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"Shut In" - Part One of Two
Title: Shut In - 1/2
Rating/Warning: PG (language)
Wordcount: 2,948
Spoilers: None
Fandom: SPN
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Category: Gen
Summary: Every single one of us, the devil inside.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Part One | Part Two
Here come the world
With the look in its eye
Future uncertain but certainly slight
Look at the faces
Listen to the bells
It's hard to believe we need a place called hell
+--+--+
“Hey, wake up.”
Dean cracks open one eye and then the other, seeing Sam’s face hovering just over him. A grin splits Sam’s face.
“Wha hap’nd?” Dean croaks, knowing he should be worried by how much it hurts to talk, his throat feeling raw and abused.
Like he’s been screaming really recently.
“You got possessed, you dumb shit,” Sam snaps, but there’s humor in his face and wry affection. If anything, that makes Dean even more confused. He flexes his fingers, hands and then curls his arms up to his chest. Everything seems to be cooperating.
“You exorcised it?” Dean hazards.
“Something like that, yeah,” Sam evades and waves a hand. When he does, Dean can see he’s wearing black, fingerless gloves. Dean’s lying prone, so he sits up slowly. There’s a slight headache but nothing worse than what he’d be dealing with if he’d had a few beers the night before.
Sam’s keeping one side of his face turned away and that makes Dean edgy. “Look at me,” he demands. Sam grimaces and turns slowly, Dean watching healthy pink skin give way to an ugly mess of green and brown from right to left. Dean leans over the bed he’s on to puke because he knows, even before the dull ache in his knuckles registers that he did that, he messed up his brother’s face.
Dean’s last coherent thought is that he hopes to hell Sam isn’t angry enough with him to let him pitch face-first into his own mess as he passes out.
+--+--+
Dean drifts back to consciousness in the shower and has a panicky moment right before he realizes that Sam is in the stall with him, holding him up. It’s so bizarre that it doesn’t even occur to him to be embarrassed that he’s completely naked and Sam is mostly dressed, t-shirt and boxers on.
Dean huffs and shakes water out of his hair, pushing back so Sam will catch on that he’s awake. Sam’s got him under the arms and he adjusts his grip and loosens his hold when Dean gets his feet under him properly and steadies himself with hands on either side of the tile wall.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Dean grunts. The water is only lukewarm and he hates that. Sam still has a hand on his back like he’s expecting Dean to keel over when he leans out of the shower and snags one of the motel towels. Dean shuts off the water himself before Sam pulls it in with them and then steps out.
“You puked on the floor, then yourself, then me,” Sam says, sounding bemused. “I didn’t have a lot of choice.”
Dean wraps the towel about himself and moves to step out. Sam’s hands come up and hover until Dean has both feet on the coarse mat beside the tub. Dean notices when he’s using another towel to rub over his head and Sam is just hovering in the doorway that he is still wearing the fingerless gloves and has socks on.
“What’s with these?” Dean asks, reaching out for one of Sam’s hands and feels a little hurt when Sam flinches backwards. He can understand Sam’s reticence because from what he’s been able to piece together he’s beaten the shit out of the kid and relatively recently, but he knows if anyone, Sam should understand the difference between him and when he’s possessed.
“I’m cold,” Sam says and Dean knows he’s lying. He’s also pretty sure Sam knows he knows but is looking at Dean with his chin up and his eyes flat. The bruised side of his face is titled towards Dean and he knows that isn’t an accident. Look what you did to me he’s saying. I get to be weird for a little while and you don’t get to say a damned thing about it.
Dean lets it go, frowning at Sam’s back when he follows him out into the main room. Dean catches sight of a paper on one of the bedside tables and pulls up short, noting the date. Last he remembered it was May twelfth.
The paper says June twenty-ninth.
+--+--+
Bobby sounds surprised to hear his voice and that, more than anything, gives Dean pause.
“I thought he would have brought me to you first,” Dean says when Bobby recovers enough to actually get that it is actually Dean he’s talking to.
“He did,” Bobby says in his interminable way, not willing to elaborate unless Dean flat out asks.
“What’s the problem then?”
“I couldn’t help,” Bobby says and it sinks in that the older man sounds truly shaken.
“Bobby, what-?”
“You go and ask Sam just exactly what he did because I can guarantee that it wasn’t good. I want you boys here and I mean yesterday.”
Bobby hangs up on him and Dean looks towards the door of the motel room and sees Sam standing there with what would probably be dinner. He’s still got the gloves on and Dean narrows his eyes.
“Something you want to tell me?” Dean asks.
“I found a way. That’s all that matters,” Sam snaps, going from zero to angry faster than Dean has ever seen him, even with dad. Sam’s fury was always a slow burn until he snapped and it worries Dean that he’s got the brakes off all of a sudden.
“Last time you found a way some poor kid died instead of me,” Dean growls, not meaning to hit so low but he’s suddenly terrified. It’s something that’s been festering between them for a while. He’d shot a guy in the head when he thought Sam was in danger and he hadn’t regretted it for a moment but knowing Sam had done the same, somehow that wasn’t acceptable in Dean’s world view. He was trying to shield Sam from that and he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
He wanted Sam torn and conflicted because if he ever saw the same blankness in Sam’s eyes he sometimes saw in his own in the mirror, he’d know that he’d truly failed.
“Wow, the demon kicked the hell out of me but they should take lessons from you on how to really stick it in and break it off,” Sam grates, eyes flashing and color flooding his cheeks and neck.
“Just take the damn gloves off, Sammy,” Dean orders.
“No,” Sam refuses, sticking his hands up under his armpits and backing into the corner of the room.
“I’ll take them off you,” Dean warns and watches Sam’s chin go up again, defiance in every line of his body. Dean rolls his eyes and takes the couple of steps necessary to bring him right in front of Sam, practically standing on his feet. “You really want to do this the hard way?”
“I’m not a skinny kid anymore remember,” Sam says. “I put you on your ass last time we did this.”
“Oh that’s it,” Dean snarls and launches himself at Sam, hooking a leg around the back of Sam’s knees and getting him on the floor before Sam has a chance to fight back. It doesn’t help that Sam is keeping his hands wedged up under his arms so he’s already at a huge disadvantage. Dean manages to pry one of Sam’s hands loose and gets Sam flipped over onto his belly with that hand bent up and behind him.
“No, don’t,” Sam protests, trying to eel out from under Dean. There’s a moment where he almost bucks him off but Dean just digs his knees into either side of Sam’s torso and holds on.
“Say Uncle,” Dean crows, because despite everything, the thrill of beating Sammy who admittedly does have four inches and a few pounds on him, dulls everything else. Sam’s face, when he manages to turn it so all Dean can see is the bruising, dumps cold water all over his enjoyment. Dean keeps Sam’s arm pinned but he sits back, weight low on Sam’s upper thighs and Sam goes limp.
Dean’s expecting it to be a strategy and braces himself but it seems the fight has all but drained out of his little brother. Instead of arguing further, Sam says, “They’ll fade eventually. Guy said you wouldn’t even be able to see them in a few weeks and I’ll need to get them redone. Can’t you just…?”
“Sammy, what did you do?” Dean breathes, stripping off the glove from the hand he has a hold of in one swift movement, feeling his stomach fall out when he sees what Sam was trying to hide.
A Devil’s Trap, black and intricate, is inked on the vulnerable skin of Sam’s palm.
+--+--+
“I don’t think it was Meg but it must have been someone… related. The demon found a way to lock itself into you. It was something called a Winter Knot and it was tattooed on the inside of your cheek,” Sam explains. They’re sitting on opposite sides of the motel room, both on the floor with their legs stretched out. Sam has stripped off his socks and Dean can see Devil’s Traps etched on the bottoms of his feet.
He knows without looking that there will be another one on the palm of Sam’s remaining hand. Dean rubs his tongue across the place Sam describes but he feels nothing and wonders how that could be if he was tattooed.
“Exorcism didn’t work. Nothing worked but Bobby found an old incantation that would draw a demon out and into another living vessel. The Winter Knot went with the demon though and we would be playing ‘Pass The Demon’ for eternity.”
“You did it anyway?” Dean hazards and Sam winces.
“Not before I found a way to make the demon powerless. I started thinking that maybe the Devil’s Trap didn’t just work on walls and floors. It’s the symbol that has power, the magic in the line and form. I talked to some connections of Missouri’s and most of them agreed that the hands and feet should work.”
“Should?” Dean says slowly. “You mean you didn’t know?”
“Not for sure,” Sam admits. “Bobby wouldn’t have anything to do with it but I-”
“Fuck me!” Dean blurts. “You’re still possessed?” Dean pushes up from the floor but Sam is just looking at him, not making a move.
“I’m not possessed. That’s the whole point. The demon is inside but it’s as powerless as if it were in a Devil’s Trap on the outside.”
“But Meg-”
“Verbal incantation. Yeah, it was a neat trick but I checked. The demon’s pissed as hell but completely impotent.”
“How do you know that?” Dean asks, raising an eyebrow and still keeping wary distance between them. Demons loved messing with your head and Dean thought it was a pretty clever way to get him to drop his guard.
Almost as good as a panicked phone call and a terrified-looking and blood-spattered Sam holed up in a hotel room.
“I can hear him,” Sam says. “Not very well and I think it takes a lot out of him to get through but every now and again, yeah.”
“Sam, I’m not really comforted by the idea that the voices in your head are real,” Dean says gravely. “And a really pissed off demon.”
“He can’t do anything. I told you-”
“He’ll find a way.”
“No he won’t.”
Dean sighs, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I really wish I could believe that.”
+--+--+
Dean realizes for the next three days, as they travel to Bobby’s that he is on tenterhooks. He’s just waiting for Sam to disappear, do something evil, squeeze out all his toothpaste, something. He’s not ready for Sam to just be Sam, grousing about how loud the music is, stealing his fries after saying it was disgusting to order them for breakfast and generally being the normal level of pain in the ass that he’s always been.
“Stop it,” Sam snaps when they are an hour out and Dean starts guiltily, knowing that he’s watching Sam as much as the road.
“What? I’m not doing anything,” he says anyway. Bluster is his friend.
“You keep staring at me like I’m going to start sacrificing virgins or something,” Sam complains, scooching lower in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “Every time I go to take a piss you follow me to the bathroom and if you try to work Christo into the conversation one more time I’m going to punch you.”
“Aha!” Dean crows. “Feeling unwanted aggression?”
“No, just the normal level when dealing with you. Just… just pull the car over.”
Sam rolls his eyes when Dean hitches in a panicked breath. Sam reaches across and yanks on the steering wheel. Dean swears, slamming on the brakes so they coast to a halt in the gravel beside the road. “What the hell, Sam?” he barks.
“Okay, yes, I have a demon in me but I’m not possessed. I’m waiting for you to get the difference.”
“You can’t blame me for having a small problem with all of this.”
“No, I can’t, but I do expect you to trust me,” Sam says, sounding exhausted. “I mean, even when Meg was completely in control she couldn’t kill you using me.”
“You tried.”
“Jesus Dean, Meg tried,” Sam says, now sounding truly pissed off. “And didn’t you ever wonder why, at such close range, she still only shot you in the shoulder?” Dean blinks, because all he’d ever really thought about that was that he’d been damn lucky.
That they would both be dead or as good as if Meg hadn’t been such a lousy shot.
“She wanted me to see it. She wanted me to watch you die and it was all lined up. You should’ve taken one in the middle of the chest. I’m not going to pretend that I did it consciously, but I felt something at the last moment. Some part of me just refused to do it. My muscles seized up, my elbow locked badly and the aim was off that precious few inches.”
“I’m not worried about you hurting me,” Dean says, voice low. Sam looks at him, a frown on his face. “I’m worried about you hurting you. I’m terrified you’re going to just disappear like you did before.”
“I wouldn’t,” Sam says, touching fingers to his still bruised face. “I think the demons have learned a few things. If one of us gets taken, first order of business seems to be to take the other one out.”
“Christ, Sammy,” Dean breathes. Sam still won’t tell him exactly went down between possession and Sam getting him to Bobby and a small part of him is pathetically grateful.
“Until we can find a way to exorcise a demon that has used a Winter Knot, I’m stuck this way. If you’re saying there’s no way you can trust me then I’ll just have to deal with that. I’d suggest we split up but then you’ll accuse me of being evil or trying to leave again.” Sam scrubs a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Let’s just… go see Bobby. He might have something.”
+--+--+
Dean always enjoyed Sam being yelled at like an errant schoolboy but even he was starting to squirm as Bobby neared the hour mark.
“Bobby-" he tries to interject and just earns himself a baleful glare. Bobby has one of Sam’s hands grasped in his own and is demanding to know just what kind of idjit would do something like that to a Winchester, knowing he would hunt them down afterwards.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to tell you,” Sam grunts and gets a cuff to the back of the head for his trouble.
“It’s done now. Let’s just find a way to undo it,” Dean interjects.
“I haven’t been able to find much,” Bobby responds, switching so quickly from ranting to research mode that Dean blinks. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, creating a Winter Knot in the first place is almost impossible. There was some heavy duty dark favors pulled in for this one. That demon must hate you boys like nothing else in existence.”
“I’d say that’s about right,” Sam agrees, nodding.
“I’ll keep looking, there’s a few people I can see but I’m going to have to travel. These are the kinds of people who don’t make house calls. You boys can stay here.”
“No.”
Both Dean and Bobby look at Sam.
“No?” Bobby says.
“No. Dean and I still have a job to do and we’ve been out of it for too long as it is. I’m fine and we can hunt while we’re waiting for you to find something,” Sam insists, his mouth firmed down to a stubborn line.
“You’re possessed kiddo. You ain’t going nowhere.”
Sam stands, hands clenched into fists. “Dean, c’mon. Bobby, call us when you know something.” Sam makes his way to the door, Bobby moving so he’s put himself between Sam and escape. They stare each other down until Dean puts a hand on Bobby’s shoulder.
“I’ll take care of him. We’ll just go stir-crazy sitting around here,” he says, offering a small smile. Bobby rolls his eyes and snorts in disgust.
“Of course. Why would I expect you to be the level-headed one?” he says, finally slumping in resignation. “Fine, but I want you boys to check in with me every day and I mean every day.”
“Sure.” Dean nods.
Bobby steps aside and Sam shoulders past, banging out the door and down to the Impala. Bobby turns back to Dean and narrows his eyes. “You sure?”
“Absolutely not,” Dean says with a grin.
Rating/Warning: PG (language)
Wordcount: 2,948
Spoilers: None
Fandom: SPN
By:
kellifer_ficCategory: Gen
Summary: Every single one of us, the devil inside.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
With the look in its eye
Future uncertain but certainly slight
Look at the faces
Listen to the bells
It's hard to believe we need a place called hell
“Hey, wake up.”
Dean cracks open one eye and then the other, seeing Sam’s face hovering just over him. A grin splits Sam’s face.
“Wha hap’nd?” Dean croaks, knowing he should be worried by how much it hurts to talk, his throat feeling raw and abused.
Like he’s been screaming really recently.
“You got possessed, you dumb shit,” Sam snaps, but there’s humor in his face and wry affection. If anything, that makes Dean even more confused. He flexes his fingers, hands and then curls his arms up to his chest. Everything seems to be cooperating.
“You exorcised it?” Dean hazards.
“Something like that, yeah,” Sam evades and waves a hand. When he does, Dean can see he’s wearing black, fingerless gloves. Dean’s lying prone, so he sits up slowly. There’s a slight headache but nothing worse than what he’d be dealing with if he’d had a few beers the night before.
Sam’s keeping one side of his face turned away and that makes Dean edgy. “Look at me,” he demands. Sam grimaces and turns slowly, Dean watching healthy pink skin give way to an ugly mess of green and brown from right to left. Dean leans over the bed he’s on to puke because he knows, even before the dull ache in his knuckles registers that he did that, he messed up his brother’s face.
Dean’s last coherent thought is that he hopes to hell Sam isn’t angry enough with him to let him pitch face-first into his own mess as he passes out.
Dean drifts back to consciousness in the shower and has a panicky moment right before he realizes that Sam is in the stall with him, holding him up. It’s so bizarre that it doesn’t even occur to him to be embarrassed that he’s completely naked and Sam is mostly dressed, t-shirt and boxers on.
Dean huffs and shakes water out of his hair, pushing back so Sam will catch on that he’s awake. Sam’s got him under the arms and he adjusts his grip and loosens his hold when Dean gets his feet under him properly and steadies himself with hands on either side of the tile wall.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Dean grunts. The water is only lukewarm and he hates that. Sam still has a hand on his back like he’s expecting Dean to keel over when he leans out of the shower and snags one of the motel towels. Dean shuts off the water himself before Sam pulls it in with them and then steps out.
“You puked on the floor, then yourself, then me,” Sam says, sounding bemused. “I didn’t have a lot of choice.”
Dean wraps the towel about himself and moves to step out. Sam’s hands come up and hover until Dean has both feet on the coarse mat beside the tub. Dean notices when he’s using another towel to rub over his head and Sam is just hovering in the doorway that he is still wearing the fingerless gloves and has socks on.
“What’s with these?” Dean asks, reaching out for one of Sam’s hands and feels a little hurt when Sam flinches backwards. He can understand Sam’s reticence because from what he’s been able to piece together he’s beaten the shit out of the kid and relatively recently, but he knows if anyone, Sam should understand the difference between him and when he’s possessed.
“I’m cold,” Sam says and Dean knows he’s lying. He’s also pretty sure Sam knows he knows but is looking at Dean with his chin up and his eyes flat. The bruised side of his face is titled towards Dean and he knows that isn’t an accident. Look what you did to me he’s saying. I get to be weird for a little while and you don’t get to say a damned thing about it.
Dean lets it go, frowning at Sam’s back when he follows him out into the main room. Dean catches sight of a paper on one of the bedside tables and pulls up short, noting the date. Last he remembered it was May twelfth.
The paper says June twenty-ninth.
Bobby sounds surprised to hear his voice and that, more than anything, gives Dean pause.
“I thought he would have brought me to you first,” Dean says when Bobby recovers enough to actually get that it is actually Dean he’s talking to.
“He did,” Bobby says in his interminable way, not willing to elaborate unless Dean flat out asks.
“What’s the problem then?”
“I couldn’t help,” Bobby says and it sinks in that the older man sounds truly shaken.
“Bobby, what-?”
“You go and ask Sam just exactly what he did because I can guarantee that it wasn’t good. I want you boys here and I mean yesterday.”
Bobby hangs up on him and Dean looks towards the door of the motel room and sees Sam standing there with what would probably be dinner. He’s still got the gloves on and Dean narrows his eyes.
“Something you want to tell me?” Dean asks.
“I found a way. That’s all that matters,” Sam snaps, going from zero to angry faster than Dean has ever seen him, even with dad. Sam’s fury was always a slow burn until he snapped and it worries Dean that he’s got the brakes off all of a sudden.
“Last time you found a way some poor kid died instead of me,” Dean growls, not meaning to hit so low but he’s suddenly terrified. It’s something that’s been festering between them for a while. He’d shot a guy in the head when he thought Sam was in danger and he hadn’t regretted it for a moment but knowing Sam had done the same, somehow that wasn’t acceptable in Dean’s world view. He was trying to shield Sam from that and he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
He wanted Sam torn and conflicted because if he ever saw the same blankness in Sam’s eyes he sometimes saw in his own in the mirror, he’d know that he’d truly failed.
“Wow, the demon kicked the hell out of me but they should take lessons from you on how to really stick it in and break it off,” Sam grates, eyes flashing and color flooding his cheeks and neck.
“Just take the damn gloves off, Sammy,” Dean orders.
“No,” Sam refuses, sticking his hands up under his armpits and backing into the corner of the room.
“I’ll take them off you,” Dean warns and watches Sam’s chin go up again, defiance in every line of his body. Dean rolls his eyes and takes the couple of steps necessary to bring him right in front of Sam, practically standing on his feet. “You really want to do this the hard way?”
“I’m not a skinny kid anymore remember,” Sam says. “I put you on your ass last time we did this.”
“Oh that’s it,” Dean snarls and launches himself at Sam, hooking a leg around the back of Sam’s knees and getting him on the floor before Sam has a chance to fight back. It doesn’t help that Sam is keeping his hands wedged up under his arms so he’s already at a huge disadvantage. Dean manages to pry one of Sam’s hands loose and gets Sam flipped over onto his belly with that hand bent up and behind him.
“No, don’t,” Sam protests, trying to eel out from under Dean. There’s a moment where he almost bucks him off but Dean just digs his knees into either side of Sam’s torso and holds on.
“Say Uncle,” Dean crows, because despite everything, the thrill of beating Sammy who admittedly does have four inches and a few pounds on him, dulls everything else. Sam’s face, when he manages to turn it so all Dean can see is the bruising, dumps cold water all over his enjoyment. Dean keeps Sam’s arm pinned but he sits back, weight low on Sam’s upper thighs and Sam goes limp.
Dean’s expecting it to be a strategy and braces himself but it seems the fight has all but drained out of his little brother. Instead of arguing further, Sam says, “They’ll fade eventually. Guy said you wouldn’t even be able to see them in a few weeks and I’ll need to get them redone. Can’t you just…?”
“Sammy, what did you do?” Dean breathes, stripping off the glove from the hand he has a hold of in one swift movement, feeling his stomach fall out when he sees what Sam was trying to hide.
A Devil’s Trap, black and intricate, is inked on the vulnerable skin of Sam’s palm.
“I don’t think it was Meg but it must have been someone… related. The demon found a way to lock itself into you. It was something called a Winter Knot and it was tattooed on the inside of your cheek,” Sam explains. They’re sitting on opposite sides of the motel room, both on the floor with their legs stretched out. Sam has stripped off his socks and Dean can see Devil’s Traps etched on the bottoms of his feet.
He knows without looking that there will be another one on the palm of Sam’s remaining hand. Dean rubs his tongue across the place Sam describes but he feels nothing and wonders how that could be if he was tattooed.
“Exorcism didn’t work. Nothing worked but Bobby found an old incantation that would draw a demon out and into another living vessel. The Winter Knot went with the demon though and we would be playing ‘Pass The Demon’ for eternity.”
“You did it anyway?” Dean hazards and Sam winces.
“Not before I found a way to make the demon powerless. I started thinking that maybe the Devil’s Trap didn’t just work on walls and floors. It’s the symbol that has power, the magic in the line and form. I talked to some connections of Missouri’s and most of them agreed that the hands and feet should work.”
“Should?” Dean says slowly. “You mean you didn’t know?”
“Not for sure,” Sam admits. “Bobby wouldn’t have anything to do with it but I-”
“Fuck me!” Dean blurts. “You’re still possessed?” Dean pushes up from the floor but Sam is just looking at him, not making a move.
“I’m not possessed. That’s the whole point. The demon is inside but it’s as powerless as if it were in a Devil’s Trap on the outside.”
“But Meg-”
“Verbal incantation. Yeah, it was a neat trick but I checked. The demon’s pissed as hell but completely impotent.”
“How do you know that?” Dean asks, raising an eyebrow and still keeping wary distance between them. Demons loved messing with your head and Dean thought it was a pretty clever way to get him to drop his guard.
Almost as good as a panicked phone call and a terrified-looking and blood-spattered Sam holed up in a hotel room.
“I can hear him,” Sam says. “Not very well and I think it takes a lot out of him to get through but every now and again, yeah.”
“Sam, I’m not really comforted by the idea that the voices in your head are real,” Dean says gravely. “And a really pissed off demon.”
“He can’t do anything. I told you-”
“He’ll find a way.”
“No he won’t.”
Dean sighs, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I really wish I could believe that.”
Dean realizes for the next three days, as they travel to Bobby’s that he is on tenterhooks. He’s just waiting for Sam to disappear, do something evil, squeeze out all his toothpaste, something. He’s not ready for Sam to just be Sam, grousing about how loud the music is, stealing his fries after saying it was disgusting to order them for breakfast and generally being the normal level of pain in the ass that he’s always been.
“Stop it,” Sam snaps when they are an hour out and Dean starts guiltily, knowing that he’s watching Sam as much as the road.
“What? I’m not doing anything,” he says anyway. Bluster is his friend.
“You keep staring at me like I’m going to start sacrificing virgins or something,” Sam complains, scooching lower in his seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “Every time I go to take a piss you follow me to the bathroom and if you try to work Christo into the conversation one more time I’m going to punch you.”
“Aha!” Dean crows. “Feeling unwanted aggression?”
“No, just the normal level when dealing with you. Just… just pull the car over.”
Sam rolls his eyes when Dean hitches in a panicked breath. Sam reaches across and yanks on the steering wheel. Dean swears, slamming on the brakes so they coast to a halt in the gravel beside the road. “What the hell, Sam?” he barks.
“Okay, yes, I have a demon in me but I’m not possessed. I’m waiting for you to get the difference.”
“You can’t blame me for having a small problem with all of this.”
“No, I can’t, but I do expect you to trust me,” Sam says, sounding exhausted. “I mean, even when Meg was completely in control she couldn’t kill you using me.”
“You tried.”
“Jesus Dean, Meg tried,” Sam says, now sounding truly pissed off. “And didn’t you ever wonder why, at such close range, she still only shot you in the shoulder?” Dean blinks, because all he’d ever really thought about that was that he’d been damn lucky.
That they would both be dead or as good as if Meg hadn’t been such a lousy shot.
“She wanted me to see it. She wanted me to watch you die and it was all lined up. You should’ve taken one in the middle of the chest. I’m not going to pretend that I did it consciously, but I felt something at the last moment. Some part of me just refused to do it. My muscles seized up, my elbow locked badly and the aim was off that precious few inches.”
“I’m not worried about you hurting me,” Dean says, voice low. Sam looks at him, a frown on his face. “I’m worried about you hurting you. I’m terrified you’re going to just disappear like you did before.”
“I wouldn’t,” Sam says, touching fingers to his still bruised face. “I think the demons have learned a few things. If one of us gets taken, first order of business seems to be to take the other one out.”
“Christ, Sammy,” Dean breathes. Sam still won’t tell him exactly went down between possession and Sam getting him to Bobby and a small part of him is pathetically grateful.
“Until we can find a way to exorcise a demon that has used a Winter Knot, I’m stuck this way. If you’re saying there’s no way you can trust me then I’ll just have to deal with that. I’d suggest we split up but then you’ll accuse me of being evil or trying to leave again.” Sam scrubs a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Let’s just… go see Bobby. He might have something.”
Dean always enjoyed Sam being yelled at like an errant schoolboy but even he was starting to squirm as Bobby neared the hour mark.
“Bobby-" he tries to interject and just earns himself a baleful glare. Bobby has one of Sam’s hands grasped in his own and is demanding to know just what kind of idjit would do something like that to a Winchester, knowing he would hunt them down afterwards.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to tell you,” Sam grunts and gets a cuff to the back of the head for his trouble.
“It’s done now. Let’s just find a way to undo it,” Dean interjects.
“I haven’t been able to find much,” Bobby responds, switching so quickly from ranting to research mode that Dean blinks. “From what I’ve been able to piece together, creating a Winter Knot in the first place is almost impossible. There was some heavy duty dark favors pulled in for this one. That demon must hate you boys like nothing else in existence.”
“I’d say that’s about right,” Sam agrees, nodding.
“I’ll keep looking, there’s a few people I can see but I’m going to have to travel. These are the kinds of people who don’t make house calls. You boys can stay here.”
“No.”
Both Dean and Bobby look at Sam.
“No?” Bobby says.
“No. Dean and I still have a job to do and we’ve been out of it for too long as it is. I’m fine and we can hunt while we’re waiting for you to find something,” Sam insists, his mouth firmed down to a stubborn line.
“You’re possessed kiddo. You ain’t going nowhere.”
Sam stands, hands clenched into fists. “Dean, c’mon. Bobby, call us when you know something.” Sam makes his way to the door, Bobby moving so he’s put himself between Sam and escape. They stare each other down until Dean puts a hand on Bobby’s shoulder.
“I’ll take care of him. We’ll just go stir-crazy sitting around here,” he says, offering a small smile. Bobby rolls his eyes and snorts in disgust.
“Of course. Why would I expect you to be the level-headed one?” he says, finally slumping in resignation. “Fine, but I want you boys to check in with me every day and I mean every day.”
“Sure.” Dean nods.
Bobby steps aside and Sam shoulders past, banging out the door and down to the Impala. Bobby turns back to Dean and narrows his eyes. “You sure?”
“Absolutely not,” Dean says with a grin.