Chapter Text
Sam was sitting at the kitchen table when Dean walked in, carrying a duffel. Dean shouldered the bag. "I'll be back."
Sam turned to face him. "Wait." Dean stopped and turned around. "Where you headed?"
"Washington. I caught a case."
Sam was a little confused now. "You want me to come with?"
Dean's face was expressionless. "Do you want to come?"
"On a hunt? Why wouldn't I?"
"I don't know, man. Cause lately with you, up is down and down is sideways, you know? I don't know what you want."
Sam gave Dean what Dean referred to as his "bitch face".
"Okay, you want in? Fine. Sure thing." Dean tossed Sam a printed photograph. "Photo leaked from the crime scene. Girl was murdered in her room, doors were locked, windows were locked."
Sam studied the picture. There was a blurry figure in the background that resembled a tall, thin man. Without a face. "Who's the wallflower?"
"Exactly. Best guess, ghost caught on film." Dean took the photo back, avoiding Sam's gaze. "So you're coming."
Sam shook his head in exasperation. Some days, the workings of Dean's mind eluded him.
Sam sat across from Dean at the small motel table, which was littered with takeout and research. "Okay. Just grasping at straws here, but when I think 'teleport', I think 'crossroads demon'."
Dean set down his burger and wiped his mouth. "Demon that likes to stab and watch YouTube. Why not?"
"Oh, by the way, speaking of which, the video of, uh, Trey getting knifed? It's already online," Sam said. "It has, like, 2,000 views. It's like somebody wants people to see Thinman in action."
"It's cause people will watch, cause people are sick," Dean said.
"And when did 'viral' go from that baby chimp falling out of a tree to killer 'Candid Camera'?"
Dean's face melted into a grin. "You know what video would have gone viral, if we still had it? When you were five and you got dressed up as Batman and you jumped off the shed cause you thought you could fly."
Sam smiled, remembering the scene vividly. "After you jumped first."
"Hey, I was nine, and I was dressed up like superman, okay? Everybody knows that Batman can't fly."
Sam chuckled, "Well, I didn't know that. I broke my arm."
"I know you did," Dean managed through a laugh. "Man, I drove you to the E.R. on my handlebars." Dean lifted his beer, eyes avoiding Sam's even with a smile still lingering on his face. He took a sip. "Good times."
Sam's grin slipped off his face. The fondness of the memory slipped away with it. "Yeah, they were."
Nice try, Dean.
Sam was waiting outside the room when Ed walked out. "Hey. How did it go?"
Ed looked up at Sam, his eyes wide, vulnerable. Broken. "It, um, went, uh..." Ed's strained voice trailed off into silence, and the shorter man walked away. Sam let him go. The look in Ed's eyes was too familiar for him to deal with. He'd seen it too often in a pair of weathered green eyes. Harry, though? Harry, he might be able to help.
Sam pushed open the door. "Hey. You okay?"
Harry looked down. "I just got punched right in the feels."
Sam didn't really know how to respond to that.
"None of it was real, Sam. Ed was just pretending, and now he wants me to pretend, like this is just something I could get past."
Sam nodded. "I know what you mean." If anyone knew, it was Sam. "Trust me here, secrets ruin relationships." "Look, there are things you can forgive, and there are things you can't."
Harry looked up. "So, which one is this?"
"That's something you got to figure out for yourself."
Sam was confident that Harry would make the same decision he did.
Sam struggled to maneuver his lock picks into the key hole of his handcuffs while Dean distracted Roger and Deputy Norwood. Figures Thinman would turn out to be a couple of socially awkward psychos. Just their luck that one of them was armed with a taser and a handgun, too.
"You realize what you two jackasses are doing doesn't make you Thinman. It makes you copycat killers." Dean somehow managed to look defiant while being handcuffed to a chair.
Roger leaned forward. "It makes me Thinman. And you're not telling anyone I'm not, cause you'll be too dead to talk."
Deputy Norwood moved back to the camera. "Showtime."
Roger stepped around Dean to stand behind him. "You two are lucky ducks. You're the stars of our best video yet. And when it goes viral, everyone will know Thinman's real." Roger grinned at Norwood and put his mask back on.
Sam realized what was about to happen and struggled harder. Cmon, cmon... He looked over at Dean, who had a resigned look on his face.
Norwood positioned his camera. "And... Action!"
Roger drew his knife and yanked Dean back, pressing the blade against his throat.
Sam was out of time. "Wait, no, no, no, don't!"
Suddenly a door slammed open somewhere in the mill. Everyone froze. Roger pulled his knife away from Dean's throat, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief. Before he could do anything more, tape was slapped over his mouth. He looked over to see Dean in the same predicament. Roger and Norwood left, off to investigate the noise.
As soon as he was sure they were gone, Sam hurriedly finished picking his cuffs. He got up, ripping the tape off his mouth, then went to help Dean. Once Dean was free, the two split up, hiding in opposite corners of the room. They waited silently.
Before long, Roger and Norwood's voices echoed down the hallway, along with... Ed and Harry's? I should have expected that. Soon the Ghostfacers were being dragged in by the Thinman duo. Looks of confusion and shock crossed the men's faces as they saw the empty room.
The Winchesters took their chance.
The next few seconds were a flurry of movement. When Sam looked up from his brief grapple with Deputy Norwood, he saw Dean pinning Roger to his chest with one hand, and gripping the hand Roger was using to hold his knife with the other. Sam watched in horror as Dean slowly lowered Roger's own knife toward his chest. Roger only had time to let out a breathless "No..." And then the knife was shoved into his heart.
Dean dropped the body to the floor. He looked up at Sam. The look Sam saw in Dean's eyes made his blood run cold.
Sam didn't have time to process his brother's ruthlessness before the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking caught his attention. He turned to see Norwood aiming his handgun right at his chest. To his surprise, Ed stepped into the path of the gun.
"Wait, no! No! No! No, look. Look at me. This is all my fault. Okay? It's all my fault."
Deputy Norwood just grinned. "I got enough bullets for both of you."
A shot rang out, and Norwood dropped dead to the floor. Everyone turned to see Harry holding a gun, a shellshocked look on his face.
Dean gently took the gun from Harry's hands and exchanged a meaningful look with Sam.
They had to leave. Now.
Sam walked over to Dean, who was loading the trunk of the impala. "So, are we good in there?"
Dean looked up. "Yeah. With the Thinman footage and the way I set the bodies, there should be enough breadcrumbs to make it look like those two psychos offed each other."
Sam put his hands in his pockets. "They were just people, man. They weren't...demons. They weren't monsters. They...were just frickin' people."
"Yeah, well, like I said, people are sick," Dean said.
Sam studied his brother. You must really believe that to have been able to kill Roger the way you did. Dean had always possessed a dangerous love of violence, and Roger definitely needed to go down, but the way Dean killed him...it was almost as if he enjoyed it.
Sam was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of Ed's voice, coming from over by the Ghostfacers van. He and Dean turned to face the scene.
"S-so... Are we cool?" Ed stuttered.
Harry shook his head. "I don't think we ever will be."
"I mean, you know, we made it right. We, uh--we beat the guys. This could be our shot to start the old Ghostfacers again.
"I came here with you to finish this thing with Thinman. I wasn't just closing a chapter, Ed. It was the whole dang book."
"But you saved my life back there."
Harry's voice shook. "I killed a guy, Ed."
"He was a bad guy, Harry."
"He was a guy, Ed. Too many people have died because of your crap."
"I did all this crap for us. I-I don't know why you don't see that."
"No. No, you did this for you."
Sam had a strong feeling of deja vu. "You didn't save me for me. You did it for you." Dean remained silent next to him.
"There's a lot of things I can forgive, Ed, but this isn't one of them."
It was a lot less satisfying than Sam thought it would be to hear Harry say that.
"So, what does this mean about us?" Ed asked quietly.
Harry hefted his bag onto his shoulder. "It means... It's complicated."
Harry walked towards them, leaving Ed standing alone at his van. Harry took a deep breath. "Can I get a ride from you guys?"
Dean shot a quick look at Sam. Sam nodded. "Yeah, sure."
They piled into the impala, letting Harry arrange his luggage in the back seat next to him. Soon the car was pulling out of the lot. Sam avoided looking at Ed.
So, it had all been a set up.
Ed had lied to Harry, altering some unchangeable part of Harry's life so that he could get his best friend back. Then everything went wrong. Innocents had died, Harry had gotten hurt, and while the blame belonged to Ed, Harry was the one with blood on his hands.
Sam didn't miss how closely that mirrored his and Dean's situation.
Except for a few minor differences.
This time, Harry was the one to walk away. It made sense. But Sam hadn't walked away. Dean had.
If Dean had done all that he had just so he could get his brother back, just so he wouldn't be alone, why did he leave?
"I'm poison."
Sam wondered if he was justified in spitting all those angry words at Dean.
For the first time, he thought maybe he wasn't.
"Harry, you okay?"
"Yeah. I mean, no.
You roll with a guy so many years, you start to think he's always gonna be next to you. Like, when you're old and drinking on the porch, he'll be in that other rocking chair. And then something happens, and you realize that other chair has gone empty."
Sam studied the road ahead, a deep feeling of loss piercing his anger and detachment. Loss for the brother who sat right next to him.
"You know what I mean?"
Do we ever.