Chapter Text
Sam was asleep when Dean came back to the motel, but he woke up instantly when his brother opened the door, spilling in the sound of the downpour outside. He raised his head, looking blearily toward the door where Dean stood, a dark shape outlined against the falling rain. “Dean?”
“S’all right, Sammy, go back to sleep.” He ducked inside, shutting the door behind him, and put his bag on the floor.
Sam let his head drop back onto his pillow with a sigh. Dean was back, which meant that he could finally relax. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged it out of him, but he spent most of the time Dean was gone in a state of high anxiety. Which was stupid because he’d left Dean alone for almost four years once, parted ways with him since then tons of times, and never had a twinge of concern. Dean, generally speaking, could handle himself. This inane worry—fear, if he was honest with himself—hadn’t begun until recently. Until Aaron Daughtry’s ranch, to be more specific, because he’d been near to panicking by the time Dean had come back. Earringed, tattooed, and with a ‘broken’ cell charger that Sam had pulled out of the trash and tried on his own phone and it had worked just fine, thank you.
Since then Dean had been off—not possessed, although Sam had just about made himself hoarse throwing “Christos” at him that first week or so, just … different. More distant, if that was possible. On edge in a way he hadn’t been since that first year after Dad’s death. And every time he left—visiting old friends, supposedly, which was a laugh because Sam had actually met Dean’s “old friends,” and they weren’t the type of people you took a week off to go visit—Sam had this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that something was wrong, and that Dean wasn’t coming back: not this time.
And every time his brother walked through the door, the draining of pent-up tension left Sam exhausted. This thing, whatever it was that was going on, had to come to a head soon. He’d give Dean a few more weeks to sort out whatever he was going through, and then they were going to have a little talk.
Lying in the dark, Sam heard the shower go on in the bathroom and it made him smile slightly. Whatever was going on in his brother’s head, Dean was just as vain as ever—man showered every chance he got, sometimes twice a day. Sam drifted on the verge of sleep, mind shuffling through memories of meals on the road—with Dean, with Dad and Dean—that had all taken on the fond cast of times sufficiently distant to be romanticized.
He must have actually fallen asleep at some point because he opened his eyes and, according to the clock next to his bed, two hours had gone by. There was the sound of water falling, which he associated with the rain outside until he managed to drag some shreds of awareness around himself. Then he realized that the noise was coming from the bathroom.
Sam pushed himself up, frowning, and glanced at the other bed. No sign of Dean, except for his bag sitting at the foot. He had obviously fished through it for something in the dark because clothes littered the bed around it, dropped haphazardly. Sam stared at them for a moment, working it through in his head.
The shower was still running and Dean wasn’t in his bed. It had been two hours.
He got out of the bed, fully awake now, and hurried over to the bathroom door. Detoured briefly to grab the gun he’d left on the room’s small table. It was probably nothing—Dean’d probably fallen asleep standing up, God knew he’d done it before: the guy could sleep anywhere—but better safe than sorry in their line of work.
Sam knocked on the door with his free hand, leaning close. “Dean?” he called. “You okay in there, man?”
The sound of cascading water, and otherwise silence. His heart jackhammered against his ribs.
“Dean?” he tried again, louder this time.
Nothing. His hand dropped, found the doorknob. It turned easily in his grasp and he pushed the door open, raising the gun to a firing position.
Dean was standing in the shower, back turned toward Sam and forehead resting against the tiled wall. Water spilled across his skin, shining lines snaking across goosebumps—the hot water had to have been used up ages ago, place like this—and Sam swore, lowering the gun and flipping the safety back on. Dean was going to make himself sick if he kept standing there: if he hadn’t already caught something, that was. Sam had to get him out of there, dry him off, get him into bed … He started forward and then stopped as Dean’s voice, broken and rough, floated back to him.
“’M sorry, ‘m so sorry …” In a litany, on and on and over and over.
Dean's shoulders flexed, the muscles there shifted, and the tattoo breathed into life: the wings stretched out, feathers ruffling. Then Dean’s back went lax again and the illusion was gone. It was just a tattoo again, inked into his brother’s skin.
Sam inched forward a step. “Dean?” he hazarded.
He could tell that Dean had heard him because his brother’s entire body tensed, muscles suddenly cast in sharp relief, and the repeated mumbles cut off. Dean twisted his head a little—not enough for Sam to see any of his face, but enough that he felt acknowledged.
“Sam. Get the hell out.”
“I will. But let’s get you out of there first, okay?” He reached out and Dean flinched, even though Sam knew that his brother couldn’t actually see him.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Come on, man.” Sam averted his eyes as he reached around Dean for the shower knobs and found himself looking at the floor. Where the water was swirling red down the drain. Oh God.
His eyes snapped up again and he grabbed Dean’s arm, manhandling him around quickly. “Dean! Jesus what’s wrong? Where’re you—”
Dean’s skin was unmarked. His eyes were shut, his face empty.
Sam shot a panicked glance down at the drain again and the water was still washing down like blood. It pushed out of the showerhead clear, ran down over his brother’s unmarked body and churned red into the drain.
“Dean, what the hell—”
Dean opened his eyes and Sam’s mouth went dry. There was no pupil there, no white or iris, only a blinding wash of silver. A shadow grew across the tiled shower wall behind him: the spreading of wings.
“It won’t come off, Sammy,” Dean moaned. “It’s inside me and it won’t—I felt her go, so close, felt her heart stop. There was so much blood.”
“Dean, you’re not—Your eyes are ...” He swallowed. Tried again. “What happened?”
Dean’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “You betrayed me, Sam.” The shadow wings dipped in, curling off the wall toward Sam, and he stumbled back, instinct pulling the gun up in his hands, thumb flicking off the safety, and
He jerked up, panting, the sheets sticking to his sweat-soaked body. In the other bed, Dean rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. His hair was flat on one side, puffed up on the other. His eyes were thick with sleep, but even in the dim room Sam could see that they were Dean’s. They were human.
“Sammy?" he mummbled. "Wha’s wrong? You have a vision?”
Sam shook his head but one hand went to massage at his temples anyway. His heart was still racing in his chest and his legs were trembling. Holy shit that had felt real.
“Nightmare?” Dean tried again. He rubbed his eyes with one hand, pulled himself further upright in the bed.
“Something like that.”
“What about?”
Sam snorted a laugh. Did Dean actually think they was going to have share time here when he’d been shutting Sam out for almost half a year? “Puppies. Round, fluffy ones.”
Dean just looked at him for a minute and then shook his head. “Yeah, okay,” he muttered, flipping onto his stomach. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and Sam could see part of his tattoo where the sheet had slipped down.
He lay back, one hand resting limply over his heart, and stared up at the ceiling. God, he hated ceilings. He shut his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at it and listened to his brother’s breathing.
After a few minutes, he opened his mouth and said, “Dean?”
Shifting from the other bed. “Christ, Sam, what? I’m trying to sleep over here.”
“If there were something wrong, you’d tell me, right?”
Beat of silence.
“Yeah, sure.”
Liar.
“Dean?”
Grudgingly. “What?”
He hesitated. “Never mind.”
A sigh. “Go to sleep, dude.”
But Sam lay awake the rest of the night, thinking. In the end, he stared at the ceiling, and his memory painted flames there, and women. It was better than what he saw with his eyes closed: Dean, his humanity bled away, those silver eyes blazing. You betrayed me, Sam. And oh God, he had no idea why, but that felt so true.
Dean seemed fine in the morning, which was to say that he seemed closed off and on edge. Sam searched his brother for some indication of what was going on and ran into the blank wall that was Dean Winchester. He asked questions about Dean’s trip—checking in with some contacts this time: looking for a job, presumably—and got back fairly monosyllabic answers.
Had he found anything for them? No.
Who, exactly, did he go see again? People.
Did he have a good time? That question just got him a look: one of those patented Dean looks that said it must be some cosmic joke. That Sam couldn’t be his brother because he didn’t have brothers who asked stupid questions like that.
So, yeah, pretty much par for the course, except that Sam, pretending to sleep in his own bed, had watched covertly as Dean got up and dressed in quick, almost angry movements. Watched him pick up his leather coat, glance over to make Sam was still oblivious to the world, and then leave the room without putting it on. Watched him come back inside a few minutes later without it.
Sam wanted to ask what he'd done with it, but he knew that doing so was a sure way to wire his brother's jaws shut. Dean had probably just put it in the Impala, anyway. Also, asking would alert Dean to the fact that Sam was on to him, which Sam in no way wanted. If he was going to figure out what was going on with his brother, he was going to have to catch him off guard: relaxed. Or as relaxed as Dean ever got nowadays.
So when Dean bypassed his opening sallies, Sam offered to go out and pick up some coffee and breakfast for them while Dean looked through the job possibilities Sam had found combing the newspapers. Sam drove the Impala a few blocks over, then pulled off into the back parking lot of a hardware store and stopped. Searched the Impala from the front fenders to the bumper. Came up empty handed.
He left the Impala there and jogged back over to the motel, careful to stay out of sight from the room’s window, in case Dean bothered to look out. Dean had only been gone a few minutes when he went out that morning, so he hadn’t gone far. Sam started searching, using the grid pattern their dad had taught them. He found the coat in the dumpster behind the motel. His hands shook as he pulled it out to examine it.
It looked the same as always: worn and scuffed. Small stitches where something had sliced it open and Dean had repaired it. He lifted it for a closer look and caught a whiff of lemon. What the hell? Sniffed the coat and the leather smell was buried under lemon, which meant that Dean had washed it. Which meant that something had been on it. What? Sam held the coat loosely in his hands, staring at it.
He shook with the effort of not storming back into the motel and throwing the coat at Dean’s feet. Normally, if he forced an issue, Dean caved. Dean hated it, but if Sam pushed hard enough all of those defenses Dean kept around himself crumbled. Usually. But Sam couldn’t be sure, with the way his brother had been acting lately, that he wouldn’t just cut and run. More Sam’s style, sure, but Dean hadn’t seemed all that concerned with staying around lately. Or, worse, forcing the issue might accidentally shatter that razor’s edge of self-control Dean had been clinging to. Sam had no idea what would happen then, and he didn’t want to find out. Those first few months after Dad had been bad enough.
So in the end, coat held tightly in one fist, he went back to the Impala. Where he folded his brother's leather coat and hid it carefully under the passenger seat. When he got a chance, he’d move it somewhere safer: his bag, probably. Dean left that alone: gave him all the privacy he could with the way they lived.
Sam kept the coat because he couldn’t bear to leave it lying in the dumpster, as though he’d be throwing away some vital part of his brother if he did that. And because there was going to be a time when he and Dean would have to talk about this, and damn the consequences.
“Took you long enough,” Dean said curtly when Sam got back to the room with two steaming coffees and a bag of food. “Get your shit together and meet me in the car.”
“Dean,” Sam started, trying to juggle the coffee, food, and the door at once. “What do you—”
“We’re moving out. Oregon. If we push, we can be there tomorrow.”
“Dean, Oregon’s over a thousand miles from here—”
“Yeah, and it isn’t getting any closer. Car, Sam. Now.” He shoved past Sam, bag slung over his shoulder. Didn’t even glance at the coffee or the food, which… Even on hunts, Dean could never quite get his mind off of food. Not unless whatever they were after was standing right in front of them.
Damn it, Dean.
Sam left the coffee and the food on the dresser while he packed, shoving things into his bag with more force than was strictly necessary. Oregon. Which of the jobs was that? Oh yeah, a series of female deaths, corpses partially dessicated. They’d each showed signs of having had sex right before they died. Incubus, then.
Sam left the coffee and the food in the room when he went out. Dean didn’t seem to notice.