Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Thanks to Sapphire Wing, doyleshuny, ILB, judyann, Olive-Pizza, twomoms, SayLo, criminally charmed, isabelcolin, Ange De La Misericorde, reannablue, hotshow, shookenuppepsi, emebalia, scootersmom, L.A.H.H and TG for the reviews and to Cheryl for the beta.
Chapter I: While I Nodded, Nearly Napping
"Just one more, you big baby," Dean muttered, holding Sam still with a hand on his shoulder. "Tell me how old you are again?" Sam didn't reply. Dean sighed and put down the needle, sliding his hand into his brother's hair. "Hey. You OK?"
"Get on with it," Sam muttered.
Dean rolled his eyes. "Excuse me for trying not to hurt you. Next time I'll just let you bleed out all over the floor and leave the mess for the cleaners."
"Shut up," Sam said, words slurring with exhaustion.
Dean smiled, keeping his hand in Sam's hair, rubbing his head lightly until Sam's eyes closed and his breathing evened out. Then he picked up the needle again.
He'd just put in the last stitch, Sam barely stirring the whole time – and yeah, Dean would like to see anyone else do that, stitch up a torn shoulder while the patient slept through it without the aid of drugs, Dean was just awesome at first aid – when Sam's phone rang.
Dean cursed – stupid phone, waking Sam after all that trouble – and answered it, mainly to shut it up. It was too late by then, Sam was awake and blinking drowsily at him, but maybe Dean could get him back to sleep.
He shoved the first aid kit unceremoniously aside and dropped to the edge of the bed, letting his hand rest on the nape of Sam's neck as he whispered, "Hello?" into the phone.
"Dean? Why are you answering Sam's phone?"
"Garth?" Dean asked. He kept his voice low and even, hoping it would lull Sam back to sleep. Dean was probably a horrible brother for feeling secretly relieved when Sam was injured badly enough that sheer exhaustion and pain would make him sleep a night through, but when you had to deal with the world's leading insomniac you took your breaks where you could get them. "What do you want?"
"Dude, why are you talking like that? Is Sam OK?"
"I'm not talking like anything," Dean said in his normal voice. Sam's eyes had drifted shut again, so it was OK. As long as Dean was just talking and not shouting a warning or screaming in pain, Sam wouldn't wake up. "What's up?"
"I heard you and Sam were in New Jersey."
"Yeah, we are." Dean moved, sitting back against the headboard, grateful for the chance to rest his back. "Why? Something we should know about?"
"Yes… Well, nothing too bad. I just have a friend in Baltimore who needs some help – our kind of help – and I've got my hands full with – well, you know." Dean nodded; he did know. Garth was keeping tabs on Kevin Tran, their prophet. "So, since you and Sam are in the area, I was wondering if you could swing by?"
"What's the job?"
"I have a friend called Lou West – my father's friend, actually. He's opening a haunted house."
"A real haunted house?"
Garth laughed. "No, idjit." Dean just managed not to cringe. "You think I wouldn't have stopped him? No, it's one of those fairground, amusement park kind of things. On a bigger scale. Lou has vision."
"So where do we come in? He wants Sam to dress up as Sasquatch for his opening night?"
Garth laughed again. "No. It's simple, Dean. Lou had one of those Wiccans come and draw occult stuff on the walls and floors. For atmosphere, he said. He wants a hunter to take a look at it and make sure he won't actually wind up summoning a demon."
Dean sighed. "Let me get this straight. Your friend had some New Age yoga chick draw crap on his walls and now he wants us to establish that she hasn't accidentally drawn something that means something to, potentially, any of the world's religions, including religions that people stopped following in the Stone Age?"
"Well, when you put it like that… I guess it's kind of difficult."
"You kidding me? You're lucky we're in New Jersey." Dean's free hand dropped to his brother's head again. "Sammy's the only person alive who, maybe, has a shot at doing this."
"So you'll go?"
"I'll have to check with Sam, but we don't have anything else lined up, so I don't see why not."
"Great." Dean could almost hear Garth's grin. "Thanks, Dean. I knew I could count on you guys."
"What now?" Sam asked, looking so horrified you'd think someone had asked him to kidnap puppies.
"Check the guy's decor and make sure there's nothing disastrous," Dean repeated patiently.
"But, Dean… What if it's in Mandarin? Neither of us speaks Mandarin. Or the proto-Indo-European language, there's nobody left in the world who speaks that."
"Yeah, Sam," Dean said, just managing not to comment on how Sam seemed about fifty times more eager to get some freaking runes right for some idiot friend of Garth's that they'd never even met before than he ever had been to look for Dean in Purgatory. "He just had some hippie chick do this, but yeah, I'm sure Patchouli managed to find something in a language you don't know."
Sam glared. "Well, if there does turn out to be a spell that summons Anansi and we don't find it, I'm blaming you."
"Sure. What the hell is a Nancy anyway?"
"Anansi," Sam enunciated.
"Whatever you say, princess. Look, Sam, just calm down. It's a hippie chick. I'm sure she doesn't know Enochian or anything –"
"Enochian would be OK," Sam muttered. "I can read Enochian."
Dean stared. "How the hell can you read Enochian?"
Sam flushed. "Michael and Lucifer. They… Well. When they want you to learn something, they make sure you learn it."
Dean felt a little sick. In all his PTSD from Purgatory (or non-PTSD, because Dean Winchester did not get traumatized by a little blood) it was easy to forget that Sam had been through a hundred and eighty years of the Cage.
"Sammy…"
Sam shook his head. "It's not a big deal. Just – I can read Enochian. So we're safe there. You know, if there's some summoning ritual in Enochian that snuck in. I can't answer for Mandarin."
"Awesome." Dean forced his lips into something resembling a grin. "What are we waiting for, then? Let's hit the road."
They didn't actually hit the road that day.
Sam was still hurting – he tried to hide it, but Dean could see right through him and his stupid attempt to claim that he was ready to sit through the drive to Baltimore. Sure it was only three hours (well, an hour and a half if you drove like Dean Winchester and not like somebody's elderly great-aunt) but that was still no reason to risk Sam's stitches.
They stayed at the motel. Dean made a run for pizza and beer and Sam found Night of the Living Dead on cable, and they spent the afternoon sitting on the ratty sofa listing all the ways in which George Romero absolutely would not survive a real zombie apocalypse. It was ridiculous and familiar, and for a moment Dean could pretend that there had never been Ruby or Lilith or Lucifer or Benny or anything else between them. For a moment it felt like it was still just him and Sam on the open road.
Without thinking, he leaned closer to Sam.
Sam looked startled, but he went with it, bumping Dean's shoulder with his and poking at Dean where he was the most ticklish, just to prove he still remembered how to be a pain-in-the-ass little brother. By the time they finished the resultant mock-wrestling match (mock-wrestling because there was just too much crap everywhere and Sam's shoulder was still a little fragile) the movie was over.
Dean made sure Sam hadn't busted any stitches, because that would be just like the kid, to ruin all Dean's handiwork and put them both through that torture again.
When Dean was sure Sam hadn't done any damage, he left to get more beer from the convenience store down the street.
He came back to find Sam on his bed, leaning back on a pile of pillows looking emo.
"What?" Dean asked warily.
"Lou West called."
"Garth's buddy?"
"Yeah."
Dean wondered what the hell Lou West had done to put that look on Sam's face. The thought was followed by a desire, strong and almost shocking in its intensity, to introduce Lou to Dean's fist.
Huh.
It shouldn't surprise him that he felt so fiercely protective of Sam. But it did. Sam had grown up so much; now he was about three times Dean's size and more than capable of taking care of himself. More than capable of dealing with anything the world could throw at him.
And then Sam got that look on his face, like he'd had a first-edition copy of War and Peace and a puppy and someone had taken both of them away. It wasn't fair that that look still made Dean want to break things.
"What happened?" he asked, and if his voice was a low growl, well, that was just the natural consequence of knowing somebody had upset Sammy. "What did he say to you?"
As he waited for Sam to respond, he wondered just how fond Garth was of his friend, and how much he'd care if Lou had an accident. Like, maybe, accidentally running into a brick wall. About twelve times.
He was so busy fantasizing about beating Lou West to a pulp (kind of difficult when he had no idea what the guy looked like, but he'd have Sam pull up a photo) that it took him a moment to realize that Sam was showing no sign of responding.
Dean scowled, considered and decided against badgering Sam into telling him what had gone down, and grabbed his brother's phone instead. He found the last call and called the number back.
"Hello?" an unfamiliar voice said. "Sam?"
"No, this is Dean." Dean sat on his bed, opposite Sam, and nudged his brother's knee. Sam smiled at him, shaking his head in silent warning. Dean ignored it. "So I hear you spoke to Sam. Anything I need to know about?"
Some hint of the mental pictures he was still amusing himself with must have seeped into his voice, because Lou said, a little too quickly, "Nothing. Really. Nothing at all. I'm grateful to you boys for helping me out like this."
"Really? You sure that's all?"
Dean might not have big, soulful eyes that could make people pour out their deepest secrets, but he was John Winchester's son and he could sure as hell do intimidation. Lou West only lasted a few seconds.
"Look," he told Dean, sighing, "I don't want trouble or anything. I just… I know some hunters, OK? And I heard some… stuff… about Sam. And some Satanic business. I know what you do, but I just wanted to make sure it wasn't anything I needed to worry about. That's all. No offence."
Dean thought he must have heard wrong. He must have heard wrong, that was the only explanation, because if he heard right, it meant that this man – this man who was stupid enough to open a freaking haunted house and who was being given the indescribable privilege of having the closest thing the hunting community had to a walking encyclopaedia come and make sure that he hadn't woken anything hairy that would eat him – upset Sam because he was curious about the Lucifer thing.
Dean drew in a long, steadying breath.
Then he said, "Listen, douchebag. You mention that ever again – in fact, you do anything to upset Sam ever again – and I'm going to show up overnight and fill your little-girl haunted house with summoning spells for every supernatural thing I know. Do not mess with my brother. We clear?"
Lou stuttered out a response, which Dean mostly ignored, and asked if they were still coming to help.
Dean raised an eyebrow in Sam's direction. Sam wasn't even looking at him, but he must have sensed the question, because he nodded.
"Yeah," Dean said into the phone. "Sam's too damn forgiving for his own good, or mine, so we're coming. We'll see you tomorrow."
"Great," Lou said. "I've arranged for you to stay at my hotel… It's new, I'm going to open it to the public when I open the haunted house next month but it's fully stocked and there's a skeleton staff in place so they can take care of you. I'm staying there myself, right now. It's very close to the haunted house, easier to do it this way than to make the drive from Baltimore everyday."
"What, this place isn't in Baltimore?"
"It's a few miles outside of town. I'll send you directions."
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