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 I hope that you're enjoying the fic! Comments of any kind really keep me going, should you feel moved to leave them! :) Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!