A Single Blade Of Grass - Section One

[glasslogic]

A Single Blade of Grass

Chapter One

Dean walked into Bobby's house, mopping sweat from his neck with a ragged towel and smiling at nothing in particular. Dust and a few withered leaves clung to the worn denim of his pants and the split in his lip still tasted raw, but the entertainment of the previous couple of hours had been worth it. At the tail end of February, South Dakota was normally still buried under several feet of snow, but an unseasonable warm spell and the resulting melt had been too much to resist. Dean had taken eager advantage of the break in the weather, spending as much time outside as possible. Sometimes alone, but usually Jessica went along with him.

The odd relationship the three of them had forged was still new and had it's awkward edges. Sam and Dean had a lifetime of history to fall back on, but Dean and Jess were still learning about each other. Time in the yard, working on training Jess into competent back-up, provided a good excuse for them to spend time together. It made the work of building his own muscle and stamina back up from the state he had let himself fall into more enjoyable as well. Jess had proved to be an okay shot, more so with a rifle than a handgun, and she had the basics down for survival skills from camping trips with her uncle. Unfortunately, her hand-to-hand combat ability was non-existent. The snow-free ground provided the perfect playground to work on that problem, and Dean was finding a lot of side benefits to playing teacher. Jess didn’t seem to mind.

Upstairs, Dean heard the water kick on in the shower as Jessica took advantage of first dibs to thaw out under the hot spray. Even with the ground clear and dried to a dusty brown, the air was still bitter. Since sweating in the freezing cold had never really been his favorite thing to do. Dean was looking forward to his own turn in the bathroom. Having four adults living in a one shower house had its disadvantages.

Dean didn’t think Sam had so much as stuck his nose outside the entire week. He was busy switching his time between Bobby’s library and whatever legal-type things he was angsting over. His resistance, when Dean tried to get him involved in other activities, had grown steadily more entrenched until Dean had finally given up in disgust. He’d shrugged it off philosophically. If Jess learned to kick Sam’s ass while Sam sulked inside ignoring the world, his little brother totally deserved what he got.

Suddenly aware he wasn’t alone, Dean turned to find Bobby leaning in the kitchen doorway, watching him speculatively.

“What?”

Bobby just took a long pull from the beer in his hand.

“Something wrong, Bobby?” Dean asked finally, after several long moments of silence.

“You’re awfully handsy with a woman who’s engaged to your brother.”

Dean cursed inside. He had noticed Bobby watching his interactions with Jess with more interest over the past few days, and Dean knew that some of the “training” going on in the yard was pretty obviously on the wrong side of the line for a man dealing with his future sister-in-law. He wasn’t really surprised Bobby was calling him on it, but he was in no way ready to have the conversation and didn’t feel a shred of guilt over mentally assigning that particular duty to his brother. This whole threesome thing had been Sam’s idea --he could tell Bobby.

“You got a problem with it?”

Bobby took another drink. “Not if Sam doesn’t.”

“I suppose we’re good then,” Dean said firmly, meeting Bobby’s level gaze.

“I suppose.” Bobby nodded slowly, and turned back into the kitchen. Dean swore under his breath and went to find Sam, his good mood completely evaporated.

The three of them tried hard to keep their arrangement under Bobby’s radar, but it was difficult when sharing the same house with the man. Jess and Sam had taken the guest bedroom at the top of the stairs, and Dean had the couch in the living room, but the relationship was new and exciting, and it was killing all of them --or at least Dean-- to know exactly where the other two were (together) and be expected to stay down in the cold by himself. It had been eight weeks so far at Bobby’s house, and Dean figured he had actually spent maybe less than half those nights virtuously on the couch. The rest he had spent in the tiny bedroom at the top of the stairs exploring the new ties between himself and Sam and Jess, with muffled laughter and wandering hands, warm bare skin and swollen lips. Then he would wash hastily in the cramped bathroom and sneak back downstairs. It was getting old fast, but he acknowledged that Sam and Jess had a point about his need to get back into shape, and living with Bobby didn’t cut into their finances. The man refused to even hear of them paying for anything but groceries, though he was happy enough to have free labor. This new development could be a problem though.

Sam was, as expected, buried in Bobby’s library.

“I would have thought you’d have finished all these off by the time you were fifteen,” Dean greeted his brother.

Sam looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Back inside so soon?”

Dean snorted. “We’ve been working out for almost four hours, Sam. You should have joined us. Jess is making some good improvement.”

“Really?”

“No. But you still should have come outside. I need a real workout, and you’ve been benched for about seven years. You’re now almost twice as big as you were the last time you did any training. I bet I could take you and Jess on together.”

“It’s nice to see your humble nature reasserting itself,” Sam said absently, attention being drawn back to his book.

“Truth is truth.” Dean leaned against one of the bookcases and gazed out the small window. “I don’t think the good weather is gonna last, though.”

“Probably not.” Sam waited for Dean to say something else, but his brother seemed content to just look out the window.

“There something else you need, Dean?” he finally tried.

“Bobby knows something’s up,” Dean told him, not shifting his gaze.

Sam closed the book on his lap with a sigh. “I’m not surprised.”

“You’re not?”

“It’s not that big of a house and Bobby’s not exactly dim. What did he say?”

Dean shrugged. “Not much, just pretty much that Jess and I seemed a little too friendly. He didn’t actually accuse me of anything or ask any questions.”

Sam was quiet for a minute. “Maybe you should stay on the couch for a few nights.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

“If the ‘training’ involved less giggling and rolling around on the ground, it might also help,” Sam added, dropping the book onto a pile stacked beside his chair.

“Hey! I can’t help it if she’s ticklish, and that wasn’t ‘rolling around’ --we were grappling. It’s totally legit.”

“Try ‘grappling’ things other than her chest.”

Dean looked amused. “Did you know she keeps salt packets in her bra?”

Sam glared.

“Hey.” Dean straightened up, “I tried to drag you outside with us.”

“Yeah,” Sam snorted, “because you and I rolling around on the ground is exactly what Bobby needs to see.”

“You don’t think we can keep it professional?” Dean raised an eyebrow.

Sam muttered something and looked away.

“I couldn’t quite hear that,” Dean suggested, stepping closer until he was standing over Sam who was still slouched in his chair.

Sam sighed. “I just wish all of this wasn’t necessary. That we had our own place.” Dean nodded and reached out to brush Sam’s lips with his thumb. His brother’s eyes darkened and Dean felt a hint of Sam’s tongue slide against his skin. He though about turning the gesture into something more, but knew Sam wouldn't cooperate. Not in the daytime where just anyone could walk in.

Even in the room at night, Sam acted with frustrating restraint. Dean understood Sam’s discomfort with the surroundings, but he was starting to get annoyed with it. Dean enjoyed what they did, but he had no doubts it would be even better if every time he touched Sam, his brother didn’t act like the morality police were going to bust the door down and drag them all off. Actually, Sam would probably prefer that to the more likely scenario of opening the door and finding Bobby there waiting for them. The three of them needed to find a different place to crash, but Sam and Jess flat out refused to go anywhere until Dean was in better condition after the state of neglect he’d fallen into during his last couple of years of solitary hunting. It certainly provided incentive for him to work harder at it.

The floorboards in the hallway creaked and Dean casually dropped his hand from Sam’s face and picked up the other book from Sam’s lap, turning to face the doorway. But it was just Jess who stepped through, hair wrapped in a towel and wearing a baggy robe that had probably hung unused on the back of Bobby’s door for over a decade before she adopted it.

“Shower’s free.”

“Thanks, Jess.”

“No problem. How’s your lip?”

“Sore.” Dean gingerly touched it again.

“Stop poking at it. And next time when I’m flailing wildly in your direction, you should duck. Go take a shower and later Sam and I can flip a coin to see who gets to kiss it better for you.”

“Speaking of which,” Sam interrupted, “Bobby is starting to get suspicious.

“I know,” she shrugged.

“Now you know?” Dean demanded. “Why am I the last one to find out about these things?”

“He asked me a few days ago if Sam and I were still engaged. It completely slipped my mind, probably all of the excitement of my new work-out routine. But you had to know this was coming eventually, right? Did you talk to him about it?”

“No, absolutely not,” Dean said flatly. “I brushed him off and he went back into the kitchen.”

Jess nodded. “Smells like spaghetti for dinner. Do we want to wait and see if he brings it up directly or start the conversation ourselves?”

“Do we think he will?” Sam asked.

Dean nodded reluctantly. “He approached Jess, and he spoke to me. You’re the only one he hasn’t mentioned something to about it. If he thinks we are doing something behind your back… yeah, he’s gonna bring it up.”

Jess shrugged one shoulder. “You guys know him better than I do. I’ll go along with whatever you want.”

Sam frowned. “Let’s wait, then. If he comes to me... I’ll tell him as little as possible to assure him no one is sneaking around.”

“That’s graceful.”

Sam glared. “You have a better idea, Dean? I’m all ears if you do.”

“Nope, this one is all on you, Sam. Let me know how it goes.” Dean flashed his brother an encouraging look and sauntered out and down the hallway to claim the shower. Sam stared after him, an irritated look on his face until Jess dropped her wet towel on his lap and gave him a pointed look while finger combing her hair. “Did you really want Dean to be the one to discuss this with Bobby?”

“Do you really keep salt packets in your bra?” Sam countered.

Jess smiled, accepting the shift in topic. “Come out with us tomorrow and find out for yourself!” she called over her shoulder as she headed out of the room in search of dry clothes.


Chapter Two

Days went by and Bobby didn’t say anything to Sam about the situation. Dean stayed virtuously on the couch for almost a week before he started his nightly visitations again, and slowly, life went on. But it wasn’t quite as relaxing for Dean as it had been before his run-in with Bobby. He was starting to feel awkward and ...judged whenever Bobby was around. There wasn’t anything he could point to or call Bobby on, just a feeling. Jess was still playing the “you know him best” card and Sam refused to take any action at all, claiming that if Bobby was bothered he would speak up. But as far as Dean was concerned Bobby had spoken up, and pretending there wasn’t a problem didn’t sit right. But he could hardly fault Sam for preferring the current arrangement to the possible fall-out of a direct confrontation.

He had almost reached the point of forcing a conversation, just to get rid of the awful feeling of suspense, when something happened that made it moot.

“I’ll be away for a few days,” Bobby grunted. He dropped a heavy duffle bag by the front door and picked up a loose stack of mail on the table there, then flipped through it business like. He pulled an envelope out, folded it and shoved it in one pocket, before turning to face his house guests. Dean and Jess had been in the middle of finally dragging a still-reluctant Sam outside and all three were looking at him in surprise.

“Got some business in Wyoming that needs my attention. You three going to be here when I get back?”

Dean traded looks with Sam. After a moment of awkward silence, Jess drove a surreptitious elbow into Sam’s ribs. “If you don’t mind us being here,” Sam spoke up, giving her a sidelong glare.

“You boys are the closest thing to kin I’ve got living. I’ve already told you to stay as long as you please. Still planning on training Jess up as a hunter?”

“Not a hunter,” Jessica corrected. “Back-up. Sam’s going to work off a laptop and a cell phone, Dean is going to hunt, and I’m-”

“Going to make sure everyone’s toenails stay trimmed and sparkly,” Dean cut in, making sure Sam was firmly between them.

Jessica gave him a look that promised retribution, “-going to do translation work. Glad to know you value my contributions to our little family though, Dean.”

“Hey! I care about the state of my toenails.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “We’ll still be here, Bobby. You need us to do anything while you’re gone?”

“Yep,” Bobby hefted his bag and pulled the door open. “I want you to teach your girl to cleanse a house of spirits. You can start with this one. Pay close attention to the staircase and don’t skimp on the Rosemary, something is making them squeak awfully fierce in the night.” He gave them all a level look while smiles grew strained and the awkward pause lengthened.

Finally Dean coughed and nodded. “Sure thing, Bobby.”

Bobby snorted. “Back in about a week.”

~~~~~

After the door had closed behind Bobby, leaving the three of them staring at each other in some chagrin, Sam had suggested that the least they could do was what Bobby had asked. Rummaging up the herbs and finding the right ritual hadn’t taken very long, and Jess was a quick study. They traded off, taking the rooms one at a time until the entire house from rafters to cellar had been gone over. The whole project had taken the rest of the day, but that had as much to do with taking a long break to do something ill-advised with a straight back chair and some edible body paint as it did with teaching the ropes of spiritual pest control to a novice.

Fixing the chair had taken some time, too.

Jessica hadn’t seen any reason to stop with a metaphysical cleansing, and insisted on a more traditional scrub down too. She airily ignored Sam’s professed shock at the fact that she knew what a duster was for and hit Dean with a pillow when he suggested they check her for possession after she went through the second bottle of Windex. Reluctance and groaning aside, the house was thoroughly cleaned, in all respects.

They also worked on fixing the stairs. Not enough to let an intruder climb them in silence, just enough to make a squeak-free path for a person who knew where to step.

Bobby’s absence had provided more than just free space for fooling around without fear of getting caught, and a whirl-wind catch up on what felt like a decade’s worth of chores; it had also, finally, given Dean space and time alone. For the eight weeks they had been there, Jess and Sam hadn’t given him five minutes of free time unless it was the dead of night or they knew Bobby was around. And even in the dead of night, Dean was never certain of privacy. Bobby had the justifiably paranoid habit of checking his perimeter when he woke at random hours and Dean didn’t want any surprise encounters. Dean wasn’t even sure the constant company was a conscious thing, they were just always there, and he couldn’t ask them to leave him alone because then they would want to know why. But now Bobby was away and Jess was in town doing who-knew-what and Sam was out getting some fresh air.

Dean cleared the kitchen table and dug the gifts Frank Black had given him from the very bottom of the Impala’s trunk where they had been hidden since the night he had received them; Jordan’s sketch pad and a plastic case of charcoals and colored pencils. Sam and Jess had been there when Frank had given them to Dean, but only Sam had asked about them afterwards, and he had only asked once. Dean’s expression had forbidden him to ask again. It wasn’t something he was comfortable with and he didn’t want to have to discuss it. Especially since he knew Sam wouldn’t approve of what he was doing and any conversation on the subject was going to end in yelling and possibly a punch or two. Jess, for all she was new to hunting and almost a stranger to Dean, seemed to have a better understanding of the space he needed on the subject of his ...art.

But now the house was quiet. He opened the sketch pad and ran admiring fingers over the smooth, even grain of the heavy paper. The nicest thing he had drawn on before was cheap white paper swiped from a printer behind the back of an inattentive motel desk clerk. When he had thought about spending the few dollars to buy something more suitable for drawing, it had made his skin crawl, like he was giving in to whatever it was that caused this compulsion. But the sketch pad had been a gift, and given just for this purpose. Dean closed his eyes and saw this shape and this form, the vision of what was waiting to be given substance on paper as real to him as the chair on which he sat.

He knew when everything had started. One day he was just Dean Winchester, lone hunter extraordinaire; then there came a chintzy motel room outside of Pontiac, Illinois, mirrored ceiling, heart shaped tub; then a raging fever and searing pain in his ears like nothing he had ever experienced before. Dean remembered convulsing on the sheets, feeling like a knife was twisting in his skull. Then, just as the pressure grew too much and he opened his mouth to scream, the ceiling exploded and rained razor shards of silvered glass down onto the bed.

Blackout.

When Dean had woken up, bloody from the hail of glass and exhausted, the pain was gone and he felt woozy but otherwise fine. He bandaged his wounds and fled.

But that night he had drawn the first angel.

Barely aware, he had started sketching on the back of a gas receipt while waiting for his dinner in a roadside dive. The curve of a wing, an edge of robe.... His burger arrived but he didn’t care. Feather details, hands, feet, then a face. He tried to stop, but there was something about the sketch that held him captive, kept his pen moving even while his mind whirled in a panic. Then it was done and paper eyes bored up into his. Blood seeped through the bandages on his arms, staining the fabric of his shirt in spreading swaths of scarlet. He dropped the pen and shoved away from the table so fast he knocked the bench over from the booth. Dean had tipped his glass of water over the paper, causing the ink to blur, but he could still feel the eyes and he had torn out of the diner before anyone else could do more than gape in shock.

That night had been bad, and the next, when he had found himself sketching wings into the dust of the Impala’s hood while filling her tank. After a week of struggling to conquer the compulsive need and desperate research that turned up no stories of anything like what he was experiencing, Dean had woken in the middle of the night to find himself kneeling naked on the floor of his hotel room, a wound on his arm ripped open, bleeding freely, and an angel in crimson watching him with studied neutrality from the wall. His fingers were stained with his own blood.

Dean willingly admitted to not being the sharpest crayon in the box in all things, but he was far from stupid and knew when he was beaten, at least when the only life at stake was his own. Feeling calmer than he had since that first night, he scrubbed the wall clean, bandaged his arm again, and sat down with a pencil to redo the drawing properly. When he didn’t fight it, the clean lines flowed from his hand naturally and he lost track of time in the simple grace of the picture. It was different than the one on the wall, and the others he had strangled before they could truly take form. A stark original that had a depth commanding in such a simple figure. He studied it until the sun had risen in the Eastern sky. Then Dean finished cleaning up, checked out, and drove until he found a place isolated enough that no one was likely to interrupt him. The lighter his father had given him on his eighteenth birthday was a comforting weight in his hand; he clung to it like an anchor as flames consumed the cheap paper and pain drove him to his knees. There was no center to it, just a storm of misery that assaulted his nerves and left him crying, overwhelmed with loss. He felt like he had when Sam left, when his father had died, when he had woken up three months after scattering his dad’s ashes, smelling like cheap beer and casual sex, and realized that the people he loved best were lost to him forever.

After that he didn’t fight it any more. If he just let it come when he had downtime, it never really reached the compulsive stage. He drew his angels and he burned them afterwards, and if he paid a price in health and sleep --losing pounds, and speed, and focus-- well, that was his decision too. Dean hadn’t even been surprised when the visions had started, glimpses of shining figures, indistinct in their radiance, standing by people soon to die. The figures radiated comfort, but at the same time such an overwhelming feeling of dread that Dean could feel them in the pit of his stomach long before he caught sight of them. He didn’t understand what they wanted from him, didn’t understand any of it really. He was never able to save the people they showed him, so he gritted his teeth and endured.

Jordan Black’s case had started as just another girl missing under suspicious circumstances. His kind of suspicious. But it wasn’t until after he had seen her room that he had known he had to find her. The angels that looked down on him from every inch of her wall could have been drawn by his hand. He recognized the mark of his own madness, but until she had disappeared, Jordan’s life, by all accounts, had been a happy one. She had friends, was engaged in life, active on campus; a bright and cheerful personality whose presence was genuinely missed by everyone he interviewed. He had to find her, had to talk to someone who was where he was and still managed to thrive.

And he had found her, or she had found him. Knocking on his motel room door one blustery, dark night when he had all but given up hope of discovering where she had gone. She had asked him to stop following her, but wouldn’t answer his questions. When he categorically refused to leave her alone she had grudgingly allowed him to go with her. There was a strange, compelling charm to Jordan Black, to her quirky smile and her half-answers that left him lying wide awake in the dark, trying to puzzle out the meaning of her cryptic words that he felt was lying right there just beyond his grasp. She had led him to the cave, and the voices, and the well. He had thought he would die there, in dark and frigid water, but then Sam and Jess had come, and it was Jordan who died.

Or maybe not. There had been that letter mailed to her father after the cave in.... Dean knew Sam was convinced of her death, but Dean had known her better and he wasn’t so sure.

Sam had saved him, and stayed with him, and refused to leave until Dean recognized the truth of Sam’s feelings and his right to make his own choices. Jessica’s rights, too. As bewildering as it still was when he paused to really think about it, in the space of one day he had gone from a dedicated loner who deliberately avoided any kind of social ties, to a man firmly committed not to one person, but two. He hadn’t honestly thought the relationship would last more than a few days, maybe a week since the people involved were all of the stubborn sort, but not longer than that. Dean had tried to resist them, had told himself, and Sam, and Jess, all of the reasons it was a bad, bad idea. But the only thing they had wanted to know was if Dean wanted to try, and he couldn’t look Sam in the eye and say no.

He had loved his brother from the first moment he had seen him, had dedicated almost his entire childhood to protecting him and keeping him safe. And when Sam was sixteen and Dean had realized that he was starting to develop a decidedly non-brotherly sort of appreciation, he had done the hardest thing in his life and told his father. He’d had to. John kept putting them in situations that quickly strained Dean’s self-control almost to the breaking point. It was either do something about it or maybe find himself in a situation where he would be ...tempted, to break the trust his family had in him. John had listened in a strained sort of silence. But he stopped putting his sons up in single bed motel rooms, and two years later, when Sam had stormed off to a west coast school, John had done nothing to stop him. As much as his brother’s absence had pained him, it had also been freeing. The invisible tension between himself and his father had vanished like it never existed, as Dean committed the whole of his attention to the hunt and left the past behind. But life had continued and things had happened, and as rough as the road had been, he liked where he had ended up.

Dean traced one finger over a pale white line on his forearm, the clean slice more than two years healed. There were more than a dozen over his body, souvenirs of the shower of mirror shards. Jess had found them all with her tongue one memorable night not too long ago. Sam had wanted to know what caused them, but was easily distracted by a mumbled “something sharp” and skilled hands in sensitive places. There were some things Dean wasn't ready to share.

Whatever drove him had been quiet lately, but he could still feel it building. In the silence of a house he finally had to himself, Dean picked up a pencil and began to draw.

~~~~~

Sam had planned a run that would have taken him far past the piled cars of the junkyard, then through the overgrown field beyond, and down around a pond way back in the woods. It was a route he had run many times as a youth, just getting used to the length on his legs, and many more times as a sulky teenager, trying to take the edge off his frustration and anger at his father’s pointed direction. It should have taken about three hours, but then he stepped in a rabbit hole not even twenty minutes in and that ended that. He was lucky the ankle was only sprained and not broken, but it still took him almost an hour to hobble back to the house.

Sam was surprised to find the yard deserted when he finally reached it. Jessica had tried hard to drag Dean to town with her, but he’d insisted he had work to do on the Impala and so she had taken one of the other junkers Bobby was perpetually working on and gone alone. But the Impala sat exactly as she had been when Sam had left on his ill-fated jog, with no indications Dean had so much as been outside. A stir of unease curled through Sam and the pain of his sprained ankle faded against his sudden need to find his brother. Eight weeks of relative peace hadn’t quite erased twelve months of panic and searching. His vision had given him the chance to save Dean’s life, but the price had been everything he had worked for. Except Jessica, who stuck by his side through what she could only have seen as madness, let him drag her into the hunting world and all across the country, and had even taken the truth of Sam’s feelings for his brother in stride. He still wasn’t entirely sure he understood the decisions she had made that had brought her to this place with him, but she seemed ...happy, and adjusted.

More than adjusted, really, since within days of rescuing Dean from a watery grave in the heart of a frozen forest, the three of them were sharing a bed. But Dean wasn’t quite okay yet, and nothing Frank Black had said about the talents his brother had developed eased any of Sam’s fears. Dean refused categorically to discuss it and Jess had quietly asked Sam to drop it, to wait until he came to them. But everyone else who had talents like Dean’s had died, and Sam couldn’t help but feel a certain ominous sense of hovering dread that the worst was still to come. He hadn’t had any more visions, and the tangled wash of images and sensations Jordan Black had pressed on him in the cave were still a mystery to him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that their current bit of peace was just the eye of the storm. And now Dean wasn’t where he was supposed to be and Sam had to take a moment to force back the fear.

Sam crept into the house, taking the time to be as silent as possible despite the deliberately unoiled door hinges and the warped boards that were Bobby’s most basic form of security. He found his brother in the kitchen, seemingly unaware of Sam’s early return. Dean was hunched over the table, focused on something there to the exclusion of all distraction. The faint scratch of pencil on paper gave Sam all the information he needed to realize what was happening, but knowing that Dean was afflicted with Jordan’s gift and seeing him actually consumed with it were two different things.

Sam stood silently by Dean’s shoulder, weight heavily on one foot, until it became obvious his brother wasn’t going to acknowledge him. After a couple of minutes he wondered uneasily if Dean could. The figure taking shape on the paper was simple and compelling, strong lines and careful balance, forming seemingly without effort under his brother’s callused hands. But Dean was at least thinking about the picture; Sam could see the minute pauses for consideration, the hesitation before a line shifted subtly. Dean wasn’t being controlled by some outside force, or at least not completely. It was still creepy as hell, but it surprised Sam how much that small observation comforted him.

“Dean.”

Dean finished the line he was drawing and then laid the pencil down. He laced his fingers together to stretch his arms out and raised an eyebrow at his brother. “Sam.”

There was tightness to the corner of his eyes that betrayed his real feelings. Sam hadn’t been meant to see this.

Which annoyed Sam to no end.

“How long have you been working on this?”

“Not too long. You’re back awfully soon, run out of ground?”

Sam grimaced and gingerly shifted his weight. “Stepped in a hole. Took me an hour to walk back.”

Dean automatically glanced down to where Sam had tugged the leg of his sweatpants up to show his foot. Even with his sneakers and socks still on, Sam’s right ankle was obviously in bad shape. Dean swore, shoved his brother down into a chair and went to fix an ice pack.

“Get your shoes off; throw the bad one up on the other chair.”

Sam did as directed, letting Dean settle the ice around his ankle, which was starting to turn some alarming colors.

“Can you get me some Tylenol or something?”

“Any idea where Bobby keeps it?” Dean asked, opening cabinet doors but finding nothing.

“I think I saw some in the bathroom closet with the other first aid supplies.”

Dean nodded and slipped out of the room. Sam barely waited for him to clear the doorway before he snatched up the picture. He was still looking at it when Dean came back. Dean set the bottle of generic Tylenol on the table and brought a glass of water. He didn’t say anything about Sam’s examination of the drawing.

“You don’t ...have to hide this.” Sam finally said, laying it back down.

Dean crossed his arms tightly over his chest and shrugged.

Sam tried again. “You aren’t the only one who’s different, Dean.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Dean said dryly. He slid back into his seat and picked the pencil up again.

“I just mean this,” Sam pointed to the page, “doesn’t have to be something you try to keep secret from me. Or Jess. It’s just a picture.”

“It isn’t, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place. It’s a freaky-ass drawing of a freaky-ass angel that I’m compelled to draw. And sometimes I see them, and sometimes people die. There isn’t anything just about it.”

“How often do you draw them?” Sam hastily swallowed a couple of tablets and downed half the glass of water, taking advantage of Dean’s apparent willingness to talk. “From Jordan’s room, and what you and Frank said, I thought you would be more prolific than this. I thought-”

“You thought I was going to be like Jordan and leaving a trail of creepy little fluttery pictures behind me?”

“No.” Sam glared. “Look, I just, I worry about you. You have this thing we know almost nothing about, it started out of the blue, and everyone else who had it is dead! I think I’m entitled to want to know more about it.”

“Because we’re having sex?”

Sam blinked, nonplussed. “What?” he hissed. “No! That has nothing to do with this. I’m your brother. I think I’ve got enough of a right to be concerned about something that might kill you without dragging anything else into it!”

“Okay.” Dean shrugged. “It’s just that we were also brothers for a whole ten years you didn’t seem to give much of a damn. Just thought I’d check.”

Knowing that he was being deliberately provoked wasn’t doing much to help Sam keep his cool, and the statement was so outrageous that he could only stare at Dean for a moment as the pencil flew over the paper. Dean never looked up. Realizing that there was absolutely nowhere for the conversation to go that wouldn’t just make things worse, Sam hauled himself to his feet and stormed out of the room as best he could.

“Stay off that foot!” Dean called after him.

As much as the childish part of him was tempted to do something stupid just because Dean had said otherwise, Sam limped all the way up the stairs and sprawled onto the bed he shared with Jess, throwing his swollen ankle up onto a pile of folded blankets and stewing in his own irritation. Leaving the ice pack downstairs was just icing on the cake; it would make the swelling worse and the healing slower if he didn’t ice his foot, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask Dean to bring it to him and going to get it himself seemed like admitting some kind of defeat. Sam settled for grabbing one of Jessica’s magazines off the bedside table and buried himself in a quiz trying to determine “what kind of girl” he was.

He gave up and flipped the magazine aside after it informed him that he was the most boring girl alive, and settled his hands across his stomach, still irritated but more thoughtful. The argument made no sense, not even from a ‘burning off steam’ perspective. Dean had picked the fight on purpose, and Sam just couldn’t see why. It hadn’t been to hide the drawing. Dean hadn’t been exactly welcoming, but he had left it out openly and even worked on it with Sam watching. He hadn’t seemed self-conscious or upset about Sam catching him, so then why drive Sam off?

Sam mulled it over for a while. His ankle was still painful but had subsided to more of a dull ache than insistent throbbing and he felt that if he stayed very still he could almost fall asleep....

The bang of the screen door below made his eyes fly open. He hadn’t heard a car in the yard so it was Dean going out instead of Jess coming in. He was drifting off again when an image floated into his mind. Jordan Black’s bedroom, purple drapes and cheap furnishings, and every inch of the walls covered with her drawings looking down in impassive judgment. Dean holding his father’s journal, the cheap typing paper folded in half hanging from his fingers.

I burn them.

Like peeling off your own skin.

Sam bolted upright and slid out of the bed, almost falling when his ankle refused to support him. He grabbed hold of the doorframe and gritted his teeth through the white wash of pain, and when it receded, stumbled down the narrow stairs and through the house. The kitchen was empty, the drawing pad now open to a fresh page with no sign of the picture or Dean. Sam limped as fast as he could out into the yard, but there was no one there, either. He stood in frustration, in no way up to searching the entire compound, when an odd muffled sound caught his ear. Sam made his way cautiously around a stack of scrap metal and found Dean kneeling in the dusty cold. This close, Sam could smell the ashes of the burning and see the glint of silver clenched in his brother’s hand.

“You asshole!”

Dean spun and stared wide eyed at Sam which made Sam want to swear even more. Dean had been crying. He’d chased Sam off so he could do this alone and it was such a Dean thing that Sam was torn between wanting to hug him and wanting to hit him.

“You stupid, fucking, asshole.”

Dean rubbed at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and stood up, dirt clinging to the knees of his jeans. There wasn’t anything in his expression now that wasn’t tired and somewhat annoyed, but even the years of space between them hadn’t robbed Sam of his ability to read his brother like a book, and there was something off in his eyes. Vulnerable.

Sam’s ankle threatened to spill him across the ground again, but Dean had a shoulder under his arm and was pulling him towards the house before Sam could even get himself together enough to protest.

“If you didn’t want to work out with me and Jess, you only had to say no. Maiming yourself is a little extreme,” Dean grumbled as he eased Sam to the couch minutes later, dragging over a tattered chair to prop Sam’s foot up in again. He’d swiped the ice pack from the table as they passed and used a dishtowel to secure it back over the swelling. Sam winced, but still managed to grab Dean by a belt loop when he looked like he was thinking of escape. He tugged until Dean reluctantly sank onto the couch beside him.

“We’ve been through too much for this shit, Dean.”

Dean did him the grace of not pretending to misunderstand. “They’re my drawings and I can do with them what I damn well please.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Dean frowned. “That’s it?”

Sam shrugged. “You’re right, they’re your drawings.”

“Okay then. Um, I guess that’s settled.”

“I know why you don’t want to keep them around,” Sam continued.

“Or not,” Dean growled.

“Shut-up and listen to me. I’m not going to stop you from burning them, and Jess won’t either. But I don’t want you to hide it from us! It hurts you and it sucks, and if you have to do it, then at least let us help.”

“You want to dry my eyes and hold my hand while I burn some paper?” The sarcasm was sharp enough to cut, but Sam grit his teeth and refused to rise to the bait again.

“If you don’t like that, then how about this: you are practically a vegetable when you’re doing the drawings, and seem pretty preoccupied when you destroy them. We’re supposed to be a team and take care of each other now, remember that? So get off your high horse and ask for some fucking help. There’s enough things out there that want to kill you without you making yourself a sitting duck! I’m not angry about you burning the stupid pictures, Dean; I’m pissed about you being such a dumbass about it!”

The rumble and choke of an engine in desperate need of help from out in the yard cut off Dean’s rejoinder.

Sam watched him with a look of dark satisfaction. “Jess. Can’t wait to hear what she has to say about this.”

“Oh, I don’t think she’s going to have anything to say to me.” Dean nodded towards Sam’s ankle.

It was a moot point though, because when the door opened it wasn’t Jess carrying groceries but Bobby carrying his duffle bag. He looked tired but grimly satisfied. Dean hopped up to take the bag and it was a sign of how exhausted Bobby was that he let him.

“Everything go okay?” Sam asked, as Bobby sank into a chair with a relieved groan.

“Well as could be expected. Gremlins are gone, what needed burying is buried. Not much else to say about it.”

Dean tossed the filthy duffle bag onto the linoleum of the kitchen and wiped his hands off on his jeans with an expression of distaste. Under Bobby’s sharp gaze, Sam squirmed as he recalled the last conversation they had, but then Bobby looked around the room and his eyes widened.

“What in holy hell have you people done to my house?!”

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