After the last chapter, Chapter 9 is a bit of a break. There's still some angst, and there's still a tiny bit of grotesquery, but this is more about the fun. This is the last chapter of the second section; the third and final section begins with chapter ten. It's going to get pretty dark before the light comes back, so savor the humor while you can.
Thanks to my beta, K. Hanna Korossy, who graciously laughs at my jokes. Or, at least, graciously tells me she does.
Thanks to all my reviewers; I love to hear what you think.
I hope you enjoy Chapter 9
Kohadril
Chapter 9: Side Effects
Sam awoke to the sound of the alarm. He turned over and fumbled to find it, but something large and lumpy was in his way. He opened his eyes and found Dean's face staring back at him, about an inch from his nose. The resultant shock caused Sam to jerk away fast enough to completely fall off the bed.
From his position on the floor, groggy and confused, he heard Dean scoot over and hit the alarm button. After a moment, Dean's head appeared over the edge of the bed, looking down at him with a valiant attempt at a straight face. Sam stared back up at him with puppy dog eyes, silently pleading for mercy. Dean bit back a laugh with great difficulty.
Sam rolled his eyes and sighed. "Fine," he whispered.
Dean's face cracked into a mocking grin, and he burst out laughing. This, in turn, caused Sam to start laughing, albeit less heartily. Dean rolled onto his back and disappeared from Sam's vision.
"This is really weird, Dean," Sam mused.
"I know, man," Dean replied, still chuckling. "But that almost made up for it."
"Says the one who managed to stay on the bed."
This elicited another peal of laughter from Dean. "You should have seen your face."
The man walked up to the counter in his new, unblemished black robes and collar, and the tailor looked at him curiously.
"Don't I know you?" he asked.
"No," the preacher said menacingly. "No, you were never in my flock."
"Must've seen you around town at some point, I guess," the tailor replied nervously. "Do you want me to box that up for you, Father? Or are you going to wear it?"
"I'll wear it, thank you, and I don't like to be called 'Father,'" the man replied with terrible calm. He put out his hand, and the tailor found himself flying backwards into the wall. The several pair of scissors on the table beside him came up off the surface and floated over, their tips pointing at his heart, shoulders, legs, and eye sockets. The preacher looked at him with deadly earnestness. "'Pastor' will be fine."
The scissors shot forward and after a flash of awful pain, the tailor felt no more.
They'd just been to the hospital, getting Sam some stronger medication. Matthews had interrogated Sam fairly thoroughly before providing the new meds, and Dean had learned some more awful truths about his brother's condition. Among other things, he knew the voices Sam heard included their father's, Sam's late girlfriend Jessica's, and Dean's own, and he knew what the voices had said.
One of the revelations in particular stuck in him painfully like a piece of shrapnel. As comfortable as the silence was as they drove along, Dean needed to say something.
"Sam," he started. Sam kept looking forward through the window, but Dean knew he was listening. "You told the doctor that when you hear me…I say you can't do anything right, and that you'll never change."
Dean looked over briefly to gauge reaction, just in time to see a flash of pain shoot through Sam's eyes. The kid didn't turn his head.
"You know I don't think that, right?" Dean asked, as nonchalantly as he was able. He glanced over at his brother again. Sam clenched his jaw for a moment, eyes just a little misty. He looked back gratefully.
"Yeah," he whispered.
Back at the motel, they were doing their best with what little they had. Matthews hadn't given them any of his newer case files; apparently he'd broken the law for them as much as he was going to. Still, there were a few of the new cases that were publicly known, and Sam had marked them all down on a large real estate map. Blue Sharpie meant "residence," red Sharpie meant "workplace." Even with the new data, there wasn't any noticeable pattern, and his laptop statistics software had failed to detect anything either.
Sam's head ached and he felt foggy. As awful as the night before had been, he'd actually gotten more sleep than he had in a while, so what he was feeling was the new medication. It was certainly powerful, and Sam's mind felt like it was running a few cycles slower than usual. At the same time, he wasn't hearing any voices, and he was more than willing to suffer the side effects so long as that was the case.
Dean had already called everybody they could think of who might know anything about the monster, or the Anasazi. He'd come up with nothing. He was now busying himself going through each of their journals a page at a time for anything that looked like it might be useful.
"How's it going over there?" Sam queried.
"I swear, Wikipedia would tell me more than this," Dean bitched. "How about you?"
"Brick wall. There's just no pattern here."
"Can I take a look?" Dean asked, walking over to look at the map sprawled across the bed.
"Sure," Sam replied, looking back to his laptop screen and searching for some statistical tool he hadn't tried yet. As he did so, Dean picked up one of the Sharpies next to him and started to draw on the map. "H—hey! What the hell are you doing?"
"Keep your shirt on, Sammy," Dean teased. He continued to draw carefully, making a big circle around all of the known cases—the smallest circle that would fit them all—and putting an "X" at the center of it. "I think we look there."
It came to Sam in an instant; since there had been no cases outside of Jeremiah, whatever power the creature was using to make people crazy had a finite range. That range could be expressed as the radius of a circle. That circle, in turn, could be estimated from the available data as the smallest circle encompassing every point. It was rough, and it was incomplete, but the center of the "real" circle-of-effect was probably close to the center of the one Dean had just drawn. There was a good chance they'd find the creature there.
It was remarkably simple. Obvious, even. A deep discomfiture spread through Sam's gut as he wondered why he hadn't thought of it.
At the center of Dean's circle was a series of undeveloped low hills and woods north of town. They were on their way out to it, prepared for a long grid-search of several square miles of wilderness. They had just hit downtown when they picked up a call on the police scanner. A cop was babbling to dispatch about a bizarre homicide a block from their location.
"Did he just say 'pinned to the wall with scissors'?" Sam balked.
"Yeah, I think he did," Dean agreed, screeching to a halt at the side of the road. "Looks like our hike is postponed."
The brothers got out of the car, and Dean went to the trunk for the FBI windbreakers.
"Won't work," Sam cautioned. "With the quarantine, nobody will be stupid enough to think we're state police or feds."
"That's a good point," Dean admitted. He thought for a moment, then an evil grin blossomed across his face. "Sammy, can you still do that gross thing with your shoulder?"
"Yeah…" Sam replied. It took a moment for him to see the relevance, then he got it. He looked at his brother annoyedly. "No, I'm not doing that."
"Why not?"
"Because it fucking hurts, that's why! And it won't work"
"It totally will. Town like this, there's like one guy at the scene right now. All I need you to do is yell a little and pull him away for like ten seconds so I can get in. I'll be out before the detectives even show up," Dean said. "You got anything better? We don't have a lot of time."
"…God damn it," Sam whispered.
"Okay, the shop is just around the corner. I'm going to go around the back way, through the alley. You got your story straight?"
"Yeah. Tripped on the sidewalk, tried to catch myself on the fire escape, yanked my shoulder out," Sam repeated.
"You gotta be loud, dude. I need him to come all the way around the corner to find you."
"I get it."
"Try to look cute and pathetic, too. Like a kitten stuck in a tree or a puppy in a storm drain."
Sam looked up at Dean hatefully.
"That's it! That's the look!" Dean teased gleefully. "Oh, wait, that's your mad face. It's hard to tell."
"Shut up," Sam gritted with embarrassment. He knew exactly how to make Dean stop. He sat down against the building, adjusting his left shoulder in its socket, cradling his left elbow in his right hand. Dean went humorously pale.
"You need any help?" Dean asked nervously, suddenly unable to look directly at Sam.
"No, man. I got it," Sam groused. "Now go. I think you threw up the last time you saw me do this."
"I did not," Dean called, already heading the other way.
"Did too," Sam mumbled to himself. He arranged his arms again, getting into position. He waited about a half a minute, then braced himself. He whispered his final count: "1…2…3!"
He pushed his left arm up with all his strength, and when he felt his shoulder pop, he started to scream his lungs out.
Dean flinched instinctively when he heard his brother scream, but the cop guarding the tailor shop door almost immediately took off to investigate. Good job, Sammy, Dean thought to himself with a narrow smirk.
He quickly and quietly made his way into the shop. The scene did not disappoint: seven pair of scissors of various sizes and shapes pinning the tailor up against the wall. There was a lot of blood.
"Whoa," Dean breathed. He brought up the video camera and did a 360 degree scan of the scene, paying special attention to the body of the victim. It took a few minutes to take all the various readings.
From outside—and all the way around the corner—he heard Sam yell again, which signaled that the cop had just started to help Sam set his arm. Sam had promised to draw that process out.
Dean searched the place carefully, finding a sooty residue in the dressing room and on the countertop. He scraped a sample into a plastic bag and waved it beneath his nose. Rotten eggs. Sulfur. That was all he needed. As quickly as he was in, he was out, and he was back in the alley by the time the second police cruiser arrived.
It had taken Sam a while to make it back to the car; the officer must not have known how to set a shoulder. Sam plopped down in the passenger seat next to Dean, rubbing the joint gently and wincing as much as his scowl would allow.
"Nobody can resist an injured Sammy," Dean mocked. Sam didn't so much as turn his head. "How many—"
"Five tries," Sam growled. "I had to teach him how, and it still took the guy five fucking tries."
"Ouch," Dean chortled.
"No, you don't—You do not get to laugh at me! I just ripped my shoulder out of its socket and taught a know-nothing dipshit future mall security guard how to shove it back in!" Sam raged, reducing his brother to helpless laughter. "I had to convince him not to call an ambulance twice!"
"Stop, stop, man, you're killing me!" Dean gasped.
Sam looked away in a huff, as much to cover his own smile as to convey his anger. It was a bizarre feeling, the ebullient humor in his chest, because he genuinely was angry. But he had missed this. It was like the feeling he'd had that morning, when Dean had laughed at him for freaking out and falling off the bed. This was normal. This was how it was supposed to be.
Dean eventually calmed down. "Sorry," he chuckled.
"Did you get anything?" Sam demanded coldly.
"Yeah," Dean said, forcing a straight face. "Sulfur residue. Looks like Pastor Evil is back in town."
Things had changed. As much as they needed to find this creature and kill it, there was a demon looking for them who meant business.
"Do we even know it's Aphorael?" Sam questioned. "We know he's the kind of demon who needs belief to make him powerful, so how would he get his powers back?"
"Who the hell else would it be? We exorcised that one in Halstadt; there's no way he's made it back already. And the chances of two demons showing up in the same place, at almost the same time, without being related in some way? Like a bazillion to one."
"Maybe Aphorael had summoned more than one demon before we stopped him."
"Come on, Sammy!" Dean shouted, the frustration getting to him a little. "Big demons summon little demons. And little demons can't do anything like what I saw in that store. You know this stuff!"
In the silence that followed, he expected Sam to give him something back, to hold to his position and argue it, make a point Dean hadn't thought of. It didn't occur to him that Sam might not have one. So it came as a surprise when Sam just looked away and nodded, mumbling "Yeah, you're right."
"Yeah, I am right," Dean said uncertainly, watching his brother carefully. "Still, he's not the top priority."
"Why not?" Sam wondered aloud. Once again Dean's frustration spiked; what was with the stupid questions?
"Dude!" Dean practically yelled. "He pinned a guy to the wall with seven pairs of scissors. He's trying to get our attention. If all he wanted was revenge, he wouldn't be advertising; we could bolt and he'd never find us. He risked that because this was a faster way of distracting us."
"Yeah, sorry," Sam acquiesced.
Dean could have sworn he saw his brother wince. He felt a pang of guilt. Then he had a thought, and the guilt doubled. He softened his demeanor considerably. "Is something wrong, man?" he asked gently. "Are you…hearing things?"
"No," Sam replied, looking caught and clearly fighting back his feelings. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Dean said. "You're distracted. I want to know why."
"I'm not hallucinating," Sam said coldly, and Dean believed him. It just didn't answer his question. "Let's get back to—"
"No." Dean interrupted. "That's not how this works anymore, Sammy. You're going through something, you don't just push it down and get back to work. That attitude almost got you killed last night."
They sat there in silence for a moment, and Sam seemed to be struggling. Finally, he looked at Dean with as much calm as he could muster, trying, Dean could plainly see, to retain some semblance of strength. "I think it's the drugs. They…uh." Sam laughed painfully and averted his eyes. "They slow me down a lot." He gave Dean a vulnerable half-smirk.
Dean felt like shit. "God, Sammy, I'm sorry."
"Not your fault."
"I meant for bitching you out."
"So did I," Sam said soberly. "You didn't know. Can we get back to work now?"
By the time they'd hammered out their strategy, it was late. They would have to pick up the hunt in the morning.
They had secured the doors and windows with lines of salt. Sam was already in bed, and Dean was brushing his teeth. Dean was using the time, what little time he had alone, to reflect.
Things weren't normal, as much as they pretended they were. Ever since they'd gotten up that morning, ever since Sam had fallen off the bed and given Dean permission to laugh at him, things had seemed to fall back into their natural order. But it was an illusion, and a fragile one.
Sam wasn't fine. He was broken, he was hurting, even when it looked like he wasn't. Dean didn't have a clue how to deal with that. When he treated Sam like he was fragile, it made his brother feel weak. And when he treated Sam like normal, he ended up hurting him by forcing him to confront just how deficient he was. He needed to find a balance between those extremes, some way to keep what normalcy he could without making Sam deal with unrealistic expectations.
Dean knew the teasing had helped, as much as Sam had tried to hide his mirth. So that was something. Not much, but something.
He spit in the sink and rinsed his mouth out, then came out to his side of the bed and sat down. Sam wasn't asleep, Dean could tell, but he was rolled onto his side and his eyes were closed, so he was at least trying to get there. Dean slid into bed next to his brother and turned out the lamp. His thoughts kept him awake for a while.
He'd told Sam he needed his help; that was how he'd gotten him to stay. If Sam became convinced he wasn't capable, if the drugs made him dull enough, he might try to leave again. And that was a possibility Dean couldn't bear. There was so much more to Dean's reticence to let Sam go than utilitarian efficacy and safety concerns. Even if Sam couldn't help him at all, even if he was completely useless on the hunt, Dean still needed him.
What kind of coward was he that he couldn't say it?