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Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Dean hadn’t entirely expected Rachel to return, or maybe that was wishful thinking. He’d been pretty fucking embarrassed that he hadn’t been able to make her come when she was wearing the amulet. He’d been a little handicapped by having to stay far away from her chest so as not to get burned, but not enough that it should have mattered. When she showed up on her regular day and time, he guessed that his failure made the incubus powers even more attractive.
“So,” she said during one of their breaks, “you’re Dean Winchester.”
Fuck, he should have known better than to tell her so many details. Just another complaint to lay against his failure of skills. “How’d you figure it out?”
She shrugged, which made her breasts shimmy intriguingly. “I work for Homeland Security. I can correlate information like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You’re not scared of bein’ in bed with a serial killer?”
She turned on her side, propping herself up with one elbow. “But you’re not, are you? You’re a hunter, you and your brother. There were always anomalies in your files. The FBI doesn’t mix well with vampires and ghosts.”
He nodded fervently, remembering Henricksen.
“Tell me more,” she said. “Start with how you’re not dead in a police station in Oregon.”
“That,” he started and then, surprising himself, grinned. “That’s a long story. I’ll tell you if you promise to bring a vibrator next time.”
Angry silence. Then: “I’ve tried--”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a couple of ideas. It won’t hurt.”
“There’s lots of ways to get hurt,” Rachel told the far wall. Dean knew what she meant—trying and failing, again and again, was rough on a person. It was a lot easier to stop trying. But he wasn’t planning to be around forever, and Rachel was nicer than most of his clients. Sex should be compensation for the rest of being alive. She deserved to have that, same as anybody. It would be nice to help one last person. Kind of like a fuck-you to the demons that had done this to him.
“Please,” he said.
She sighed. “Fine.”
****
Sam didn’t know exactly what Dean had said to Bobby about the black dog, but Bobby kept him on light duty for weeks afterwards, so Dean must have done one of his Dad impersonations. Except that Bobby would never have taken shit from Dad, so Sam could hardly imagine how Dean had guilt-tripped him. Sometimes he wished—well, it was selfish to be jealous of Dean’s connection with Bobby. It wasn’t like Dean hadn’t proved his basic loyalty, over and over.
It was only that Sam couldn’t get over the feeling that Bobby thought Dean would be a lot better off without Sam in his life.
One night, when Dean had been so busy he’d barely had time for fifteen minutes of conversation, Sam got drunk enough to confess his suspicions. (Dean would have dragged him out of the kitchen before that could have happened, and then bitched at him for the next week about holding his liquor.)
Bobby stared at him, eyes round as quarters. “I oughta slap you,” he said, voice thick. Sam blinked back, stomach sinking. “You boys don’t even know where the one ends and the other begins. Do I think it’s right? ‘Course not. But I ain’t fool enough to—” He stopped, looked away, and poured himself another shot. He downed the alcohol with a grimace and shook his head. “The both of ya talk a lot about which one’s stronger, which one needs the other more. It’s a bad way to think, but if Dean’s deal and drinking demon blood and all the rest didn’t teach you that then I don’t expect an old man’s nattering will make any difference. You’re good men at heart, the both of you, but you’d be a lot better if you—”
His mouth slammed shut, and he shook his head. “Nah, I don’t mean that. You got dealt a dead man’s hand. I don’t rightly know what you should’ve done instead. I do know—Sam, you can’t put your life on hold forever. Even if you’re not opening the gates of Hell, you—Dean’s a man grown now. He wants you to stand on your own. Doesn’t mean he don’t love you more than anything else in this world or the next.”
Sam swallowed, tasting tears and bile through the sourness of his beer. He knew he was the one who was running behind now, too afraid of being left alone to think right. Dean might have been infected by the incubus glamor, but Sam was the one who was sick. “I know all that,” he said, staring at the bottles on the table in front of him. “I know, but I can’t—”
“Yeah,” Bobby said, and sighed. “I didn’t figure you could.”
****
It took a lot of careful contortion and three different attempts before Rachel came with Dean’s hand on the vibrator, but it was totally worth it for how she thanked him (he manfully ignored the tears). Then it was three more sessions before they managed it again. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have wanted to work that hard, but after so many demon-hazed fucks it was sweet to create some purely human magic, like mastering a really complicated rifle. He figured the incubus power helped him out, at least by convincing her that her body really was capable of coming, but he was going to claim credit for the rest.
“I got you something,” she said after the third time. They were sprawled as far apart as they could get on the bed, which was big enough that Dean didn’t feel too much heat from the amulet, though he was going to ask her to take it off if she didn’t mind going again the magical way, because its proximity did get hard to ignore after a while.
“Mmm, what?” He hoped it wasn’t jewelry. Everything he wore was his, chosen and made meaningful by years of familiarity, and he’d hate to have to turn her down but he wasn’t going to wear something just for her.
She got out of bed, grabbing for the green robe on the back of his chair with the weird modesty so many women had. When she’d covered up everything he’d just seen and touched, she walked over to where she’d left her briefcase by the door. “Here,” she said, returning with a manila envelope.
He opened it, curious, and gave himself a papercut on the flap, swearing and sucking on his thumb before he pulled out a single heavy sheet of paper.
“What is this?” It had fancy, almost unreadable lettering, like the credits in an old monster movie, and Sam’s name smack in the middle.
“Your brother took a bunch of summer courses. He was only shy a few credits, and Stanford has a lot of government contracts. I got the idea from a TV show, actually: I convinced them to overlook the last few units, and now he’s officially a graduate.”
“This is—” He had to take a breath. “How’d you know I—”
“I have listened to you talk about your life,” she pointed out. “I know you don’t want him out there hunting if you can’t be there. At least this gives him some options. You’re both out of the federal databases now. They clear the data when someone’s declared dead. So he doesn’t have to worry about that either.”
****
“Happy early birthday, Sammy,” Dean said, his voice full of sunshine, when Sam called to ask him what the fuck.
“Why would you--?” It was so cruel, and cruel in a way he’d thought Dean incapable of. “Dean, a fake diploma isn’t going to do anything.”
“Not a fake,” Dean said, wounded, as if only now realizing that Sam might have distrusted his gift. “Call ‘em up and check if you want. You’re a college man.”
Dean’s voice was so confident that Sam had to believe him. “How?” he asked.
“Kelty’s got some friends in high places,” Dean said casually. “Pulled some strings, ‘cause I guess he got tired of hearin’ me talking all the time about how you pretty much got screwed out of your fancy education. He said it was fuckin’ with my chi or whatever, says I’ll do better if I know you’re happy.”
“How—I’m legally dead, Dean, how can I--?”
Dean snorted. “I don’t think schools track stories about felons dying in custody, Sam. You better get one of those Facebook websites or whatever, prove to the internet you’re still alive so you can’t be the dead guy, but after that you should be golden.”
Sam sat in silence, suppressing the laughs that shook him, but not doing quite as well with the tears.
“Dude, you better not be crying.”
“No,” Sam lied. “Dean, I—” I don’t even remember why I thought this would make me happy, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t spit at Dean’s generosity, this shocking indulgence from a lost world. And a Stanford degree certainly wouldn’t hurt in implementing his agenda for when Dean could be around civilians again.
****
“Dean,” Sam began the conversation a few weeks later. “I, uh.”
“What is it?” Sam hadn’t been so hesitant in months. The circumstances might have sucked, but in some ways they were doing better than ever, able to say anything without the constant pressure of each other’s physical presence, enjoying each other more because they weren’t cooped up in about a hundred square feet of car twelve hours a day.
“I wrote my application essay for law schools.”
“That’s great,” Dean said. “Right?” He’d been so grateful when Sam decided to take Rachel’s gift and use it. Sam deserved a future as shiny and neat as he could make it.
“Yeah, but. I had to—there’s this big gap on my CV, and I need to explain it. So the essay, it’s. I—it’s about you, and Dad, and how we grew up, and how you called me right at the end of Stanford. The thing is, it’s—when I wrote my college essays, I did the same thing. Making my life into a fairytale where Dad runs us around the country and my brother who’s only four years older raises me, gets me to school and makes my sandwiches and gives me the sex talk. I’ve got twelve high school transcripts and I took precalculus in three different states. I overcame all these obstacles because I’m just that good and in America you can get anything as long as you work for it, right?”
Dean didn’t know what to say to that. The criticism of their father was old hurt, healed up enough that it didn’t seem worth mentioning.
Sam continued: “When I wrote it for college, I believed every word. And now I have to tell the same story so I can explain how when you called me to come help find Dad I had to come, and how we drifted around for the next five years. I have to show that I’m worthy of being rescued from the underclass all over again, and I’m doing it because that’s how it works, that’s what gets you admission. But now it’s—I know the parts of it that are lies, even when they’re just facts, even if you take out all the supernatural shit. I don’t want you and Dad to be characters in this fake drama I wrote where I’m the hero and you’re the, whatever, the Giving Tree. You didn’t do any of it so I could escape that life.” Dean opened his mouth, but Sam barreled on as if he could see Dean’s intent to interrupt. “You didn’t do any of it so I could stay, either. You did it because you’re my brother, and I don’t want to exploit that.”
Dean couldn’t help it; he laughed. He could feel Sam’s indignation radiating across the airwaves, so he tried to convert his reaction into words that Sam could somehow translate. He was smart enough to bite down on the first thing that came to mind, which was ‘You had no problem drinking demon blood and now you’re worried about the ethics of exploiting your tragic family history?’ Yeah, no, and actually that made more sense of why Sam was freaking out now, not trusting his own judgment even though that was all behind them.
“Sam,” he began, kind of enjoying being the big brother who could put it all in perspective, “you’re talking to a guy who ran credit card scams and hustled pool just to put gas in the tank. You think I’m worried about what you put down on a piece of paper? Like you said, it’s not really me and Dad, and why would it matter what some pencil-pusher thinks about us anyway? You do what you gotta do. Let’s face it, our life hasn’t been so freakin’ grand so far. If you can pretty it up so’s they let you in and it makes them feel good about themselves doin’ it, then I say take what you can get.”
Sam was silent for a while. “You can read the essay, if you want.”
Dean hadn’t even known about the college applications, and that was at a time when Dean would have sworn he knew more about Sammy than about his best gun. He wondered how he would have felt if he’d come across one of those essays when Sam was seventeen, whether he would have seen himself in Sam’s description at all.
Dean shook his head, knowing that Sam would feel his reaction even halfway across the country. “So do you have to take that test again?”
Sam shrugged—Dean didn’t have to see it to be certain of that. “Won’t hurt. Prove I still have a brain. Did you know that I’m not even that old for Harvard or Yale? Turns out, a lot of the students there take off time between college and law school.”
“What do they do?” Dean asked, idle curiosity mostly.
“Get Ph.D.s, work in government, volunteer with the Peace Corps—save the world, I guess.”
“‘Save the world’?” Dean repeated, not sure he’d heard right. Then he snorted, and Sam realized what he’d said and broke into that helpless, choked-off laughter that had been nearly absent from their lives since—well, for a long time. Hearing Sam laugh kept Dean going too, not that he’d ever admit to giggling or anything like that, but his stomach hurt when he was done. “You—you’ll fit right in,” Dean managed finally, so proud of Sam he felt stretched out of his skin with it.
Then he noticed the time—Ralph would be there in a few minutes, and it was much better to be prepared for Ralph. The man had the refractory period of a sixteen-year-old and tastes that might have impressed Alastair. “Hey, look, gotta go.”
They didn’t bother with goodbyes. They both knew they’d be talking tomorrow. It was a greater certainty than they’d had in years, and, while Sam’s name still showed on his phone, Dean was content.
****
The letter arrived at the post office while Bobby was off on his road trip, but even if he’d been back at the yard Sam would have called Dean first. Dean didn’t pick up, so Sam left a message, and just as he parked back at Bobby’s, Dean returned the call.
“Harvard’s giving me a ton of money,” Sam said immediately. “I’m still gonna have to borrow another ton, but with starting salaries the way they are, and you and me living the way we know how, we’re only talking about a couple of years of wage slavery.”
“That’s awesome,” Dean said indulgently, and sincerely. It used to drive Sam crazy how Dean could mix those, but Dean wasn’t being condescending. He’d had enough trouble accepting the idea that he was done hunting—Sam had heard it in his voice, wistful and speculative even as the months passed and no permanent cure emerged—and it was easier for him to want normal indirectly, via Sam. “How much is a ton?”
“I’ll be borrowing about fifty thousand dollars.” It was so much money for them that it might as well have been a million, so he didn’t bother to hem and haw about it. He got out of the car, closing the door carefully so that Dean wouldn’t overhear the slam and complain about rough handling, and headed towards the porch.
Dean let out a whistle. “They just give that kinda money to broke-ass law students with no job history anybody can find? No wonder the economy’s in a fuckin’ mess.”
Sam smiled. “Hey, I’m a good bet now. And like I said, after a couple of years I’ll be able to take any job I want. Helping people, you know.”
“Harvard man,” Dean said, his voice softening. “So, uh, you’re not gonna have to borrow the cash. There’s—in Bobby’s attic, there’s a box. It’s ours—yours. Should be more’n enough.”
“What?” Sam almost dropped the door key. He fumbled his way in, stepped carefully over the wards, and stopped just inside. “Dean?”
“I’m real glad—” Dean started, then fell silent. Sam hurried up the stairs and wedged the phone between his shoulder and his ear so that he could pull the cord to get the attic ladder to come down. “You should. You should grab on to everything they give you and more.”
The ladder was as frail as a grandmother’s bones, creaking worrisomely under Sam’s weight, but he was only on it for a few seconds. He saw the box as soon as he pulled the string that worked the single bare bulb on the ceiling. It was a cardboard carton right near the ladder, dustless, marked WINCHESTER.
It was nearly filled with stacks of money, twenties mostly, neatly banded together. Sam picked up one of the stacks and thumbed through it: newer bills. This wasn’t some legacy of Dad’s that Dean simply hadn’t seen fit to mention for a couple of years. His stomach lurched. “Dean, where is this from?”
Dean breathed out. Sam shivered, suddenly freezing, and turned around in a tight circle, checking out all the darkened corners in case there was something waiting to hurt him. “I’ve been doing some work for Kelty.”
Like that, Sam understood it all: the nature of the work, along with the fact that there was not and never had been a cure in the offing. Eventually he’d make time for rage at Dean’s complete betrayal, but he had a more pressing inquiry. “Why are you telling me now?”
In the silence, he watched a glittering cloud of dust pass through the light, the bulb still swinging a little from when he’d pulled it on.
Bobby had said he needed to visit an old friend in California to talk to him about the new Colt. Sam had offered to keep him company—it was too big a state to avoid, and worse things had happened to Winchesters in other places—but Bobby had said no, this guy didn’t like meeting new folks, least of all hunters because they always ended up asking for favors. Sam had nodded understandingly, but now he remembered that Bobby had taken ten times longer than usual getting on the road, moving like every step hurt.
Dean thought that Hell was his final destination. But the Colt could kill anything, which meant that it destroyed souls. Azazel hadn’t gone back to Hell, he’d just gone.
“No,” Sam yelled into the phone, hurrying towards the ladder. “No, Dean, you can’t—”
“I’m sorry,” Dean said, barely audible. Sam pounded down the hallway, heading for the stairs. The tank was full; Bobby had a day and a half’s worth of lead, but Sam would call and force him to wait. “I told you, I can’t live in a cage, Sam.”
“We’ll find something,” he swore. David Kelty obviously hadn’t really been trying to help, and Bobby had been spending all his time building the new version of the Colt from scratch, for reasons now glaringly plain. Take Hell out of the equation with a soul-killing weapon, and death started to look like an escape.
Dean sighed. “I don’t—I want you to have a life, okay? I, uh, I always loved you more than anything—” and Sam was shaking his head, negations spilling from him like tears because this was mortal-wound stuff and he would not have Dean just saying--“I’m not sad, Sammy. I’m ready.”
“I’m not!” Sam screamed, but Dean had already hung up, and wouldn’t answer back.
He left five messages on Bobby’s voicemail, three entreating and two threatening, before he hit the county line.
****
Kelty had been pretty understanding about Dean’s announcement. Unhappy, sure, and he’d tried to sweet-talk Dean into hanging around longer, but he’d backed off once Dean made his intention to leave clear. Of course Kelty didn’t know the whole story, and he was probably going to be pretty upset with the bloodstain on his nice clean walls, but that was going to be Bobby’s problem.
Dean finished up with his last client. She was no different than anyone else, other than being the last. Except for Sam, once the incubus magic settled in to work, they were all pretty much the same, which was what made it so much hotter and so much worse than real sex. He wished he’d had the chance to do it regular, one last time, but Rachel hadn’t been in the mood for that—she was kind of mad at him for quitting, even if she wouldn’t admit it, and even promising that he’d drop by if he ever got down to DC hadn’t made her relent. At the end, at least, she’d smiled at him for real, smart enough to know that nobody ever felt better for leaving angry.
After he’d washed up, he went out into the kitchenette to grab himself a snack. Kelty was waiting for him, beer on the table in front of him open and untouched.
“Hey,” Dean acknowledged, then opened the refrigerator.
“You’re sure you won’t reconsider?” Kelty asked, a formality, like the cops reciting the Miranda warning.
Dean grabbed a carton of milk—man can’t live on beer alone—and closed the door. “Nah,” he said, tilting the carton up. He wished Sam was there to rag on his manners.
He wished a lot of things.
“I’m sorry, then,” Kelty said, and something in his tone made Dean turn.
“What did you do?” he asked, wary. He hadn’t worn a gun in months, but he still had a knife in his boot. Only problem was, Kelty took that amulet off and Dean wouldn’t even know how to use the knife any more.
Kelty wouldn’t look at him. “We made a lot of money together, Dean. We could have gone on like that, but I’m not one to keep a man locked up against his will.”
Dean tensed up. “But you know somebody who is.”
“Hello, Dean,” a new voice said from the doorway. Dean turned, slowly, because speed wasn’t going to help this. The guy was in his late forties, well-kept, nice suit and slicked-back hair, neatly trimmed little beard peppered with gray. Everything about him said: I am well-connected and know how to get things done. “I’m Henry Parker. You’ll be working for me now.”
Dean wanted to curse—should never have given Kelty this much warning, should just have waited until Bobby showed up. Instead, he put the milk down on the counter and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. “Hi, Hank. It sure sounds like a nice offer, but I—”
Without looking away from Dean, Henry pulled a gun and shot Kelty three times, pop pop pop, so loud in the small space that Dean’s ears rang. “I hate unnecessary violence,” he said pleasantly over the gurgling sounds of Kelty’s demise. “But more than that, I hate missing a chance to make or keep money. So why don’t you go pack your things, except for your weapons of course, and we’ll get you set up in your new home. I know you can’t help but enjoy the work, and I’m sure you understand how dangerous for all concerned it would be if you were allowed to run loose.”
Behind him, drawn by the gunfire, two large enforcer types appeared. They were each wearing amulets, so seduction wouldn’t have worked even if Dean had miraculously figured out how to control the glamor while under stress.
Bobby, Dean realized. Bobby was heading here, and if he showed up while Henry and his men were still present, he’d be walking straight into his death.
Dean put his hands up. “Hey, I’m convinced,” he said, resolving not to give Henry a reason to disbelieve him until they were well away from this place.
****
Sam thought that he knew freaked-out from, say, finding out that he was supposed to lead the demon apocalypse. Or a full year waiting on Dean’s deal to come due. Or waiting for the last few seals to break. Or, or, or. As it turned out, though, fresh terror worked just as well as ever, at least when the reason was Dean.
He’d just crossed the state line when his phone buzzed, Bobby’s name appearing like a curse.
He didn’t say anything when he hit ‘accept.’ If Bobby was calling to tell him—
“Sam?”
A thousand pounds left his chest—Bobby was scared, but not devastated, which meant that Dean wasn’t dead yet. “Yeah.” Didn’t mean Sam wasn’t mad as Hell, and he knew whereof he spoke.
“Dean’s—he’s missing.”
“What?”
It was almost unbelievable, listening to Bobby explain that he’d lost Dean, come to find Kelty’s body and no signs of struggle. Bobby’s best guess was that Kelty had told someone else that his cash cow was about to stop putting out, maybe a client who really and truly didn’t want to be cut off—and when they had Dean back, Sam swore, he and Bobby would be having a conversation about Bobby’s full knowledge of Dean’s new job. He shoved the anger into a corner of his brain to ferment for later.
Sam could imagine why someone who’d had a taste of Dean might take matters into his or her own hands to keep unimpeded access.
Bobby said that there was no sign on the outside of Kelty’s building that anything untoward had happened, but there was no way to tell how long it would be before someone else came across the body and called the cops. Sam might be able to get in later to investigate, but in this at least he trusted Bobby. If there were clues, Bobby would find them at least as easily as Sam would.
Bobby hadn’t found any records yet, but he wasn’t as good with computers as Sam was, so he agreed to bring Kelty’s laptop to a motel where they could get started investigating.
Sam pressed harder on the gas, feeling the car shake underneath him as if she was just as terrified as he was. The sour-metal taste of fury coated his tongue. He wished that there was someone left, above or below, to bargain with. He’d give up any hope of touching Dean again, he swore, if he only got to save his brother.
Part 5
Part Two
Part Three
Dean hadn’t entirely expected Rachel to return, or maybe that was wishful thinking. He’d been pretty fucking embarrassed that he hadn’t been able to make her come when she was wearing the amulet. He’d been a little handicapped by having to stay far away from her chest so as not to get burned, but not enough that it should have mattered. When she showed up on her regular day and time, he guessed that his failure made the incubus powers even more attractive.
“So,” she said during one of their breaks, “you’re Dean Winchester.”
Fuck, he should have known better than to tell her so many details. Just another complaint to lay against his failure of skills. “How’d you figure it out?”
She shrugged, which made her breasts shimmy intriguingly. “I work for Homeland Security. I can correlate information like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You’re not scared of bein’ in bed with a serial killer?”
She turned on her side, propping herself up with one elbow. “But you’re not, are you? You’re a hunter, you and your brother. There were always anomalies in your files. The FBI doesn’t mix well with vampires and ghosts.”
He nodded fervently, remembering Henricksen.
“Tell me more,” she said. “Start with how you’re not dead in a police station in Oregon.”
“That,” he started and then, surprising himself, grinned. “That’s a long story. I’ll tell you if you promise to bring a vibrator next time.”
Angry silence. Then: “I’ve tried--”
“Yeah, but I’ve got a couple of ideas. It won’t hurt.”
“There’s lots of ways to get hurt,” Rachel told the far wall. Dean knew what she meant—trying and failing, again and again, was rough on a person. It was a lot easier to stop trying. But he wasn’t planning to be around forever, and Rachel was nicer than most of his clients. Sex should be compensation for the rest of being alive. She deserved to have that, same as anybody. It would be nice to help one last person. Kind of like a fuck-you to the demons that had done this to him.
“Please,” he said.
She sighed. “Fine.”
****
Sam didn’t know exactly what Dean had said to Bobby about the black dog, but Bobby kept him on light duty for weeks afterwards, so Dean must have done one of his Dad impersonations. Except that Bobby would never have taken shit from Dad, so Sam could hardly imagine how Dean had guilt-tripped him. Sometimes he wished—well, it was selfish to be jealous of Dean’s connection with Bobby. It wasn’t like Dean hadn’t proved his basic loyalty, over and over.
It was only that Sam couldn’t get over the feeling that Bobby thought Dean would be a lot better off without Sam in his life.
One night, when Dean had been so busy he’d barely had time for fifteen minutes of conversation, Sam got drunk enough to confess his suspicions. (Dean would have dragged him out of the kitchen before that could have happened, and then bitched at him for the next week about holding his liquor.)
Bobby stared at him, eyes round as quarters. “I oughta slap you,” he said, voice thick. Sam blinked back, stomach sinking. “You boys don’t even know where the one ends and the other begins. Do I think it’s right? ‘Course not. But I ain’t fool enough to—” He stopped, looked away, and poured himself another shot. He downed the alcohol with a grimace and shook his head. “The both of ya talk a lot about which one’s stronger, which one needs the other more. It’s a bad way to think, but if Dean’s deal and drinking demon blood and all the rest didn’t teach you that then I don’t expect an old man’s nattering will make any difference. You’re good men at heart, the both of you, but you’d be a lot better if you—”
His mouth slammed shut, and he shook his head. “Nah, I don’t mean that. You got dealt a dead man’s hand. I don’t rightly know what you should’ve done instead. I do know—Sam, you can’t put your life on hold forever. Even if you’re not opening the gates of Hell, you—Dean’s a man grown now. He wants you to stand on your own. Doesn’t mean he don’t love you more than anything else in this world or the next.”
Sam swallowed, tasting tears and bile through the sourness of his beer. He knew he was the one who was running behind now, too afraid of being left alone to think right. Dean might have been infected by the incubus glamor, but Sam was the one who was sick. “I know all that,” he said, staring at the bottles on the table in front of him. “I know, but I can’t—”
“Yeah,” Bobby said, and sighed. “I didn’t figure you could.”
****
It took a lot of careful contortion and three different attempts before Rachel came with Dean’s hand on the vibrator, but it was totally worth it for how she thanked him (he manfully ignored the tears). Then it was three more sessions before they managed it again. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have wanted to work that hard, but after so many demon-hazed fucks it was sweet to create some purely human magic, like mastering a really complicated rifle. He figured the incubus power helped him out, at least by convincing her that her body really was capable of coming, but he was going to claim credit for the rest.
“I got you something,” she said after the third time. They were sprawled as far apart as they could get on the bed, which was big enough that Dean didn’t feel too much heat from the amulet, though he was going to ask her to take it off if she didn’t mind going again the magical way, because its proximity did get hard to ignore after a while.
“Mmm, what?” He hoped it wasn’t jewelry. Everything he wore was his, chosen and made meaningful by years of familiarity, and he’d hate to have to turn her down but he wasn’t going to wear something just for her.
She got out of bed, grabbing for the green robe on the back of his chair with the weird modesty so many women had. When she’d covered up everything he’d just seen and touched, she walked over to where she’d left her briefcase by the door. “Here,” she said, returning with a manila envelope.
He opened it, curious, and gave himself a papercut on the flap, swearing and sucking on his thumb before he pulled out a single heavy sheet of paper.
“What is this?” It had fancy, almost unreadable lettering, like the credits in an old monster movie, and Sam’s name smack in the middle.
“Your brother took a bunch of summer courses. He was only shy a few credits, and Stanford has a lot of government contracts. I got the idea from a TV show, actually: I convinced them to overlook the last few units, and now he’s officially a graduate.”
“This is—” He had to take a breath. “How’d you know I—”
“I have listened to you talk about your life,” she pointed out. “I know you don’t want him out there hunting if you can’t be there. At least this gives him some options. You’re both out of the federal databases now. They clear the data when someone’s declared dead. So he doesn’t have to worry about that either.”
****
“Happy early birthday, Sammy,” Dean said, his voice full of sunshine, when Sam called to ask him what the fuck.
“Why would you--?” It was so cruel, and cruel in a way he’d thought Dean incapable of. “Dean, a fake diploma isn’t going to do anything.”
“Not a fake,” Dean said, wounded, as if only now realizing that Sam might have distrusted his gift. “Call ‘em up and check if you want. You’re a college man.”
Dean’s voice was so confident that Sam had to believe him. “How?” he asked.
“Kelty’s got some friends in high places,” Dean said casually. “Pulled some strings, ‘cause I guess he got tired of hearin’ me talking all the time about how you pretty much got screwed out of your fancy education. He said it was fuckin’ with my chi or whatever, says I’ll do better if I know you’re happy.”
“How—I’m legally dead, Dean, how can I--?”
Dean snorted. “I don’t think schools track stories about felons dying in custody, Sam. You better get one of those Facebook websites or whatever, prove to the internet you’re still alive so you can’t be the dead guy, but after that you should be golden.”
Sam sat in silence, suppressing the laughs that shook him, but not doing quite as well with the tears.
“Dude, you better not be crying.”
“No,” Sam lied. “Dean, I—” I don’t even remember why I thought this would make me happy, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t spit at Dean’s generosity, this shocking indulgence from a lost world. And a Stanford degree certainly wouldn’t hurt in implementing his agenda for when Dean could be around civilians again.
****
“Dean,” Sam began the conversation a few weeks later. “I, uh.”
“What is it?” Sam hadn’t been so hesitant in months. The circumstances might have sucked, but in some ways they were doing better than ever, able to say anything without the constant pressure of each other’s physical presence, enjoying each other more because they weren’t cooped up in about a hundred square feet of car twelve hours a day.
“I wrote my application essay for law schools.”
“That’s great,” Dean said. “Right?” He’d been so grateful when Sam decided to take Rachel’s gift and use it. Sam deserved a future as shiny and neat as he could make it.
“Yeah, but. I had to—there’s this big gap on my CV, and I need to explain it. So the essay, it’s. I—it’s about you, and Dad, and how we grew up, and how you called me right at the end of Stanford. The thing is, it’s—when I wrote my college essays, I did the same thing. Making my life into a fairytale where Dad runs us around the country and my brother who’s only four years older raises me, gets me to school and makes my sandwiches and gives me the sex talk. I’ve got twelve high school transcripts and I took precalculus in three different states. I overcame all these obstacles because I’m just that good and in America you can get anything as long as you work for it, right?”
Dean didn’t know what to say to that. The criticism of their father was old hurt, healed up enough that it didn’t seem worth mentioning.
Sam continued: “When I wrote it for college, I believed every word. And now I have to tell the same story so I can explain how when you called me to come help find Dad I had to come, and how we drifted around for the next five years. I have to show that I’m worthy of being rescued from the underclass all over again, and I’m doing it because that’s how it works, that’s what gets you admission. But now it’s—I know the parts of it that are lies, even when they’re just facts, even if you take out all the supernatural shit. I don’t want you and Dad to be characters in this fake drama I wrote where I’m the hero and you’re the, whatever, the Giving Tree. You didn’t do any of it so I could escape that life.” Dean opened his mouth, but Sam barreled on as if he could see Dean’s intent to interrupt. “You didn’t do any of it so I could stay, either. You did it because you’re my brother, and I don’t want to exploit that.”
Dean couldn’t help it; he laughed. He could feel Sam’s indignation radiating across the airwaves, so he tried to convert his reaction into words that Sam could somehow translate. He was smart enough to bite down on the first thing that came to mind, which was ‘You had no problem drinking demon blood and now you’re worried about the ethics of exploiting your tragic family history?’ Yeah, no, and actually that made more sense of why Sam was freaking out now, not trusting his own judgment even though that was all behind them.
“Sam,” he began, kind of enjoying being the big brother who could put it all in perspective, “you’re talking to a guy who ran credit card scams and hustled pool just to put gas in the tank. You think I’m worried about what you put down on a piece of paper? Like you said, it’s not really me and Dad, and why would it matter what some pencil-pusher thinks about us anyway? You do what you gotta do. Let’s face it, our life hasn’t been so freakin’ grand so far. If you can pretty it up so’s they let you in and it makes them feel good about themselves doin’ it, then I say take what you can get.”
Sam was silent for a while. “You can read the essay, if you want.”
Dean hadn’t even known about the college applications, and that was at a time when Dean would have sworn he knew more about Sammy than about his best gun. He wondered how he would have felt if he’d come across one of those essays when Sam was seventeen, whether he would have seen himself in Sam’s description at all.
Dean shook his head, knowing that Sam would feel his reaction even halfway across the country. “So do you have to take that test again?”
Sam shrugged—Dean didn’t have to see it to be certain of that. “Won’t hurt. Prove I still have a brain. Did you know that I’m not even that old for Harvard or Yale? Turns out, a lot of the students there take off time between college and law school.”
“What do they do?” Dean asked, idle curiosity mostly.
“Get Ph.D.s, work in government, volunteer with the Peace Corps—save the world, I guess.”
“‘Save the world’?” Dean repeated, not sure he’d heard right. Then he snorted, and Sam realized what he’d said and broke into that helpless, choked-off laughter that had been nearly absent from their lives since—well, for a long time. Hearing Sam laugh kept Dean going too, not that he’d ever admit to giggling or anything like that, but his stomach hurt when he was done. “You—you’ll fit right in,” Dean managed finally, so proud of Sam he felt stretched out of his skin with it.
Then he noticed the time—Ralph would be there in a few minutes, and it was much better to be prepared for Ralph. The man had the refractory period of a sixteen-year-old and tastes that might have impressed Alastair. “Hey, look, gotta go.”
They didn’t bother with goodbyes. They both knew they’d be talking tomorrow. It was a greater certainty than they’d had in years, and, while Sam’s name still showed on his phone, Dean was content.
****
The letter arrived at the post office while Bobby was off on his road trip, but even if he’d been back at the yard Sam would have called Dean first. Dean didn’t pick up, so Sam left a message, and just as he parked back at Bobby’s, Dean returned the call.
“Harvard’s giving me a ton of money,” Sam said immediately. “I’m still gonna have to borrow another ton, but with starting salaries the way they are, and you and me living the way we know how, we’re only talking about a couple of years of wage slavery.”
“That’s awesome,” Dean said indulgently, and sincerely. It used to drive Sam crazy how Dean could mix those, but Dean wasn’t being condescending. He’d had enough trouble accepting the idea that he was done hunting—Sam had heard it in his voice, wistful and speculative even as the months passed and no permanent cure emerged—and it was easier for him to want normal indirectly, via Sam. “How much is a ton?”
“I’ll be borrowing about fifty thousand dollars.” It was so much money for them that it might as well have been a million, so he didn’t bother to hem and haw about it. He got out of the car, closing the door carefully so that Dean wouldn’t overhear the slam and complain about rough handling, and headed towards the porch.
Dean let out a whistle. “They just give that kinda money to broke-ass law students with no job history anybody can find? No wonder the economy’s in a fuckin’ mess.”
Sam smiled. “Hey, I’m a good bet now. And like I said, after a couple of years I’ll be able to take any job I want. Helping people, you know.”
“Harvard man,” Dean said, his voice softening. “So, uh, you’re not gonna have to borrow the cash. There’s—in Bobby’s attic, there’s a box. It’s ours—yours. Should be more’n enough.”
“What?” Sam almost dropped the door key. He fumbled his way in, stepped carefully over the wards, and stopped just inside. “Dean?”
“I’m real glad—” Dean started, then fell silent. Sam hurried up the stairs and wedged the phone between his shoulder and his ear so that he could pull the cord to get the attic ladder to come down. “You should. You should grab on to everything they give you and more.”
The ladder was as frail as a grandmother’s bones, creaking worrisomely under Sam’s weight, but he was only on it for a few seconds. He saw the box as soon as he pulled the string that worked the single bare bulb on the ceiling. It was a cardboard carton right near the ladder, dustless, marked WINCHESTER.
It was nearly filled with stacks of money, twenties mostly, neatly banded together. Sam picked up one of the stacks and thumbed through it: newer bills. This wasn’t some legacy of Dad’s that Dean simply hadn’t seen fit to mention for a couple of years. His stomach lurched. “Dean, where is this from?”
Dean breathed out. Sam shivered, suddenly freezing, and turned around in a tight circle, checking out all the darkened corners in case there was something waiting to hurt him. “I’ve been doing some work for Kelty.”
Like that, Sam understood it all: the nature of the work, along with the fact that there was not and never had been a cure in the offing. Eventually he’d make time for rage at Dean’s complete betrayal, but he had a more pressing inquiry. “Why are you telling me now?”
In the silence, he watched a glittering cloud of dust pass through the light, the bulb still swinging a little from when he’d pulled it on.
Bobby had said he needed to visit an old friend in California to talk to him about the new Colt. Sam had offered to keep him company—it was too big a state to avoid, and worse things had happened to Winchesters in other places—but Bobby had said no, this guy didn’t like meeting new folks, least of all hunters because they always ended up asking for favors. Sam had nodded understandingly, but now he remembered that Bobby had taken ten times longer than usual getting on the road, moving like every step hurt.
Dean thought that Hell was his final destination. But the Colt could kill anything, which meant that it destroyed souls. Azazel hadn’t gone back to Hell, he’d just gone.
“No,” Sam yelled into the phone, hurrying towards the ladder. “No, Dean, you can’t—”
“I’m sorry,” Dean said, barely audible. Sam pounded down the hallway, heading for the stairs. The tank was full; Bobby had a day and a half’s worth of lead, but Sam would call and force him to wait. “I told you, I can’t live in a cage, Sam.”
“We’ll find something,” he swore. David Kelty obviously hadn’t really been trying to help, and Bobby had been spending all his time building the new version of the Colt from scratch, for reasons now glaringly plain. Take Hell out of the equation with a soul-killing weapon, and death started to look like an escape.
Dean sighed. “I don’t—I want you to have a life, okay? I, uh, I always loved you more than anything—” and Sam was shaking his head, negations spilling from him like tears because this was mortal-wound stuff and he would not have Dean just saying--“I’m not sad, Sammy. I’m ready.”
“I’m not!” Sam screamed, but Dean had already hung up, and wouldn’t answer back.
He left five messages on Bobby’s voicemail, three entreating and two threatening, before he hit the county line.
****
Kelty had been pretty understanding about Dean’s announcement. Unhappy, sure, and he’d tried to sweet-talk Dean into hanging around longer, but he’d backed off once Dean made his intention to leave clear. Of course Kelty didn’t know the whole story, and he was probably going to be pretty upset with the bloodstain on his nice clean walls, but that was going to be Bobby’s problem.
Dean finished up with his last client. She was no different than anyone else, other than being the last. Except for Sam, once the incubus magic settled in to work, they were all pretty much the same, which was what made it so much hotter and so much worse than real sex. He wished he’d had the chance to do it regular, one last time, but Rachel hadn’t been in the mood for that—she was kind of mad at him for quitting, even if she wouldn’t admit it, and even promising that he’d drop by if he ever got down to DC hadn’t made her relent. At the end, at least, she’d smiled at him for real, smart enough to know that nobody ever felt better for leaving angry.
After he’d washed up, he went out into the kitchenette to grab himself a snack. Kelty was waiting for him, beer on the table in front of him open and untouched.
“Hey,” Dean acknowledged, then opened the refrigerator.
“You’re sure you won’t reconsider?” Kelty asked, a formality, like the cops reciting the Miranda warning.
Dean grabbed a carton of milk—man can’t live on beer alone—and closed the door. “Nah,” he said, tilting the carton up. He wished Sam was there to rag on his manners.
He wished a lot of things.
“I’m sorry, then,” Kelty said, and something in his tone made Dean turn.
“What did you do?” he asked, wary. He hadn’t worn a gun in months, but he still had a knife in his boot. Only problem was, Kelty took that amulet off and Dean wouldn’t even know how to use the knife any more.
Kelty wouldn’t look at him. “We made a lot of money together, Dean. We could have gone on like that, but I’m not one to keep a man locked up against his will.”
Dean tensed up. “But you know somebody who is.”
“Hello, Dean,” a new voice said from the doorway. Dean turned, slowly, because speed wasn’t going to help this. The guy was in his late forties, well-kept, nice suit and slicked-back hair, neatly trimmed little beard peppered with gray. Everything about him said: I am well-connected and know how to get things done. “I’m Henry Parker. You’ll be working for me now.”
Dean wanted to curse—should never have given Kelty this much warning, should just have waited until Bobby showed up. Instead, he put the milk down on the counter and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. “Hi, Hank. It sure sounds like a nice offer, but I—”
Without looking away from Dean, Henry pulled a gun and shot Kelty three times, pop pop pop, so loud in the small space that Dean’s ears rang. “I hate unnecessary violence,” he said pleasantly over the gurgling sounds of Kelty’s demise. “But more than that, I hate missing a chance to make or keep money. So why don’t you go pack your things, except for your weapons of course, and we’ll get you set up in your new home. I know you can’t help but enjoy the work, and I’m sure you understand how dangerous for all concerned it would be if you were allowed to run loose.”
Behind him, drawn by the gunfire, two large enforcer types appeared. They were each wearing amulets, so seduction wouldn’t have worked even if Dean had miraculously figured out how to control the glamor while under stress.
Bobby, Dean realized. Bobby was heading here, and if he showed up while Henry and his men were still present, he’d be walking straight into his death.
Dean put his hands up. “Hey, I’m convinced,” he said, resolving not to give Henry a reason to disbelieve him until they were well away from this place.
****
Sam thought that he knew freaked-out from, say, finding out that he was supposed to lead the demon apocalypse. Or a full year waiting on Dean’s deal to come due. Or waiting for the last few seals to break. Or, or, or. As it turned out, though, fresh terror worked just as well as ever, at least when the reason was Dean.
He’d just crossed the state line when his phone buzzed, Bobby’s name appearing like a curse.
He didn’t say anything when he hit ‘accept.’ If Bobby was calling to tell him—
“Sam?”
A thousand pounds left his chest—Bobby was scared, but not devastated, which meant that Dean wasn’t dead yet. “Yeah.” Didn’t mean Sam wasn’t mad as Hell, and he knew whereof he spoke.
“Dean’s—he’s missing.”
“What?”
It was almost unbelievable, listening to Bobby explain that he’d lost Dean, come to find Kelty’s body and no signs of struggle. Bobby’s best guess was that Kelty had told someone else that his cash cow was about to stop putting out, maybe a client who really and truly didn’t want to be cut off—and when they had Dean back, Sam swore, he and Bobby would be having a conversation about Bobby’s full knowledge of Dean’s new job. He shoved the anger into a corner of his brain to ferment for later.
Sam could imagine why someone who’d had a taste of Dean might take matters into his or her own hands to keep unimpeded access.
Bobby said that there was no sign on the outside of Kelty’s building that anything untoward had happened, but there was no way to tell how long it would be before someone else came across the body and called the cops. Sam might be able to get in later to investigate, but in this at least he trusted Bobby. If there were clues, Bobby would find them at least as easily as Sam would.
Bobby hadn’t found any records yet, but he wasn’t as good with computers as Sam was, so he agreed to bring Kelty’s laptop to a motel where they could get started investigating.
Sam pressed harder on the gas, feeling the car shake underneath him as if she was just as terrified as he was. The sour-metal taste of fury coated his tongue. He wished that there was someone left, above or below, to bargain with. He’d give up any hope of touching Dean again, he swore, if he only got to save his brother.
Part 5
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Also--nice OCs so far. I liked Rachel and I am looking forward to some day-rueing for this Parker guy.
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!!!!!!
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Actually, it was just what I needed to shake loose my week and get back to zen. Thanks!
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too good
Such a stubborn bastard. You can divert him, but he'll find a way eventually. And I do believe he can't live for long in a cage.
So you'd better let Sam find a way out for him, you hear?
This Sam, I've been thinking all along, reminds me a bit of CbtG Sam. Different backstory, but something of the same attitude about Dean: Dean as miracle, Sam himself as something much more ambiguous. Also smart and ruthless, which is supposed to be canon, but canon characterization has issues that yours doesn't. Also, hot. I know, or thought I knew, that Dean's your darling, but you do such a good job of distilling what I love about Sam (good and bad) that I'm helpless not to adore him.
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OMG, DEAN IS! HE'S THE GIVING TREE!
God, Sam's burst of understanding about what Dean's been doing and what the plan is is SO PAINFUL.
Ooo, the double-cross was excellently done.
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I'm glad you liked the reveal!