-The Broken Road That Led Me Straight To You-
-Chapter Three-
Sam sat silently in the passenger seat of his brother's bright orange 1962 Thunderbird, his eyes flickering nervously to his companion every once in a while. As much as Sam wanted to ask Rick about the hunt, he knew his brother was still pissed off about his coffee, and he knew speaking up would not be wise. Sam hoped sincerely that the prospect of a new case would temper Rick's anger down, and maybe then he could interrogate and find out a bit. Sam cringed when Rick turned the radio on, rock music blaring from the speakers at an eardrum shattering volume.
The T-Bird tore up the miles towards Auburn Hills, the two brothers quiet as they headed towards their destination.
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"So what's their story?" Dean asked casually after taking a generous swallow of beer, even though his feelings betrayed his tone. He was quite curious about these two, for some odd reason, especially the youngest one. He knew he shouldn't be so surprised, a lot of hunters were younger than this when they first started hunting, including himself, but he knew there was more to it than he already heard, which wasn't exactly much.
Bobby looked at the young man. "You wanna know why they're all alone, hunting by themselves?"
Dean nodded slightly. Even though he knew of many hunters who were solitary either by choice or some twist of fate — he was still curious about the two brothers.
"Their Daddy was a military man." Bobby explained, his eyes turning on John now. "Richard Wesson fought in Vietnam as well, came back home and married his high-school sweetheart."
Dean nodded attentively; that was not very different to what had happened to his own father.
"Wesson couldn't find a decent job and settled for driving transport trucks across the country." Bobby continued."That left his wife — Carol, I think her name was — at home to raise Rick."
The grizzled hunter took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I don't know all the details of what happened. Wesson never told me outright, but I heard enough from the other hunters. The boys were still quite young — Sam was just two years old and Rick was ten — when their mother was seduced by a Gancanagh — "
Dean sat up and interrupted. "What's that?"
"One of the Fair Folk." Bobby grumbled, annoyed that he had to explain. John simply drank his beer and listened, since he already knew a bit about Wesson's story, he didn't have any questions so far.
"They're attractive and they prey on women and girls." Bobby continued. "They've got an addictive toxin in their skin that acts like a drug . . . the women usually die from withdrawal."
Dean grimaced sympathetically. "So, that's what happened to Carol Wesson?"
Bobby nodded. "I guess with Richard being away so much, she got lonely and the Gancanagh found her as an easy target. They're a nasty sort, ya know, making vulnerable women fall in love with them and then disappearing; killing only for their own entertainment."
"What about the boys?" John asked, startling both his son and Bobby.
"Rick called 911 when Carol became ill, or I think a neighbour or friend found out — I'm not really sure which — and Richard was contacted by the local hospital when his wife was taken in." Bobby explained.
"After Carol died, Wesson quit trucking and sought out the monster that had killed his wife, taking his sons with him." Bobby finished. "That's about all I know. Richard taught his boys to hunt before he passed away; had a stroke when his oldest was eighteen and Rick became Sam's legal guardian."
Bobby shrugged. "They usually keep to themselves. Richard wasn't exactly the friendliest sort and liked his privacy. Rick's like his Papa, in more ways than just his name. I'll hear from him from time to time, but mostly he just stays away from other hunters."
Dean pulled back the rest of his beer and stood, stretching. "Are they good hunters?"
If Rick and Sam Wesson had learned to hunt like he and Adam had, then they clearly knew what they were doing. Dean did not want to find himself with two incompetent hunters while on the trail of not one but two Black Dogs — even with his Dad by his side.
"Rick's as ruthless as hell and Sam can follow orders." Bobby confirmed rather vaguely.
John nodded. "That's good to hear."
Dean frowned. He wasn't sure if he meant that Rick could apparently hold his own in the midst of battle or that his brother wouldn't screw up.
Dean grimaced, thinking of his own little brother. Although Adam hadn't liked hunting he had tried . . . God knows he had tried so hard to please their father, had tried to make John proud of him . . . until he had just given up.
Shaking his head to dispel the depressing thoughts, Dean stood and set his empty bottle on the motel room's scuffed wooden table.
"When will they arrive?" He asked, turning his gaze on Bobby.
"A few hours yet." The grizzled hunter answered.
Dean nodded and went to one of the beds, grabbing his duffel bag and pulled out his gun, deciding to clean it as they waited.
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Sam shifted restlessly in the passenger seat as a memory came into his dreams, clouding his blissful sleep with the deep ache of guilt in his heart that he usually kept hidden from the outside world.
Sammy smiled up at his mother as she carefully tucked the blue blanket around him, the curtains in his room drawn for his afternoon nap.
"Story?" Sammy asked, his puppy-eyes wide.
His mother chuckled fondly and said, "I'll read to you before you go to bed tonight."
Sam decided that was a good idea and nodded with a large smile, snuggling into the soft sheets. His mother brushed his dark brown hair away from his face and kissed his brow.
Standing straight, Sam's mother smoothed down the skirt of the light green dress she wore and walked to the door.
"Sleep tight." She said in a light voice and closed the door, leaving it open about a half-inch.
Sammy breathed a soft sigh and closed his eyes. He listened to the quiet pad of his mother's shoes as she walked down the carpeted hallway, his mind slowly drifting away from the living world.
The loud peal of laughter woke Sam a short time later and he sat upright in bed, rubbing his eyes with his fists. The young infant listened, hearing the low rumble of a male voice — indistinct but certainly belonging to a man — and he smiled joyfully.
Daddy's home! Sam flung his blanket away in excitement and carefully climbed down from his bed. He stopped in time to grab his favorite toy — a stuffed grey rabbit with a blue bow tie around its neck — and hurried down the hall.
Sammy followed the voices, peering stealthily into the kitchen where his mother was sitting across from a man who was not his Daddy.
The man had curly brown hair and light brown eyes, and he was holding his mother's hand over the table.
Suddenly, the stranger turned his gaze on Sam and the boy shrank back a little in fright.
"And who's this young man?" The man asked in a funny voice, a pale clay pipe held clenched between his teeth.
Sam's mother turned to him and her brows knitted together. "Sammy, you're supposed to be sleeping."
Sam cautiously stepped into the kitchen, hugging his toy to his chest. His mother scooped him up and looked apologetically at the man who was not her husband.
"I'll just put him back to bed." Carol said, holding Sam tightly against her chest.
She turned so that Sam could see the man lean back in his chair and cross one leg over the other.
"Who's he?" Sam mumbled, his hazel eyes already drifting closed.
"He's just a friend, Sammy." His mother said softly. "A very special friend."
They reached the room and his Mom placed him back in the bed, draping his blue blanket over him once again.
"You can't tell Daddy or Ricky about him, okay?" His mother said, looking slightly frantic as she lifted his blanket higher to his shoulders. "It'll be our secret." She whispered softly as he ran a hand through her baby's hair.
Sammy liked secrets; knowing them made him feel like a big boy, like his brother who was ten and went to school.
"Okay Mommy." Sam said sleepily. "I won't tell."
Carol gazed down at her son with a shaky smile, her hand trembling lightly as she brushed his bangs away from his forehead. "There's a good boy."
Sam smiled as his mother kissed his brow again and walked out of the room. Rolling onto his side, Sam hugged his stuffed rabbit to his chest and snuggled into the blankets. Mommy was always so sad whenever Daddy had to leave, but this special friend made her smile and Sam just knew he was a good guy.
Sam startled out of sleep and blinked rapidly against the fog in his vision. He looked out of the window and observed; it was just the beginning of evening, and the sun was almost touching the tops of the buildings they blurred by.
Sam twisted his body towards his brother, gathering up the courage to voice out his simple question. Rick had long since turned off the radio, and was now driving in silence.
"W-where are we?" Sam ventured hesitantly, all the while trying to push away the dredges of his dream from his mind.
"Pontiac." Rick deigned to answer. "We'll be in Auburn Hills in twelve or fifteen minutes."
Sam straightened in his seat and breathed a small sigh of relief — either at not being screamed at, or getting out of this confined space that was filled with nothing but discomfort and fear, he wasn't sure — and he raised his hands to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
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Rick consulted his cell phone before pulling into the parking lot of the Hills Motel, stopping before the front doors and leaving the engine idling.
Sam waited patiently as his brother checked them into a room.
The youngest Wesson sighed as he stared at the motel's façade; the office and the outlying rooms were all covered in pale yellow siding and had weathered brown tiles on their roofs, the door to every room was coated in peeling white paint and had a brass number above the peepholes.
Sam wondered if the motel had its own laundry facilities; most of the clothes in his duffel bag were stained with coffee from Rick's 'accident' that morning, and he really needed to have them washed because he wasn't very fond of the idea of walking around in clothes that have weird brown spots on them.
Stopping in front of the very last room, Rick killed the T-Bird's engine and exited the vehicle, keeping both of the keys. Rick didn't give him the luxury of wielding the keys, hell, he wouldn't even allow him to go out unless he had to, for food or groceries mostly. He was practically a slave to his brother, not allowed to do anything without his permission.
He stepped onto the curb and right to the door, Sam moving slower than his brother with his stiff legs. Sam was already tall for his age, about one and a half inches taller than his brother, but he wasn't as strong and muscular as Rick, instead having a skinny and lanky figure, and the classic car was not certainly designed for especially long-legged people.
Sam stretched as he closed the T-Bird's door, careful not to slam it or else bring the wrath of Rick down on his head. Sam moved around the back of the car, unlocking the trunk and grabbing their duffels — his bag smelling strongly of old coffee and sporting a dark brown stain over its top — before meeting his brother at the door of the motel room.
Rick entered their temporary home first, grimacing in disgust at the parquet floors and paneling that went half-way up the walls — the top half painted a greenish-grey that made Sam think repulsively of boogers — before deeming the room fit. The older Wesson grabbed his bag from Sam and set it on one of the beds, and then reached into his pockets for his cell phone.
Sam was relieved that the room had two beds. During the last hunt they'd been on, Rick had forgotten to ask for a room with two single beds and had ended up with one queen-sized one. Sam had been made to sleep on the hard floor — which had some very creepy stains on them, and he couldn't sworn there was a rat hole in one corner of the wall — for the duration of the case, and his back still twinged whenever he thought about it.
"I'll let Bobby know we're here." Rick said absently, speaking mostly to himself.
"Okay." Sam mumbled inaudibly and sat down on his bed, staring at the duffel uncertainly.
"Go get me something to eat." Rick demanded suddenly as he turned to him, his cell phone pressed against his ear. "I'm starving."
Uh . . . oh.
Sam slowly stood up, but didn't act any further, fiddling nervously with the hem of his gray t-shirt and stared at his brother's shoes, waiting for him to finish talking to Bobby.
"Hey! Yeah, we just got here." Rick spoke jovially to the grizzled hunter on the other end of the line. "We're just gonna get a bite to eat and then get down to business, alright?"
Rick paused, listening as Bobby spoke. "Yeah . . . okay . . . uh, we're in room twenty."
Sam's palms became slick with sweat, his heartbeat racing faster. He hated asking his brother for anything.
"Are you deaf? What are you waiting for?" Rick snapped irritably and Sam looked up in fear.
"R-Rick . . . uh . . . about dinner," Sam mumbled, trying to pick his words carefully.
"Spit it out!" Rick growled and Sam's instantly flinched back a step, his head snapping up as he quickly glanced at his brother before looking down again.
"I — I don't have any money to pay for dinner." Sam explained hurriedly and waited for his brother to explode.
Rick didn't disappoint.
"What the fuck did you do with all the money I gave you?!" He yelled angrily, rising to his feet, and finding satisfaction at the flinch he earned from his brother. He liked it, because it made him feel more in control, of himself, of his brother, and he loved control.
"I-I used it." Sam whispered softly. "The l-last of it paid for breakfast."
Rick narrowed his eyes at his brother as though he didn't believe Sam, as though he thought Sam had been spending the money behind his back.
Rick growled angrily and snarled, tearing his wallet from his jeans' pocket and shoved a handful of bills at Sam's face without counting them.
Sam swallowed and reached down for the money without comment, picking it up and folding it, and then placing it into the pocket of his own jeans.
It could have gone worse, Sam thought to himself.
Before he left the room Rick spoke up once more. "If I find any rabbit food on my burger, I'm going to kick your ass."
Sam cringed slightly and gazed down at the ground, knowing that his brother's threat was not an empty one.
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Rick bit into his burger with gusto; clearly he hadn't been exaggerating when he'd claimed he was starving.
Sam stared at his usual food, a small muffin, having no appetite. He was thinking about his dream instead. He should have said something to someone about the man — the monster — but he had kept his mother's secret. He should have told his father or even his brother. When he had finally spoken up — out of childish innocence after the funeral — he soon realized his mistake. He might still have been able to save his mother if he had talked . . . but he hadn't. It was his fault his mother was dead, and his father and brother never let him forget it.
A sharp knock on their door caused both brothers to look up. Rick jerked his chin in the direction of the door and Sam stood shakily, wiping his hands on his pants.
Looking carefully through the peephole, Sam relaxed somewhat when he saw Bobby. Opening the door, Sam gave the older hunter a small smile.
Bobby grinned back. "Hiya, Sammy. Hope we're not interrupting anything."
Sam shrugged casually and moved out of the way so Bobby could enter.
"I brought a couple of friends with me, if you don't mind." The grizzled hunter commented and this time Rick stood up too, wiping his face on a diner napkin.
"That's fine." He said and stepped forward. "We were just about finished anyway."
Bobby quickly took in Rick's half-eaten hamburger and Sam's picked-at muffin with a raised eyebrow.
"Anyways." Bobby said, scratching his head beneath his baseball cap. "I thought we could get the whole group together, make introductions and plans and the like. I wanna nip these two beasties in the bud before they get worse."
"How can they get worse?" Rick asked and Bobby just rolled his eyes.
"We're afraid that those Black Dogs aren't just here together by coincidence." Bobby grumbled. "We think they might be mates."
Sam gulped nervously. That wasn't good.
"So, are you going to keep us in suspense Bobby, or are we actually going to meet the Winchesters?" Rick asked, smirking.
"You're an idjit." Bobby deadpanned and went to the opened door. "Alright, c'mon in."
John Winchester entered first; tall and broad-shouldered, with a rugged face, aquiline nose, dark eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, Sam mused observantly. He was also dressed casually in jeans, boots and a button-up flannel shirt underneath a black leather jacket.
"So you're Richard Wesson's boys." John rumbled and smiled, extending a hand to Sam, who was standing closest to him.
Sam shook John's hand, thinking that the smile changed John Winchester's face completely; he didn't look so much like a Roman Centurion, but an old teddy bear when he wasn't frowning.
Rick nudged Sam out of the way and introduced himself.
Dean entered the motel room more hesitantly than his father had done. He was tall — though not as tall as Sam — with short, light brown hair and emerald-green orbs. He dressed in much the same way as John, flannel and leather and denim.
Dean seemed to relax more once he was inside, and he straightened, even risking a broadened smile.
"I'm Dean." He introduced, facing the younger Wesson. "And you're Sam? Pretty tall for your age, aren't you?" He leaned in slightly and asked humorously, "Did your parents feed you Miracle-Grow when you were a baby or something?" He grinned widely.
He furrowed his eyebrows slightly as he had a closer look at the boy, and tried to push down and hide the sudden concern and protectiveness he felt when he caught sight of the bruises on the young boy's face.
Sam smiled shyly — the dimples standing out prominently on his cheeks — at the joke and shook his head. "No, nothing like that. Just lucky I guess." Years of emotional and physical pain had stripped him of his confidence, but for some reason, he felt comfortable and . . . and free in Dean's sudden company. The feeling was quite foreign to him, because he couldn't remember a single time of feeling it, and that made him want to sob.
Because Rick was never like this with him, he never joked around with him, and talked to him in that playful tone, or allowed him to be free.
Because he always feared talking in front of his brother, and he hated how he spent most of his life being silent, only talking when talked to or when it was necessary.
Dean's heart warmed at the smile, much like when he heard his own baby brother's laugh. He still remembered what it sounded like; bright, carefree and infectious, and sometimes when he thought of it, he caught himself smiling, a true, honest smile, unlike the cocky grins that he had mastered at faking.
He internally shook his head off the thoughts that are only bound to cause him more grief, and his eyes crinkled slightly as he smiled again and turned his attention to Rick.
"Nice T-Bird out there." He said and Rick beamed proudly; Sam could see him gearing up to start bragging about the vintage car.
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In no time at all, the Winchesters, Wessons and Bobby were sitting around the tiny motel table, a map spread out with X's marking the sites where victims had been found, discussing the best plan of attack. Rick was in his element, trumpeting any idea that came to mind and more than prepared to argue if he didn't think something was going to work.
Sam sat a little bit outside of the circle, watching the hunters quietly. He felt slightly left out, but otherwise he enjoyed not having much attention on him, because it made him feel a bit self-conscious and awkward. Although a few times Dean had asked him what he thought and Sam could only shrug and say, "Whatever Rick thinks is best."
He liked how Dean had tried to include him though. Rick never did that. He would decide what was going to happen and then tell Sam what he was expected to do for his part in their hunts.
SNSNSNSNSN
Sam checked his gun to make sure he had enough silver bullets and followed Rick out to the car. His brother and Dean were laughing about some joke and Sam frowned, wondering they were talking about and what was so funny, and wishing he could also be involved.
Sam shook his head. Dean and Rick weren't going to become friends. His brother liked his privacy and after this hunt they'd probably never see the Winchesters again.
Still, Sam cringed as Rick continued to chuckle — having witnessed him to be mostly cranky and angry for all his life would do that — as he slid into the driver's seat and put the key in the ignition, the T-Bird roaring to life. Sam closed his door and reached out to pull his seatbelt across his chest when his brother's hand snaked out and grabbed his wrist in a bruising grip.
Sam flinched violently, his face scrunched slightly in pain as he swallowed hard, peering at Rick's face which was shadowed by the moth-smeared light outside their motel room.
"Don't fuck this up, Sammy." Rick hissed; his eyes cold and hard. He stared his younger brother down until Sam lowered his gaze and nodded.
Releasing his hold on Sam's wrist, Rick grinned fiendishly and turned on the radio.
"Let's raise a little hell!"
Author's Note: So . . . liked it? Enjoyed the longer-than-usual chapter? :D
As always, thank you all for the great support and feedback. I also apologize for the delay. I just can't seem to shake off the darn writer's block!
And a MASSIVE thank you to AlElizabeth, because she was the one who wrote the whole chapter for me. I only made a few changes, but she wrote 99% of the whole chapter, and I also recommend you read her stories because they're truly great! We also made a collab story together — which is on her profile — it's called 'Burning Bright', check it out!
Reviews are love and courage! :)