"The Not So Good Son"

[kellifer]

Title: The Not So Good Son
Rating/Warning: PG (language)
Wordcount: 7,500
Spoilers: None
Fandom: SPN
By: kellifer_fic
Category: Gen
Summary: Raised in a small town all their lives, it's Dean Winchester who leaves. Now he's back and two brothers will discover that they were never meant for normal.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.

Dean Winchester walks into a bar.

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, and to some it would be. Dean hoists himself onto the bar stool at the end and Stephen plunks an orange juice down in front of him without asking.

Being a regular has its benefits.

“You gonna order a man’s drink some time?” Tony Richardson asks from the other end, hunkered with the other ol’ timers who only roll out of bed to crab their way to this place. Dean ignores the jibe because he’s heard it a couple of hundred times now and responding just makes them more likely to… hell, it doesn’t make a difference if he responds.

Gonna be the same tomorrow and the next day and the one after that…

Dean instead fixes his gaze on the dusty bottles lined up along the back wall of the bar and wonders if anyone actually ever orders anything that would require Stephen to use them. It’s not really the kind of place where someone’s gonna ask for a Slippery Nipple.

“Hey Winchester.”

Dean doesn’t even turn around because he’s not being addressed. He lost the right to Winchester in the eyes of the town when he abandoned it in search of something better. His father had been Winchester and now the only son of John’s that the town actually still recognizes is known as Winchester too.

“You’re way too predictable, man,” Sam says, sliding onto the stool next to Dean. He’s wearing his uniform, badge almost too shiny in the dim confines of the bar and his silly hair is slicked back from his forehead. Dean taps his glass and Stephen swaps the juice out for a coke.

Dean’s moved onto the hard stuff.

“Y’know, you’re just like Dad.”

Dean turns enough to blink at Sam, because of the two of them he would’ve pegged Sam as filling those particular shoes. “Come again?”

“You’re all about the self-flagellation,” Sam says, rubbing his hands together briefly. He’s come in from the snow and there’s a faint dusting of it on his shoulders and he’s not wearing gloves, as usual.

Sammy, where are your gloves?

Lost ‘em.

How? I sewed them on the ends of your sleeves, goddamit

“Sam-”

“I’m just here to see if you’re coming in today,” Sam says, eyes sliding away. He’s still mad and Dean gets that, he really does. Dean feels like Sam was always mad at him for something but this last time is a keeper. Dean looks down at his own badge, pinned to his chest and dull like his surroundings, like how he feels deep down inside.

Worn down.

Dull.

He retrieves his hat from the bar top and sighs. “Yeah, ‘course,” he says and follows Sam out into the snow.

000

Mayor Quimby, and doesn’t Dean just want to laugh his ass off whenever he thinks about that unfortunate naming, is in Bobby’s office.

“Deke got hauled in again last night,” Sam says, shucking his jacket and stomping the snow off his boots. He smiles at Angeline the receptionist, who grins back and holds up a ready-made cup of coffee. Dean wonders just how long he’s going to have to serve in this piss-ant little office for her to look at him like that, make him coffee before he even gets there. When Angeline merely narrows her eyes when Dean tries a smile he knows it’s going to be a long-ass time.

Even though he’d been a resident of Charlotte since he was four, he left. To most of the town’s population, he’s worse than summer people.

It probably helps that since Angelene needs to work two jobs to support three little girls on her own, Sam babysits when her regular sitter bails which is more often than Dean thinks actually likely, the big sucker.

“Fake ids?” Dean asks, because that’s the Mayor’s son’s thing at the moment. The fact that it’s an exercise in futility because most of the shopkeepers know just about every kid within the city limits and therefore exactly how old they are whether they’re holding an id that says otherwise or not, is just a demonstration in why Dean left in the first place.

“Nah, Deke and his buddies ordered a keg online,” Sam says, shrugging.

“You can do that?” Dean asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Apparently.”

“Don’t know why we bother bringing him in anyway. He’d have to murder someone before we could actually make anything stick, and even then it’d probably be an uphill battle.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Sam says, sniffing and Dean looks at him before cracking a grin.

“You brought him in, didn’t you?”

“Cuffed him and everything,” Sam says and for a moment he’s smiling and they’re brothers, but the smile falls away when Bobby’s office door slams and Quimby bustles by them, darting a glare full of venom in Sam’s direction. Sam merely sketches a salute at Quimby but then winces when Bobby bellows for him from his office.

“Don’t know why you want to piss the guy off that could ensure you never sit in Bobby’s office.”

“What the hell do you care? It’s a nowhere town and a nothing career, right?” Sam says and his eyes are flat, the same way they were when Dean turned up on his doorstep after five years of radio silence.

You didn’t even come back for her funeral.

Why? It’s not like I really knew her.

I needed you, Dean. Me.

Dean retreats to the back of the station where he’s slowly been transferring all the older closed files onto the ancient computer. He’d started out hunting and pecking but he was getting pretty good. Even with four rooms between them, Dean can still hear Bobby yelling, a liberal amount of idjits thrown in. Nothing will come of it though, nothing ever does. Bobby couldn’t love Sam more if he was his own son.

Dean, though?

Well, he’s the big disappointment.

000

Dean’s in just an undershirt and his uniform pants, belt hanging open when the phone rings. For a moment he thinks it’s just one of those heavy-breathers on the other end and is about to swear long and colorfully when he realizes that the wet mouth sounds are more like a child than a horny old man getting his rocks off. Dean takes a stab in the dark and says, “Molly?”

“Sam smells funny and he won’t wake up,” the high, sweet voice of Angelene's oldest manages to get out in a rush. Dean feels his insides turn to water and he grips the phone handset so hard it’s a wonder he doesn’t crack the plastic.

“You stay there baby, I’ll be round in two shakes,” Dean says and drops the phone. He’s at a full run by the time he hits the sidewalk at the bottom of his apartment block. He’s only two streets away from Sam’s place, thank Christ but it still feels like hours before he reaches the neat little yellow house.

Dean almost takes a header into the stairs when he trips over Molly’s three-wheeler parked at a diagonal at the bottom of Sam's steps but momentum keeps him on his feet and he skids to a halt only when he’s sliding through the front door. His heart feels like it’s in his throat when he reaches the front entryway and sees Molly and the twins standing in the archway that leads to the living room. He can see his brother through the door, sacked out on the couch with a half-done bottle of whiskey by a limp hand trailing on the floor.

Dean crosses to Sam and puts fingers to his throat and a hand to his chest, relieved to find both a pulse and the steady rise and fall under both. From the smell of him, Sam’s passed out drunk and Dean has the conflicting urges to both throttle and hug the crap out of his brother.

Dean turns back to the girls and smiles at them. “Sam’s okay, he’s just really tired. We had a long day at work.”

The twins, Becca and Amy are looking upset, but Dean figures that’s mostly because Molly is. Molly, for her part, just looks unconvinced. Dean feels like a heel for asking but he just has to know one thing.

“Does Sam do this often?”

Molly scrunches up her face and Dean realizes that this is very important to her, like possibly she’s been waiting the twelve months Liz has been gone or even longer for someone to just say, hey kid, what’s wrong?

“Just when the pictures get bad,” Molly says finally.

Dean doesn’t know why, but all of a sudden he feels cold all over. “Pictures?”

Molly takes the hand that still clasps Becca’s and brings it to her temple, bending sideways so that she can tap it.

“In here.”

000

Sam’s at his kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee and a sullen expression. The girls are playing in the other room, a rousing mixture of all the boardgames Sam owns by the sounds of it with Molly’s very special rules. It’s something Dean remembers from when Sam was little, how he was never content to play a game the way it was designed.

Candyopoly was a favorite and Dean never really got how it worked but Sam’s face when he won, or at least announced that he won was worth every confusing second.

“You’re still having the nightmares after all this time?”

Dean remembers them. They’d gotten so bad when Sam was smaller that John had taken Sam to Doctor Hillop, an old army medic who lived three doors down who had dismissed them as night terrors, a common childhood affliction. Dean had thought they were something more than that, had to be but their father had gotten this weird tightness around his eyes whenever Dean pressed so he’d dropped it.

“It’s nothing,” Sam says, waving a dismissive hand and almost knocking his coffee across the table. He rights it at the last second and then scowls at it. “You don’t have to stay.”

“I don’t think drinking yourself into a stupor in front of the kids you're babysitting is nothing,” Dean says and Sam does knock his coffee aside now, slamming his hand on the tabletop. Dean hears the girls in the other room go silent and he winces.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Sam demands, breathing hard. He gets up from the table and paces the small room, clenching and releasing his fingers into loose fists. “You don’t get to come in here and lecture me!”

“Sam, keep your voice down.”

“Who invited you anyway?” Sam snaps and Dean stands too, squaring his shoulders and looking Sam dead in the eyes.

“A terrified six-year old who thought you were dead.”

Sam freezes and everything, including the fight, seems to drain out of him. He makes it back to his chair and drops into it. “Just get out,” he says, sounding defeated.

“Sammy-”

“Dean, I’m fine. They’re fine. We’re all fine and we were fine before you prodigal-ed your way back here. Angelene will be by to pick them up in twenty minutes. I think I can hold it together till then.”

Dean understands when he's being dismissed, when all he's going to do is piss Sam off further rather than get through to him so he goes, makes it to the door before he stops. Sam is standing in the kitchen doorway, looking at the floor and his bare toes. “I dreamed about Liz.”

“Come again?”

“Before she died,” Sam says, sounding tired. He moves to the front door and herds Dean out before shutting it firmly.

Dean stands on the front stoop for a few moments just looking at the closed door and wondering why the feeling that his whole world is about to tip sideways just won’t go away.

Like he'd just missed something important.

000

Charlotte is a small town where nothing much happens, so when someone calls in a homicide, Dean's actually thinking it's some kind of hoax right up until he arrives.

Sanderson is trying to surreptitiously vomit into the bushes just outside the split level house they've been called to on the edge of town. That more than anything gets Dean moving faster. He’d figured it was all some belated welcome-home prank to make it feel more like New York for him but little Jamie Crum, youngest of the Crum family, is sitting in the back of an ambulance with a blanket over his shoulders. His mother and father pace restlessly nearby, both looking shell-shocked.

Bobby emerges, looking a little shell-shocked himself and pauses out front. He spots Dean and waves him up. Dean pushes his cap off his head as he comes up the stairs and pulls the gloves from his hands with his teeth. “Wyatt,” Bobby says simply, jerking his chin in the direction of the house.

“I thought Wyatt was at school,” Dean says. The front door is open and there’s a bloody hand print on the inside right near the handle.

“Back just last week, visiting for a few days because it was Emma’s birthday,” Bobby says. He then leans past Dean and looks at Jamie for a second and sighs. “Little ‘un was at a friend's but the parents were asleep upstairs. Swear black and blue they didn’t hear a thing.”

Dean gestures towards the front door. “You need me to-?”

“Witness statements,” Bobby instructs quickly, nodding at the front curb. There’s a gaggle of people, most with puffy jackets over different varieties of sleep wear. “Doesn’t look like you’ll need to go door to door.”

000

“You okay?” Dean asks. He and Bobby are sitting sharing a pie Angeline had brought in and Dean doesn't feel the least bit guilty that she'd pointedly told him not to touch it because it was for Sam. Dean had taken a few mouthfuls before he’d decided that his philosophy that even bad pie was good needed to be revised and that he'd saved his little brother. He sets aside his spoon and quirks an eyebrow at Bobby who still has his first mouthful hovering in front of his lips.

“Just… it was creepy as all get out,” Bobby says with a little shudder. Dean hadn’t actually been inside the house but the photos were enough to maybe give him nightmares to rival Sam’s for the next few weeks.

Somebody had a party at Wyatt Crum’s expense.

Somebody had fun.

“Hey, least this place is too small to have a serial killer,” Dean says with a wry grin. “They’d run out of victims pretty damn quick and we could just arrest whoever was left.”

“Har har,” Bobby sniffs, but he finally has his spoon meet his mouth and then pulls a face. “Christ almighty, what is this?”

“A crime against pie,” Dean says mournfully and they both look up when the front door jangles and Sam comes in, shaking snow out of his hair. “Dude, get a haircut,” Dean calls and Sam looks up and then narrows his eyes.

“What’d I miss?”

“Goddamn slasher movie,” Dean says, shaking his head. “Crum family didn’t know what hit ‘em, poor bastards.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Wyatt Crum," Dean says and then grimaces. "Oh shit Sammy, I’m sorry. You went to school with Wyatt, didn’t you?” he adds, feeling like a heel as the color drains from Sam’s face.

“What? N-no…” Sam stammers, stumbling backwards until he’s stopped by the front wall of the station. Some of the tacked-up pictures of missing kids from bordering towns come loose and flutter to the floor around his feet. Bobby is rising out of his chair and Dean does too because Sam suddenly looks like he’s about to keel over.

“You okay kiddo?” Bobby asks, skirting around his desk until he can reach Sam, putting hands out that Sam shoves aside.

“No! It can’t… No!” Sam practically yells and then he’s out to the door and back into the snow, Dean calling his name.

000

Dean goes to Angelene’s place and picks up the girls when he gets a worried call from her. Sam is an hour late picking them up and one thing he never does is be late for picking up Angelene's kids.

Liz had looked after them before... before.

“Everything okay?” Angelene presses when Dean has a twin hooked under each arm and Molly trailing him with a hand fisted in the bottom of his jacket.

“Yeah, of course,” Dean says, making a beeline for the door. “Sam asked me to pick ‘em up and I… forgot.” Dean can’t help feeling a little pang when Angelene just raises her eyebrows and then nods. Of course it’s all Dean’s fault. He made the mistake of leaving town and has been marked as the black sheep ever since. No one seems to be paying attention to the fact that his brother is a slowly falling-apart drunk, following in their Daddy's footsteps.

No siree. He’s the screw-up in the family.

Molly watches as Dean makes quick work of transferring the twin's car seats to the back of Dean’s car but she buckles them in, brushing aside his attempts to help, and then settles herself in the passenger side. He wants to ask just what business she has being so responsible at the grand-old age of six as she sits and gazes out the window.

Dean glances in the rear-vision mirror and sees Becca and Amy with their heads bent together. They don’t talk much to other people but he sees them constantly expressing volumes to each other just with expressions and hand gestures. He remembers that kind of secret short-hand, had the same thing with Sammy once upon a time. It made him feel safe, feel special that he and Sammy had their own language that no one else could intrude on and he’s pretty sure at the time Sammy felt the same. They were a unit, he and Sammy, while their father put back the pieces after their mother…

Dean’s broken out of his reverie by Molly tugging on his sleeve. “Becca and Amy have to eat at six,” she says, looking at him solemnly. She then looks very pointedly at the pink and purple watch on her wrist.

“It’s okay, I’ll fix us some sandwiches when we get back to your place,” Dean says and then furrows his brow when Molly just frowns at him. “What?”

“Sandwiches aren’t dinner.”

“Who says?”

“Auntie Liz,” Molly says and looks at him levelly.

“What about pizza?” Dean tries, not willing to challenge the irrefutable logic of a woman no longer alive.

Molly seems to ponder for a moment, even going so far as to raise a finger and tap it thoughtfully on her tiny chin before she nods. “Pizza’s okay.”

“Great. We’ll swing by Paddy’s.”

“Does he still have gingerbread men?” Molly asks and then chews at her lip. “Becca and Amy like them,” she adds and fidgets in a way Dean recognizes.

“I reckon he does,” Dean says and smiles at her. “Only, you have to buy four at a time or Paddy gets cranky. You think you could choke one down?”

“I’m sure I can manage it,” Molly says and turns her face back to the window.

Dean wishes he could protect her, let her be a kid but he’s starting to realise that that ship has already sailed.

000

Sam gets dropped off, or more accurately dumped on the side of the road at around two in the morning. Dean is sleeping in the front room of Sam’s house, having fallen asleep in the armchair by the window and the sound of a car slowing but not stopping wakes him. There’s the tinkle of broken glass and his brother cursing.

Dean gets outside and finds Sam trying to get to his feet. He’s in only an undershirt, jeans and unlaced boots and he smells like a brewery before Dean even gets close. Sam has the remains of a bottle clasped in his hand and looks almost hilariously perplexed when he brings it up to his lips and finds no liquid inside, having obviously missed the part about losing the bottom of the bottle on the street.

“Hey!” Dean hisses, jogging over to Sam, whipping his coat off as he goes. He has another three layers underneath and he’s already broken out into goose flesh from the cold. He knows Sam will be feeling no pain now but the alcohol won’t stop him losing appendages to frost bite.

Sam stumbles and then awkwardly flails at Dean when Dean gets close enough to try and swaddle him in the coat. Close up Dean can see Sam has the yellow smudge of a bruise under his eye that will be black by morning and blood at the corner of his mouth. Up close he smells worse which Dean didn’t even think was possible. “Get off me,” Sam protests when Dean comes at him again with the coat.

“What is this, man?” Dean demands, giving up on the coat and instead trying to herd Sam’s lurching gait towards his house. Lights have come on at the Green's place across the road and Dean isn’t exactly thrilled to have witnesses to Sam’s less than finest hour.

“Had to… can’t a guy have some fun?” Sam slurs, walking stiff-legged to try and stay upright. He starts to veer diagonally, heading for the Malackey’s driveway and Dean gets a hand twisted in the back of Sam’s shirt and hauls him back straight.

“Oh yeah, looks like you had a blast,” Dean grumbles, knowing there’s no point in yelling at his brother in this state. Better to wait for the hangover the next morning.

“What are you doing here?” Sam demands sourly, turning despite Dean’s grip on him and peering at him. “You left and I missed you and you… you’re a jerk!”

“Seems to be the popular opinion around these parts,” Dean sighs, getting two hands on Sam’s shoulders and forcing him around now, willing to frog-march him if he has to. “Yet you’re the guy who disappears when he’s supposed to be babysitting kids.”

“Oh fuck you,” Sam grates, but this time he doesn’t struggle out of Dean’s grip. “Who are you to judge me?”

Dean gets Sam up the stairs and through his front door. Thankfully most of the neighbourhood is still dark and silent, miracle of miracles. Dean gets Sam leaned against the wall next to the fireplace in his living room, knowing it’ll be more trouble than its worth to try and get Sam up the stairs to his bedroom and clears off the couch enough that he can lay Sam out on it.

Sam is snoring before he’s even fully horizontal and Dean slides down onto the floor by Sam’s hip, breathing hard. He takes a moment to catch his breath and then turns to look at his brother, the straight-A golden child, the good son. He puts a hand up and pushes Sam’s sweaty bangs out of his face and lets out a breath.

“What’s happening to you?”

000

Sam’s gone from the couch in the morning but it doesn’t take long to find him. Dean stands in the doorway of the downstairs bathroom, looking down at his little brother curled around the toilet. He’s got a bunched up towel under his head on the rim and Dean would think it was funny if he wasn't so sure he was watching his brother’s rapidly accelerating decline into god knows what kind of a breakdown.

Dean nudges at Sam’s thigh and Sam’s head rolls sideways, one of his eyes opening. “I think I might have thrown up in the vegetable crisper,” Sam says morosely.

“Why’d you do that?” Dean asks, trying not to laugh because he wants to stay angry.

“I thought it was the bathroom and I saw the tomatoes too late.” Sam scrabbles to get his feet under him and uses the shower screen behind to lever himself upright. He grips the towel that was his pillow against his chest like Linus’ blanket and at that moment everything about Sam screams pathetic. As per usual, Dean does let his anger slip and instead drops himself down onto the abandoned toilet, first making sure that he isn't going to be sitting in anything and lowering the lid gingerly.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Dean asks, reaching out with a boot to nudge at Sam's bare toes. Sam curls his toes in towards the bottom of his feet in reflex.

"You'll think I'm crazy," Sam finally mutters, sounding defeated and resigned. "I know I do."

"I already think you're nuts," Dean says with a shrug. "And by now I thought you'd know that nothing you tell me will make me love you any less."

Sam looks up at that, the bald way Dean states that fact, something Sam has never been able to offer Dean in return. Dean knows that opening his chest up and offering his heart to Sam is always an exercise in futility but sometimes, just sometimes the gesture bears fruit.

Not this time though. Instead Sam makes a face and mutters, "Always with the mushy."

"Hey, of the two of us, I'm definitely the man in this relationship," Dean says and Sam snorts and rolls his eyes.

"You want pancakes?" Sam asks, brightening and it's Dean's turn to make a face.

"Ugh, dude, I never did understand how you could hurl and then eat like two minutes later."

000

Dean looks down at his pancake and it looks right back at him. He sticks his fork into one strawberry eye and then drags it through the whipped cream mouth so it doesn't look like a face anymore. Sam's sitting at the opposite side of the table and if it weren't for the tell-tale marks on his face, Dean would think it was like any other morning before he'd left, before everything had gone to hell. He expects any moment for John to bellow from deeper in the house that there better be some left for him when he's done with his shower.

Sam's cheeks are bulging with pancake and syrup when he looks up and notices Dean staring. "What?" he manages to get out without spraying the table with food which is a real talent.

"I gotta keep asking, you know that," Dean says and Sam makes a put-upon noise and puts his fork down, pushing his plate aside.

"I'm fine," Sam says even though he looks a few shades off fine and has for a long time. "I'm just... you know, still grieving."

"I know what you grieving looks like and this ain't it," Dean says and knows he's pushed too much for whatever truce they'd established to last past this morning when Sam's face blanks out. Sam is really pissed when he can't even muster the bitch face.

"You don't know what me grieving looks like," Sam says and his tone is so cold that it almost makes Dean shiver. The small amount of breakfast he'd managed to get down turns to rock in his gut and it's his turn to push his plate aside. Sam cocks his head sideways like a curious puppy. "I mean, how could you? My wife died and you didn't come back to see that."

"I came back," Dean says but he didn't, not really, not soon enough. He was a coward, pure and simple and it took him a long time to actually work up the nerve to return to Charlotte, six months after Sam's first call that said, I need you to come home.

"You're an asshole," Sam dismisses, pushing back from the table. He stretches when he's on his feet and then reaches over to flip the coffee machine on.

"And you're not going to change the subject by making me the bad guy," Dean says, standing also.

"I'm not making you anything, you are the bad guy," Sam snaps and Dean is just so sick of Sam being angry at him that he reaches out and grabs Sam by the shoulders, manhandling him up against the wall next to the fridge and then yanking him forward just so he can knock him against the wall again. The second time the back of Sam's head connects with the wall and he makes a sound of protest.

Dean lets go and steps back, watching Sam slump and rub his head with a hand. "Feel better?" Sam asks mulishly and Dean rolls his eyes and throws his hands up.

"Goddamit Sam, something is going on with you and I want to know what it is. Yes, I'm a jerk and I've let you down more times than I can count but I'm here now and you're not going to push me away no matter how much of a bastard you are."

"You don't get to swoop in when it suits you!" Sam yells and goes to grab Dean's shoulders this time. Dean deflects his grab, pushing Sam's hands down and sideways and Sam stumbles, knocking a shoulder against the fridge hard enough to jostle it. Sam rights himself and comes at Dean again and even though deep down Dean knows this is just another deflection, another way for Sam to change the subject, he can't help responding.

Sam's the first one to throw an actual punch and Dean's pretty sure he's been wanting to do it for a long time so he takes it, tipping his head up so it glances off his chin rather than hitting his cheek like it was intended. He only allows Sam the one free hit though. They're very similar in brawling style considering they were brought up and trained by the same man but while Sam's reach is better, Dean is quicker and whenever they'd sparred in the past it had always been anyone's guess who would come out on top.

This time they manage to destroy Sam's kitchen table before their fight takes them out into the scrubby postage stamp of his backyard. Sam's a kicker but thankfully he's only in sneakers when he manages to tap Dean in the ribs. If he'd been in his steel toed boots Dean knows he would've had a break. Dean manages to catch Sam in the temple just right and the skin above Sam's eyebrow splits, an impressive spray of blood over the frost on the ground.

When he watches television, Dean sees most fights ending when someone is knocked out, but in his personal experience they finish because one of the combatants decides to turn tail and run or both are so exhausted that they just stop. The latter is true this time, Dean and Sam pummelling at each other without doing any kind of significant damage after those first few hits up until they're both stumbling around the yard with exhaustion like they're drunk. Dean's arms and shoulders are on fire and he can see Sam struggling to muster the energy to continue. Dean holds up his hands and Sam takes a last swing, ignoring the obvious surrender but there's nothing behind it and Dean takes the bump to the chest with only a small grunt.

He turns his back and Sam scrapes some energy up from somewhere, enough to run at Dean and drive him to the ground. They both roll until there's about a foot of space between them and then lie there, panting. "Now do you feel better?" Dean asks when he stops feeling like he's pulling air through broken glass.

"Not in the slightest," Sam says and for some reason this strikes Dean as hilarious and he laughs, great racking coughs of giggles that Sam finally joins in on. They both roll around on the frigid ground, clothes soaking through and the crisp soil beneath them crackling. The laughter finally dies out just like the fight did and they're back to both staring at the clear blue sky.

Sam takes a breath and Dean thinks its a precursor to Sam getting up but instead Sam turns his head so his eyes are on Dean, sweaty clumps of hair sticking to his brow and he says, "I've been having these dreams."

000

Dean has circled back to the idea of Sam having some kind of breakdown.

What Sam tells him make Sam sound crazy, his brother was right about that much. He describes dreams that sound darkly prophetic but what terrifies Dean most is Sam's vivid description of the Crum crime scene and Dean's pretty damn sure Sam didn't see so much as a photo of the house after the fact.

So either Sam actually has been having visions of the future or...

Or.

Sam's been a fall-down drunk for a while now and Dean knows of people who have done terrible things in the black, not remembering a lick of them the next day. Hell, when he was sixteen, his own dad had clocked him a good one after crawling into the bottom of a bottle of Jack and then had asked Dean the next day where he'd gotten the shiner. Dean watches his brother pace the small living room that had survived the fire that had taken Liz mostly unscathed, just a good airing out to get rid of the smokey smell, and tries to imagine Sam hurting Wyatt Crum, let alone...

He just can't.

Dean presses his thumbs into his eye sockets while Sam still talks. It's kind of funny how Dean had wanted Sam to open up, tell him what the hell was going on and now he wants him to shut up.

With everything in him he wants Sam to shut up.

Mostly because with every word Dean is becoming more and more sure that Sam has done something terrible.

"What do you think?" Sam asks, stopping in front of Dean and holding his hands out, palms up. Sam's face is full of something Dean hasn't seen in a while, a kind of blind hope that just by virtue of being the big brother Dean will have answers, Dean will have a solution.

What Dean should say is, sure Sam, you may be having visions of the future, but more likely you killed your wife and then some dude you went to school with while drunk and nobody has put it together yet.

What he does say is, "Maybe we can find someone. You know... someone who knows about this stuff." When Dean says stuff he waggles his fingers in the air.

Sam bites at his lip, uncertain. "Yeah, I... I guess?" he agrees after a while.

000

They have to go all the way to Burkett to find any kind of psychic. Dean gamely tries the local phone book first but isn't surprised to find no listing. A google search bears more fruit and they're in the car an hour later.

Sam seems to have talked himself out, sitting quiet and sullen in the passenger seat with his forehead resting against the cold glass. Every now and again his eyes will creep Dean's way but never actually make it, as if he's scared to see what might be on Dean's face. Dean faces grimly forward, fighting the urge to look at Sam as well, maybe contemplating suggesting that they just disappear, leave Charlotte behind all together. The police force isn't much shakes considering he and Sam are a part of it but if Sam is actually responsible for what happened to Wyatt and Liz then it's only a matter of time before someone figures it out.

Dean tightens his hands on the steering wheel when they hit the Burkett town line. It's another fairly small town so it only takes about ten minutes to find the place they're looking for and then Dean nearly turns the car around when he sees a spray-painted hand with an open eye on the palm on the small shop front and the brightly colored beaded curtain behind it. When they both get out of the car the smell of incense hits them before they even breach the threshold and Sam finally turns eyes on him, a are you sure about this in his expression.

"The worst that can happen is we waste money and time," Dean says with a small shrug and Sam huffs a breath but doesn't argue. Dean knows it's probably the worst thing to do to cater to Sam's delusions but he's playing for time, trying to figure out what he'll have to do with Sam, how to help him. He was able to tie Sam's shoes and teach Sam how to shoot bottles off a fence post but this he has no previous experience with.

A bell tinkles merrily when the door opens, Dean ignoring the sign that says, By Appointment Only tacked up next to it. The lighting is dim inside and Dean has to squint until his eyes adjust and then reach back and yank Sam through when he hesitates in the doorway. They're standing in a small room with a couple of unmatched chairs against one wall and a rack with ancient magazines at the end. There's a heavy curtain separating the front from the rest of the store and what Dean assumes would be the staircase to an apartment upstairs on their other side.

Dean's about to yell out when a woman thumps down the stairs with a robe on and a towel around her head. There's a strand of dark, wet hair escaping the towel and she's tucking it back up under as she comes. She's got an annoyed expression on which melts into confusion when she hits the bottom of the stairs and for just a moment she looks right through both Sam and Dean before she suddenly seems to startle and blink rapidly, hands clasping together at her breast.

"Where the hell did you come from?" she demands, still blinking hard. She unclasps one hand and rubs over her eyes that have begun to water and redden. Dean is thinking maybe she's a little baked and is about to hustle Sam out with an apology, never to look back, when Sam steps forward and around him, a frown furrowing his brow and his hand going up.

The woman shrinks back and honest to god hisses at Sam's outstretched hand. Dean swears and grabs for Sam when her eyes flood beetle-shell black but Sam is an immovable object, damn hand still outstretched but fingers now slightly curled like he's holding onto something. The woman jerks hard enough that her towel comes free and a spill of dark hair falls to her shoulders and then she's growling something not English but Dean's pretty sure by the emphasis is not complimentary anyway.

Dean makes another grab for Sam, getting the front of his jacket bunched in both hands and yanks but Sam's still not budging. Something warm and wet hits the back of Dean's hand and he looks, sees a smear of red and then looks at Sam and can see that blood has begun to ooze sluggishly from Sam's left nostril.

The woman jerks again and a flailing hand catches Dean in the cheek. She's a small woman but the force of the hit sends Dean staggering sideways and his vision swims grey for a moment. He recovers and spins just in time to see the woman's mouth open in a silent scream and black smoke belch out, cascade down her body like water and pool at her feet before disappearing in a final flash of red.

The woman and Sam drop almost at the same time and Dean darts to his brother, checking Sam's pulse and only letting out his breath when he feels it strong under his fingertips. He carefully sets Sam onto his side and then crab-crawls over to the woman. She coughs and her eyes open, once again a normal brown and she manages to croak out a strangled-sounding thank you before she slumps again.

000

Evelyn tells them about demons.

Dean sits at a kitchen table with a coffee mug with a chip in the handle and listens as Evelyn explains how some of the worst monsters from nightmares and horror stories are real. Every now and again Dean will look to Sam but Sam's got a towel full of ice pressed to his forehead and a glassy look to his eyes so Dean's not sure how much Sam's taking in.

"That bitch hijacked my body for six months," Evelyn says, stabbing a finger down on that day's paper, her nail cutting into the printed date. "I knew it had to have been a while but..."

"I'm not really sure what just happened," Dean says slowly, swishing the dregs of his coffee around the bottom of the mug. Evelyn's gaze swings to Sam and then back.

"I'm not too sure either," she finally admits. "I mean... she couldn't see you at first, either of you. I've never heard of anything like it."

"I've never heard of anything like this," Dean says, flinging a hand out. He gets up, refills his coffee from the pot on the warmer plate and then turns to see Evelyn looking at Sam with something strange in her expression. "What?"

"Is he...?" she starts to say and when Sam finally brings his eyes up, she levels a finger at him, almost touching his nose. "You're... something. Nothing too refined. Lot of power bubbling away and it's dampening everything else so you're fuzzy at the edges. No wonder she couldn't see you properly."

"Want to start making some sense?" Dean asks and Evelyn rolls her eyes.

"Someone in your life knows what's going on," she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You wanna find that person and get the rest of your answers."

000

Bobby's waiting for them when they get back to Charlotte.

He's standing on Sam's porch and he's wearing old jeans, a flannel shirt and a beaten-up trucker's cap. "It's weird seeing you out of uniform," Dean comments as he and Sam trudge up the stairs.

Bobby gives Dean a strange look and frowns. "Kid, this is the first time in a long-ass while that I've been in uniform."

When both Dean and Sam look at him in confusion, Bobby sighs and untucks something from the back of his jeans. It looks like a leather-bound journal, dark brown and well-used. Bobby presses it between his hands for a moment before he hands it over to Dean. "This was your Daddy's."

"What is it?" Sam asks and Dean feels him at his back, Sam's head craning over Dean's shoulder to see. Dean swats him away and thumbs open the book, seeing his dad's cramped handwriting filling pages and pages, newspaper clippings and crude drawings the only other things taking up the once white and now yellowed space.

"I promised your dad I wouldn't do this, not unless it became necessary," Bobby says, taking off his cap for a moment to rub over his balding head. He looks at Dean and Sam for a few moments and then seems to slump. "I guess it's become necessary."

"What?" Dean asks slowly and he fights the urge to grip onto Sam, knowing deep down in his gut that their world is about to tilt sideways and settle in a way it never has before.

That Bobby's next words are going to change the course of their lives.

"It's up to you what you do with the book and what I'm about to tell you. I just promised to pass both on when the time came, look after you until it did." Bobby's gaze is measured and heavy.

"It's time you knew who your Daddy was," Bobby says finally and now Dean does reach out, finds a handful of Sam's t-shirt under his jacket and grips tight. Sam's already got both hands wrapped around Dean's bicep, so hard Dean feels tingles in his hand.

"And what happened to your mom."