Work Text:
Dean is eight. As always, there are other problems at hand - Dean’s impending trip to Hell, a small-town coven they thought they’d dispatched handily and evidently hadn’t - but the most immediate issue is that Dean’s stuck in a body he thought he’d grown out of years ago and neither of them really know what the fuck to do about it.
It’d happened quick - a flash of light, a smell like boiled eggs, and Dean’s left swimming in clothes twice his size in a room piled with dead witches. They hightail it out of there as soon as they’ve figured out what’s happened, Dean now pantsless since it’s too hard to run and hold them up at the same time. He gives Sam the usual “don’t ding up my baby, jackass”, and they head straight back to their motel, even though Dean wants to go to a diner (“we gotta, man. Kid’s menus”). He spends the trip examining his face in the rearview mirror while Sam sweats nervously and pumps the gas.
Sam herds his brother from the car to their room and prays no one’s keeping watch, because there are only so many conclusions a person can reach when they see a large single male shunting a bare-legged kid around. He squares his shoulders and tries to look fatherly.
As soon as they get in the room, Sam calls Bobby to appraise him of the situation, and he comes to about the same conclusion: Dean’s cursed, probably courtesy of some residual hex that’d hung on just a little longer than the witch who’d spun it, and there’s only so much they can do.
“Have to wait it out,” Bobby says. “With luck, it’ll dry out in a day or two.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Sam says.
Bobby sighs. “I’ll keep an eye out for a remedy, but - well, you know curses.”
“Yeah, it’s too late to get out of the way now. Thanks, Bobby. Call me if you find anything.”
It could be worse, Sam figures, watching his (smaller) brother roll around the bed. It could’ve been, like, a coma, or something. At least Dean’s still functioning. Sort of.
They’ve got a small collection of witchcraft-related books still sitting around, leftovers from the case, and Sam digs back into these again. It’s a sizeable pile, and it’d go much faster if Dean were to pitch in, but he’s busy drumming his little heels against the bed and flipping through channels too quick to really absorb what’s happening onscreen.
“A little help here, please?” Sam says.
“Eh. Don’t wanna.”
“It’s your shitty curse, man. At least try.”
“We read all these already,” Dean complains, but he’s sliding off the mattress, sidling over to the pile of books. “Not gonna find anything.” He grabs one at random and gets back on the bed.
Sam smiles to himself, doesn’t give in the urge to slide over and ruffle his brother’s hair. He hadn’t been able to appreciate it the first time around -- he’d only been four, for Chrissakes -- but his brother made a damn cute kid. It’s the huge, expressive eyes, probably. And those freckles.
Sam shakes his head, refocuses. Curse. Cure. Right.
It’s not even half an hour before Dean starts bouncing his heels on the bed again.
“Dude. Stop,” Sam says.
Dean groans. “Sorry, your majesty, I forgot. Quiet in the library.”
There’s blessed silence for almost twenty whole minutes, and then Dean starts gurgling spittily.
“Dean,” Sam says.
“Ugh,” Dean says. “This is so fuckin’ boring. You know I hate this shit, Sammy.”
“Language,” Sam says, without thinking.
“Dude. You do know I’m not actually a kid, right?”
Sam doesn’t bother to look up from his book. “Mh-hm.”
“Maybe I’ll just have to prove it to you,” Dean says, pitching his voice about as low as an eight year old can (not very). He slides off the bed and prowls toward Sam, narrow hips swaying away.
“What are you - hey,” Sam says. Dean’s yanked the book right out of his grasp and sent it spinning onto the floor, where it lands open-face down, pages bent. Sam makes the horrified, strangled noise of distressed book-lovers everywhere.
“That’s a first edition,” he says. “You can’t just - there are notes from the author - “
“Shh,” Dean purrs, swinging up onto Sam’s lap and clasping his skinny little arms around Sam’s neck. “Lemme show you how grown up I am, baby.”
“What? Eugh, no, gross - you’re, like, five - “
“Yeah, I’m real little, huh? Betcha like that, dragging me around, makin’ me do what you want...”
And okay, maybe the thought has crossed his mind, once or twice, how he could just throw his brother down on the bed and pin him there, press him into the mattress with one hand and tug his hair with the other, move him just where he needed him -
“Absolutely not,” Sam says.
“C’mon, Sammy, know you want it,” Dean says, grinding down slow and firm and steady. “You ever fucked someone standing up? You could hold me there and make me take it, right up against the wall…”
“This is - can’t,” Sam says, except his dick is pressed hot and hard against his brother’s firm ass, and he’s starting to pant and push up to meet Dean’s movements thrust-for-thrust, and he’s going to do this, isn’t he. He totally is.
His jeans are way too rough against his poor, abused dick, and he fumbles a hand between them to pop the button, do down the zip.
“Yeah, fuck, there we go,” Dean says. He claws off the t-shirt he’d been wearing, too big for him anyway -- everything too big for him, even the boxers he’s still wearing -- and it’s more than a little strange to see his brother’s slight, lithe chest, his pink little nipples, but it’s also pretty fucking hot. Sam brings up his hands and draws them up and down Dean’s heaving sides, skin soft and unblemished beneath his calloused fingertips, all of him so compact and little. Sam thumbs one pert nipple, rolls it around just to feel how small it is, and Dean outright mewls, little soft baby sounds Sam can’t ever remember him making as an adult. They shoot right through him and spark in his stomach, and he rolls his hips up in a slow, aching wave, teases the nipple between his thumb and index finger, anything to force those noises out of his brother again.
And that’s when the cops burst in.
They are not at all gentle with him. A thick-armed, tattooed cop slams him face first against the desk while a lady cop reads him his rights, and under other circumstances that’d probably be grounds for a class-action lawsuit, except he’s a wanted serial murderer and pedophile kidnapper so that’s not going to happen anytime soon. They wrench his arms behind his back and cuff them and he’s going to have some nasty bruises later, yikes.
They try to be gentle with Dean (“we gotcha, buddy, you’re going to be okay, you’re safe now”) except Dean isn’t allowing it, kicking and hollering in their arms, Sam, Sammy, don’t, and then he’s out of sight, swallowed up in a cluster of blue uniforms.
Sam wants to fight to get to him but there are still a few guns trained on him, and he’d rather not risk it. The arresting officer looks positively murderous, and her cohorts aren’t much better, hands clamped down on his forearms, shoves that are meant to hurt, make him stumble. He doesn’t fall as they force him out of the room and into a waiting van, but it’s a close thing.
He doesn’t begrudge them their violence. If he’d walked in on a similar scene, he’d probably have shot the bastard already. His dick isn’t hanging out, thank Christ, but his fly is still down, and he flushes under the focus of all the curious stares.
It’s not what it looks like, he wants to say, except it’s exactly what it looks like (and worse, even, because that’s his brother he’d been grinding on). He feels a flood of guilt of the likes he hadn’t experienced since he’d started fucking Dean. Shoulda gone with his gut, shoved him away, but no. If only they’d burst in a few minutes earlier - it’d make all and none of the difference, nothing that’d clear him in a court, but everything for his conscience.
They bang his head on the door when they duck him into the back, and he lets them. Ah. Neat. He gets an armed guard.
“Where’s my brother,” he asks them. They say nothing.
They throw him in an interrogation room which looks like every other interrogation room he’s ever been in (thanks, Dad), except this time his hands are cuffed to the table and his ankles are chained together. Also: his fly is still fucking unzipped.
He knows the drill - they’re going to leave him to stew for a couple hours, and then Detective Anonymous’ll come in and drop a heavy box of files down in front of him, tell him they’ve got his number. They do, in fact, have his number, but he won’t admit that to them.
They’d set up a plan for this, dammit, only that plan had banked on Sam holding out as an innocent and Dean playing the murderous psychopath, which will not at all work under these circumstances. Option B is, more or less, bolt as soon as no one’s looking. Hopefully they’ll want to interview him bad enough that he’ll get to stay in the local lock up for as long as possible, slip out before they transfer him to a high-security prison. He imagines Dean’s deal coming due while he slumbers on some nondescript prison bunk, and his gut churns. That wasn’t an option.
He’s jittery with nerves when finally the door swings open and the woman who’d read him his rights earlier strides in. She’s slight in build, Asian, dark pixie-cut hair and sharp cheekbones. She peers down at him like he’s a particularly revolting centipede.
“Sam Winchester,” she says.
He gives her a nervous smile.
“S’lucky we’ve got a friend at the motel who loves all that true-crime shit,” she says. “Otherwise you’dve blown outta town scot-free, huh? But here we are.”
Her scrutiny is uncomfortable. She’s got a seer’s eyes, piercing and clever like Missouri’s, and he wonders if she’s a psychic, too. NOT GUILTY, he thinks at her as hard as he can, just in case. MONSTERS ARE REAL. I’M NOT A MURDERER.
“It’s a nice surprise, getting you in here,” she says. “Everyone thought you were dead. Be better if you were, of course, but this is a close second.”
Not a psychic, then. He hadn’t put much stock in the idea anyway.
“We’ve got a lot of questions for you. Some friends are coming to visit, so get comfy. You’re gonna be here for a while.”
“I’m not gonna - .” He coughs, throat parched. “I won’t answer anything without a lawyer.”
She snorts. “Yeah, okay. Sure. I’ll fetch you the very best public defender the state can spare.”
She leaves without looking back.
His lawyer is a mousy little guy with thick glasses, thinning hair, and one of the ugliest ties Sam’s ever had the displeasure of seeing. He stutters sometimes and refuses to come within a yard of the table, so his chair is pushed back nearly against the far wall.
“Well, Mr. Winchester, we’re in a tight spot,” he says. “Since you were caught with a minor in flagrante delicto, and there are a number of reliable witnesses who came forward, we’re looking at a few years in prison, at the very least - maybe a fine, if we can negotiate with the kid’s parents. What we can’t count on are the other things.”
“‘Other things’,” Sam says.
“Ahem. Grand theft auto, grave desecration, abduction of a minor, ah, manslaughter in the first degree. And there’s the minor stuff, too - credit card fraud, multiple instances of petty theft, B&E, the list goes on. There’s significant evidence of your presence in and around the scenes of the crime.”
“But not my involvement.”
“Exactly. In only a few cases is your direct participation obvious. I understand you have an older brother, Dean?”
“You want to pin everything on him.”
“You’re an innocent, dragged along on your brother’s killing spree against your will. He’s manipulative, violent, smart - you didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
Sam thinks of the angry, thrashing little boy the cops had pulled off him in the hotel, tries to imagine a universe where anyone'd believe Dean’s even still alive. “Yeah. That’s not gonna work so well.”
By the time his federal friends are ready to interview him, Sam’s spotted several gaping holes in the case that his lawyer just hasn’t noticed. Why would a clever, disciplined serial killer kill so sporadically, in such a wide variety of ways? Why are most of the witnesses choosing to protect the brothers in their statements? Why do the deaths stop soon after they’ve rolled into town? Who the fuck died in St. Louis, if not Dean?
He does not say these things aloud.
They shift around to make room for the interviewers. The lawyer is still too skittish to come near Sam, so he sits, somewhat comically, at the very edge of the table.
“I appreciate your support,” Sam tells him.
“What? Uh. No need to thank me,” he says, scooting his chair back. Sam gives him a mild smile.
Two suited agents stroll in - one a tall, aging white man, the other an elegant young woman with earth-brown skin and close-cropped hair.
“Sam Winchester, in the flesh,” the man says. “Never thought I’d see you again.”
Forgotten neurons light up, conjure a familiar face, a name. “Reidy,” Sam says. “Right? Henricksen’s partner?”
“Not anymore,” Reidy says.
Sam winces. “I’m sorry,” he says. “He was a good man.”
“What do you know about good men?” Reidy snarls. His fists clench and unclench as if he’d like nothing more than to break Sam’s nose.
“Agent,” the lawyer says.
Sam and Reidy send twin glares in his direction.
“Why don’t we, um, sit down?” the lawyer says.
“You’re right,” Reidy says. “I was getting ahead of myself.”
“You already know Reidy, clearly, but I’m Agent Lark,” the second agent says, pulling out a chair. “I’m glad to meet you, Sam.”
“Why’s that?” Sam says, out of genuine curiosity.
“You’re an interesting man, Sam,” she says, studying his reaction carefully. “I’ve been following your case for a while.”
“As have I,” Reidy cuts in. “Not because I thought you were interesting, of course. For a more personal reason.”
Lark’s face remains unchanged. “I never knew Henricksen myself, but up until your brother’s supposed death in St. Louis, he took meticulous notes on yourself and your family, and from that alone I can surmise he was a dedicated agent.”
“Yeah, dedicated is one word for it. I thought he was crazy, sometimes, tracking you three across the country. But I guess he was right, huh?” Reidy says, eyes glittering dangerously. “Didn’t think I’d ever say it, but turns out he was too soft on you. Never plugged you for the type who went after little boys.”
“Allegations of pedophilia - “ the lawyer says.
“Forget allegations,” Reidy snaps. “You were caught in the act.”
“How is he,” Sam says. “Is my - is the boy okay?”
Lark watches him with calculating eyes. “Your what, Sam? What is it you meant to say?”
“Friend,” Sam lies. Reidy snorts.
“Yeah, bestest buddies, I betcha,” he says.
“I have to wonder, Sam,” Lark says. “Neither your brother nor your father were ever charged with sexual abuse, and up until now, neither were you. It’s a noteworthy break in the pattern.”
“And when you say ‘pattern’,” the lawyer says, “you refer of course to the alleged crimes attributed to my client?”
The table continues to ignore him.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Um. Surprised me, too. Sorry,” he adds. He’s blushing, he realizes.
“Sorry? Are you apologizing to me, or the child? Do you regret the way you’ve treated him?”
“Lark,” Reidy says.
“I shouldn’tve,” Sam says. “I really - . I know better, you know? But I couldn’t stop.”
“That’s real uplifting and all,” Reidy says, “only, it doesn’t matter, ‘cuz you screwed the kid anyway.”
“Allegedly,” the lawyer mumbles from his corner.
“You messed that poor kid up for life. Not that it’s news to you. You know what he said when we asked him what his name was? He said, ‘Dean’.”
“Because that’s his name,” Sam says.
“Oh, yeah? ‘Cuz when we jogged his memory a bit, he said it was Thomas.”
Goddamn lying older brothers. It isn’t Dean’s fault, not really, but now their stories are all tangled up and uneven and that’s going to cause problems in the long run. Sam hates that he can’t predict his brother’s moves, can’t see their game plan laid out like a map in his head. He hates being separated from him, in general.
“Thomas,” Sam says.
“Thomas Singer,” Reidy says. “Eight and a half, has a daddy and a mommy out looking for him somewhere. Doesn’t know which state he’s from but we’ll get on that soon enough, once the database goes through.”
Singer. That gives Sam something. If Bobby knows - . He can get Dean out, at the least.
“Sam,” Lark says, in her gentle voice. “Where’s Dean?”
“What? I don’t know. Where’d you take him?”
“Not Thomas, Sam. Your brother, Dean. The boy you grew up with.”
“Uh,” says Sam. He’s got no idea how to answer.
“I don’t have the time for this,” Reidy says. “Here’s what I think, Sammy: Dean’s dead. He didn’t make it out of the station in time and he got blown up with Henricksen, and you wandered outta there all fucked up since you’ve got that creepy can’t-live-without-you codependence thing going on. You scooped up some kid with a passing resemblance to your brother, crowned him the new Dean, and carried on tradition.”
“That’s nuts,” Sam says flatly.
“You’re the compulsive serial killer, Sammy. You tell me.”
“Allegedly,” the lawyer begins, and is cut off by the door swinging open.
A frantic intern pokes her head in. “Um. Agent Reidy, sir. Officer Nam needs to speak with you.”
“Now? Can’t it wait? I’m a little busy.”
“I know, sir, I’m sorry, it’s just - there’s been a development in the case - .”
Reidy shoves back his chair, rises to his feet. “I’m not done with you,” he tells Sam, and stalks out.
“Sorry about all the posturing,” Lark says. “He’s not a bad agent, he’s just emotionally involved in the case.”
“Nah, I get it,” Sam says. “I mean, he and Henricksen were probably close, right? It’s gotta be tough, talking to me.”
“Because you killed him?”
“Because he thinks I killed him.” Sam lets out a deep breath. “I’ve done a lot of shitty things, sure, but I never hurt Henricksen. I never wanted him to die.”
“But someone did.”
“Yeah. Just, not me, and not my brother, either, before you ask.”
“Hm,” she says. “And the others?”
The lawyer has evidently checked out, because he doesn’t object to the question. Sam just shrugs. What he does isn’t, strictly speaking, murder.
“Henricksen suggested your brother was the dominant partner,” she says, when it becomes clear he’s not going to answer. “That he chose the victims, and forced you to play along.”
“What do you think?”
“I think… well.” Her eyes go glassy, and she stares into the middle distance. “You were unwilling at first, but your brother secluded you and led you to rely on him completely, until you became so dependant as to think you couldn’t survive without him. He manipulated you into acting out in ways you might not’ve, otherwise, in the name of keeping his attention. That’s what I think.”
She cocks an eyebrow at him, as if to say, how’s that?
She’s pretty far off, excepting the part where he’s disgustingly co-dependant. Only Dean hadn’t drawn him in on purpose with mind tricks and deprivation. Sam doubted he could plan that far ahead, anyway. Instead it’d been a series of unhappy accidents, beginning with messy pubescent dreams of plush lips and brotherskin all warm against him and cementing itself with a kiss outside a diner in Montana.
“You’re empathetic,” she muses. “Or, at least, you’re good at faking it. At college, you - “
The door slams open, cutting her off, and the lawyer jerks upright. “What?” he says. “Sorry?”
Reidy strides in, folder in his hand, eyes tight and calculating. He doesn’t say a word, just slips out a handful of photographs, lays them out on the table one-by-one. There’s a woman with a messy shotgun blast splitting her abdomen wide open, a middle-aged lady with her throat cut neatly, a man’s torso and then, yards away and no longer attached to the mangled stump of his neck, his head. There are a few more - stab wounds, stab wounds, shotgun, stab wounds. It’s the goddamn witches, and Sam can’t help but feel a vindictive stab of fulfillment seeing them dead.
“Ah,” he says. “That. You found it sooner than I thought you would.”
“You’re a sick fucker, Winchester,” Reidy says. “You kill those people? Come in and murder all eight of them?”
“You don’t have to answer that, Mr. Winchester,” says the lawyer.
“Yup,” Sam says.
“Mr. Winchester - ”
“Is that a confession?” Reidy says, leaning forward across the table. If Sam were a Hannibal Lecter type, he imagines, he could lean forward and bite off the guy’s nose. Only, he isn’t, so he doesn’t.
“My client has not - ”
“Sure, that’s a confession,” Sam says.
The lawyer puts his head in his hands. This is very unprofessional, Sam thinks distantly.
“Can we get that in writing?” Reidy’s partner says to the mirror. ”Let’s get that in writing.”
The jittery intern from before scurries in with a piece of yellow legal pad paper and a pen. It’s plastic tipped and hard, and as Sam takes them both he marvels at how oblivious his captors are. They’ve heard the stories, right - inmates punching through internal organs, children accidentally popping their own eyes - ? He’s not actually going to stab anyone, but man.
“Okay,” Reidy says, leaning in even closer, and if there was ever a better time to introduce pen to jugular, now was it. “I, Sam Winchester - .”
“Reidy,” Lark says. “Don’t dictate.”
“This is Marla Hennings, right?” Sam says, tapping a photo. “And this one is Matt Wilson?”
“Uh, yeah,” Reidy says, startled.
“Okay, then - in that case, Marla isn’t mine,” he says, sliding the photo over to the right. “Neither’s Charlotte, or Mark.” Slide, slide, slide. “These guys, though, yeah. Matt Wilson, Audrey White, Jeffery Wong, Lacey Stevenson, and… Jenna? Jennifer… Gilbert?”
“Gilt,” Reidy says. “Jennifer Gilt.”
“Right. These five, they’re mine,” he says, pointing to the row he’s arranged to the left.
“And those three? Marla, Charlotte, and Mark?”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Then...who?”
“Dean,” Sam says. He signs his name on the paper with a flourish and drops the pen, gives the room a dazzling grin.
“Aw, hell,” Reidy says.
They give him a water bottle and leave him alone for a while. The confession, as he’d hoped, had sent Reidy into a fit.
He just needs to keep them occupied, keep them focused on him, so Dean can slip away unnoticed. Beyond that, well - maybe they won’t notice the pen’s gone missing. Maybe he’ll have an exceptionally stupid guard.
There are a whole lot of maybes.
He’s actually glad to see Lark come back. The interrogation room is really fucking boring.
“Hi, Agent,” he says to her. She smiles, but it’s more reserved than it’d been before.
“I know you can empathize, Sam,” she says, without sitting down. “Everyone who’s ever given a statement about you says how kind you were, how understanding. I’ve seen it firsthand, and I have to say, I believe it. But when you saw those photos…”
She’s quiet, searching for the words. Sam waits patiently.
“It was as if you were looking at animals,” she says. “Like they were nothing at all. Why is that? What makes Matt and Audrey and the others different? What separates them from Henricksen, and Reidy? What makes them unworthy of sympathy? It’s not race, or gender, or age, none of the usual markers.”
Once, Sam would’ve argued the witches’ case. They are humans - just greedy, power-hungry ones - and they didn’t rely on their craft to survive. If they relinquished their books, promised never to use magic again, there wasn’t any reason to hurt them.
But that was before they’d tangled with one too many covens, before this one chose to fight back, before Dean’d been cursed. Before Dean was condemned to hell.
So: “They’re monsters,” Sam concludes. “That’s all it is.”
“Does Dean tell you who’s a monster and who isn’t?”
Sam understands the underlying implication - you’re hallucinating your dead brother, aren’t you, and he’s telling you to kill things - but he doesn’t feel like tussling this one out. Hell, the crazier they think he is, the better.
“We collaborate,” Sam says.
She can take that to mean whatever she’d like it to.
After a while the lawyer insists that Sam be allowed to rest, and he’s led by two grim-faced officers to a cell. It’s very dungeon-y, wet cement floors and bolded-down bunk bed, fat iron bars. There isn’t a toilet and Sam’s already formulating fantastical plans where he asks his guard for a bathroom break, overwhelms him, and Solid Snakes his way out of the station.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Reidy informs him through the bars. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, you and I.”
“G’night, Agent Lark,” Sam says. “Night, Reidy.”
Lark gives a sad smile. “Goodnight, Sam.”
She pities him, Sam thinks. Poor sick Sam, with his transient father and controlling, violent brother. Could’ve been a lawyer in another life, a businessman, a doctor.
He’s glad she hasn’t pinned him as a sociopath, but the alternative isn’t really much better. At least she doesn’t want to see him skinned and hanged, unlike Reidy, who would probably draw and quarter him if he was allowed it.
The bed is hard and lumpy and the whole room smells like other people’s feet. On the Sam Winchester Scale of Places To Stay Overnight, it ranks a solid four (one being the time he’d squatted in an abandoned house with his Dad and the rotting floor collapsed underneath them while they were sleeping, ten being the overdone honeymoon suite Dean’d once splurged on purely for the vibrating, rotating circular bed). The pillow is thin but its cover smells clean, which is more than he can say for quite a number of the motels he’s stayed at. The sheets do not meet the same standard but as they say, beggars, choosers, etc.
There’s one small, slender window at the end of the hall, and through it he can see asphalt and a slice of dead grass and darkness. It doesn’t feature in his dramatic escape fantasies because he’s pretty sure he couldn’t squeeze the breadth of his shoulders through it. Also detrimental to his plan are the not one but two guards stationed outside the cell to watch him, both armed, both bored out of their skulls. They murmur to each other in quiet tones and Sam wonders how long they’ve known each other, if they’re friends or just colleagues, if they’re native to the county or not.
They’re lovers, Sam decides, caught in a torrid, forbidden affair full of pining and silent communication and minutes stolen away in broom closets when the chief isn’t looking. Cop A’s parents know but disapprove, and Cop B’s parents would disown him if they found out, but neither of them would ever consider ending the relationship. Cop B once dove in front of Cop A during a firefight to take a bullet and now he’ll never walk right again, but he -
There is a noise like a rain of large boulders dropping onto (and through) a metal sheet roof and then the unmistakable awful racket of fifteen or so car alarms all going off at once.
The cops look at each other like what the hell.
Sam is pretty sure he knows exactly what the hell. Dean couldn’t have announced his presence more obviously than if he’d shouted it through a goddamn megaphone. He feigns nonchalance, which, he realizes, actually might be more suspicious than if he’d freaked out. Oh well. It doesn’t much matter anymore since neither guard is paying him much attention, Cop B having sprinted off to parts unknown as soon as the alarms rang out and Cop A standing with his back right up on the bars, hand on his holster.
Sam rolls his eyes, stands up. First the pen thing, now this, he thinks, easing his biceps through the bars and grappling the cop in a sleeper hold. They might’ve well just left the cell door open.
“Ngh,” says the guard, and flails like a stuck fish. He bops Sam on the nose but otherwise inflicts no actual damage, slumping after a count of twenty.
Sam’s got bobby pins sewn into the cuffs of his jeans (all of the four pairs he owns!), and he tears through the weak stitching to extract one, starts to pick the lock into his cell. It’s way easier with an actual lock picking kit but he’s been trained all his life to make do, so he does.
The window at the end of the hallway pops open at about the same time he’s picked the lock, and he steps out of the cell just in time to see Dean’s clumsy eight-year-old body squirm through and land less-than-agilely on the floor. He doesn’t hit his head but it’s a close thing.
“It’s fucking so good to see you, man,” Sam says, hurrying over to help him up.
Dean brushes him off. “Sam,” he says. “Why’s your fly undone.”
“Motherfucker,” Sam says. He does up his jeans. “This is the worst.”
“You think so? I had to talk to a lady counselor. She told me, like, twenty times how brave I was.”
“Aw, you are brave, Dean,” Sam says. “Surviving a trauma like that - “
“You’re hilarious. Really. You want me to help you get out or not? C’mon.”
“Yeah, uh, only you forget that you’re the only pint-sized one here. I’m not getting through that window in one piece.”
“Maybe if you suck in your gut - I’m kidding, gigantor, calm down. I’ve done my research.”
Dean flips open a switchblade.
“Woah, hey,” Sam says.
“Shut up, I know what I’m doing,” Dean says, slicing open his left palm. “Gimme your hand.”
“But - “
“C’mon, Sam, Bobby’s only gonna get us so much time!”
“Bobby?” Sam asks, and extends his arm out for Dean’s inspection.
“Mhm,” Dean says. He dips an index finger in his own blood and begins to draw complex circles on Sam’s forearm. “We did the rituals and shit beforehand, so hopefully we should just have to - yeah. There.”
“Hopefully?”
“Catch,” says Dean, tossing a small green something over to his brother. Sam snags it with both hands and he’s able to register soft and sachet before there’s a great billow of smoke and that same boiled egg smell and suddenly he’s eye-to-eye with his brother’s eight-year-old body.
“Aw, hell,” is all he can say.
“Now you can fit just fine! Also, the cops aren’t looking for a kid, so we’ll be able to drive outta here no problem.”
“They’re probably looking for you, though,” Sam points out, striding over to the window. It’s harder than he’d thought, operating this strange, tiny body, and he has to give Dean some props for staying generally upright that first time. He’s only gone a few steps when he’s decided his jeans, enormous and empty around his hips, are a lost cause, and wriggles out of them. The shirts he’d been wearing hang down past his knees and cause a lot of trouble when he bends down to let his brother abuse him as a springboard.
“I’ll put a blanket over my head or something, whatever. All kids look the same anyway.”
“That is - oof, careful, jackass - empirically untrue.”
“Yeah, well, you’re empirically gay,” Dean says, wriggling through the window. He extends his arm down and Sam stretches to meet him.
“S’a scale - “
“Yeah, yeah, heard it a billion times,” Dean puffs. “Candy Scale or whatever. Jesus, dude, you’re like a fuckin’ bag of cement. Lose some of those coats, wouldja?”
“Wow, Dean, can’t even lift a little kid?” Sam says, shedding off his outer layers. He’s gonna miss that flannel. It was a good one. And his wallet, too, with Gary Lee’s ID card, three dollars, and a picture of Dean where his nose is all crinkled up and he’s making claw-hands at the camera. He wonders what the police will make of the trail of clothes.
“I’m fucking eight,’” Dean says, and heaves, and with a minimal amount of scrabbling Sam’s scaled the wall and slipped through the window, his little-boy shoulders sliding through easy as pie.
And then they run.
It’s silent and harrowing, just their breathing and bare feet slapping the pavement, sirens wailing somewhere behind them, a man’s yell. They run and run until they’re blocks away and Sam thinks he’s going to die, his young lungs unused to the sting of a prolonged sprint, yet-uncalloused feet torn and dirty, and then there’s the Impala parked shining and perfect in the parking lot of a grocery store and he could cry he’s so happy, finally, so glad Dean was leading them somewhere and not just running without reason or direction as he’d thought.
“Git in, idjits,” Bobby says from behind the wheel, and they both clamour into the back seat and lean into each other, breathing heavy, Sam’s head on Dean’s shoulder, their skinny arms wrapped around. Bobby raises a brow at that but starts the car all the same, gets on the road and begins to drive away from the lights flashing blue and red on the windows.
“Nearly gave me a heart attack, hearing from your brother,” Bobby says, and the rest of his speech turns into meaningless jabber because Dean is here and he is safe and Sam is so, so tired, and they fall asleep clinging to each other in the back of the Impala.
When Sam wakes he’s staring up at a pebbled, water stained ceiling. There is a scratchy blanket underneath him, and it’s irritating his bare arms and legs, the back of his neck. Motel blanket, his years of experience tell him, and the crooked dresser at the foot of the bed is also undeniably motel decor, as are the rickety nightstand and light-shadeless lamp.
He takes a moment to catalogue his body and, yeah, everything’s back as it should be, thick arms and broad shoulders and legs so long his heels are dangling off the end of the bed. All of him is sore and limp, like it’s the morning after a marathon and his body’s still recuperating, and he’s got an unpleasant headache waxing and waning behind his right eye, but otherwise he’s in one piece.
He flings out one arm to the side, hoping to connect with Dean’s drooly, slack face, but he just hits pillow and air and more scratchy blanket.
“Dean,” he whines.
Someone groans to his right and he painstakingly rolls around to face it - it’s Dean, strong and full and gloriously adult, flat on his stomach on the opposite bed with his face swallowed up in a pillow.
“S’my,” Dean says, muffled, and Sam heaves himself up and totters the short distance over so he can plaster himself against his brother’s side.
Dean snuffles, turns his head to see. His eyes are tired and drooping with exhaustion but they’re as brilliant green as ever, and Sam can’t help but lean in and press their lips together, gentle, no heat or hunger, just a quiet content affirmation.
“We’re normal again,” he says, forehead pressed against Dean’s. He drapes his arm across his back and tries to worm in closer.
“Huh. Yeah,” Dean says. “Guess so. Time’s it?”
“Uh. Noon...ish?”
“Missed checkout.”
“S’okay. Tired.”
“Yeah, Bobby had to carry you in. Ha. You were fuckin’ gone.”
“Ngh,” Sam complains. He leans in and kisses Dean again, laps at his full lower lip, sucks on it just the littlest bit.
“Mmm. Y’know,” Dean mumbles, “s’too bad we never got to have sex.”
Sam’s stomach swoops uncomfortably. “...Uh. Y - yeah.”
“Gonna… hmm,” Dean says, his eyes falling shut. “So hard.” He wriggles downward a little and snuggles his head underneath Sam’s chin.
“Yeah, Dean, okay,” Sam says, petting his hair. “We’ll do that.”
He falls asleep to the rhythm of his brother’s heartbeat.