Chapter Text
“Dean?” Sam’s voice is a tinny crackle of bad reception and concern, sounding so far away he might as well be calling from another planet.
“Sammy,” Dean slurs affectionately, the ‘S’ soft and sticky behind his teeth.
“Dean, where are you?”
An acidic wave swells at the back of Dean’s throat. He pushes his face deeper into the toilet bowl, half-wishing the puke would just come out already. “‘M taking the night off,” he mumbles into the phone. “‘Member?”
“Um, no, actually,” Sam snaps in his ear, and Dean cringes at the mental image of his younger brother jutting his jaw. “You didn’t say anything. You just left. I’ve spent the last half hour tearing the bunker apart before I saw the car was gone.”
Dean pooches his lips as he mulls through his whiskey-soaked recollection. He’s been at the bar since ten, and now it’s—he unsticks the phone from his balmy cheek and squints at the drifting numbers—what, close to midnight? He can’t remember what he’d said to Sam. Dean meant to tell his brother he was going out. Maybe he did, but Sam didn’t hear because his nose was buried in some obscure book on cave paintings made by Native Americans high on ayahuasca.
Or, maybe Dean forgot in his rush to flee the suffocating silence of the bunker. Dean can’t handle quiet for very long these days. If his mind has too much space, it orbits that same black hole, nothing to distract him from the gravity pulling down, down, down. Even now—after enough liquor to drown his brain and dampen the world into a blur—the void pulls at the corners of his being, threatening to fold him in on himself.
“—even listening?” Sam’s voice washes in and out like a tide. He sounds angry, but not nearly as angry as worried, which should make Dean feel better. It doesn’t. It only makes him feel worse. Guiltier.
Dean wants to say sorry, that he didn’t mean to freak Sam out, that he feels bad because he’s been freaking Sam out a lot lately. But what slips out is less honest, more bitter. Something that sounds a lot more like ‘fuck off.’
Dean braces for a lecture—which always rubs him the wrong way, coming from his younger brother—but surprise briefly sobers him when Sam only lets out a bone-tired sigh, mutters something about calling a cab, then hangs up.
After he’s sure the threat of vomiting has passed, Dean rocks back onto his ass and lets his head thud against the humid tile wall of the bar bathroom. Someone is knocking on the door, griping about needing to take a shit, but Dean’s too numb and thick-limbed to get up. He just stares at the blank wall across from him, trying not to imagine a viscous, black liquid bubbling out from the tiles.
*****
The next morning tastes like stale puke and burped alcohol. Dean’s neck and back are stiff, and a headache burns behind his eyes. Around eleven, Sam sticks his head into Dean’s room, says he’s making a sandwich, asks if Dean wants one. Dean doesn’t but says yes anyway, because it’s as close as he’ll get to being able to apologize.
After Sam disappears in pursuit of sandwiches, Dean finally makes himself sit up on the edge of the bed, dragging a coarse hand over the stubble on his cheek. He considers the bourbon in his nightstand, but opts to at least brush his teeth first. And shower—the ungodly scent of his own body odor does nothing to ease his growing nausea.
As Dean shuffles to the bathroom—how did he manage to lose a sock, and since when did the other one sprout a hole in the big toe?—he can hear Sam clanking around in the kitchen. Big oaf can’t even make a sandwich without dirtying half the dishes in the cabinets. Then again, Sam isn’t used to being the one playing house.
Guilt tightens Dean’s diaphragm, squeezing his lungs as he creaks on the bathroom sink. He doesn’t look in the mirror. He brushes his teeth and drinks from the faucet until the chemical taste of the tap makes him queasy again, then gets in the shower and stands under the steaming stream until he’s certain he’s burned away a sin or two.
He refuses to think about Sam last night, frantically bustling in and out of every bar in a twenty-mile radius before finally finding him passed out in a bathroom. He refuses to think about the smell of ozone and the rustle of wings. Or the three words that never stop echoing through his head in his best friend’s voice.
By the time Dean makes it back to his room, he’s ready to crawl right back under the covers and go back to pretending the world doesn’t exist, but then Sam’s there in the doorway, sheepishly holding a suspiciously leafy sandwich and mumbling about needing to call Eileen for help with some research. Dean takes the sandwich with an unintentionally-gruff thanks, and Sam exits as quickly as he entered.
Dean lifts the top piece of bread, plucks a few layers of green off, then takes a couple bites. About halfway through, the bread starts to gum up on the roof of his mouth and the whole thing becomes more hassle than it’s worth, so Dean pushes it aside in favor of the Tylenol Sam was wise enough to put on the plate without mentioning. He takes it dry, not minding the way it scrapes down his sore throat. If anything, the sensation is welcome—pain is one of the few things that seems to get his muted synapses firing these days.
It doesn’t take long for his hungover brain to grow warm and soggy again, and sleep finds him soon after.
*****
“Tell us where they are,” Dean demands, his silver knife licking a bloody stripe up the shifter’s neck. The shifter shrieks and writhes against the cheap metal folding chair, but the monster doesn’t stand a chance against the silver chains binding him.
Sam makes a movement behind Dean—maybe a startle, maybe a hand lifting to caution or placate—but Dean ignores it. He doesn’t have the patience for Good Cop, Bad Cop right now.
It’s not common for shifters to travel in groups, but a few days ago Sam stumbled across an article about an up-and-coming pop-punk band whose five members were recently found dead in a storm drain in Detroit. The catch? The band played a live show in Columbus the same night, three hours after the bodies were discovered.
“Like I’d tell you!” the shifter hisses, curling his pierced lips. “They’re family to me—I’d rather die than betray them.”
“Those kids were someone else’s family!” Dean roars, his rage echoing through the empty auditorium.
“Dean,” Sam says, almost softly. Maybe Sam can sense the antsy twitch in Dean’s hand around the hilt of the knife, or maybe he’s just trying to calm him down enough to interrogate the shifter properly. Either way, it irritates Dean.
He makes a point not to acknowledge Sam as he leans down into the shifter’s face until he can smell the brine of sweat and blood coming off the monster’s skin. Dean’s voice is low but penetrating when he speaks. “Tell us where they are and I’ll kill you nice and quick, instead of cutting off everything that sticks out until you run out of regrow juice.”
A muscle in the shifter’s jaw flexes, pure hatred simmering in his eyes. Then he spits in Dean’s face. Dean wipes a hand over his spittle-covered features and doesn’t waste another word before carving the blade along the side of the shifter’s skull, effectively sawing off an ear—along with several tufts of hair. The creature howls and Sam’s hand lands on Dean’s shoulder, but Dean shrugs it off.
A few bleeding, blubbering minutes later, the brothers have an address. Dean cleanly stabs the shifter through the heart after gathering the necessary information, and while Sam doesn’t object, Dean doesn’t miss his scrutinizing glance. Dean knows that look. It’s the one that says ‘slow down,’ and counterproductively makes Dean want to punch and stab things even more.
Less than an hour later, they’re at an after party in a crowded club that boasts swaths of skinny-jeaned college kids with enough piercings in their faces to set off an airport TSA. It doesn’t take the brothers long to single out the band members (or shifters masquerading as band members) snorting lines off the glossy red body of a Telecaster.
As planned, Sam approaches first and asks for a selfie. The skinny kid with emo fringe jumps at the opportunity, but as soon as he gets close, Sam presses the unseen length of a silver blade to his abdomen. The other shifters won’t be able to attack or flee without risking their friend getting stuck like a pig.
Dean bounds up to the DJ booth and snatches the mic, eliciting a string of curses from the DJ and capturing the attention of nearby bouncers. “Cops!” Dean shouts, his voice booming over the sound system. “It’s a drug bust! Everyone get out!”
Amidst the chaos that ensues, Sam hauls the captive into the nearest hallway marked ‘STAFF ONLY’ with the other three shifters on his tail. Dean barrels after them.
Two against four wasn’t their brightest idea, he’d admit, but during the blade-slinging, fist-wielding fight that erupts in the hallway, Dean is secretly invigorated by the surge of adrenaline in his veins. He finally feels something in the broken skin of his cheekbone; the crack of his bruising knuckles; the salty taste of his split lip.
When the skinny kid rapidly sheds his wet skin and morphs into the hulking shape of one of the bouncers from earlier, Dean merely cracks his neck and grins. He lets himself take nearly as many licks as he gives, and continuously throws himself in front of Sam, bearing the brunt of the fight. It’s not until Sam swears at him that he remembers he actually needs to survive this if he wants to get his younger brother out alive too.
Dean manages to reel in his masochism long enough to slip a silver blade between the big shifter’s ribs. Sam calls out as the other shifter—now wearing the DJ’s skin suit—loops a power cable around Dean’s neck. Dean barely gets his hands between the cord and his neck before it’s yanked tight, snapping his head back.
The shifter is behind him, which doesn’t exactly put Dean at an advantage, and that DJ clearly frequented the gym, because he’s impossible to shake. Dean throws himself backward, knocking the shifter into the wall. His hands are still fighting to keep the cord from cutting off his oxygen supply, so he utilizes the only weapon he has left: his head. Dean bashes the back of his skull against the shifter’s face like a battering ram until the cord slackens enough to tear away.
Once free, Dean jams the knife through the DJ-shifter’s beefy chest with a vicious twist, then immediately whirls around in search of his brother. Sam is scrambling to his feet, blade slick with red, the final shifter sprawled dead at his side. The hallway is a slimy mess of blood and shifter refuse, and both brothers did enough tumbling around to get covered in it.
Dean allows himself a sigh of relief as he places a hand on his younger brother’s gunky shoulder, but something about the wetness makes Dean’s pulse stutter. When he jerks his hand away, his palm is black and glistening. So is Sam’s coat. To Dean’s utter horror, the thick, dark liquid begins to crawl across Sam’s shoulders and pool around his body, sucking him in.
“Sam!” Dean shouts, grabbing a fistful of his brother’s shirt and yanking with all of hell’s fury. Cold panic shoots down his back, threatening to buckle him where he stands, and the corners of his vision blotch.
“Dean?” Sam’s voice cuts in. “Hey!” He swats the side of Dean’s face with a bit of force.
It takes a second for Dean to realize the ‘no-no-no-no-no’ is tumbling from his own mouth. He looks down at his hands—which are shaking embarrassingly—and flips them over, searching for the black liquid that was there only moments ago. After double, triple checking, he confirms his hands and his brother are definitely covered in sludge, but innocent, perfectly normal shifter sludge. Not black sludge.
Even though his heart is still rocketing along in his chest, Dean’s mind begins to right itself, and he wills the adrenaline out of his system.
“Hey!” Sam objects as Dean turns away, but it’s too late—Dean’s already out of the hall and across the dance floor.
The overhead lights are on now, making the club music (which is still thudding off the walls) feel abjectly out of place. A few employees amble around, dazed and confused, but the venue is mostly vacant.
Sam must know better than to draw attention by shouting after Dean, so he makes a silent beeline toward the nearest exit. Dean however, takes a slight detour, swiping a couple of abandoned shot glasses from a table on the way out. He chucks the fiery liquid back as they step outside, then tosses the empty glasses aside. Dean can feel Sam’s stare practically burning bald spots into the side of his head, but he keeps walking.
“Guess I’m driving,” Sam scoffs.
Thankfully, they parked right out front, knowing they wouldn’t stick around long enough to get towed for taking up the VIP spaces. Dean tosses Sam the keys and jams his hands back into his coat pockets because they’re still trembling—and because he can’t stop turning them over, looking for smudges of black.
When Sam gets to the driver’s side, he pauses like he’s going to initiate some chick-flicky moment, but Dean swings the passenger door open and hops right in. Reluctantly, Sam follows, but once he gets settled in the Impala, he tucks the keys into his lap instead of the ignition. Both brothers stare through the windshield like it’s a contest.
“Dean—“
“Sam, we’re not doing this.”
“Dean.”
“Look, I said I needed to blow off some steam. Gank a couple of monsters. Throw a few punches. And look—mission accomplished. Now let’s go home, crack a couple cold ones, and put on season four of True Blood.”
“No, because that wasn’t blowing off steam, Dean. You were being reckless back there—reckless even for you, and that’s saying something.”
“I wanted to get the job done,” Dean defends. “And we did. We did it damn well. So quit your pouting and drive so we can go home and celebrate.”
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose the way he does when he’s stressed, and Dean bristles through a silent minute before his brother finally speaks.
“Are you trying to die?” The way Sam asks it—so weary and defeated, no fight in the words—knocks the wind right out of Dean’s lungs.
He swallows against the lingering burn of the vodka and responds, low and stern. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re acting like you don’t care if you get yourself killed,” Sam says, vexed again. “I mean, you were throwing yourself at them, dude. I almost expected you to hand your knife over to the shifters!”
Dean waves his hand dismissively. “I was off my game there at the beginning. But I pulled through.”
Sam, the little twerp, snorts out a dry laugh. “This—this is you pulling through?” Sam gestures to his brother, likely indicating Dean’s dinged-up face and sour countenance. “Because to me, it looks more like you’re being careless with your life and shutting everyone out. And drinking. A lot. When I took the trash out yesterday, the whole bag was bottles, Dean. Your liver’s probably hanging on by a thread.”
Dean crosses his arms, indignant. “So what—you sit me down, we have an intervention, ugly-cry, hug it out, then I start going to AA? ‘Hi, my name is Dean Winchester, and I kill things that crawl out of your worst nightmares. Wanna grab coffee?’”
Sam tries to interrupt a couple of times but eventually exhales in frustration.
“That’s not how things work for people like us,” Dean continues. “You know that. Hell, if it takes me a drink or two to sleep at night, who cares? We could be a lot worse off—all things considered.”
Sam sits back in the driver’s seat, broody but resigned. A heavy silence stretches between them. Dean’s anger flinches when he notices the red rimming Sam’s eyes, and he wants to reach across the seat to reassure him, but he doesn’t. He can’t.
“You said his name,” Sam murmurs, so quietly Dean almost can’t make it out.
Dean’s mouth goes dry. “What?”
“Back there, at the end. When you… freaked out.” Sam’s throat bobs with a hard swallow. “You said his name.”
Dean’s eyes close, and he sinks against Baby’s cool leather bench seat. His body is in the car with Sam, but Dean is at the other end of a long, dark tunnel, the world behind him nothing but a disjointed echo.
“Sam, please,” he hears himself whisper. “Please Sammy, let’s just go home.”
The engine gently rumbles to life, and they do. They go home.