Sam was barely able to put on some clean clothes and brush his teeth and hair before Dean was shoving him in a hurry from the motel room out into a Texas afternoon. Large puffs of clouds covered the sky, and for once the heat was subdued into almost proper spring temperatures.
Uneasiness draped his shoulders like a cloak as he watched his older brother almost skip to the Impala. Not that this was something necessarily unusual. There'd been plenty of other times when some mission or other made Dean act like a little kid on Christmas morning. Give him a monster to hunt and a trail to follow and he'd grin like a loon for hours – totally submerged in his element. Doing what he'd been born to do. Unlike him. Or so he kept telling himself. Though this was definitely better than whatever the Yellow Eyed Demon deemed Sam should be doing and which he hoped never to find out.
He shook his head, dismissing the somber thoughts, and trailed after his brother.
No, the problem was everything else about this situation, and the fact Dean didn't seemed concerned by it in the least. It wasn't normal. If he were the one having lost time, whether it was spent dreaming some off kilter alternative of reality or not, he'd be freaked. Heck, had been freaked! It had happened to him when the demon Meg took possession of his body and went off to murder hunters with it, then tried goading his brother into killing him to boot. There'd been lots of major freakage afterwards. Yet Dean was taking all this in stride as if nothing could be more normal. It wasn't right.
"Sammy, catch!"
Sam glanced up just in time to see Dean toss him the Impala's keys. He fumbled for them and was able to catch them before they hit the ground.
"You're the one who knows how to get to where we're going, right? So you drive."
Sam raised an eyebrow. This wouldn't be the first time Dean let him drive the Impala, but it sure wasn't the norm. And not knowing how to get somewhere had never been an impediment for Dean before. He really must be in a good mood. It just made Sam worry all the more.
Dean opened the passenger door, then hastily fanning his face took a step back. "Dude! What did you do to my car?"
Sam opened his own door not surprised by the fermenting smell of wet cat, fish, and insecticide issuing from within. He gave his brother a disgusted look. "I didn't do anything. This is your fault."
"Like hell it is!"
Sam gave him a tight smile, enjoying this despite everything. He didn't get to turn the tables on Dean every day. "I'm not the one who went for a dip in the Trinity River, was I?"
He saw his brother's face fall with realization. "Oh crap."
"Not so funny to have left poor old Sam at the shore now, is it?" Oh yeah, this was sweet. He could feel his smile growing brighter.
Dean totally ignored him. "Oh, Baby, I'm so so sorry. I didn't know! I swear!" He scrunched down inside the open door and caressed the dash, looking totally abashed. Sometimes his brother was downright weird. "Sammy, we've gotta make a stop on the way. Please! I've got to buy some Febreze or something. I can't leave her like this."
Sam slid into the driver's seat. "Yeah, sure. Whatever." Totally weird.
After making a quick stop, fogging the car with smell absorbers as Dean apologized to the car – again! – then grabbing a quick bite to eat as the whole mess aired out, Sam drove them to the DMA.
A large multistoried building, the roof wasn't flat, but rose and dropped levels and even possessed a half dome, giving the whole a strange, half jumbled together look. A huge red colored piece of artwork, composed of what appeared to be building struts, graced one side of the of the cultivated lawn.
A round fountain filled part of the paved area before the rectangular entrance, the multiple shooting jets of water a work of art in of themselves. The sound of the falling streams would have normally been soothing, but today there was too much at stake.
"I remember this place." Dean dipped his hand into the water and threw a bit of it in Sam's direction.
He was barely able to dodge the spray, caught off guard by his brother's words. "You've been to an art museum?"
"Well, not 'in' one." Dean came close and swept his wet hand over Sam's shirt to dry it. Sam pushed him away, giving him a dirty look. "About fifteen years ago or more this place had this awesome demon/hell door as some kind of outside décor. Dad figured we should check it out, just in case. Got no readings from it though. Wicked looking thing. Be an awesome front door."
"Can we go inside now?" Sam tried to lace the request with as much sarcasm as possible. He was pretty sure Dean was talking about a casting of the famed Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin. It had given him the creeps when he saw it at Stanford, one of the castings having been exhibited there. The images of torment and misery were too close to reality for his tastes. Only his brother would think it something to be used as a common house door.
Without waiting for him, Sam headed toward the entrance. His brother caught up to him at the ticket counter inside. Sam paid for the tickets, wondering if letting his brother in here might be a mistake. Dean's concept of art was dogs playing poker around a card table. Probably see it in the foyer right after you came in through the Gates of Hell front door.
"What now, bro?"
Sam shrugged. "We look around, see if anything looks weird. Unless you have another idea?"
"Nope." Dean pulled out his homemade EMF scanner. Dorky as it looked, the thing worked and had come in handy a number of times. Not that he'd ever tell his brother that.
The first floor was split into different sized galleries for temporary exhibitions as well as contemporary art galleries. The first room was an exhibit of Greek statues.
A faint chuckle made Sam glance at his brother. He was staring at a statue of Aphrodite.
"Dude, ancient porn." His brother had a lecherous, loopy grin on his face, his gaze plastered dead on the goddess's exposed chest. Dean took a step closer to the figure.
Sam punched him hard in the arm.
"What?" Dean rubbed at the spot, giving Sam a wounded look. "I haven't touched anything."
Sam pursed his lips, trying to hold back the urge to strangle his brother in public. "But you were thinking about it. Don't."
"Geez, you can be so mean." He rubbed at his arm again. "Damn that hurt." Dean quickly moved out of his range of fire. "Friggin' no sense of humor art freak."
Renaissance art, Roman tile work, and more were gathered together for all to view. Another room contained a special exhibit on the Maya. The back wall held a representation of the Calendar Round, which mixed the two main calendars of the Maya, the Tzolkin and the Haab to give a date designation that would not be repeated for 52 years. It looked like a set of three gears made of large, fake stone. The smallest sat inside the middle sized one, while the larger connected with the middle one on the outside right.
"The date's wrong." His brother was staring at the back wall with unusual intensity.
"What are you talking about, Dean?"
"On the calendar. The date's wrong. It's off by two days. Can't you tell?"
Sam felt the hackles prickling on the back of his neck. "Uh, dude… That's a Mayan calendar. How the heck can you tell?"
Dean turned his head to look at him, his mouth opening for some kind of comeback that just seemed to suddenly stutter and die. "Uhm…because…" His face scrunched up for a second. "It's…something I remembered?" The last came out in an unsure little boy voice.
First transforming into jaguars, now this. What next?
"Do you smell that?" Dean moved away from him toward a glass case on the left.
"Smell what?" Sam hurried to catch up to him, detecting nothing out of the ordinary in the air.
"The rotting nectar. Like spoiled fruit. Like in my dream." Dean sniffed at the air, the motion very much like what Sam had seen his jaguar form do before.
The prickling at Sam's hackles spread into goose bumps running up and down his arms and back.
The counter before them had bits of jewelry, small figurines of frogs, snakes, and other animals, some with human characteristics. There were thirteen different types of flint daggers, nine incense burning vessels, and seven jade masks. Each mask seemed a representation of an animals or deity, some possibly of both. Most were whole, while a couple appeared to have been meticulously glued back together to their original shapes.
Sam took the EMF reader from Dean's unresisting hand and swept it over the top of the case. The lights remained dormant. "Is it everything in the case that smells?"
He saw Dean frown then inch by inch work his way down the case, his attention focused on the items beneath the glass. "It's one of these." He nodded toward the knives. Most didn't look like they could be used for anything but decoration, the way the flint was cut into branches making them too flimsy to be used for anything else. A couple looked quite serviceable, however. "And definitely that." His finger pointed at an intact mask in the shape of what might be a jaguar's face.