The woman stands in the doorway of the log cabin. Sam's hand is still raised, poised and ready to knock on the dark red door, and she's just looking up at him. Her eyebrow is arched and one hand's on her hip; expectation clear.
Four months back and there was nothing but relief and desperation looking up at this house; the need for the time alone to find a solution and look into the list of bookmarks on his laptop; organised by priority of possibility. There had been no true curiosity as to Dean's motivations past the obvious. He'd been all too happy to just accept Dean's 'Two months, Sam. What the fuck do you think I want?'
Sam looks at the woman in the doorway and he feels too much and nothing all at once.
He remembers watching Dean walk up to this house four months earlier. The image of his brother fading to lines and shapes in his memory; just a familiar silhouette with a backpack slung over one shoulder; sticking his thumbs up before turning his back on Sam and walking away. It feels fundamentally wrong that the details that made up Dean aren't clearer. He remembers them, but in parts. Trying to recall how they all fit together to make Dean's face ends in something abstract and frustrating. They'd spent the majority of their lives living in each other's pockets and already he has to pull out a photo.
"Sam," she says after a minute, no question in her tone.
She's looking at him the same way Missouri did, like she sees straight through him. Like she sees all. Sam's half tempted to ask if she's a psychic, but he's really pretty sure Dean found the whole seeing into his head thing far too creepy to ever consider fucking one. No matter how hot, and this girl's pretty, but she's no Playboy bunny. If anything Sam would say she was more his type than Dean's, but then he remembers Cassie.
He opens his mouth to reply, finds the introduction he'd practiced out loud ten times or more during the ride from Pontiac, Illinois to Smithfield, Maine and lets it fade. "How'd you know..."
The woman, Hermione, sighs, straightens then reaches back, twists her hair up on her head, fixing it with a pencil, and Sam suddenly realises she hasn't once looked past him. Not down the path or at the car parked at the edge of the drive. Anger stings hot, stretching out in his chest and settling into a tight feeling when he breathes in. He clenches his fingers once, twice and looks her straight in the eye, not sure if it's her he's frustrated with, or Dean. Because getting Dean to tell him anything voluntarily was like getting praise from their Dad. Given this woman's lack of hope upon his appearance, apparently different rules apply and Dean's unwillingness to talk about shit ends when it's a casual fuck buddy he's talking to.
"I guess you'd better come in," she says.
He wonders what Dean told her. Cancer maybe. Some other disease? The Truth? He can't get past why the fuck Dean felt so comfortable telling a freaking stranger. It's only after she's turned her back on him and stepped back into the cabin, leaving the door wide open, that he catches up with the conversation and the fact that the woman's disappeared inside the house.
"- not exactly warm up here this time of year. There's a draft excluder on your left. If you wouldn't mind putting it back, please."
Her voice is followed by the bubbling hiss of a kettle starting to boil from somewhere further inside. Sam rolls his shoulders, steps forward.
The cabin's warm; a fire's grumbling away happily in the grate across the room. Sam leans back against the door, watching the embers flare and curl their way up into the chimney.
He remembers staying somewhere like this when he was sixteen or so; more run down though. It had felt like every day something new had needed fixing. Sam remembers most of the places they stayed being like that. He can recall Dean stretching cling film over the window in the bathroom. His brother explaining gruffly that it was to stop the fucking draft when they showered; making fun of Sam's delicate immune system and calling him a precious baby while ruffling his hair.
And Thursdays! Sam's lips tilt up, just a fraction. Thursdays there had been coming home after math club to Dean stoking the fire, take-out on the coffee table, and later pushing a copy of the Matrix (or whatever film he'd gotten hold of), into the second hand video player.
"You take sugar, right?"
"Yeah," Sam replies even though the voice sounded too sure, the question too politely rhetorical. His lips thin.
He pushes off from the door, stretches out the kinks that have knotted into his shoulder during the drive up. The Impala's heating had sputtered out fifty miles before he crossed the border into Massachusetts, and he hadn't realised until now just how deep the cold had got. The thaw from the fire is still too shallow, and Sam can feel the chill too deep in his bones, he thinks no matter how long he warms himself in the room it will remain too superficial.
He can hear clinking from the direction he presumes leads to the kitchen. The sound of a cat purring and the women murmuring, 'Okay, okay, just give me a minute, Crooks.
He looks around the room and this whole thing feels wrong. There was a bar two miles back down the road and Sam's head has felt too clear for the last four hours of the drive up.
When he'd found the picture, well, the morning after, and in the light of the hangover from hell and the realisation of what it might mean, Sam had just thought – someone to tell. Someone who won't just say, I'm sorry about your brother. He was a good hunter. Your dad would have been proud. He's not sure Hermione's what he was hoping for.
Three books lie open on the desk that stands behind the sofa. Sam pokes the corner of one, turning it until it lies straight and easy to read, some form of Latin he's unfamiliar with. He can pick out some names though, enough to understand it's got something to do with the position of the stars and planets. There was a time when snooping through someone's things like this made Sam blanch, his skin hot and prickly with the fear he might get caught and the fact that it was wrong. He can't remember when it became a routine habit and not an invasion of someone else's privacy.
He shifts the top book again, looks at the other two underneath, one's an astrology text and the other is in the same language as the first. He looks at the lines of text and feels frustrated that he doesn't recognise its origin.
After their Dad had died, when Dean had been let out the hospital and they'd been staying at Bobby's, Sam had spent weeks going through Bobby's bookcase, Dean outside focused on fixing the Impala and barely talking. He'd hardly made a dent; doesn't remember anything that looked like this.
He moves to turn around. Bookcases line the wall to the right of the door and it's like a reflex to want to look. He doesn't get that far.
Hermione's leant against a door frame watching him as she takes a sip from her mug. "Finished snooping yet?" she asks, and takes another drink.
There's a ginger cat rubbing up against her legs, patches of fur missing from his coat and a scratch across his nose.
She's too calm, too accepting, and Sam narrows his eyes. "How'd you meet my brother?" he returns, voice hard. He has the urge to add, 'What are you?' If this involved almost anyone but Dean, he would, because everything since the moment he got here - walked through the gate - has felt off.
The cat stops, pushes its head through Hermione's legs, his ears flat. Sam doesn't even question the fact that it's staring right at him.
When Sam was twelve they stayed in a rental in Wyoming for six months while their Dad hunted a pack of werewolves. The old lady next door who sometimes made them food had eleven cats, one of whom was ninety percent feral. Sam doesn't remember any of them, even Fitz, looking at him as intensely as Hermione's is right now. He's not sure what's more off putting; the cat or the fact that Hermione's looking at him, head tilted and unfazed.
He adds it to the list of wrong, wonders if in a moment her eyes will turn cruel and black.
Hermione walks up to him, holds out a second mug, nudging it against his chest. "When did you last have a drink? You know he'd kill you himself if you drove his car-" Hermione wrinkles her nose.
She has freckles like Dean's and the familiarity in her qualifier makes Sam want to snap like he's sixteen and arguing with his Dad over having to move schools again.
He doesn't. He swallows the retort down with a practiced ease he learnt while he was applying to colleges and trying to avoid both his Dad's and Dean's attention. Still, his hands clench into fists and he sucks his cheek between his back teeth, bites down.
He isn't sure what riles him up about this woman so easily, but it's like every conversation he had with his dad. Like being babied by Melisa Talbot, the girl Dean dated for three months back when Sam was eleven, and who was always around the house whenever their dad took off.
"I wouldn't," he replies. It's mostly true as far as the tense goes.
Hermione nods primly, lifts her chin. Sam thinks she's about to say 'good,' but she doesn't. Instead, she nudges the mug towards him again. 'It'll help warm you up. I hope there's enough sugar. I presumed Dean was exaggerating when his said you liked enough so that the spoon stands up." She arcs an eyebrow and smiles up at him, an attempt at some kind of some kind of truce.
Sam's fairly sure it doesn't work. Not the way she intended. His skin feels too tight around his bones, there's a lump in his throat that feels too much like it's practically throbbing and he wants to ask, 'What? What did he say about me?'
"Dean's-" His voices breaks and Sam can't look at her. He stares at the flames flickering in the grate instead.
A hand settles on his arm, squeezing it.
"I know, Sam. I know. You don't - Sit down. Drink the coffee and get warm. We can talk later. All you want. Okay, Sam? "
He wants to shake his head, say 'no, it's not,' that it never will be. Instead, he nods, takes the drink, says, 'Yeah,' without feeling and takes the seat she gestures at. He feels tired, would rather just crash out and not talk about any of this ever again.
Hermione takes the cup from Sam's hand and places it on the coffee table. His eyes are closed and it's hard not to just stare, look for the similarities like the indent of his chin. It's all too easy to find them when she actually looks. The lines on his forehead and the shadow of too long stubble make it easier to see Dean in him, the weight they both shared.
Hermione kneels on the floor, smoothes her hands across the denim covering her thighs. There's a lump in her throat and she wishes it would move; that she could swallow past it.
He looks so much older than when she'd last met him. She isn't surprised he doesn't remember. It's not like they were even introduced at the time; the whole premise of her meeting him at all to see if she could pick up anything magical about Sam that would explain his dreams to Dean.
"Couldn't have introduced us like normal people, could you Dean?" Hermione huffs, looks down and wonders if that would really make any difference; if maybe it would have been worse because Sam might not have had the curiosity to come look.
She pushes up on her knees, leans in to cup the back of Sam's head and take his shoulder. When she starts to turn him to lie him down, Sam's eyes open; sleepy, slanted slits like a cat that's been disturbed.
"Shh, Sam," Hermione coos, pushing him around and down.
His pupils are blown and unfocussed. He blinks and they narrow even more.
"Dean," Sam says, drawing the syllable out, stressing the long 'e' sound.
Hermione's hand falters and she bites her lip. The lump in her throat slides down sharp and quick to lodge in her chest and feels so much worse. She wonders if Ron still calls for them sometimes.
"Hush," she says, aware of the innateness of the gesture, knowing first hand how little it will ever help, but just wanting him to be quiet.
She turns, fetches the comforter from her bed, and wishes she'd had the foresight to mix up a fresher batch of Dreamless Sleep two months back, but knows the temptation would have been too much.
When she walks back into the room Sam's shifting, turning on his side and she knows the draft she gave him had lost far too much potency to be effective enough.
"Dean," he says again and Hermione's glad for the comforter Luna had pushed into her hands that first week after the battle at Hogwarts.
"Dad made it me, after my mum. It'll help you sleep. I don't need it anymore."
She thinks she's come far enough to get through at least a few nights sleep on her own; hopes she has.
Hermione drapes it over Sam, tucks him in and strokes a hand across his hair the way she had wished for once. She watches as the flicker of his eyelids slow, evening out as his breathing becomes deeper.
The room's dark when Sam wakes up, a low lit lamp on the desk the only companion to the light from the fire.
There's a blanket covering him, and for a minute it's easy to just turn over, burrow deeper into the cushions, pretend Dean's only twenty feet away in Bobby's spare room.
The fabric against his cheek's too soft though, the cushions too plump, and there's a mild smell of aniseed in the air. Sam can taste it when he sucks in a breath on a long yawn. Sam's no stranger to waking up in rooms that smell of herbs. But this isn't one he associates with Bobby's house. Bobby's house smelt of ash, car oil, bergamot and borage, and Dean's a whole lot more than twenty feet away.
He closes his eyes, tips his head back listens to the dull repetitive tick-tock of a clock somewhere before pushing himself up on his elbows.
The available light casts warm glow over everything it touches; reflecting off the wooden furniture and making everything feel homelier. Sam thinks he should appreciate it more than he does. Can't.
He does a quick sweep of the room looking for anything out of place; looking for some sign of its owner. The dim lighting accentuates the dark corners, causing shadows to spread out and stretch their fingers up the walls in a way that scared a four-year-old Sam far more than the dark. It's been a long time since he was frightened of simple shadows, but he still finds himself paying more attention to them than he perhaps would if he'd been brought up normally. He wonders if the same is true for some of the kids they've saved.
"How'd you sleep?" Hermione asks.
Sam hadn't realised she was there. His eyes settle on the vague silhouette of someone curled up in the armchair beside the desk; just a fuzzy outline of curly hair and the corner of a book where it hangs over the edge of an arm rest.
It's almost reflex to say, like crap. It's what he's said the few times Bobby's called and he's actually answered. Sam's not sure he's slept more than an hour since the whole thing with Lilith in New Harmony.
Or at least he hadn't.
He stretches one arm up and over his head, moves his other to scratch his belly through a yawn. "Good," he say's not really thinking about how unexpected that answer is. What he really wants to do is lie back down, turn over and maybe sleep like that for another twenty-four hours at least.
He doesn't remember dreaming.
And that right there is far more surprising than the fact he feels like he actually got some rest. Because he wasn't drunk.
The only times since Dean died that Sam remembers not waking up to a memory of his brother dying a hundred different ways, or to bloodshot green eyes staring out at him from pitch black, Dean's voice panicked and horse, hollering, 'Sam! Sammy! Sam! are the times he's drunk too much to do more than pass out in the back of the Impala or wherever he's happened to fall.
He narrows his eyes, tries to adjust to the light and focus on Hermione, see her expression. "Did you drug me?" he asks. Sam's more pissed at himself for letting some slip of a girl drug him so easily than he is at her audacity and presumption. Dean would kick his ass for it; Bobby too, and he doesn't even bother thinking about what his dad would say.
"You looked like it had been a while since you last had a good rest."
There's no apology in her voice, it's prim and un-reproachful; bluntly honest in a way that makes Sam wonder how the hell Dean ever hooked up with this girl. He really can't imagine any of Dean's pickup lines going down very well. Scathing might very well have been an apt description for her response, and Sam can't really see how that type of response or Dean's first impression could have led to any kind of relationship where his brother felt he could just drop by for sex.
He narrows his eyes, studies the little he can see of her.
There were girls, back whenever Sam and Dean started a new school, who used to eye Dean - leather jacket still a little too big on his shoulders - like he was the juiciest cut of steak. Stuck up little snobs who liked Dean well enough to make out with him, who let him get them off in the back of his car, but who wouldn't ever take him home to meet mommy and daddy. Sam had always hated them a little for never being able to see Dean as more than that bit of rough.
He wonder's if Hermione's the same as those girls, if there's really anything else to gain by being here; if there's anything to learn. She's not surprised, she doesn't seem upset. Sam's really not sure what point there is in staying any longer.
He just wants – some kind of reaction.
Sam stands up. "I should get going," he says, looking anywhere but at Hermione. His hands clench by his side and he grinds his teeth. "I just thought you should know," he grates out. "That's all. But, you know, clearly I needn't have bothered."
He turns away. Sam feels ten kinds of tired all over again and that drink he thought about earlier? Right now, it's ten times as appealing.
"Sam," Hermione says softly. Calm as ever, and he snaps.
He spins, stalks the short distance across the room to her. "I don't need pity," he says.
She tips her head to one side and looks up at him, "Well that's good -" Hermione snorts derisively, all hint of softness in her voice gone and her lips thin. "- because it's certainly not what I was offering. Or what you deserve."
Her voice is cold – judgemental.
Sam stops short, and he pulls back from where he'd braced himself on the arms of her chair. He stands up straight. "What do you mean?"
Hermione pushes herself up out of the chair and slides past Sam, placing her book on the desk as she passes. "Now's really not the right time to get into this."
Sam swears under his breath. "People've been telling me that all my life," he says. "Thing is, I'm just a little fed up of waiting for right times that never seem to come."
Hermione sighs, long and low, and shakes her head.
Sam scoffs, turns on his heel. He has his hand on the door handle, fingers clutched and ready to just get the hell out, but then she says, "When we met Dean was on a hunt. I think he thought I was who or what he was looking for."
Sam lets go, looks back over at the woman. Her face is softer than the open accusation of earlier. Sam dislikes it more than her anger, but then he realises she's not looking at him and he looks away.
"You know, my whole life Dean and dad drilled into me how I was supposed to keep the family secret -"
"He was hunting me, Sam. You really think his job's not going to come up in conversation at some point? It's not like he was conspiring against you."
Sam opens his mouth to say something, but Hermione holds him off.
"I think you were at Stanford. I guess. You – he didn't talk about you until later."
Sam wants to ask. Wants to question her on every thing Dean said about him. The smallest details. Needs to just know. "What-"
"Sam," Hermione says.
He takes a deep breath; halts the words.
"There's hot water if you want a shower. I've made a pot of stew as well. There's plenty if you'd like a bowl after."
"I don't under... Why are you doing this?" Sam asks.
"What?"
"Letting me sleep. This! Fuck! Just everything."
Hermione closes her eyes, it's a drawn out blink and when she opens them her whole attention's focussed on Sam - uncompromising. The weight of it almost makes him step back.
"Because Dean would –" she starts to say. "Because you're wasting the sacrifice he made for you. Call me a hypocrite, but I'm not willing to watch you do that to him. He deserves more respect than that."
Sam looks at her. For the first time he sees more than just another in a long line of women.
His shoulders sag and he lets his head fall forward, too long bangs hanging heavy in his eyes.
Sam's whole body feels too heavy, but Hermione touches his shoulder, squeezes, and it's like lying down.
"Go shower. You could really do with it," she smiles. The curve of her lips upward seems alien to Sam. "The bathroom's down the corridor, through the door on the left. I'd appreciate it if you resisted snooping in my bedroom. I'll have the stew ready in about forty-five minutes."
Sam nods even though there was no question to answer. It feels like there should be, like there maybe is.
"Sam," Hermione calls out.
He's half way across the room, back to her. He looks over his shoulder; her head's cocked and brown curls falling heavy to one side. She looks like she should take up more space than she does, he thinks.
"It's okay, you know. You have to – It's okay."
Sam pulls his shirt off, looks at the shower that hangs above the bath. It's nothing fancy and Sam would bet, from the large, half-full bottle of bubble bath on the side, that it doesn't see much use.
He considers it for all of a minute before just leaning his back against the door instead, letting himself slide down it to the floor.
His head hurts; a pounding roar that had started off as just a dull throb when he'd woken up - the kind you get when you've slept too long or too deep. Now it just fucking hurts and his legs feel like jello to boot.
He wants to sleep for a week.
A month.
There's a definite allure in the idea of just not waking up and having to face – everything that's left.
He knocks his head back against the door, closes his eyes and sees Hermione's look of scorn; hears her words in Dean's voice.
Sam swallows.
He wants – he wants what he's wanted for the last year. What he's wanted since he was nine and the night Dean had walked back to the car, their dad leaning heavy on his shoulders while Sam looked out from the front seat of the Impala, his eyes on the blood soaked into the stomach of Dean's tee.
He wants and the headache doesn't detract from the fact he can think too clearly.
Sam shifts his concentration, thinking about the bottle of Cuervo lying in his duffle in the car, all too tempting.
He can't remember how much is left.
Can't remember if there's anything remaining in it that would make it worth the trip past Hermione to get it.
He bangs his head back against the door and for a moment enjoys the displacement of pain from his temples.
The door knocks back and Sam sits up straighter. He turns around, pushes himself up. When he looks around the corner of the door, Hermione's halfway down the corridor.
She turns, not quite meeting his eye.
"I thought you might need some towels," she says, coughs.
Sam looks down at his feet where there's a pile of grey-blue towels neatly folded in size order.
"Thanks," he replies.
Hermione starts to turn away, but Sam quickly adds, "I don't have clean clothes. They're in the car."
She looks back at him, eyes dropping down and then up to his face, they narrow slightly and her head tilts.
"If you leave the ones you were wearing outside the door, I'll get them washed and dried."
Sam wants to ask if she really is fucking psychic.
He doesn't. Hermione's already turned away again and is walking through the doorway into the main room.
He turns back to the bath and the shower, looks at where it hangs on the wall. It's one of those fixed ones, no handy pole to let you adjust the height.
He sighs.
Hermione's five foot nothing and Sam's body's aching enough as it is.
He undoes the buckle on his jeans, pops the top button and toes off his shoes. 'Bath it is,' Sam thinks, leans down and drops the plug into the bath.
Sam's clothes are on the hall floor in a pile when she comes out her bedroom.
The pile's neat and unexpected; it contradicts the whiff of alcohol she'd gotten when she'd been close to Sam earlier, the same whiff she gets when she picks them up now.
Hermione takes them into her bedroom, shuts the door behind her and pulls her wand out of her pocket; charming them clean. It's the quicker option, if the one that could prove infinitely more questionable. She has a feeling Sam won't think to ask though. Not right now at any rate. She picks up his jeans and imagines what Dean might have said regarding Sam's lack of observation.
Hermione frowns.
She tries not to think too much about Dean; feels guilty that she pushes him out of her mind like this, but it feels necessary. Hermione thinks of the charmed comforter she'd leant Sam and forces herself to admit it's not the only thing she's come to rely on too much.
Sam's not like she'd expected.
He's not the man Dean talked about and he's not the one she met before; two years back.
She recognises too much of herself in Sam and she doesn't think it's the same things Dean saw; that he highlighted.
It's why she asked him in. It's one of the reasons why she wishes he'd stay a while. That and some obligation she still feels towards Dean.
Dean had never said much about his family. The only time she'd met Sam had been under circumstances that did not really facilitate the option of an introduction. It really had not been a traditional, 'Hey, I want you to meet my brother' situation. Hermione hadn't really expected that from Dean. Ever.
She liked that about him; liked that that she knew she'd never be part of Dean's tight-knit, if a little dysfunctional, family. It's one of the reasons she let him get so close.
That and the fact he piqued her curiosity.
She thinks maybe if she hadn't spent so much time becoming something like friends with Blaise that the first time she'd met Dean she would have missed that he was more than he appeared.
Reading Dean was like talking to Blaise, though she thought there was less of an underlying stratagem involved in Dean's reticence. Blaise's friendship had been as much of a surprise as her relationship with Dean.
Sometimes though, Dean could be easy to read.
Where Blaise was more carefully closed off when he talked about the few people he cared about, Dean was more lax.
Dean had spoken about Sam in shadows and with his back to Hermione; in half formed sentences spoken with a gruff voice and averted eyes. He should have been hard to read, but when he talked of Sam he was like an open book. Sam's with me. His... his girlfriend - died. Sam's having these - dreams. I need you to meet him. I think – I think maybe there's something wrong with him. I don't – fuck I don't know what's going to happen after.
Hermione had been so angry at Dean for his deal. She still doesn't know if it's that he valued his life so little to make the deal, that he valued Sam's enough to and that he'd done what Hermione couldn't, or just that he'd left her behind.
Hermione folds Sam's clothes, feels a sharp prickle race up her nose. When she blinks she feels the moisture in her eyes bubble and spill down her cheeks like she hasn't let it since the morning after Dean left.
She laughs - an involuntary hiccup that bursts and cracks through the silence of her room; over the low hiss of water running across the hall.
Hermione sits down on the edge of bed, swallows, wipes roughly at her eyes and forces herself to breathe slow and steady.
She's past this.
She has to be past this.
She looks at the shirt in her hands. There's a smear of wetness across the shoulder where she'd been holding it when she'd lifted her hands to her eyes. She huffs and shakes her head, casts a second cleaning charm over it and places it on the pile.
Thinking of Dean hurts. It brings back too many other hurts and thoughts. Like Harry; the way he appears randomly in her life now, more in letters than actual visits, the way that when she does see him it's accompanied by the feeling that it's not as it should be. That they're not as they should be. They talk and catch up and he's still her best friend, but it's always wrong and they both know it is. They both know why.
Dean filled a gap she didn't know was there.
Dean made her feel something she hadn't missed once, not since she was ten and she was just an ordinary girl, nothing special except for the fact she was moderately bright. At least until – until everything fell apart and turned out worse and better than she'd ever expected all at once.
Funny how someone like Dean, who hunted ghosts and broke curses and had grown up in an even more unconventional fashion than herself could make her feel some modicum of normality.
Hermione hadn't realised how close she'd got until Dean pulled her into him on her bed, both of them sweaty and blissed out from sex. He'd tried to tuck her head under his chin, but she'd pulled back, made him tell her face to face, wished after that she hadn't because it meant that Dean's eyes had burnt into hers. He can close her eyes and see them glinting in the dark of her bedroom, can see the shadowed line of his nose, and hear the tone of his voice;, horse - roughened with sex and something else. He'd brushed her hair behind her ear, cupped her cheek and told her of his deal, said, "I don't think he's going to let me go. I wish he could come to you. I wish you'd met. Properly. I should have -"
Hermione picks the pile of clothes up, moves over to the door and turns the knob. She hopes Sam will stay.
It feels the least she can do.
She's not sure it's entirely for Dean just like she's not sure that this isn't exactly what Dean had hoped for.