AN: i planned on getting this done sooner, but more happened than i had originally anticipated... i also made the mistake of starting a separate, multi-chapter fic (not intetionally... that was supposed to be a oneshot but the characters just keep doing stuff). i'll (as always) try to stay on a weekly update basis as much as possible, if for my own sanity rather than anything else
any who - someone had asked about dean's age in this. i don't have a specific, hard answer for that. this is obviously canon divergent, but i never really picked a specific season when this would break off from canon. so i'd say dean is anywhere from mid 50's to early 60's (which is the age range my parents are, so i'm kinda using that as a basis). and let's face it, in 22 years from now dean/jensen will still be smokin' ;)
as always, feel free to hit me up on tumblr (jhoomwrites)
Thomas wakes up with morning wood and a pounding headache. Two minutes of consciousness and his body decides it's more interested in the headache. A minute after that he's puking in the motel toilet, gasping for breath between heaves. Eventually he feels the nausea subside long enough to rinse out his mouth and wander back into the room.
Dean is no where to be seen, but there's a glass of water and some aspirin on the table. Just when he feels the silence starting to soothe him, the door bursts open way too loudly. A laugh, much too happy for this shit awful morning, responds to his muffled groaning.
"C'mon, kid." A bag lands in his lap. It smells greasy - two parts delicious, one part vomit-inducing. "We got a long trip back. Get up, we're leaving in five. You can eat in the car."
"I'm not a kid," he huffs under his breath, but otherwise doesn't complain.
Whatever it was that might have (or might not have, his memory's a little hazy) happened that night remains unsaid.
Even if they don't talk about it, there's a noticeable shift in their dynamic. The tension between them is, at times, palpable. For himself, at least, Thomas finds his eyes being drawn to Dean's lips more or raking over his whole body more and more. It's, quite honestly, confusing.
Partly because Dean just... doesn't really seem to notice. No matter how long their staring matches go, it never seems to phase or even register with Dean.
Is Thomas imagining it?
But one time Dean catches him staring at his ass. All he does is wink before going back to what he was doing.
Thomas has no idea how to handle that.
The demon hunt was such a success that they each hint at doing another one. When Dean spots a likely ghoul case in Montana, they make a weekend of it. On the way back they happen upon a werewolf. A few weeks later, some suspicious deaths put them in Georgia.
Thomas is sure it's another demon - or maybe it's just because the last one was exciting and he wants it to be another one - but Dean's not convinced. The first vic's house was completely incinerated, so there's not much there to go on. It's not until the third sweep through the second vic's apartment that they find a hex bag stowed in a lighting fixture.
"Goddamn witches," is all Dean says, jaw tight.
Never having experience with any himself (at least not directly), he's worried by Dean's reaction. This is a man who had no issue with going after a demon a week and a half ago. Hell, he even seemed fine with doing it alone. But the idea of witches has him agitated and thoroughly on edge.
The horrific ways people keep dying makes Thomas start to understand.
They're flying blind, no real suspects after five deaths. Which is absolutely ridiculous, how could there not be one thing that ties five people together? Their investigation must attract too much attention or tip off the wrong people, which isn't surprising since they have no clue who the "wrong people" could be.
Dean sends Thomas out on a food run while he looks over maps. When he returns, their motel room is a mess. All their notes are missing and half the room has been demolished. It even looks like there might be bullet holes on one of the walls. Dean is, of course, no where to be found.
To say he starts to panic is an understatement. He probably stands there, near comatose, for a good half hour before there's a hesitant knock at the door.
There's a young woman, probably only a few years older than him. The only thing that snaps him out of his mini-meltdown is the sudden awareness that this woman might be a threat. He instinctively reaches for his gun.
"Wait, no, please!" She holds her hands up. "I'm on your side! I swear!"
He really doesn't believe her, but he has no leads and needs to find Dean. Although he doesn't relax his grip on his pistol, he does lower it slightly. "Go on."
Her name's Patty and yes, it is in fact a coven of witches behind the recent murders. She explains everything in detail, right from the forming of the coven to the reasons behind each death. And it's no wonder they weren't able to find a connection. The coven is relatively large, ten witches all in all, and their reasons for killing these people are just so petty.
Cut me off on the way to work. Didn't tip enough on dinner. Has an obnoxious laugh. Let my daughter eat candy before bed when she was babysitting. Parked too close to the lines and didn't leave enough room for another car.
When Thomas expresses his general disgust for her coven, Patty whole-heartedly agrees. "Why do you think I'm trying to help you?"
"Okay, so help me. They took my friend. Where?"
Unfortunately she has no idea. They must have started to suspect her lack of enthusiasm for their latest revenge kicks because they had moved their normal meeting place. Short of searching each of their houses one by one, she has nothing to offer in terms of locating Dean.
"What are they going to do with him?"
She shrugs. "Honestly? Probably do some weird voodoo shit that needs a human sacrifice."
Thomas' stomach turns at the idea.
There's obviously no time to search, they need to find him now. The best Patty can offer is a locator spell. "But..."
"But what? I thought you were helping?"
"I'm here, aren't I? They find out I'm even talking to you, I'm dead. I have an invested interest in you and your friend killing these crazy bitches. So yeah, this is me helping."
"So what's the problem."
There's an embarrassed grimace. "I'm not exactly... like... a good witch. I'm probably in the weaker end of the witch spectrum."
"Can you do the spell or not?"
"I can. It's just that normally you need something that belongs to the person you're trying to find. Anything they own will do. Pretty straight forward."
"And the reason it's not straight forward right now-"
"I'm not powerful enough to be able to find a link between just any ol' object. I need something meaningful to the person. Some sort of connection that I can use."
Thomas suggests the Impala. Patty is skeptical. Not because she doubts the choice, but because if the spell goes as planned the car will take off towards Dean at full speed. Even sitting behind the wheel, they'd have no way of controlling the car.
He's stumped for a few minutes. They didn't bring much. And Dean's not really sentimental about his clothes or his shampoo (picky, yes, but he doubts the older man's affinity for a particular brand of product is enough to qualify as a "connection"). Panic is once again starting to worm it's way back under his skin when it hits him.
"Use me."
She gives him a look. "What?"
"Can you do it?"
"Yeah. But like... the bond you'd need to have with this guy..." She trails off, lets the implication hang between them.
He thinks of the pull Dean has had on him his entire life. That foreign sense of longing, never quite his own, that's been a tether between the two. If she could find a way to solidify it, he has no doubt he could find Dean.
They gather the ingredients. She shows him symbols to paint on the ground while she lights some candles and starts mixing some powders. He sits across from her and leans into her hands like she asks.
"You sure about this? If the bond's not strong enough, this probably won't work. The connection will be too weak and you won't be able to pinpoint his location. We'll waste a lot of time just trying to find the right direction. An inanimate object is really-"
"It'll work. Just do it."
The witch just makes a face but stops trying to talk him out of it. "This'll be a little different than if it were the car. It'll clear your mind, dust out some of the cob webs that might be up there, and act like a homing beacon. Well, assuming you have the kind of bond that you seem to think you two do. If you don't..." She shrugs, clearly not all that torn up about the fact that it'll probably do some serious damage.
She holds his face in place, chanting what sounds like gibberish but is hopefully a spell to help him save Dean. At first it feels like nothing is happening. This is a total waste and she's either here to slow him down or she's a whole lot weaker than previously indicated.
Then there's the splitting headache that bursts through his head. He's drowning in pain and can't find a way out of it for god knows how long. When he does come to, Patty is kneeling over him, shaking him gently but insistently. He stares at her for a while, still in some sort of shock, before he blinks and awareness comes back to him.
He nearly knocks her over with how quickly he gets up. "Let's go," he snaps, grabbing the keys to the Impala and not bothering to see if she follows.
Patty wasn't wrong. It's like a beacon's been lit. He knows exactly where Dean is, even has a sense of who's around him. When they get to the edge of an orchard, he parks the car and immediately hops the fence and heads northwest. Patty scrambles to keep up, not even trying to question him.
They find the coven gathered around an unlit pyre, a lifeless figure strapped to a pole at its center. To his own surprise, no panic comes at seeing Dean like this. Somehow he knows the other man is alright.
He and Patty lurk at the edges of their gathering, staying hidden in the dusky shadows. They hadn't really discussed a plan, not outright, but Patty had made it clear that these witches had no qualms about killing. Talking to him alone had forfeit her life in their eyes, and he's sure his own life is less than meaningless in their eyes.
Still, he hesitates. Witches or not, these are people.
And then one of the witches walks to Dean, still unconscious and looking a little worse for wear, with a blade raised.
She's dead before she can break his skin.
He doesn't have enough bullets for all of them and he misses two shots. The resulting chaos has curses flying all over the place. He keeps to the perimeter of the treeline, both for cover and to keep their attention away from Dean. Patty, for her part, manages to take out two of them and nullify some of the spells directed his way.
All told, the whole skirmish couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes.
Only when he's sure it's safe does he approach Dean and begin to untie him, though it's not until he takes on some of the other man's weight that he wakes up.
"Wh' happen'd?"
"Apparently the witches found and subdued you before bringing you here. They may have been planning to use you in a ritualistic human sacrifice." Dean just nods knowingly with eyes still a little distant. "And I'm guessing they hit your head. You may have a concussion."
"Pr'bly."
He sighs. Not ideal, but still much better than the alternatives.
"Hey."
Oh, right. Patty.
"I'll clean this up." This. Her coven until earlier today, and she refers to everything as casually as though she were offering to take out the trash or set the table for dinner.
He's wary to let her go. Knowing what her coven did and as capable of, he can't help but wonder if she'll end up the same. But he's tired and Dean's clearly woozy and he really can't bring himself to have to kill anyone else today. So he just nods in the faintest bit of acknowledgement before making the long trip back to the Impala.
There's no way he can go back to their old motel room, what with the state it was in. He drives an hour or so before pulling in somewhere new. Luckily they didn't leave anything valuable behind.
Once settled, he fills Dean in on what happened.
"Are you fucking kidding me!?" Dean all but screeches when he finds out. "They killed those people for that stupid shit?" The rest is just a tirade of curses.
His concerns about letting Patty go rest on the tip of his tongue. Dean seems to sense it and pats his knee. "Hey, you did the right thing. Gotta trust your instincts on this stuff, man, or you'll drive yourself crazy."
Dean's hand lingers for the rest of the conversation.
He determines Dean's concussion to be a minor one and insists he sleep. Dean grumbles about it ("Okay, mom.") but does as he's told. They can drive back to Lawrence in the morning, though he fully expects on argument about who should drive.
He dreams such dreams that night. Everyone's dreamed they're someone else, but this is different. They have the same surreal quality of a dream, but they're so rooted in something that feels like memory. From the moment he passes out the moment his eyes flutter open, he's someone else.
It's so complete that he's more disoriented than usual when he wakes up.
Dean's throwing a towel at him and telling him to shower, a cup of coffee steaming on the nightstand. He grumbles something (hopefully something snarky, but it was probably just a string of nonsense) before going to wash the sleep from his eyes.
The hot water calms his nerves, soothes the mystery ache in the back of his mind. Nothing seems off until he goes to shave. He looks into the mirror and starts slightly. The face looking back at him is right but not right. The general features seem close to how they should be, but the specific details are all wrong.
He stares so long that eventually the face in front of him becomes familiar again. Maybe not the one he was expecting, but one he knows.
Very deliberately, he's able to ignore the odd experience.
AN: hmmm when was the last time i wrote the name "thomas" - you know how annoying it is to purposely only use the pronouns "he/him" instead of someone's name .