, eyebrows climbing in undeniable interest.
"In case we've been followed."
"Weirdest case ever." Dean leaned to the side to see the house, its imposing, black gate ajar. "I would take a hundred zombies over that shit."
"They weren't so bad." Sam's fingers flew over his cell phone. The missed call read 'Unregistered'. Instead, he put in the address for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, New Orleans in Mapquest.
Dean snorted, and keyed the ignition, smiling as the engine purred to life. "Baby, I have missed you." He said, stroking the wheel.
"They tried to help us. Al, at least."
"He's the one who freaks me out the most." Dean dug through the organizing bin for a proper Metallica tape. Sam said nothing, and he relented, as the rough lyrics of One blasted away the cloying stillness of the Elric household lingering at their skin, cold. "It was a lot of work they did. Fast, too. Speak of the little devil."
Sam looked up to see Al jogging, barefoot, to their car, leaves kicked up and wet, clinging to the skin of his calves. Edward watched, from the barest shadows of the doorway, impassive.
"Here." Al thrust a piece of paper through the open window. "If it comes to use."
Sam took it, an old receipt for a ridiculously overpriced bag of dog food. On the back, a phone number.
"You yourself said, there's very little actually known about how these contracts work. Just how they're played out. If you find out anything, please let me know."
"Yes. Of course." Sam pocketed the number, written in fine, even print. "Thanks, again."
"What he said." Dean jerked a thumb nearly in Sam's face, smiling something half-honest.
Al said nothing, just watching them with that oddly distant, somber look. He stepped back, like a skittish colt. Suddenly, with fluid grace and the slip of his hair over his shoulder, he leaned down and pressed a gentle, chaste kiss to Sam's cheek. "Be careful." He whispered, before running back through the iron gates, through the yellow leaves, into the shadows of their doorstep.
"Shit." Dean hissed, and put the Impala into gear.
"I knew it, man." Dean shook his head for the tenth time, halfway through Nevada. "I knew it, knew he had a thing for you, Sammy. You should burn that number, might be fucking cursed."
Nothing.
"Sam?" Dean yelled, over the music vibrating through the floorboards and the roar of desert air along the monotone highway.
Dean glanced to the side. Sam slept, facing away, head tilted back, as if to see the endless sky.
It was white and still. Even the invisible settling of dirt and decomposition gasses found in graves was missing from that soulless pristine. Sam stood, and heard nothing, not even his own breathing, and the sourceless light showed him the hinges and seams of that immense door, the bas-reliefs of human bodies and reaching hands.
Then the door creaked, the glint of a wet eye behind that immeasurable darkness, and from the sudden cold breath he heard the low whisper of Edward's voice. He stepped closer to listen, and his soul trembled as the sultry anguish of Edward's voice warped, suddenly, into a rough ferocity so known to him.
"Give him back - he's my brother - just -"
Dean turned up the music to drown out Sam's voice, and let his foot weigh heavily on the gas pedal. He looked at nothing but the cut of the headlights through the even and unchanging highway.
End of Chapter Two
(To Be Continued)