Someday Never Comes

Chapter 3

Dean pushed at the oppressive heat that was nearly suffocating him as he twisted on the soft mattress. The weight of the blankets on his chest was making it difficult to move, let alone breath, but he managed to extract a hand after a brief struggle and push the layers of bedding down and off his chest.

Okay, maybe it wasn't entirely the blankets that had made it hard to breathe. Drawing a slow, heavy breath, he coughed as the air tickled along his throat and limply raised a hand to massage the tightness that had taken up residence under his breastbone. After a few moments, breathing became a bit easier and he cracked an eye open, his sight focusing on the form of his little brother perched on the edge of the adjoining bed, bent forward, elbows on knees, staring at him intently.

"That's creepy," he croaked as he closed his eye and practiced taking deep even breaths.

He knew that look.

Nothing good ever came from that look.

Suffocating under the blankets was starting to look more appealing.

He cracked an eye again, sighing before turning his head and focusing his hazy sight on his brother.

"What?"

Sam just continued to stare.

"Will you please stop that?" Dean couldn't help the slight whine in his gravelly voice. He cleared his throat, wincing at the soreness, racking his brain for a clue to what he could have done to garner 'that look' from his brother.

"Sam," he ran a hand over his eyes, effectively shielding himself from the intense hazel stare. "Whatever I did, I'm sorry. Okay? Now will you stop with 'the look'? I already feel like shit."

Dean peaked out from under his fingers, sighing in relief as his brother dropped his gaze and shook his head.

"What do you remember?"

Dean frowned as he rubbed the hand down his face, rubbing lightly against the tender puncture mark the djinn had left on the side of his neck. "Huh? I um… I don't…" The memories of the night before suddenly filled his head and his eyes opened wide, momentarily landing on his brother's concerned face before dropping to his hands splayed on the blanket covering him. "Oh."

"Yeah." Sam sighed, obviously relieved the older man was remotely in charge of his faculties.

Dean cleared his throat again, feeling his face color in embarrassment as more of the evening's events flooded his memory. "I um…. I just…." He didn't really know what to say. He'd told his brother he'd heard his mom. What exactly could he say to make Sam believe he wasn't nuts? He may have been temporarily… distracted… but he knew whatever he heard wasn't his mother. It was just all these memories crowding his head…

"Dean, man, I want to help you but…"

Dean sighed and closed his eyes, letting his head sink back into the down filled pillow. "I know, Sammy. It's okay. I know it wasn't mom. I guess I was just… a little more out of it than I thought."

"Ya think?"

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I was tired and half asleep and…"

"Shocky and delusional and stubborn and frustrating…" Sam's voice trailed off, the look on his face telling Dean he was letting the older hunter off easy.

"Okay, okay. I get it. I'm sorry. It's been a rough few days."

It was Sam's turn to sigh and he waved an apologetic hand toward his brother before raising it and running it through his hair. "I know. Sorry. I was just…"

"Worried. Yeah, I get it, Sammy." Dean decided to throw his brother a bone. He understood that the kid had spent the better part of the last few days worried out of his mind. And it was all Dean's fault. That was something he truly did regret. "But I'm okay. Really. You're not gonna have to find me a little white jacket with funky sleeves any time soon. I'm not gonna loose it, man. I promise."

Sam nodded slowly, his head tilted as he looked at his brother from under too long bangs. "Yeah, well that ship has probably already sailed." He gave Dean a grin, letting him know that all was okay between them. Dean returned the grin, relieved to know his brother still had his back.

After a few moments of comfortable silence, Sam pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. "What do you remember?"

Dean took a slow, deep breath and shrugged as he played back the evenings events in his head. "I couldn't sleep. I went outside and I was just.. you know…trying to get myself together. I heard a voice."

"A voice?"

Dean nodded, his eyes losing focus as he tried to recall details of what had happened. "Yeah. A woman. She was crying."

Sam's eyebrows rose and he leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his thighs and clasping his hands together. "Dean, the nearest cabin is over a hundred yards from here."

"It was coming from the water." Dean shook his head, his brows coming together as he forced his mind to recall the memories. "I thought… I thought someone was in trouble."

"So you went down to the dock to check it out," Sam prompted.

"Yeah. I guess." Dean shrugged again and rubbed at his eye with the back of a hand. "I don't know. It gets a little fuzzy after that." He shifted in the bed, his expression going from confusion to surprise in less than a second. "Dude, am I naked?"

Sam grinned, slightly surprised it had taken his brother so long to notice. "You decided to take a little midnight swim, Dean."

"I fell in? I know I was a little out of it but…"

Sam shook his head, his grin disappearing as he realized the older man didn't remember how he had ended up in the lake. "You didn't fall, Dean. I woke up and went outside to find you. I saw you on the dock. You didn't fall into the water. You stepped off the dock. Deliberately."

Dean's eyes opened wide and he looked at Sam, trying to decide whether the younger man was serious. "Why would I do that?"

"I don't know." Sam shrugged and blew out a breath. "I jumped in after you and hauled you out, but you were so far gone, all I could get out of you was that you thought Mom needed your help." He paused, watching Dean's face in an obvious attempt to gauge his brother's reaction. After a moment he continued, his voice softer in response to the unmasked ache on Dean's face. "Then you passed out and I dragged your ass back here, got you dry and warm. You were shivering so hard, Dean, I thought…"

Dean held up a hand, stopping the words that were becoming a little too painful to hear. "It's okay, Sammy. Uh, thanks." At Sam's slight nod, he gave a short laugh that held no actual humor. "I guess I'm kind of giving you a rough go lately, huh?"

"Yeah." Sam agreed. "No worse than usual." He cleared his throat and sat up straighter on the bed. Taking a deep breath he continued his line of questioning. "So, the voice. Did you recognize it?"

Dean thought for a moment before shaking his head slowly. "No. I thought…" He glanced at his brother, giving him a sad smile. "…well you know what I thought, but no. It wasn't her. It was… I don't know. Different. Sad."

"How are you feeling now?"

Dean thought about that for a moment, too, deciding his brother deserved the truth, despite the familiar desire to sweep it all under the proverbial rug and just move on. "Honestly? Tired. And more than a little creeped out that my little brother got his jollies off stripping me and putting me to bed."

Sam chuckled. "Well, you should've thought of that before you decided to take a hypothermic swim in a dark, deserted lake." He stood and moved toward the small table near the door, grabbing his jacket and snatching the keys to the Impala from the top. "I'm gonna head over to the convenience store by the office on the far side of the lake." He shrugged into the jacket, turning toward the bed, silently watching as his brother rubbed at his temples, obviously trying to alleviate the headache that had taken up residence behind his eyes. "Why don't you take a hot shower and get dressed. I'll bring back coffee and something to eat and we'll figure this out, Dean."

Dean sighed and nodded slightly, wondering if he'd be able to muster the strength to get out of bed, let alone wander all the way to the bathroom. He had to admit, a nice, long hot shower did sound good. Now that he was actually awake, he was aware of the aching muscles throughout his body and knew the heated water would feel like heaven.

"And Dean? Make sure the water's hot." Sam grinned at his brother, a slight twinkle in his eye as he opened the front door. "From what I saw last night, what they say about cold water? Apparently, it's true."

Snsnsnsnsnsnsns

By the time Sam returned, coffee, donuts and supplies in hand, Dean was showered and dressed in extra layers to ward off the chill his body couldn't seem to shake. Of course, he wasn't about to tell Sam he was anything but 100% okay – although he suspected his brother wasn't about to squelch the mother hen act for a few more days anyway.

"I spoke to the woman at the convenience store," Sam began around a bite of his bear claw.

"Was she hot?" Dean asked, a lascivious smile lighting his face.

"She was at least fifty and about as round as she was tall,"

Dean munched on a chocolate covered donut before tilting his head and shrugging, "Might be a little out of your league, dude, but you have to start somewhere, right?"

Sam just rolled his eyes and took a sip of his coffee.

"So what did your new girlfriend have to say?"

Sam pointedly ignored his brother's baiting, a talent born of much practice. "Inez told me that a man drowned out on the lake about a month ago." He waited a moment while his brother considered the information.

"Shit happens, Sam," Dean intoned with an apathetic shrug. "It's a big lake, people get careless, accidents happen."

Sam nodded slowly, taking another sip of the cooling coffee before continuing. "He was on his honeymoon, staying in this cabin. That's why she told me about it. Apparently the guy got up in the middle of the night and ended up at the bottom of the lake."

The silence in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.

Finally Dean cleared his throat and sat back in his chair. "Suicide?"

"On his honeymoon?"

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Doesn't sound real likely, huh?"

Sam shook his head. "Apparently the coroner didn't agree and that was what they tagged it, but Inez didn't seem to think so."

"Okay," Dean said, his eyebrows raised, body poised as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. "I'll bite. What does Inez know that the local fuzz doesn't?"

"La llorana."

Dean shook his head once. "Excuse me?"

Sam placed his cup on the table and leaned forward, tenting his hands on the surface of the table. "La llorana," he explained. "Apparently it's kind of an Hispanic version of a woman in white. There's a pretty big Mexican community around here that migrated up sometime in the fifties to work the fields."

"And you think that's what I heard last night?" Dean asked. "This lorna thing?"

"La llorana," Sam corrected. He shrugged. "I don't know, Dean. You heard something, right?" He waited until his brother nodded once in acknowledgement. "And in our experience, most of these legends turn out to somewhat true, right?"

Dean nodded again, his eyes losing focus as he thought back to the voice that had summoned him toward the lake. He had heard it – he was sure of that now. He hadn't imagined it despite the fact that his mind had been so scrambled by the events of the last few days that he barely trusted his own memory.

But Sam did. The fact that Sam was taking it seriously and not brushing it off as some hallucination brought about by his djinn infected mind somehow made it easier to breathe; like a weight had somehow been lifted from his chest and he was able to take a deep breath for the first time in a long while. "Okay. So how do we kill it?"

Sam shrugged. "No idea, man. Inez said there was a library in the town of Como, about a half hour north. Maybe we can dig up some information there."

Snsnsnsnsnsnsns

Como wasn't really much of a town – more of a collection of old, weather beaten buildings with the cracked pavement of a road breaking them up into small clusters. The library wasn't hard to find, sitting directly across the main road from a small open area that could only be interpreted as a town square.

Dean pulled the Impala into a diagonal parking space directly in front of the small, concrete library building and cut the motor. He leaned forward, craning his neck to the right and then to the left, getting a good look at the expanse that was downtown Como.

"Hoppin' place." He observed as he followed his brother's example and opened the door, stepping out onto the tarmac. "You sure this place has even heard of the internet?"

Sam chuckled and closed the passenger door. He stepped up onto the curb and moved around the big Chevy to join his brother. "Inez says it's got indoor plumbing and everything," he quipped with a grin.

Dean snorted a laugh. "Well, good old Inez certainly has her thumb on the pulse of exciting Como now doesn't she?" He turned and studied the buildings on the other side of the street, his eyebrows rising as his eyes lighted on the 'Bud Lite' sign glowing in the window of the building at the end of the row. "You go ahead, Sammy. Use that college boy head of yours for something more than growing hair." He nodded his own head toward the tavern down the street. "I'm gonna hit the bar."

Sam stopped, watching his brother for a moment before responding. "Dean, I don't think you should be drinking. You're still not one hundred percent, man." Dean's extra layers hadn't escaped his attention. It was normal for the older man to wear a flannel shirt over his t-shirt and a jacket hide whatever weaponry a job may require, but Sam had noted the extra thermal Henley over the T and that his brother had opted for his heavier blue coat even though the temperature was a mild 55 degrees.

As expected, Dean waved off the concern, giving Sam a cheeky smile in an attempt to alleviate the younger man's understandable trepidation. "You don't need me holding your hand while you get your geek on in the library, dude. You research your way, I'll research mine."

TBC