Chapter Text
October 1999
Bay City, Michigan was beautiful this time of year. It was a beautiful place in general, but there was something about the fall months that really brought out the natural serenity of the place. Sam paused from his reading to watch another autumn colored leaf fall from the rapidly shedding trees around him and drift down to settle on the surface of the lake. The wind gently blew across the water, causing ripples over the surface. It made the brightly colored leaves look like surfboards on the tiny swells.
A victorious cry from across the lake caught his attention. Several people were scattered out on the green, cut grass. Sam was far enough away to not be noticed, but close enough to see the mock scowls adorning half of the group as the other half appeared to be in much better spirits. Then he spotted a man hoisting a small boy up into the air. The kid was clutching a football tightly between his two tiny fists and flailing his legs around. He let out a joyful cry as the man swung him around.
Sam smiled, just a small upturn at the corner of his mouth, before turning back to the clips of newspaper sitting in his lap. Between the peace of the lake and the excitement of the family football game, Sam felt like he was sitting inside a Georgia O'Keefe painting. It was hard to believe six people had gone missing in the span of one week. He flipped through the articles piled in his lap until he got to the most recent one. He’d yet to read over it since teachers weren’t very tolerant of him taking out the newspaper during their lectures. And then there was Dad...
Sam jumped as a brown paper sack suddenly dropped into his lap and sufficiently covered the articles. “I thought I’d find you hiding out here.”
Sam jerked his head up and squinted at the leather jacket hovering over him. It was autumn, but it was hardly cold enough for that heavy of a jacket, but Sam knew his brother well enough to know he wore it for different reasons. The same way he knew when his older brother pointed at the scrap of newspaper that had fallen from his lap that he was busted.
“You’re not supposed to be reading those.”
The older boy’s boots clumped around to the other side before he sank down onto the grassy slope beside his brother. Sam chose to ignore him for the most part and answered simply, “I’m not hiding, Dean.”
“Well, you’re certainly not at soccer practice,” Dean eyed him with a raised brow. His brother was daring him to contradict him, but Sam wisely kept his mouth shut. Dean leaned back a little, setting his hands behind him to take the weight of his recline. “So I asked myself, where would my peace-loving, yogurt-eating, pansy-ass runt of a brother go?”
“Lactose intolerant,” Sam shot back.
“Expression,” Dean returned and grinned when Sam gave him a glare.
“I could have been at soccer practice,” Sam mumbled a little sullenly and his brother was already shaking his head before he could finish.
“Not likely. Because for one,” Dean shifted his weight and held up one finger, “you only have practice on Tuesdays and Thursday. And two,” another finger went up, “you would have told me instead of Dad and Dad wouldn’t have come home and asked why my lazy ass was on the couch instead of picking up my brother from school.”
Sam winced and eyed his brother for any signs of hostility. He hadn’t meant to get his brother in trouble. He just wanted some time to himself, to go over some things. He felt guilt sneak up on him and it must have showed on his face.
Dean rolled his eyes, “Whatever, dude. You can put those eyes away.”
Sam reverted back to a glare. He wondered what it said about the two of them that Dean immediately grinned at being on the receiving end of it. This time it was Sam’s turn to roll his eyes. “So you decided to look for me here?” His voice tinged with doubt.
“No. I went to see if you were holed up in the school library, but the girl at the desk, the one with the preppy blonde ponytail...” Dean trailed off as he motioned his hand around the top of his head.
“Susan,” Sam supplied. He regretted it immediately when a lecherous smile curved up his brother lips.
“That’s right. Susan. Sweet Susanne,” his brother glanced up and off into the distance for a minute as if lost in thought.
“Dude, she’s fifteen!”
“Fifteen isn’t that much younger.”
Sam snorted, “Tell that to the Michigan Court Justice.”
Dean shrugged as if the thought wasn’t really that important to begin with; plenty of other fish in the sea. And for his brother, that was probably true.
“At any rate, I don’t think I’m the Winchester she wanted,” Dean waggled his eyebrows and Sam couldn’t decide between looking put upon or doing an impersonation of a tomato. From the smug look on his older sibling’s face, he assumed it was the latter. “She said she watched you head down Bloomington Street and take a right. Watched, Sammy.”
“Still doesn’t explain how you found me,” Sam said, completely ignoring his brother’s insinuation. Dean looked disappointed at the play-off, but not altogether deterred. Sam imagined they’d be picking up the topic again later.
“Didn’t take long to find you after that,” Dean said, the light tone implying the simplicity of the task. “I just followed that road until I heard two old guys talking about how ‘refreshing’ it was to see the youth of our country still taking an interest in the news. I figured it was you since you have that affect on the over 60 population.”
It didn’t sound overly insulting. It was definitely a jab, Dean really couldn’t pick at him too much about it, especially with all the times his special old person-empathy had gotten them information on a hunt or, more importantly, had gotten a waitress to serve them pie on-the-house.
“I figured you’d look for a secluded place to read and since the library is all the way across town and you’re only supposed to be at ‘soccer practice,’” Sam could practically hear the air quotes. “I figured you’d pick somewhere close by.”
Dean spread his arms out to indicate their surroundings. The motion implied, “And here we are.”
“So you made a lucky guess?” Sam deadpanned at his brother, who gaped in return.
“Hardly a guess, Watson. My leg work was impeccable.” Sam snorted. For all of his brother’s complaints about reading, he knew there were sometimes, when Dean thought he was asleep, that he would catch his brother up reading late. Whether it was from boredom due to inability to sleep or from actually having an interest, Sam didn’t know. But what he did know was that big brother had obviously been reading through a couple of his Conan Doyle’s.
“But, Sammy,” Dean’s tone took on a hard edge, catching Sam’s full attention. “If you pull a disappearing stunt like that again, you can expect something else besides a bag of food as a greeting.”
Sam had the decency to look sheepish as he peered down at the brown sack sitting in his lap. There was a growing grease stain at the bottom. If he looked hard enough he could pretty much see the outline of the food wrappers in the bag. He was disappointed, but unsurprised when he picked up the sack and found that his newspaper clips were soaked as well. He picked up the now flimsy strip of paper and let it dangle limply from his fingers. He glanced up when his brother snorted and was glad to see the tension from a moment ago was gone.
“Only you would lie and sneak off to do research. Which brings me back to my first point,” Dean leaned over and tugged the soggy newspaper from between Sam’s fingers. He made a face as the article flopped onto his arm and stuck there. “You’re not supposed to be reading these.”
“Yeah, well,” the rest of the articles hit the ground with a plop. “Apparently I’m not.”
“Well good,” Dean replied. He peeled the greasy paper off his hand and held it out in front of him, thumbs and forefingers clamping the top corners. “Because apparently this fascinating department is all mine.”
Sam huffed out a breath and glanced out across the lake, “This is stupid.”
There was a brief pause and then, “Dude, I was researching this stuff before you even knew it existed.”
Sam turned back on hearing the heat in his brother’s voice. He was just in time to catch the irritated shake of the useless newspaper in his direction and the annoyed look on his older brother’s face.
Sam rolled his eyes, “Not you. I mean this.” He gestured around at his secluded little hiding area complete with ruined newspaper clippings. “Just because Dad wants me off the bench this time doesn’t mean I should be left out of the research. I mean, how am I supposed to know how to fight if I don’t even know what we’re up against? What’s the point in this?”
Dean was quiet for a moment, long enough to draw Sam’s attention. His brother was studying the article in his hands a little too intently. But like the grease, Dean’s stare seemed to pass right through the paper and onto something Sam couldn’t see. Eventually Dean shrugged, eyes never leaving the article, and said, “It’s your first hunt.” Sam opened his mouth to interject, but wasn’t quick enough as Dean continued. “First real hunt, Sam. Not sitting at home and feeding us information from behind a phone, but a real hunt with guns and monsters and...”
Sam sat perfectly still, watching a pinched expression form over his brother’s mouth and wrinkle his brow. That look was usually only reserve for when Dad talked about soloing a hunt or the time Sam came home late from school with a black eye and minus a jacket. Each of those times the expression had quickly given away to anger immediately followed by blowing off some steam. However, this time the look of concern only held for a moment before trailing off much like his thoughts had. It was left Sam feeling slightly confused, trying to fill in the blanks.
Dean didn’t give him much time to dwell on it though. With his features schooled again, he looked over at Sam and answered his original question. “Dad just wants you to concentrate on the physical aspect. He wants to know you can take all your training and apply it to the hunt, and he doesn’t want you focused on anything else but that.”
Sam felt himself visibly inflate at the mention of his father’s name. His Dad had never been what someone would call ‘fatherly,’ but lately the man had been pushing him physically in all his training, not to mention pushing every last button he possessed. His strict sergeant of a father didn’t understand what school work and growth spurts were. Sometimes Sam wondered if it even mattered. Nothing he ever did was good enough or remotely added up to what his older brother could do.
“He doesn’t think I can do both.” Sam was pretty sure he meant it as a question, but the underlying heat made it sound more like a statement.
A sigh came from his right. He didn’t have to look up to see the exasperated look on Dean’s face. “You know that isn’t it. He wouldn’t let you go if he thought you weren’t ready.”
Sam was less than convinced. He didn’t think his Dad would send lambs off to the slaughter, but if the man needed another able-body for the hunt a semi-trained teenager would do the trick.
“It’s different, okay,” Dean admitted after a pause of Sam’s skeptical silence. “No matter how much you train, being on the hunt is different. You have to think faster, move faster than whatever it is out there. So just cut yourself some slack this time. No need to shoot for MVP on your first try.”
“That’s what Dad will be expecting,” Sam mumbled. Either that or he was setting Sam up for failure as another kind of lesson. It wouldn’t be the first time his Dad had pulled that crap during training, but he would like to think the man wouldn’t do something like that in the midst of an honest to God hunt.
“Then forget Dad,” Sam snorted at his older brother’s words. Six feet of muscled bulk that seemingly lives to bark orders at them is kind of hard to forget. “We’re partners, right?”
Sam nearly gave himself whiplash looking back around at his brother. He was sure his eyes looked like saucers. Somehow he managed to push out a baffled, “What?”
“Do you trust me to watch your back?” Dean asked instead.
“Of course—”
“And I trust you to watch mine,” Dean said without hesitation.
It shocked Sam to hear that vote of confidence coming from his older brother. After all, Dean had been present for his many spectacular defeats during their sparring matches, and that was before he added on another few inches and secured his place as a complete klutz.
“So we do this thing together,” the older brother concluded. “You trust me to pinpoint our monster of the week and I’ll trust you to go Rambo on its ass.”
Sam couldn’t help the small snort that slipped out. Bringing up the rear on a recon mission with nothing but a .22 was not exactly Sylvester Stallone material. Of course, he didn’t think he was ready for that level of action, which just gave more credence to Dean’s earlier suggestion. Maybe taking things slow for his first hunt wasn’t a shot to his training skills, but rather a way of acclimating to the real deal. A small smile pulled at the side of Sam’s mouth. He was torn between thanking his brother and shooting him the bird. Dean always made things seem better, but if the guy knew that his ego would be unbearable to live with. So he did the only thing he knew would express both, “Jerk.”
“Bitch,” his brother returned and suddenly the sodden newspaper in his brother’s hands was stuck to the side of his face.
“Dude, gross!” Sam pawed at the greasy mess and flung it into the pile with the rest of them. He scowled up at the pleased look on Dean’s face.
“C’mon, dude,” Dean jerked his head toward the path leading to the street, but paused to gesture at the ground, “But clean up that mess. The last thing I need is for Smoky the Bear to bust us for littering.”
Sam paused, “I don’t think he really cares about littering.”
“Really?” Dean’s brow wrinkled in concentration. “That seems a little hypocritical. Who does care then?”
Sam pushed himself up from the ground and paced over to his brother. There was a trash receptacle just a little ways up the path. “Well, littering is against the law, so I guess the Michigan Court Justice would.”
“Seriously?” Dean raised an eyebrow as Sam approached. He waited until his brother was at his side before they both began their trip back to the car. “Damn, I can’t catch a break today,” He cursed.
Sam had to duck down a bit to keep his brother from clipping him in the back of the head as the older man threw his arm around his shoulder. “You might want to take the community service for littering over the pedophilia charge.”
Dean grinned, choosing to disregard the last remark, “Awe, Sammy, you would miss me if I went to jail?”
“Not really,” Sam shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I mean, I could always come visit you. But, I would hate to miss the opportunity to throw trash as I passed you and your orange jumpsuit on the side of the road.”
Sam laughed as the arm around his shoulders quickly turned into a headlock. A mock punch landed on his stomach. It was barely a hit, but it made Sam squirm with how dangerous close his brother’s knuckles were to his ticklish sides. The bastard was doing it on purpose.
“Careful, Sammy,” Dean rolled his fist a little farther to the right, causing Sam to jerk. “Throwing trash will get you a jumpsuit too,” and then Sam was released with a small shove.
He recovered quickly enough and grinned up at his older brother, “I’ll take my chances.”
Dean replied with a grin of his own and a shoulder bump.
--------------------------
It took less than ten minutes to get back to the motel. In that time Sam had managed to poke around through the bag of food Dean had brought him. He had been surprised when he found a sandwich sitting at the bottom of it. No sandwich should practically sweat grease, but it made sense when he unwrapped it and found the dripping meat and cheese of a Philly Cheese Steak.
It was good, if messy, but he only managed to consume half of it before his gallbladder decided no one human should intake that much grease. Well, no human other than Dean. His brother didn’t appear to have any qualms about finishing off what his younger brother left behind. It was Dean’s third best skill next to killing shit and scamming people’s money: Human garbage disposal.
None of those things would get his brother far in life; just a motel room and his next fast food order. It couldn’t get him an education, or an honest job and a place to call his own. Those were all the things Sam wanted and all the things he wanted his brother to have. Though Dean didn’t seem to mind going without them. He would smile when Sam brought it up and brush it off with some dumb remark like, “Who needs a real job when I’ve got a fake ID that says I’m with the FBI?”
Dean was smart, no matter what ridiculous comments tended to spill out of his mouth at times. A person with only half a brain couldn’t build their own EMF and certainly wouldn’t be interested in the eccentric adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Sam trusted Dean with his life, whether it’s with guns or research. He just hated to see his brother waste his potential and become a ‘Yes man’ for his father. He didn’t want the same thing for himself, which meant one day he’d have to leave. He knew Dean wouldn’t go with him and leave their father. So all he could hope for was that it wouldn’t break his brother when he was gone. Sam jerked out of his thoughts when the back of Dean’s hand hit his thigh. He glared up at his older sibling.
“Home, sweet home,” Dean announced and then slid out from behind the wheel. Sam hadn’t even noticed they’d arrived at their makeshift dwelling. The rows of outward facing doors greeted him, all looking like they could use a new paint job. The door they were parked in front of had a worn number ‘13’ tacked on it. There was evidence that at one time it was gold, but now it was nothing but coated rust. At the very least Dean had enjoyed the irony of the number, whereas it only caused Dad to carve an extra few protection symbols into the frame work.
A few doors down a man’s head poked out from behind the frail looking door. All of his wiry gray hair was collected around his ears as if the strands were trying to run away from the top of his head. His beady eyes, framed by glasses, shifted around the parking lot before his head disappeared back through the door. Soon after a leggy blonde, clad in clothes fit for a street corner flounced out the door in high heels. She turned quickly before she fled down the side walk and blew the much older man a kiss.
Sam blinked and turned his head away. These people were his neighbors. A sharp rap on the car window caught his attention. Dean’s face was peeking in close to the passenger side window. The older boy raised his eyebrows and made an expecting gesture with his hands. “Are you getting out or do you plan on staying outside to finish spying on George Costanza?”
Sam blushed, feeling the rush of blood heat his ears. “I wasn’t watching,” he scowled, trying to cover up his embarrassment.”
“Dude, I was considering offering you a notebook so you could take notes.”
Sam popped his door open and pushed the door quickly enough to knock the glass into Dean’s forehead. It wasn’t hard enough to cause any damage, just enough to shock the older hunter. It worked.
Dean jerked back, slapping a hand over his forehead. Sam used the distance to slip out of the car and hurry toward their motel room. Although the hit wouldn’t have hurt Dean physically, he imagined the harder blow was to his ego. His best bet to save himself from an ass kicking was to get inside where his father wouldn’t allow their ‘tom-foolery.’ Dad was the only person who could hold off Dean’s wraith, and vice-versa. Sam was just the catalyst.
Sam had just entered their room as Dean’s fist closed in the back of his shirt. As expected, John was sitting at the small table tucked back toward the far side of the room flipping through his journal. Sam had to stifle a laugh as Dean cursed and removed his hand.
“You got lucky this time, runt,” Dean whispered, bumping his shoulder as he passed. “But you better sleep with one eye open.”
Sam grinned. He was not afraid of empty threats. However, the grin slipped from his face when his brother eyed the bathroom for longer than necessary and then smirked at him over his shoulder. Great, he was going to have to carry around his own shampoo bottle for the next month.
“Boys,” John greeted, catching both of their attention as he placed his journal down on the table. He didn’t bother marking his page as he closed the book. Sam had no doubt his father knew the journal backwards and forward and knew exactly where he would need to pick up at later. “How was practice?”
The question was aimed at him, but the surprise of it caught Sam off guard. What a time to be speechless.
“There wasn’t a practice,” Dean announced as he plopped down in the seat across from their Dad. Sam felt his heart skip a beat at his brother’s admission. John’s questioning eyebrow made his pulse spike up, but thankfully before he could launch into another excuse Dean piped in again. “Oh, you mean that herd of gawky teen-aged boys chasing a ball back and forth across the field?” Dean leaned across the table as if to whisper to his Dad, but his tone was clearly loud enough for anyone in the room to hear. “I’m pretty sure the ball won.”
Sam glared at the back of his brother’s head. Apparently there were ways to retaliate while their father was in the room. “Hilarious,” Sam deadpanned and sat down on the bed closest to the door. A ratty old sheet was draped over the bed sheets, protecting them from the gun powder and oil of the guns lying on top of it. He didn’t see the reason for precaution. There wasn’t much else that could be done to the comforter to make it any more moldy than it already smelled. A little gun oil might even help. Maybe it would make the flowery print a bit manlier and a little less humiliating to sleep under.
Sam reached over and picked up the Beretta closest to his knee. The handle was a pleasant weight and familiar. He had practiced with the weapon many times, slowly graduating from pegging cans off a fence to hitting makeshift skeet tossed into the air by his brother. The skeet shooting was still a work in progress, but at least he could get all the cans without having to load another clip.
“Those are for you, Sam,” The slide clicked back into place where Sam had been examining it as his father’s voice grabbed his attention. The older man had since reopened his journal and had a few other books and newspaper articles spread out over the table in front of himself and Dean. John was looking up at him, hand indicating to the guns across the bed. “They need to be completely disassembled and cleaned. The last thing we need is a jam.”
Sam squeezed the handle a little harder than necessary, but bit his tongue and replied with a curt nod. Part of him knew it was only busy work to keep him away from the research laid out on the table. They always cleaned their guns after a hunt in case an emergency situation cropped up. The other part, the part that sounded like Dean telling him they were partners, insisted it was just Dad wanting to make sure he took every precaution before going in. But if that were really true, Sam would have a part in the leg work as well.
Sam contained the sigh that threatened to pass his lips and focused on the task at hand rather than the hushed conversation behind him. It took the better part of an hour to field strip the guns laid out on the bed and the few that were still left in the weapons bag, but it took half that time to clean them. As he had expected, the guns were already well oiled and clean. The rag and barrel brush were barely grimy by the time he was done. By the time he’d completely finished he’d spent a good two hours on the unnecessary task. Time that would have been better spent helping out on research.
“Done?” John asked as Sam clicked the clip into the last gun. His Dad was standing over him, looking down over the reassembled weapons. Sam passed the gun up in answer. Sam ignored the dull metal clicks as his father inspected his work. The small table at the back of the room was now cleared. The only thing on it was Dad’s old journal and two long necked bottles. Both chairs were pushed back and empty. The low hiss of the shower head offered an explanation as to where Dean was.
“Rag,” John held his hand out and Sam passed up the used piece of cloth. His Dad ran the material over the slide and eyed the inner walls of the barrel. Sam jerked his head up when the older man hmm’ed. He knew that unsatisfactory sound, but couldn’t fathom why he was hearing it. The guns were already cleaned. Sam hadn’t needed to do much more than re- check them and apply gun oil.
“There are a few minor scrapes in the rifling,” John frowned and pushed the piece of the gun close to Sam’s face. “You can’t be careless with the brush just because you’re in a hurry to get done. You scratch the barrel and you’ll be lucky to hit anything within two feet of you. And that’s unacceptable.”
Sam couldn’t keep the incredulous look off his face, “I didn’t even use the brush on that one.”
That apparently hadn’t been the right thing to say. The frown on his Dad’s face deepened, “And why not? That’s part of the cleaning process, Sam. What have you been doing over here for the past two hours?”
Sam felt his own mounting frustration toward his father. What he’d been doing for the last two hours was cleaning and dismantling guns that were already in top condition. “They didn’t need it, at least not the full treatment. None of us have fired them since we last cleaned them three days ago.”
“And as I recall your brother left them in good condition. Scratch-free.”
Sam’s mouth tightened. He was unwilling to show how much that one comment stung. Dad hadn’t even checked behind Dean to see if there were any faults. And why would he? Dean was pretty much the perfect soldier in Dad’s eyes, and Sam wasn’t blinded to the fact that nothing he could do would measure up to his brother. Dean had set the bar pretty high and on a good day Sam could only manage to flounder underneath it. He really did love his brother, but being compared to him was a real bitch and it never ceased to piss him off.
“I don’t understand what you’re accusing me off here,” Sam’s glare was in place, but he wished his Dad would step back so he could rise to his full height. He wasn’t as tall as John, but anything would be better than having the man tower over him. “Cleaning the guns or not cleaning them.”
John’s nostril’s flared at the confrontation and Sam couldn’t help but take pleasure in it. His dad didn’t like questions, or being questioned rather, and especially when that question was against his authority. Too many years in the military and dealing with subordinates had warped his sense of being a father into something more harsh and commanding. Sam imagined the demon and Mary hadn’t helped much either.
The gun in John’s grip suddenly jerked causing Sam to jump as the gun clicked back together. He fumbled to catch the piece of steel when Dad all but dropped it in his lap.
“It’s time you start taking responsibility for yourself, Sam,” John said, not bothering to address his son’s previous statement. “Dean and I can’t be with you ever second to clean up your messes for you, especially not on a hunt. How do you expect me and Dean to trust you if you can’t even follow protocol before hand? This,” the older hunter gestured to the weapon in his youngest’s hands, “is exactly the type of thing that will get one of us killed.”
“Responsibility,” Sam blurted before clamping his mouth shut. His Dad couldn’t be serious. Was all this fuss really over a couple of scratches on a gun that he didn’t even make?
“Yes,” John answered before Sam could blurt out anything else. “This is your part of the hunt, your responsibility, and so far you’ve gotten off to a pretty poor start.”
Sam was speechless, not really knowing what to say or even how to form his anger into words or at least not until his Dad spoke again.
“Re-check them all. Tonight.”
“All of them,” Sam could hear the shock in his own voice. Surely his Father was kidding, but that thought dissipated when John nodded.
“That’ll take another hour at least.”
“You’ve already wasted two hours, might as well take another,” John replied. He didn’t even wait to see if Sam had a response. He just collected his journal from the table and headed to the door separating their adjoining rooms. “When you’re done pack everything up and place it by the door. Leave one gun on the table so I can check it in the morning.” And with that John was gone with an auditable bang of the door.
Sam felt like tossing the gun across the room. The only thing stopping him was the noise it would make when it smashed into the wall. The last thing he wanted was to inadvertently call his father back over here for a repeat lecture. Sam tossed the gun in his hand to the bottom of the weapons bag. It had already failed his Father’s test. There was no way he was taking the chance that he might accidentally leave it out for inspection. The clock on the bedside table glowed an angry 10:47pm and Sam reluctantly picked one of the guns he’d cleaned only moments ago. He might as well start now if he planned on finishing by midnight.
He was only half-way through the second gun when the bathroom door opened, spilling out both steam and his brother. Dean was already dressed in his sleep clothing, hair sticking up everywhere from the towel he’d no doubt scrubbed over it. He spared Sam a look—one that was slightly more knowing than Sam preferred—before glancing at the guns still laid out on his bed and the clock by the bed. Dean frowned and crossed over to Dad’s door. Sam opened his mouth to ask what he was doing, but his brother had already rapped his knuckles against the wooden door twice and then entered without invitation. Sam idly wondered if he could get away with the same thing.
Sam didn’t actually have to ask what his brother was doing. He’d seen the look on Dean’s face and knew his brother had heard part, if not the whole argument he and John had just had. Dean had gone over to play referee, and as much as Sam appreciated that at times, now wasn’t one of them. His Dad already thought he was incompetent; the last thing he wanted was for his Dad to think he’d gone crying to Dean about the unfair work load. Dad would see it as just another thing that made Sammy irresponsible and in need of his big brother to clean up his messes. Barely five minutes had passed before Dean came back, hair still spikey and half dried and with an unpleasant look settled on his face.
“So how did that go?” Sam asked, not even bother to mask the annoyance in his voice or look up from the task at hand.
There was a pause before he heard his brother push away from the door and then sit down on his bed with a groan. “Apparently I’m supposed to supervise you.”
Sam snorted, only feeling slightly bad for his older brother, “It’s your own fault, Dude. You shouldn’t have wandered off into No Man’s Land.”
His only response was a sigh, followed by the squeak of bed springs. Sam looked up for the first time since Dean came out of the bathroom when his bed suddenly dipped. His brother was perched on the opposite side, second rag in hand and picking up one of the pistols. “What are you doing?” Sam asked, genuinely wanting an answer this time.
“I’m supervising,” Dean said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world; which it wasn’t. No part of supervising included actually pitching in to help, at least not John Winchester’s definition of supervising.
“This is my part of the job, Dean,” Sam snatched the other rag from Dean’s grip. “Remember, partner?”
It was kind of a rude thing to throw back in his brother’s face, especially when Dean was only trying to help, but Sam was irritated and tired. The hunt had barely begun and he was already ready for the damn thing to be over. To Sam, no part of hunting was fun, but at least when he was on research duty there was a challenge. At least with research he wasn’t told how badly he sucked at it.
“Hey, just because you’ve got your panties in a twist, doesn’t mean you get to show your ass to me,” Dean griped and made a grab for the rag. Luckily Sam was quicker and pulled back before his brother could grab it.
“I don’t need your help, Dean.”
“Too bad,” another fruitless grab for the rag had Dean sighing in a mix of irritation and resignation. “Fine, but at least go take a shower. Then you can continue this.”
Sam raised an eyebrow at his brother, “You don’t really think I’m that stupid do you?” Not one part of Sam believed his brother wouldn’t finish up the gun inspection while he was in the bathroom.
“It will be too late to take it by the time you finish.”
“Then I’ll take one in the morning.”
“We’re heading out early,” Dean said. “So you won’t have time.”
Sam’s attention perked up at the tidbit of information. It was the first plans Sam had heard in regarding to the hunt. He considered the possibility of interviewing witnesses, but from pieces of conversations he’d overheard, Dean and Dad had already taken care of those. He also doubted either of them would take him along if that was the case. This meant Dad wanted to do a walk-through, scout out the location. Dad and Dean must have had a break in the case tonight. There was no other reason why Dad would want to get a feel for the location. That explained why Dad wanted to drag him along.
“Where are we going?” Sam ventured.
After a beat of silence, Sam glanced up from his lap and found Dean just staring at him. The expression was restrained at best with a tinge of regret. Sam hated; knowing that Dean had information to share but Dad had placed a gag order on it. His anger was mostly directed at Dad, but he couldn’t help but be pissed at his brother for going along with it. Sam took advantage of his brother’s distraction and latched a hold of the gun Dean was holding. Unfortunately, the older hunter’s reflexes snapped into action and clamped down on the handle just as Sam did. The result was each of them holding tight to each end of the weapon.
“I’ll take a shower after the hunt then,” Sam gritted out.
“Well that’s one way to kill the thing,” Dean quipped.
Sam glared, undeterred by the verbal jab, “What thing?”
Dean clenched his jaw and glared down at his little brother. A sense of frustration settled between them and after a moment Dean released the gun with a jerk. “Fine. You don’t want to trust me; that’s fine.” Dean stood up from the bed and moved toward his own. “I’ll just supervise from over here... with my eyes closed.”
Sam didn’t watch his brother go, but he heard the springs of the opposite bed complain as his brother flopped down on it none to gently. He hadn’t meant to imply that he didn’t trust Dean. There wasn’t anyone he trusted more than his brother. It was just... this whole thing was stupid. Splitting up aspects of the hunt to test teamwork was a terrible method and especially for his first in-the-field hunt. He knew he should apologize to Dean. His brother was only trying to help any way he could, but right now Sam just couldn’t. Not with his anger still so fresh.
It was a little while later when Sam heard Dean’s breathing even out and an hour after that before Sam was able to crawl into bed himself. He felt grimy from spending part of the day outside and sweating in the heat, but he was too tired to shower. It was doubtful he’d be up earlier enough for a shower. Sam sighed into his pillow and stared at the clock on the table. His shower, just as Dean said, would have to wait.