SPN Fic: Shadow and Sway
Sep. 7th, 2009 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coyotesuspectTitle: Shadow and Sway
Fandom: Supernatural
Summary: Sam and Dean hunt a troll. Mid season 3. Sam/Dean
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: ~5600
Spoilers/Warnings: spoilers through mid-season 3; incest.
1.
“Troll,” says Dean, to himself much as it is to Sam. He’s squatting, frowning thoughtfully at the bloodstains on the rock, left behind by the third drifter in four months to get ripped to shreds. The police suspect a serial killer.
It’s November, and the month settles chill and gloomy around them. Tattered yellow police tape flaps in the wind, incongruously bright against the gray of the day. The light’s pale, almost watery, and it washes Dean out, gives him the pallor of a corpse. Sam shivers, and leans back against the driver’s door of the Impala, the metal cold and hard beneath him.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Yeah,” says Dean firmly, standing up. He scrubs his hands against his jeans, and Sam’s eyes flick downward to follow the motion. The bridge above them rumbles and growls, traffic passing over.
The river’s silver-flat and peaceful, and the woods get thick about a hundred yards down, a tangle of bare, dark limbs and the almost-black of evergreens, pressed up close to the edges of civilization, deep smell of autumn-rot and wet earth beneath the bitter-sharp of winter. Sam wishes the culprit weren’t so obvious; his legs ache from the hours in the car, and he wouldn’t mind stretching them on recon.
“So,” says Dean, eyes lidded and mouth smirking. “You wanna be Gandalf or Bilbo?”
Sam smiles, all little brother acrimony. “You’re the short one with the hairy toes,” he points out cheerfully.
“Bite me Gollum,” sneers Dean. “Oh wait, you might.”
Sam snickers then stretches, rolling his shoulders. Those ache too, and he hears the sharp pop-pop as the bones in his back crack.
“Paper’ll say when sunrise is,” he says, a peace offering.
“Hhm,” mutters Dean, shoving Sam aside and opening the car door. The keys are still in the ignition because mauled bodies under a bridge is a really obvious MO. Sam doesn’t know why Dean insisted they stop and check.
Two ways to kill a troll, he thinks, sliding into shotgun. Fire or sunlight.
2.
There are five listings under “psychic” in the phonebook, three of which are for national hotlines. That leaves Madam Roma’s and Tony Oracles to visit. Both request that appointments be made in advance, but Sam figures if either one’s worth seeing, they’ll know he’s coming.
He writes down their addresses while Dean’s in the shower scrubbing off the stench of an eight hour drive. When Dean comes out, Sam says, “I’m gonna grab a pizza, be back soon.”
Dean looks at him for a long moment, narrow-eyed and inscrutable. He’s scrubbed clean, all fresh, pink lines, solid and damp. The sun’s sinking low, and the lingering light turns the hotel room faded and flat. Dean looks like he’s peering out of an old photograph. Sam can’t breathe.
“All right,” says Dean finally, twisting his gaze away. He pulls on a black shirt, worn soft and too tight in the shoulders. “No pineapple bitch.”
3.
Sam steps into Madame Roma’s “office” half an hour before the sign says it will close. The place is suffocating with incense and illuminated dimly with candles. There’s a chair, moth-eaten and purple, and a beaded curtain that separates the waiting room from the main one. The vibe is old world and carefully staged, and Sam’s disappointment is sour but familiar. Just by the décor, he knows the psychic’s a fake.
Madame Roma comes through the curtain with a rustle and click of beads. She’s a short woman, and squat, with eyes like a toad, pale and wide, and a long fall of smooth gray hair. She smiles at him but Sam can see the edge to it, that’s she’s more exasperated than pleased. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and when he smiles back, neither does his.
“Welcome child,” she whispers, voice hushed like someone in a sickroom. “Do you have an appointment?”
There’s a slight stress on the word appointment, a definite sense that the words because if you don’t, you’ll have to leave are tacked on after.
Sam wonders if she has people set up appointments so she can google their specs beforehand, dazzle them with some knowledge they themselves left lying around for anyone to find. But she looks wary of him, almost nervous, so Sam knows she must be good at her job. It means she’s observant. Sam works very hard so that people see a sweet, shy young man when they look at him, and not someone large enough and strong enough to kill them with his hands.
“Don’t you think it’s odd that someone who can see through bullshit so easily ends up peddling it to other people?” he asks. It’s a Dean thing to say. He’s been saying a lot of Dean things lately.
Madame Roma’s mouth drops open. “Young man,” she begins, but he cuts her off.
“Quick question, and then I’ll go, I promise,” he says. Madame Roma isn’t a psychic, but that doesn’t mean she’s completely ignorant. “What do you know about hellhounds?”
Madame Roma draws herself together, squaring her shoulders and adding an inch to her height. “Hellhounds,” she says haughtily, “are the minions of the devil. They drag condemned souls to Hell.”
“Yeah, I know,” snaps Sam, and he looms a little more than he means to. “But how do you stop them?”
She stares at him. “Young man,” she says, concerned lilt to her tone that means she’s edging toward the phone. “Are you all right? Do you need me to call someone?”
Sam gives her another fake smile, smooths out the lines on his face, and unclenches his fists. He eases back so that he's no longer towering above her.
“No,” he says tersely. “I’ll just be going.”
4.
Sam has a pizza box warming his hands when he gets back, and he finds Dean sitting outside the hotel door, face propped up thoughtfully in his hands. It’s been dark for an hour and the strip lighting overhead gives everything a harsh tinge. Dean doesn’t look old, but he looks tired.
“Lock yourself out again?” asks Sam amiably.
Dean scoffs, awareness settling back onto his face. He pats the ground next to him.
“Fucking heater’s broken,” he complains. “I was freezing my balls off in there.”
“It’s pretty cold out here too,” points out Sam, but he sits down next to Dean. It’s only gotten colder since the sun went down, more like January than November, and Dean’s warm and solid next to him.
“Did you ask for a new room?” he asks, opening the pizza box and handing Dean a slice.
“Nah,” says Dean, too-casual tone that makes Sam glance at him sharply. But Dean’s face is bland, vaguely pissed, and if he’s lying, Sam can’t tell about what. “Figure we’re barely gonna use the room anyway. It’s not like we gotta do research.”
Dean doesn’t have to do research, thinks Sam darkly. But Sam does, he hates the irony of it, that he has too much time and not enough, hours in the car doing nothing but watching scenery, knows Dean will just grab whatever book he’s searching through and throw it out the window. First time Dean did that, Sam made him pull over, and they almost came to blows on the side of the road.
He does his research at night while Dean’s asleep. His guilt feeds his insomnia, and he makes phone calls that twist between pleading and threatening while Dean’s at the bar or fucking some girl. He let loose the Gates of Hell, and he cares less about getting the demons back in than he does about keeping Dean out.
He doesn't say anything, just makes a noncommittal noise and they eat the pizza in silence. Dean wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, and Sam’s fingers slowly go numb.
Dean smiles, slow and dazzling. “Hey,” he says, brushing his hand against the outside of Sam’s thigh. “Let’s go get a drink.”
5.
They nurse the same two beers for hours, and Dean convinces Sam to help him hustle the locals. Sam plays drunk, fumbling his shots, and Dean talks loudly about how Sam’s hammered, should maybe take the rest of the night easy.
Dean’s riding high on something, shoulders loose and face flushed, and he keeps touching Sam. Casual, intimate touches, a hand on his shoulder or the small of his back or brushing against his side as they walk around the table. It makes Sam feel jittery, like his skin’s too hot and tight, and half the time he tips into Dean’s touch and the other half he jerks away.
When he leans down to take a shot, Dean leans over him, palm curled warmly over Sam’s spine, and whispers, lips against his ear, “Pocket this one. Makes it more realistic.”
The shot goes wide, and Sam stands up. He’s vaguely flustered, his heartbeat faster than it has any reason to be, and he glares down at Dean.
“I know,” he grits out. “I’ve been doing this since I was fifteen.”
Dean arches his eyebrows, innocent expression destroyed by his smirk. “Maybe you have had one too many to drink.”
Sam’s had enough. He drops the pool cue, hisses, “Finish the damn game yourself,” and stalks off to the restroom. It’s not until the door swings shut behind him that he stops feeling Dean’s gaze, heavy and intent, against his back. But that doesn’t make sense. Dean doesn’t do girly shit like watch someone as they walk away.
He exhales loudly and drops to the tiled ground. Country music fills the restroom up, twangy and sorrowful and louder in here than in the bar. Sam’s heart is still beating in his ears, and he takes a few deep breaths to calm it, then pulls out the demonology text he has wedged in his pocket. There’s just enough light to read by.
Thirty minutes later, three drunks have almost stumbled over him, his butt hurts from sitting on the hard tiles, and he hasn’t learned anything, but at least his heart rate is back under control. He wonders if he’d be able to sneak out of the bar and go read one of the books he has stashed in the Impala. There’s an old leather bound hunting manual that might have something useful.
He decides to try, but when he walks out of the restroom, it’s immediately obvious Dean is in trouble.
The mark’s thick-necked and has a hairstyle Ash would have approved of, probably named something like Randy or Earl or Ed, and he’s frowning at Dean like he’s just beginning to realize he’s been hustled.
“Now wait a minute,” he says slowly, and normally when Sam and Dean get caught, they give the guy back his money and quietly leave with everyone else’s. “I think you just-”
But Dean’s in a mood, same mood he’s been in since he made the deal if Sam’s honest. He smiles, electric spark of a smile, and interrupts with, “Hey, it’s not my fault you’re congenitally stupid. That’s what happens when your daddy marries his sister.”
Dean easily dodges ‘Earl’s’ punch, and usually Sam would be marveling at Dean’s use of the word ‘congenitally,’ but Earl has three friends coming to help him out. And much as Dean probably deserves it, Sam doesn’t want to watch his brother get beaten bloody. Besides, they still have a troll to kill.
Sam wades into the fight. Dean’s already taken two jabs to the head, but neither enough to break the skin, and he’s got one guy doubled over and gasping in pain. But the rest of the bar’s taken notice, and it’s unlikely they’ll take Dean’s side. A heavy set guy comes at Dean with a pool cue, and Sam punches him in the side of the face before he can get there. Sam feels the satisfying crack of his knuckles against the guy’s bone, and the answering flare of pain in his hand as the guy cries out and drops the cue.
Sam grabs Dean by the back of his jacket and hauls him out of the fray, keeps both hands on him as he manhandles Dean out of the bar. For once in their lives, their luck is good. No one follows them out. Probably because it’s too cold, a sharp, bitter cold that sings through Sam like a particularly high, clear note of music. He swears and lets go of Dean. Dean laughs.
“That was fun,” Dean says, and he sounds like he means it.
Suicidal’s a good look for Dean. His eyes are over-bright, wide in his face, over the sharp-white of his smile. Sam thinks if he kissed him, Dean’d taste like copper, like fire.
He’d probably just take like stale beer, sour-breath, the mint gum he chews to keep awake.
Sam doesn’t kiss Dean, just curls his hands tighter into his pockets as they walk across the parking lot and lets the adrenaline drift out of him. His right hand throbs from the punch he threw. The neon sign of the bar blinks blueandred, blueandred, turning Dean’s face ghostly then bloody, and something in Sam’s stomach curls and twists unpleasantly.
“You’re an idiot,” snarls Sam, when they get into the car.
“We’re up two hundred,” smirks Dean. “No thanks to you. You do like to eat, don’t you? Stay in hotel rooms instead of the car?”
What Sam would like is to slam his brother’s head into the steering wheel.
“We should head back to the hotel,” he says instead, throat tight. “Get a couple hours sleep.”
“Nah,” says Dean, glancing at Sam from the corner of his eye and then ducking his head. He hums a bar of some song, indistinct and almost familiar. It’s low and sweet, tenor of a lullaby to it. “S’too cold in there, remember? We’ll have to sleep in the car.”
“Great,” grumbles Sam. “So glad we picked up some cash.”
6.
Sam’s cell phone alarm wakes him up three and a half hours later, and he jerks up and hits his head against the ceiling of the car. He lies back down.
“Jesus fuck,” he mutters. He’s stiff and cold, and he’s pretty sure sleeping in the car on a night like this is a great way to catch hypothermia. He knows he’s lucky that Dean lets him have the backseat, but he’s still too large for sleeping in the car to be comfortable.
“What’s the point of paying for a hotel room if we can’t actually sleep in it?” he whines.
“Motherfucker,” groans Dean, and Sam allows himself a tiny moment of satisfaction that he’s not the only one in pain.
“Not my fault the heater’s broken,” Dean finally answers back, voice sharp.
“We still could have switched rooms,” snipes Sam.
There’s a pause.
“Shut up,” orders Dean and his head pops up over the divide. He flashes a smile, crooked and crazy.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go kill a troll.”
7.
Dean’s face and hands are pale-pale, luminescent in the dark of the night. Sam watches the white shapes float back and forth as Dean paces. They’re at the bridge, waiting for the troll to scent Dean and come out. Sam’s a dozen yards back, hidden downwind with a flashlight, a pack of matches, and a canister of gasoline they rigged to spray when Sam pulls the trigger. Usually, it’s easier and safer to just let the troll talk itself straight into dawn, some two hours from now by Sam’s watch. But sometimes the troll’s not in a chatty mood, and it’s best just to set it on fire and suffer through a quarter hour of howling, flaming monster.
Not that either of them have any qualms about setting things on fire.
It’s still unseasonally cold, and Sam has his hands shoved into his pockets as far they’ll go. He’s no longer angry he has a life that means lying-in-wait for a troll in the dark and the chill, and he’d much rather wait for a troll than for hell hounds.
He and Dean don’t have to wait long though, twenty minutes maybe, and then the water parts and the troll lumbers out of it, reek of murder preceding it.
“Human,” rumbles the troll delightedly when it spots Dean. Sam almost gags from the stench. He wonders if it’s worse for him because he’s downwind, or worse for Dean who’s so close.
Dean visibly recoils, taking a step back and putting his hands over his nose and mouth. It answers Sam’s question.
“Dinner,” cackles the troll this time, lumbering toward Dean. It’s large, but it’s quick.
“You don’t want to eat him,” Sam calls out. His voice is unexpectedly loud. The night has been quiet thus far, and Sam doesn’t know if it’s from the encroaching winter or the taint of the troll.
The troll pauses. It looks around.
“I do,” it says. It makes a wet, fleshy noise, probably smacking its lips. “Delicious.”
“He won’t taste very good,” asserts Sam. “He eats too much junk food. He’s going to be horrible for your cholesterol.”
“Cholesterol?” repeats the troll dumbly. It has a hard time saying the word.
“You know,” explains Sam. “That stuff that hardens your arteries, makes it more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke. Cholesterol.”
Dean doesn’t say anything and doesn’t move, which is exactly according to plan. Privately, Sam thinks their positions should be switched. Dean’s better at inane babble than Sam is, and Sam’s had a lot more practice being bait. But Dean’s been a lot more willing to play the sacrificial lamb lately, and it’s one more thing that makes Sam want to scream and shake him.
“I am troll,” growls the troll. “I don’t have k-k-kle.” It gives up. “I eat human now.”
“But how?” asks Sam, reverting to the classics. He thinks back to the summer before seventh grade, the whole of Middle Earth on his lap as they drove from hunt to hunt. Dean was allowed to go on hunts for the first time, and it's the only time Sam can remember Dean being gawky and unsure in his skin. Didn’t matter though; Sam still hero-worshiped him. Dean was the one who gave him the Tolkien books in the first place, found them at a yardsale and left them lying on the motel bed they’d been sharing while in Boise.
“How?” repeats the troll. Its tone of voice implies that it thinks Sam is the stupid one. “I just do.”
Sam keeps the troll talking for over an hour, mouth and throat getting progressively dryer and dryer. Dean stands there the entire time, probably bored out of his mind, and occasionally glances at his watch. Sam winces every time he sees the spark of bright blue as the face lights up, worried it will divert the troll’s attention back to Dean.
Sam himself hasn’t been doing a very good job at keeping the troll’s attention; for the past fifteen minutes, the troll has become less and less talkative.
Sam rattles off his latest thought and waits for the troll to reply. It doesn’t. It looks up, in his direction, and Sam can make out a nasty grin on its face.
“Okay,” it says slowly. “I don’t eat him then. I eat you.”
The troll lopes toward him, and Sam’s surprised- most trolls aren’t this smart- but he’s not really worried. He’s the one with the equipment.
Then Dean hits the troll with a rock. The troll stops midstride and turns back to Dean. It bares its teeth, and they shine white and deadly in the dim light.
“Hey fugly,” says Dean. “I’m a hell of a lot less stringy than that guy.”
Dean’s got his head tilted up, and Sam bets the bastard’s smirking. It’s probably his come and get it look, the cocky fuck. Thing is, Dean’s normally entitled to wear that look. He can take almost anything the world throws at him, but this. This is a fucking troll, barreling at him and he’s gonna get himself ripped to shreds.
Douchebag probably just has his lighter on him.
Sam flips on the flashlight and shines it directly in the troll’s face. The troll shrieks and flails back, gives Dean enough time to get out of the way. Sam drops the flashlight and rushes forward. He sprays the troll down with gasoline and pulls the matches out of his pocket. The match will light. Matches always light for him.
It flares up, bright orange with the sharp scent of sulfur and smoke.
He throws the match on the troll and it screams and blazes up and up, stench roiling off it in thick, nauseating waves. Sam sprays more gasoline onto the troll, and the fire billows and blooms. The troll stumbles toward the river, and Dean darts in front of it and shouts, wordless and loud enough that the troll, panicked, jerks back and starts running toward the forest. It gets three more steps in before staggering to the ground, still screaming, full throated and human sounding.
The fire snaps and rages. Even standing a few yards away, the heat is intense, and the sky’s gone gray with light while Sam wasn’t watching. Dean comes to stand next to Sam and stares at him reproachfully, face flickering with shadows from the fire.
It’s dawn. The troll turns to stone.
“Christ Sammy,” snaps Dean. “Didn’t have to freak out like that, did you? What the fuck’s your problem?”
Sam mouth twitches in anger and then he’s turning before he can think about it, fist raised. He punches Dean in the face. Dean staggers away, mouth open with hurt and surprise, and Sam shoots out a hand and drags Dean back to him. His knuckles are white around Dean’s wrist.
“Seriously Dean?” he seethes. “You got six months left, and you’re trying to check out on me early?”
Dean wrenches his arm away like Sam branded him. “Calm the fuck down,” he barks. “We killed it, didn’t we?”
He wipes at his mouth, and it comes away bloody. He glares at Sam, eyes a cold, dark color. But he doesn’t say anything or try to hit Sam back. They stand there in silence, watching the flames die out.
Dean pokes at the charred stone with his toe. “Come on,” he growls. “Let’s get this thing back into the river.”
8.
They get back to the hotel room, still not speaking, and Dean was right. The place is fucking freezing. Sam marches over to the heater to attempt to fix it. He doesn’t know why he thinks that’s a good idea, considering the last heating unit he dealt with burst into flames. But it’s better than getting into an argument with Dean.
When he looks at it, he realizes his brother is an idiot. Dean must have tried to turn the heater on, and ended up switching on the ac instead. It’s too good not to say anything, and he turns around to gloat about Dean’s mistake, but the words stop.
Dean’s standing a few feet away, arms crossed, glaring.
“I know how to work a fucking heater,” he says without being prompted.
“Okay,” says Sam. “So you deliberately left the ac on because…”
Secretly, he thinks the answer is because Dean is fucking insane, but Dean sneers at him and replies, “Because I wanted to spend an evening with my brother for once. You haven’t exactly been Mr. Social lately. ”
Sam gapes at Dean and then says, voice shrill in a way only Dean can make it, “Excuse me? I’m the antisocial one? You’re the one always out getting drunk or laid or…”
“You know why?” snaps Dean. “Cuz you’re always on that damn laptop.” His voice goes high and cruel. “Oh no Dean, I have to research the case.” His mouth twists unpleasantly. “I’m not stupid Sam, I know you’re researching the deal. And I told you-”
“And I told you I don’t care,” cuts in Sam. “And do the words passive aggressive mean anything to you? Because seriously Dean-”
“Do the words I’m your older brother and you should fucking listen to me mean anything to you?”
Sam doesn’t reply. His jaw feels tight. He wants to hit Dean again, and Dean looks like he’s willing to hit back this time.
Sam exhales, then turns around and leaves.
9.
Tony Oracles doesn’t open for another hour, so Sam sits on the stoop and waits. There’s a jogger coming down the street, breath pluming out in front of him, and Sam watches him with mild interest, willing himself to calm down. He’s still keyed up from the troll and the fight with Dean, doesn’t want to intimidate Tony like he did Madame Roma.
The jogger slows down as he approaches Sam.
“Sam Winchester,” says the jogger, coming to a halt. He’s tall, though not as tall as Sam, and narrow-shouldered, with thin eyebrows and a thin mouth. He’s wearing a blue velour tracksuit and doesn’t look a threat, but that means exactly nothing.
Sam immediately stands, hand reaching for the gun in his waistband, and the jogger gives him a bored look, one thin eyebrow slanting up.
“Please,” scoffs the man. “I’m not a threat,” echoing Sam's conversation with himself. The man frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. “And you do realize there’s no way to save your brother?”
Sam blinks. “You’re Tony,” he blurts after a second.
“Very good,” laughs Tony. “I heard you were the smart one.”
“How do you know there’s no way to save Dean?” demands Sam, taking a step forward. Tony takes a step back, and his expression shifts from amused to considering as he looks Sam over.
“Here’s the thing,” says Tony, raising his hands placatingly. “I’ve heard of maybe two cases where a guy got out of a deal. And I know you and Dean were involved with one of them.”
“And the other one?” asks Sam; he fists his hand, ragged edges of his nails cutting into his palms.
Tony eyes him warily. “Someone else offered the demon something it wanted more.” He shrugs. “Some souls are more valuable than others.”
“There’s another demon,” tries Sam. The Crossroads Demon already refused his soul, but someone else might want it. “Not a Crossroads Demon, that owns my brother’s contract…”
Tony shakes his head. “I don’t anything about it,” he says. “I don’t normally deal with demons. They tend to be bad luck. And the only reason I’m telling you this personally instead of ignoring you is because you and your brother killed that troll.”
“You know about the troll?” says Sam blankly.
“Psychic,” says Tony dryly. There’s a pause, and then he adds, “You didn’t have to kill the troll. Most of what you and Dean do, you don’t have to. Why not just kick back for awhile, stop worrying about everyone else. Spend time with your brother Sam. You don't have much time left.”
Sam can’t answer. He feels like he’s sixteen again and his anger is too big for his body to hold. He feels it expanding out of him, hot and dense, filling him up with it, so fierce and painful he wants to make the universe burn with it. He breathes deep, shakes out his fingers. His right hand hurts from the two punches he threw last night, and both hands ache from the cold.
He shoulders past Tony, and Tony grabs him by the elbow.
“Look Sam,” he says, eyes wide and earnest. “I’m serious. You need to let Dean go.” He licks his lips, gaze darting around nervously as if he were searching for eavesdroppers. “Something… something’s coming, and the two of you are part of it.”
Sam jerks away, movement violent enough to send Tony sprawling. Tony stares up at him from the ground, expression pinching in. Sam doesn’t offer to help him up.
“Go back to your brother Sam,” sighs Tony. “He’s worried about you.”
10.
Sam drives slowly on his way back to the motel. He’s nauseous and his thoughts keep stumbling into each other. He’s pretty sure both are the result of his lack of sleep. Tony didn’t tell him anything he hasn’t heard from at least a dozen other two bit psychics and occultists. Nothing Missouri didn’t tell him when he called her three hours after finding out about the deal, fear of losing Dean burning acid-like in his throat. No one knows anything, and Sam forces himself to calm down because he still has six months left to figure things out.
He finds himself thinking about Roy LeGrange, back when Dean was dying from heart failure. He should have kept the book; if he knew how to control reapers, he wouldn’t have to worry about losing Dean to the deal.
He wouldn’t have to worry about losing Dean at all.
The sky’s a blue that hurts to look at, the kind of day meant for traveling, with their breaths fogging the window and the heater on and Dean singing low and off-key to his tapes. It’s the kind of day Sam’s learned to live for, the country spread vast and dangerous before him and Dean bright and reckless next to him, leading them onto some new adventure.
It strikes Sam then that Dean's idea of a good night with his brother is hustling people at pool and nearly catching pneumonia as they hunt a troll.
He grips the steering wheel too tight and pulls into the parking lot.
11.
“Where have you been?” demands Dean as soon as Sam walks back in. The hotel room is warm, the heater purring happily. Dean stands up from the tiny hotel chair he’d been sitting in. He looks furious and he’s clearly been staring at the door, waiting for Sam to return. There’s still blood on his face. He hasn’t even bothered to wash it off.
It’s fucking ridiculous. Sam’s an adult. He shouldn’t be treated like a teenager out past curfew. He shouldn’t still have to listen to his older brother. He shouldn’t still be living with his older brother.
Then he thinks with a painful clarity: He really shouldn’t be in love with his older brother.
“I was talking to a psychic,” he says resignedly. “Trying to see if there was a way out of your deal.”
Dean sucks in a deep breath. “And?” he says.
Sam shakes his head.
Dean lets the breath out. “You shouldn’t do that Sam,” and his tone is low and intent. He stares hard at Sam as if he could make Sam comply by sheer force of will. “You really shouldn’t.”
Sam knows that if he says anything in response to that, Dean will forbid him. And he knows if Dean forbids him, they’ll be locked in another argument, the kind that lasts miles, that stretches tight and poisonous between them.
“We should go,” he says instead. “Go check out those deaths in Charleston.”
Dean looks at him unhappily, then he runs his hand through his hair and forces a smile. It’s tight, ugly, only a smile because his lips are curved up.
“Whatever,” he bites out.
There’s a tick of silence.
“You should wash the blood off your face,” says Sam.
Dean gives him this look, this fucking look. It’s hurt and confused and child-like with his huge eyes all the way open and green like nothing else has ever been. The morning light makes him look radiant, and Sam wants to touch him. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek instead and feels a sharp burst of pain, tastes the copper of blood. He concentrates on the pain, and Dean’s expression locks back down. That’s what does it, Dean’s eyes going cold and cutting as he turns away. And Sam, Sam just wants to make Dean stop.
He crosses over to Dean and reaches out, grips Dean’s chin in his hand. He wipes at the blood dried below Dean’s lips with his thumb, vague memories of Dean cleaning his face like this back when they were kids.
Dean trembles faintly.
“Blood,” mumbles Sam, like it explains everything and maybe it does. He doesn’t apologize for being the reason Dean bled in the first place.
Dean’s skin is flushed and warm to the touch. His lips part and Sam feels something clench in his chest.
He looks at Dean and knows he could have him if he asked. He’s wanted to kill his brother and he’s wanted to kiss his brother. The impulses aren’t far off and he doesn’t know which would be worse, but he’ll settle for just keeping his brother.
He presses his thumb into the indent on Dean’s lower lip, watches the pink flesh sink in. Dean’s breath hitches, and he leans into the touch.
“Sammy…” he says, voice ragged-edged, almost a moan.
Sam wonders, sometimes, if he’d be trying this hard to save Dean if he weren’t in love with him. He thinks he still would.
Sometimes, he thinks he'd try harder.
He drops his hand.
-End.
AN: Once upon a time, I was walking through the woods and stumbled upon a bridge. Naturally, I immediately thought of trolls. From there, it was a quick jump to, "Sam and Dean should hunt a troll!" And so I sat down to write a 2000 word gen casefile about Sam and Dean killing a troll.
As you can see, that is not what happened. *sigh*
My apologies to Tolkien.
Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading. And for your amusement, here is a picture of a bridge. Not the bridge from the story, but a bridge (two bridges, actually), and from Winchester, Oregon no less.
Fandom: Supernatural
Summary: Sam and Dean hunt a troll. Mid season 3. Sam/Dean
Rating: PG 13
Word Count: ~5600
Spoilers/Warnings: spoilers through mid-season 3; incest.
1.
“Troll,” says Dean, to himself much as it is to Sam. He’s squatting, frowning thoughtfully at the bloodstains on the rock, left behind by the third drifter in four months to get ripped to shreds. The police suspect a serial killer.
It’s November, and the month settles chill and gloomy around them. Tattered yellow police tape flaps in the wind, incongruously bright against the gray of the day. The light’s pale, almost watery, and it washes Dean out, gives him the pallor of a corpse. Sam shivers, and leans back against the driver’s door of the Impala, the metal cold and hard beneath him.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Yeah,” says Dean firmly, standing up. He scrubs his hands against his jeans, and Sam’s eyes flick downward to follow the motion. The bridge above them rumbles and growls, traffic passing over.
The river’s silver-flat and peaceful, and the woods get thick about a hundred yards down, a tangle of bare, dark limbs and the almost-black of evergreens, pressed up close to the edges of civilization, deep smell of autumn-rot and wet earth beneath the bitter-sharp of winter. Sam wishes the culprit weren’t so obvious; his legs ache from the hours in the car, and he wouldn’t mind stretching them on recon.
“So,” says Dean, eyes lidded and mouth smirking. “You wanna be Gandalf or Bilbo?”
Sam smiles, all little brother acrimony. “You’re the short one with the hairy toes,” he points out cheerfully.
“Bite me Gollum,” sneers Dean. “Oh wait, you might.”
Sam snickers then stretches, rolling his shoulders. Those ache too, and he hears the sharp pop-pop as the bones in his back crack.
“Paper’ll say when sunrise is,” he says, a peace offering.
“Hhm,” mutters Dean, shoving Sam aside and opening the car door. The keys are still in the ignition because mauled bodies under a bridge is a really obvious MO. Sam doesn’t know why Dean insisted they stop and check.
Two ways to kill a troll, he thinks, sliding into shotgun. Fire or sunlight.
2.
There are five listings under “psychic” in the phonebook, three of which are for national hotlines. That leaves Madam Roma’s and Tony Oracles to visit. Both request that appointments be made in advance, but Sam figures if either one’s worth seeing, they’ll know he’s coming.
He writes down their addresses while Dean’s in the shower scrubbing off the stench of an eight hour drive. When Dean comes out, Sam says, “I’m gonna grab a pizza, be back soon.”
Dean looks at him for a long moment, narrow-eyed and inscrutable. He’s scrubbed clean, all fresh, pink lines, solid and damp. The sun’s sinking low, and the lingering light turns the hotel room faded and flat. Dean looks like he’s peering out of an old photograph. Sam can’t breathe.
“All right,” says Dean finally, twisting his gaze away. He pulls on a black shirt, worn soft and too tight in the shoulders. “No pineapple bitch.”
3.
Sam steps into Madame Roma’s “office” half an hour before the sign says it will close. The place is suffocating with incense and illuminated dimly with candles. There’s a chair, moth-eaten and purple, and a beaded curtain that separates the waiting room from the main one. The vibe is old world and carefully staged, and Sam’s disappointment is sour but familiar. Just by the décor, he knows the psychic’s a fake.
Madame Roma comes through the curtain with a rustle and click of beads. She’s a short woman, and squat, with eyes like a toad, pale and wide, and a long fall of smooth gray hair. She smiles at him but Sam can see the edge to it, that’s she’s more exasperated than pleased. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and when he smiles back, neither does his.
“Welcome child,” she whispers, voice hushed like someone in a sickroom. “Do you have an appointment?”
There’s a slight stress on the word appointment, a definite sense that the words because if you don’t, you’ll have to leave are tacked on after.
Sam wonders if she has people set up appointments so she can google their specs beforehand, dazzle them with some knowledge they themselves left lying around for anyone to find. But she looks wary of him, almost nervous, so Sam knows she must be good at her job. It means she’s observant. Sam works very hard so that people see a sweet, shy young man when they look at him, and not someone large enough and strong enough to kill them with his hands.
“Don’t you think it’s odd that someone who can see through bullshit so easily ends up peddling it to other people?” he asks. It’s a Dean thing to say. He’s been saying a lot of Dean things lately.
Madame Roma’s mouth drops open. “Young man,” she begins, but he cuts her off.
“Quick question, and then I’ll go, I promise,” he says. Madame Roma isn’t a psychic, but that doesn’t mean she’s completely ignorant. “What do you know about hellhounds?”
Madame Roma draws herself together, squaring her shoulders and adding an inch to her height. “Hellhounds,” she says haughtily, “are the minions of the devil. They drag condemned souls to Hell.”
“Yeah, I know,” snaps Sam, and he looms a little more than he means to. “But how do you stop them?”
She stares at him. “Young man,” she says, concerned lilt to her tone that means she’s edging toward the phone. “Are you all right? Do you need me to call someone?”
Sam gives her another fake smile, smooths out the lines on his face, and unclenches his fists. He eases back so that he's no longer towering above her.
“No,” he says tersely. “I’ll just be going.”
4.
Sam has a pizza box warming his hands when he gets back, and he finds Dean sitting outside the hotel door, face propped up thoughtfully in his hands. It’s been dark for an hour and the strip lighting overhead gives everything a harsh tinge. Dean doesn’t look old, but he looks tired.
“Lock yourself out again?” asks Sam amiably.
Dean scoffs, awareness settling back onto his face. He pats the ground next to him.
“Fucking heater’s broken,” he complains. “I was freezing my balls off in there.”
“It’s pretty cold out here too,” points out Sam, but he sits down next to Dean. It’s only gotten colder since the sun went down, more like January than November, and Dean’s warm and solid next to him.
“Did you ask for a new room?” he asks, opening the pizza box and handing Dean a slice.
“Nah,” says Dean, too-casual tone that makes Sam glance at him sharply. But Dean’s face is bland, vaguely pissed, and if he’s lying, Sam can’t tell about what. “Figure we’re barely gonna use the room anyway. It’s not like we gotta do research.”
Dean doesn’t have to do research, thinks Sam darkly. But Sam does, he hates the irony of it, that he has too much time and not enough, hours in the car doing nothing but watching scenery, knows Dean will just grab whatever book he’s searching through and throw it out the window. First time Dean did that, Sam made him pull over, and they almost came to blows on the side of the road.
He does his research at night while Dean’s asleep. His guilt feeds his insomnia, and he makes phone calls that twist between pleading and threatening while Dean’s at the bar or fucking some girl. He let loose the Gates of Hell, and he cares less about getting the demons back in than he does about keeping Dean out.
He doesn't say anything, just makes a noncommittal noise and they eat the pizza in silence. Dean wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, and Sam’s fingers slowly go numb.
Dean smiles, slow and dazzling. “Hey,” he says, brushing his hand against the outside of Sam’s thigh. “Let’s go get a drink.”
5.
They nurse the same two beers for hours, and Dean convinces Sam to help him hustle the locals. Sam plays drunk, fumbling his shots, and Dean talks loudly about how Sam’s hammered, should maybe take the rest of the night easy.
Dean’s riding high on something, shoulders loose and face flushed, and he keeps touching Sam. Casual, intimate touches, a hand on his shoulder or the small of his back or brushing against his side as they walk around the table. It makes Sam feel jittery, like his skin’s too hot and tight, and half the time he tips into Dean’s touch and the other half he jerks away.
When he leans down to take a shot, Dean leans over him, palm curled warmly over Sam’s spine, and whispers, lips against his ear, “Pocket this one. Makes it more realistic.”
The shot goes wide, and Sam stands up. He’s vaguely flustered, his heartbeat faster than it has any reason to be, and he glares down at Dean.
“I know,” he grits out. “I’ve been doing this since I was fifteen.”
Dean arches his eyebrows, innocent expression destroyed by his smirk. “Maybe you have had one too many to drink.”
Sam’s had enough. He drops the pool cue, hisses, “Finish the damn game yourself,” and stalks off to the restroom. It’s not until the door swings shut behind him that he stops feeling Dean’s gaze, heavy and intent, against his back. But that doesn’t make sense. Dean doesn’t do girly shit like watch someone as they walk away.
He exhales loudly and drops to the tiled ground. Country music fills the restroom up, twangy and sorrowful and louder in here than in the bar. Sam’s heart is still beating in his ears, and he takes a few deep breaths to calm it, then pulls out the demonology text he has wedged in his pocket. There’s just enough light to read by.
Thirty minutes later, three drunks have almost stumbled over him, his butt hurts from sitting on the hard tiles, and he hasn’t learned anything, but at least his heart rate is back under control. He wonders if he’d be able to sneak out of the bar and go read one of the books he has stashed in the Impala. There’s an old leather bound hunting manual that might have something useful.
He decides to try, but when he walks out of the restroom, it’s immediately obvious Dean is in trouble.
The mark’s thick-necked and has a hairstyle Ash would have approved of, probably named something like Randy or Earl or Ed, and he’s frowning at Dean like he’s just beginning to realize he’s been hustled.
“Now wait a minute,” he says slowly, and normally when Sam and Dean get caught, they give the guy back his money and quietly leave with everyone else’s. “I think you just-”
But Dean’s in a mood, same mood he’s been in since he made the deal if Sam’s honest. He smiles, electric spark of a smile, and interrupts with, “Hey, it’s not my fault you’re congenitally stupid. That’s what happens when your daddy marries his sister.”
Dean easily dodges ‘Earl’s’ punch, and usually Sam would be marveling at Dean’s use of the word ‘congenitally,’ but Earl has three friends coming to help him out. And much as Dean probably deserves it, Sam doesn’t want to watch his brother get beaten bloody. Besides, they still have a troll to kill.
Sam wades into the fight. Dean’s already taken two jabs to the head, but neither enough to break the skin, and he’s got one guy doubled over and gasping in pain. But the rest of the bar’s taken notice, and it’s unlikely they’ll take Dean’s side. A heavy set guy comes at Dean with a pool cue, and Sam punches him in the side of the face before he can get there. Sam feels the satisfying crack of his knuckles against the guy’s bone, and the answering flare of pain in his hand as the guy cries out and drops the cue.
Sam grabs Dean by the back of his jacket and hauls him out of the fray, keeps both hands on him as he manhandles Dean out of the bar. For once in their lives, their luck is good. No one follows them out. Probably because it’s too cold, a sharp, bitter cold that sings through Sam like a particularly high, clear note of music. He swears and lets go of Dean. Dean laughs.
“That was fun,” Dean says, and he sounds like he means it.
Suicidal’s a good look for Dean. His eyes are over-bright, wide in his face, over the sharp-white of his smile. Sam thinks if he kissed him, Dean’d taste like copper, like fire.
He’d probably just take like stale beer, sour-breath, the mint gum he chews to keep awake.
Sam doesn’t kiss Dean, just curls his hands tighter into his pockets as they walk across the parking lot and lets the adrenaline drift out of him. His right hand throbs from the punch he threw. The neon sign of the bar blinks blueandred, blueandred, turning Dean’s face ghostly then bloody, and something in Sam’s stomach curls and twists unpleasantly.
“You’re an idiot,” snarls Sam, when they get into the car.
“We’re up two hundred,” smirks Dean. “No thanks to you. You do like to eat, don’t you? Stay in hotel rooms instead of the car?”
What Sam would like is to slam his brother’s head into the steering wheel.
“We should head back to the hotel,” he says instead, throat tight. “Get a couple hours sleep.”
“Nah,” says Dean, glancing at Sam from the corner of his eye and then ducking his head. He hums a bar of some song, indistinct and almost familiar. It’s low and sweet, tenor of a lullaby to it. “S’too cold in there, remember? We’ll have to sleep in the car.”
“Great,” grumbles Sam. “So glad we picked up some cash.”
6.
Sam’s cell phone alarm wakes him up three and a half hours later, and he jerks up and hits his head against the ceiling of the car. He lies back down.
“Jesus fuck,” he mutters. He’s stiff and cold, and he’s pretty sure sleeping in the car on a night like this is a great way to catch hypothermia. He knows he’s lucky that Dean lets him have the backseat, but he’s still too large for sleeping in the car to be comfortable.
“What’s the point of paying for a hotel room if we can’t actually sleep in it?” he whines.
“Motherfucker,” groans Dean, and Sam allows himself a tiny moment of satisfaction that he’s not the only one in pain.
“Not my fault the heater’s broken,” Dean finally answers back, voice sharp.
“We still could have switched rooms,” snipes Sam.
There’s a pause.
“Shut up,” orders Dean and his head pops up over the divide. He flashes a smile, crooked and crazy.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go kill a troll.”
7.
Dean’s face and hands are pale-pale, luminescent in the dark of the night. Sam watches the white shapes float back and forth as Dean paces. They’re at the bridge, waiting for the troll to scent Dean and come out. Sam’s a dozen yards back, hidden downwind with a flashlight, a pack of matches, and a canister of gasoline they rigged to spray when Sam pulls the trigger. Usually, it’s easier and safer to just let the troll talk itself straight into dawn, some two hours from now by Sam’s watch. But sometimes the troll’s not in a chatty mood, and it’s best just to set it on fire and suffer through a quarter hour of howling, flaming monster.
Not that either of them have any qualms about setting things on fire.
It’s still unseasonally cold, and Sam has his hands shoved into his pockets as far they’ll go. He’s no longer angry he has a life that means lying-in-wait for a troll in the dark and the chill, and he’d much rather wait for a troll than for hell hounds.
He and Dean don’t have to wait long though, twenty minutes maybe, and then the water parts and the troll lumbers out of it, reek of murder preceding it.
“Human,” rumbles the troll delightedly when it spots Dean. Sam almost gags from the stench. He wonders if it’s worse for him because he’s downwind, or worse for Dean who’s so close.
Dean visibly recoils, taking a step back and putting his hands over his nose and mouth. It answers Sam’s question.
“Dinner,” cackles the troll this time, lumbering toward Dean. It’s large, but it’s quick.
“You don’t want to eat him,” Sam calls out. His voice is unexpectedly loud. The night has been quiet thus far, and Sam doesn’t know if it’s from the encroaching winter or the taint of the troll.
The troll pauses. It looks around.
“I do,” it says. It makes a wet, fleshy noise, probably smacking its lips. “Delicious.”
“He won’t taste very good,” asserts Sam. “He eats too much junk food. He’s going to be horrible for your cholesterol.”
“Cholesterol?” repeats the troll dumbly. It has a hard time saying the word.
“You know,” explains Sam. “That stuff that hardens your arteries, makes it more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke. Cholesterol.”
Dean doesn’t say anything and doesn’t move, which is exactly according to plan. Privately, Sam thinks their positions should be switched. Dean’s better at inane babble than Sam is, and Sam’s had a lot more practice being bait. But Dean’s been a lot more willing to play the sacrificial lamb lately, and it’s one more thing that makes Sam want to scream and shake him.
“I am troll,” growls the troll. “I don’t have k-k-kle.” It gives up. “I eat human now.”
“But how?” asks Sam, reverting to the classics. He thinks back to the summer before seventh grade, the whole of Middle Earth on his lap as they drove from hunt to hunt. Dean was allowed to go on hunts for the first time, and it's the only time Sam can remember Dean being gawky and unsure in his skin. Didn’t matter though; Sam still hero-worshiped him. Dean was the one who gave him the Tolkien books in the first place, found them at a yardsale and left them lying on the motel bed they’d been sharing while in Boise.
“How?” repeats the troll. Its tone of voice implies that it thinks Sam is the stupid one. “I just do.”
Sam keeps the troll talking for over an hour, mouth and throat getting progressively dryer and dryer. Dean stands there the entire time, probably bored out of his mind, and occasionally glances at his watch. Sam winces every time he sees the spark of bright blue as the face lights up, worried it will divert the troll’s attention back to Dean.
Sam himself hasn’t been doing a very good job at keeping the troll’s attention; for the past fifteen minutes, the troll has become less and less talkative.
Sam rattles off his latest thought and waits for the troll to reply. It doesn’t. It looks up, in his direction, and Sam can make out a nasty grin on its face.
“Okay,” it says slowly. “I don’t eat him then. I eat you.”
The troll lopes toward him, and Sam’s surprised- most trolls aren’t this smart- but he’s not really worried. He’s the one with the equipment.
Then Dean hits the troll with a rock. The troll stops midstride and turns back to Dean. It bares its teeth, and they shine white and deadly in the dim light.
“Hey fugly,” says Dean. “I’m a hell of a lot less stringy than that guy.”
Dean’s got his head tilted up, and Sam bets the bastard’s smirking. It’s probably his come and get it look, the cocky fuck. Thing is, Dean’s normally entitled to wear that look. He can take almost anything the world throws at him, but this. This is a fucking troll, barreling at him and he’s gonna get himself ripped to shreds.
Douchebag probably just has his lighter on him.
Sam flips on the flashlight and shines it directly in the troll’s face. The troll shrieks and flails back, gives Dean enough time to get out of the way. Sam drops the flashlight and rushes forward. He sprays the troll down with gasoline and pulls the matches out of his pocket. The match will light. Matches always light for him.
It flares up, bright orange with the sharp scent of sulfur and smoke.
He throws the match on the troll and it screams and blazes up and up, stench roiling off it in thick, nauseating waves. Sam sprays more gasoline onto the troll, and the fire billows and blooms. The troll stumbles toward the river, and Dean darts in front of it and shouts, wordless and loud enough that the troll, panicked, jerks back and starts running toward the forest. It gets three more steps in before staggering to the ground, still screaming, full throated and human sounding.
The fire snaps and rages. Even standing a few yards away, the heat is intense, and the sky’s gone gray with light while Sam wasn’t watching. Dean comes to stand next to Sam and stares at him reproachfully, face flickering with shadows from the fire.
It’s dawn. The troll turns to stone.
“Christ Sammy,” snaps Dean. “Didn’t have to freak out like that, did you? What the fuck’s your problem?”
Sam mouth twitches in anger and then he’s turning before he can think about it, fist raised. He punches Dean in the face. Dean staggers away, mouth open with hurt and surprise, and Sam shoots out a hand and drags Dean back to him. His knuckles are white around Dean’s wrist.
“Seriously Dean?” he seethes. “You got six months left, and you’re trying to check out on me early?”
Dean wrenches his arm away like Sam branded him. “Calm the fuck down,” he barks. “We killed it, didn’t we?”
He wipes at his mouth, and it comes away bloody. He glares at Sam, eyes a cold, dark color. But he doesn’t say anything or try to hit Sam back. They stand there in silence, watching the flames die out.
Dean pokes at the charred stone with his toe. “Come on,” he growls. “Let’s get this thing back into the river.”
8.
They get back to the hotel room, still not speaking, and Dean was right. The place is fucking freezing. Sam marches over to the heater to attempt to fix it. He doesn’t know why he thinks that’s a good idea, considering the last heating unit he dealt with burst into flames. But it’s better than getting into an argument with Dean.
When he looks at it, he realizes his brother is an idiot. Dean must have tried to turn the heater on, and ended up switching on the ac instead. It’s too good not to say anything, and he turns around to gloat about Dean’s mistake, but the words stop.
Dean’s standing a few feet away, arms crossed, glaring.
“I know how to work a fucking heater,” he says without being prompted.
“Okay,” says Sam. “So you deliberately left the ac on because…”
Secretly, he thinks the answer is because Dean is fucking insane, but Dean sneers at him and replies, “Because I wanted to spend an evening with my brother for once. You haven’t exactly been Mr. Social lately. ”
Sam gapes at Dean and then says, voice shrill in a way only Dean can make it, “Excuse me? I’m the antisocial one? You’re the one always out getting drunk or laid or…”
“You know why?” snaps Dean. “Cuz you’re always on that damn laptop.” His voice goes high and cruel. “Oh no Dean, I have to research the case.” His mouth twists unpleasantly. “I’m not stupid Sam, I know you’re researching the deal. And I told you-”
“And I told you I don’t care,” cuts in Sam. “And do the words passive aggressive mean anything to you? Because seriously Dean-”
“Do the words I’m your older brother and you should fucking listen to me mean anything to you?”
Sam doesn’t reply. His jaw feels tight. He wants to hit Dean again, and Dean looks like he’s willing to hit back this time.
Sam exhales, then turns around and leaves.
9.
Tony Oracles doesn’t open for another hour, so Sam sits on the stoop and waits. There’s a jogger coming down the street, breath pluming out in front of him, and Sam watches him with mild interest, willing himself to calm down. He’s still keyed up from the troll and the fight with Dean, doesn’t want to intimidate Tony like he did Madame Roma.
The jogger slows down as he approaches Sam.
“Sam Winchester,” says the jogger, coming to a halt. He’s tall, though not as tall as Sam, and narrow-shouldered, with thin eyebrows and a thin mouth. He’s wearing a blue velour tracksuit and doesn’t look a threat, but that means exactly nothing.
Sam immediately stands, hand reaching for the gun in his waistband, and the jogger gives him a bored look, one thin eyebrow slanting up.
“Please,” scoffs the man. “I’m not a threat,” echoing Sam's conversation with himself. The man frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. “And you do realize there’s no way to save your brother?”
Sam blinks. “You’re Tony,” he blurts after a second.
“Very good,” laughs Tony. “I heard you were the smart one.”
“How do you know there’s no way to save Dean?” demands Sam, taking a step forward. Tony takes a step back, and his expression shifts from amused to considering as he looks Sam over.
“Here’s the thing,” says Tony, raising his hands placatingly. “I’ve heard of maybe two cases where a guy got out of a deal. And I know you and Dean were involved with one of them.”
“And the other one?” asks Sam; he fists his hand, ragged edges of his nails cutting into his palms.
Tony eyes him warily. “Someone else offered the demon something it wanted more.” He shrugs. “Some souls are more valuable than others.”
“There’s another demon,” tries Sam. The Crossroads Demon already refused his soul, but someone else might want it. “Not a Crossroads Demon, that owns my brother’s contract…”
Tony shakes his head. “I don’t anything about it,” he says. “I don’t normally deal with demons. They tend to be bad luck. And the only reason I’m telling you this personally instead of ignoring you is because you and your brother killed that troll.”
“You know about the troll?” says Sam blankly.
“Psychic,” says Tony dryly. There’s a pause, and then he adds, “You didn’t have to kill the troll. Most of what you and Dean do, you don’t have to. Why not just kick back for awhile, stop worrying about everyone else. Spend time with your brother Sam. You don't have much time left.”
Sam can’t answer. He feels like he’s sixteen again and his anger is too big for his body to hold. He feels it expanding out of him, hot and dense, filling him up with it, so fierce and painful he wants to make the universe burn with it. He breathes deep, shakes out his fingers. His right hand hurts from the two punches he threw last night, and both hands ache from the cold.
He shoulders past Tony, and Tony grabs him by the elbow.
“Look Sam,” he says, eyes wide and earnest. “I’m serious. You need to let Dean go.” He licks his lips, gaze darting around nervously as if he were searching for eavesdroppers. “Something… something’s coming, and the two of you are part of it.”
Sam jerks away, movement violent enough to send Tony sprawling. Tony stares up at him from the ground, expression pinching in. Sam doesn’t offer to help him up.
“Go back to your brother Sam,” sighs Tony. “He’s worried about you.”
10.
Sam drives slowly on his way back to the motel. He’s nauseous and his thoughts keep stumbling into each other. He’s pretty sure both are the result of his lack of sleep. Tony didn’t tell him anything he hasn’t heard from at least a dozen other two bit psychics and occultists. Nothing Missouri didn’t tell him when he called her three hours after finding out about the deal, fear of losing Dean burning acid-like in his throat. No one knows anything, and Sam forces himself to calm down because he still has six months left to figure things out.
He finds himself thinking about Roy LeGrange, back when Dean was dying from heart failure. He should have kept the book; if he knew how to control reapers, he wouldn’t have to worry about losing Dean to the deal.
He wouldn’t have to worry about losing Dean at all.
The sky’s a blue that hurts to look at, the kind of day meant for traveling, with their breaths fogging the window and the heater on and Dean singing low and off-key to his tapes. It’s the kind of day Sam’s learned to live for, the country spread vast and dangerous before him and Dean bright and reckless next to him, leading them onto some new adventure.
It strikes Sam then that Dean's idea of a good night with his brother is hustling people at pool and nearly catching pneumonia as they hunt a troll.
He grips the steering wheel too tight and pulls into the parking lot.
11.
“Where have you been?” demands Dean as soon as Sam walks back in. The hotel room is warm, the heater purring happily. Dean stands up from the tiny hotel chair he’d been sitting in. He looks furious and he’s clearly been staring at the door, waiting for Sam to return. There’s still blood on his face. He hasn’t even bothered to wash it off.
It’s fucking ridiculous. Sam’s an adult. He shouldn’t be treated like a teenager out past curfew. He shouldn’t still have to listen to his older brother. He shouldn’t still be living with his older brother.
Then he thinks with a painful clarity: He really shouldn’t be in love with his older brother.
“I was talking to a psychic,” he says resignedly. “Trying to see if there was a way out of your deal.”
Dean sucks in a deep breath. “And?” he says.
Sam shakes his head.
Dean lets the breath out. “You shouldn’t do that Sam,” and his tone is low and intent. He stares hard at Sam as if he could make Sam comply by sheer force of will. “You really shouldn’t.”
Sam knows that if he says anything in response to that, Dean will forbid him. And he knows if Dean forbids him, they’ll be locked in another argument, the kind that lasts miles, that stretches tight and poisonous between them.
“We should go,” he says instead. “Go check out those deaths in Charleston.”
Dean looks at him unhappily, then he runs his hand through his hair and forces a smile. It’s tight, ugly, only a smile because his lips are curved up.
“Whatever,” he bites out.
There’s a tick of silence.
“You should wash the blood off your face,” says Sam.
Dean gives him this look, this fucking look. It’s hurt and confused and child-like with his huge eyes all the way open and green like nothing else has ever been. The morning light makes him look radiant, and Sam wants to touch him. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek instead and feels a sharp burst of pain, tastes the copper of blood. He concentrates on the pain, and Dean’s expression locks back down. That’s what does it, Dean’s eyes going cold and cutting as he turns away. And Sam, Sam just wants to make Dean stop.
He crosses over to Dean and reaches out, grips Dean’s chin in his hand. He wipes at the blood dried below Dean’s lips with his thumb, vague memories of Dean cleaning his face like this back when they were kids.
Dean trembles faintly.
“Blood,” mumbles Sam, like it explains everything and maybe it does. He doesn’t apologize for being the reason Dean bled in the first place.
Dean’s skin is flushed and warm to the touch. His lips part and Sam feels something clench in his chest.
He looks at Dean and knows he could have him if he asked. He’s wanted to kill his brother and he’s wanted to kiss his brother. The impulses aren’t far off and he doesn’t know which would be worse, but he’ll settle for just keeping his brother.
He presses his thumb into the indent on Dean’s lower lip, watches the pink flesh sink in. Dean’s breath hitches, and he leans into the touch.
“Sammy…” he says, voice ragged-edged, almost a moan.
Sam wonders, sometimes, if he’d be trying this hard to save Dean if he weren’t in love with him. He thinks he still would.
Sometimes, he thinks he'd try harder.
He drops his hand.
-End.
AN: Once upon a time, I was walking through the woods and stumbled upon a bridge. Naturally, I immediately thought of trolls. From there, it was a quick jump to, "Sam and Dean should hunt a troll!" And so I sat down to write a 2000 word gen casefile about Sam and Dean killing a troll.
As you can see, that is not what happened. *sigh*
My apologies to Tolkien.
Feedback is good karma. Thanks for reading. And for your amusement, here is a picture of a bridge. Not the bridge from the story, but a bridge (two bridges, actually), and from Winchester, Oregon no less.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-09-09 03:16 pm (UTC)Yeah, sorry about that. I wanted a happy ending. And it just... wasn't happening. ):
Thanks for reading!