PART FOUR: Full Circle

 

Rules.  They were very few of them in Dean’s life, because for the most part he didn’t believe in them.  Driver got to pick the music, he didn’t bottom, and no sex stuff until it was dark, they were in a motel room, and no one was there to watch.  Okay, the last one had been revised as of late, because he figured in his car at four in the afternoon was okay as long as they’d covered the no one watching part.

The other two were intractable, though, which was why it was Dean grinding Sam into the seat and not the other way around and why it was Metallica playing in the background.

Sam moaned, spreading his legs a little wider to accommodate Dean’s hips.  “Seriously, dude, this music is a buzz kill.”

In response, Dean pressed down harder, rubbing his jean clad erection against Sam’s and kissing him, using his tongue to shut his little brother up. This was Sammy, his baby brother, practically writhing in the seat under him and wasn’t that just the sickest, most erotic image he’d conjured up that day?

Sam’s grip on Dean’s shoulders slipped and wrapped around his back, clutching his t-shirt as he moaned, “Oh, god.”  And didn’t being called God just do wonders for his ego.  “Dean...”  And didn’t Sam sound so perfect when he was all urgent and pleading.

“Oh, fuck, Dean,” Suddenly, Sam didn’t sound so much urgent as pleading and not in a sexy way either. His hands were clenching Dean’s shirt so tight it was about to rip, his head pressed too tightly into Dean’s shoulder.  A vision.  Just fucking great!   So, Sam whines and begs and fucking pouts about how horny he is and how they haven’t had sex for days because they’ve been at the Roadhouse, until Dean finally pulls over so they can both get off, because watching Sam rub himself had made Dean so hard it hurt, and now the little freak had to go and have a fucking vision.

There were very few things that could kill Sam’s hard on and make it stay gone, but a vision was one of them.   Dean sat up, pulling Sam with him and returned the hold, letting Sam ride out whatever it was he was seeing.  It would have death in it, because it always did.  How was it that Sam could dig up a rotting corpse and want to fuck like rabbits five minutes later, but one little vision and he was dry for a week?  Of course, Sam would have countered with how was it that Dean could go eight years on sex once a year and suddenly a week without getting into Sam’s pants was too long?

“Sam, talk to me.   Come on, Sammy, what did you see?”

Please, oh, please, don’t let it be three states over this time.  Sam pulled away and he was staring at Dean with unfocused eyes like he was afraid to tell him, but Dean wasn’t exactly the most patient man when he was interrupted this close to getting off.  He tapped Sam’s face just hard enough to draw his attention, but light enough so that it didn’t hurt and, bingo, those bright green eyes were focused on him again.

“Dad.”   Dean drew his brows together, unable to make heads or tails of that comment. Even with the stubble and the tight clothes he didn’t look anything like Dad.  Wished he did, tried hard to, but he just didn’t.  “Dean, it was Dad.  I saw Dad.”

In true Dean fashion, he sat back, trying to make his face as neutral as possible and, failing that, decided to settle on cursing.  “Fuck that.”

 

*****

 

They’d been almost three hours out on their way to Arizona when the vision had hit and that put them nine hours away from Iowa, which was where Sam said they needed to be.  Dean made it there in seven and a half.  He stopped just inside the border and got a room, because they wanted to be rested when they pulled into Salvation in the morning.

“Ellen, it’s Dean.  Look, when you get this, call me back.  Sam had a vision about Dad and we’re in Iowa.”

They’d had to tell Ellen about the visions a few months back when Sam had one in front of her.  Dean had tried saying nothing was the matter, but she’d said she didn’t believe him and she’d sick Caleb on his ass if he didn’t start being honest with her.

Hanging up, Dean looked at his cell for a few minutes, making sure she wasn’t going to call back.   It was midnight, which was the way he’d planned it, hoping she’d be too busy to notice her cell ringing in the back.  He didn’t want to talk to her right now. He needed a few more hours to get his head together before she started flinging questions at him.

Dad was alive.  Dad was in Iowa.  Okay, to be fair, something that looked like Dad was in Iowa, stalking some girl that Sam didn’t recognize.

Until now, Dean had thought the vision thing was kind of cool - freaky and it put him off of sex for a while and he would never, ever admit it to Sam, but still cool, because every vision put them one step closer to the demon.  Besides, he’d take following Sam’s visions to checking up on Sam’s old college buddies any day.  He shuddered a little as he remembered the shapeshifter. There were just some things a person did not need to walk in on, and yourself dry humping your brother into the ground while you were chocked him was one of them.  He’d shot the thing six times and that hadn’t been enough.  Of course, there were also drawbacks to shooting yourself and one of them was having to call Ellen and tell her that she was probably going to get notice soon that you were dead, but not to worry.

He shrugged off the memory. While he’d rather rehash all the mistakes he’d ever made in his entire life than think about the current situation, he really needed to think this through.

Sam sat on the motel bed, glaring at the dark television.  “He’s got to be possessed, Dean.  That’s the only explanation.”

Dean wanted to believe that, but there were facts to consider.  “Demons don’t usually possess people for that long.  A year or two, okay, but ten?  It would have moved on by now.”

There really wasn’t anything to say about that and Dean threw himself on his back on the bed next to Sam and stared at the ceiling.  What possible excuse could there be for leaving them for ten years?  Sure, okay, he got the possession part and he couldn’t bring himself to believe there was any other explanation for Dad’s disappearance, but then what had happened?  There had to be something, because... because...

“Dean, it’s okay.”  Sam was looking at him with a sympathetic gaze and Dean realized that his eyes were watering.  Shit.  Way to be the man in the relationship, Dean, why don’t you just roll over and take it up ass while you’re at it.

“I’m fine, Sammy.”

“Really?”

Dean gave him the look, the one that said ‘drop it’ and Sam slid down to lay on the bed next to his brother.  They’d made progress in the months they’d been on the road together.  Not with Dean sharing his feelings, but just with being okay, which was a big step for both of them.  Now this... this threatened to undo everything and Sam couldn’t let that happen.

Rolling over, he kissed Dean’s neck, just bellow his ear and deflected the swat that Dean aimed at his head.   “Stop it.”  He licked the same spot and bit it.  Dean tensed as he tried not to make any noise.  He slid his hand up Dean’s t-shirt, wondering why the man had to go and wear such tight clothing all the time?  Not that Sam was complaining, especially since more often than not, Sam was walking behind Dean and in those jeans, at least he had something to look at.

His searching fingers found Dean’s nipple and he heard the annoyed grunts that indicated Dean was uncomfortable with this.  Well, good, let him be, because Sam was about to change his mind about this, just like he’d changed his mind about necking.  Sam had been at Stanford for two years and in the first few months, before he’d met Jess, he’d done a hell of a lot of experimenting and not just with girls.

“Sam, stop it, I’m not a fucking girl.”  Sam twisted the nipple, biting Dean’s neck at the same time and Dean jumped, “Shit, Sam, that fucking hurt.”  He was using fuck in excess, which meant he was fumbling for words, which meant he didn’t exactly hate this as much as he was pretending.

Sam moved his leg over Dean’s to hold him in place and dug his erection into Dean’s hip.  It wasn’t a secure hold, if Dean wanted to move, he could, but it was just tight enough to let Dean know that Sam would prefer he didn’t.

Lifting Dean’s shirt, Sam transferred his mouth from Dean’s neck to his abdomen, kissing upwards until he was eye level with one of those tight, dark nipples.  He liked men’s nipples, they were small and hard against flat chests and he especially loved Dean’s nipples, because Dean’s chest was all muscle.

He ran tongue over the nub, flicking at it and Dean squirmed under him.  “Sam, if you want to play with someone’s nipples, get yourself a chick.”

In retaliation Sam bit down softly, rolling the hardened nub between his teeth and the sound that Dean made in the back of his throat said that he very clearly approved of that.  He bit a little harder, until the noise was just that side of pain, then he let it go and licked it again.

 “Oh, fuck, point made.”  Sam chuckled deeply as Dean flipped him onto his back and covered him, pinning him to the bed with his hips.  “What did I say about bottoming?”

Sam jerked his hips up again Dean and licked his lower lip suggestively.  “You know for someone who says he doesn’t like to talk during sex, you sure seem to find it hard to shut your mouth.”

Dean’s stomach twisted, but not in any way that was bad, which was one of those new sensations he’d learned about with Sam.  He’d always thought talking in bed was overrated, even with the girl’s he’d had sex with it was an annoyance he could have lived without, but with Sam it was different.  Everything was different with Sam.

 

*****

 

Dean had only been asleep for three hours when he woke to the wordless tune of Tainted Love.  Lifting his head off the pillow, he stared at the bedside table.   Softcell?  “That bitch.”

“Hm?”  Sam blinked awake and stretched while Dean flipped open his phone.

Dean cleared his throat, “Dean.”

“I got your message.”  Oh, fuck, it was Ellen.  At least she hadn’t called while they were having sex.  “What do you mean Sam had a vision about your father?”

He flopped back on the bed and ran a hand over his face.  It was too early for this shit, or possibly too late, depending on how you looked at it.   “Like I said.  Sam had a vision of Dad in Iowa.”

“Doing what?”

Sitting in his truck, watching a woman cradle a sixth month old baby through the window of a two story house.

“Buying groceries.   What does it matter?  Dad’s in Iowa and now we’re here too.”

The pause that followed didn’t bode well for Dean.  It meant she was pissed that he wasn’t telling her everything, but fuck it.  This wasn’t about her and it wasn’t any of her damned business and she knew it.  “It could be a trap, Dean.”

“I know that, Ellen, I do, but...” it’s Dad.

“You boys be careful.”

“Always are.   Oh, and tell Jo she is one dead chick when I get back.”

“What did she do this time?”

“My phone’s ringing Softcell.  I’m going to have Tainted Love stuck in my head all day thanks to her.”

Ellen chuckled, “That’s my girl.  Get some sleep, honey.”

He cringed at the endearment.  She didn’t use it often, but when she did, it made him feel guilty.  It meant she was resigned to whatever it was he was doing, even if she didn’t approve of it and she was going to worry the whole time they were gone.  Dean did not like feeling guilty, especially where Ellen was concerned.

Sam took in his annoyed expression.  “She’s just worried about you.”  Dean hummed his disapproval and stood up, grabbing his pants off the floor.  “Where are you going?”

He zipped up and pulled his shirt on.  “Coffee.  Go back to sleep, Sam.”

Sam didn’t say anything as Dean walked out, but Dean knew what he would have said and that was just as bad.   ‘Stop being such a tough-guy, Dean, just talk to me, tell me what’s wrong.  You’ll feel better.’  But this wasn’t something that Dean could talk about with Sam, or anyone for that matter, this was personal, the deep, dark kind of personal that Sam didn’t need to know about.

As much as he would have preferred a good, stiff drink, there weren’t any bars open at four in the morning, so he settled with driving through the McDonald’s across from the motel, buying a large cup of the sorry ass shit that passed for coffee, and drinking it in the empty parking lot.

If Dad was alive... if Dad was alive, then what?  What if they found him and he hadn’t been possessed or he wasn’t possessed anymore?  Just the thought made him so fucking angry.  Those eighteen months had been the longest, hardest of his life.   He’d gotten through it, because he was trying to do right by Sammy, he was trying to do what Dad would have wanted him to do.   Only if Dad hadn’t come back... then maybe he’d known what Dean had done; maybe he’d been disgusted or ashamed and that was a kind of fear that outweighed anything else Dean had ever experienced.

Death had nothing on the thought that his Dad hadn’t loved him enough, cared about him enough to even call.

Getting out of the car, he sat on the hood and let the coffee burn his tongue.    This wasn’t going to be pretty no matter how it played out.   If a demon was still possessing his father - and considering Sammy’s visions so far had all had to do with the demon, he was of a mind to think this did too - then what were they going to do about it?  Long term possession was hell on a person’s body, the chances that someone his dad’s age would survive an exorcism were slim. Would an exorcism even work on something like this?

“Dude, you must be doing some serious angsting.”  Dean looked back to see Sammy standing a few feet away, fully dressed in wrinkled clothes and giving that half smile that said he was trying to comfort Dean, but wasn’t really sure how to go about it or if Dean would even let him.  “You don’t punish yourself with that crap unless you mean it.”

Dean looked at the cup in his hand.  Oh, yeah, Sam knew him far too well.  “I thought I told you to go back to sleep.”

Sam sat down next to him and took the cup, sipping it with a grimace before handing it back.  “How can you drink that?”

“That’s a man’s drink, Sammy, but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Mr. Caramel Macchiato?”

Sam pushed him and the coffee sloshed a little over the sides, stinging his hands a little.

“Come on, Dean,” Sam looked out over the train tracks in front of them and the overgrown field beyond that.  “It’s the middle of the night, no one’s watching.”

Dean raised an eyebrow, “Someone’s always watching.”  Sam looked confused for a minute, until Dean motioned behind them and he turned to see the drive through attendant trying to pretend he wasn’t staring.  “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Sam, but this isn’t something I’m going to talk about.”

After a minute, Sam nodded.  “Okay, but don’t think I’m not thinking the same thing, Dean, and it’s really messed up, but there’s nothing we can do about it until we get there.”

“This coming from the original emo-boy?”

“Fuck you.”   But there was an almost grin that said he didn’t mean it and Dean put a hand on the back of Sam’s head, bringing him down for a kiss, in front of the attendant, the security camera and anyone who happened to be driving by at four in the morning.

“Go on back to the room.”

Sam nodded and got up, walking away with a blush on his face that said he knew the pimply little shit behind the window had watching them the entire time.  Dean found to his own personal annoyance that that thought didn’t bother him as much as it should have.

 

*****

 

Fucking Tainted Love!   Dean was going to kill that girl!  She’d erased every other music tone he’d downloaded.  He was going to drag her ass out behind the house and drown her in the sobering trough with the dirty rain water that Ellen kept around for when Ash was truly wasted and it didn’t help that Sam was sniggering at him while he scrambled for the phone.

He looked at the display, cursing.  Caleb?  Caleb only called him when he needed help on a hunt, which made no sense, because he’d broken his leg not two weeks ago and there wasn’t a job he could do until he could walk again.  He flipped it open, “Hey, Caleb, I thought you were supposed to be taking it easy.”

“Hi, Dean.”

The blood drained from his face and, his baby or not, he would have driven his car into a ditch if Sam hadn’t grabbed the wheel.  “Dean?  Dean, what’s wrong?”

His fingers were white around the phone and he could feel his lower jaw shaking.  “Dad?”

The voice chuckled, that deep familiar rumble that Dean had locked away in his memory because thinking about it hurt too much.  Hearing it now wasn’t any better, especially when it was followed by a mocking.  “Aw, did you miss me, son?”

Sam let go of the wheel as Dean stopped the car, parking them half off the road.  He was staring at the phone with the same mix of disbelief and confusion that Dean felt and that wasn’t good, because one of them had to think straight in this and Dean got a bad feeling it wasn’t going to be Sam.

“What...”   But he couldn’t get past that, because the questions suddenly just weren’t there.

“I’ve sure missed the two of you.  How’s Sammy?   He there with you?”  It wasn’t his dad, it wasn’t really his dad.  He knew it wasn’t.  It was in the inflection of the words, the amusement in the voice, things that just weren’t John Winchester, but that wasn’t helping.  “Of course he is.”

“Who are you?”  His mouth and his brain had finally connected, but the tremor he heard in his own voice said that his emotions had joined the party as well and that wasn’t good.

“I think you know who I am.”

“Demon.”

“Call me Daddy.”

Dean sucked in breath and smacked Sam’s hand away as it reached for the phone.  “Where’s Caleb?”

“Hm, well, that depends.  Was he a good boy, or was he bad?”

“What?”

The demon chuckled again.  “Heaven or hell, Dean? Wait, that’s right, you don’t believe in that nonsense, do you?   When you’re dead, you’re just dead.   You were such a cynical child.”

Caleb was dead.  That’s what it was saying and Dean couldn’t even begin to process that hurt, because he’d had a lot of father figures over the last eight years, but Caleb had been the closest to the real thing.  “I swear to god, I will kill you.”

“Oh, I’d really like to see you try, son, but I have other plans.  You and Sammy are going to keep driving until you reach Lincoln.  There’s a warehouse there, at the corner of Waughbash and Lake.  Be there by midnight tonight.  Daddy and I’ll be waiting for you.”

He grit his teeth, “What if we don’t show?”

“That would be a bad idea, Dean, because if you don’t, I’ll kill someone else.  In fact, I think it’s been far too long since I saw Bobby.”

Bobby who’d been nothing but helpful, who’d driven ten hours at over a hundred in a rickety old truck that no one in their right mind would have thought could even go that fast, just because Dean had called and said he needed help.  Bobby who’d spent a day at a time at the Roadhouse, helping Dean fix up the Impala, because it was the only thing Dean had left of his Dad.  Bobby who hadn’t told anyone how he’d found them, hadn’t ever betrayed their trust in all these years.

Finally, he managed to choke out, “Leave Bobby out of this.”

“Really, and who should it be in his place?  Ellen?  Little Jo?  You’ve created quite the family for yourself.”

Sam saw Dean’s face go from pale to paler and that was fucking it.  “Dean, what’s wrong?”

“Tell Sammy Daddy says hi.”

Dean’s lip curled, “Fuck you.”

“I’d say sure, but I think that job belongs to Sammy, doesn’t it?”  And his anger was replaced with a sickening plummet in his stomach.   “What’s wrong, Dean, cat got your tongue?”

Before he could work up a response, Sam grabbed the phone from him and Dean couldn’t work up the motor functions to stop him.

“Who is this?   Dad?”

Sam’s face went as white as Dean’s.  A soft beep indicated that the connection had been cut off and Sam held the phone away from him, staring at the lit screen.  “Dean, what was that?”

Dean shook his head, his mind whirling.  He’d only ever seen one demonic possession and that had been enough for him. What had really stuck in his mind, though, was what the guy had said afterwards, how he had been so thankful, because he’d seen everything, he’d heard everything, he just hadn’t been able to say or do anything about it and that was where Dad was.  If the demon knew something, if it saw something, Dad saw it too and the demon knew that Sam and he were having sex.

He’d realized the implications of his affair with Sammy in the beginning.  He’d known that they couldn’t tell anyone, but that hadn’t really bothered him much, because while Dean may have made a display of the girls he’d flirted and slept with over the past few years, that had all been show and this was real and he honestly didn’t want anyone to know.  Even if he had wanted them to, though, it wouldn’t have been possible.   Sam was his brother, this was incest and that might not have meant a damned thing to Dean, who’d only ever found comfort with his brother, other people weren’t going to see it that way.

Other people like his dad.

“Dean?”

The tremor in Sam’s voice was what brought him out of it and made him move, made him think again.  It was the tremor that said he was worried about Dean, that he thought his brother was hurt or something.  Dean forced himself to move, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists around the steering wheel and clutch so that Sam couldn’t see them shaking.  “It’s the demon, Sam, it wants us to go to Lincoln.”

“Fuck that.”   A response that conclusively proved Sam was spending too much time with Dean.

“It killed Caleb and it threatened to go after Bobby next.”

“Caleb’s dead?”

Dean nodded and forced himself to let go of the clutch, because his hand had started to cramp.  “Yeah.”  He wanted to say more, but that was all he could get out.  He couldn’t even think past that.  Wonder of all wonders, he didn’t have to.  Sam stooped down and picked up the phone where it had fallen on the floor, punching buttons at lightening speed.

“What are you doing, Sam?”

“I’m calling Bobby and then I’m calling Aunt Ellen and everyone else on your damned list.”

“Sam...”

Sam gave him that look, the one that read vengeance, only there was something else there that Dean couldn’t decipher.  “I know what Caleb meant to you, I know what they all mean to you, even if you won’t admit it, but they’re Hunters, Dean.  They can take care of themselves.  This family that the demon’s stalking can’t.”

And that was why Dean loved Sam.  Cool, calm logical Sam, who could look this kind of problem in the face and just deal with it.  Sometimes Dean had to wonder which of them really was the strongest.   He didn’t say that, though, didn’t say anything as he put the car in drive and pulled back onto the road.

They’d get to Salvation, they’d find the family, then they’d come up with a plan.

 

*****

 

Three hours later they pulled into a motel on the outskirts of Salvation, Iowa; cute little town that reminded Dean of Lawrence in a way that made him sick to his stomach. The family wasn’t all that hard to find.  Sammy suffered another vision and when he came out of it, he said the house was near train tracks and fifteen minutes later, they were walking away from a woman who been pushing a six month old in a baby carriage.  Exactly six months old.

It explained why the demon wanted them in Lincoln.  They couldn’t stop it if they weren’t here, except that Sam had no intentions of letting that thing hurt another family.

“Sam, it’s a bad idea.”

“Have you got a better one?”

No, he didn’t, but that didn’t mean he liked it. “I’m not letting you do this.”

Sam squared his shoulders and it wouldn’t have been as impressive if Dean didn’t know the kind of muscle those baggy, layered clothes hid.  “You can’t stop me, Dean.  I may be your little brother, but I’m not a child anymore and this is not up for negotiation.”

“Everything’s up for negotiation, Sammy.”  When Sam opened his mouth to protest, Dean shoved him back against the car, holding fist-fulls of his shirts and glaring at him intently.  “You are a selfish little prick sometimes, you know that?”  Because if I lose you, what do I have left?

Sam didn’t need Dean to say, but he also wasn’t backing down.  They had few enough options without letting this get in the way of them.

“I know, but we don’t have any other choice.”

 

*****

 

The motel was five minutes away and a little more expensive than Dean would have liked, but he paid for the convenience of being within walking distance of the target.  Dean got the room, two queen beds and not because that was all that was available, even if that’s what he told Sam, but because Dean was feeling unsure of himself, like when you know you’re being watched, but you can’t tell from where or by who.   How the hell had the demon known about him and Sam?  They’d been discreet, mostly, Dean was obsessed with that.

He thought back to the parking lot of McDonald’s, where he’d kissed Sam in front of that drive-through attendant.  Shit.  But just because someone had seen them kiss, didn’t automatically mean they were having sex.  No, of course not, because two twenty-something year old men alone on the road together for months at a time weren’t going to want to have sex or anything, no, they probably just laid together in bed watching Desperate House Wives.

Sam sighed and sat on the other bed, laying back with a flop.  Dean hadn’t said a word on the drive over.

“Dean.”   Dean didn’t respond, so he kicked out, catching the other bed with his foot and rocking it.  “Dean.”

“What?”

“We’re not having sex tonight, are we?”

He heard Dean shifting and sat up.  Dean had his elbows in his knees and he was looking at his clenched hands.  “You in the mood?”

“Not really.”

Dean nodded, still not looking up.  “Go to sleep, Sammy.”

“It’s Sam.”

Dean didn’t respond, just stood up and walked into the bathroom.  A moment later the shower came on and Sam sighed up at the ceiling.  As soon as he was sure Dean was actually under the spray of water, he picked up his cell and called Ellen, relief flooding him the instant he heard her voice.

“Sam, is everything okay?”  Sam wasn’t the one that usually made the check-in calls, because Dean said Sam couldn’t lie for shit and calling Ellen often meant skirting around the truth.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“I just... I needed to make sure you guys were still okay.”

“Honey, don’t you worry about us.  You just be careful.”

“Thanks.  You, too.”

“Get some rest, Sam, you sound like you could use it and make sure that good-for-nothing brother of yours calls me tomorrow.”

“Sure thing.   Love you, Aunt Ellen.”  He hung up and smiled a little, setting the phone on the table.   Sleep, actually, was the last thing he needed.

Shrugging off his jacket, he pulled his shirts over his head and slipped off his baggy jeans, stepping into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.  He stepped into the shower behind Dean and wrapped his arms around his brother’s waist.

They didn’t have to talk.  He vaguely remembered back before Dad disappeared, when his brother’s motives had been a mystery to him, when he’d watch Dean doing exactly what Dad told him without question and wondered why someone as strong willed and stubborn as his brother would do that.  Somewhere on the road, that had been left behind, replaced by an intimate knowledge of each other that had nothing to do with sex.  It was in the way he felt Dean’s abdomen tighten under his hand and knew that his brother was doubting and he knew that if he leaned down, just like he was doing, and bit Dean’s ear just so, moving down his neck with teeth and lips and tongue, that the tension would leave that powerful body, leave it vulnerable for Sam in a way it was vulnerable to no one else.

He moved his hands down Dean’s wet body, letting them ride over the slick muscle as he slid to his knees and took Dean’s hips in his hands, using them to turn his brother around and then push him back so that he leaned against the wall.  “Sam...”

Dean choked on the words, but Sam didn’t need to hear them to know what they were.  Dean’s heavy lidded eyes were on him, steady, even as his legs shook.  Middle of the night, when no one was watching.  This was the Dean that only Sam got to see, the one that watched him as Sam used his mouth to make his brother sigh and moan and tense up in a way that had nothing to do with fear.  This was what was inside Dean, what no one else knew was there.   None of the girls Dean had been with, none of the men that Dean had used to earn money.

Dean’s hand ran over Sam’s wet hair and tightened just a little, a satisfied sigh breathing past his lips as he released and Sam eagerly swallowed the evidence.  He stood up and Dean pressed Sam back, pushing so that it was Sam leaning against the wall and Dean’s hand wrapped around him, stroking him, bringing him off expertly in a way that had everything to do with experience and knowledge of Sam’s body and Sam’s limits.

This thing with Dad, it wasn’t going to be okay and Sam knew that, but as long as he had Dean, as long as he had this to come back to...  He pulled Dean against him and kissed his brother, forcing the full lips to open under his tongue, tasting the bitterness that was Dean’s coffee soaked mouth mixing with the aftertaste of cum.   As long as he had this, he could see it through.

 

*****

 

Lincoln was five hours north and by the time they got out of the shower, he had four and a half to get there.  They didn’t say anything to indicate that this was goodbye, even though they both knew there was a high probability it was, at least for one of them.

It was obvious what the demon wanted.  He wanted Sam and Dean out of the way for whatever he had planned, but the demon couldn’t be more than one place at a time.  He couldn’t be in Lincoln and Salvation at the same time.  So, Sam figured that they should split up and cover both.  Sam was going to the warehouse to confront this thing if it was there.  If it wasn’t, then Dean would be waiting outside the family’s home to protect them.

Dean said splitting up was stupid, he said they were stronger when they were together.  Sam said, “Stop worrying, Dean, I won’t let anything happen to your car,” like that was the real issue and then drove off and Sam wasn’t about to tell Dean this, but he thought the whole idea was pretty stupid, too.  It was just that, like he’d said before, it was the only one they had.

He drove to Lincoln in absolute silence, but it was the shortest four and a half hours of his life, because he had a whole hell of a lot to think about.  He thought about Jess.  He thought about what would have happened if she hadn’t been killed and by the time he pulled up to that warehouse, it was eleven thirty and any uncertainty he’d had, had been replaced by anger and the knowledge that he wanted to kill this thing.

Getting out, he shut the door and put his hands in his pockets, looking around the empty parking lot.  He was early by ten minutes.  Sitting on the hood of the car, he watched the large windows for movement.   It was cold and he pulled his coat closer to him, keenly aware of his cell phone in his pocket, Dean’s number was set on speed dial.  If it looked like anything wasn’t going to go as planned...

A shadow passed across the window.  A man with short hair and broad shoulders.  Dad?  He stood up and pulled his gun from his back pocket, cocking it.  It wouldn’t stop the demon, but it might slow him down.

Cautiously, he went inside the warehouse.

 

*****

 

Dean sat on the bench in the park, the house just visible, waiting.  Ten minutes to midnight.  This was a bad idea, him alone here, Sam alone there, but it did have one thing going for it.  They wouldn’t have expected them to split up.  Of all the things the demons would have prepared for, he doubted that was one of them.

So, when he saw the truck pull up in front of the house, he thought, ‘that’s it, Sam’s safe.’  He was really relieved for about two seconds, until it occurred to him that meant he had to face down a thing wearing his father’s face alone.  Fuck, that couldn’t be good.  Of course, better him than Sam.

He stood up from the bench, bag in hand and dug around until he found the holy water and gun, loaded with blessed silver bullets.  Not enough to kill a demon, but it should make it pause.  Dean shoved the holy water in his pocket and clasped the gun with both hands as he approached the car, weapon extended.

The first hint that something wasn’t right didn’t come until Dean was ten feet away from the car.  He’d been a good distance away from the house, so he wasn’t surprised when the demon didn’t notice him there, but the closer he got to the truck, the deeper his stomach dropped.

Why wasn’t the demon moving?  Why wasn’t it looked at him?  Why was its head dropped down on its chest?  Why did it look, for all intents and purposes, like it was unconscious?  The answer hit Dean just about the same time the shit hit the proverbial fan.

His father, unconscious in the truck, because the demon wasn’t possessing him anymore, he was... the lights in the house started to flicker, the wind picked up and Dean cursed, unsure what to do first - Dad or the family.  A moan from inside the truck made up his mind for him and he ran forward, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans as he reached in through the open passenger side window, unlocking the door.

“Dad?”

His dad’s head lifted slightly and tilted towards Dean and time, in that instant, stopped.  He’d changed.  He’d gained some weight, his stubble was thicker than Dean remembered, peppered with gray, his hair was shorter, he wasn’t...

“Dean?”

His dad’s voice was choked, torn and sounding nothing like it had over the phone.  Nothing.  A scream tore from the house and Dean’s mind started working again.  Sam would fucking kill him if anything happened to that family.  “I’ll be back, just... just hold on.”

Racing for the house, he crashed through the door, tearing up the stairs.  The woman was pressed against the wall, inching towards the ceiling, the demon’s yellow eyes glued to her from where it stood next to the crib.

“Hey!”   The eyes shifted focus and Dean leveled the gun at it - only suddenly the gun wasn’t in his hand and he wasn’t standing in the doorway, he was flying across the hall and slamming into the wall with what felt like two tons of pressure on his chest.

The woman was inching higher, she was almost on the ceiling. Dean tried to move away from the wall, then tried to just move, but it wasn’t happening.  This woman was going to die while he watched; die like his mother had and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.  He closed his eyes and then opened them again, because he wasn’t a coward, he wasn’t.

What happened next was like something out of one of his dreams from so many years ago, the ones where Dad came and rescued him.  It had its differences.  He was pinned to a wall by a demon, suffocating from the pressure on his chest, not on his knees in an alleyway with a cock shoved so far down his throat he couldn’t breathe, but the other thing, the important ones, were there.  His father came barreling up the stairs, bruised and gripping the walls for support, but still running.  He slid to a halt in front of the nursery, putting himself between Dean and the demon and all Dean could see was his back, broad and strong.  He remembered that back from the hundreds of times his father had stepped between him and evil and he remembered how he’d admired it, because seeing it meant he was safe.

The pressure increased, inside him, making him scream as his insides compressed.  If Dad said anything, he didn’t hear it, he heard the firing of a gun as if from a great distance and then he was on his knees, panting for breath.  His dad grabbed the woman off the floor, helping her up, calling for Dean.  “Dean!  Dean, get the baby!”

Take Sammy and run.

Dean scrambled up, moved without knowing how he did it, like when he’d saved Sammy from the vampires.   Nothing mattered except getting the baby and getting the hell out.  The window blew out as he came through the door and he ducked his head over the baby, protecting it from the heat and the flying glass.

He looked back at the burning house as deja vu washed over him.  His dad touched his shoulder and he turned around, noticing the anxious woman, looking at the bundle in his arms.  He passed it over, giving her a reassuring smile, but he knew it was shaky at best.

She didn’t seem to notice. Pushing the blankets aside, she looked back at Dean.  “Thank you.”

He nodded and the hand on his shoulder made him turn around so that he was looking at his father.  Every wall Dean had ever built was threatening to come down.   His mind was working too fast.  He couldn’t fully form one thought before another one came crashing down on him.  It was a relief to see him not dead, not possessed; and at the same time it hurt, because where the hell had he been all these years?

Before he could say anything, though, his Dad grabbed onto him, wrapping him in his arms and Dean just stood there, feeling uneasy and unsure and comfortable and safe all at the same time.  His arms moved of their own accord, wrapping around his father and holding on.

This wasn’t okay, this was everything he’d wanted for so long he’d forgotten he wanted it.  This was...

His mind froze and he yanked away, “Sam.”

 

*****

 

Sam fought his way back to consciousness.  He tried to move, but he couldn’t.  His arms and legs felt like they were made out of lead, even his eyelids were too heavy to open.  Slowly, he started to feel things.  His arms were stretched out at his sides, his legs spread out in front of him.  He was on his back on what felt like a bed.

Slowly, he blinked open his eyes and found himself staring up at a ceiling fan.  His head lolled to the side and he managed to focus on his left wrist, bound in heavy rope.  He pulled on it, grunting with the effort that just that took, but the rope was tight and it didn’t move.

A door opened he looked past the foot of the bed, where he noticed his feet were also tied.  A woman came in, dressed in a jogging suit, her eyes light hazel, human, but he knew she wasn’t, and he groaned, pulled at the restraints as she sat on the bed next to him.  He watched her as she picked up a syringe and filled it with a clear fluid.

Drugs.  They were going to drug him.  “No...”

She put a finger to his lips.  “Sh, we aren’t ready for you to wake up yet.”

Yet?  We? What did she mean?  But the needle slipped into his arm, stinging as its contents were injected into him and the heavy lethargy that had barely begun to recede came back, dragging him under.

 

*****

 

“How could you have let Sammy go off alone like that?!”

Dean grit his teeth against his father’s anger, “I didn’t let him do anything, Dad.  He’s twenty two years old, he did this on his own.”

“You should have stopped him!”

“How, tie him to the bed?”  As soon as he’d said it, he felt the blush in his cheeks, because it called up visions of the last time he’d done that and it’d had nothing to do with keeping Sam from running off.  “I didn’t mean... look, we didn’t have any other choice, okay?  We had to protect that family, but we couldn’t just leave you...”

“You should have.   Rather than risk your brother, you should have left me!”

Dean hunched over on the bed, his head in his hands, fighting back the anger that was rising in his throat.   “No.  You don’t get to tell me what I should have done.”

“Excuse me?”   The affronted disbelief in his voice was just like Dean remembered it, only it had always been aimed at Sammy before - for questioning what they were told to do, for disobeying direct orders when he didn’t agree with them.

“I said, you don’t have the right to tell me what I should have done.”  He stood up, backing away from his father in as nonchalant a manner as he could manage.  His skin had started to crawl.  “We’ve been making our own decisions for ten fucking years, ever since you left.  So don’t start giving orders and expect me to fall in line.  Finding you...” he stepped back when his dad stood up.  “Don’t come near me!”

John stopped, seeing the apprehensiveness in his son’s face.

Dean shook his head to clear it.  “Finding you meant everything to us.  The thought that you might be alive was all that held me together sometimes, so don’t tell me I should have left you to die.  I couldn’t do that.  Sam couldn’t do that.”

He felt small and helpless and dirty again, like when he first starting hooking on the drive from Florida to Wyoming.  He wasn’t that kid anymore, he knew that.  He was bigger, stronger, he could defend himself and he didn’t have to suck dick to make money, but faced with his father... god, it felt like he was back there.  Dean rubbed his arm nervously.  He needed Sam.

John watched his eldest son.  Dean’s posture was torn between defiance and skittishness, in the way he stood straight, but couldn’t stop moving.  This wasn’t what he had expected, not that he’d really known what to expect.  “Dean, are you okay?”

Dean looked up at him with large eyes, too large, pupils dilated.  John moved forward, half worried that maybe Dean was in shock, but Dean backed up and when he hit the wall, he rebounded away from it, moving so the bed was between him and his father.

“Dean?”

“Don’t.   You don’t get to pretend like you care.”

That hurt.  “I didn’t want to leave you boys.”

“Then you damned well shouldn’t have.”  Dean clenched his fist around his arm and John noticed that he was shaking slightly.

“I was protecting you.  I got too close to the demon, it was going to use you boys against me, or me against you, I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You should have called.”

“It didn’t know where you were, I couldn’t do anything that might lead it there..”  Dean mumbled something that John didn’t catch, wasn’t sure he wanted to.  “Wha... where did you boys end up?”

Dean let go of his arm.   The shaking had stopped.  He rubbed his hand over his face and leaned back against the wall again.  “Ellen.  Ellen took us in.”

John nodded to himself.   “Good.”  Ellen was safe, she was a strong woman and the Roadhouse was always full of Hunters.  He hadn’t been sure where he would have wanted his sons to be until he heard that.  Of all the people that could have raised them, Ellen was by far the best.  “Dean, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.   Just... don’t.”

They stood in silence for a minute, two, five.  It stretched out, but John couldn’t think of anything to say.  He couldn’t read Dean, couldn’t tell what he was thinking behind that pale, glassy stare.

The silence was cut by Dean’s cell blasting... was that Tainted Love?  What the hell was Dean doing with Tainted Love on his cell?  Last time he’d checked, his son liked heavy metal 80's rock.

“Fucking Jo, I swear to god...!”  Dean took the phone out of his pocket and looked at the display before cussing again.  Ellen.  “Fuck!”   The last thing he needed on top of everything else was to have to explain to Ellen that he’d let Sam go off on his own and that he’d lost contact with him, because while Dad may not have had the right to tell them they were being stupid, somehow Ellen did.  He opened it held it to his ear tentatively, looking for all the world like he thought it was going to explode in his hands.

“Hey, Ellen.”

“Dean, are you boys okay?”

“Of course we are.   Couldn’t be better.”  Okay, so maybe nonchalance wasn’t his strongest suit, but it was the only one he had to play right then.

“Really? Because you sound like you’re hiding something.  Where’s your brother.”

Shit, shit, shit.   “Not here.”

“Sam’s in trouble, isn’t he?”  Sam’s-in-trouble-dar activated.  Well, there was one way to deactivate it in a hurry and quite frankly, it was pretty damned appealing.

“Ellen, dad’s here.”

“I know, you told me he was in Iowa...”

“No, he’s here with me, in the motel room, right now.”

Sure enough, that stopped her.  He heard a glass being set down a little too hard and couldn’t help the satisfaction that made it just that much easier for him to think.  Let her be mad at someone else for once.  “Are you okay?”

And because there wasn’t any point lying about this, he didn’t.  “No, not really.”

“Put him on the phone.”

Dean looked across the bed to where his father stood and then past him to the door.  He needed air.  Walking past him, he thrust the phone at his dad and kept walking, out the door and into the early morning air, where he didn’t feel trapped and the light breeze rolling over him cleared his head a little more.

Okay, he had to think.   Dean had tried to call Sam first thing after they’d gotten the family out, but it had rung until it put him in voice mail and he’d thought, ‘stupid idiot turned the radio on so loud he can’t hear his phone,’ even thought that wasn’t like Sam, because that was more comforting than thinking something might have happened to him.  Besides, the demon had been here and he couldn’t be in two places at once.

They’d stayed at the scene of the fire for a few hours, until they were sure that the demon wasn’t going to reappear and then he rode with Dad in the truck back to the hotel and that been awkward, because Dean couldn’t think of anything to say.  Sam should have been back at the hotel by the time they got there, assuming he’d left when he’d realized the demon wasn’t showing, but the Impala wasn’t there.

He’d tried Sam’s phone again.  It rang and rang and rang and then, “You’ve reached Sam Winchester.  Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”  He tried back, with the same result, the third time, it rang once and dumped him into voice mail.

His dad had asked what was wrong, where Sam was and he’d had to tell him about their oh-so-brilliant plan of splitting up and his father had told him something that he and Sam simply hadn’t thought of.  “There’s more than one.”  Well, didn’t that just change things?  To be fair, demons didn’t often work in pairs, let alone groups and according to his father, they were at least three of them, working as a team.

He put his hands in his jacket and took another deep breath.  He’d get Sam back, that was all there was to it.  It was just a matter of how.

The door opened and John came out and Dean realized that thinking of him by his first name made this easier than thinking of him as Dad.  Dad had protected him, had kept him and Sam safe, this was just a stranger that he hadn’t seen in ten years.

“I talked with Ellen.”

“What did she have to say?”  His calm was back, his skin had stopped crawling and he could think.

“I asked her about you and she said it wasn’t any of my business.”  Dean laughed before he could stop himself.  He liked that - the words he’d thrown at Ellen so many times being used by her against John - it was poetic.  “Look, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait.  We’ve got to get Sam back.”

Finally, something they could agree on, and that it took him away from the emotional side of this was even better.

“Now, they won’t have killed him, they need him.”  Killed.  Dean hadn’t even thought of that option, he’d only been thinking about getting him back, not what they would have done to him.  “As far and their concerned, me and you are just bad influences on him.  They’ll keep him somewhere, bait us to come get him and finish us off when we do.”

That sounded too much like he was saying they shouldn’t go.  “I’m not leaving him with them.”

“No, we’re not, but we have to think this through.  Where are the rest of your weapons?”

“In the car.   Sam took it.”

“You boys really didn’t put a lot of thought into this, did you?”  Dean started to say ‘fuck you,’ but then he remembered what the demon had said to that and he was afraid John would remember, too.  “It’s okay, I’ve got some in my trunk and I’ve got the Colt.”

He pulled a gun out, looking at it like it was salvation and Dean couldn’t fathom that because, yeah, blessed bullets slowed them down some, but if there were three of them, one gun wasn’t going to be enough.  “A gun?”

“Oh, not a gun, son, the gun.”

 

*****

 

When Sam opened his eyes this time it was night out.  He kept himself still until he knew he could move and then tested the restraints.  They held firm.  He tried to get to the knot with his fingers, but the pull was just tight that he couldn’t bend his wrists.  His legs could move a little, but nothing significant, not enough to help him.

The door opened again and he ground his teeth as the woman came in again, looking at him speculatively before approaching the bed.  “Did you sleep well, Sammy?”

“Fuck you.”

“Now, that’s not very nice, is it?”  He pulled against the ropes and seethed.  She reached over and took his face in one of her hands, holding his head in place when he tried to turn away.   “We’ve got plans for you, Sammy, so we can’t kill you, but we can make you hurt.”

He didn’t see the hand move away, but he felt it come back down, snapping his head to the side with a resounding smack that made him see black for a moment.  Testing his jaw, he was relieved to find that it wasn’t broken, despite the numbing pain.

“Now, be a good boy and don’t try anything stupid.”

She untied him and he was tempted to kick her in the face and make a run for the window.  There was the matter of him not having had enough blood circulation to his extremities the last few hours, though, so, he let her help him up and support him to the half open door that turned out to be a bathroom.  She didn’t try to help him pee, which he hadn’t realized how badly he needed to do until he’d started, but she didn’t close the door either.  Instead, she stood there with a smirk and a raised eyebrow that had ‘impressive’ written all over it.

Sam dragged it out, not a hard task, considering he hadn’t emptied his bladder in he didn’t even know how long.  By the time he was zipping up he knew he wasn’t at full strength, but his hands and feet weren’t tingling anymore.  If he got in a good shot, if he could knock her down, he had half a chance of making it out the window and if they were on a busy street, they wouldn’t dare chase after him, right?  Demons didn’t like witnesses.

He had to make her think he was still weak, take her by surprise, because the grip she’d had on his jaw earlier and the way she’d held him up meant she was strong.  Stepping forward, he let himself stumble and grabbed the wall for support.

With a sigh, she stepped forward, “Come on, Sam, it’s time for bed.”

She took another step and he struck, kicking his foot at, catching her in the chest and sending her across the room, where she hit the bedside table and went down on her face.  Rushing forward, he went for the window, half fumbling with the latch because he really wasn’t as coordinated as he usually was, which actually, wasn’t all that impressive to begin with.

She started to stand, looking pissed as he pushed the window up.  Or, at least, he started to.  There was a noise behind him and the next thing he knew, he was on the other side of the room, face first on the floor, his ears ringing and his head pounding.  What the fuck was that?

“That was very, very stupid, Sam.”

The girl grabbed his arms and lifted him.  His legs wouldn’t support him as she dragged him to the bed, dropping him back on it.  A man was standing in the doorway, watching while the woman pulled his arm out and retied them, glaring at him the whole time.

“I thought you said you could handle him.”

Her eyes melded black and she turned to the man, “I would have stopped him.”  He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but didn’t say anything as she pulled Sam’s legs straight and tied them as well.  His ears were still ringing and she reached over, taking up the needle again, refilling it with practiced ease.

“Wait.  You said you had plans for me.  What plans?”

“If you wanted to talk, you should have played nice.”  The needle slid in again and he flinched, more from the thought that he was going to be unconscious and helpless again than from the pain.  She put her mouth to his ear and licked it lewdly,  “Sweet dreams, Sammy.”

 

*****

 

Finding the place hadn’t been a problem.  The Impala wasn’t at the warehouse and the GPS device that Ellen had insisted they put in it finally came in handy.  Of course, telling Ellen she was right about something was like putting your hands in fate and since Dean didn’t believe in fate, it went without saying that he wasn’t breathing a word of this to her.  They tracked the car (thankfully unharmed) to the parking lot of an apartment building in Missouri.  That was when things became a little more difficult, because there was the matter of finding out if the demons were even in there and if they were, how to get everyone else out so they could rescue Sam.

Dean stared at John in obvious disbelief.  “You’re kidding, right?  That’s the oldest trick in the book, they’ll know it’s us.”

“Trust me.  I know how these things think.”

Dean didn’t trust John, but he went with it.  Sam was always telling him that if he couldn’t think of anything himself, he should shut his ‘cake hole’ and go with it. Wonder of all wonders, it worked.  They set off the alarm, stole some firemen’s suits and charged in, wielding axes, holy water and salt.  Ten minute later, they were one bullet less for the Colt and Sam hadn’t woken up once through the whole thing, but they had him and he was safe.

They drove until John insisted they pull over, saying that he had to make sure Sam wasn’t possessed.  Dean didn’t like it, but he let him, and Sam was clean.   He didn’t realize how worried he’d been until he heard that and relief washed over him, making his eyes water.  Sam was safe, bruised and drugged, but no serious injuries, and he wasn’t the play thing of some sick twisted demon.  It wouldn’t do to cry, though, so Dean sucked it up and just leaned against the door of his car while John stood, looking down at Sam asleep on the seat.

“He’s gotten big.”

Dean stared forward, “Yeah, well, ten years.”

“Yeah.”   John looked over.  “You did too.  You know, Dean, leaving you two was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  Harder even than burying your mother.”

“Can we not do this?  I need to get Sam back to the Roadhouse.”  I need to know what they did to him.  I need to know he’s okay, need to hear him say it.

“You’re right, we need to get him somewhere safe, but, Dean?”  Dean looked over, his face hard and set, meeting John’s equally determined gaze.  “Once we get to Ellen’s we’re going to have a talk and you are going to tell me what’s going on.”

Dean bit back his reply - that Ellen had never abandoned him and it had taken her two years to get it out of him and only then because Sam spilled it in a fit of anger and confusion.  He didn’t say it, though, because he didn’t want to stand there waiting anymore.  He wanted to go home.

 

*****

 

Sam woke up to the familiar vibration of a car and he almost panicked, because that meant they were moving him, but as he breathed in, the smell of Dean filled his senses and he opened his eyes to find himself staring at the back of a bench seat.  He mind registered every nearly invisible scratch and imperfection in the leather, every subtle discoloration, proving that he was indeed in the back of his brother’s car.

Looking up, he saw Dean’s head and felt himself smile.  “Dean.”  The car swerved under him and he laughed, sitting up groggily.  Dean looked at him from the rear view and Sam stretched.  “You know, this is really anti-climactic?”

“Anti-what?”

“Climactic.   I was expecting you to come in with gun’s blazing like in all those action movies you used to make me watch.  Instead, I fall asleep and when I wake up, I’m already rescued - missed the whole thing.  It’s disappointing, really.”

Dean smiled, but there was something not quite relaxed about it.  “Don’t worry, little brother, I wouldn’t disappoint you.  Although, the guns were armed with holy water.”

“Could have woken me up for it.”

“Tried, you were stone cold out.”

Sammy crawled over the seat into the front, ignoring the annoyed looked Dean was throwing him as he walked on the upholstery.  “I don’t know what the hell they were giving me, but I’m...” wait a minute.  “You said ‘we.’  Did Ellen call the armada?”

“No.”

When Dean didn’t seem forthcoming with an answer, Sam frowned at the tail lights in front of them.   It was night out and his eyes were still having trouble focusing, so he stopped trying.  The truck turned on its blinker, pulling over and Dean gave a particularly hard frown, “No way.”  He sped up and Sam looked back to see the truck pull back out.

“Dean, who is that?”  The phone in Dean’s pocket went off, but Dean didn’t reach for it.  “What the hell’s going on?”

Still, Dean refused to answer, staring back at the truck with venom in his eyes.  Lunging forward, Sam wrestled the phone from Dean’s pocket, aided by the fact that his brother couldn’t take both hands off the wheel.  Finally succeeding, he looked at the number, half expecting it to be Ellen or Jo, and this was only about Dean not wanting another lecture.  It wasn’t any number that had been programmed into Dean’s phone, though.

“Hello?”

“What the...?!   Sam?”

Sam’s throat locked up and he looked back at the truck, still holding the cell tightly to his ear, listening to the breathing on the other end.  The truck’s lights blinded him, making it impossible to see the person in it, but he didn’t need to.  “Dad?”

Realization struck like lightening.  Dad was trying to get Dean to pull over, only Dean wouldn’t do it and he wasn’t answering his phone, because he knew it was Dad calling.  Covering the mouth piece, he looked at Dean anxiously.  “Is he still possessed?”

“No.”

“Then why aren’t you pulling over?”

“Just not.”

“Dean...”

“Not up for negotiation, Sammy, hang up the phone.”  Without warning, Sam grabbed the wheel and jerked it hard to the right, forcing Dean to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting a tree.  “Fuck, Sam!”

“I don’t know what happened while I was... gone,” because he knew Dean hated the words kidnapped, captured, or missing, “but I have as much of a right to talk to him as you do.”

He opened the door and Dean cursed, slamming his hands against the steering wheel and putting his head on them, trying to control his anger.  He wasn’t mad at Sam.  This wasn’t Sam’s fault, it was John’s.  They’d been driving for seven hours, stopped for gas only once, and the entire time Dean had been shifting his eyes between the road and Sam in his rear view, who didn’t even twitch.   The longer they drove, the more time he had to think, and the more time he had to think, the angrier he got and maybe if he and Sam were alone it would be better, but they weren’t.  No, John Winchester was driving in front of them - the man who’d abandoned them and never even bothered to check and see where they’d ended up.

Looking into his rear view, he saw Sam standing outside, not hugging John, but standing too close, like he was comfortable with him.  Dean grabbed the handle and yanked his door open, stepping out.  “Sam, get back in the car.”

John gave him that fucking look, the same one he’d been giving him the whole time, but Dean wasn’t intimidated.  When Sam didn’t immediately move to do what he’d said, Dean marched forward and took his brother’s arm, dragging him back.  “If we hurry up, we can still make the Roadhouse before day break.”

Sam pulled back, “Dean’s what’s gotten into you?”

Dean felt his fists balling up and shoved them in his pockets, looking up at Sam and wishing his brother were just a few inches shorter, because it would be a hell of a lot easier to be intimidating if they were closer to the same height.  “We’re not discussing this.  Get in the car.”

“Dean, I know how you feel, okay, but just talk to me.”

That carefully built layer of control that Dean kept over his emotions was slipping.  Just this once, couldn’t Sam do what he was told without asking any fucking questions? “Not in front of him.”

“Dean, he left me, too, okay?  I know it sucks and I’m pissed about it, but if you’d just...”

“It’s not the same!”  There went the control and if he’d had the presence of mind, he’d have waved it goodbye.  “You don’t know how I feel, so don’t even pretend that you do!”

“I wasn’t...”

“You weren’t the one on your knees sucking cock for money, Sam, so don’t tell me that you’re pissed at him, because you can’t even begin to understand what that means!”  John was staring at them and Dean rounded on him, turning the anger on the one that deserved it.  “You wanted to do this, so fine, let’s do it.  How about we start from the beginning?” Sam’s hand touched his shoulder, but Dean shook it off.   “You left!  You fucking dropped off the face of the planet without so much as a call and I fucking thought you were dead!”

John had to open and close his mouth several times before anything came out.  “You said Ellen...”

“Yeah, she did, because when Sam was ten he got taken by a den of vampires and I got him out okay, but I realized that I couldn’t do it on my own anymore.  So, I called for help.  We were a year and a half on our own.  A year and a half of driving, because I was afraid that if we stopped anywhere for too long, someone would get suspicious.”  It hurt saying it, but if John wanted to know, then he’d fucking tell him all the gritty little details.   “So, I hustled pool when I could and when I couldn’t, I let men fuck me for money, because that’s what I had to do to keep Sammy fed.”

“You should have called someone...”

“Who?!  Who had you ever told me that I could trust, because I seem to remember years of lectures on how I couldn’t trust anyone, how all we had was each other.  Never once did you say, ‘if something happens to me, call...’ fucking anyone!”  Sam was staring at Dean with worry, but fuck that, they’d both started it and while he was at it, he might as way lay all the fucking cards on that table.  “Oh, and me and Sam are fucking, by the way.  So, if we pull off the side of the road without telling you, I suggest you keep driving, we’ll catch up; and don’t take the room next to our, because I’m telling you, when I really get him going, he’s a screamer.”  Sam’s face went red, nearly as red as John’s and that was one hell of an accomplishment.

Sam took his arm firmly, “Dean, get in the car.”

“No, he wants to know all about us, let’s tell him everything.  How about it, Dad, still want to know about how I got raped over the trunk of the car my first time?  Or how about when Caleb asked if I was gay because I wasn’t interested in women?  Or when I first realized you could give a blow job without getting choked?  Or...”

Sam grabbed Dean’s jacket and spun him around, “Dean!”  Dean’s eyes focused on Sam, trying to figure out why it looked blurry.  He went to rub his eyes and his hand came back wet.  He was crying.

He brushed Sam off and wiped his face off with his over shirt.  “Is that enough for you?  Think you hold off the fatherly concern for a few hours?”  Dean didn’t wait for a response as he turned around and got back in his car, slamming the door.

Sam stared at the Impala in shock, jumping a little when he saw Dean hit the steering wheel.  He’d never seen him blow up like that.  Dean was the kind of person that got cold and calm when he was pissed and, yeah, something died, but it was done methodically and with control.

“Sam, is that true?”

He looked back at his dad, wondering what the man had said to set Dean off like that.  “Is what true?  That we’re having sex or that Dean was a whore?”  He hadn’t said it to be mean, he just honestly wasn’t sure.  Dad winced, though, and Sam shook his head.  “Look, I’ve got to check on Dean.  Go on ahead, we’ll meet you at Ellen’s.”

Not waiting for a response, he walked over to the Impala and got in, letting the door shut a little harder than necessary.  “Dean...”

“Not yet, Sam.”  He put the car in gear abruptly and sped off, leaving John still standing at the side of the road.

 

*****

 

They didn’t talk for an hour, but Dean did keep the radio on, so while it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, it was still a very long hour and finally, Sam couldn’t stand it anymore.   He reached over and turned off the radio.   “Dean, remember when we were being held by those vampires and you said that if we didn’t talk you were going to go insane?”  Dean didn’t respond, but Sam knew he’d heard him.  “Well, it’s time to return the favor.”

“As I recall that ended in a humiliating conversation about my emotional deficiencies.”

“Don’t forget the mind blowing sex.”

“That wasn’t sex.”  Sam’s head whipped around and Dean glanced at him, shrugging.  “It wasn’t!  Making out with a good deal of groping involved, but the sex didn’t come for months.”

“You came like three times before we stopped, how the hell is that not sex?”

“Sex involves penetration of one or more orifices and nothing was penetrated that night.”

“One or more?  How exactly would you go about single handedly filling more than one of my orifices at a time?”

“God gave me hands for a reason, little brother.  Is this what you wanted to talk about or are we just killing time?”

Sam opened his mouth to respond, but there wasn’t anything there, so he closed it again and tried to regroup his thoughts.  It really didn’t help that the idea of Dean’s hands was making him hard and, damnit, after what Dean had said back there, he so wasn’t about to let him pull over.

“Well?”

“No.”  Sam shifted uncomfortably.  “Are you okay?”

“Well, I just blurted out to Dad that not only was I whore, but that I’m in an incestuous relationship with my little brother, so other than the excruciating embarrassment of realizing that I’m going to have to face him tonight, I’d say I’m doing pretty good.”   Sam looked at Dean with a raised eyebrow until he caved.  “Fine, I’m not okay, does that make you feel better?”

Sam sighed, ignoring Dean’s defensive tone for what it was - a tactic.  “What the hell was that back there, Dean?  I mean, I’ve never seen you like that.”

Dean’s grip on the wheel tightened and then relaxed again with visible effort.  “He was never possessed, Sam.”

“What?”

“Never possessed.   As in, when he left, it was his decision.   According to him, he was protecting us.”   Sam tried to wrap his mind around that, but it had frozen.  Neither of them, in all their talks about what could have happened, had even entertained the thought that nothing had happened.  It was always ‘he was possessed’ or ‘he got killed,’ never ‘he decided to protect us by leaving without so much as a word.’

Sam sat back on his seat and stared at the road ahead of them again.  It didn’t feel real.  None of this felt real.  Maybe he’d wake up and find out it was some dream induced by the drugs or... he pinched his arm, hard, wincing at the pain.  Okay, not a dream then.  He thought about telling Dean to pull the hell over, not because he wanted sex, but because he wanted Dad to think they were doing it.  He didn’t though.

Several minutes of silence became half an hour and then an hour and they weren’t that far from the Roadhouse now, maybe ten minutes.  Dean was wound tightly, staring too hard out the window, like he was only half seeing the road.  “Dean.”

Dean blinked and his eyes lost that glassy quality, focusing.  “What?”

“There’s just one more thing I’d like to say before we get home.”

“What?”

“I am not a screamer.”

Dean’s mouth twitched up.  “Not yet.”

Sam gave Dean a sour look, despite the fact that he was pleased to see his brother relaxing his death grip on the wheel.  “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, my innocent little brother, that there a great many things we haven’t done and, in light of recent events, I intend to rectify that, starting with putting you over my knee and spanking your ass for coming up with that stupid idea.”

“It wasn’t stupid!”  He tried to will down his cock as it hardened at the thought of Dean spanking him.  “It worked, didn’t it?”

Dean slid his eyes over just long enough for a chastising glare.  “If by ‘worked’ you mean got yourself kidnapped, then yes.”

“Smart ass,” he mumbled his reply, knowing that Dean was right.  “Still not a screamer.”

Dean didn’t say anything and Sam looked over, his sense of dread growing.  He knew what that glint in his brother’s eye meant.  It was the same glint he got when he thought he was being clever, like when they’d almost gotten caught after breaking into a crime scene for clues and they were hiding in the closet while the police talked and Dean decided that was a good time to give Sam a blow job.

At least he wouldn’t have to worry about it for a while, because Sam’s only rule was that the Roadhouse was a no-sex zone.  He refused to sleep with Dean and have to look Ellen in the eye the next morning.  It had never been a problem, though, because Ellen was Dean’s kryptonite when it came to sex, worse even than the visions were for Sam.

They pulled up in front of the Roadhouse, Dad’s truck right behind them and Dean fought back a sigh.  The lights were on, which meant Ellen was up.  Great, just perfect.   A good, stern lecture about doing stupid things that put them both in danger was exactly what he needed right now.  Dean shut his door and went inside, followed closely by Sam.

Ellen was standing next to the bar and Dean nervously noted the rifle propped up next to her.  He hadn’t done anything that bad.  Except that John chose that minute to walk in and Dean found himself in a position he’d never been in before - the one where Ellen’s wrath wasn’t aimed at him.

She looked at John sternly and said, “Boys, you go on back.  I’d like a word with your father alone.”

Dean didn’t move at first, even as Sam immediately started walking past her to the back door, stopping to give her a kiss on the cheek and say, “Hi, Aunt Ellen.”  It was routine for Sam.  They came in the door, Ellen sent Sam back to the house, and then she yelled at Dean for a while about responsibility and how even though Sam was an adult, Dean was still responsible for him.

Ellen turned her stern gaze from John to Dean, seeing that he hadn’t move.  “I’ll see to you later, Dean, go with your brother.”

She almost laughed as he stormed past her, mouthing ‘damnit.’  Dean was nothing if not predictable.  Sam had always been a much bigger handful.  Unlike his brother, Sam thought things through and part of that process had always been how to get away with it.  He was good at it, too, good at looking apologetic and Ellen hadn’t bothered lecturing him half the time she should have, because in the end if he wanted to do it, he was going to, regardless of what she or anyone else thought.  Perhaps that was why she had leaned so hard on Dean to take care of Sam.  At least Dean understood accountability.

When she’d heard the faint rattle of the back door shutting and the sound of the boys’ half hearted bickering as they walked away, she turned her attention to he matter at hand - John Winchester.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Ellen...”

“No, you tell me what was more important than those boys.”

John put his hands in his pants pocket, a move that strongly reminded Ellen of Dean.  “I didn’t want to leave, Ellen, you have to know that.  Without Mary, they were all I had, but the demon was...”

“The demon, that’s what this was about?  Taking away Dean’s childhood, getting Sam nearly killed or worse.  Why is it that I’m not surprised?”

“It’s not like that...”

“Then what is it like?  What, exactly, was worth putting them through that hell, because that’s what it was, John.  You should have seen them when they first came here.  Dean wouldn’t let anyone touch him, not me, not Jo, and he nearly fell out of his chair the first time Ash patted him on the back.  Sam wouldn’t talk.  For weeks, he didn’t open his mouth except for when he woke up screaming from nightmares.  That’s the only way I knew he even had a voice.  And then there’s this relationship of theirs...”

“You know about that?!”

“Of course, I know.  Haven’t said anything to them, yet, but I’m not blind and, honestly, since it’s started, Dean’s almost been normal.  I’d worry about Sam, but... well, if I told him to stop it, he’d just run off, taking Dean with him.  At least this way, I know they’re safe.”

The disgust on John’s face was nothing that she hadn’t dealt with herself and he’d get over it, just like she had. “They’re brothers, Ellen, that’s incest.”

“Thanks for pointing that out, John, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Fuck.”   Another Deanism - when you couldn’t think of anything to say, curse.  It seemed strange because she’d never realized how hard Dean tried to be like his father.  She didn’t think he did it on purpose, but Dean had made hiding his emotions an art form and that was John Winchester all over.  The man hadn’t been able to deal with his wife’s death, so he’d stopped dealing with anything other than hunting.

“This isn’t about them, John, this is about you.”  Ellen put her hand on the handle of the rifle.  If she thought it would encourage him to talk, she already would have been aiming it at him.   “You explain yourself and it had better be good or you are walking out that door and I never want you going near them again.”

“The demon wanted Sammy.”  Ellen’s hand slipped from the rifle.  “I thought I was tracking it, but turns out it was the other way around.  It was going to use me to get to the boys and I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

“It was keeping tabs on me, Ellen, anyone I’d called, it would have found.  This demon is more powerful than anything I’ve ever faced and the only way I could protect them was by disappearing.  After a few years, when they got older, I figured maybe it was safe, but... hell, I was scared to face them.”

She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, staring him down.  “Have you told the boys this?”

“Dean won’t let me a get word in edgewise and I haven’t gotten to talk to Sammy.”

“It’s Sam now.  Dean gets away with the kid name sometimes, but I wouldn’t try it if I were you.”  John nodded and the hands pushed further into the pockets.   “So, what are your plans?”

“Hunt the son of a bitch down and kill it.  Kind of hoping I can convince the boys to come with me.”

“You’ll have one hell of a time with that one.”  He nodded gravely and she almost felt sorry for him.  What would she have done in his place, if it was Jo that needed protecting?  Certainly not abandonment, but she saw what he had been thinking.   “Talk to Sam.  If he goes, Dean will.  Those two are on a short leash and you guess who holds which end.”

John could, he remembered how anything Sammy had wanted, all he had to do was pout and Dean caved, even when John had explicitly said no.  “Thanks, Ellen.”

“Don’t thank me, yet.  You still have to convince Sam and I can promise you, that’s not gonna be an easy task.”

 

*****

 

The house was eerily quiet when they came in.  Ash was passed out on the ratty sofa, either having drunk himself into a stupor or fallen asleep watching infomercials again.  They didn’t bother creeping past him, because a bomb could have gone off and he wouldn’t have woken up; at least, not unless that bomb was Ellen.

Jo’s door was shut, lights out, but Dean wasn’t in the mood for revenge just yet.  Sam saw him looking and rolled his eyes, continuing through the swinging door and into the small kitchen, where a box of cookies sat on the table with a note in Jo’s untidy scrawl that said there was beer in the fridge.

Sam looked in the fridge and whistled.  “Breckenridge!   She’s trying to get on your good side.”

“Yeah, well, she should be.  It was bad enough when it was Cory Hart, but Softcell’s going too far.”  He took the offered beer and opened it, taking a long gulp.

“So... what do you think their talking about?”

Dean shrugged, watching Sam run his fingers over the edge of his own can, not opening it.  “Doesn’t matter, really.”  He pulled the box of bite sized cookies to him.  They weren’t even open yet, she really was feeling bad.  Good, then she’d understand when he dumped her ass in the trough.

Sam opened his can, but didn’t make a move to drink it.  “So, you want to tell me what happened while I was gone?”

Dean tipped his beer at his brother, “You first.”

“Not much to tell.”  Sam drank a little, just a sip, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  “I went in, weapons at the ready and the next thing I knew I was flying across the room.  I guess I must have hit my head or something, because I don’t remember anything for a while.”   Dean waited with his eyebrows raised.  That contemplative look meant there was more and he didn’t think he was going to like it.  “They said they had plans for me.”

“What kind of plans?”

“Didn’t say, just that there were plans.  I don’t think it’s good, though.”

Dean nodded and drank, tossing the empty can in the trash and going for another.  “Yeah, well, they’re demons.  Anything they’ve got planned isn’t exactly going to the Christmas with the Waltons.”  Sam’s face was still drawn tight, he was slouched over, staring at the can with disinterest.  “Sam, we’ll figure it out.”

Sam nodded and did a toasting motion with the can before gulping it half down.  “So, what about you?”

Dean tried to be brief and sum the whole thing up, nice and neat, but Sam was good at prying and he was damned good at figuring out where to pry.  There wasn’t a single word left out by the time he got finished and Sam’s hand was resting on his knee, trying to comfort him even though they both knew there wasn’t any comfort for this sort of thing.

“Then you woke up and... you know the rest.”

“Yeah, I do.   So, he says he was trying to protect us?”

By now, Dean was working on his third can and he was starting to get that pleasantly numb feeling in his brain that said he was just that side of drunk enough to deal with this.  “Yup.  Demon was after him or us or both and he ran so it couldn’t find us.”

Sam didn’t say anything and Dean frowned at his brother’s thoughtful expression.  “Sam, that doesn’t make what he did okay.”

“No, I know that, but it changes things.”

“How?”

“It was after me then and it’s after me now and we know something big is going to go down and I’ve got a part in that.  I don’t think it’s safe for us to stay here.  We don’t want to put Aunt Ellen and Jo in danger.”  ‘Us’ and ‘we’ and Dean looked at Sam from the corner of his eye, watching his brother’s face.

Dean ran tongue over the inside of his cheek, trying to put the words together to say what he was thinking.   Finally, he settled with, “You want to leave, we will, but not right away.  Aunt Ellen’ll kill me if I don’t make you rest for a few days at least.”

Sam stared at him and a slow grin began to spread.

Dean rolled his eyes, “What?  Don’t look at me like that.”

“Is the almighty ice queen finally admitting that this is home?”

“Shut up.”

“No, this is a monumental occasion.”  Sam turned his chair and slid his hand up Dean’s thigh.  “Say it again, call her Aunt.”

“Oh, I hate you.”

Sam leaned closer and nipped the side of Dean’s mouth.  “You don’t mean that.  Come on, Dean, for me? You can do it.  Just open that pretty mouth of yours and say, ‘Aunt Ellen.’ ”

His voice was breathy and he was caught between a pout and a smile.  Dean fought the twitch of his lips.  “Fuck you.”

The pout went away entirely, replaced by one of those wicked grins that said a rule was about to be broken.   “Well, if we’re going to be here for a few days.”  Before Dean could remind Sam where they were, Sam was kissing him - in Ellen’s kitchen, with Ash asleep on the other side of the door, with Jo just one wall away in her bedroom and... and somehow that made Dean so fucking hot that not even the thought of Ellen walking in one them could have stopped him.  Hell, if anything, it turned him on more.

Sam moaned a little and Dean put his hands into Sam’s hair, holding his head in place as he ravished his brother’s mouth, completely oblivious to anything around them.  At least, until he heard, “I’d ask if I’m interrupting, but I think I already know the answer.”

They jumped apart so fast that Sam tipped his chair over and he fell on the floor.  John was standing in the doorway, his face red with obvious embarrassment.   “I, uh... I’m sorry, I just... I needed to talk to Sam.”

Dean stood up, blocking his younger brother, but Sam scrambled up as well and stepped around Dean, his ears red at having fallen, but his face set and certain. “It’s okay, Dean.  If I’m not back by the time you’ve finished the last of the beer, call the armada.”

It was meant as a joke, but Dean frowned and Sam rolled his eyes.  He leaned in and kissed Dean, slow and soft, conscious that their father was watching, before he headed towards the back door, John following.  Dean sat down heavily, grabbed the can and tilted it back, gulping it down before tossing it across the kitchen into the trash can.

John’s face flashed across his mind and the realization that his fucking father had walked in on him making out with his brother.   Time for number four.  If he were real lucky, he’d be too wasted to remember this in the morning.

 

*****

 

Sam listened to Dad while he talked, not exactly pensive, but not throwing punches and that was something.   The years had smoothed out a lot of Sam’s memories of Dad.  He’d kind of remembered what the man looked like, but exact conversations and personality traits had been lost.  ‘Dad’ was almost as mythical as ‘Mom’ for Sam, but he knew that wasn’t the case for Dean.

Dean had always done everything for their dad’s approval, even after they’d thought he was dead.  He’d never recognized anywhere as home or anyone other than Sam as family, because it felt too much like betraying the memory of his father.  Now, that memory had betrayed him and Sam wanted to feel bad about it, but he thought it was almost a good thing.  If nothing else, Dean had stopped clinging to a ghost from his past and was looking at the present, where this was home and Ellen was family.

“So, you want us to go with you.”

John nodded, “You aren’t safe anymore, Sam, it knows where to find you.  We’re safer together.”

Sam chuckled a little, hanging his head for a moment before looking up.  “Safer?  Look, I’m not going to argue that we’re safe, I won’t even argue that there is safety in numbers, but you do realize what all of us being together is going to mean?”  John didn’t answer, so Sam plowed ahead.  “Dean puts on a really good face most of the time, but the last few hours, he’s scared me.  He’s got no control and that’s because of you.  So, how is he safer when he can’t think straight enough to hold in his temper?  With you around there’s a good chance he’ll do something stupid and get himself killed.”

“Not to mention, if we go with you, you’ll have to put up with us and by ‘us,’ I mean the sex.  Can you honestly say you’ll be okay with us in the same motel knowing what Dean and I are doing on the other side of the wall?”

John cringed, “Honestly, I don’t want to know what you two do.  You want to be... together?  I guess I can’t really tell you not to.  Even without me having been gone for so long, well, you boys are adults.  So, I’d ask that you try and keep it down at night and I’ll make sure there’s a room or two between us.”

Sam stared at him in shock.  That was... unexpected.  “You mean that?   You don’t have a problem with us sleeping together?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m not going to try and stop you.  This thing I’m hunting, it killed your mother, it killed your girlfriend and, yes, I know about that.  You were pretty much on the radar at Stanford, but without me or Dean there, apparently the demon didn’t think it was an issue.  At least, not until...”

“Do you know why it took Jess?”  He’d buried his pain in Dean, but it was still there.  Jess had been special to him, much the same way Dean was and when he thought long enough and hard enough about it, every bit of the anger he’d learned to deal with came back.

John shook his head, “Not the exacts of it, no.  I just know that it had something to do with whatever plans that thing has and I’ve got no intentions of letting it happen.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair, remembering Dean’s fingers on the back on his head a few minutes before.   “I can’t... we can’t.  I want to kill the demon as much as you do, but Dean...” he glanced at the house.  Dean was sitting in there, getting piss drunk because the father he’d always idolized had just disappointed him in the biggest way possible.

“Sam, it’s to keep you safe, to keep Dean safe.  They want you away from us.  If you two go it alone, you’re putting Dean in danger.”

“That’s low.”  Dean’s safety was as much Sam’s priority as Sam’s safety was Dean’s.

“But it’s true and you know it.  They’ll try to separate the two of you.  At least if we’re together it’s three against one.”  John hesitated.  “I missed you boys.  I’d like to get a chance to know you again.”

Sam looked at the ground, his teeth clenched.  As much as he was mad at him, Sam couldn’t deny that he’d like a chance to get to know his father, too.  There had to be something in there, the same something that Dean had looked up to, spent his entire life imitating.  Besides, maybe if they spent time together they could come to some kind of peace.  It was never going to be the same as it had been before, but maybe it could get... better.  He thought better might be good for Dean.

With a resigned sigh, he opened his mouth, only to be interrupted by an ear piercing scream.  For a split second, his mind drifted towards, “oh, god,’ but the scream was immediately followed with, “Put me down!  Dean!!”

A grin spread over his face and he put out an arm to stop his father from going forward.  The back door burst open and Dean came out, carrying Jo over his shoulder, her hair tangled in her face, her bare legs kicked the air.  “Dean, let me...!!”

Her scream was cut off as he dropped her none-to-gently into the water trough, splashing brown water over the sides.  She resurfaced, gasping wetly.   Dean stood back and watched her with his arms crossed over his chest, while she tried to push herself out of the troff.  She slipped back in once before finally managing to get her feet under her, standing up in the trough, dripping wet wearing only her t-shirt and... Sam raised an appreciative eyebrow.  He hadn’t realized Jo wore thongs.

She wrapped her arms around herself and glared at Dean.  “You asshole!”

“Well, at least you’re not asking why I did it.”

“I bought you Breckenridge!”

“I didn’t hold your head under.”

She glared, but didn’t say anything in retaliation, just stepped out of the trough and stormed into the house as Ellen was coming out.  She looked at Dean, “You feel better?”

Dean gave her his lazy smile, “Oh, yeah.”

“Get in here.”  She held the door wide, patting Dean’s back as he went past her and then looked over at John and Sam.   “You too, Sam.  You boys need a good night’s sleep.  John, Ash fell asleep on the sofa, so why don’t you take his bed in the back?  You remember where it is.”

John gave her a salute and she watched him walk of, hands in his pockets, his back straight.  She also noticed the way Sam watched him go and she knew, without having to ask, that they’d be leaving with him.  Whatever he had said to Sam, the boy had bought it.  Not that she’d had much doubt.  She remembered John Winchester well enough to know he was mighty convincing when he wanted to be.

Sam stopped to hug Ellen before heading off to his and Dean’s room, a haunted smile on his face.  They’d probably push the beds together again.  It was one of those nights.

-Finis-