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astolat: Sam/Dean, with kabbalah!
Dean gets a new hunting partner. Dean/OC, Sam/Dean. Sexual content.
6.
Six months on, they’d really hit a groove, tearing through ghosts like they were cardboard Halloween cutouts, taking on big game every couple of hunts, sweet and mindless. A couple of times Dean went to chat up some girl and realized that he hadn’t spoken all day, that was how easy it was.
After a bad hunt, George would watch him extra carefully for days. If he’d been human Dean would have expected lectures, but Dean wasn’t big on post-game analysis and George wasn’t big on unnecessary talking, so it all worked out.
Sometimes, if he spent too much time sitting around between hunts, he felt the way he had when Dad was gone for too long and the money got tight, when he’d drunk four glasses of water before dinner so that he really, truly meant it when he pushed his plate over to Sam. (Sam could always tell when Dean was lying, but he wasn’t that good at figuring out why Dean was telling the truth.)
They kept going, that was what mattered. Even when he was laid up for a week after the tulpa – he guessed it made sense that George would be powerless against another earth creature, though neither of them had known that at the beginning – he resisted the temptation to call Sam.
If he’d looked Sam up on the internet, Dean knew, he would probably be able to find Sam’s graduation pictures. Dean had never really paid attention when Sam talked about law school, but he knew Sam had already taken the test, and he guessed that it was still valid, so Sam had probably gotten in everywhere he applied and was just getting ready to start. Somewhere good, he hoped. Harvard maybe.
So it was kind of a shock when his phone rang and Sam’s voice came out.
“I, uh, I found us a hunt,” he said in Dean’s ear, just like he was leaning over the table at some artsy coffee shop, hands clutched around his fancy drink. “It’s in Sedona.”
“You want to hunt?” Dean asked, confused.
“Well, yeah,” Sam said. “A friend of mine from Stanford called me up, I guess I’ve got a reputation now.”
“All right,” he said. That explained why Sam wasn’t just giving him the details; Sam must think that Dean wouldn’t be able to behave himself appropriately in Sam’s social circles. “We’ll be there in a day,” he told Sam, and hung up on Sam’s shocked “We?”
Sam was waiting for them at his friends’ mansion. It really was beautiful country, all red and orange layers, glowing in the sunlight. The mansion had a little desert-type garden, stuff that didn’t need watering, and Sam was sitting on a white bench in the middle of a bunch of carefully arranged rocks. He had a book open, face-down, on the bench next to him, like he’d been mooning for a while before they showed up.
George got out of the car and bounded up to Sam before Dean could catch up. “George Clay,” he said, shaking Sam’s hand vigorously as Sam stared. “Dean thinks the world of you, you know.” Dean got a little bit of a charge out of the fact that, just this once, Sam couldn’t look down on someone.
Sam tried to pull him aside to talk about George, but he was pretty easy to redirect towards the hunt, given that the thing they were after had killed six people in the past week. Sam himself was close-mouthed about his current status, and Dean didn’t ask, not really wanting to hear about how much nearer Sam had gotten to his perfect life and his minivan now that he didn’t have to worry about his hellbound brother.
George sat in the back seat without needing to be told, but then he leaned forward, one arm on each seat back, and told Sam stories of their adventures. He used more words than Dean had ever heard from him, his head turned away from Dean, talking at Sam a mile a minute. Dean wondered if that was how he himself sounded to other people, all cheerful aggression and bragging that wasn’t really bragging, because of how it was true.
In the end, the hunt was swift, but grueling and nasty – slime past his knees, and he had to put down towels in the Impala and make them both put on clean clothes before they got in. Sam winced when Dean handed him a fistful of rough restroom paper towels to wipe off his hands.
Dean remembered how slippery their hands had been after the last battle with the demon holding his contract. Their fingers had been so thick with gore that when he’d had to pull Sam up they’d had to grab each other’s wrists, grinding the bones together to keep from losing the grip. Sam had still borne traces of black and blue when he’d left.
Sam gave Dean a look of pure betrayal when George changed into an old blue T-shirt of Sam’s that had somehow ended up in Dean’s duffel before they’d split. It fit George fine, though, and Dean wasn’t about to make him give it up.
Sam, he noticed, had kept in shape. Even with magic on George’s side, Dean was pretty sure a girl would have found it hard to choose between the two of them.
They both seemed like they were waiting for him to say something. It was easier from inside the car, when he could concentrate on the road ahead, so he ducked inside and waited for them to follow. “I don’t know about you,” he told them, starting the engine, “but I am beat. I say we bed down for the night, then get you –” he nodded at Sam – “back to granola-land.”
“Dean, I –” Sam said, and then glanced over at George and shut up.
There was nothing cheap about Sedona; Dean pulled into the first place he saw that didn’t look like it would max out a credit card in a single night. “Get us rooms,” he told George. Sam looked like he half wanted to apologize for Dean, but George of course just shrugged, got out of the car, and ambled off.
“So, where did you guys meet?” Sam said, as painfully polite as if he’d been hitting up a source for information.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “Atlanta,” he said. “Saved a rabbi from some skinheads. George’s Jewish,” he said, and grinned.
Sam shot him a ‘you are so not PC’ look. “And you’re, what, partners now?”
He put his hands back on the steering wheel. “I guess.”
Sam was staring down at his lap. “I did fine on this hunt.”
“Course you did,” Dean agreed.
“I didn’t – the demon blood, it’s under control. I know you thought I was dangerous –”
There was a topic he wasn’t going to revisit any time this century. Unbidden, the image of Sam, drenched in blood like Sissy Spacek in Carrie, flashed in his mind. “That’s all over with,” he said roughly.
“Yeah, that’s my point, Dean.” Sam shifted in his seat, turning his body towards Dean. “I’ve been researching, meditating – no, don’t say it, there’s a lot of wisdom in the old traditions –”
He didn’t want to hear about Sam’s great new demon-free life, no thank you. He knew Sam had reason to think that Dean wouldn’t let him go easy. But listening to Sam’s hopes and dreams, all perfectly planned-out and not even a Dean-shaped hole in them – that, he couldn’t stand.
“Don’t really need a recap, Sam.”
That was when George came back and tossed Sam a key through the open window. “You’ve got the room next to ours,” he said, and both Sam and Dean stared at him, Dean recovering a little quicker.
“Great,” he said brightly. George’s caretaking was often annoying, but Dean had to admit that the golem had a real sense of what he needed, and what he needed right now was to be reminded that things were different. That they weren’t the kind of brothers who shared a room on the road any more.
“What does it feel like, being a golem?” he asked George when they were putting their stuff away.
George considered the question, the way he considered any question. After a pause, he said, “I have an imperative. It is written into me. I follow the imperative.”
“What would happen if I told you not to follow it? If what I wanted was for you to go away?”
George frowned, his expression so like Sam’s when he was trying to figure out some obscure translation that Dean’s fists clenched involuntarily. “It is written,” he repeated.
“Okay, what if you being with me was bad for me?”
He stood motionless for several minutes, long enough that Dean started to worry. Dean waved his hand in front of George’s face, wondering if he needed to call the rabbi and ask if there was any place that did good golem repair.
At last, George blinked and moved away from Dean’s prodding fingers. “I would stay away from you if that was the best way to protect you.”
He knew, he did, that George didn’t have emotions any more than a VW Bug did, no matter that they had what looked and felt like faces. So he knew it was unfair to feel a hollowness in his stomach at that answer. “What if you could choose?” he asked. And then, because that was clearly too hard a question, he added, “Choose what you wanted to do. Protect someone else, or do some other job, or just – live.”
“Then I wouldn't be a golem.”
He wondered whether the rabbi had words to turn a man into a golem. It would have to be easier than starting with clay, wouldn’t it? Or maybe not, if clay didn’t want stuff on its own.
For some reason, he wanted to go knock on Sam’s door. He imagined it, Sam opening the door, smiling at him, handing him a beer, all without needing to talk. It would be awesome.
But the fantasy derailed quickly. Assuming Sam would let him in, the cover charge would be some stupid discussion about the future, their futures, their separate and distinct futures, and that would only end in yelling. He wanted – he wanted to part ways with good memories, even if they had to be a little fake.
That night, George pounded him so hard that the bed dented the wall. Dean got pretty vocal near the end, but it was all groans and curses, so it didn’t much matter.
astolat: Sam/Dean, with kabbalah!Dean gets a new hunting partner. Dean/OC, Sam/Dean. Sexual content.
6.
Six months on, they’d really hit a groove, tearing through ghosts like they were cardboard Halloween cutouts, taking on big game every couple of hunts, sweet and mindless. A couple of times Dean went to chat up some girl and realized that he hadn’t spoken all day, that was how easy it was.
After a bad hunt, George would watch him extra carefully for days. If he’d been human Dean would have expected lectures, but Dean wasn’t big on post-game analysis and George wasn’t big on unnecessary talking, so it all worked out.
Sometimes, if he spent too much time sitting around between hunts, he felt the way he had when Dad was gone for too long and the money got tight, when he’d drunk four glasses of water before dinner so that he really, truly meant it when he pushed his plate over to Sam. (Sam could always tell when Dean was lying, but he wasn’t that good at figuring out why Dean was telling the truth.)
They kept going, that was what mattered. Even when he was laid up for a week after the tulpa – he guessed it made sense that George would be powerless against another earth creature, though neither of them had known that at the beginning – he resisted the temptation to call Sam.
If he’d looked Sam up on the internet, Dean knew, he would probably be able to find Sam’s graduation pictures. Dean had never really paid attention when Sam talked about law school, but he knew Sam had already taken the test, and he guessed that it was still valid, so Sam had probably gotten in everywhere he applied and was just getting ready to start. Somewhere good, he hoped. Harvard maybe.
So it was kind of a shock when his phone rang and Sam’s voice came out.
“I, uh, I found us a hunt,” he said in Dean’s ear, just like he was leaning over the table at some artsy coffee shop, hands clutched around his fancy drink. “It’s in Sedona.”
“You want to hunt?” Dean asked, confused.
“Well, yeah,” Sam said. “A friend of mine from Stanford called me up, I guess I’ve got a reputation now.”
“All right,” he said. That explained why Sam wasn’t just giving him the details; Sam must think that Dean wouldn’t be able to behave himself appropriately in Sam’s social circles. “We’ll be there in a day,” he told Sam, and hung up on Sam’s shocked “We?”
Sam was waiting for them at his friends’ mansion. It really was beautiful country, all red and orange layers, glowing in the sunlight. The mansion had a little desert-type garden, stuff that didn’t need watering, and Sam was sitting on a white bench in the middle of a bunch of carefully arranged rocks. He had a book open, face-down, on the bench next to him, like he’d been mooning for a while before they showed up.
George got out of the car and bounded up to Sam before Dean could catch up. “George Clay,” he said, shaking Sam’s hand vigorously as Sam stared. “Dean thinks the world of you, you know.” Dean got a little bit of a charge out of the fact that, just this once, Sam couldn’t look down on someone.
Sam tried to pull him aside to talk about George, but he was pretty easy to redirect towards the hunt, given that the thing they were after had killed six people in the past week. Sam himself was close-mouthed about his current status, and Dean didn’t ask, not really wanting to hear about how much nearer Sam had gotten to his perfect life and his minivan now that he didn’t have to worry about his hellbound brother.
George sat in the back seat without needing to be told, but then he leaned forward, one arm on each seat back, and told Sam stories of their adventures. He used more words than Dean had ever heard from him, his head turned away from Dean, talking at Sam a mile a minute. Dean wondered if that was how he himself sounded to other people, all cheerful aggression and bragging that wasn’t really bragging, because of how it was true.
In the end, the hunt was swift, but grueling and nasty – slime past his knees, and he had to put down towels in the Impala and make them both put on clean clothes before they got in. Sam winced when Dean handed him a fistful of rough restroom paper towels to wipe off his hands.
Dean remembered how slippery their hands had been after the last battle with the demon holding his contract. Their fingers had been so thick with gore that when he’d had to pull Sam up they’d had to grab each other’s wrists, grinding the bones together to keep from losing the grip. Sam had still borne traces of black and blue when he’d left.
Sam gave Dean a look of pure betrayal when George changed into an old blue T-shirt of Sam’s that had somehow ended up in Dean’s duffel before they’d split. It fit George fine, though, and Dean wasn’t about to make him give it up.
Sam, he noticed, had kept in shape. Even with magic on George’s side, Dean was pretty sure a girl would have found it hard to choose between the two of them.
They both seemed like they were waiting for him to say something. It was easier from inside the car, when he could concentrate on the road ahead, so he ducked inside and waited for them to follow. “I don’t know about you,” he told them, starting the engine, “but I am beat. I say we bed down for the night, then get you –” he nodded at Sam – “back to granola-land.”
“Dean, I –” Sam said, and then glanced over at George and shut up.
There was nothing cheap about Sedona; Dean pulled into the first place he saw that didn’t look like it would max out a credit card in a single night. “Get us rooms,” he told George. Sam looked like he half wanted to apologize for Dean, but George of course just shrugged, got out of the car, and ambled off.
“So, where did you guys meet?” Sam said, as painfully polite as if he’d been hitting up a source for information.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “Atlanta,” he said. “Saved a rabbi from some skinheads. George’s Jewish,” he said, and grinned.
Sam shot him a ‘you are so not PC’ look. “And you’re, what, partners now?”
He put his hands back on the steering wheel. “I guess.”
Sam was staring down at his lap. “I did fine on this hunt.”
“Course you did,” Dean agreed.
“I didn’t – the demon blood, it’s under control. I know you thought I was dangerous –”
There was a topic he wasn’t going to revisit any time this century. Unbidden, the image of Sam, drenched in blood like Sissy Spacek in Carrie, flashed in his mind. “That’s all over with,” he said roughly.
“Yeah, that’s my point, Dean.” Sam shifted in his seat, turning his body towards Dean. “I’ve been researching, meditating – no, don’t say it, there’s a lot of wisdom in the old traditions –”
He didn’t want to hear about Sam’s great new demon-free life, no thank you. He knew Sam had reason to think that Dean wouldn’t let him go easy. But listening to Sam’s hopes and dreams, all perfectly planned-out and not even a Dean-shaped hole in them – that, he couldn’t stand.
“Don’t really need a recap, Sam.”
That was when George came back and tossed Sam a key through the open window. “You’ve got the room next to ours,” he said, and both Sam and Dean stared at him, Dean recovering a little quicker.
“Great,” he said brightly. George’s caretaking was often annoying, but Dean had to admit that the golem had a real sense of what he needed, and what he needed right now was to be reminded that things were different. That they weren’t the kind of brothers who shared a room on the road any more.
“What does it feel like, being a golem?” he asked George when they were putting their stuff away.
George considered the question, the way he considered any question. After a pause, he said, “I have an imperative. It is written into me. I follow the imperative.”
“What would happen if I told you not to follow it? If what I wanted was for you to go away?”
George frowned, his expression so like Sam’s when he was trying to figure out some obscure translation that Dean’s fists clenched involuntarily. “It is written,” he repeated.
“Okay, what if you being with me was bad for me?”
He stood motionless for several minutes, long enough that Dean started to worry. Dean waved his hand in front of George’s face, wondering if he needed to call the rabbi and ask if there was any place that did good golem repair.
At last, George blinked and moved away from Dean’s prodding fingers. “I would stay away from you if that was the best way to protect you.”
He knew, he did, that George didn’t have emotions any more than a VW Bug did, no matter that they had what looked and felt like faces. So he knew it was unfair to feel a hollowness in his stomach at that answer. “What if you could choose?” he asked. And then, because that was clearly too hard a question, he added, “Choose what you wanted to do. Protect someone else, or do some other job, or just – live.”
“Then I wouldn't be a golem.”
He wondered whether the rabbi had words to turn a man into a golem. It would have to be easier than starting with clay, wouldn’t it? Or maybe not, if clay didn’t want stuff on its own.
For some reason, he wanted to go knock on Sam’s door. He imagined it, Sam opening the door, smiling at him, handing him a beer, all without needing to talk. It would be awesome.
But the fantasy derailed quickly. Assuming Sam would let him in, the cover charge would be some stupid discussion about the future, their futures, their separate and distinct futures, and that would only end in yelling. He wanted – he wanted to part ways with good memories, even if they had to be a little fake.
That night, George pounded him so hard that the bed dented the wall. Dean got pretty vocal near the end, but it was all groans and curses, so it didn’t much matter.
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He didn’t want to hear about Sam’s great new demon-free life, no thank you. He knew Sam had reason to think that Dean wouldn’t let him go easy. But listening to Sam’s hopes and dreams, all perfectly planned-out and not even a Dean-shaped hole in them – that, he couldn’t stand.
I'm really enjoying this, Dean's quiet heart break over losing Sam, the way he can't even acknowledge it really. I even love George:) I hope it ends well for him as well as the boys.
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Sometimes, if he spent too much time sitting around between hunts, he felt the way he had when Dad was gone for too long and the money got tight, when he’d drunk four glasses of water before dinner so that he really, truly meant it when he pushed his plate over to Sam.
I love this. Such a cool way to describe the emptiness that Dean is feeling.