
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12833316.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Supernatural
  Relationship:
      Dean_Winchester/Sam_Winchester
  Character:
      Dean_Winchester, Sam_Winchester, John_Winchester, Original_Female
      Character(s), Original_Male_Character(s)
  Additional Tags:
      Case_Fic, Angst, Horror, Psychological_Horror, Sibling_Incest, Explicit
      Sexual_Content, Original_Monster_-_Freeform, Beach_House, Wincest_-
      Freeform, Pre-Series
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-12-18 Updated: 2017-12-31 Chapters: 3/? Words: 8912
****** Heron Blue ******
by SummerNightmares_(BlackDog9314)
Summary
     'Here we are in the weeds again,
     here we are
     in the bowels of the thing...'
     Cohasset, Massachusetts is quiet, and so is the beach house Sam and
     Dean find themselves sequestered in for the better part of two weeks.
     The latest mistake in a litany of recent failures is thinking that
     they are alone together.
Notes
     The quote in the summary is an excerpt from Richard Siken's poem
     'Boot Theory'.
     This is my first multi-chaptered Wincest story! I hope you enjoy it :
     )
     I've never been to Cohasset Beach, additionally, so most details are
     based on photos, fabricated entirely, or shifted to fit story
     parameters.
***** Chapter 1 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
1998
The beach is called Cohasset, and John says he owes someone a favor there
before he drives them from the jagged edge of Florida to Massachusetts over the
course of almost twenty-four hours. For half of it Sam’s fast asleep in the
back seat of the Impala, illuminated only by the high-mast lights spaced out
along the interstate. He has a towel they took from a motel room wrapped around
his shoulders like a blanket, and pieces of soft, dark hair cover half his
face.
Dean sees these things from the corner of a hungry eye, the back of his neck
damp with sweat from the exertion of not turning around.
It’s officially Monday, he thinks as he watches the hands of the dashboard
clock creep along because they aren’t his kid brother.
John looks at neither his sons nor the clock winding the hours past; he just
keeps his eyes on the ratsnake of a road that runs ahead, turning the music up
by slow degrees as they enter North Carolina.
 
“What kinda favor you owe?” Dean asks when they stop to get gas at a hole-in-
the-wall pump that isn’t retro or vintage but modestly, nakedly old. The car’s
turned off and so is the music for the first time in hours, and the last notes
of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ are still ringing in Dean’s ears. He shakes his head a
little and thumbs absently at the base of his skull.
John turns to look at him for a moment before gracing him with an answer, as if
to telegraph that he’ll only be saying this once (and Sam won’t ever hear it at
all).
Dean’s fluent in things unspoken now, he thinks.
“I helped the Waldens out a couple years back. Things didn’t work out the way
we wanted, but we got the job done. I owe ‘em. I got a call yesterday asking me
to come down and help out again.”
It doesn’t answer any of Dean’s questions, not by a long shot, but it’s the
last John says of it for the rest of the eight hours it takes them to reach the
coast.
The last leg of the journey is spent with sunshine streaming through the
cracked windows of the car and Sam awake, feet propped up by the window as he
reads one of the paperbacks he’s been carting around since the school year
ended. He’s aware whatever district he’s shuffled into when August comes likely
won’t have had the same summer reading list as the one they left behind, but
Sam’s always reading, always holding a book in a hand or a torn pocket or
stacking them four-deep in the backpack that used to be Dean’s. Sam loves to
read more than almost anything else in their cramped lives, has read organic
chemistry textbooks and car manuals and the Hardy Boys and every Tolkien work
published. Dean knows it’s all the same to his brother if he ends up going
through more books than he needs to; Sam’s been an overachiever since he
started school.
Dean looks down and notices that his knuckles are white on hands that have
curled into fists. He unfolds them, pressing them flat-palmed to his thighs
before he averts his tired eyes to the window again.
‘Stairway to Heaven’ is playing for the second time since they hit New York,
and Dean’s head is throbbing.
           
When they arrive, what they can see of the beach is…well, it’s perfect. Dean
tries to think of another word for it, but there isn’t one. There’s been such
little grace or beauty in blood-stained leather and guns and the rotten wood
varnish of coffin tops. Precision? Yes. Symmetry? In a surreal sort of way, he
thinks. But perfection? No.
It’s only the second time in his life Dean’s used the word to describe
anything, and the first had been Sam.
Dean clears his throat, chases the memory of skin and teeth and salt away.
He looks at the beach again, rolling the window down and breathing in warm,
brackish air. The sand is almost white where it stretches out into the waves of
blue and green beyond, deep gold when the water soaks it through every couple
seconds. The sun’s low in the sky as they pass the sign that welcomes them
formally to Cohasset Beach. Dean doesn’t think he or his father are pronouncing
it correctly, though he keeps the thought to himself.
They drive by a dollar store, a small food mart, a laundromat, and a few tall,
faded houses that have the phone numbers of rental places plastered beside
their front windows, advertising wholesome family vacations for reasonable
weekly rates during the summer months. Dean watches a dog as it’s given scraps
from a white-aproned café worker standing in front of a neon open sign, looks
on as the boney back of the stray shakes in lonely delight as it eats yellow-
white pieces of bacon fat and stale bread heels. There’s a rusted, pastel pink
lawn chair sitting beneath a street lamp, and Dean wonders how long it’s been
there.
Everything feels like a stuck gear in this town, and they keep driving as the
sun sinks down red then orange then blue. Dean yawns into his hand, tapping his
foot restlessly as he senses the end of the drive drawing near at last.
“There a hunt here?” he asks as John references a creased diner napkin
scribbled with street names and coordinates and drives them deeper and deeper
toward the syrup-slow edges of the beach town.
His father grunts shortly at him and Dean obediently quiets. He ignores the way
Sam scoffs behind them, the dry pages of The Things They Carried fluttering
indignantly in the silence between the end of ‘Fade to Black’ and the start of
‘In My Time of Dying’.
They reach their destination less than five minutes later, and it’s a brown and
blue wooden house on what looks like a set of stilts. The outside’s nothing
special, old and forgettable and in need of a few coats of paint, a thorough
scouring, and a couple replacement window shutters, but Dean feels strangely
drawn to it; even with the sticky violet night scrubbing the shine off the
place it feels like a home.
John parks the Impala around the side of the house and tells them to get their
things.
“Are you gonna tell us what we’re doing here?” Sam asks their father with
enough fifteen-year old attitude that Dean feels the muscles of his shoulders
start to tighten as they walk around to the front of the house.
“Sam,” he cautions, but John’s obviously heard.
Dean looks down at his father’s hands where they rest idly by his sides, then
over to where Sam is still waiting by the car with his backpack and dog-eared
book both in hand. They’ll be the same height soon, Dean notices. Sam comes up
to the ridges of John’s cheekbones now.
John doesn’t immediately say or do anything in response to his youngest,
obviously pondering whether or not it’s worth engaging after the day and night
of utter silence they’ve just spent together. When he acts at last, it’s simply
to turn and take the first step toward the front door.
Sam doesn’t ask again, but the maw of bright, seething tension that’s opened
between him and their father is a palpable thing, and the short walk to the
door is weighed down with it.
The old steps creak beneath their feet, and a wind chime made of seashells and
green glass tinkles prettily beside their heads. The push and pull of the waves
is loud a couple dozen yards beyond and the wind wants only quiet, a slow,
winding hush surrounding them despite the water.
John doesn’t even get the chance to rap once on the peeling, mint-green door
before it’s pulled open before them with a short, metallic squeal that makes
Sam flinch noticeably.
“John?” An older man in a dark button-down asks tentatively. He looks from
their father over to where Sam and Dean stand just behind him.
“Yessir,” John says briskly, precise and distant as he reaches into his jacket
pocket with exaggerated slowness to produce a piece of paper. He hands it over
to the man carefully.
Whatever the piece of paper says, it must convince him that John is who he
says, and the man nods and steps to the side while gesturing for the
Winchesters to enter.
Dean doesn’t know if he’s ever seen his father act so formally with people he’s
worked cases with in the past, and wonders again what exactly John’s come here
for.
It’s darker in the entryway of the house than it was outside, and noiseless as
a midnight graveyard. The click-hitch of tumblers moving is muffled and slow as
the door is closed behind them (apparently the same as everything else in
Cohasset). Dean looks from one shadowy side of himself to the other,
understanding without conscious effort that if five, four, three more seconds
pass in the dark he’ll begin reaching for the switchblade stored in the pocket
of his jeans.
Before he can get to it, however, the man lifts his arm to flick on a lamp
mounted to the south wall, bathing them in faint yellow light. Dean feels the
weight of tension leaving the muscles of his forearms as a living room and
hallway materialize before him, and he hears Sam exhale quietly.
“Y’got here sooner than I thought you would,” the man says while he locks the
door, pocketing the key.
“It wasn’t a bad drive,” John responds briskly. “Walden, these are my sons, Sam
and Dean. They’ll be watching the house. Boys.”
He turns to look at Dean before he can so much as open his mouth to ask what
his father means. More unspoken words like those at the gas station gloss the
wells of hangover-swollen eyes, and John continues, “This is Daniel Walden,
owner of this house. We got a few things to talk about right now.”
Dean feels a flush of shame and looks down at his feet, knowing his cheeks are
red and that his eyes will give him away if he looks back at his father.
He thought nineteen might be different, but so far it hasn’t been.
Walden speaks again then, cutting through the impotent, piss-yellow of Dean’s
resentment. “There’s a guestroom at the end of the hall. You boys’ll be staying
there. Hope that’s alright,” he actually sounds apologetic.
At the thought of sharing a bed with Sam, Dean feels something like relief
before the shame flares, hot and prickly in the center of his empty belly
again. It’s been almost three weeks now that they’ve been living almost
entirely on the road. They’ve been taking shifts sleeping in the back seat
rather than side-by-side in bleach-white sheets or close enough to touch in
sunken double beds.
Dean realizes he hasn’t responded when Walden averts his eyes and John grasps
his shoulder tight enough that it hurts like a bastard as he leans down.
“You and Sam go to bed. In the morning I’ll tell you what our game plan is. You
understand me?”
Dean nods, folding his bottom lip between his teeth at the sting of John’s
fingertips in the meat of his arm.
“Yessir,” he says, noticing without noticing that he sounds exactly like his
father.
 
That night he and Sam don’t sleep facing one another. In fact, they don’t speak
at all, and it makes Dean feel hollow and sick. He wants to tell Sam he’s sorry
and ask him to turn around but doesn’t know what to be sorry for. Sorry they’ve
always been so twisted up it would take a knife to untangle them? Sorry he made
Sam come wet and white and shaking against the shower curtain of a motel
bathroom?
Sorry he can still feel his brother aching for him across the spaces they’ve
been putting between one another ever since?
Maybe he should apologize for being born at all, because sometimes Dean thinks
that’s the only thing that could’ve prevented whatever it is they are.
Dean doesn’t reach for Sam’s hand even though he wants to. He simply keeps his
own clasped against his chest as outside he hears the ocean crash and crash and
crash.
Chapter End Notes
     Alright, I hope you enjoyed the opening chapter! I'll aim to update
     once weekly. I might post chapter two a bit early as it's already
     edited and ready, but if not, I'll see y'all here next Monday :)
***** Chapter 2 *****
Even though John made it sound like they were going to talk the next morning,
they don’t.
Dean’s pulled from a shallow sleep by the sound of the front door opening,
closing, and finally locking a few minutes after five, and he lies in bed until
almost six looking at the ceiling.
He knows Sam’s doing the same thing, and doesn’t look over to see that he’s
right.
           
When Dean decides it’s time to leave the heaviness of the guestroom, a piece of
notebook paper taped to the old refrigerator is the first thing he sees upon
entering the kitchen. He crosses the scuffed linoleum to grab whatever John’s
left for him this time, easily recognizing his father’s pet code. He doesn’t
need the cipher after years of decoding notes tacked onto walls and mirrors and
Frigidaires, and reads the message easier than he does regular writing.
Walden found a witch coven in Illinois and contacted some people down there.
We’re going to help take care of it. You and your brother need to stay at the
house and make yourselves scarce until I get back. Don’t do anything dumb, and
make sure Sam’s never out of sight. I’ll call when I have news.
Sam comes into the kitchen as Dean’s rereading the note a third time, his steps
still heavy with sleep. His dark hair’s messy and there’s a faded yellow bruise
high on his forehead from a tweaker at a motel in Alabama who’d been convinced
Sam had ‘bad blood’ inside him.
Dean had beaten the ever-loving shit out of the man until Dad made him stop
(and Sam couldn’t look him in the face the day after).
“He didn’t say when he’d be back, did he?” Sam’s voice brings Dean back to the
house by the sea.
“No,” Dean says with a voice he hasn’t used in almost ten hours.
Sam laughs bitter and long next to the stove, the shoulders that grow broader
by the day shaking. “Shit,” he says, the word forced out between peals of
laughter that grate red and painful in the air. They make the insides of Dean’s
ears itch, and he crumples John’s note in his palm.
“Would you shut up?” he snaps before immediately wishing he hadn’t.
Sam does, though, closing his mouth and looking down at the floor. It’s worse
than if he’d given a snotty, high school response. Usually, Sam gives as good
as he gets, quick-witted and too good at turnabout for Dean to worry his little
brother might get walked on. But sometimes, this happens instead.
Dean clears his throat.
“I’ll make you somethin’ to eat. Sit down,” he says, knowing he’s hurt Sam and
can’t take it back.
Sam does as he’s told and Dean turns toward the refrigerator, the ruined piece
of paper at his feet the only sign the last few minutes happened at all.
 
After eating in silence they explore the house. The sun’s risen fully outside
when they begin, shining down on an ocean the brothers can see from the window
if they stand on their tiptoes.
The house is as obviously old on the inside as it was on the outside: the
wallpaper’s busy and ugly and bubbled, the furniture cushions are dipped and
dingy, the light fixtures are clouded and the curtains filmed with dust. Dean
isn’t sure why, but the house itself feels familiar. Not in the sense that he’s
visited here in the past, but as if he’s dreamt of this house before; it’s easy
to imagine walking through its water-damaged halls in his sleep, tracing his
fingers over the blue and white flowers painted on the china hutch in-between
running from the fanged monster that almost took him down in Arizona and making
desserts with his dead mother.
Deja-vu aside, however, all he and Sam find is that there are two bedrooms (the
one they spent the night in and a modest master suite near the back of the
house) and only one shared hall bath, which is crammed beside a tiny office the
size of a broom closet. It looks like Walden hasn’t updated anything since the
early eighties, and the things he’s deemed fit to surround himself with clash
with one another and seem random. There’s an ancient umbrella stand near the
door that looks like it could be blown over with a breath, an eyeless, stuffed
boar’s head mounted above the fireplace, and a collection of shining brass
ducks waddling their perpetually joyful way across the coffee table. The only
thing that indicates Walden to be the hunter he apparently is are the few
things scattered here and there throughout the rooms of the house that Dean
recognizes as protective items or what might even be spells disguised as new-
age decoration.
Something else Dean notices as they scope out the place is that there are
several pictures of the same dark-haired woman hanging in the living room and
entryway. She has wide hazel eyes and an apparent penchant for the color blue,
and her smile reminds Dean of his mother’s. He’s assuming she’s probably
Walden’s dead wife, though he doesn’t say as much to Sam.
Though it’s not a particularly interesting exploration, it takes up almost an
hour and ends with Sam opening the door to Mr. Walden’s bedroom, the last part
of the house on their self-given tour.
The room feels different from the others when they step inside, and Dean
realizes it’s because Sam has frozen in the middle of the blue-carpeted space
to stare at the ceiling-high bookshelf wedged into the corner.
“Wow,” Sam who spends hours in libraries and could live in one if he had enough
food says.
The books filling the many shelves are crisp and delicate-looking in the sleepy
light of the coastline beyond, organized by height and color but not author
name. There are books whose spines stretch three or more inches and those less
than a half, paperbacks and hardbacks and what look like magazine collections
all pressed up together in neat, careful rows. Sam seems to forget himself as
he looks on, his stance loosening as he steps forward once more, then twice.
“This…this is what I want one day,” Sam breathes as he steps forward to look at
the titles.
“Yeah?” Dean asks from where he still stands in the doorway, voice quiet and
careful like he’s back in Mississippi petting the only horse he ever liked.
“Mhmm, want all the classics and most the new things, too,” Sam says
distractedly as he reaches for one of Mr. Walden’s books and flips it over to
read the summary.
Dean watches his brother’s slender hands as they reverently trace the covers of
a few of Walden’s dust-covered books. The curious, excitable dexterity of Sam’s
fingertips is so familiar that Dean can always predict where they’ll fall next.
This moment is no exception.
—Calvino, Hawthorne, Plath, Sophocles, Marquez—
Those hands on his bare skin, Sam’s lips soft and red and warm between Dean’s
thighs—the memories surge up sudden and unbidden like arterial spray and Dean
feels wrong, white-trash and nauseous with guts that aren’t the right shape. He
exhales slowly.
Sam turns around to look at him, as if he’s just remembered where he is and
why. The book in his hand falls closed as he moves. When Dean opens his mouth
to say something, Sam’s face flushes before going the color of cream, and Dean
closes himself off again.
He thinks of Sam’s hand held in his and pressed hard against cheap white tile
and mildew-stained grout. He thinks of the way Sam felt in his arms, shoved
against his hummingbird heart and still asking for more.
Like he knows, his brother says his name. “Dean.”
Dean can barely hear Sam, his voice is so low.
They’re less than two feet apart and Dean doesn’t remember when he stepped
forward. He can smell Sam, soap and salt and licorice candy from a 7-Eleven
he’s been eating as they go from room to room.
“You read too much,” Dean says. “One day you’re gonna run outta books.”
Sam stares at him with stray-dog eyes until Dean has to leave him there, still
holding Invisible Cities in front of the shelf.
 
They don’t sleep facing one another that night, either, and Dean holds his own
hands again.
 
The following day Sam shuts himself in Walden’s bedroom, alone with the
bookshelf and its contents after he and Dean eat another silent breakfast. He
doesn’t offer an explanation before he leaves his plate in the sink and turns
to walk down the hall, and Dean doesn’t ask him for one while he still has the
chance.
The sound of the door clicking closed behind Sam is almost lurid in the early-
morning quiet, louder than anything else he’s heard in the old house since
their arrival.
Dean wants to go back to sleep even though he’s only been awake for two hours
and has had almost three cups of coffee blacker than the barrel of his gun, but
instead he stands before the sink and does dishes. His eyes feel puffy and his
hands clumsy as he scrubs with a piece of steel wool soaked in water so hot it
turns his skin bright red. Swirls of steam billow up, gently fogging the
already-opaque glass of the window above the sink. Dean closes his eyes and
lets warm, wet air fill his lungs before he turns the faucet off and reaches
for the checkered dish towel folded by the sink.
After everything’s been put away Dean wanders into the living room to sit on
the ugly brown couch. The morning is pale and overcast through the tall picture
window, the watery silver of the sky making Dean’s skin crawl as the restless
silence rings uncomfortably in his ears, like someone shoved cotton balls into
them while he slept. He can barely even hear the calls of the gulls flying past
the house just outside.
Dean drags his eyes from the window and over to the portrait of Walden’s wife
hanging on the wall. She’s wearing a blue dress with purple flowers he can only
see from the chest up, and her eyes look nice, like she was a good listener
when she was alive. How Dean gleans that from a photograph he doesn’t know, but
it doesn’t make him any less certain.
Who the fuck cares?
The voice sounds like John’s and Dean sags forward on the couch, pressing his
hands to his aching face. His lungs are heavy and tight with something that
feels like more than air and less than words, the ache of it trapped in him
squirming like something alive. Dean briefly thinks of knocking on Walden’s
bedroom door and asking Sam questions until his brother has no choice but to
answer, but knows he won’t.
When he stands up a few minutes later he isn’t sure what he’s planning on
doing, he only knows that it’s a relief to leave the living room and make his
way toward the guestroom. Once he’s let himself in he moves forcefully enough
that the not-words inside his lungs recede to a twinge behind his ribs, and he
sucks in mouthfuls of air now that he can again. He runs a hand over his face
again, smelling soap and copper on his skin.
After, Dean pulls on his jeans and boots and a blue and red overshirt that’s
been folded tight in his duffel along with everything else he owns for weeks.
He stows his switchblade in his back pocket and tucks another blade under the
hem of his pants before rolling the blue denim neatly down over it.
Before he opens the door to let himself out of the house, Dean pauses in front
of the hallway and the room beyond that houses his brother.
“Sam?” he calls.
He doesn’t get an answer.
“I’m…I’m gonna take a walk and see what’s around. You wanna come with?”
The second time Sam ignores him, Dean doesn’t bother saying goodbye before
stepping outside.
He wonders if he should have reminded Sam to lock the door after him as he jogs
his way down the sagging front steps onto a gray pebbled pathway. It snakes
around the side of the house and out to the main road, and from there Dean can
either go toward the beach or into town.
Make sure Sam’s never out of sight.
 John’s familiar instructions run through Dean’s mind, caution-tape yellow and
just as tightly-wound. He fleetingly considers turning back and finding
something to occupy himself with at the house so he can do as his father’s
asked, but shakes his head in tight-lipped frustration as he shoves his hands
into his pockets.
Sam’s fifteen and has taken out a water spirit with a homemade slingshot and a
ghoul with a butter knife in the last three months alone. Sam’s smarter than
Dean and people like him almost as soon as they meet him. Sam could make it
across the country using only his dimples, his smarts, and his pocketknife if
he had to. Sam’s holed-up in Walden’s room with as many as books as he can read
and just enough light to do it by, Dean reminds himself.
If Dean knows Sam at all, his brother probably won’t even emerge from the back
of the house to eat or stretch or check the wall-mounted clock in the kitchen.
Sam can live on stories alone if they’re good enough, always has when things
got too lonely or bloody or fucked-up.
If Sam can pretend to be someone else for a few hours, why can’t Dean?
He bites his lower lip so hard he thinks he might draw blood and finds he
doesn’t care. His skin feels tight beneath the clothes he’s pulled on. The sky
above him is still gray, still dull and water-logged and heavy.
 
Dean means to take the road into town, but ends up sitting on a patch of dry
white sand for almost two hours instead, his knees partially drawn up to his
chest and his arms looped around them.
When he actually starts the walk into Cohasset, he guesses it’s probably almost
noon from the way the sun’s starting to peek timidly out from behind the
bloated clouds. However, the effect is muted when it begins to rain a few
minutes later, the water warm and sticky as it falls in fat, wide-spaced drops.
By the time Dean finally arrives at the edge of town, the shoulders of his
overshirt are damp to the touch and water’s falling steadily into his eyes. The
weather seems to be keeping most of the townspeople indoors, and Dean sees
barely anyone walking on the sidewalks or driving down the main road as he
starts to work his way inward. He sees a few people through the windows he
passes, but they move quickly, only visible for all of a second or two before
they’ve disappeared again.
All Dean can hear is the low roll of the sea in the distance and the soft
patter of the rain around him; he doesn’t think he’s ever been to a coastal
town so quiet and empty.
He walks around for a long time like that, looking into shop windows, stepping
inside boutiques and gift shops and taking in far more than he did during his
sunset-introduction to the town a day and a half before. The few people he does
see don’t greet him, nor do they acknowledge him at all for the most part. Some
of them look at Dean curiously and he smiles the smile that’s gotten him free
food and late checkouts and wet pussy, but no one smiles back.
Well, almost no one.
The sole cashier at the front of the food mart has bottle-blonde hair and a
gold necklace that reads ‘babygirl’.
“Hi,” she says as she lifts a wrist covered in tinkling bracelets to wave Dean
into the store.
“Hey,” he says, surprised and sure it shows.
“Having a good day?” she asks him as a bell rings gently above his head.
Dean lies and nods his head, coming to stand before the counter. He can’t see
anyone in the store with them. Without conscious thought he looks down at her
nametag before he addresses her.
“Sure am…Meagan,” he says. There’s a heart drawn next to her name in red
sharpie. “How about yourself, darlin’?”
 She laughs and distractedly thumbs through a stack of magazines piled on the
counter.
“You’re not from here, I can tell,” she says before looking back up at him.
Dean gives her another smile. “Guilty,” he concedes without concern. “Where is
everyone? Is it always this quiet?” he asks.
Meagan’s smile fades for a moment and her hand stops moving.
“It’s the weather,” she says, her mouth drawing tight for a second, then she’s
smiling at him again.
“You live here?” Dean asks her, looking at the blue v of her stretched polo
shirt and the fullness of her breasts where they pull parts of the garment
close enough that he knows what she’d look like with her chest spilling free
and warm in his hands.
There’s no pleasure in the thought, though, nothing but the same certainty Dean
feels when he aims a gun or shakes a line of salt from its canister.
Meagan is speaking to him, and Dean makes himself listen to what she’s saying.
“…and my family’s all from here, too. We go back a while.”
“That so? When do you get off? Maybe you can show me around,” Dean says as he
leans over the counter a little.
“I have a break in ten minutes,” she says after deliberating for a second.
Something inside Dean curls up tight enough to hurt, and he thinks it might be
the not-words he’s still choking on from that morning.
 
Meagan tastes like cherry lip gloss and kisses like she thinks Dean will break
if she pushes too hard, and while Dean usually lets himself unfold easy and hot
into touches like hers, into soft hands and soft schoolgirl crushes he doesn’t
deserve, he finds he can’t today.
Meagan could be any girl he’s had before, any set of open thighs he’s pressed
himself hard between in the dusty dark of broom closets or bar bathrooms or
worn cotton sheets in someone else’s bed. She could be just another moment in
time that he’s wasted, and time weighs heavy on Dean’s mind today, has been a
wrought-iron collar around his neck since his brother’s birthday and—
“Dean, oh, s—shit. Dean. Feels good, feels so—”
“Sammy.”
 Dean doesn’t want to be someone else right now.
He pulls away from Meagan’s soft arms, telling her he’ll see her soon and
leaving after that.
He walks back to Walden’s house without feeling the road beneath his feet.
Dean didn’t need to worry about his brother, which doesn’t surprise him the way
he always thinks it should. When he gets home the door is locked and he has to
wait for Sam to let him in after he knocks four times, two quickly, two slowly.
“You find anything?” Sam asks quietly when he steps back to let him in. He
looks tired.
“Nothing,” Dean says as he shrugs and makes his way to the guestroom to stow
his overshirt.
“You sure?” he hears Sam ask behind him.
A minute later in front of the crooked mirror hanging by the bed, Dean notices
Meagan’s lip gloss, red and shiny on his lips from their makeout in the alley,
and thumbs it off quickly.
When he comes back to the living room, Sam’s gone back to Walden’s room, and he
stays there until dinner.
Dean cooks noodles with tomato paste and garlic powder alone in the kitchen.
           
The third night he and Sam sleep facing away from one another, Dean dreams of
Walden’s wife. Her skin is pale and soft-looking in the moonlight coming in
through the kitchen window, and it’s a cloudless night outside.
Sit with me, she says to Dean as she pulls a chair out for herself at the
dining room table.
Dean does as she asks. He isn’t wearing the boxers and undershirt he fell
asleep in, but his father’s jacket and a pair of jeans he left in Colorado.
You’re the lady in the pictures, Dean says after they’ve gotten as comfortable
as they’re going to in the old, creaking chairs.
She nods, regarding him silently until he brings a hand up to his face to wipe
sweat from his forehead. He doesn’t know why he’s hot, but he feels almost
feverish.
You’re unhappy, she states after more minutes pass in silence between them. Her
gold earrings glint in the darkness like stars. Her voice is like a blanket he
could fall asleep in, and it drags him down to the table. He rests his head in
his arms and breathes out slowly. His chest hurts the way it did earlier, but
this time he can breathe through it, and he wonders if maybe it’s because she’s
there, putting a hand on his arm and reminding him of his mother so keenly he
wants to cry for a peculiar, stinging second.
I ruined it, Dean tells her when he lifts his head again. I don’t know how to
fix it.
He doesn’t understand how she knows he’s talking about Sam, but she seems to
anyway, her eyes soft and concerned where they meet his.
What happened?She asks as behind her the ocean moves as if in slow-motion, the
water surging like sap making its way down brown bark.
Dean means to tell her about what happened the day before Sam’s birthday, but
when he opens his mouth he finds himself telling her about the time his brother
came home with a roll of multi-colored lights from a church donation box and
hung them up in their room in the Whistler Motel and pretended it was Christmas
in July.
Sammy’s always liked holidays, he finishes.
She doesn’t say anything after he’s done speaking, she just reaches for his
hand and holds it.
When one of Dean’s teeth falls out a few minutes later he catches it in his
palm, worrying his tongue over the empty spot it used to occupy in the softness
of his gums. Grief and terror seep into the centers of his bones, and he tastes
his own blood.
What’s happening? He asks her. What’s happening?
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The next morning Dean takes a walk along the water’s edge just before sunrise,
heading outside wrapped in the oldest flannel he owns, sweatpants, and not much
else. When the sun begins to slip out from beyond the horizon, it’s pale rose
and lime green and the same blue of Walden’s wife’s dress in her living room
portrait.
The waves are almost quiet beside him and cold enough to sting when they come
to cover the tops of his bare feet. In the distance, Dean sees a few gulls
flying lazily above the waterline, but in the distance is where they stay as he
makes a trail in the damp sand.
The last time Dean went to a beach and spent any extended amount of time there
had been when John took down a kelpie in Florida back in ’94. They’d stayed in
a seaside motel with a leaking ceiling for the better part of two weeks; John
had spent most of that time interviewing people in town and talking to the
other lone hunter who lived near the water, and Dean had been relegated to the
cramped motel room with a petulant, fidgeting Sam. It had been mid-July, and
the days were long and tacky, filled with close summer heat that made Dean’s
clothes stick to his skin and Sam’s chin-length hair damp with sweat. Sam had
been recently eleven then, twitching on legs too long for his body and
endlessly hungry as he grew and filled out.
“Why doesn’t Dad take you with him, Dean? I’m fine here by myself, y’know.”
Dean’s never forgotten the way Sam sounded, one of his hands pressed against a
cracked windowpane as he stared out at the water. Even then, Sam had been
burning for something different than motel-hopping and not knowing anyone,
something that didn’t involve opening credit cards under fake names and waiting
for Dean to come back with something stolen to eat. And like a fishbone through
his heart, the same restless longing had often filled Dean, too.
He’d known at age fifteen that wanting wouldn’t get him anywhere, but the
knowledge hadn’t stopped the wanting from creeping in all the same. In that
beachside town the things he dreamed about had felt almost palpable, Dean had
carried them like rocks in his shoes when he and Sam took walks beside the sea
or sat on the edge of the pier together. Dean had imagined living in a house
like the bright green two-story they passed every day they were there, or
perhaps the white, wood-shingled cottage decorated with shells and pale pink
pebbles next door. Sometimes, Dean had even pictured himself sipping beer next
to John in one of those wicker rocking chairs you see in postcards, or getting
sandwiches for everyone from a café like the one whose dumpster he raided
almost nightly while they stayed in Florida. He’d imagined being happy and safe
with Sam and John someplace they’d chosen, not someplace they’d ended up.
But he hadn’t allowed any of those things to be more than what they were,
dreams.
Dean realizes he’s alone on the long stretch of sand and water when he next
looks up, shaken from his drifting thoughts.
He should go inside and see if Sam’s awake, he reminds himself. It’s almost
seven, and it’s time to pretend things are still the way they were two months
ago.
 
Dean and Sam spend the day in separate rooms again after they eat, and this
time Dean doesn’t bother pretending he has anything to do other than make his
way aimlessly around Walden’s house while Sam curls up next to the bookshelf
down the hall.
Dean’s always had an easy knack for fixing things, and in this house there’s an
awful lot that needs a little TLC and some tweaking. Without much effort he
manages to find more than one thing to tinker with as the hours slowly pass,
and before the day’s half-over he’s already repaired the ancient garbage
disposal, the damaged lock on the front door, and a stuck window latch in the
living room. All the while, Sam sits quiet as he’s ever been in the back
bedroom.
Once, twice, three times, Dean considers going to the door of Walden’s room and
leaning all of his weight against it as he listens for the sound of Sam’s
breathing. It feels like both a triumph and a failure that he succeeds in
abstaining.
 
Before he starts dinner at ten after seven, Dean takes a few overlong swigs of
a bottle of cooking sherry he finds in the bottom of Walden’s pantry, exhaling
slowly at the bitterness on his tongue before he chases it with a few more
swallows. The liquor numbs the skin of Dean’s forehead, and he hums ‘Stairway
to Heaven’ to fill the silent beats between the rhythmic crash-and-roll of the
ocean as he minds the pot of rice and beans boiling on the stove.
The evening meal is as quiet as the day itself was, and Sam looks pointedly at
his food instead of his older brother. They both pick glumly at the canned-
veggie-rice-bean-too-much-salt-slop Dean’s wrangled together from Walden’s
pantry, and Dean wishes the man had a record player somewhere in his strange
house, a stereo perhaps, something to cut the silence as thick as the margarine
melting in a white plastic tub on the table. But Walden doesn’t, and the hush
settles dense and comfortable between Dean and Sam, slowly pushing them apart.
“I’m going to bed,” is all Sam says before he sets his plate beside the sink
and leaves the dining room not long after they’ve begun.
Dean eats the rest of the food in front of him even though it tastes like
nothing in his mouth, and drinks sherry until he feels tired enough to sleep.
 
When he falls asleep after what feels like hours of lying awake listening to
Sam breathe next to him, Dean dreams of the woman in the painting again that
night.
Instead of inside at the dining room table, they sit together on one of the
hills of sand near the water, and it’s late enough that the stars are out and
brighter than streetlights in the dark around them. Dean and the woman’s feet
touch where the waves just come up to wet them, a warm wash on the tips of his
toes so unlike the chill of it from earlier that morning.
The night air is hot on Dean’s skin, and he begins to sweat beneath it,
rivulets of damp already running down his sides and into the waistband of his
jeans. He thinks again of Florida, of the dreams he kept secret in the pits of
his lungs.
You’re unhappy, Walden’s wife says as she reaches out to touch Dean’s shoulder.
Tonight, she’s foregone her earrings and is in what looks like a nightgown. It
reminds Dean of the one Mary used to wear, and he reaches out to seize a
handful of the cotton material, feeling somehow that he shouldn’t let go.
I don’t know what to do, Dean whispers to the dark. I can’t let it go.
Let what go? she asks, even though Dean senses she already knows.
What we—
Dean’s voice catches, and he begins again.
I don’t—I’m not normal. I’m…’m Sam’s. Always have been. I…weruined it,
together. 
Dean closes his eyes as he remembers the softness of Sam’s hair under his lips,
the trembling kiss he’d pressed to his open mouth.
Walden’s wife looks at him with sadness in her eyes.
I know what it feels like to breathe for someone else, she says as she reaches
down to hold Dean’s hand. The gesture feels familiar, but Dean can’t figure out
why. Soon, he forgets to wonder as his teeth begin to fall out of his mouth.
His gums ache and fear, newborn-blind and immense, fills him.
He’s shaking when she cradles his head to her chest.
It’s okay, she says. It won’t be this way forever.
More of his own teeth fall into his lap in groups of two and three, and Dean
sobs into the front of the woman’s nightgown like the child he’s never been.
           
The next day dawns bright and stinging, streams of pure, burning gold pouring
into the dirty window of the guest room and waking Dean up all at once. His
shirt is soaked through with sweat from a sleep he thinks was dreamless, and
his head is pounding hard enough to make him wince. He doesn’t bother changing
and throws back a few pills from an old Advil bottle he finds in the medicine
cabinet, wordlessly going to the kitchen to start breakfast.
He notices they’ll be out of eggs after he prepares the last four for this
morning’s meal. He pours a dollop of oil into the hot frying pan and cracks the
eggs into its belly, leaving only an empty carton next to it.
Sam sits down at the table after everything’s done and cooling atop the stove a
few minutes later, moving almost gingerly as he does so. His eyes narrow as the
chair creaks under his weight.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
Even though Sam’s not quite looking at him, the greeting makes Dean feel self-
conscious, suddenly hyper-aware of the cooling sweat on the skin beneath his
clothes and the lingering taste of copper on his lips he can’t explain. Did he
brush his teeth before coming into the kitchen? Dean can’t remember now.
“Hey,” Dean responds as he turns to fix them each a plate.
“Did, uh…did Dad call?” Sam asks hesitantly.
Dean feels his stomach lurch as he shakes his head, knowing it’s not the answer
Sam wants. His brother seems determined to make conversation, however; he sets
both hands beside his full plate after Deans put it down and smiles. The
expression looks almost like a grimace on Sam’s slender face, and his dimples
don’t show, but Dean sees the strained olive branch for what it is.
“He should soon, though,” Dean says hurriedly. “It—it’s been almost five days.
Usually he doesn’t go longer’n a week.”
Sam knows this, but the words take up time and space and Sam's nodding along
like it’s new information and he’s looking at Dean, truly looking at him for
the first time in days.
“Walden’s got a phone here and I know Dad has the number, so’s long as the
power stays on we’ll be able to pick it up,” Dean says as he stabs his fork
into the eggs on his plate.
Sam nods some more, licks his heart-shaped upper lip and moves his hands down
into his lap. Outside, the wind picks up, and he chooses that moment to speak
again while Dean shoves his fork into his mouth.
“…So, I was reading yesterday,” he begins.
It’s Dean’s turn to nod. “Yeah?” he asks through the food in his mouth.
Sam almost immediately launches into a long description of the things he’s read
so far from Walden’s impressive collection, his food untouched in front of him
as he uses his hands to get his points across. He apparently thinks Walden must
have had an interest in literature or writing that went beyond that of a casual
hobbyist, and he has books Sam’s never even heard of, which has proven both
exciting and interesting. Dean feels surprise at that, considering Sam’s been
making every town’s public library his second home since he was old enough to
convince people they’d be staying long enough to let him have a card of his
own.
Dean feels something like relief as he listens to Sam talk, something soft and
calm and measured in a chest that’s been aching for weeks. This feels good, he
thinks as he shovels another forkful of eggs into his mouth. This feels almost
like—
Dean’s guts cramp as he notices Sam’s cheeks redden under his gaze.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Sam mumbles a few seconds later before pushing
his plate forward and darting down the hall without explaining himself.
Dean watches him go, the smile he hadn’t even felt on his lips slowly fading.
When Sam doesn’t come back after fifteen minutes have passed, Dean stands up
from his seat, gathering the dishes to bring them over to the sink.
Dean keeps his feet planted firmly on the old, peeling floor, his hands curling
into fists and loosening again as he stands as still as he can, turning up the
edges of himself into something smaller than the piece of paper he’s still
carrying around in his pocket from John. He doesn’t know what he did wrong,
only that this is his doing.
He turns away from the sink and approaches the pantry behind him without
consciously choosing to do so, pulling the door open to peer inside with hands
he doesn’t even feel. Everything’s arranged in neat units because Dean took it
upon himself to organize it the first day he and Sam were alone in the house,
and without difficulty he’s able to see exactly what they have and how much of
it. He habitually begins to catalogue what all he can cook and how long it will
last them if he does as his eyes dart to and fro over the boxes, bags and cans.
Spaghetti with tomato paste, peanut butter sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, grilled
cheese sandwiches, beans and toast, noodles with margarine and eggs, noodles
with tomato paste, noodles with kraft slices…
Dean has more to work with in this house than he has in weeks, both in quantity
and variety, and his stomach still twists and burns behind his ribs because it
isn’t enough.
Dean draws in a breath, his throat raw as if he’s been shouting instead of
staring into the pantry like it’s some kind of oracle. He wants go to Sam and
tell him they don’t have to worry for a few more days if they don’t want to. He
wants to tell Sam that everything’s fine and he’s sorry he smiled at him, that
he just wants to talk the way they were a few minutes ago.
He breathes into his hands, picturing blood and something dark and smooth like
a river stone taking up space in his belly alongside the eggs he just ate.
Dean can rebuild a car from parts; he can repair broken lights and locks and
pipes; he can help his father kill a monster terrorizing a town and make its
citizens sleep soundly again, but he cannot heal the tender, bleeding thing
that’s opened between himself and his brother.
He throws up coffee and mush-yellow into the kitchen sink less than a minute
later, watching the wasted food as it circulates down the drain.
 
The following day, Dean waits until Sam’s taking a shower in the cramped hall
bath and goes into Walden’s bedroom.  The first thing he sees upon opening the
door is a stack of books his brother’s got piled on the dresser. Bits of napkin
and sticky notes are all that mark Sam’s respective places in each one, and it
doesn’t look like he’s bothering to finish one before he starts another.
Dean has only a few minutes alone in the room and wants to use them wisely, but
isn’t entirely sure what he hopes to find. He runs his hands over the same
covers he knows Sam has, wondering which ones he’s liked and which ones he’s
simply powered through because they’re a convenient means of distraction; he
has no way of knowing. He opens a few hardbacks and makes his way through a
passage or two here and there, unsure what most of it means without the context
of the rest of the story. 
He’s about to consider the venture a bust and leave the room when he catches
sight of something poking out just behind the bookshelf itself, an object
caught between the polished oak and the slight sag of the wall.
He hears Sam turn the water off down the hall just as he’s noticed it, and Dean
quickly crouches to nudge at whatever he’s looking at with an index finger.
When the thing moves with the motion, he sees that it’s what looks like another
book, one that’s somehow escaped his brother’s notice.
This one is unlike the others, however, Dean sees almost immediately when he
carefully tugs it out from behind the shelf. It’s not a published hardback or a
worn mystery novel. It’s what looks like a diary. Its cover is soft, dark blue
velvet, worn and frayed at the edges. It sounds like a paper heart as Dean
holds it to his chest, its spine cracking sinuously in time with his movements.
He presses his palm to it, feels the crush of its silky surface against his
skin before he opens it to see what’s been written inside.
Just within the front page is a name scrawled in neat, almost prim cursive.
Gloria Walden.
Connecting the dots with practiced ease, Dean understands that the journal was
likely owned by Walden’s late wife. The realization makes him feel he’s
forgetting something, but not what that something could be.
When he turns the second page he sees that the date for the first entry is
December 11th, 1984. Dean feels something slick and heavy clog his throat as he
reads the numbers, like the mucus that settles in the back of your mouth before
a wave of tears comes.
“Dr. Brooks says writing down how I feel will help with the grieving process.
He also says time heals everything. I don’t know if either is true.”
Dean shuts the book, then, leaving the room and closing it behind him just as
Sam emerges from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. His long,
dark hair is still wet and dripping down his shoulders as clouds of warm steam
billow out behind him from the bathroom and spill into the hallway.
He looks just the way Dean still remembers, and he makes himself turn away from
the sight of Sam’s Indian-brown bare skin and the barely-there grooves of his
ribs.
Dean goes into the living room and slips the book underneath one of the
threadbare sofa cushions. He feels as if he’s done something wrong, but doesn’t
know why.
He tells himself he’s not going to read the diary as he goes to the kitchen and
throws back another sour mouthful of sherry.
 
Chapter End Notes
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