Chapter Text
Sam leaned back and hit submit, a little smile playing around his face. With that one gesture, that simple push of a button, his first semester at Stanford officially drew to a close. He’d made it. It hadn’t been easy. He’d had to deal with a few adjustment issues around the transition to civilian life, and he’d had to deal with the more than a few aspects of his old life that just wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d hunted, alone, and he’d helped his family without their ever being the wiser.
He’d almost died.
Almost doesn’t cut it, Sammy. He could hear his father’s voice just as clear as if he was eight again, heading out for the first time with the double barrel. He’d been proud of himself for almost hitting the target for all of three seconds, before his dad had gotten into his face. Almost isn’t going to save your brother. Almost will only get your brother killed, you understand me? He could still feel his father’s breath hot on his ear if he let himself.
And in that, his father had been right. Almost didn’t count for much. Almost hitting a target wouldn’t save his brother, and a clutch of owl-men almost killing him hadn’t managed to stop him from finishing the semester.
He wasn’t too worried about his grades. He’d kept up with his work, even during the long days he’d spent locked up in the hospital waiting for his body to knit itself back together. He had a few concerns, just enough to keep his stomach a little unsettled, but it wasn’t any worse than his usual grades-related anxiety. His most likely problem area was going to be the paper for the Theology 101 class; he’d had few opportunities to discuss or even explore the subject mater before showing up to Stanford and didn’t feel as though he was on such firm ground as he did in his other classes. Still, he should do okay.
Of course, now that his last paper had been handed in, he had no idea what to do with himself. It wasn’t a feeling he’d had much experience with, and he didn’t think he liked it much. He had a couple of translation clients he could take care of, but none of them were urgent given the time of year. He had no current research cases as Taurus. Jim hadn’t sent him anything at all since he’d been hurt, and if the contacts he’d made through other cases had anything going on it wasn’t anything they needed his help with.
As if on cue, someone knocked on his door. He didn’t have to look to know who it was. He got up and unlocked the door, letting Brady into the small room. “Hey, Sam.” The blond grinned and closed the door behind himself. “You all set with exams yet?”
“Yeah, I had my last one this morning, in Hebrew. We’ll see how I did, but I’m feeling confident.” He locked the door and returned to his desk. He wasn’t going to let himself get worked up, not this time. “How about you?”
“Yeah, I finished O-Chem just a few minutes ago. Let me tell you, I am not sorry to see the back of that one!” He shuddered. “You know, all through grade school and high school and all that I thought I was smart, you know? That’s what they kept telling me. ‘Oh, Tyson, you’re so smart! Oh, Tyson, with brains like yours you can make it anywhere!’ Then I get here and it’s like I got hit with a two by four.”
Sam winced. He’d been hit by a two by four. Not fun. “Yikes.”
“I feel like I’m only going to get by with the skin of my teeth.” He flopped down onto the bed in a sad little blond heap.
“Brady – you’re going to be fine. You are. You’re brilliant. Everyone else here got told the exact same thing that you were told.” He reached out and put a hand on Brady’s shoulder, and maybe that was a little awkward given how different things had been since Sam had gotten hurt but he couldn’t let Brady suffer alone. “You’re every bit as brilliant as everyone else in your classes, buddy. And trust me – you’ve been getting tutoring from Meli. She wouldn’t waste her time if she didn’t think you were capable of going every bit as far as she is, and she’s pretty damn likely to go to far. Okay?”
Brady leaned into his touch, which gave Sam all kinds of warm feelings deep in his gut. He shouldn’t let himself think that way, he knew better, but self-discipline could only carry him so far when he could feel Brady’s warm skin underneath his hand. “You’re the best, Sam. I’ll have my mom call you when my grades come in, you can explain it all.”
Sam chuckled. “You’re going to be fine, dude. Trust me. You’re going to rock your first semester.”
The blond rested his head on Sam’s shoulder for a minute, and looked pretty happy to do so, before he jerked his head up. “Oh, crap, I’m sorry. Is that your bad shoulder?”
Sam counted backwards from ten, in Akkadian. “It’s fine, Brady. I’m fine.”
“The doctor said you’d still be in rough shape.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You should still be in a sling!”
“But I’m not.” Sam rolled his eyes but confined his frustration to that. A guy like Brady couldn’t understand the Winchester way. Sam would have given anything to not understand the Winchester way himself, but he couldn’t help the way he’d been raised. Maybe he had a little residual discomfort in the shoulder or in his ribs, but he didn’t register it anymore. He could use it, he had a full range of motion, and that was enough. At least no one was expecting him to go out and take on a werewolf or anything stupid like that. “I’m fine, Brady. I’ve always been a fast healer, and I’m sure not going to question how or why but I’m not going to complain about being able to go out for a run this quick.”
All color drained from Brady’s face. “Are you kidding me? You went for a run? You should still be on bed rest, Sam!”
“I’ve only got one use for that bed, and there haven’t been any takers,” Sam muttered. “Look, the doctor said that I’m making a very fast recovery, faster than she’s ever seen before. All my scans have come back fine, everything is coming along normally. I’m fine. I can do almost everything I did before, and I’m getting closer every day. She says there’s no reason I can’t do normal college things now.”
Brady shook his head. “Sam, I don’t know what kind of macho crap you’ve been raised with, but you need to take care of yourself. Just because it’s not bothering you now doesn’t mean it’s not going to bother you ten or twenty or thirty years down the road if you don’t let it heal right.”
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “At the same time, I can’t live like some kind of anchorite, man. I’m not going to get any better, physically or mentally, if I stay locked up in my room like Rapunzel.”
Brady had opened his mouth to respond o that, but he stopped himself short. “Rapunzel?”
He laughed a little. “Told you I was cracking up.”
“And here was me thinking you’d look good in the dress.” Brady nudged him with his shoulder. “I know. I’m hovering and obsessing. I guess I’m just… It’s like, you told me what your father was like, how he trained you and everything. And then I saw it. With that action-hero stuff, right?”
Sam swallowed. How was he going to cover this one up? “I mean yeah, he wanted us to be ready, but he didn’t train us specifically for owl things swarming from the sky, no.”
“That would be oddly far-sighted,” Brady said, nodding his head. How he managed to keep a straight face would remain one of the mysteries for the ages. “But like, he taught you all that other… stuff?”
Sam blushed. “More my brother, really.” He squirmed. He didn’t need to be thinking about Dean right now.
“This would be the same brother that called you up, said your name once, breathed heavily enough to sound like an obscene caller and then hung up.” Brady frowned. “That brother?”
Sam sighed. “It’s complicated.”
Brady didn’t say anything. That was a good thing. He didn’t get it. Even calling him was a big deal for Dean; one more thing that someone like Brady wouldn’t understand and shouldn’t be able to understand. After a minute, Sam cleared his throat. “So how long before you have to go back to Orange County?”
Brady groaned, glad of the change of subject. “Ugh. Two days. I’m not ready. It’s like I’ve had a few months of freedom and now I’ve got to go back for a month of being a kid again, you know?”
Sam didn’t know, but he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he grinned. “Ah, they’ll be happy to have you home. It’ll be good to be there, too, right? Have someone else to do your laundry for you for once?”
Brady laughed. “You’re still laughing at me because of that time I turned all of my whites blue.”
“I’m still laughing at you because of that time you turned all of your whites blue.” Sam huffed and turned away.
“What about you?” Brady looked up at him, face hopeful. “Are you going to go stay with that priest up to Minnesota?”
Sam grimaced. Tonight was turning out to be a lot more of a minefield than he’d wanted. He’d just wanted to spend a little time with the guy he wasn’t technically dating. “I… um, my brother’s there right now, so I can’t go there.” He swallowed and forced a smile. “But it’s cool, because I kind of expected that. I applied for this internship through the law department, and I got accepted. I’m going to be staying here over break.”
Brady shook his head. “That sounds… um. That sounds kind of isolated, honestly. Even most of the international students are going home.”
“Nah. It won’t be so bad. I’ll be working every day with investigators from the state Attorney General’s office, so it’s not like I’ll be hiding out in here feeling sorry for myself all day. And believe me, this is the chance of a lifetime.” He reached behind him, glad to have the chance to focus on something positive at last. “It’s the Nicholas Lange case.”
Brady blinked and shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
Sam grinned. “Lange was a mass murderer from back in like, 1973. He up and killed a family of six in their beds one night. It looks like he chose them at random, or because they drove a big car or something. Left a note, scrawled in blood on the master bedroom walls, talking about people who ‘despoil the Father’s creation.’”
Brady made a face. “And you’re excited about this.”
“Well yeah!” He rubbed his hands together, warming to his subject. “I mean, it was huge news in the area at the time and it was right here in Palo Alto. Yeah I’m excited!”
“Oh God. You’ve got a thing for serial killers, don’t you.” Brady clutched at his stomach. I knew you were too good to be true.”
“What?” Sam pulled away. “It’s a legitimate piece of local history!”
“Dude. It’s creepy.” Brady gave him a peck on the cheek. “It’s okay. I’m a big Sailor Moon fan myself.”
Sam silently repeated the words. “Seriously?”
“What can I say? The storylines are compelling. And hey, you’ve got a serial killer fetish, you have no grounds to criticize.”
“No judgment, just surprised.” Sam put his hands up. “Just surprised, that’s all. But anyway, it’s kind of a dream internship, and it’s paid plus I get credit, so I’m sure not going to complain about spending Christmas here.” He grinned. “Plus, Pastor Jim is many things but an expert chef is none of them.”
“You’re so not an English major.” Brady laughed. “I don’t know. I’d rather you weren’t alone right now. I mean after everything, Sam. You’re a hero, you shouldn’t be alone at Christmastime.”
Sam felt his lips twist a little and fought to keep the bitterness from them. “Brady, look,” he said. “We never really did the Christmas thing in my family anyway. It won’t be the first time I was alone on the twenty-fifth of December, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last. I don’t really miss it.” He made sure he caught Brady’s eyes. “Except when people point it out.”
His friend huffed out a little laugh. “Point taken, Winchester. I apologize. And this project of yours – it sounds like it’s a good deal. Paid internship that also offers course credit? Pretty sweet.”
“Almost too good to be true.” Sam ran his hands through his hair. It was almost too good to be true, and anything that sounded like that good a deal couldn’t be real. There had to be some kind of hidden catch. Nothing good just shined down on a Winchester.
Except so far, here at Stanford, things had been good. The scholarship had sounded too good to be true too, and it was every bit as real as it had sounded. Sure he had to work his ass off to keep it, but it was his. “So what’ll you be doing while you’re with your parents?” he asked, genuinely curious.
Brady rolled his eyes, flopping down onto the bed. “My mother wants a spa day. A spa day! She has a daughter to take her to the spa, why can’t Janice take her?”
Sam scratched his head. “I had a job in a spa once. It wasn’t that bad,” he offered.
Brady sat up. “You did?”
“Yeah. I mean it was just for a few weeks, with a fake ID and everything, but I worked there as a masseur. Trying to help the family out, you know.” Sam squirmed. The spa had been haunted, and his father had sent him in as a decoy, but Brady didn’t need to know about any of that.
“It wasn’t all, like, slathering mud on your face or stuff like that?”
“Nah. I mean there was plenty of that if that’s what you’re into, but that’s not the main thing. Your skin is fine, Brady. It doesn’t need help.” He smirked. “Although I guess it doesn’t hurt to take care of it before you start to feel the effects of all this California sun.”
“Are you trying to butter me up, Winchester?”
Sam blushed. “Is it that obvious?”
“Maybe a little.” Brady chuckled and beckoned Sam over.
Sam had a moment of fear as he sat down on the bed beside Brady. They hadn’t always had Ginny between them when they’d been together but she’d been a part of their undefined little relationship, even when she’d been off doing her own thing. Now Ginny was gone, a ghost between them even though she was still alive. Maybe Brady had only been using Sam’s injuries as an excuse to extricate himself gracefully from a union that had never been more than a way to spice up his fling with Ginny. After all, he still wasn’t “dating” Sam, was still firmly in the closet as far as school was concerned.
The blond grabbed Sam’s chin and brought him in for a chaste kiss. “You’re thinking too much,” he said in a soft voice, barely above a whisper. “You sure you’re ready for this?”
Sam took a deep breath. He was being ridiculous. This was the kind of thing Coryell had told him about, warned him to stop doing. Self-sabotage, the therapist had called it, and he’d been right. He knew why his brain spun itself into a tizzy. He had very little practical experience of how normal human interactions worked, and he was always struggling to hold onto some connection. He got it, intellectually. He just needed to get the rest of himself to catch up. “I’m ready,” he promised Brady, not having to force the smile.
Brady stayed with him that night, rather than heading back to his own room. Getting to sleep with his lover’s arms around him was a rare luxury. Sometimes, back before the owl-men attacked, he’d shared a bed for an hour or two with an casual partner, but Brady rarely stayed the night. Somehow that seemed like a better Christmas present than anything he could have expected.
John
John lifted his shotgun. Dean was almost into position. Part of John couldn’t help but be frustrated with that “almost.” There shouldn’t be any “almosts” anymore. They’d been doing this for nineteen years now and the one unknown, the one wild card was gone now. They should be moving like they were one mind in two bodies.
The rest of him knew how absurd that was. Nothing, literally nothing, worked like that. At the moment Dean was fighting an exceptionally nasty vengeful spirit, the ghost of a possessive lover who’d murdered his girl here at the toy factory a good hundred years ago. According to the lore, both spirits still haunted the factory, rendering the facility completely unfit for any other purpose. Only the guy seemed to be at all vengeful, and it was the man who was currently hurling old machine bits at John’s son’s head, but they both had to go.
The point of which was, Dean was entirely on board with getting rid of the ghosts. He’d done everything humanly possible to adhere to his father’s timetable and plan, he’d been the perfect obedient soldier, and he still wasn’t in position because said murderous ghost wasn’t cooperating. He was proving to be a much more intelligent spirit than the lore indicated, which meant that both of the Winchesters needed to step up their research game.
They’d relied too heavily on Sammy for that, John knew.
John had asked Dean to reach out to Taurus, but both Dean and Jim had kicked up such a fuss about it that the hunter had backed off. Apparently the guy was hurt, or sick, or something, John didn’t know. If Taurus had been his son, nothing short of a coma would have been enough to get him out of working, but both of them were set on babying this guy and nothing that they said or did was going to get them to budge.
Well, that was fine. Winchesters shouldn’t rely on anyone else anyway. Perfect self-sufficiency. That was the mantra he’d always preached, and it had been wrong to pin so much on a stranger in the first place. Especially when he’d already known that they guy was a shirker.
Finally, Dean managed to wrestle the ghost into position. This case was tricky. The killer had been hanged and then cremated, unusually enough for the time, and it had taken some work to figure out what he was attached to. It turned out that the guy’s tether object was a blood-soaked bullet, one of the bullets with which he’d killed his girl. According to testimony from the trial, he’d had some kind of an open cut on his hand or arm or something, and that had caused this whole mess after their death.
John was going to have to destroy the bullet. Consecrated iron should do the job safely enough. They’d know for sure if it didn’t. Ghosts usually went out in a pretty spectacular fashion. He just hoped he got to it before Dean got too beat up.
Now! John pulled the trigger. Dean jerked his head back just in time as the shells passed through his foe and met the indentation in the wall that had come from the killer’s bullet a hundred years ago. The killer’s face twisted into a snarl of hatred and he advanced on John just as his form erupted into flame. A second eruption, across the machine room floor, was accompanied by a wail that shook the shattered windows.
John relaxed and lowered his gun. “You okay, Dean?”
His son’s grin could have lit up half of Iowa. “Never better, sir.” It was half a lie. Dean’s handsome face, so like Mary’s, was already darkened by a smattering of bruises and he held one of his arms close to his chest. John knew, though, that he wasn’t processing the pain yet. Dean was still riding the adrenaline high. “Head out?”
John spared him half a grin. “Let’s head out. We can get ourselves cleaned up, maybe hit that roadhouse I saw in the next county.”
Dean’s eyes lit up. “You’re singing my song, sir.”
John knew that he should probably feel bad about that. Mary hadn’t wanted this kind of life for her child. Every time they’d passed a place like this she’d averted her eyes with a kind of shudder, and it hadn’t been because she was some kind of teetotaler. He felt a pang at that; sometimes he thought that Mary would be disgusted if she knew what he’d done to them, what had become of their perfect little family.
At the same time, she hadn’t chosen to be murdered. It was up to him to keep the world safe from the thing that had killed her, him and his sons. Maybe Mary wouldn’t have liked the fact that Dean thought the scent of stale beer and half-rancid peanuts as comforting, but it brought them closer to the thing that had killed her and it put money in their pockets.
They drove back to the motel and changed into slightly less grimy clothes before heading back out. It was getting to be time to do laundry; maybe they’d swing back up to Blue Earth and borrow Pastor Jim’s laundry room. Not that he wanted to be beholden to the preacher any more than he already was, but if he could avoid spending more on trivialities than he had to he could spend more on the hunt.
Besides, Christmas was coming, and it would be nice to pick something up for Adam, and maybe for his mother too.
The roadhouse was one of those places that didn’t even have a sign, just neon beer ads in the windows and a row of old beaters out front. If the weather were better those would mostly be motorcycles. John led them in and no one gave them a second glace; that was good. Once inside, he decided he’d try his luck at pool while Dean went for poker.
The place had a dartboard. It looked like people were putting up higher stakes than he usually saw on darts. This was another one of those times when they could have really used Sammy. He was shit at poker and worse at pool, but hell if he couldn’t throw anything at any target with an accuracy that terrified even John, ever since the day he was born.
John wasn’t going to let his lazy, no-good, ungrateful son kill his buzz. So what if they were leaving money on the table – or dartboard, as it were? He and Dean didn’t need to foot the bill for any of Sammy’s shenanigans anymore. He settled in for a good quiet hustle.
That good quiet hustle led to something more exciting as a leggy blonde waitress took an interest in the game, making sure that his drink stayed filled all night and that he knew to make sure to let her know if she needed anything. She got done with work at two, she said, and made sure he knew that. Did he maybe want to come home and show her what else he could do with a stick?
He grinned and sent Dean a text. He could find his own way back to the motel in the morning. Given that there was a waitress siting in Dean’s lap, John didn’t think his son would mind having the room to himself.
He spent a very nice night with the waitress, he thought her name might have been Darlene, and made her breakfast in the morning before he left. She dropped him off at the motel, where he found Dean still in the shower. Damn, but that boy took longer to wash up than most women he knew. It wasn’t like washing his hair should have taken all that long. Maybe it was all the product he kept rubbing into it. Lord knew the kind had a vain streak to him; liked to look good and preen for the ladies. For all his weak ways, Sam had never had that about him at least. As far as Sam had been concerned, clothes were for covering the body. They did not “emphasize my pecs and shoulders” or anything else like that, thank you very much.
Of course, Sam hadn’t ever really gotten to pick out his own clothes, so there was that.
“Dean!” John yelled. “Get a move on, I want to be out of here before check-out time!”
“Yes, sir!”
To his credit, Dean did hurry it up a bit and slip out of the shower. He came out with the towel wrapped around his waist and an apologetic grimace on his face. “Sorry, sir. I wanted to make sure Sarah got back to her car safely.”
John grunted. He supposed he couldn’t fault that logic, after all. “How much did you get last night?” he asked instead.
“About a grand, sir.” Dean shrugged. “Not too bad for one night’s work.” He stalked over to his duffel, completely unselfconscious about how much of his body he was displaying. He’d never cared about that kind of thing; they lived in too close quarters to get to have that kind of privacy. Dean had a nice body, it was true. John supposed that if he was going to have that kind of vanity, it was good that he could back it up. “Do we have a new case already?”
“Nah.” A grand wasn’t bad for a night’s work at all. John had only made about four hundred at pool. People tended to open their wallets a little wider when it came to poker, and of course you had more players chipping in. When you looked at things that way, he’d done just as well as Dean. Not that he should be looking at things that way, no, that was silly. He wasn’t in a competition with his boy. “I just want to head back to Blue Earth, maybe get a little laundry done.”
Dean frowned. “Didn’t we just come from there?” He slid his briefs on underneath the towel and then let the towel fall to the ground to finish dressing.
“Yeah. We did, at Thanksgiving. Now our clothes are all kind of ripe and we’re not that far away.” He shrugged his shoulders and packed up his bag. “My visit to Jim got cut kind of short last time, on account of his friend almost dying and everything, so I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to catch up with him a bit either.”
Dean hesitated, but then he shrugged. “Pastor Jim’s a cool enough guy, I guess.”
John stilled. “Did he give you a hard time about your – about him?”
“No, sir.” Dean met his eyes, perfectly honest. “He knows better. It’s just a little weird, you know? Being in the rectory without him. I keep looking for a ghost, except there isn’t one. There wouldn’t be, in Pastor Jim’s house.”
John sighed. “I know it’s hard, son.” He put a hand on Dean’s bare shoulder. “It’s hard on you. I wish he hadn’t put you through this. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
Dean managed a weak little grin. “I know sir. You did the best you could. I get that. I think if I’d tried harder with him, coddled him less, he’d have turned out better, but –“
John’s throat threatened to close. “Dean, no. It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid yourself. I think it must have been a problem with Sam, with Sam himself, that made him the way he is. We could have eased up on him, we could have ridden him right into the ground, and he was always going to turn out rotten.”
Dean flinched when John said “rotten,” like John had stabbed him, but he straightened up. “Yes, sir.” He drew his tee shirt on. “What do you say to coffee, sir? I know you already had breakfast.”
John laughed. Dean was a good kid. Always bounced back. “You know that how?”
“I can smell the bacon on you.”
They grabbed coffee before heading out on the two-hour trip north, back to Pastor Jim’s.
Jim didn’t seem at all surprised to see them, which made John suspect that Dean had called while they were driving. Well, that was okay. John hadn’t authorized it, and John did like to have the upper hand when he met up with people, but Jim wasn’t so much “people” as he was family. Who knew, maybe Jim and Dean had reached some sort of understanding? Either way, the priest met them at the back door of the rectory with a big smile on his face, a far cry from his expression he last time Jim had seen him. “Well well, if it isn’t the Winchesters! It’s good to see you!”
“Good to see you too, Jim. Glad to hear your friend’s doing better.” John barely restrained a smirk when a shadow fell over the priest’s face. Something was definitely going on with regards to that friend of Jim’s, that supposed parishioner. Maybe they were an old flame of Jim’s?
“He is. In body, anyway. I’m not thrilled about leaving him to spend Christmas alone, but some things can’t be helped. He says he doesn’t mind, anyway.” Jim looked out the window for a moment.
John rolled his eyes and put his bag down. “Christmas is for civilians, Jim. Come on. It’s nice for some people to get to do the whole turkey and stuffing and presents under the tree thing, but it’s not for everyone. I mean honestly, I can’t see why anyone wants that stuff. It’s just another guilt-tripping holiday to try to pressure people into spending money they don’t have and then causing hurt feelings all around.”
Once upon a time, Christmas had been important to him. It hadn’t been a big part of his own life once his dad had taken off, but Mary had loved the holiday and so he loved it too. Throughout their long courtship and their ten years of wedded bliss, he’d dutifully done the tree thing, and the gifts, and the decorations that made him want to gouge out his own eyes from tackiness sometimes. Once she’d died Christmas had seemed like a pathetic joke.
He’d tried. He’d tried for Dean’s sake, for a while, but the hunt had taken up too much of his time. How could he justify spending a pile of cash on fucking wrapping paper when people were dying? The money was better spent on silver bullets and consecrated iron. Worse, by the time that Sam was all of eight his attempts just seemed pathetic even in the boy’s eyes. Sam had just turned away from him, stopped even asking him to try to make it home for Christmas.
Instead of “You’ll be home for Christmas, won’t you, Dad?” it had become, “You know it breaks Dean’s heart when you’re not here for Christmas.” And that had just about eroded the last sentimentality John might have had for the holiday.
Somehow, seeing both the priest and his son stare at him with horrified eyes, he didn’t think that would be the right thing to say right now.
“Oddly enough, the patient in question is a civilian.” Jim’s mouth tightened and his hands balled into fists. “But there’s nothing I can do about it, so it will have to be okay, won’t it?” He seemed to force himself to relax, shoulders loosening up with a shake. “Either way, John, I’m glad to have you here.”
John and Dean were soon settled into their traditional rooms. Dean got to work on the laundry, yet another area in which John felt the lack of Sam pretty severely. Sam had been the best at laundry duty. John and Dean never quite got things as clean as Sam did, what with his fussy nature and his obsession with cleanliness. Still Dean was better than nothing, and a damn sight better than doing it himself, and so John left him to it.
In the meantime, he sat down with Jim and shot the breeze. He already knew that the thing out in California had been owl-men, but getting more details out of Jim was absolutely useful. Who knew that the bastards could form flocks? They talked about some of their other recent takedowns, too. Jim hadn’t gotten around to the Mason City case, he’d been too busy with other projects to worry about that one, but he had just recently taken down a witch using her powers to make people fall in “love” – essentially a date rape spell. That had been over in New Ulm, although her dirty work had been seen all over southern Minnesota, and Jim still had a few scars from that one. Bobby Singer had taken on a shifter up in North Dakota, travelling well out of his own range to take that one on.
Dean joined them when he could, and they had a companionable evening made more companionable by a few beers and some pizza. They went to bed comfortable and happy, and John congratulated himself on a job well done. Dean would get over this thing he had, this grief and loss over Sam soon enough.
The next morning, though, John got a call from Travis Lea. Travis spoke in a harsh whisper. “Johnny? Johnny, it’s Travis, from down in Missouri. I need to talk to you.”
John snorted into his coffee. Travis always tried to sound like he was imparting a secret for the ages or something, when mostly he wanted to talk about the weather. “Figured that’s why you called me, Travis.”
The other hunter laughed at that. “Good point, Winchester. Good point. Listen, I met up with this guy down here in Missouri. One of those backwoods types, crusty, beard that you could hide a whole flock of ducks in?”
John nodded. He knew the type. “Okay. Tends to come with the territory, being a hunter.” They tended to shop in a lot of the same places, for one thing. They tended to hide from a lot of the same authorities, for another.
“This one had a story to tell. He was talking about some kind of a knife, said it could kill anything. It’s old, real old. Made from a donkey’s jawbone old.”
John opened his mouth to retort, but he shut it again as a distant Sunday-school memory penetrated years of angry atheism. “You’re not saying…”
“I’m saying, Johnny. I mean I don’t know how real it is, but it seems awfully specific to be that much of a hoax, you know? It seems like the kind of thing that would be real useful once you go up against whatever it is what killed your woman.”
John took a deep breath. Mary hadn’t just been “his woman,” she’d been his reason for living. A guy like Travis couldn’t understand that, though. “Your source, is he for real?”
“Maybe. Usually pans out.” Travis took a deep breath. “Johnny, this ain’t something you’re going to want to go chasing after on your own. It’s dangerous.”
“No, I’d need backup.” John tugged at his hair. Who could he call on? Maybe that Gordon Walker kid, although he might have been a little green for that kind of game.
“No problem, Johnny. I got a hunter raring to go. I’d go with you myself except I busted my leg last week. But T, T’ll be just fine.”
John didn’t even have to think about it. If he had a chance to take down the thing that had killed his Mary, he had to chase it. “Tell me when and where.”
Dean
Dean wasn’t at all surprised when his father tore out of the rectory, socks trailing out of his still-open duffel behind him and not a word of explanation. He might have been disappointed, of course. He might have been devastated. But he wasn’t surprised.
“Now what do you suppose caused that?” Jim scratched at the side of his head, sipping at his mug of coffee.
“Lead on the thing that killed Mom.” He sighed. “He’ll be back when he can. If it doesn’t pan out, or if he gets hurt.” Dean slumped into his own cup. “It’s happened before.”
“At Christmas?” Jim kicked the draft blocker back into place.
“Evil doesn’t observe Jesus’ birthday, padre.”
Jim grinned. “Well, the Savior was most likely born sometime in –“
Dean held up a hand. “You sound like my brother.”
“I’ll take that as a complement.” The priest sat down. “How’ve you been, Dean? I mean really?”
Dean sighed. “I’m fine, PJ. Thanks for asking, but really. I’m fine.” He grinned. “It’s a weird time of year, you know?”
His friend nodded. “Most families experience some tension around the holidays. It’s normal to have a bit of anxiety or depression this time of year.”
Dean glared. He didn’t have any kind of depression. He’d just said he was fine, damn it. “What’s Sammy doing for Christmas? Don’t they kick the kids out of the dorms for the holidays so they can fumigate them?”
Jim raised an eyebrow. “You seem to know a lot about it for someone who’s never been to college.”
Dean flipped his collar and widened his stance. “Hey. I don’t have to sit through a bunch of dumbass classes about the meaning of a leaf or whatever to take advantage of college girls.” He bit his lip. “That came out wrong.”
“I don’t think it did.” Jim grinned a little. “Anyway, most of the time yes, they do prefer that students move out of the dorms during the winter break, but that’s not always a possibility and there’s a process in place for your brother. He’s been accepted into an internship that will give him course credit and a paycheck for the duration.”
“Huh.” Dean gave a slow nod of his head. “That’s Sammy. Always resourceful.”
“That he is.” Jim looked over at him. “Have you spoken to him?”
“Uh, once.” Now Dean looked away, face hot, and tugged at his collar. “I mean, yeah. I called him.” Not that Dean was able to get more than one word out. And then he’d hung up in a flurry of humiliation and grief and relief. “He hasn’t called me back though.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want you to get in trouble with your father.” Jim sat back in his chair and turned his mug around in his hands. “The last thing he wants is to be a problem for you.”
“The only problem he is for me,” Dean sulked, kicking the floor under his chair like he used to when he was a little kid, “is that he’s not here with me doing what he’s supposed to do anymore. He should’ve been there to help distract that ghost.”
“Dean, if he’d stayed with your father he’d be dead by now and you’d be in the same position you’re in now.” Jim’s face softened, even if his words were harsh. “You wouldn’t be able to reach out and call him when you wanted to hear his voice. That’s the only difference.”
“He’d have knuckled under eventually.” Dean shook his head. Jim couldn’t understand it, but he’d always favored Sam. He didn’t have a whole host of supernatural uglies looking for him. “If he’d stayed with me, that whole thing with the owl men wouldn’t have happened.”
“It would have been something else. Probably himself, Dean. He hated life, when he was with your father. He loved you, but he hated the way you lived.” Jim sipped from his coffee. “Anyway. I don’t think we’re going to agree on this, so maybe we should change the subject. Looks like that ghost tossed you around a little bit.”
Dean waved a hand. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” He tried to grin, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe what the priest had said. Would Sam have really hurt himself if he’d stayed with them? No, that couldn’t be true. Sure their life was hard, but Sammy wouldn’t have just checked out like that.
Except he’d found a different way to get out. So maybe… No, Dean couldn’t think about that. “Are there any cases around here?”
Jim laughed. “You know there’s a hunter in town. Right here.” He pressed his hands to his chest.
“I know, PJ. I just… I don’t like to sit idle.” He didn’t like to sit idle. He especially didn’t like to sit idle when he had his brother on the brain, especially not at Christmas. “I’ll start looking for something.”
The priest sighed and put a hand on his arm. “I’ll tell you what, Dean. You help me out around here and let the bruises fade a little. I’ve got a few things to do around the rectory that are definitely two-man jobs. In return, I’ll help you find a project.”
Dean hesitated. This sounded like one of those things his dad’s friends tried to do sometimes, to try to get him to not hunt for a while. At the same time, he’d been working pretty hard lately. Maybe it was okay to take a little break. It wasn’t like Dad had given him any specific jobs or orders, after all. “You’ve got a deal, sir.”
True to his word, Jim did have some fairly heavy-duty tasks around the rectory that needed doing. It wasn’t that the priest was some kind of fainting violet, far from it. Pastor Jim was a hunter and just as good with a stake or a blade or a club as he was with a rosary and a holy book. Some tasks just couldn’t be done without four hands, and Dean was more than happy to help out. Jim had helped Sammy out, after all. Kept Sammy safe while he lay in his hospital bed. Dean owed him for that, never mind all of the food and lodging he’d given all of the Winchesters over the years.
After a couple of days, Jim started to look for jobs. Finally, he came to Dean with something. “Alright. This one is a little weird. Definitely not a simple salt-and-burn. You’re going to need all your brains for this.”
Dean winced. He knew he didn’t exactly give good value for money in that department. “Are you sure I’m your guy, then?”
“Positive. There’s backup around there if need be.” Jim waved a hand.
“Not Sam.” Dean put his hands on the table and met the priest’s eyes.
“Sam is still recovering from his injuries,” Jim said, without flinching. “Even if he weren’t out of hunting – and he’s out, believe me – I wouldn’t ask him to play backup on anything right now. His doctors told me he wouldn’t be up to more than walking between classes until spring.”
Dean snorted. “And they think he’s going to listen?” But he relaxed anyway. As long as Pastor Jim didn’t intend on forcing him to work with Sam, he might be able to pull this off. Working with Sam would just be too much. Sam had abandoned them; he couldn’t be trusted at his back now, no matter how much he’d helped them from afar. And no matter that he’d jumped in to help their dad in person, either.
“Well, they don’t know him like we do, but he’s got people looking out for him now. They won’t let him push himself before he’s ready. And since we’re both agreed that he’s not suitable backup on this, it’s not an issue.” Jim gave him a saccharine smile. “I do have other contacts out there, you know. Now. Do you want to know the details of the case or no?”
Dean chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it would make sense to have some clue what’s going on.”
Jim chuckled. “Okay. So this is out in Palo Alto, but it shouldn’t have anything to do with your brother. We’re looking at a house that’s experiencing some very unusual phenomena. The site’s been abandoned for a good twenty-nine years, and ever since then people have been reporting bizarre occurrences. We’re talking shifts in reality, faces melting right off, people disappearing and never being seen again. There’s sometimes a fine dusting of sulfur, sometimes a weird smell of ozone. And sometimes just blood, covering an entire room with no indication of any body.”
“Yikes!” Dean grimaced. “Some of that sounds like fairly typical poltergeist stuff but some of it sounds like something else.”
Jim nodded. “I guess that the sulfur sounds vaguely demonic, but there aren’t a lot of other indicators of demonic activity. The other stuff, though – that’s pretty out-there.”
“So… research and report?”
Jim grinned at him. “You can probably figure out how to kill just about anything we can identify, son. Not the demonic, there’s no way to kill a demon, but anything else you should be okay with.”
“I’m not even sure that demons exist, Pastor Jim.” Dean shook his head. His father didn’t believe in demons. Sammy did, and he knew that Jim did, but Dean – well, his dad had never steered him wrong. He had faith.
“Then don’t worry about it. This might be some kind of dark fae thing. I don’t know. If it is, you know how to handle it.”
“Iron, salt, sugar.” Dean ticked off the items on his fingers.
“And if it’s a pagan god?”
“Usually some kind of wooden stake dipped in the blood of some kind of animal. I’ll call you or Bobby Singer for specifics if I can figure out who the god of brown acid is.”
Pastor Jim clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. You can head out tomorrow; I think you’ll be okay until then.”
Dean did some research into the house once he’d packed up and checked his Baby over. The house had been the site of some kind of weird mass murder back in the early seventies, it looked like the killer had tried to channel his inner Manson or something, but that wasn’t a big deal. They saw serial killer crap all the time and most people were amazed to learn how rarely that stuff turned into hauntings. It did happen every once in a while, but most of the dead who made up their bread and butter came from much less sensational cases.
Maybe there was something about this case, something about the background that made it exceptional. He couldn’t find anything in one night, although he did learn that the subdivision in which the home had been built had been constructed not on a native burial ground but on top of an old potter’s field. Apparently the city hadn’t bothered to relocate the remains, just had the developer build right over them. That was usually a recipe for problems right there. He made a note of it.
Another possible issue was that an old mission church had been demolished to make way for the subdivision. When Dean managed to dig up the old map that included the church and compared it to the new map of the neighborhood, he found that the poltergeist house had been built right on top of the church site. In essence, the builders had desecrated sacred ground to create their mini-palaces for the wealthy. The combination of the destroyed potter’s field and the desecrated church could well have been a catalyst, a perfect storm.
Of course, if Sammy had been here he’d have found all of this crap out in like three seconds, plus where every single victim was buried. But he wasn’t here.
Still, Dean left the next morning with a good feeling in his heart. He was out there on the open road, doing what he did best: saving people and hunting things. He had a great new puzzle to work through, one that would hopefully distract him enough to forget about the fact that he was spending Christmas alone for the first time ever. Maybe Sammy wouldn’t be adequate backup, but Dean would still be in the same place as his brother, the same town. Once everything was done he could peek in, verify with his own two eyes that Sam was recovering from what Jim made sound like truly horrific injuries.
The drive took about three days. Dean could probably have done it in two, but he hit some snow in Utah and he wanted to play it cautious. Besides, he was on his own and this case didn’t have a schedule. Despite the occasional dumbass who went into the place on a dare, people weren’t actively dying and the bathtubs full of blood seemed to be mostly illusion. He could take his time, pick up a poker game here or a cocktail waitress there. He was his own man, for now anyway, and that kind of freedom could be intoxicating.
His father didn’t call. That nagged at the back of his mind, like the seam on ill-fitting jeans.
When he got to California he had to admit, much as he hated it, that he could see the appeal. Here he was, maybe ten days before Christmas, and the worst people had to do was throw on a hoodie. If he’d gone down to southern California he probably could have gotten away with shorts, not that Dean Winchester did shorts. Let other people fuss about “Oh, I want a white Christmas.” Dean had been there, done that, had the scars from a yuki-onna and the barbegazi and the giwakwa to prove it. Give him sun, and sand, plenty of college kids flush with Daddy’s money that he could hustle out of a few hundred bucks without breaking a sweat.
He found himself a motel far enough from the haunted site that he wasn’t likely to get caught up in the crazy if things hit the fan and close enough that he wasn’t going to get caught in traffic trying to get in or out of there. Motels out here cost a bit more than he was used to but he’d deal with it, just find a few poker games or whatever. Sammy’s overgenerous little nest egg could come in handy, too. Maybe he’d hit Vegas on the way out and try to inflate that a little bit, see what he couldn’t do.
Once he’d taken care of that, he went out to scout out the haunt site. He didn’t want to go in, not without a daytime look-see to get a feel for what he might be looking at, but he wanted to get a sense of the place at least.
The neighborhood was enough to draw a low whistle from him. Sure everything had been built sometime in the late sixties, but still – these places were some fancy digs. The landscaping alone must have kept an army of gardeners employed and sucked up God knew how much water through those sprinkler systems. Maybe he’d stick around for a little while, sign on to one of those work crews and make a few bucks mowing lawns. It wouldn’t be the first time. Of course, they didn’t need to stay in one place anymore, so there was no need for him to do that. He needed to unlearn that thinking.
Instead, he looked around. While the homes in the neighborhood all had floodlights and security systems, and all showed signs of normal rich people living normal rich lives within their walls, the old Couch place was different. The place was dark, completely dark. That alone made the place look ominous. The landscaping had overgrown the fence and the gates, too, creating an impenetrable wall of greenery.
He stared at the place for about half an hour. Dad would have said something about how the place felt. It didn’t “feel” right, or it “felt” like a poltergeist or something. Dean didn’t have that kind of instinct yet. He’d probably never have it. He’d been in this right alongside his dad since day one, no coddling and secrecy for Dean, but somehow he’d never gotten that unerring ken that John Winchester had, the one that made him the best in the world.
All he had was what was in front of him: his car, the ordinance in the back, and a give-em-hell attitude.
He might not be able to suss out what the monster was based on the direction of the wind and the kind of vine growing around the gate, but he could pick up on one thing. The Couch place was creepy as hell. He drove away once he’d decided that he’d had enough, aiming his car toward Stanford.
This was stupid. Pastor Jim had already told him that Sammy was safe, so he didn’t need to go checking up on the kid. It made no sense for him to drive up to campus and sneak up to Sammy’s dorm with a bunch of stressed-looking frat boys. It made even less sense for Dean to steal a maintenance uniform and go sneaking up onto Sam’s floor. Here he was, though, creeping down Sam’s hall in pushing a cart like he had any business here.
A nearby door creaked open. “Hey, buddy!”
Dean turned. The kid was probably about Dean’s height, maybe an inch or so taller. He was blond and preppy, with bright, keen eyes and a wary expression on his face. He had his cell phone in his hand.
Dean decided to go for confidence. “Hey, I’m just here to check on a problem with the lights, the kid in that room reported some problems before he checked out.”
Blond Boy’s eyes narrowed and he started to dial his phone. “The ‘kid’ in that room didn’t report any problems. And he didn’t check out. Sam!” the kid yelled. “Call the cops!”
“Shit!” Dean abandoned the cart and ran, cursing the blond kid who’d ruined his recon mission.