![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Boy Who Walked On Stilts - Part Two of Two
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Rating: PG
Category: SPN - Gen
Word Count: 3,468
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: In a world where John Winchester has given his life early for the hunt, his sons are raised separately. One by a holy man and one by a hunter.
Part One | Part Two
“I feel funny just leaving him here,” Dean says as he stands by his car, fingering the keys in his pocket. Jim has walked around to the passenger side and is waiting to be let in, but props his arms on the roof when Dean speaks.
“We’re not just leaving him, Dean,” Jim huffs with a shake of his head. “You know where he is now and that he’s safe. You can come back and visit whenever you want, Bobby said.”
“He’s my family,” Dean insists, almost feeling choked with a rising tide of the urge to protect, to take back what’s his. He often feels like Sammy and his father were ripped away from him and leaving Sam behind willingly is…
He’s not sure he knows how to do that.
“I can take the bus back if you want to stay a couple of days?” Jim offers. “Get to know him better and see how everything goes?”
“Yeah… maybe,” Dean allows. He knows it would be a big ask, but he also recognises in Bobby’s house a place where people come. He’s stayed in dozens of places like it. Hunters are fairly nomadic but there are a few that have a home base and are never averse to sharing it with the rolling stones intent on no moss gathering. He’s pretty sure the older hunter will agree to him staying.
“Okay, I’ll go and clear it with Bobby,” Jim volunteers and rolls his eyes when Dean makes his way around to the trunk and pulls out a duffle that’s packed with a couple of spare changes of clothes. “You’re like a boy scout,” he says but there’s warmth in his tone, wry affection for the little quirks Dean’s never been able to shake.
Always being prepared is one of them.
000
Dean’s given a room upstairs and towards the back of the house. There are a few gaps that the chill air can sneak through but there’s also a huge, old-fashioned bar heater so Dean thinks he can probably maintain a level of luke-warmness in the room.
He gets handed an armload of military blankets and sets about making up the double wrought-iron bed that’s nearly buried under stacks of musty-smelling sheets and jackets. There’s an ancient wooden wardrobe in one corner of the room and Dean slings his duffle into the bottom of it but doesn’t bother to unpack anything. He’s figuring on sticking around for three days, tops. Just long enough to maybe figure out how he’s going to crow-bar his little brother back into his life and if he even wants to.
The yen for family rises in him again and he tamps it down, deciding instead that he’s about due for dinner and hoping Bobby and Sam are on the same kind of stomach-oriented schedule. He finds Sam burning the crap out of some burgers on a small BBQ out the back, the patrol dogs nowhere to be seen and more than likely on duty.
“Man, we might as well eat the charcoal,” Dean teases and Sam snorts.
“These are for Harry,” he says, pointing tongs at the mixed-breed sitting by his feet. Finally the dog has a name and also, apparently, an iron stomach. “Bobby’s ruining steaks inside for us.”
“Wonderful,” Dean sighs but doesn’t move, instead watching Sam work and the smoke spiralling up into the night sky. It’s stopped snowing when he was squaring away his room but his breath still mists the air in front of his face.
“Can’t decide whether you want to keep me or not?” Sam asks, apropos of nothing and Dean startles a little, having been caught up in his own thoughts.
“Something like that,” he decides to admit, because maybe the years and distance have been too much. They could have nothing in common, or worse, decide they dislike each other intensely. He’s pretty sure the latter won’t prove to be true. Sam seems relaxed and easy to like, coming out the other side of his teenage years and probably past the angst-laden rebellious stage.
“Did you think this would ever happen?” Sam asks and Dean shrugs, accepting a beer out of a cooler by Sam’s knee. Sam gets one for himself and Dean has to bite back the urge to take it off him. It’s not his place, at least not yet and apparently Bobby is okay with it. It’s then though that Sam slides him a sly glance and after he’s taken a mouthful he says, “Don’t tell Bobby,” waggling the bottle.
“Not this exactly,” Dean says, answering Sam’s first question. “I mean, I get why all those people who have missing family never really give up hope. While there’s no body it’s never really… finished, you know?”
“I guess I do,” Sam nods, pulling the hood from his jacket over his hair when he sets his beer aside because the snow has started falling again.
Harry makes an impatient yip and Sam flicks the burgers into a bowl set to the side. They sound like stones hitting the bottom. Harry doesn’t seem to mind though, setting to as soon as Sam takes his hand away when he sets the bowl on the ground. Sam replaces Dean’s empty beer bottle with his own half-finished one and leads the way back inside the house.
“Hope you boys are hungry,” Bobby greets and slides a load of steaks onto a platter in the middle of the kitchen table. They’re black and clunk when they hit and Dean rolls his eyes.
000
He stays up well past midnight and isn’t even aware he’s been waiting for something to happen until he jerks upright when he hears a cry.
Dean’s halfway down the backstairs and almost to Sam’s door when he runs right into Bobby. The hunter is an immovable object in his path and when Dean sidesteps, Bobby moves with him. “It’s best you don’t,” he warns.
“Something’s happening!” Dean barks and makes to pass Bobby again but gets hauled into the hallway wall for his trouble, Bobby’s arm like an iron bar across his chest and holding him in place.
“Just trust me, it’s worse if you wake him,” Bobby grits. He moves his arm just enough to tilt his head sideways and expose his neck to the dim light cast through the window at the end by the moon. There’s a long scar that starts just under his ear and disappears beneath his shirt. “I learnt that the hard way.”
There’s another strangled moan and Dean wants nothing more than to bat Bobby aside and go to his brother. “He’s in pain.”
“Nothing he remembers,” Bobby says. “I know it sounds callous but he feels worse in the morning if he’s hurt anyone. Sometimes he’ll have an especially vivid dream and those he remembers but that’s rare as hens’ teeth.” Bobby drops his arm completely, maybe sensing that Dean’s now willing to listen to reason and everything in him slumps. “This only happens every few weeks or so. I was hoping you’d be gone before he had another episode.”
“Is that what you call it? An episode?” Dean asks, incredulous. There’s a fine tremor through the floor and the sound of something heavy scraping across in the next room, like a bed with the weight of a person on it. Suddenly Dean understands the lack of anything in the room. Why have trinkets and furniture that’s just going to get tossed about and wrecked?
“I put you in the back of the house because I thought you might sleep through. Maybe you can make Sam believe you did?”
There’s another groaning scrape and shudder and then everything stills. Dean steps back and away, rubbing a forearm across his eyes. “Yeah, sure. I can do that,” he agrees.
Deciding whether you want to keep me?
Sam had said it like it was a joke, some gentle long-lost ribbing. The tightness in his eyes and mouth when he’d found out Dean was staying overnight indicated what he’d been truly worried about. That Dean would run for the hills.
Trouble is, he really wants to.
000
It seems in the Singer household, there’s no such thing as medium as Dean surveys the pile of crispy bacon set down in front of him. He sets to though with gusto, never one to turn down a meal someone else has made.
Sam stumbles into the kitchen when he’s nearly done, hitching at pyjama pants that are too big in the waist and not nearly long enough in the leg. He looks like three kinds of hell and is walking like an old man, stooped and shuffling. “I forgot to ask how you slept in that bed?” Bobby asks like it’s an after thought. Dean sees Sam jerk a little before pouring a large bowl of cereal and then just staring at it unhappily.
“There’s a couple of springs that were intent on lodging themselves in my spine but I did okay,” Dean replies without missing a beat. Sam’s hand walks the table and only halts when it finds Dean’s coffee cup. Dean gives him a go on wave and Sam grins sheepishly as he reels it back towards himself, all the tension leaking out of him as he takes a swallow.
“Dean, I got an old buddy who’s given me the heads up on a possession a town over. Not more than half an hour’s drive. He’s trapped the son of a bitch but could never recite Latin worth a damn. Can you stay here with Sam while I’m gone?”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Sam protests and Bobby claps him one upside the head.
After Dean nods his assent, Bobby asks, “Jim says you know your way around a car?”
“I do at that,” Dean agrees, smirking.
“I have some cars that won’t turn over. Mind having a look-see?”
Dean turns a little in his seat. Out the kitchen window, the landscape is mostly obscured by a tower of wrecks. “I think they’re beyond help,” Dean says.
“The fixables are out the side, wiseass,” Bobby says. “Sam can show you where everything is.”
“I can help,” Sam offers and Dean looks over at him and has to grab onto the table for a moment. Sam is looking at him with large eager eyes and Dean finally sees it, the little boy that would follow him around a room as he laid salt lines. Can I Dean, he’d always press and Dean would say, No, it’s too important. You’ll just mess it up.
000
Dean has his head and half his torso stuck under the hood of the one and only piece of crap Bobby has that might be salvageable when he hears the dogs start howling. He yanks his head free and looks up into the noon-day sun. Sam is nowhere to be seen, having disappeared inside the house to retrieve drinks, a beer for Dean and a soda for himself, Dean had insisted.
He can’t see the dogs but the howling goes up in pitch and urgency and Dean makes sure he has a weapon in each hand, a wrench in one and a screwdriver in the other when he finally makes it around the front.
Sam is standing at Bobby’s chain-link fence, the dogs milling about in a rough semi-circle a few feet behind him. Dean at first thinks maybe he’s just giving directions to a passer-by, but there’s something off about the woman in the ragged red dress standing on the other side. It takes Dean a moment to realise that the weak winter sunlight is slanting through her rather than being blocked.
“Sam?” Dean moves a little closer and can see from Sam’s angle, the woman actually looks solid.
“Hey, Gina here is lost,” Sam says, turning to frown vaguely at the dogs. “Would you guys quit that? You’ll scare the nice lady.” Sam’s voice has a strange hollow-sound to it, like he’s talking through a tunnel. His eyes are glazed and unfocused.
“Sam, step away,” Dean instructs, keeping his eyes locked on the woman. Sam’s gaze shifts to Dean but slowly, like it’s a struggle and he doesn’t see the woman flicker-snap like an old piece of film.
Sam stumbles a little when Dean reaches out and wraps a hand around his elbow, jerking Sam sideways and behind him. Dean sees there’s a narrow trench dug just inside the fence line and it’s filled with white powder. Dean leans down and scoops a little into his hand, mindful not to break the line.
The woman moves backwards into the shadows of the overgrown yard that’s nestled right up to Bobby’s property, a jerky shudder-step that has her head rolling on her neck in an unnatural way. Dean closes his fist on his palm-full of salt, waiting for a charge at the boundary that doesn’t come. The dogs all stop their howling at once and dart off again, resuming their posts.
“Don’t you know a spirit when you see one?” Dean demands, wondering just how a hunter’s boy could mistake the dead for the living.
Sam kind of blinks and then looks around, a hand coming up to rub over his head. “Hey,” he says slowly. “I could’ve sworn I was just in the kitchen.”
000
Bobby returns later that evening to find Dean sitting on the porch like an angry father, a chair tipped halfway back and a shotgun full of rock salt across his knee. “What happened?” he asks, sounding more resigned than worried.
“Spirits come up on your place often?” Dean asks, raising an eyebrow. He has half a mind to give Bobby a chestful of salt for leaving that little titbit out if he’d known it was a possibility.
“Only in the last month or so,” Bobby allows, eyeing the shotgun like maybe he suspects the train of Dean’s thoughts. “I got some powerful wards set up and I’m thinking they’re getting curious.”
“Cut the crap,” Dean scoffs, standing and setting the shotgun aside. “We both know what’s attracting ‘em.”
“I don’t know anything for sure,” Bobby objects, but his eyes cut away at the last moment and Dean knows he doesn’t believe his own words.
“Spirits who aren’t tied to the place they die head for whatever’s burning bright, like moths. Sam might not know it but he’s projecting something and the wrong kinds of folk are getting wind of it.”
“You been reading my books?”
“Some,” Dean says, nodding slightly. “I saw a couple of designs meant to dampen down the freaky vibe. You think maybe a tattoo would work?”
“Maybe,” Bobby says, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. “I’m just not sure what something like that will do to him. No matter what I keep telling myself, he’s not normal by any stretch of the imagination.”
“How about we ask what he wants?” Dean proposes and Bobby looks at him sharply.
“He’s just a kid,” he snaps and Dean shakes his head.
“Sam’s nineteen years old and like it or not, I don’t think he’s quite been a kid since our dad died. He’s smart too so he’s gotta know something’s going on.”
“You’re going to take him, aren’t you?” Bobby asks, and he sounds sad but resolute.
“I’m going to ask if he wants to come along on the road with me,” Dean corrects. “I’d like to get to know my brother.”
000
Dean often finds himself surprised by just what kind of people are aware of the occult. A tattooist that specialises in protection symbols and charms named Arthur with a slight build and little spectacles is odd to say the least.
Sam had listened while Bobby had explained just what he feared was happening and all Sam had done was nod and ask how they were going to fix it, what he had to do. The tattoo is a start. Dean knows it won’t be that easy, it never is for Winchesters, but you can’t start a journey without putting that first boot down on the road.
Sam has what looks like a stylised axe with three slashes across it etched into the flesh over his right shoulder blade. He sits on a chair backwards, gripping the wooden slats with his hands, a white line appearing around his mouth as he clenches his jaw. There is the smell of blood and ink in the air and Dean sits opposite, keeping up a running commentary of childhood exploits and more adult conquests to keep Sam’s mind off the pain. He thinks he’s succeeding when the white line disappears around Sam’s mouth at one point and he sticks his fingers in his ears while Dean is extolling the charms of a double-jointed waitress named Cindy.
The little tutting noise that Arthur makes whenever Sam moves in the slightest is about to drive Dean completely insane when he hangs up his needles and announces he’s done. Sam, rather comically, twists his torso and tries to look over his shoulder but Arthur makes one final, mother of all tuts and slaps a square of gauze over the tattoo and tapes it down.
“You’ll still make noise, but it’ll be muted. Not so much a clamour,” Arthur says cryptically and Dean realises there’d been a little frown line between Arthur’s eyebrows from the moment he’d entered the house which is gone now. The frown had reminded him of when Jim had been forced into the same car as Dean and subjected to his music. Jim had often said, It all just sounds like noise when it’s that loud.
Sam is still looking a little unconvinced so Dean claps him on the shoulder and announces the tattoo is totally badass which makes Sam grin.
Arthur just rolls his eyes.
000
Dean finds the tin cans with string attached when he’s in Bobby’s back shed looking for an army duffle that the older man had assured him was there. He pulls them out, looking at the carefully drilled holes on either side of the top edges and the thick twine pulled through. Dean sets them down and steps up onto them, the makeshift string-handles only coming up to mid-thigh.
“He saw this nature documentary and how sometimes animals make themselves look bigger or taller to scare off predators,” Bobby says from the doorway, probably having come down to see if Dean got lost amongst the piles of junk. “He said if he was tall like his big brother then the monsters couldn’t get him.”
“Why didn’t you ever try and find me?” Dean asks, stepping down and his eye catching sight of the duffle. He stuffs the home-made stilts inside without really thinking about it.
“He talked about you and your daddy sometimes right after but he never once talked about the accident. I’m not sure if he even remembers much. I never had any idea you weren’t actually there.”
Dean nods absently, moving back towards the door. Bobby catches his arm before he passes. “A bunch of us went back to the site a few days after. Black dogs don’t leave much behind but there was no sign of your daddy, nothing at all.”
“What are you saying?” Dean asks.
“I’m just saying that you don’t have to give up on a miracle.”
“I didn’t think you were one much for faith,” Dean says with a tight smile.
“Yeah well, I’ve been known to be wrong,” Bobby dismisses. “On occasion.”
000
Dean watches Sam fold himself into the Impala’s passenger side and it’s a tight fit, Sam shoving around until his knees hit the dash hard and he curses. Dean just laughs as he leans down to trip the seat’s catch and slide the whole bench backwards, enough to make Sam look less like a grumpy pretzel.
“You sure you can reach the pedals like this?” Sam asks with a smirk.
“Watch it growth-hormone-boy,” he warns.
When he’s set inside the driver’s side, Bobby leans down into the window and rubs a hand over Sam’s head, Sam ducking and protesting. “Now, you boys back no later than a month,” he reminds them. “I don’t want to have to come out and drag your asses back here.”
“And miss your special brand of home cooking?” Dean asks, slapping a hand to his chest. “Never!”
“You’ve got this real odd notion that you’re funny, right?” Bobby deadpans and Sam snorts beside him.
When they leave, Sam twists around in his seat until the junkyard disappears from view. He turns back with a sly grin on his face.
“So when can I drive?” Sam asks.
“Apparently I’m not the only one in this family that thinks they’re funny,” Dean answers with a grin.
Author:
kellifer_fic Rating: PG
Category: SPN - Gen
Word Count: 3,468
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: In a world where John Winchester has given his life early for the hunt, his sons are raised separately. One by a holy man and one by a hunter.
Part One | Part Two
“I feel funny just leaving him here,” Dean says as he stands by his car, fingering the keys in his pocket. Jim has walked around to the passenger side and is waiting to be let in, but props his arms on the roof when Dean speaks.
“We’re not just leaving him, Dean,” Jim huffs with a shake of his head. “You know where he is now and that he’s safe. You can come back and visit whenever you want, Bobby said.”
“He’s my family,” Dean insists, almost feeling choked with a rising tide of the urge to protect, to take back what’s his. He often feels like Sammy and his father were ripped away from him and leaving Sam behind willingly is…
He’s not sure he knows how to do that.
“I can take the bus back if you want to stay a couple of days?” Jim offers. “Get to know him better and see how everything goes?”
“Yeah… maybe,” Dean allows. He knows it would be a big ask, but he also recognises in Bobby’s house a place where people come. He’s stayed in dozens of places like it. Hunters are fairly nomadic but there are a few that have a home base and are never averse to sharing it with the rolling stones intent on no moss gathering. He’s pretty sure the older hunter will agree to him staying.
“Okay, I’ll go and clear it with Bobby,” Jim volunteers and rolls his eyes when Dean makes his way around to the trunk and pulls out a duffle that’s packed with a couple of spare changes of clothes. “You’re like a boy scout,” he says but there’s warmth in his tone, wry affection for the little quirks Dean’s never been able to shake.
Always being prepared is one of them.
Dean’s given a room upstairs and towards the back of the house. There are a few gaps that the chill air can sneak through but there’s also a huge, old-fashioned bar heater so Dean thinks he can probably maintain a level of luke-warmness in the room.
He gets handed an armload of military blankets and sets about making up the double wrought-iron bed that’s nearly buried under stacks of musty-smelling sheets and jackets. There’s an ancient wooden wardrobe in one corner of the room and Dean slings his duffle into the bottom of it but doesn’t bother to unpack anything. He’s figuring on sticking around for three days, tops. Just long enough to maybe figure out how he’s going to crow-bar his little brother back into his life and if he even wants to.
The yen for family rises in him again and he tamps it down, deciding instead that he’s about due for dinner and hoping Bobby and Sam are on the same kind of stomach-oriented schedule. He finds Sam burning the crap out of some burgers on a small BBQ out the back, the patrol dogs nowhere to be seen and more than likely on duty.
“Man, we might as well eat the charcoal,” Dean teases and Sam snorts.
“These are for Harry,” he says, pointing tongs at the mixed-breed sitting by his feet. Finally the dog has a name and also, apparently, an iron stomach. “Bobby’s ruining steaks inside for us.”
“Wonderful,” Dean sighs but doesn’t move, instead watching Sam work and the smoke spiralling up into the night sky. It’s stopped snowing when he was squaring away his room but his breath still mists the air in front of his face.
“Can’t decide whether you want to keep me or not?” Sam asks, apropos of nothing and Dean startles a little, having been caught up in his own thoughts.
“Something like that,” he decides to admit, because maybe the years and distance have been too much. They could have nothing in common, or worse, decide they dislike each other intensely. He’s pretty sure the latter won’t prove to be true. Sam seems relaxed and easy to like, coming out the other side of his teenage years and probably past the angst-laden rebellious stage.
“Did you think this would ever happen?” Sam asks and Dean shrugs, accepting a beer out of a cooler by Sam’s knee. Sam gets one for himself and Dean has to bite back the urge to take it off him. It’s not his place, at least not yet and apparently Bobby is okay with it. It’s then though that Sam slides him a sly glance and after he’s taken a mouthful he says, “Don’t tell Bobby,” waggling the bottle.
“Not this exactly,” Dean says, answering Sam’s first question. “I mean, I get why all those people who have missing family never really give up hope. While there’s no body it’s never really… finished, you know?”
“I guess I do,” Sam nods, pulling the hood from his jacket over his hair when he sets his beer aside because the snow has started falling again.
Harry makes an impatient yip and Sam flicks the burgers into a bowl set to the side. They sound like stones hitting the bottom. Harry doesn’t seem to mind though, setting to as soon as Sam takes his hand away when he sets the bowl on the ground. Sam replaces Dean’s empty beer bottle with his own half-finished one and leads the way back inside the house.
“Hope you boys are hungry,” Bobby greets and slides a load of steaks onto a platter in the middle of the kitchen table. They’re black and clunk when they hit and Dean rolls his eyes.
He stays up well past midnight and isn’t even aware he’s been waiting for something to happen until he jerks upright when he hears a cry.
Dean’s halfway down the backstairs and almost to Sam’s door when he runs right into Bobby. The hunter is an immovable object in his path and when Dean sidesteps, Bobby moves with him. “It’s best you don’t,” he warns.
“Something’s happening!” Dean barks and makes to pass Bobby again but gets hauled into the hallway wall for his trouble, Bobby’s arm like an iron bar across his chest and holding him in place.
“Just trust me, it’s worse if you wake him,” Bobby grits. He moves his arm just enough to tilt his head sideways and expose his neck to the dim light cast through the window at the end by the moon. There’s a long scar that starts just under his ear and disappears beneath his shirt. “I learnt that the hard way.”
There’s another strangled moan and Dean wants nothing more than to bat Bobby aside and go to his brother. “He’s in pain.”
“Nothing he remembers,” Bobby says. “I know it sounds callous but he feels worse in the morning if he’s hurt anyone. Sometimes he’ll have an especially vivid dream and those he remembers but that’s rare as hens’ teeth.” Bobby drops his arm completely, maybe sensing that Dean’s now willing to listen to reason and everything in him slumps. “This only happens every few weeks or so. I was hoping you’d be gone before he had another episode.”
“Is that what you call it? An episode?” Dean asks, incredulous. There’s a fine tremor through the floor and the sound of something heavy scraping across in the next room, like a bed with the weight of a person on it. Suddenly Dean understands the lack of anything in the room. Why have trinkets and furniture that’s just going to get tossed about and wrecked?
“I put you in the back of the house because I thought you might sleep through. Maybe you can make Sam believe you did?”
There’s another groaning scrape and shudder and then everything stills. Dean steps back and away, rubbing a forearm across his eyes. “Yeah, sure. I can do that,” he agrees.
Deciding whether you want to keep me?
Sam had said it like it was a joke, some gentle long-lost ribbing. The tightness in his eyes and mouth when he’d found out Dean was staying overnight indicated what he’d been truly worried about. That Dean would run for the hills.
Trouble is, he really wants to.
It seems in the Singer household, there’s no such thing as medium as Dean surveys the pile of crispy bacon set down in front of him. He sets to though with gusto, never one to turn down a meal someone else has made.
Sam stumbles into the kitchen when he’s nearly done, hitching at pyjama pants that are too big in the waist and not nearly long enough in the leg. He looks like three kinds of hell and is walking like an old man, stooped and shuffling. “I forgot to ask how you slept in that bed?” Bobby asks like it’s an after thought. Dean sees Sam jerk a little before pouring a large bowl of cereal and then just staring at it unhappily.
“There’s a couple of springs that were intent on lodging themselves in my spine but I did okay,” Dean replies without missing a beat. Sam’s hand walks the table and only halts when it finds Dean’s coffee cup. Dean gives him a go on wave and Sam grins sheepishly as he reels it back towards himself, all the tension leaking out of him as he takes a swallow.
“Dean, I got an old buddy who’s given me the heads up on a possession a town over. Not more than half an hour’s drive. He’s trapped the son of a bitch but could never recite Latin worth a damn. Can you stay here with Sam while I’m gone?”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Sam protests and Bobby claps him one upside the head.
After Dean nods his assent, Bobby asks, “Jim says you know your way around a car?”
“I do at that,” Dean agrees, smirking.
“I have some cars that won’t turn over. Mind having a look-see?”
Dean turns a little in his seat. Out the kitchen window, the landscape is mostly obscured by a tower of wrecks. “I think they’re beyond help,” Dean says.
“The fixables are out the side, wiseass,” Bobby says. “Sam can show you where everything is.”
“I can help,” Sam offers and Dean looks over at him and has to grab onto the table for a moment. Sam is looking at him with large eager eyes and Dean finally sees it, the little boy that would follow him around a room as he laid salt lines. Can I Dean, he’d always press and Dean would say, No, it’s too important. You’ll just mess it up.
Dean has his head and half his torso stuck under the hood of the one and only piece of crap Bobby has that might be salvageable when he hears the dogs start howling. He yanks his head free and looks up into the noon-day sun. Sam is nowhere to be seen, having disappeared inside the house to retrieve drinks, a beer for Dean and a soda for himself, Dean had insisted.
He can’t see the dogs but the howling goes up in pitch and urgency and Dean makes sure he has a weapon in each hand, a wrench in one and a screwdriver in the other when he finally makes it around the front.
Sam is standing at Bobby’s chain-link fence, the dogs milling about in a rough semi-circle a few feet behind him. Dean at first thinks maybe he’s just giving directions to a passer-by, but there’s something off about the woman in the ragged red dress standing on the other side. It takes Dean a moment to realise that the weak winter sunlight is slanting through her rather than being blocked.
“Sam?” Dean moves a little closer and can see from Sam’s angle, the woman actually looks solid.
“Hey, Gina here is lost,” Sam says, turning to frown vaguely at the dogs. “Would you guys quit that? You’ll scare the nice lady.” Sam’s voice has a strange hollow-sound to it, like he’s talking through a tunnel. His eyes are glazed and unfocused.
“Sam, step away,” Dean instructs, keeping his eyes locked on the woman. Sam’s gaze shifts to Dean but slowly, like it’s a struggle and he doesn’t see the woman flicker-snap like an old piece of film.
Sam stumbles a little when Dean reaches out and wraps a hand around his elbow, jerking Sam sideways and behind him. Dean sees there’s a narrow trench dug just inside the fence line and it’s filled with white powder. Dean leans down and scoops a little into his hand, mindful not to break the line.
The woman moves backwards into the shadows of the overgrown yard that’s nestled right up to Bobby’s property, a jerky shudder-step that has her head rolling on her neck in an unnatural way. Dean closes his fist on his palm-full of salt, waiting for a charge at the boundary that doesn’t come. The dogs all stop their howling at once and dart off again, resuming their posts.
“Don’t you know a spirit when you see one?” Dean demands, wondering just how a hunter’s boy could mistake the dead for the living.
Sam kind of blinks and then looks around, a hand coming up to rub over his head. “Hey,” he says slowly. “I could’ve sworn I was just in the kitchen.”
Bobby returns later that evening to find Dean sitting on the porch like an angry father, a chair tipped halfway back and a shotgun full of rock salt across his knee. “What happened?” he asks, sounding more resigned than worried.
“Spirits come up on your place often?” Dean asks, raising an eyebrow. He has half a mind to give Bobby a chestful of salt for leaving that little titbit out if he’d known it was a possibility.
“Only in the last month or so,” Bobby allows, eyeing the shotgun like maybe he suspects the train of Dean’s thoughts. “I got some powerful wards set up and I’m thinking they’re getting curious.”
“Cut the crap,” Dean scoffs, standing and setting the shotgun aside. “We both know what’s attracting ‘em.”
“I don’t know anything for sure,” Bobby objects, but his eyes cut away at the last moment and Dean knows he doesn’t believe his own words.
“Spirits who aren’t tied to the place they die head for whatever’s burning bright, like moths. Sam might not know it but he’s projecting something and the wrong kinds of folk are getting wind of it.”
“You been reading my books?”
“Some,” Dean says, nodding slightly. “I saw a couple of designs meant to dampen down the freaky vibe. You think maybe a tattoo would work?”
“Maybe,” Bobby says, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. “I’m just not sure what something like that will do to him. No matter what I keep telling myself, he’s not normal by any stretch of the imagination.”
“How about we ask what he wants?” Dean proposes and Bobby looks at him sharply.
“He’s just a kid,” he snaps and Dean shakes his head.
“Sam’s nineteen years old and like it or not, I don’t think he’s quite been a kid since our dad died. He’s smart too so he’s gotta know something’s going on.”
“You’re going to take him, aren’t you?” Bobby asks, and he sounds sad but resolute.
“I’m going to ask if he wants to come along on the road with me,” Dean corrects. “I’d like to get to know my brother.”
Dean often finds himself surprised by just what kind of people are aware of the occult. A tattooist that specialises in protection symbols and charms named Arthur with a slight build and little spectacles is odd to say the least.
Sam had listened while Bobby had explained just what he feared was happening and all Sam had done was nod and ask how they were going to fix it, what he had to do. The tattoo is a start. Dean knows it won’t be that easy, it never is for Winchesters, but you can’t start a journey without putting that first boot down on the road.
Sam has what looks like a stylised axe with three slashes across it etched into the flesh over his right shoulder blade. He sits on a chair backwards, gripping the wooden slats with his hands, a white line appearing around his mouth as he clenches his jaw. There is the smell of blood and ink in the air and Dean sits opposite, keeping up a running commentary of childhood exploits and more adult conquests to keep Sam’s mind off the pain. He thinks he’s succeeding when the white line disappears around Sam’s mouth at one point and he sticks his fingers in his ears while Dean is extolling the charms of a double-jointed waitress named Cindy.
The little tutting noise that Arthur makes whenever Sam moves in the slightest is about to drive Dean completely insane when he hangs up his needles and announces he’s done. Sam, rather comically, twists his torso and tries to look over his shoulder but Arthur makes one final, mother of all tuts and slaps a square of gauze over the tattoo and tapes it down.
“You’ll still make noise, but it’ll be muted. Not so much a clamour,” Arthur says cryptically and Dean realises there’d been a little frown line between Arthur’s eyebrows from the moment he’d entered the house which is gone now. The frown had reminded him of when Jim had been forced into the same car as Dean and subjected to his music. Jim had often said, It all just sounds like noise when it’s that loud.
Sam is still looking a little unconvinced so Dean claps him on the shoulder and announces the tattoo is totally badass which makes Sam grin.
Arthur just rolls his eyes.
Dean finds the tin cans with string attached when he’s in Bobby’s back shed looking for an army duffle that the older man had assured him was there. He pulls them out, looking at the carefully drilled holes on either side of the top edges and the thick twine pulled through. Dean sets them down and steps up onto them, the makeshift string-handles only coming up to mid-thigh.
“He saw this nature documentary and how sometimes animals make themselves look bigger or taller to scare off predators,” Bobby says from the doorway, probably having come down to see if Dean got lost amongst the piles of junk. “He said if he was tall like his big brother then the monsters couldn’t get him.”
“Why didn’t you ever try and find me?” Dean asks, stepping down and his eye catching sight of the duffle. He stuffs the home-made stilts inside without really thinking about it.
“He talked about you and your daddy sometimes right after but he never once talked about the accident. I’m not sure if he even remembers much. I never had any idea you weren’t actually there.”
Dean nods absently, moving back towards the door. Bobby catches his arm before he passes. “A bunch of us went back to the site a few days after. Black dogs don’t leave much behind but there was no sign of your daddy, nothing at all.”
“What are you saying?” Dean asks.
“I’m just saying that you don’t have to give up on a miracle.”
“I didn’t think you were one much for faith,” Dean says with a tight smile.
“Yeah well, I’ve been known to be wrong,” Bobby dismisses. “On occasion.”
Dean watches Sam fold himself into the Impala’s passenger side and it’s a tight fit, Sam shoving around until his knees hit the dash hard and he curses. Dean just laughs as he leans down to trip the seat’s catch and slide the whole bench backwards, enough to make Sam look less like a grumpy pretzel.
“You sure you can reach the pedals like this?” Sam asks with a smirk.
“Watch it growth-hormone-boy,” he warns.
When he’s set inside the driver’s side, Bobby leans down into the window and rubs a hand over Sam’s head, Sam ducking and protesting. “Now, you boys back no later than a month,” he reminds them. “I don’t want to have to come out and drag your asses back here.”
“And miss your special brand of home cooking?” Dean asks, slapping a hand to his chest. “Never!”
“You’ve got this real odd notion that you’re funny, right?” Bobby deadpans and Sam snorts beside him.
When they leave, Sam twists around in his seat until the junkyard disappears from view. He turns back with a sly grin on his face.
“So when can I drive?” Sam asks.
“Apparently I’m not the only one in this family that thinks they’re funny,” Dean answers with a grin.
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Nice idea for a story too. Are you thinking about more of this? Maybe hunting for John together?
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