![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Skin Horse - 2/2
Rating/Warning: PG (language)
Wordcount: 3,038
Spoilers: End of S2 (Reference to S3 up to BDABR)
Fandom: SPN
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Category: Gen
Summary: Dean has always been grounded by contact, needing to touch.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Part One | Part Two
“Focus,” Missouri instructs.
“I am,” Dean insists.
“Not on making your brother’s head explode with your thoughts!” Missouri snaps and Sam, sitting opposite with his legs crossed even though it’s gotta be murder on his ginormous stilts, cracks open one eye.
“He’s breathing loud,” Dean snaps, flailing a hand in a what am I supposed to do gesture. “It’s bugging the crap out of me.”
“You need to be filtering out distraction,” Missouri says at the same time as Sam interjects, “You cannot seriously be complaining about me breathing!”
“You’ve always been this weird-ass mouth breather,” Dean continues and now Sam is fairly flushing with anger.
“What else am I supposed to breathe out of?” he demands. Missouri enters the circle chalked around them both, stops in front of Dean and claps her hands together once, loud. It’s like a gunshot and Dean jerks and looks up at her.
“Don’t think you’re too big to have your palms smacked with a ruler,” she warns and Dean just gapes at her. He then tries to glare around her at Sam when he hears his brother snicker, but Missouri moves sideways as well, cutting off his view. “Do I need to separate you both?”
Dean looks down at the collection of odds and ends at Missouri’s feet, stuff Sam had gone out into the street to collect. He was supposed to find his center, whatever the crap that meant and then try to get a read off the objects. When Sam had made to leave Dean alone Missouri had instead steered him into the circle as well, tutting at him that it wasn’t too late and Sam had gone strangely pale and quiet. He was just supposed to be meditating and Dean realises that he was mostly just trying to get a rise out of Sam rather than concentrate on his own stuff because he’d never been comfortable when Sam shut down like that.
“We’ll be good,” Dean promises and Missouri finally steps away, Sam looking at Dean with a strange expression when he can see him again.
“I thought I was bugging you,” Sam says. He’s got his hands down flat on the floor like he’d been about to get up.
“Yeah, well, it bugs me a lot more when I can’t see you,” Dean says and then rolls his eyes when Sam gets that ridiculously goofy grin on his face whenever he thinks he’s caught Dean saying something extra mushy and damaging to his manhood. “Just… breathe through your nose like a normal person.”
Sam pulls a face and rolls his eyes, but he complies.
His nose whistles and Dean smacks a hand to his face.
000
He gets nothing that first day.
The only time he’s intentionally done anything was when he was pretty drunk. Dean is contemplating asking Missouri if she has any hooch in the house when she sits down across from him in the kitchen the next morning and just shakes her head.
“I know you’re scared,” she starts to say and Dean scowls and ducks his head.
“No I’m not,” he denies a little waspishly and Missouri snorts.
“Dean Winchester, you’re terrified and don’t think I can’t tell.” When Dean makes to get up from the table, Missouri reaches out a hand and he jerks away without even thinking about it. She’s wearing an expression like, yeah, that’s what I thought.
“What if I can’t…” Dean makes a helpless gesture with his hand and Missouri just waits for him to finish without saying a word. “What if I can’t turn it off?”
“That what’s worrying you?”
“Sam was practically paralysed with his visions. I’m just thinking that if I can’t as much as pick up a gun without reliving its life story how am I supposed to… protect him?”
“That’s not your job,” Missouri says and Dean stills, eyes narrowing.
“Like hell it isn’t,” he says, voice a low tremble.
“I know what your daddy put on you,” Missouri continues, her face showing the kind of sadness and understanding Dean had often seen on teachers when either he or Sam would turn up to school with one too many patches on their jeans. “It wasn’t fair, you were only a child. You’ve carried that burden all your life but can’t you just see that Sam’s doing nothing but trying to shoulder his own now?”
“He’s my little brother,” Dean grates, back of his throat suddenly burning.
“And by virtue of birth he always will be,” Missouri says with a smile. “Doesn’t mean he can’t take his turn at watch.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Dean asks, pulling his hands into clenched fists. He has never, ever wanted to escape a conversation as much as he wants to get away from this one.
“You been holding yourself back, apart for too long. It’s not surprising that power’s now trying to bleed out of you anyway it can. You’re liable to pop otherwise.”
“You saying I always had this?” Dean asks, a little mystified. So far as he’s concerned, this power of whatever it is came out of nowhere, much like Sam’s. Dean bites his lip though because that’s not strictly true once he actually thinks about it. He lives a lot of his life on instinct but maybe… He shakes the hand of a weapon’s trader, gets a bad feeling and he and Sam hightail it out of there. He picks up a gun and just knows it’s going to jam and so goes with another one, not even blinking when he takes apart the first gun the same day and finds gunk in the barrel because Sam’s accidentally run the damn thing through the wash.
He’s always just sort of… known.
This though?
This has gotta be different.
“You ever put something off because of Sam?” Missouri prods gently and Dean sort of nods, staring down at the table. There was PT and dates and hundreds of other little things Dean forwent as he was growing up because Sam needed something, wanted something. Missy Sanders in the eleventh grade had been ready to give it up the day the Winchesters were heading out of town but Dean spent his last night instead with Sammy at a drive-in because he’d gotten his first ever C, in Shop no less, and had been so hang-dog about it.
“I just, what? Set this aside until I had time for it?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Missouri says sagely, before getting up to make them both coffees.
000
Missouri stuck them in the same room even though she had three spare so Dean’s awake, staring at the ceiling and listening to Sam snore. To be honest, he would have heard Sam snoring from three rooms down anyway because his little brother has always been a buzz-saw when he’s on a too-small bed and can’t stretch out. It’s like he makes up for the fact he doesn’t have enough space in volume, his body protesting that his feet are in space in anyway it can.
Dean can span the distance between their two beds with the length of his arm and he does, hesitating right before he comes into contact with Sam’s brow. His fingers curl for a minute because Sam’s forehead isn’t creased like he’s having a bad dream and Dean’s wondering if he should intrude on a good one.
Sam kind of shifts though right at that moment and Dean’s knuckles knock against his temple and
buried into a snow drift up to her waist and she’s so pink-cheeked and beautiful like that, that Sam can’t help but think I’m going to marry her and while
jerks his hand away, managing to smack Sam in the nose when he does. Sam comes awake with a snort and blinks at Dean, still looking muzzy with sleep. “What are you doing?” Sam asks, pushing up onto his elbow.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Dean isn’t quite sure what he wasn’t meaning to do. The nightmares were one thing but Sam actually had four good years away from him and sometimes he forgets that. Sam had a life, friends and a woman who was good to him and Dean feels a stab of guilt that he pretty much ripped the rug out from under Sam’s feet. Hell, he’s not even sure if Jessica would’ve-
“Don’t,” Sam says, nothing but shadows and lines in the darkness and Dean rolls over onto his back because looking at the ceiling is safer.
000
Dean is careful to handle the weapons only when he’s wearing the gas-station gloves. Missouri had looked a little annoyed that he’d turned her dining table into a cleaning area but he’d been ready to point out that she got lord knew what on it when putting together gris-gris and protection charms.
He’s reassembling his favourite pearl-handled automatic when Sam appears, holding their dad’s journal. At first Dean thinks maybe Sam’s been researching something but when Sam advances, Dean realises what he’s doing.
“You might be able to see if he’s okay,” Sam tries when Dean gets up from the table and backs away.
“I might see that he’s not,” Dean argues. “Or just some chick he put it to while he had it in his coat pocket,” Dean adds, giving an exaggerated little shudder. “Man, mess me up for life!”
“Don’t joke about it,” Sam snarls, getting so angry so fast that Dean’s not quite prepared for it. Dean’s pretty sure Sam’s angry at himself mostly, having finally found a way for their dad’s death to have been his fault, like maybe he could’ve seen it coming if he’d just honed his talent. “Not about this.”
“Sammy, c’mon,” Dean says, wanting to smack the damn thing out of Sam’s hands. “You wanted me to read off Jess and now dad? Are you trying to hurt me? Are you punishing me for something?” Like trading myself in for you like a used car, Dean nearly adds, but that is one argument he’s not yet prepared for.
Sam deflates completely, letting the journal thump to the table in amongst the knives and guns. He drops and Dean’s pretty sure his ass hits a chair purely by accident. Sam’s hands come up and cover his face. Dean wants to hug the crap out of him but he’s also fearful of just what he’ll see going on in that brain. After all this time, he’s only just able to see out from underneath his own grief and to have that compounded, even from the outside…
He’s not sure what it will do to him.
“I got some stuff I need picked up,” Missouri says from the doorway. Sam looks up at her and she puts a hand out with a piece of paper in it, what looks like a list. “Madelyn’s got what I need. She’s a couple of hours drive so you can use my car.”
Sam looks back at Dean for a second but then nods mutely. When he’s gone, only pausing long enough to take his jacket off the hook by the door, Dean watches Missouri seem to collapse in on herself, lines appearing that he’s never seen before and her skin looking almost grey. He helps her to a chair when she starts to teeter and she smiles at him wanly.
“Sorry,” she apologises, grimacing. “I thought I’d be okay with the two of you here but… whoo!” She flicks a hand in front of her face like she’s clearing dust or bugs. “Sam might think he doesn’t have anything left after the demon but he’s blocking it. Doesn’t know he’s doing it but it’s building, same as yours.”
“You want us to leave?” Dean prompts, concerned. Missouri had seemed ageless to him but now he can see every single year on her.
“No, just, maybe not in the house at the same time for a little bit, unless you’re both sleeping,” Missouri says, patting Dean’s cheek. “You go on out for a beer when Sam gets back tonight.”
Dean nods even though he’s never felt less like going to a bar in his life.
000
A hunt only an hour out of Lawrence had seemed like a good way to blow off some steam to Dean. Now though, he wasn’t as sure as he searched through a house with rotting floors and a questionable smell for Sam who’d disappeared as soon as they were through the front door.
“Sam!” Dean yelled for what seemed like the fiftieth time. What was starting to worry Dean was how he couldn’t seem to find either the front or the back door of the place again. He passed through what felt like dozens of rooms, no windows, no stairs, nothing. “I’m in a freakin’ Escher painting,” Dean grumbled as he swiped at the dust that was irritating his eyes.
He was pretty sure he knew why they kept finding people inside the place that had died of thirst. Once in, if the house didn’t want you to find a way out, it seemed you didn’t. The police and firemen that would come after neighbours starting complaining about the smell always found the bodies just inside the door, like a final kick in the pants, the house or the spirit within taunting see how close you were all along?
“Dean!”
Dean spins. The voice sounds faint, far away. Dean pounds on the wall and calls his brother’s name because for all he knows Sam could be in the very next room or even the same one. It’s very obvious that he can’t trust any of his senses…
Dean pauses, just breathing for a moment. He puts his hands back up to the wall, closes his eyes and concentrates. Looking at it, there’d been a wall right in front of him but now… Now Dean can feel rotted skirting under his hands and sliding sideways, empty space. With a smirk, he remembers the movie The Labyrinth and how the girl hadn’t been able to see the gaps in the wall until she’d walked right up to it with her hands out. There was no worm to tell him how to get out of the maze, just his freaky brain.
Dean finds the other side of the doorway with his hands, bracing the space on either side before stepping through. He feels a cold draft on his face and grins.
Open window.
Dean opens his eyes just for a moment but it’s a mistake. There’s just a blank room like all the others and the sensation of the breeze dies. Dean shuts his eyes again, a strange feeling to need to plunge into darkness to orient himself. The wind is back and if he didn’t know any better he’d swear…
Dean stabs a hand out to his right and gets a handful of t-shirt. As soon as he’s connected, he can hear Sam breathing and he’s never been so glad for that sound in his life. Sam kind of startles away but Dean holds on. “It’s me!” he grunts when one of Sam’s hands clunks against his face and he feels Sam go still.
“I can’t see you,” Sam says, sounding a little wary.
“I can’t see you either,” Dean says and reels Sam in closer to him. “Just kinda… with my hands,” he amends and he hears Sam chuff a laugh.
“Can you get us out of here?” Sam asks and Dean nods before he remembers that they're both working blind.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Cool. So, burn the place to the ground?” Sam proposes and it’s Dean’s turn to laugh.
“You read my mind.”
000
“It’s handy,” Dean admits, watching Missouri set up their focus circle. He knows he’s got a long way to go, but he’s also prepared for that. Practice is something a Winchester has never been afraid of.
“Good to know,” Missouri says with a nod. “It’s important to learn some ways to shield yourself though. That’s what we’ll concentrate on. Anything else, I honestly couldn’t teach you.”
Dean grimaces when he hears Sam settle opposite him, the cracks of his knee joints loud in the quiet room.
000
Dean takes off for a week and doesn’t tell Sam where, leaving him at Bobby’s. He knows Sam will be pissed but it’s important. When he gets back, Sam’s trying not to let his curiosity overcome his obvious need to be mad but it gets the better of him. He demands to know just what Dean was up to and Dean just says, “Later.”
In the evening, when Dean is stretched out on the single bed that’s been his at Bobby’s since he can remember, Sam on the same-size bed pushed up against the wall, he hears Sam roll over and huff, a sign he’s still awake.
“She wasn’t scared,” Dean says and he feels Sam’s eyes on him. “Jess, I mean,” he adds and Sam makes a weird, choked off sound. “I mean, she was,” Dean ploughs on, before he loses the nerve to get what he has to say out. “But the last… the last thing she saw was you and that…” Dean rubs a hand over his face, wondering if he’s making anything better by telling Sam this. Whether he’s reopening healed-over wounds.
“The last thing she saw was me pulling you out of the room. She knew you were okay and that…”
“Dean,” Sam says and Dean rolls over onto his side so they’re facing each other over the small distance. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know… I just. Dad was so angry for so long and everything became about the hunt. I want more for you.”
“Can you want more for us, Dean? Can you try that for a little while?”
Dean buries his face against his forearm for a moment. His blankets smell like dog and age and he can’t see a future for himself and he doesn’t know how to admit that. He’s still wary of touching anything of his because he’s pretty sure he’s going to see a great yawning chasm of nothing, endless blackness.
“Yeah,” he says, instead of telling Sam all of this. “Yeah Sammy, I can do that.”
Rating/Warning: PG (language)
Wordcount: 3,038
Spoilers: End of S2 (Reference to S3 up to BDABR)
Fandom: SPN
By:
kellifer_ficCategory: Gen
Summary: Dean has always been grounded by contact, needing to touch.
Disclaimer: Written for entertainment purposes only. No money, no sue.
Part One | Part Two
“Focus,” Missouri instructs.
“I am,” Dean insists.
“Not on making your brother’s head explode with your thoughts!” Missouri snaps and Sam, sitting opposite with his legs crossed even though it’s gotta be murder on his ginormous stilts, cracks open one eye.
“He’s breathing loud,” Dean snaps, flailing a hand in a what am I supposed to do gesture. “It’s bugging the crap out of me.”
“You need to be filtering out distraction,” Missouri says at the same time as Sam interjects, “You cannot seriously be complaining about me breathing!”
“You’ve always been this weird-ass mouth breather,” Dean continues and now Sam is fairly flushing with anger.
“What else am I supposed to breathe out of?” he demands. Missouri enters the circle chalked around them both, stops in front of Dean and claps her hands together once, loud. It’s like a gunshot and Dean jerks and looks up at her.
“Don’t think you’re too big to have your palms smacked with a ruler,” she warns and Dean just gapes at her. He then tries to glare around her at Sam when he hears his brother snicker, but Missouri moves sideways as well, cutting off his view. “Do I need to separate you both?”
Dean looks down at the collection of odds and ends at Missouri’s feet, stuff Sam had gone out into the street to collect. He was supposed to find his center, whatever the crap that meant and then try to get a read off the objects. When Sam had made to leave Dean alone Missouri had instead steered him into the circle as well, tutting at him that it wasn’t too late and Sam had gone strangely pale and quiet. He was just supposed to be meditating and Dean realises that he was mostly just trying to get a rise out of Sam rather than concentrate on his own stuff because he’d never been comfortable when Sam shut down like that.
“We’ll be good,” Dean promises and Missouri finally steps away, Sam looking at Dean with a strange expression when he can see him again.
“I thought I was bugging you,” Sam says. He’s got his hands down flat on the floor like he’d been about to get up.
“Yeah, well, it bugs me a lot more when I can’t see you,” Dean says and then rolls his eyes when Sam gets that ridiculously goofy grin on his face whenever he thinks he’s caught Dean saying something extra mushy and damaging to his manhood. “Just… breathe through your nose like a normal person.”
Sam pulls a face and rolls his eyes, but he complies.
His nose whistles and Dean smacks a hand to his face.
He gets nothing that first day.
The only time he’s intentionally done anything was when he was pretty drunk. Dean is contemplating asking Missouri if she has any hooch in the house when she sits down across from him in the kitchen the next morning and just shakes her head.
“I know you’re scared,” she starts to say and Dean scowls and ducks his head.
“No I’m not,” he denies a little waspishly and Missouri snorts.
“Dean Winchester, you’re terrified and don’t think I can’t tell.” When Dean makes to get up from the table, Missouri reaches out a hand and he jerks away without even thinking about it. She’s wearing an expression like, yeah, that’s what I thought.
“What if I can’t…” Dean makes a helpless gesture with his hand and Missouri just waits for him to finish without saying a word. “What if I can’t turn it off?”
“That what’s worrying you?”
“Sam was practically paralysed with his visions. I’m just thinking that if I can’t as much as pick up a gun without reliving its life story how am I supposed to… protect him?”
“That’s not your job,” Missouri says and Dean stills, eyes narrowing.
“Like hell it isn’t,” he says, voice a low tremble.
“I know what your daddy put on you,” Missouri continues, her face showing the kind of sadness and understanding Dean had often seen on teachers when either he or Sam would turn up to school with one too many patches on their jeans. “It wasn’t fair, you were only a child. You’ve carried that burden all your life but can’t you just see that Sam’s doing nothing but trying to shoulder his own now?”
“He’s my little brother,” Dean grates, back of his throat suddenly burning.
“And by virtue of birth he always will be,” Missouri says with a smile. “Doesn’t mean he can’t take his turn at watch.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Dean asks, pulling his hands into clenched fists. He has never, ever wanted to escape a conversation as much as he wants to get away from this one.
“You been holding yourself back, apart for too long. It’s not surprising that power’s now trying to bleed out of you anyway it can. You’re liable to pop otherwise.”
“You saying I always had this?” Dean asks, a little mystified. So far as he’s concerned, this power of whatever it is came out of nowhere, much like Sam’s. Dean bites his lip though because that’s not strictly true once he actually thinks about it. He lives a lot of his life on instinct but maybe… He shakes the hand of a weapon’s trader, gets a bad feeling and he and Sam hightail it out of there. He picks up a gun and just knows it’s going to jam and so goes with another one, not even blinking when he takes apart the first gun the same day and finds gunk in the barrel because Sam’s accidentally run the damn thing through the wash.
He’s always just sort of… known.
This though?
This has gotta be different.
“You ever put something off because of Sam?” Missouri prods gently and Dean sort of nods, staring down at the table. There was PT and dates and hundreds of other little things Dean forwent as he was growing up because Sam needed something, wanted something. Missy Sanders in the eleventh grade had been ready to give it up the day the Winchesters were heading out of town but Dean spent his last night instead with Sammy at a drive-in because he’d gotten his first ever C, in Shop no less, and had been so hang-dog about it.
“I just, what? Set this aside until I had time for it?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Missouri says sagely, before getting up to make them both coffees.
Missouri stuck them in the same room even though she had three spare so Dean’s awake, staring at the ceiling and listening to Sam snore. To be honest, he would have heard Sam snoring from three rooms down anyway because his little brother has always been a buzz-saw when he’s on a too-small bed and can’t stretch out. It’s like he makes up for the fact he doesn’t have enough space in volume, his body protesting that his feet are in space in anyway it can.
Dean can span the distance between their two beds with the length of his arm and he does, hesitating right before he comes into contact with Sam’s brow. His fingers curl for a minute because Sam’s forehead isn’t creased like he’s having a bad dream and Dean’s wondering if he should intrude on a good one.
Sam kind of shifts though right at that moment and Dean’s knuckles knock against his temple and
buried into a snow drift up to her waist and she’s so pink-cheeked and beautiful like that, that Sam can’t help but think I’m going to marry her and while
jerks his hand away, managing to smack Sam in the nose when he does. Sam comes awake with a snort and blinks at Dean, still looking muzzy with sleep. “What are you doing?” Sam asks, pushing up onto his elbow.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Dean isn’t quite sure what he wasn’t meaning to do. The nightmares were one thing but Sam actually had four good years away from him and sometimes he forgets that. Sam had a life, friends and a woman who was good to him and Dean feels a stab of guilt that he pretty much ripped the rug out from under Sam’s feet. Hell, he’s not even sure if Jessica would’ve-
“Don’t,” Sam says, nothing but shadows and lines in the darkness and Dean rolls over onto his back because looking at the ceiling is safer.
Dean is careful to handle the weapons only when he’s wearing the gas-station gloves. Missouri had looked a little annoyed that he’d turned her dining table into a cleaning area but he’d been ready to point out that she got lord knew what on it when putting together gris-gris and protection charms.
He’s reassembling his favourite pearl-handled automatic when Sam appears, holding their dad’s journal. At first Dean thinks maybe Sam’s been researching something but when Sam advances, Dean realises what he’s doing.
“You might be able to see if he’s okay,” Sam tries when Dean gets up from the table and backs away.
“I might see that he’s not,” Dean argues. “Or just some chick he put it to while he had it in his coat pocket,” Dean adds, giving an exaggerated little shudder. “Man, mess me up for life!”
“Don’t joke about it,” Sam snarls, getting so angry so fast that Dean’s not quite prepared for it. Dean’s pretty sure Sam’s angry at himself mostly, having finally found a way for their dad’s death to have been his fault, like maybe he could’ve seen it coming if he’d just honed his talent. “Not about this.”
“Sammy, c’mon,” Dean says, wanting to smack the damn thing out of Sam’s hands. “You wanted me to read off Jess and now dad? Are you trying to hurt me? Are you punishing me for something?” Like trading myself in for you like a used car, Dean nearly adds, but that is one argument he’s not yet prepared for.
Sam deflates completely, letting the journal thump to the table in amongst the knives and guns. He drops and Dean’s pretty sure his ass hits a chair purely by accident. Sam’s hands come up and cover his face. Dean wants to hug the crap out of him but he’s also fearful of just what he’ll see going on in that brain. After all this time, he’s only just able to see out from underneath his own grief and to have that compounded, even from the outside…
He’s not sure what it will do to him.
“I got some stuff I need picked up,” Missouri says from the doorway. Sam looks up at her and she puts a hand out with a piece of paper in it, what looks like a list. “Madelyn’s got what I need. She’s a couple of hours drive so you can use my car.”
Sam looks back at Dean for a second but then nods mutely. When he’s gone, only pausing long enough to take his jacket off the hook by the door, Dean watches Missouri seem to collapse in on herself, lines appearing that he’s never seen before and her skin looking almost grey. He helps her to a chair when she starts to teeter and she smiles at him wanly.
“Sorry,” she apologises, grimacing. “I thought I’d be okay with the two of you here but… whoo!” She flicks a hand in front of her face like she’s clearing dust or bugs. “Sam might think he doesn’t have anything left after the demon but he’s blocking it. Doesn’t know he’s doing it but it’s building, same as yours.”
“You want us to leave?” Dean prompts, concerned. Missouri had seemed ageless to him but now he can see every single year on her.
“No, just, maybe not in the house at the same time for a little bit, unless you’re both sleeping,” Missouri says, patting Dean’s cheek. “You go on out for a beer when Sam gets back tonight.”
Dean nods even though he’s never felt less like going to a bar in his life.
A hunt only an hour out of Lawrence had seemed like a good way to blow off some steam to Dean. Now though, he wasn’t as sure as he searched through a house with rotting floors and a questionable smell for Sam who’d disappeared as soon as they were through the front door.
“Sam!” Dean yelled for what seemed like the fiftieth time. What was starting to worry Dean was how he couldn’t seem to find either the front or the back door of the place again. He passed through what felt like dozens of rooms, no windows, no stairs, nothing. “I’m in a freakin’ Escher painting,” Dean grumbled as he swiped at the dust that was irritating his eyes.
He was pretty sure he knew why they kept finding people inside the place that had died of thirst. Once in, if the house didn’t want you to find a way out, it seemed you didn’t. The police and firemen that would come after neighbours starting complaining about the smell always found the bodies just inside the door, like a final kick in the pants, the house or the spirit within taunting see how close you were all along?
“Dean!”
Dean spins. The voice sounds faint, far away. Dean pounds on the wall and calls his brother’s name because for all he knows Sam could be in the very next room or even the same one. It’s very obvious that he can’t trust any of his senses…
Dean pauses, just breathing for a moment. He puts his hands back up to the wall, closes his eyes and concentrates. Looking at it, there’d been a wall right in front of him but now… Now Dean can feel rotted skirting under his hands and sliding sideways, empty space. With a smirk, he remembers the movie The Labyrinth and how the girl hadn’t been able to see the gaps in the wall until she’d walked right up to it with her hands out. There was no worm to tell him how to get out of the maze, just his freaky brain.
Dean finds the other side of the doorway with his hands, bracing the space on either side before stepping through. He feels a cold draft on his face and grins.
Open window.
Dean opens his eyes just for a moment but it’s a mistake. There’s just a blank room like all the others and the sensation of the breeze dies. Dean shuts his eyes again, a strange feeling to need to plunge into darkness to orient himself. The wind is back and if he didn’t know any better he’d swear…
Dean stabs a hand out to his right and gets a handful of t-shirt. As soon as he’s connected, he can hear Sam breathing and he’s never been so glad for that sound in his life. Sam kind of startles away but Dean holds on. “It’s me!” he grunts when one of Sam’s hands clunks against his face and he feels Sam go still.
“I can’t see you,” Sam says, sounding a little wary.
“I can’t see you either,” Dean says and reels Sam in closer to him. “Just kinda… with my hands,” he amends and he hears Sam chuff a laugh.
“Can you get us out of here?” Sam asks and Dean nods before he remembers that they're both working blind.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Cool. So, burn the place to the ground?” Sam proposes and it’s Dean’s turn to laugh.
“You read my mind.”
“It’s handy,” Dean admits, watching Missouri set up their focus circle. He knows he’s got a long way to go, but he’s also prepared for that. Practice is something a Winchester has never been afraid of.
“Good to know,” Missouri says with a nod. “It’s important to learn some ways to shield yourself though. That’s what we’ll concentrate on. Anything else, I honestly couldn’t teach you.”
Dean grimaces when he hears Sam settle opposite him, the cracks of his knee joints loud in the quiet room.
Dean takes off for a week and doesn’t tell Sam where, leaving him at Bobby’s. He knows Sam will be pissed but it’s important. When he gets back, Sam’s trying not to let his curiosity overcome his obvious need to be mad but it gets the better of him. He demands to know just what Dean was up to and Dean just says, “Later.”
In the evening, when Dean is stretched out on the single bed that’s been his at Bobby’s since he can remember, Sam on the same-size bed pushed up against the wall, he hears Sam roll over and huff, a sign he’s still awake.
“She wasn’t scared,” Dean says and he feels Sam’s eyes on him. “Jess, I mean,” he adds and Sam makes a weird, choked off sound. “I mean, she was,” Dean ploughs on, before he loses the nerve to get what he has to say out. “But the last… the last thing she saw was you and that…” Dean rubs a hand over his face, wondering if he’s making anything better by telling Sam this. Whether he’s reopening healed-over wounds.
“The last thing she saw was me pulling you out of the room. She knew you were okay and that…”
“Dean,” Sam says and Dean rolls over onto his side so they’re facing each other over the small distance. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know… I just. Dad was so angry for so long and everything became about the hunt. I want more for you.”
“Can you want more for us, Dean? Can you try that for a little while?”
Dean buries his face against his forearm for a moment. His blankets smell like dog and age and he can’t see a future for himself and he doesn’t know how to admit that. He’s still wary of touching anything of his because he’s pretty sure he’s going to see a great yawning chasm of nothing, endless blackness.
“Yeah,” he says, instead of telling Sam all of this. “Yeah Sammy, I can do that.”