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Title: Cast A Long Shadow
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Rating: PG (Language)
Category: SPN, Gen
Word Count: 3,699
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: You cast a long shadow, as you ride off into the sunset.
“Fuck me!”
Sam almost chokes the swallow of beer he’s just taken and then looks at Dean. “Wow, you really are hard up if that’s the line you’re going to use.”
Dean makes an impatient face and knocks a fist against Sam’s shoulder, half spinning him in his chair. “No!” he snaps. “Just look and tell me that isn’t who I think it is.”
Sam dutifully squints through the gloom of the Roadhouse, following the line of Dean’s pointing finger. He’s about ready to disavow whatever celebrity Dean thinks he’s spotted because he’s a bandit for false recognition when his eyes land on the dark haired girl leaning across the bar with a hand out to Ash who is rummaging for something and finally coming up with one of those case manila folders Jo puts together. As he watches, the girl clicks her fingers impatiently and tilts her head just enough for Sam to really see, without a doubt, who it is.
“Sarah?”
000
Dean, for once in his life, is actually discreet about making himself scarce. Sarah is sitting across the table from Sam and looking at him like he imagines he’s looking at her. She’s thinner, the wings of her cheekbones sharp under her skin and her upper arms lightly muscled where she used to be soft. She’s got a dark tank top on, long cargo pants and her hair is pulled back into a tight plait and Sam can’t help himself.
“You look like Laura Croft.”
Sarah snorts and rolls her eyes and suddenly it is just Sarah. “Shut up.”
“Seriously, what are you doing here?” Sam demands, and he doesn’t mean to sound as scandalized as he does, but again, he can’t help it. Seeing Sarah in his world, this gritty, dirty place with sawdust on the floor to soak up blood is making his head hurt. It’s about as out of place as Dean coming home with a My Little Pony tattoo.
“Nice to see you too, Sam,” Sarah says and something in her voice tells Sam that she is genuinely disappointed that he isn’t more pleased to see her which… he’s not sure how to explain that he doesn’t want to see himself in this place, let alone someone like Sarah. She might have been involved in a case, but she was still untouched by it.
“No, seriously,” Sam repeats and goddamit, he might as well be fluttering a hand over his chest. Sarah’s eyes narrow and go hard and Sam knows that she’s just waiting for the, what’s a nice girl like you line that’s supposed to come next. Sam resists, but only just. He also resists the very real compulsion to just throw her over his shoulder and driver her back to her mansion and her art gallery and tie her to a fancy antique chair until she agrees to stay home where she belongs.
She must see all this buzz through his mind because she slouches down in her chair, juts her chin and then swallows the finger of whiskey she’s been toying with ever since she sat down. The change in position lets him see the blade tucked into a holster under her arm. It’s beautifully intentional and makes him mad as hell.
“This isn’t just something you pick up because you’re bored with your perfect little life,” Sam hisses and he’s being cruel, he knows he is. He reacts badly when he’s thrown off balance. Always has.
Sarah slams a hand down on the table, making the glasses jump. Dean had abandoned his beer in his haste to get the hell away from whatever was going to happen and Sam catches sight of his brother now out of the corner of his eye, over by the pool tables. Dean is standing with his hip leaning against the table and his hands holding his cue loosely. He’s shaking his head a little and Sam knows that expression.
So hopeless with the ladies, Sammy
Sam scowls and angles himself so he can’t see Dean anymore.
“I’m not… for chrissakes, Sam,” Sarah spits back, throwing her arms out wide. “Do you think this is how I wanted everything to turn out?”
So it’s something they agree on, because Sam had a very definite idea about how things were supposed to go. He’d kept Sarah in the back of his mind like a warm little place he could retreat to. She would date other guys, sure, but she would keep this candle burning for him in the window and when he and Dean were finally done, he would go back and sweep her off her feet. They’d have two point three kids and a dog and a yard and he and Dean would barbecue on a Saturday with the millions of kids Dean was likely to have as soon as he stayed still for more than three seconds.
Sam had it all mapped out and thinking about it now, he realized how ludicrous it all was.
It had been eighteen months and Sarah had called a couple of times and he’d meant to but as the road got longer and the hunts got harder, Sam hadn’t wanted to risk tainting his perfect little fantasy with reality. He was pretty sure he was never going to get that apple pie life that he’d been fascinated with since he was eight years old. He was starting to think that he was in fact going to die early, most likely bloody and alone, more hopefully with Dean at his side.
Sam knew for a fact that unless a hunter started late in life, then he was unlikely to see fifty, sometimes forty and every now and again thirty.
“I tried to tell you when I called, talk to you but you didn’t… I don’t think you really heard me.”
Sam blinks, yanked out of his own mulish train of thought. “What do you mean?” Sam asks because he’s honestly puzzled. The phone calls had been stilted but he didn’t remember Sarah trying to tell him anything really important. He supposed he could have missed it. The first time she called he and Dean had just gotten back from a two day bash through thick forest after a Hag and the second time Dean had just finished stitching his thigh closed.
He’d been a little distracted.
He’d let the third phone call go to voicemail because he’d been hip-deep in the grave of a firefighter who now liked to start blazes and the message had just been Sarah kind of sighing and hanging up and he hadn’t realized that it had been Sarah giving up.
“What do you think happens when you and your brother leave?” Sarah asks, looking at him with that steady gaze that had caught him in the first place. Caught and pinned him as securely as a moth to a board. “You think people just go back to their lives?”
“Yes?” Sam says because he’s never really thought about it. Sure he knew there might be some nightmares but most people recovered. In the light of day and the passing of time they started to rationalize what they saw. Maybe even start thinking that they’d somehow been conned. Sam knows that for a fact when Dean tried to call in a favor with a mechanic a few states over and a few months previous and had been chased from the guy’s shop with a couple of wrenches flying at his head. There were people that stayed grateful, but they weren’t especially the rule.
“You guys swan off into the sunset but you leave behind people and mess. I suddenly felt powerless because I’d thought I was pretty tough and I didn’t realize how much I was kidding myself. There were things out there I couldn’t understand let alone control. I needed to get it back… get that control back.”
“This is the only way you could do it?” Sam asks but it’s not really a question he needs an answer to. Most hunters got into it because they lost someone or saw something they just couldn’t turn their back on. Sam and Dean were in the minority of having been raised hunters and even this upbringing was brought on by loss.
By exposure.
He can understand.
Doesn’t mean he has to like it.
“Sarah, it’s dangerous,” Sam says and Sarah just looks at him.
“You’re kidding me right? You’re seriously going to give me the no place for you speech are you? I expected more from you, Sam.” She gets up then and walks away from him, to the other side of the bar where there’s a grizzled older looking woman who merely lifts her chin for a second when Sarah slides onto the stool beside her but doesn’t comment otherwise.
A hand claps down on his shoulder and Sam flicks a glance up to his brother who is still looking at Sarah, or her back because she’s most decidedly turned it on them. “Smooth Sammy.”
“She needs someone to knock some sense into her,” Sam says and smacks Dean’s hand off him. “I thought you of all people would understand that after you tried to run Jo right on back here when she followed us.”
“That was different,” Dean says, dropping back into the chair Sarah had abandoned and stealing Sam’s beer. “I was scared of her mom castrating me.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Sam denies, waving a dismissive hand and Dean just shrugs.
“Hell, there was bound to be one,” Dean says cryptically and before Sam can ask him just what exactly he means, Dean is up again and heading to the bathroom.
000
It’s another two months before they cross paths with Sarah again.
She smiles grimly when she spots them from her perch up a tree. The very same tree he and Dean had to scramble up when the razorback decided they were encroaching on its territory while looking for the angry spirit of a hitchhiker and his bones, buried out in the middle of nowhere by time and the elements after being left for dead.
“Tell me you got something other than salt,” Sarah says. She’s lighter so up higher and Sam envies the easy way she’s perching. Sitting straddled on a tree branch is seriously mashing his manhood not to mention the splinters Sam is pretty sure are working their way through his ass and into his spine.
“Just seems to piss it off,” Dean agrees, waggling his shotgun which is loaded with nothing but. Sam, for his part, lost his dagger somewhere in the undergrowth after he’d pegged it at the giant wild pig and it had pinged off one tusk. “Or, y’know, renew its bloodlust.”
“You here for Peter Simmins?” Sarah asks absently. She’s searching through a backpack she’s got and isn’t really paying attention to them.
“Yeah, you too?” Dean asks and Sam just looks from Dean and back to Sarah, wondering how it is that these two people can just chat like they accidentally bumped into each other while getting coffee or something.
“Spent half the night traipsing around here. I think he might’ve been dragged and scattered by wolves or something.”
“I was thinking that might be-”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt you two chatting or anything,” Sam snaps and Sarah and Dean both turn their gazes on him, looking at him like he’s the demented one. “We’ve got a pissed off pig below and a woman’s stitch n’ bitch up here. Am I the only one that thinks this is just too freaky?”
“We’re talking shop,” Dean defends, and he actually sounds putout. He kind of shakes his head then and turns back to Sarah, basically dismissing Sam. “You been up here long?”
“Only a few minutes. I swear, we must have passed each other a bunch of times and just not realized.” Sarah chuckles, low and throaty and Sam clutches his hands hard on the branch beneath him. The razorback charges the tree below and the whole thing actually vibrates and Sarah renews her dig through her backpack in earnest. “I think she must be a momma to be so pissed.”
“I think being a pissed off woman is catching around here,” Dean says, looking pointedly at Sam and Sarah laughs this time while still elbow-deep in her bag.
“Look, maybe I can-” Sam starts to say, because really he’s willing to just throw himself down on top of the pig’s tusks and be done with it at this point. It’d probably less painful than watching his brother flirt with his ex… whatever, when Sarah lets out a “Ha!” of triumph and pulls a canister free of her bag.
“Why is it what you need is always at the very bottom?” she asks, waggling it triumphantly and Sam finally sees it’s a can of hairspray.
“I don’t think this is really the time to do your hair,” Sam says and boy, does he know how bitchy he sounds, but Dean is just grinning.
“Awesome, can I?” Dean asks and Sam turns wide eyes back on his brother as Sarah shrugs and tosses over the can. Dean tucks it under his armpit and digs through his pockets as best he can, coming up with his lighter. Sam feels like a complete idiot when he realizes what they’re planning. “I saw this in that Girls Just Want To Have Fun movie,” he adds with a little eyebrow waggle.
“Me too!” Sarah exclaims and if they were any closer to each other, Sam swears they would’ve high-fived.
Dean scoots along the branch he’s on, being the lowest of all three of them. He hooks his knees over it and flips so he’s dangling upside down. The razorback goes crazy because he’s just out of reach but when Dean uncaps the hairspray, blasts a jet and flicks his lighter so it’s a stream of flame, it lets out a high-pitched squeal and hightails it into the underbrush. Dean lets out a yell of triumph and swings until he can flip off the branch and land on his feet.
Sarah is already climbing down past Sam when he feels her flick him on the forehead. “Ow, what the hell?” he complains, lifting a hand to rub at the spot.
“Stop being such an asshole,” Sarah snaps, and actually does high five Dean when she gets down.
Sam doesn’t smack his head repeatedly on the trunk of the tree.
Just.
000
Of course, they’re staying in the same motel.
“Can’t she afford something better?” Sam snits and Dean turns on him, rubbing a hand through his hair.
“Just get over whatever bug is up your butt about this, okay?” Dean says, flailing his hands in a helpless gesture.
“I’m… worried about her, okay?” Sam admits, looking at his shoes. “And she wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to stay…”
“Your fantasy settle-down girl?” Dean hazards and Sam looks at him sharply. Dean holds up his hands, palms out. “Hey, I get it, I do. I had one of those and look how badly that went.” Dean is talking about Cassie, Sam is pretty sure, but he doesn’t see how the two are the same.
“Believe me, I would’ve rathered Sarah went running for the hills when she found out,” Sam says and Dean raises an eyebrow.
“Really? I don’t think that’s true.”
“What do you think is going to happen here, Dean?” Sam asks in exasperation. “Me and Sarah will get back together and we’ll form this happy little hunting family, crossing the countryside and…” Sam blinks when Dean’s eyes dart away. “Oh my god, you do think that!” Sam accuses.
“I’m saying it wouldn’t be terrible,” Dean says, shoulders hunched up around his ears in defense.
“It probably doesn’t help that she hates me at the moment,” Sam points out.
“Nah, you’re just pissing her off,” Dean denies with a grin. “Good thing is, girls love a challenge.”
000
Sarah walks into the diner they’re in the next morning and slides into the booth next to Dean when he makes room for her. She turns so all Sam can see is her profile and smiles sunnily at Dean. “I was going to ask who made your salt shells because my supplier’s retiring,” she says.
“This guy called Nicholas is pretty good in Tennessee,” Dean says. “Bit of a freaky survivalist but he’s off the radar so to speak and cool once you get past all the bullshit.”
“Excuse me,” Sam grumbles and slides out of the booth, heading for the bathroom. He doesn’t, doesn’t scream when he comes out of the stall and finds Sarah standing in the middle of the men’s room, hands on her hips and looking stormy.
“C’mon, out with it,” Sarah says, a note of demand in her voice.
“Out with what?” Sam asks, turning his back while he washes his hands. He can feel Sarah staring daggers into his shoulder blades the entire time.
“How I’m not cut out for this. How I don’t belong here. How I’m just a little girl who can’t take care of herself. How…” Sarah casts about for a second, hands uncurling and curling back into fists.
“You were supposed to stay the same,” Sam says in a quiet voice and Sarah peters out and then just looks at him.
“What?”
“You were supposed to stay safe,” Sam clarifies. Swallowing hard. “I mean, I hate that we seem so transitory to you but it’s the only way to do this job. Me and Dean. We save a kid from a ghoul and then we leave and we have no power over what happens next, not even if he gets hit by a car crossing the street only three days later.”
It had happened. Timothy Chambers had been slated to die at the hands of a monster and instead with a little intervention, managed to survive those extra days just to be killed by a drunk driver. Sam had cut the story from the paper before Dean could see it and Dean had bitched at him for snipping coupons for tampons and ruining his paper but it had been worth it.
“When we leave, everyone’s safe and that’s important. If I start thinking about what we leave behind sometimes I’ll just… I can’t…” Sam chokes on the words. Most people think Dean is cavalier but Sam knows he disconnects because he has to. He’s tried to force connections in the past but they never worked out. He was scarred early. Sam spent the first twelve months at Stanford unlearning resistance to friendships. He turned down numerous attempts to get to know him until he met a girl that wouldn’t take no for an answer, that actually forced her way through his boundaries with grim determination and a flick of her ponytail.
Sarah is suddenly in his space, small arms curling around his neck and she’s hugging him tightly. Sam cups her back with his hands, because he’s afraid if he hugs her as tightly as he wants to, he’ll crush the life right out of her. Jess, after his initial period of downright flinching, made him a touch junkie and he’d been starving for it ever since. There was brief respite every now and again but never enough.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, stepping back and away. “I’m the asshole, aren’t I?”
Sam rubs an arm over his face and then shakes his head. “Nah. I wouldn’t say that.”
000
Dean looks smug when they get back to the motel room and then confused when he watches Sam packing. “We going somewhere?”
“There’s some phantom lights in Minnesota I told Bobby we’d check out. I told you this morning. Are you losing your memory in your old age?”
“No, it’s just… I thought with Sarah…” Dean flicks a hand towards the door and then back to Sam, looking more puzzled.
“I gave her the pixie infestation in Dallas. I know how much you love pixies.”
“Wait. I thought you two sorted out… stuff. Y’know. Stuff.”
“We’re going to keep in touch,” Sam says, intentionally ignoring what Dean is getting at. It’s partly to watch his brother get more and more flustered, but mostly because he’s not really sure what happened either. He knows that nothing was ever going to happen and Sarah knew it. It seemed the only person who didn’t was Dean and…
Oh.
Sam sees the plain disappointment on Dean’s face and finally gets what all this was about, why Dean was so ready to accept Sarah into the life. Despite Sam’s assurances, he knows Dean is still waiting for the day when he’ll leave, announce he’s getting back to his real life with school and a house in the suburbs and a wife. With something to tie him to hunting, the Winchester road show would keep on trucking.
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not going anywhere?” Sam says, trying not to sound as exasperated as he feels because honestly, he has left Dean, probably three times too many for Dean to ever really believe him. Four times if he counts the unintentional body jacking and the fact that he had little choice in the matter with Meg in the driver’s seat.
“I thought we were going to Minnesota?” Dean comments and now apparently it’s his turn to play dumb. He turns to his own pile of clothes and duffle and starts rolling his second-best pair of jeans with his back a tense line, Dean speak for danger, move away from this topic of conversation.
Sam just watches Dean for a few moments until Dean looks over his shoulder with his eyebrows drawn down in consternation. “What?”
“You and me. That’s it, alright?” Sam presses.
“I don’t know why you think I’d have a problem with girl hunters considering I’m traveling with one,” Dean says with an exaggerated eye roll and Sam has to laugh. It’s just easier to hope that Dean gets what he’s saying, that something’s getting through that thick skull his big brother has.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam sighs.
Author:
kellifer_ficRating: PG (Language)
Category: SPN, Gen
Word Count: 3,699
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no offense, no money.
Summary: You cast a long shadow, as you ride off into the sunset.
“Fuck me!”
Sam almost chokes the swallow of beer he’s just taken and then looks at Dean. “Wow, you really are hard up if that’s the line you’re going to use.”
Dean makes an impatient face and knocks a fist against Sam’s shoulder, half spinning him in his chair. “No!” he snaps. “Just look and tell me that isn’t who I think it is.”
Sam dutifully squints through the gloom of the Roadhouse, following the line of Dean’s pointing finger. He’s about ready to disavow whatever celebrity Dean thinks he’s spotted because he’s a bandit for false recognition when his eyes land on the dark haired girl leaning across the bar with a hand out to Ash who is rummaging for something and finally coming up with one of those case manila folders Jo puts together. As he watches, the girl clicks her fingers impatiently and tilts her head just enough for Sam to really see, without a doubt, who it is.
“Sarah?”
Dean, for once in his life, is actually discreet about making himself scarce. Sarah is sitting across the table from Sam and looking at him like he imagines he’s looking at her. She’s thinner, the wings of her cheekbones sharp under her skin and her upper arms lightly muscled where she used to be soft. She’s got a dark tank top on, long cargo pants and her hair is pulled back into a tight plait and Sam can’t help himself.
“You look like Laura Croft.”
Sarah snorts and rolls her eyes and suddenly it is just Sarah. “Shut up.”
“Seriously, what are you doing here?” Sam demands, and he doesn’t mean to sound as scandalized as he does, but again, he can’t help it. Seeing Sarah in his world, this gritty, dirty place with sawdust on the floor to soak up blood is making his head hurt. It’s about as out of place as Dean coming home with a My Little Pony tattoo.
“Nice to see you too, Sam,” Sarah says and something in her voice tells Sam that she is genuinely disappointed that he isn’t more pleased to see her which… he’s not sure how to explain that he doesn’t want to see himself in this place, let alone someone like Sarah. She might have been involved in a case, but she was still untouched by it.
“No, seriously,” Sam repeats and goddamit, he might as well be fluttering a hand over his chest. Sarah’s eyes narrow and go hard and Sam knows that she’s just waiting for the, what’s a nice girl like you line that’s supposed to come next. Sam resists, but only just. He also resists the very real compulsion to just throw her over his shoulder and driver her back to her mansion and her art gallery and tie her to a fancy antique chair until she agrees to stay home where she belongs.
She must see all this buzz through his mind because she slouches down in her chair, juts her chin and then swallows the finger of whiskey she’s been toying with ever since she sat down. The change in position lets him see the blade tucked into a holster under her arm. It’s beautifully intentional and makes him mad as hell.
“This isn’t just something you pick up because you’re bored with your perfect little life,” Sam hisses and he’s being cruel, he knows he is. He reacts badly when he’s thrown off balance. Always has.
Sarah slams a hand down on the table, making the glasses jump. Dean had abandoned his beer in his haste to get the hell away from whatever was going to happen and Sam catches sight of his brother now out of the corner of his eye, over by the pool tables. Dean is standing with his hip leaning against the table and his hands holding his cue loosely. He’s shaking his head a little and Sam knows that expression.
So hopeless with the ladies, Sammy
Sam scowls and angles himself so he can’t see Dean anymore.
“I’m not… for chrissakes, Sam,” Sarah spits back, throwing her arms out wide. “Do you think this is how I wanted everything to turn out?”
So it’s something they agree on, because Sam had a very definite idea about how things were supposed to go. He’d kept Sarah in the back of his mind like a warm little place he could retreat to. She would date other guys, sure, but she would keep this candle burning for him in the window and when he and Dean were finally done, he would go back and sweep her off her feet. They’d have two point three kids and a dog and a yard and he and Dean would barbecue on a Saturday with the millions of kids Dean was likely to have as soon as he stayed still for more than three seconds.
Sam had it all mapped out and thinking about it now, he realized how ludicrous it all was.
It had been eighteen months and Sarah had called a couple of times and he’d meant to but as the road got longer and the hunts got harder, Sam hadn’t wanted to risk tainting his perfect little fantasy with reality. He was pretty sure he was never going to get that apple pie life that he’d been fascinated with since he was eight years old. He was starting to think that he was in fact going to die early, most likely bloody and alone, more hopefully with Dean at his side.
Sam knew for a fact that unless a hunter started late in life, then he was unlikely to see fifty, sometimes forty and every now and again thirty.
“I tried to tell you when I called, talk to you but you didn’t… I don’t think you really heard me.”
Sam blinks, yanked out of his own mulish train of thought. “What do you mean?” Sam asks because he’s honestly puzzled. The phone calls had been stilted but he didn’t remember Sarah trying to tell him anything really important. He supposed he could have missed it. The first time she called he and Dean had just gotten back from a two day bash through thick forest after a Hag and the second time Dean had just finished stitching his thigh closed.
He’d been a little distracted.
He’d let the third phone call go to voicemail because he’d been hip-deep in the grave of a firefighter who now liked to start blazes and the message had just been Sarah kind of sighing and hanging up and he hadn’t realized that it had been Sarah giving up.
“What do you think happens when you and your brother leave?” Sarah asks, looking at him with that steady gaze that had caught him in the first place. Caught and pinned him as securely as a moth to a board. “You think people just go back to their lives?”
“Yes?” Sam says because he’s never really thought about it. Sure he knew there might be some nightmares but most people recovered. In the light of day and the passing of time they started to rationalize what they saw. Maybe even start thinking that they’d somehow been conned. Sam knows that for a fact when Dean tried to call in a favor with a mechanic a few states over and a few months previous and had been chased from the guy’s shop with a couple of wrenches flying at his head. There were people that stayed grateful, but they weren’t especially the rule.
“You guys swan off into the sunset but you leave behind people and mess. I suddenly felt powerless because I’d thought I was pretty tough and I didn’t realize how much I was kidding myself. There were things out there I couldn’t understand let alone control. I needed to get it back… get that control back.”
“This is the only way you could do it?” Sam asks but it’s not really a question he needs an answer to. Most hunters got into it because they lost someone or saw something they just couldn’t turn their back on. Sam and Dean were in the minority of having been raised hunters and even this upbringing was brought on by loss.
By exposure.
He can understand.
Doesn’t mean he has to like it.
“Sarah, it’s dangerous,” Sam says and Sarah just looks at him.
“You’re kidding me right? You’re seriously going to give me the no place for you speech are you? I expected more from you, Sam.” She gets up then and walks away from him, to the other side of the bar where there’s a grizzled older looking woman who merely lifts her chin for a second when Sarah slides onto the stool beside her but doesn’t comment otherwise.
A hand claps down on his shoulder and Sam flicks a glance up to his brother who is still looking at Sarah, or her back because she’s most decidedly turned it on them. “Smooth Sammy.”
“She needs someone to knock some sense into her,” Sam says and smacks Dean’s hand off him. “I thought you of all people would understand that after you tried to run Jo right on back here when she followed us.”
“That was different,” Dean says, dropping back into the chair Sarah had abandoned and stealing Sam’s beer. “I was scared of her mom castrating me.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Sam denies, waving a dismissive hand and Dean just shrugs.
“Hell, there was bound to be one,” Dean says cryptically and before Sam can ask him just what exactly he means, Dean is up again and heading to the bathroom.
It’s another two months before they cross paths with Sarah again.
She smiles grimly when she spots them from her perch up a tree. The very same tree he and Dean had to scramble up when the razorback decided they were encroaching on its territory while looking for the angry spirit of a hitchhiker and his bones, buried out in the middle of nowhere by time and the elements after being left for dead.
“Tell me you got something other than salt,” Sarah says. She’s lighter so up higher and Sam envies the easy way she’s perching. Sitting straddled on a tree branch is seriously mashing his manhood not to mention the splinters Sam is pretty sure are working their way through his ass and into his spine.
“Just seems to piss it off,” Dean agrees, waggling his shotgun which is loaded with nothing but. Sam, for his part, lost his dagger somewhere in the undergrowth after he’d pegged it at the giant wild pig and it had pinged off one tusk. “Or, y’know, renew its bloodlust.”
“You here for Peter Simmins?” Sarah asks absently. She’s searching through a backpack she’s got and isn’t really paying attention to them.
“Yeah, you too?” Dean asks and Sam just looks from Dean and back to Sarah, wondering how it is that these two people can just chat like they accidentally bumped into each other while getting coffee or something.
“Spent half the night traipsing around here. I think he might’ve been dragged and scattered by wolves or something.”
“I was thinking that might be-”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt you two chatting or anything,” Sam snaps and Sarah and Dean both turn their gazes on him, looking at him like he’s the demented one. “We’ve got a pissed off pig below and a woman’s stitch n’ bitch up here. Am I the only one that thinks this is just too freaky?”
“We’re talking shop,” Dean defends, and he actually sounds putout. He kind of shakes his head then and turns back to Sarah, basically dismissing Sam. “You been up here long?”
“Only a few minutes. I swear, we must have passed each other a bunch of times and just not realized.” Sarah chuckles, low and throaty and Sam clutches his hands hard on the branch beneath him. The razorback charges the tree below and the whole thing actually vibrates and Sarah renews her dig through her backpack in earnest. “I think she must be a momma to be so pissed.”
“I think being a pissed off woman is catching around here,” Dean says, looking pointedly at Sam and Sarah laughs this time while still elbow-deep in her bag.
“Look, maybe I can-” Sam starts to say, because really he’s willing to just throw himself down on top of the pig’s tusks and be done with it at this point. It’d probably less painful than watching his brother flirt with his ex… whatever, when Sarah lets out a “Ha!” of triumph and pulls a canister free of her bag.
“Why is it what you need is always at the very bottom?” she asks, waggling it triumphantly and Sam finally sees it’s a can of hairspray.
“I don’t think this is really the time to do your hair,” Sam says and boy, does he know how bitchy he sounds, but Dean is just grinning.
“Awesome, can I?” Dean asks and Sam turns wide eyes back on his brother as Sarah shrugs and tosses over the can. Dean tucks it under his armpit and digs through his pockets as best he can, coming up with his lighter. Sam feels like a complete idiot when he realizes what they’re planning. “I saw this in that Girls Just Want To Have Fun movie,” he adds with a little eyebrow waggle.
“Me too!” Sarah exclaims and if they were any closer to each other, Sam swears they would’ve high-fived.
Dean scoots along the branch he’s on, being the lowest of all three of them. He hooks his knees over it and flips so he’s dangling upside down. The razorback goes crazy because he’s just out of reach but when Dean uncaps the hairspray, blasts a jet and flicks his lighter so it’s a stream of flame, it lets out a high-pitched squeal and hightails it into the underbrush. Dean lets out a yell of triumph and swings until he can flip off the branch and land on his feet.
Sarah is already climbing down past Sam when he feels her flick him on the forehead. “Ow, what the hell?” he complains, lifting a hand to rub at the spot.
“Stop being such an asshole,” Sarah snaps, and actually does high five Dean when she gets down.
Sam doesn’t smack his head repeatedly on the trunk of the tree.
Just.
Of course, they’re staying in the same motel.
“Can’t she afford something better?” Sam snits and Dean turns on him, rubbing a hand through his hair.
“Just get over whatever bug is up your butt about this, okay?” Dean says, flailing his hands in a helpless gesture.
“I’m… worried about her, okay?” Sam admits, looking at his shoes. “And she wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to stay…”
“Your fantasy settle-down girl?” Dean hazards and Sam looks at him sharply. Dean holds up his hands, palms out. “Hey, I get it, I do. I had one of those and look how badly that went.” Dean is talking about Cassie, Sam is pretty sure, but he doesn’t see how the two are the same.
“Believe me, I would’ve rathered Sarah went running for the hills when she found out,” Sam says and Dean raises an eyebrow.
“Really? I don’t think that’s true.”
“What do you think is going to happen here, Dean?” Sam asks in exasperation. “Me and Sarah will get back together and we’ll form this happy little hunting family, crossing the countryside and…” Sam blinks when Dean’s eyes dart away. “Oh my god, you do think that!” Sam accuses.
“I’m saying it wouldn’t be terrible,” Dean says, shoulders hunched up around his ears in defense.
“It probably doesn’t help that she hates me at the moment,” Sam points out.
“Nah, you’re just pissing her off,” Dean denies with a grin. “Good thing is, girls love a challenge.”
Sarah walks into the diner they’re in the next morning and slides into the booth next to Dean when he makes room for her. She turns so all Sam can see is her profile and smiles sunnily at Dean. “I was going to ask who made your salt shells because my supplier’s retiring,” she says.
“This guy called Nicholas is pretty good in Tennessee,” Dean says. “Bit of a freaky survivalist but he’s off the radar so to speak and cool once you get past all the bullshit.”
“Excuse me,” Sam grumbles and slides out of the booth, heading for the bathroom. He doesn’t, doesn’t scream when he comes out of the stall and finds Sarah standing in the middle of the men’s room, hands on her hips and looking stormy.
“C’mon, out with it,” Sarah says, a note of demand in her voice.
“Out with what?” Sam asks, turning his back while he washes his hands. He can feel Sarah staring daggers into his shoulder blades the entire time.
“How I’m not cut out for this. How I don’t belong here. How I’m just a little girl who can’t take care of herself. How…” Sarah casts about for a second, hands uncurling and curling back into fists.
“You were supposed to stay the same,” Sam says in a quiet voice and Sarah peters out and then just looks at him.
“What?”
“You were supposed to stay safe,” Sam clarifies. Swallowing hard. “I mean, I hate that we seem so transitory to you but it’s the only way to do this job. Me and Dean. We save a kid from a ghoul and then we leave and we have no power over what happens next, not even if he gets hit by a car crossing the street only three days later.”
It had happened. Timothy Chambers had been slated to die at the hands of a monster and instead with a little intervention, managed to survive those extra days just to be killed by a drunk driver. Sam had cut the story from the paper before Dean could see it and Dean had bitched at him for snipping coupons for tampons and ruining his paper but it had been worth it.
“When we leave, everyone’s safe and that’s important. If I start thinking about what we leave behind sometimes I’ll just… I can’t…” Sam chokes on the words. Most people think Dean is cavalier but Sam knows he disconnects because he has to. He’s tried to force connections in the past but they never worked out. He was scarred early. Sam spent the first twelve months at Stanford unlearning resistance to friendships. He turned down numerous attempts to get to know him until he met a girl that wouldn’t take no for an answer, that actually forced her way through his boundaries with grim determination and a flick of her ponytail.
Sarah is suddenly in his space, small arms curling around his neck and she’s hugging him tightly. Sam cups her back with his hands, because he’s afraid if he hugs her as tightly as he wants to, he’ll crush the life right out of her. Jess, after his initial period of downright flinching, made him a touch junkie and he’d been starving for it ever since. There was brief respite every now and again but never enough.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, stepping back and away. “I’m the asshole, aren’t I?”
Sam rubs an arm over his face and then shakes his head. “Nah. I wouldn’t say that.”
Dean looks smug when they get back to the motel room and then confused when he watches Sam packing. “We going somewhere?”
“There’s some phantom lights in Minnesota I told Bobby we’d check out. I told you this morning. Are you losing your memory in your old age?”
“No, it’s just… I thought with Sarah…” Dean flicks a hand towards the door and then back to Sam, looking more puzzled.
“I gave her the pixie infestation in Dallas. I know how much you love pixies.”
“Wait. I thought you two sorted out… stuff. Y’know. Stuff.”
“We’re going to keep in touch,” Sam says, intentionally ignoring what Dean is getting at. It’s partly to watch his brother get more and more flustered, but mostly because he’s not really sure what happened either. He knows that nothing was ever going to happen and Sarah knew it. It seemed the only person who didn’t was Dean and…
Oh.
Sam sees the plain disappointment on Dean’s face and finally gets what all this was about, why Dean was so ready to accept Sarah into the life. Despite Sam’s assurances, he knows Dean is still waiting for the day when he’ll leave, announce he’s getting back to his real life with school and a house in the suburbs and a wife. With something to tie him to hunting, the Winchester road show would keep on trucking.
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not going anywhere?” Sam says, trying not to sound as exasperated as he feels because honestly, he has left Dean, probably three times too many for Dean to ever really believe him. Four times if he counts the unintentional body jacking and the fact that he had little choice in the matter with Meg in the driver’s seat.
“I thought we were going to Minnesota?” Dean comments and now apparently it’s his turn to play dumb. He turns to his own pile of clothes and duffle and starts rolling his second-best pair of jeans with his back a tense line, Dean speak for danger, move away from this topic of conversation.
Sam just watches Dean for a few moments until Dean looks over his shoulder with his eyebrows drawn down in consternation. “What?”
“You and me. That’s it, alright?” Sam presses.
“I don’t know why you think I’d have a problem with girl hunters considering I’m traveling with one,” Dean says with an exaggerated eye roll and Sam has to laugh. It’s just easier to hope that Dean gets what he’s saying, that something’s getting through that thick skull his big brother has.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam sighs.
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