Absence Makes the Heart Grow Colder
K Hanna Korossy
The angel didn't stand a chance.
Since Cas had shown up again, there'd been a steady stream of Raphael's angels hovering around them, trying to get intel about Cas and his buddy Balthasar and the weapons the latter had stolen, to intimidate the Winchesters into staying out of the whole angelic civil war going on, and sometimes making a play when they thought the brothers' defenses were down.
This angel, a middle-aged-looking guy with a pot belly, had clearly miscalculated. Even as he lunged at them when Sam and Dean walked out of their motel room, Sam was already moving with impressive speed. He had the angel skewered and flaming out before Dean could even pull his own blade.
Expressionless, Sam gave the angel blade a final twist, and the angel's—and its host's—body fell to the sidewalk, dead.
"Okay…," said Dean.
But Sam was still moving. Glancing quickly up and down the thankfully empty parking lot, he grabbed the body under the arms and tugged it toward their car. "Open the trunk," he grunted.
Dean hurried to obey. He barely had time to stretch out the tarp before Sam was dumping the corpse into the trunk. Those new muscles he'd been sporting since his return were more than just show. Sam took a few seconds to wipe his blade on the dead man's suit, then slammed the trunk lid and headed around to the passenger side door.
Dean didn't move, watching his brother with a frown. Sam hadn't even blinked. No weighing the cost of smoking an innocent host or a being who was supposed to be one of the good guys. No flash of guilt at the inevitable. Sam, the original bleeding heart, barely even registered the kill.
Yeah, that wasn't worrisome at all.
They climbed into the car, Dean casting one more look at his unperturbed brother as he turned the engine over. "They're either getting bolder, or just stupider," he finally volunteered.
"We can handle it," Sam said, calmly confident.
Dean didn't argue. He doubted his brother would have understood, anyway.
The behavior was oddly familiar, though. Dean didn't have to think long about why, either. This was how Sam had behaved when he was addicted to demon blood. Hard, pragmatic, driven.
Dean side-eyed his brother. The addiction had been broken after Lucifer's release, and even a forced relapse by Famine hadn't brought it back. Or had it? Had Sam been juicing up while he hunted on his own? Maybe even why he hunted on his own? And had Dean, distracted by Lisa and Ben, missed the signs?
"Hey," he said, all fake casual. "Find us a demon hunt, huh? Maybe the other side has a better read on what's going on upstairs."
Sam considered that and nodded, pulling his phone out. "Yeah, good idea."
Dean hoped it was. Even if he wasn't sure what he wanted to learn.
00000
It wasn't demon blood.
The host was clearly dead, making easy the decision to gank the demon. Dean let Black Eyes knock him over and lunge at Sam, who was more than ready. The demon died bloody.
And Sam…wiped Ruby's blade off on its suit and turned away, losing interest.
Huh. Dean was kinda relieved. And kinda not.
He thought about it in the car, during his shower, and while packing up his stuff.
Dean had come back from Hell a traumatized, struggling shell of a man. Sam had apparently come back as the Terminator. Rough around the edges, he called it, supposedly from hunting a year on his own. Dean called it downright scary, the killing machine his brother had become. Because this was not how Sam acted when he was alone.
When Gabriel had killed Dean for six months at the Mystery Spot, Sam did turn into a kind of robot. He'd reorganized the trunk then too, lost what college-baby fat he had left, became pure hunter.
Then Dean returned, and Sam glued himself to his big brother's side. Dean often woke to Sam watching him from the other bed, couldn't go get dinner or even the frickin' bathroom without Sam shadowing him, puppy-eyed whenever Dean called him on it.
A few months later, Dean went to Hell, and Sam went to pieces.
That was when Ruby had gotten her claws into him, when Sam had been so broken that he could barely function. The addiction took a long time to clear after Dean's return, but even so, Sam again cycled through clinginess and outbursts of emotion. That was Sam after losing his brother.
"Dude," Dean turned to look at his brother at the table. "We need supplies."
"I can make a food run when I'm done here," Sam answered, snapping a shotgun barrel he'd just cleaned back into place.
He usually left the gun-cleaning to Dean, who had always enjoyed it, but Dean had lost the taste for the task and Sam was apparently really into it now. Something else that had changed since his return. Dean continued, "Not those kinda supplies. Ammo, especially for the Eagle and the shotguns." They could make their own bullets and shells, but they still needed iron and gunpowder. "I was thinking of maybe heading over to Lynchburg."
"Mr. Winters?" Sam said absently as he continued to work. "He still in business?"
"Last I heard. I'll be back in two days, tops." He watched Sam carefully.
"All right." Sam didn't even look up, racking a shell and then removing it. "I can keep digging on Raphael and that shifter alpha, see if I can find anything useful."
"Sounds good." Dean paused, assessing. "You okay if I take the car?"
"What?" Sam finally looked up, and the first emotion he'd shown in this conversation crossed his face: annoyance. "Oh, yeah." His soulless little crap car had been smushed by Cas and another angel falling on it. Good riddance. "I can get a taxi if I need to go somewhere."
"Great. Yeah. You do that." Still, Dean hesitated.
Sam looked up again, eyebrow rising. "Anything else?"
"Nope." Dean grabbed his duffel. His Colt was inside, the one only he cleaned. "I'm good. See you in two."
Sam didn't even bother answering, already back to his guns.
Yeah, Dean thought as he threw his bag into the trunk of the car. Something was definitely wrong.
It was weird, using Sam's need for him as a litmus test for normalcy. But he knew his little brother. And, he glanced back, that guy in the room behind him, that wasn't his Sam. Oh, physically, sure: Dean had surreptitiously run all the checks. But something was missing nonetheless. And Dean was going to find out what.
Nothing bad was going to happen to his brother now that Dean was around again.
The End
