Archive of Our Own

The tree stops needing the leaves, so it lets go,
and people built this car. Someone must have told you
what God made without telling you everything
doesn't mean everything...

And what of the dark? You can build it
yourself, with your own two hands. Do you remember
covering your eyes to hide, believing you made
yourself invisible? On second thought, the leaves
must let go, or else the tree would keep them.

from "Leaves," by Maggie Smith

The house is wrong. Dean knows immediately he’s fucked the address up. He keeps going, follows the sweep of the half-circle driveway until it spits him back out on the road. No way he knocks on a set of double doors to Disney’s Haunted Mansion and Sam’s the one who answers. Kid’s done some dumb shit, but he wouldn’t shack up in cartoon ghost central like a blonde taking a shortcut through the cemetery in the first five minutes of an All Saints. It’s not a big deal, Dean tells himself. He’s got the street right. It’s long, one of those looping California mountain drives that threatens to tip cars off into the sea, but there’s only so many houses on it. A quarter mile between you and your neighbors, that eats up real estate fast.

Unless Brady was lying, of course. (Not unlikely. He doesn’t know Dean; why would he tell the truth about Sam’s location when he could send him on a wild goddamn goosechase? Call Sam up and laugh about it.) Unless Sam left before Dean shows up. (Extremely likely. He’s got no idea why Sam thinks he can babysit for three months straight. He’ll fucking hate it.) Unless something happened, a monster or just whatever rich perverts do to nannies on scholarships with no family to look for them—

Not helping, that isn’t useful, and he’s got useful things to do, he’s got a clear path. Brady doesn’t even have the life experience to lie, good college boy like that. It wouldn’t cross his mind until too late. Dean’s almost to Sam.

Thing about the clear path is, it starts to look like Sam’s not on it. An hour into knocking on front doors abandoned for the summer Dean finally gets an answer, some cousin house-sitting and baked out of her mind who says no, he was right the first time, the Vaught place is 1036 and yeah, it has kind of a spooky look, she guesses Dean’s right about that.

“Motherfuck,” Dean says, but goes back to 1036. It doesn’t even look real. It’s the tryhard piece that gets him, the movie-set vibe. Like the gargoyles aren’t stone but that spray-styrofoam shit they use for pillars with no weight on them. Like the setup to a joke, or maybe the punchline. It makes it easier to knock. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Sam’s not here, but at least he can pretend Sam won’t be and not have to deal with what to do if Sam is.

But he’s there. It’s Sam, Sam opens the door, torso too long and hair too shaggy, maybe a little more of both since he left but it adds up the same, and the relief is a whirlwind. It spools Dean back together where he’s unraveled over the last three hundred miles, just the sight of Sam, just Sam’s eyes on him. Dean’s real again. Then the particulars start to register. Like: his clothes are too nice, flannel and jeans but unfrayed and colors deep. Like: the kid he’s holding on his hip, limbs stiff and face buried in Sam’s neck. Like: same-old same-old pinched, bitchy expression, tight at the mouth. Like: what he just said, “Seriously, Ruby, I just got him down—” before he realizes. “Dean,” he says, face washing blank before it twitches toward incredulity. “But—”

“Yeah, missed you too.” It comes out biting, snide. He’s cold in his chest, in his arms, down to his fingers. If Sam tells him to get lost. If Sam.

“You asshole," Sam says, breaking open in a grin and launching himself, crushing Dean in a hug.

Dean loses it again, nothing to be proud of. No keep the fuck away from me, no if you wanted to see me you should have said so when Dad told me not to come back, you spineless shit. It eclipses everything else again, makes him stupid-sloppy. Sam smells the same, sweat and cheap detergent and girly shampoo. He’s not so different, he’s still Dean’s. It’s not until Sam’s cracked his back to show he can and is pulling away that the rest of it clicks. Weird that Sam swears in front of this rich kid, weird that he hugged Dean that tight with a kid’s fragile bones in the way, weird how cold the kid is and that it hasn’t moved—

“Sammy,” Dean says. For a second he’s ready to grab his brother and run.The kid was hard, frozen in place. People do that sometimes, don’t they. Animals do that. Whales and gorillas carry their dead babies around until the rot sets in.

“Oh.” Sam laughs at the face he’s making and steps back when Dean reaches. Dean’s not sure which of them he was trying to grab. “Yeah, it’s—I know it’s weird. Um, come in, okay? I’ll explain.”

“It’s weird,” Dean repeats. “It’s weird.”

“I mean…” Sam shrugs. “Rich people are weird. Eccentric, technically. If you can afford full-time childcare for a doll, that’s just eccentric.”

“No, Sam. It’s not eccentric. It’s not weird. It’s batshit insane. His dad belongs in a loony bin, and I mean that in the nicest way. The man needs fucking help. His dad, you’ve got me doing it. I mean its… owner.”

Sam is getting all pursed again. He’s sitting at a table for eight in a kitchen bigger than the last three hotel rooms Dean shared with Dad, all three of them combined, and he’s sitting next to the doll he placed carefully in the chair at the head of the table, and he’s getting annoyed with Dean for pointing out that this is a fucked up situation. “You don’t even know him. Look, the doll’s name is Jack—” When Dean’s head about explodes he adds hastily, “Never mind, it’s just… Can you relax about it and tell me what’s going on?”

It’s not what are you doing here, it’s not how long did you plan on staying, not exactly. Yet. Dean wheels away to pace the kitchen, the whole mile of it, real tiles in the floor, heavy stone counters and hulking shining appliances that look like they belong in a recreation 50s diner. Sam’s right, maybe, theoretically, it doesn’t matter that some rich nutjob wants to give him a boatload of cash to do nothing all day, except. Except he’s not doing nothing. The way he put the doll down in its seat, arranged its clothes like tenderness is a habit. He spins back to the table just as Sam jerks to his feet and reaches to tidy the surface, and he beats Sam to it.

“Taking some summer classes?” He holds the books high, and Sam gives him a flat unimpressed look which is fair, he guesses he can’t get them over Sam’s head now, only Sam doesn’t lunge across the table to grab them back. It’s an easier win than he expected. “They got you studying…” He turns them over.

“Yes, pre-law has humanities requirements,” Sam says, snippy, reaching for them again. “Wild, I know. They made me take a chemistry class, too. Really sick.”

“Uh-huh.” Dean backs up half a step, incautious now it looks like Sam’s not willing to jump or even round the table. “And you failed every single one so hard they told you to repeat world history for the tenth grade? Said not to come back until you were up on your eighth grade English literature? Christ, Sam, I didn’t get into Stanford but I can read a fucking title.”

Sam’s eyes shoot sideways like he heard something. Dean didn’t, and there’s nothing there but that doll. The blue eyes stare ahead in its smooth white vacant face. It’s bent forward a bit, slouching with its spine perfectly straight. “Okay,” Sam says. This is where it should turn into a fight, a real one; Dean is braced for it. But Sam smiles, sudden, smooth and white and vacant. “So it’s a little weirder than I said. There are rules. I have to tutor him. And—and there’s a security system, there’s cameras, so I have to actually do it or his dad will know.” The Stepford glaze leeches back off his face as he talks, and he’s just Sam, begging Dean not to tell on him. “Dean, I need this. It’s… the scholarship, it covers classes and books and a dorm room, a couple hundred for meals in the dining hall. I’m royally screwed every vacation and every time I want food that’s not Sysco.”

Which is. It’s Dean’s job, is all. And Sam gave that up when he left; he wanted to fend for himself and that’s exactly what he got. Whining about it now isn’t a defense. Except it is, except every night Sam spent not knowing whether he had a roof over his head tomorrow, every meal Sam skipped, those are on Dean. Just because Sam went and made it harder to accomplish, that doesn’t make it not Dean’s job. He’s sick with it, and it burns easily through to anger. Sam has to make everything so fucking difficult. He bites into it until his tongue bleeds, because Sam’s got a fuse twice as long as Dean’s and if he lights it he’s not winning that one. He says, “Sure. Yeah. You making good money here, at least?”

He gets a smile for that, brilliant with relief and wide enough to squeeze up Sam’s eyes. “Really good. Like, stupidly. Especially for the workload. Jack’s not exactly a hassle.” He reaches, almost puts a hand on the doll’s head but stops when Dean’s eyebrows go up.

“Hello,” says the doll, motionless. There’s a whirr first, the recording kicking on, the only reason Dean doesn’t jump a foot in the air and then smash the thing. “My name is Jack. Can we be friends?” It’s still tilted slightly too far forward, dead gaze straight ahead so it’s staring at an empty midpoint of the table.

“Sam, I swear to fucking God.”

Sam laughs, short and strangled, and he actually goes for it this time: hand on the doll’s head, fingers combing through the wig. Stares right back at Dean the whole time and his smile is strained now but not enough, not like he’s aware he’s doing something insane. “Yeah, I know, I think it’s the humidity. It must mess up the trigger functions. Listen, I’m really glad you’re here, but,” and here it comes, but then all Sam says is, “I gotta get him down. For—don’t give me shit about this, I told you there’s cameras.” He colors a little, some shred of manly decency left. “For a nap. Can you wait ten minutes? I’ll make you dinner.”

Dean scoffs over another wave of relief, up his throat and thick in his mouth. “How about you point me in the direction of the freezer and I’ll warm up the Hot Pockets myself so you don’t burn the house down?”

“Yeah, screw off. I might surprise you.” Smug little shit. It’s comfortable for a second, it’s how things should be, and then Sam scoops the doll up. No way the cameras are so high-res he needs to hold it like that, gentle like it might bruise where there’s no blood, like it might flop over where there’s no give and not even a joint. It’s life-size to a toddler, dressed in honest-to-god kids’ clothes, but it doesn’t look real until it’s facing away. The hair is convincing. Effort went into the overall effect, the shape and the wardrobe, but the skin is dead white and the face is a generic suggestion of features. Sam shifts it onto one hip and shrugs one of its arms around his back to hold it steady, tidies the papers and books from the table into his other hand. “I’ll be right back,” he says, and pauses when Dean only nods. “You’re gonna be here?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” It’s a rush, Sam asking for him. Been about a decade since the last time that happened.

Sam nods back at that, grins so his dimples show, and off he goes. The doll’s eyes are vacant over his shoulder, aimed to the left of Dean’s head. The damn thing blinks, too. One of those. Again the priorities seem off, talking and blinking built in but not much of a face.

Sam turns the corner and Dean grabs a paper that dropped from one of the folders. His stomach spins over tight and cold, unease solidifying into fear. He pulls his phone out, hits the only contact that matters. “This is John Winchester. I can’t be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son Dean…” “Dad,” he says into the empty air. “I’m with Sam. There’s something up with him. Something bad, I don’t think he’s… uh, doing real well. You gotta call me back.” He cradles the phone after he hangs up. He didn’t expect Dad to answer, but maybe if he’s listening to the messages he’ll call back. If it’s for Sammy. He doesn’t, and Dean’s left looking at the paper. Sam’s scrawl in blue around the edges, correcting. The middle of the page is all block capitals pushed too deep into the paper, the unwieldy handwriting of a child.

By the time Sam comes back Dean’s down to two options.

He circles the downstairs of the house and it’s grim. Like the real estate agent furnished it for pictures and this freak with his doll-kid moved in without changing a single thing. Library with a week’s dust on the out-of-tune piano and long sets of matching books. He tugs one off the shelf and its spine cracks for the first time when he flips it open halfway through. This paralyzing is not an easy matter; certain nerve centers have to be found and pierced and the dose while not inflicting death must be severe enough to stop movement, and a great big splashing illustration of a wasp. It is no use the mother carefully paralyzing the insect if her child is going to kill it at the first bite. It must eat carefully; its table manners must be correct. It devours the other parts but carefully avoids going in the direction of the vital organs… “Gross.” He slaps the book shut. The gilt on the pages’ edges has rubbed off on his fingers.

In the living room there’s nothing, not a dirty mug on a side table, not a book on the couch. Sam’s coat and shoes are in the hall closet, lined up neat. Upstairs is worse, from the thirty seconds he risks it. Couple locked doors, a master bedroom in about eighteen shades of white without so much as a footprint in the carpet. Door to the kid’s room is ajar and Sam’s murmuring, talking to that thing. But then, next to that, Sam’s room. Some clothes dropped on a chair. His textbooks stacked with their edges square on the dresser. They’re dusty too. His laptop in the drawer of the rickety desk, powered down and buried under a catalog of courses from last semester, and when Dean hits the power button nothing happens.

So.

So either Sam’s lost it or something’s got its claws in him.

Sam makes a little noise when he gets back to the kitchen, annoyed but fond, relieved to be out of it but already wants it back; Dean’s heard it from single moms after they tiptoe out of their kids’ rooms and back to him. “You got him all wired up,” Sam says, and then again that blank frozen white smile before he laughs like that was a joke. “I just got him down,” he’d said when Dean showed up. There’s no security camera so good he has to fake a doll waking up from a nap.

Dean laughs back, knows it doesn’t sound sincere. Thing about this situation is. He should just take Sam and go, whether Sam knows it’s for the best or not, but Sam’s not exactly portable anymore. Dean could maybe win a fight, but that doesn’t get him to the car. “Hey,” he says, scratching at the underside of the table. “So when’d you turn into Susie Homemaker? Or is this place fully staffed?”

Sam fiddles with a cast-iron pan, pulling an honest-to-God whole onion from a wire basket hanging over the chopping board. He shoots Dean his absolute bitchiest eyebrows. “Seriously? I clean up after myself and make some food. You know, stuff you do all the time. I’ve been living on my own, Dean, I had to adjust.” He’s dicing the onion, which he sure as shit didn’t learn from Dean. It does sound stupid when he says it like that. Except he was just talking to a doll.

“Are you, though? Living on your own?” Dean sprawls back in his chair, studies the appliances some more, makes it a point to consider whether he could get any of them to the car and how much they’d be worth so he’s distracted, he doesn’t mean anything by it, when he asks, “Doesn’t the man of the house ever show up? Figure I should be worried about it if he does, I’m probably not the element he wants around his little bundle of joy.”

Sam tips the onion into the pan and pulls down a bulb of garlic. He doesn’t look at Dean. “Don’t get me fired.”

“Who’s getting you fired? I just want to know if I’m sneaking out the back door anytime soon.”

“He’s on a business trip, since you’re so concerned. But I’m not losing the easiest legitimate money I’ve ever made because he gets an alert on his credit card and comes back and finds the lock on the study door picked.”

His tone on legitimate is a lot to take given he’s six feet and change that Dad and Dean bought for him on illegitimate and if Dean didn’t have more pressing concerns he’d hassle him for the study. Like Sam knows the first thing about having a study in the house, about having a house at all. He’s the fucking help. None of that matters right now; once Sam’s in the passenger seat and they’re on their way to Dad, Sam can go right back to annoying the hell out of him. “Whatever, man. Look, forget it, I’m here for a reason, okay?”

“Right.” Sam pauses over the cutting board, shoulders sloping. Dean can’t see his expression. “There’s always another hunt, and it’s always special, or different, or—” He shakes his head. “Answer’s no.”

“I wouldn’t ask for some hunt, I got it loud and clear when you left. Special and different as in saving lives, not your thing. Fine. This ain’t about that, it’s Dad.”

Now he turns. “What about him? Is he hurt?” It’s a halfway-there question, Sam’s determination to charge right at reality faltering short of is he dead because he can afford to, because Dean will step in.

“No,” Dean says, even though. Even though. “He hasn’t been back in a few days, though. He was hunting and he hasn’t checked in, hasn’t answered me, nothing.”

Sam nods, jaw tight. For a second he looks like himself, and he might whine and bitch about it but he always comes through, so for that second Dean has him back. Then Sam blinks too slowly and frowns like he lost track of something, set it down and isn’t sure where, and he says, “I’m sure he’s fine, Dean. You should stay here, though, right? Just until he calls?”

“You kidding me?” He’s nauseous with it, with how close that was. It burns his fingertips. “I’m going to find him, Sammy. You gotta come with me.”

“Dean…” He sighs, almost laughs a little, just as incredulous and in the opposite direction. “I can’t leave—”

“The doll,” Dean says. “No, what, you can’t walk out on ten pounds of ceramic? Wow, Sam, who knew you had it in you? All this loyalty and dedication, where was that when you—”

“Bad time?” says someone else.

She’s hot. She’s really fucking hot, and her makeup’s a little smeared under the eyes like she slept in it and she’s wearing a leather jacket, shedding it as she enters the room. Huge brown eyes and a cold confidence to the way she asks like she hopes the answer is yes. Dean should be into her. He isn’t, even before she crosses to Sam and slides an arm around his waist and his stomach revolts like she's diseased, like it's communicable and she's infecting Sam, he decides he hates her. She’s the kind of girl Dean’s into so she’s the wrong kind of girl for Sam.

“Ruby.” Sam pulls her in, smiles at Dean stiff and defiant, the face he made when he signed up for soccer when he knows he needs that time to train. “This is my brother Dean.”

“Oh, wow. I’ve heard so much about you.” Syrupy-sincere, so earnest she has to be joking. Like a parody of the kind of girl Sam would date.

“Yeah, I’m sure I could say the same if Sammy’d write a postcard now and then.” He trails his gaze over her, deliberate, should be no hardship but something about her. Like he’s looking at a corpse. Sam didn’t say she was his girlfriend. Sam loves his boxes and labels. “You know you are way out of my brother’s league.”

She laughs. “Well, one of us sure is slumming it.” And she dismisses him with a flick of her gaze, turns to Sam and says, “It’s past dinnertime. Can I help?”

“I got it, Ruby. I was just—” He squeezes her one last time, steps away and gets some stuff from the fridge, strips of meat marinating in a pan. He kicks the pantry door closed as he turns away, a narrow thing set right next to the refrigerator. Dean hadn’t noticed it at all before.

“Distracted,” she finishes for him. She chews on a corner of her fingernail, grinning past her hand at Dean. “We worry about Sam. He needs to keep his strength up.”

She’s baiting him, is all, but Dean bites into it right through the roof of his mouth. “You been sick, Sam?”

“I’m not sick. I’m fine, they just—” He stops, gaze caught in the doorway, and sighs.

“Jesus,” Dean says, with more emphasis than he’d have liked in front of this bitch, but. The doll’s standing there, set in the middle of the hallway staring blank down the barrel of the kitchen. It’s wearing slippers and striped pajamas like he doesn’t see outside of old cartoons.

“Come on…” Sam swoops in like it can get cold, cradles it against his chest.

“My bad.” Ruby tugs at his shirt when he gets close enough, smiling lopsided. “I missed him so much is all. Can I watch him while you finish up?”

“You’re the worst.” But he cracks, smiles back and holds the doll out to her. “Dean, you want to go with them? I’ll have the food ready soon.”

Dean, who can’t think of anything he wants less, nods and props a grin all over his face. “Lady’s choice.”

The thing about a mancave is it’s hard to fuck one up. So a real estate agent kitted this place out from a bulk supply catalog and hit all their other properties while they were at it. Not like Dean’s used to playing pool only on the very finest of tables. This shit might be the midlife crisis version of an Easy-Bake Oven, but it doesn’t have any cigarette burns or sticky spots, and right now it’s all Dean’s. “Oh, we’re going to slaughter him together, you and me,” he tells the table, running a hand down the baize.

“Yikes,” says Ruby, but then laughs and adds, “Want me to help you warm her up?” already spinning a cue over her wrist. She’s flirty without any particular intention or drive behind it, just habitual. Again Dean thinks that he should like her, that if he met her anywhere else he’d want to leave with her at last call. That he should be proud of Sam, at least, rather than assuming he’s in over his head.

“You’d have to put Chucky there down for a second.”

“Oh, Jack won’t mind. It’s for the greater good.” She grins sideways at the doll, kisses its cheek. She puts the cue down first so she can sit it on the couch with both hands, fix its hair. She touches it the same way Sam does, only more so, through tender to reverent. Past her there’s a painting, huge behind the couch. It is possible to fuck a mancave up, Dean finds; just put a screamingly oversized portrait of the nativity scene on the wall.

Ruby’s eyebrows lift when she catches him staring. “Not a fan of the classics?”

He shrugs. “Not much of a praying man, is all.” It’s a bad painting, he suspects. Not like he’d know. But it’s ugly, the dark colors muddy and the brights smeared. Everyone’s faces are empty, doll-blank. It looks expensive but only in the stupid way.

“Hm.” She blinks her long dark lashes. “That’s funny. Sam sure is.”

“He’s going through one of those phases, huh.” The balls are racked already, sitting there decoratively. He shoves them around a little to make sure they’re not glued down, or made out of thin plastic. Like fake fruit. “How about you?”

“Oh, Dean.” She grins. “It would shock you how devout I am. So, what are we playing for?”

“Information? Sounds like you’ve known the family a while.” He nods at Jack, breaks. He pockets a stripe in one. “I want to know how the hell this is an arrangement worth cold hard cash.”

She laughs, loud and startled, then lifts a shoulder. “Sorry. I keep forgetting how strange this seems from the outside. It’s not some big secret.” She scopes out the table, still unmoved by his play which is a shame. It’s not often he gets to show off right from the start. “Mr. Vaught’s son died and he couldn’t handle it.” She makes a face, what are you gonna do. “He’s brilliant. Has a lot to offer the world. If this is what it takes to keep him working…” He feels bad for her, she’s so starry-eyed. That’s got to be a bit of a crush on the boss. “I don’t know…” She pockets three in one, and the pity’s gone. “Everyone grieves differently.”

So it’s a ghost. There’s maybe some cult shit, this painting and her on about being devout, and that’s how they’ve got Sam, he’s soft in the head for religious crap. But the cult’s engine is just a ghost. “Right,” he says.

She looks sidelong at the doll and smiles. “He pays a few of us enough to keep the bubble floating. It’s why he doesn’t want Jack to leave the house, I guess. Harder to pretend if other people are poking holes. So I bring over whatever Sam needs.”

“Oh, yeah. Wouldn’t want to leave small fry alone.” Sam’s jacket and shoes neat in the closet. Sam hasn’t gotten any tidier. He just doesn’t use them. “Ever, I guess.”

Her face twitches, a tightness around her eyes and a tug down in her lips before she covers it. “Not never ever.”

“Uh-huh.” Again the pressure in his chest, pushing his heart thin against his ribcage. This ghost has its claws in to the bone if it’s got Sam locked up indoors for months on end. He checks his phone but nothing. Nothing from Dad. Dean’s picturing what happens when you yank something out that’s sunk to the bone, picturing the mess it makes of muscle and flesh on the way out, the splinters of gray. If he gets rid of the ghost and that doesn’t fix Sam. If it makes Sam worse. He says it to needle her, because he still kind of thinks she put that doll in the doorway, or a little to pick at the cult thread: “Can we turn that thing around?” He gestures to the painting. “Plenty of fish eyes staring in here without the whole royal family.”

“Hello,” says the doll. There’s no warning this time, no buzz from the recording starting itself up. The voice is still tonelessly cheery. “I’m not sure we can be friends after all.”

“‘Scuse me?” Dean stares at it.

“Hm?” Ruby’s head tilts, her dark hair spilling over a bare arm. “Sorry, yeah, the humidity kicks it on sometimes.”

Nothing else happens, not yet, with sunlight strong through the windows picking out dust motes and spinning them over the table. Dean smiles. “Nothing,” he says. “Guess I misheard.”

Ruby steps away, toward the couch, staring up. Dean places it, what makes it stand out so much, aside from its size and the fact that it sucks. There’s nothing else on the walls, not anywhere, not even one of those strained staged family photos where everyone hates each other’s guts. He thinks she’s really going to take the painting down. Then she picks Jack up instead. “You know what people don’t get about him?”

“About the—”

She’s already continued, pointing to the left of the painted cradle. “Joseph. He gets a bad rap. Or, I don’t know, he gets no rap.”

“Never thought about him one way or the other.” He grins. “I know what I’d think if I came home and she said an angel did it.”

He said it to offend her. She grins back, mischievous. “Exactly. That’s what everyone’s thinking. Even if they believe the God part. Raising someone else’s kid, like tending another man’s garden.” She traces the outline of the doll’s ear, still smiling at Dean. She’s right in a shaft of sunlight that lights her eyes gold. “I don’t know, though. I think if you get to raise someone really special, someone who’s going to change the world. That’s noble, right? That’s an honor.”

“Guess so.” He tries to keep smiling back. She sounds like she’s joking, arch like she’s not putting weight on any single word. It’s just a weird thing to say and only weirder if she doesn’t believe it.

“And,” she says, almost laughing, hand flat to the doll’s ear now and pressing the other to her chest like she doesn’t want it to hear. “I bet fucking the Virgin Mary isn’t too bad a perk.”

Ruby doesn’t stay, at least. She takes the doll to the kitchen when Dean says he’ll put stuff away. He doesn’t, just hangs back a second and then follows in case he overhears anything useful. Instead he gets enough silence that he starts worrying and rounds the corner to find her eating his baby brother’s face off.

“Oh, for the love of God,” he says, shielding his eyes. “In front of the kid?”

Ruby pulls away, no longer silent. There’s audible smacking. “They’ve got to learn sometime.” Sam doesn’t say anything, just looks pleased with himself the way he does when Dad sides with him in an argument, always the moment Dean realizes he's only taking the side he imagines Dad would want him to. At least he does until Ruby slides her hand into his back pocket and then it’s her turn to get bitched out by his eyebrows. “Fine,” she sighs, and turns fast on her heel to grab her jacket. “Call me if you need anything,” light like she doesn’t mean anything special, like she’s offering to run a pint of ice cream over.

“We’ll be fine.” Sam scoops Jack up off the counter, both hands under his arms, arranges his limbs in long gentle strokes. “Dean’s great with kids. He’ll be the first to tell you.” Again that second-too-late smile that begs off on a joke.

“Sure we will. Hell, I’ll even make the grocery runs while I’m here. Go ahead and grab yourself a vacation.” He pastes the smile on, thick and all below the eyes.

She cuts right past him, one more heavy look at Sam, gets her promise but at least she’s leaving, at least Dean’s the one still here for when—when what, exactly, because if the ghost hasn’t attacked Sam yet, months into his being all but trapped here. And if it lets her come and go. That’s an impressively long game for something that, in Dean’s experience, exists in a constant state of reaction, and even that more to things that happened eighty years ago than to what’s in front of its face in living color.

What Dean is here for, most immediately, is dinner with a doll. Sam sets the table for three and Jack gets the head of the table again with an empty plate and a napkin and a full set of silverware, and no amount of staring at the display forces the hint down Sam’s throat so Dean says, “You sure we belong at the adults’ table? There isn’t a little round one with a tiny tea pot we should be using?”

“Fuck off,” Sam says, no force to it because he’s not mad, not mad because he’s not embarrassed. He doesn’t even bring up the phantom cameras again. Dean wouldn’t believe him if he did, at this point; he’s been looking and he hasn’t seen a single one. The freak dad might have hidden cameras in the showerhead or whatever, but there’s no reason for the ones in the kitchen to be James Bond levels of covert. “You want butter for the toast?” Sam asks, and Dean shakes himself out of another scan for suspicious nanny-cam teddy bears to nod.

It comes in a butter dish, a little porcelain boat with a lid. Dean’s never seen one in real life. He doesn’t say shit about it because the stir-fry smells too good for whining before he’s gotten at least half of it down. He heaps his plate, heavy on the rice and steak and light on the vegetables, and fills his mouth before he speaks to be obnoxious. “Not bad for a guy who microwaved a fork last time he tried to cook.”

“Sure.” Sam doesn’t rise to that, either, barely registers it except as a chance to launch his own spiel. “It’s a great opportunity. I mean, it’s an honor—and I’ve learned a lot.”

Dean coughs, inhaling rice. “You could have taken home ec instead of theater if you were that worried about these kinds of opportunities. You think no one’s going to put a ring on your finger unless you can get supper on the table by six, or what?”

“You’re such a jerk. I just—you were right, okay, you and Dad. About some things. I didn’t really appreciate what went into it, the… the money and time and skillset. To take care of people. I had you taking that on for me, so. Thanks.”

Dean can’t fit this into his head. Sam’s even doing the sappy puppy-dog eyes. It’s so exactly the kind of thing he wishes Sam would say it floods his gut with disgust. He doesn’t get stuff like this unless it’s rotten underneath. “Bitch,” he says, just to say it. He hates the way it comes out, breathless like Sam punched him in the gut.

The butter dish breaks down the middle. It’s not all that dramatic, not loud enough or messy enough. There’s still no way it happened naturally.

Sam scoops it up, eyes down the whole time. Dean’s face heats because he has an irrational urge to defend himself. To tell a ghost he didn’t mean it, it’s a joke. It’s getting dark outside, the colors draining out of the room, and when Sam stands to toss the dish in the trash he hits the light. The room glares into Dean’s eyes until Sam twists the dimmer down to the candlelight level, visible but soft. He should ask for it back up, in case; he’s going to need to see the corners of the room. But nothing else is happening.

Well. Well, not yet. Dean hasn’t pissed it off enough yet.

Sam twists his fork around his plate when he sits back down. “Okay,” he says. “So—I guess you know.”

“Yeah, your girlfriend spilled the backstory. You two should have gotten your stories straight if you were gonna lie to me about shacking up with a ghost.”

“I didn’t lie to you, I left out the part that made it sound—”

“Right, you left out the truth. Seriously, Sam, the part that made it sound like exactly what it freaking is?”

“The part that was gonna start a fight. Look, Dean, I was freaked out at first too, ’course I was, and I’m not insane, I know it’s weird, I get it. And it sounds dangerous—”

“Yeah, it sounds a little risky on the surface. You can see why I’m pulling a classic overreaction.”

“—but I’ve been living here for three months and I'm fine! He’s not like the things we dealt with, you know? He’s not a monster, he—I mean, he’s a kid, he’s temperamental or whatever, but he’s never hurt me.”

“For now, maybe.” His heart is beating too high in his chest, aches in his throat. He thinks again that there’s no way, that even if he knocked Sam out and dragged his dumb ass to the car, that gets them to the next rest stop. If Sam doesn’t hurl himself out of a moving vehicle just to prove a point. “Ghosts go bad. You know that as well as I do, Sammy, they can’t hold on. It sucks, and I’m sorry, but that rope is fucking fraying and it’s not safe just because it hasn’t snapped yet.”

“No,” Sam says, smiling, relieved, like he’s finally identified the problem and this’ll be the clincher, Dean will get it now: “This is just how Jack is, he’s—” His gaze tracks sideways and goes vacant. “I mean, he’s…”

“Hell, Sam, what do you think the discussion is here?”

“This isn’t a case.” It looks like an effort, but Sam pulls himself together from whatever scattered him, hauls his spine straight and meets Dean’s eyes. “This isn’t some salt-and-burn. This is what it was all for, this is the reason I’m here.”

“What—”

“The discussion is, can I trust you around him.”

Dean’s hands ache. He doesn’t know how he’s going to explain this to Dad. It doesn’t matter yet, though. What matters is: He’s going to get Sam to Dad alive so there’s something to explain, so the explanation matters. He nods. “We’re leaving,” he says. “You don’t want me burning Pinocchio over there, fine. This ain’t my case unless you make it my case.”

Sam scoffs. “I’m not leaving.”

“Okay. I got Dad missing, so there’s that to deal with. But if I have to go get Bobby, and drive him back here so between us we can handle this, that’s how you want all of us to spend our time, fine. Or you can come with me, and I’ll leave the ghost.”

Sam opens his mouth, and Dean can see it’s to object, that he’s only getting angrier and just as snotty, he’s not worried about Dad and that’s the ghost fucking with him, has to be, but Dean’s white-hot with it and anyway. Anyway this works for him better than it does Dad. It’s ugly and he wishes he hadn’t thought it but he did, in the second before he throws his glass past Sam’s head. It smashes against the wall, shards and water everywhere. It doesn’t relieve the pressure building behind his eyes. The wind leaves Sam, though. If Dad did something like that Sam would rise to meet him, jeering to see what comes next. It’s Dean, though, and there’s a festering part of him that knows Sam caves for Dean because he feels sorry for him, because he thinks it’s pathetic.

Sam clears his throat. “Not—tonight,” he says. “Whatever else you think—”

Since the glass hit the wall there’s been a sound building Dean couldn’t place, his tinnitus acting up but behind it something groaning. He knows when the table caves in, splintering like something huge hit it from above. It collapses down the middle to the ground, food and tablecloth and dishes puddling in the center.

Sam heaves a sigh and stands. “Great.” He picks the doll up and settles it against himself, brushing its striped shirt off. “I was going to say, whatever else you think, Jack still has feelings. I’ll calm him down and ask Ruby to stay with him, and tomorrow morning—” The ceiling cracks next, just a hairline fracture and a shower of plaster, and Sam puts a hand over that thing’s head like it’s going to be what gets hurt if the light comes down on them. “Jack,” he says sharply, “we’re gonna talk about this. We’ll figure it out. I’m not leaving you alone, okay?”

“Sam,” Dean says, “what the fuck—”

“Because you were so mature about it? You’d have snapped the table if you could have, the glass was just more in your weight class. Come here.”

“I don’t fucking think so,” but he does, because he needs to get Sam out of this room. Not like it’ll help, not like the ghost is stuck in the kitchen and they’re magically safe over the threshold, but if he can get Sam out from under this ceiling before it goes and get his hands on some salt—

“See?” Sam catches his elbow and tugs him over, holds him still easier than Dean would want to admit. “It’s fine, Jack. He didn’t mean it. He was just upset.” He shrugs an arm over Dean’s shoulders so he’s holding them both, so Dean is close enough he can’t avoid touching a cold little hand pressed between them. And it is cold, colder than it would be if it were just porcelain, but he wonders why the room isn’t—no catastrophic failure of the thermostat, no trace of his or Sam’s breath visible in the air. Nothing happens, it keeps being nothing, and the ringing in his ears dies away. “Okay,” Sam says, relief sharp enough that Dean rethinks whether he’s too far gone to be scared, and he holds onto Dean tighter before he steps away. “I’m putting Jack to bed. You want to get your stuff out of the car? I’m serious, Dean, I’m not leaving tonight.”

Sam’s playing for time. He’s not going to leave tomorrow, either. He hadn’t even promised to, had he, not exactly. The house bears down on Dean, all the empty pristine rooms. “Sure,” he says. He’s not going to the car.

Sam pauses in the doorway. Now that he’s not pretending there’s nothing subtle about the way he holds Jack, petting the thing’s hair and tilting his face against it, bouncing it in his arms like a sick baby. Dean almost wishes it would respond, move, even give a little in its limbs but it remains corpse-stiff. It makes Sam look crazy. Only then he smiles at Dean, dazzling, sheepish. “Sorry about this mess,” he says. “I’m still—I’m really glad you’re here, dude.”

Dean nods. Smiles back, even. He’s glad too.

There are other bedrooms. Dean takes the master anyway. If Sam’s going to do a whole bedtime ritual with a chunk of glass, do everything but brush its teeth, then he’s going to regret it when he sees what Dean gets up to unsupervised.

Not that much, actually, because he can’t go to the car. Like hell is he leaving this house without Sam, even for a second. Jack knows better than to let him back in. So he can’t get his stuff all over, oil some guns on the white bedspread. He bangs around the master bathroom trying to find toothpaste and a spare brush, but there’s not even a primary brush. Whoever this motherfucker is, he set Sam up, left him to get his brain wrung out by this ghost, and Dean wrenches open every drawer in both rooms but they’re all empty. Still no photos, not on the walls and not on the dresser. Like the whole thing is still blank for future inhabitants, for dolls, like it’s a game. Like Sam and Ruby are playing house.

“Seriously?” Sam is just outside the room, holding out toothpaste and a brush still in the plastic. Every step Dean took in the room shows, bootprints in the thick white pile of the carpet. Sam doesn’t touch it, socks on the far side of the doorway. Annoyed, but not as annoyed as Dean hoped.

“Daddy Dearest move out entirely, or what?” He makes a show of closing the desk drawer. Not so much as a paperclip or a parking ticket.

“I don’t know, Dean, I didn’t go through his things.”

“Really? Not your business? Because you know what this looks like. His son dies and he can’t deal with the ghost, won’t get rid of it, but he can’t face it, either?”

Sam’s mouth twists. Dean’s almost unearthed something. But he only says, “You can be messed up about something without it being your fault.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Dean reaches for the kit.

Sam doesn’t come any closer. “Don’t get freaked out if I’m not in my room. I’m probably staying with Jack.”

“So I won’t try lighting his bed on fire after all, got it.” He doesn’t address it, the fact of it, that he won’t make it an hour before he’s outside Sam’s door listening to be sure he’s breathing.

“That’s not funny. This is exactly why I’m gonna be up all night trying to calm him down.” He keeps ignoring Dean’s hand. It’s not the kind of thing Sam’s stubborn about; it’s the kind of thing, actually, he gives on fastest.

“Did you meet him?” Dean jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the bed. “The man of the house.”

It’s not a twitch this time, it’s a spasm. Sam’s whole face jerks before it smooths back out. “Yeah. ’Course I did. Not for long, I mean, he was, you know, leaving. On the, on his business trip. But if you’re thinking he’s, what, not real or something.”

Dean shrugs, like that was what he was asking. He needs to get Sam out. The follow-up questions are for after, three beers in and under the sky. He’s the one who gives up and crosses the room to take the toothbrush. “I’m getting my shoes on the bed.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Knock yourself out. My job security fucked itself when we put a crack in the ceiling.”

“Bitch,” Dean says. Nothing happens, except Sam says “jerk” and punches his arm before he turns away. Which maybe means something usable, that Jack can’t come in here specifically or that he can’t be everywhere in the house at once. Or maybe means Sam really is a ghost whisperer, at least enough to get them both through the night alive.

Dean doesn’t mean to sleep. He lies back on the bed, fingering the key to the Impala in his pocket, and his plan is to give it an hour before he gives in to the tug in his chest and checks on Sam. Then he’ll jimmy his way into the study. If it’s locked, he wants in. A loose thread in his jeans catches on a hangnail and he rips it loose, pictures it again, the way he frays without Sam or Dad to hold him together. He’s not built right, he knows that. He could try to leave without Sam, to get help, but he’d unravel on the way. He’d leave himself as so much string along the highway. Even with Sam, this version of Sam—

But it happens, abrupt as throwing a switch. He falls asleep. When he wakes he stumbles to his feet before his brain catches up, blinks against the black. There’s no light in the room, none, like the depths of the countryside but they’re not that far out. There should be the smear of the town down the hill, maybe some of those 50-watt security floodlights that thump on every time a deer stumbles through someone’s backyard. Instead the windows aren’t even a gray night-sky square in the dark and he has to grope his way to the door on trust, on what he remembers of the bed’s position.

He didn’t leave the door closed. It’s shut and he never shut it, so when his hand finds the seam in the dark he’s sure it won’t open.

It does, easy. He stumbles out and the hallway isn’t black like the room was. Yellow from some forgotten lamp downstairs laps at the bannister, green from a nightlight drips from the crack in the door to Jack’s room. At the far end of the hall is a window and there it is, the night sky, pale with the lights from town against the clouds and the fog. He glances over his shoulder but still there’s nothing, like the windows in the bedroom were bricked over in the night. He’s not sure why he’s awake, now, but it was something, a sound, not just his nerves. Not like it matters. He goes where he was always headed, straight to Sam.

He said he’d be in Jack’s room so Dean pushes the door open a few inches more. The light, it’s those stick-on stars on the ceiling. Sam used to have those, carried them around in an old cigar box. Dean would line them up on the windowsill to get as much sun as possible and they’d still fade fast. These ones are different, strong as Christmas lights. They pick everything out at least in silhouette. Sam, too big for the bed, is curled on his side on top of the blankets, shoulder rising and falling with his breath. The doll is on its back, pale face green in the light, eyes aimed unblinking at the ceiling. It’s tucked in perfectly, like an illustration, quilt and sheet folded over just so.

He hears it again, now: someone’s crying. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the doll. It’s faint, disembodied. Echoes a little, turns back on itself. Whatever else it is, it’s a kid. That tired disconsolate purposeless keening. If it had a face, a real one, it’d be smeared with tears but its eyes would be dry. It just can’t stop the sound.

“Hey,” he says.

Sam doesn’t wake up. Which—he’s been out of the life a while. So maybe.

“Hey,” Dean tries again, and the sobbing trails off. “Hey, you—” He’s addressing the ceiling as much as anything. He makes himself look at the doll, as stupid as it feels. “You, uh, you need anything?”

It sniffles. At any rate it sounds like it does. Dean’s really starting to wish it would move just so he doesn’t feel fucking insane.

“Look, I’m up anyway. So if you need something, I’m offering.” It’s colossally dumb, in that he’s talking to a doll and in that he’s negotiating with a monster.

He takes it back, next. He doesn’t wish it would move. That was a dumbass wish. The thing sits up, hinges at the waist and its spine levers straight. It doesn’t look alive, or inhabited. It looks like a hand he can’t see pulled it up. And then, like the hand shoved the arms up, both straight out with the elbows locked. It’s a grotesque parody of the gesture but he recognizes it. Fuck, he thinks. Fuck. It hasn’t hurt Sam yet, not hurt him exactly, but they’re both royally screwed if this thing gets its fangs in Dean’s head.

Only, the thing is, he figures that’s not what it wants. He’s willing to bet it wants him gone. Which is something he knows how to handle. If it attacks him first—if Sam wakes up because that little demon is trying to knife Dean—that’ll make things real cut and dried real fast.

“Christ,” Dean says under his breath, but he crosses the room. The doll doesn’t track his movement, its gesture still aimed with its gaze, vacant toward the door. “Okay. You better not bite me.” It takes a few false starts, because even if he’s going to use himself as an object lesson he doesn’t need to like it, but he gets a grip on the cold hard torso and tugs it out of bed. He tries to hold it like he would a kid, like he would—anyway. Anyway he’s not sure how Sam does it. There’s a lot more effort involved, getting its limbs right, and there’s no payoff, no feeling that it wants to be held, no evidence that he’s helping.

The crying starts again, but lower, dwindling. Dean grits his teeth. But it does sound like a kid, it sounds like Sammy used to, up all night with a fever too low for Dean to bother their dad about but too high for him to sleep through, so he’d walk the baby up and down the narrow aisle between the motel beds. He knows this part, knows to move and pat its back.

Sam sits up, straight and sudden, silent. He looks too much like the doll had. “Dean?” he says, sleep-muddled, and then Dean can see even in outline the way he goes taut, coiling.

“We’re good,” Dean says quickly. “Hey, we’re good. Just trying not to wake you up.” Come on, you little fucker, he thinks, but the doll just sniffles itself toward calm. No knife in evidence. He’s started to pick up on something, a hummingbird whir against his palm from deep in its ribs, like it has the impossibly fast heartbeat of a tiny animal. “You don’t think Casper would let you know if I tried any funny business?”

Sam lapses back against the headboard, spine curving. Even that’s too small for him, hits him below his shoulderblades. “Shit. Yeah, sorry.” Embarrassed like that was a crazy conclusion to jump to when Dean threatened it at least twice. Dean’s grip on the doll tightens. “Thanks,” Sam adds, warm. Dean doesn’t need to see him to know the glowing sappy look trained on him, to know it’d be the grand prize of the week if he’d earned it, if Sam were thinking straight and still felt he deserved it.

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. He’s got a hand on the back of the doll’s head and neck like it’s an infant. The shape is right, he guesses, enough to trick muscle memory into taking over.

“All right.” Sam yawns and holds his arms out. “He woke you up? We’ll be quiet.” And then, scolding but only faintly, “You know you can get me up, Jack, it’s why I’m here.”

He doesn’t want to hand the thing back, doesn’t want it near Sam again. He does it anyway. “Anyone want a midnight snack? Gonna grab myself something.” What he’s going to do is locate every grain of salt in the kitchen, but he’ll probably eat too, so it’s not a lie.

“That’s awful for your metabolism,” Sam says primly. He holds Jack up for a second as he takes him, high and admiring, a glint of teeth in his smile. Dad used to hold Sam like that on good days. Hell, Dad used to hold Dean like that. Before. “M’gonna feed Jack, though.”

“Great. Whatever the kid wants. I get sent to the principal’s office about it…”

“You’re an adult, Dean. He’s growing. Just bring me up one of the glass bottles in the fridge, yeah? If you’re going anyway.” Sam kicks him as he swings his legs off the bed, not remotely an accident, and adds “oops.”

“Yeah, bite me,” Dean says, and flips him off. That feeling is back, as he makes his way to the stairs and down them, the haze of being half-asleep in a room that’s too dark, in a darkness that’s too thick. He isn’t moving as quickly as he means to, but then he’s in the kitchen like he skipped everything in between. He stares into the stinging light of the open refrigerator, leftovers in glass containers with snap-on lids instead of takeout stuffed into plastic from slightly-older takeout. A half an onion in some tiny twee bowl with a lid especially for half-onions. The bottles Sam asked for are lined up along the top shelf. They’re store-bought, labeled. Just protein shakes. He thinks of the orange juice they hand out after a blood donation and isn’t sure why.

The door to the pantry is ajar. Nothing in the fridge is ready to eat. He’ll scrounge up some peanut butter, at first he thinks that, but once he steps into the pantry he thinks: There you are, you sneaky bastard. Like he expected the next door, the one at the far end of the pantry, narrow, leading to stairs that spiral down. They’re rough wood past cinderblock walls but the bare bulb works, the dangling string that hits his face as he passes.

It’s cold in the basement, so cold he expects the next thing too. All one wide room; it must cost a fortune to keep it frozen this way. A generator somewhere in the dark roars so it thuds in his chest. They don’t surprise him, the bodies. Two girls and a guy. Their eyes are gone. Not gone like scooped out, which he’s seen before; gone like they burned from the inside, sockets blackened but faces otherwise intact. They don’t look like Sam, and he takes some comfort in that. Both girls are blonde. The guy is smaller than Sam and his face is rounder, short hair parted neatly on the side. But Sam is different, Sam is special, Jack won’t hurt him.

It rips through the cocoon he’s in, the spiderweb press of it against his brain, when he places it. Ghosts don’t eat, so feed Jack what.

He careens off walls on his way back up the stairs, both flights, and he hits Jack’s room still running. He can’t make out details, not because it’s dark but because it’s too bright, the whole room swamped with white and ringing through his skull. There are shapes, only just: Sam slumped in the rocking chair and the thing, the doll, whatever screamingly bright thing is in the doll, has its mouth at Sam’s throat and it’s pulling something out of him, something glowing. Dean grabs it. It burns his hands, an awful bone-deep instant pain. Fingers locked and spasming around the little bird-boned torso he lifts it up and brings it down facefirst on the bedpost.

It works.

He didn’t expect it to, doesn’t know what to do when the head smashes easy as any porcelain doll and the light and noise goes out like he shut off the oxygen supply to a fire.

“Fuck,” he says. The body falls out of his hands. He can’t move them. The pain radiates up his arms, cuts into his stomach, floods his mouth.

“Jack,” Sam says, slurring. And then, awful, bone-deep, instant: “Jack.” He crumples out of the chair, long limbs ragdoll-loose, and pulls the body—it’s a doll, it’s just a doll—into his arms. He curls over it on his knees, pressing it close to his chest and muttering to the cracked remains of its ear, past the caved-in gash where its face was.

Dean thinks again of fire when the house creaks, all of it at once, the inhale before combustion. There’s a snapping sound like a sail in the wind, like wings.

“Dean.” It’s not Sam coming out of it, coming back to himself; it’s not Sam’s voice and it’s from the wrong direction, but for just that second Dean wants it to be so badly he hears it anyway. Then, unmistakably from the doorway, “That really hurt.”

Fuck, Dean would say again, but the pain from his hands lances his elbows, his stomach, his throat and Sam isn’t fixed, isn’t helping. They’re too fucked to go around saying so out loud. “Well, hey,” he says instead, “looks like you came up swinging. New and improved, even. Zombie's an improvement on doll in my book.”

Jack—it’s Jack, it has to be, but it’s also the corpse from the basement. The round face, the sideswept hair, the burned-out eyes, the skin mottled with frost. He doesn’t sound like the doll, but he wouldn’t, with real vocal cords. He says, “I wanted you to come. I hoped you would.” He doesn’t sound like these things usually do, taunting or angry. He sounds confused. “Sam talks about you so much. I thought you would be different. Like you are in his stories.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dean says, nausea from the injury colliding with this, with—what, he wanted to play house, he thought would Dean fall in line and—“I’m not your goddamn mother, and neither is—”

“Oh my God,” Sam says, wiping his face. “Jesus, Jack, oh my God—”

“I’m fine. I’m sorry we scared you. This is early for me, and a dead vessel isn’t really preferable, but I can make do.” He smiles, bright and bruise-blue and crooked. “You’ve been so much more helpful than the others, Sam. Thank you.” He sighs then and the smile falls away and the lifeless skin resettles. “But I’m not done growing. I’ll need to keep eating. You know, moving forward.”

“Okay,” Sam says. He stands up fast, still clutching the doll. Dean would call this entire situation pretty goddamn alarming but this is what’s got Sam worried, stepping in front of Dean and his voice stretching thin with calm. “That’s fine, I don’t care that you’re—like this, you can—” He laughs, sudden and giddy, sets the doll on the bed and wraps his arms around Jack. “I thought you were dead,” and that’s real, or he thinks it is, that’s real joy. Dean hasn’t gotten him out of this. He’s made it worse.

Jack hugs him. Meat frozen solid cracks when he bends his elbows. Dean wonders vaguely how long before the cavities where his eyes were cave in—because that’s what glass eyes are for, right, to hold the bone in place—now that the corpse is thawing, how much longer does Jack have, and this thing nestles its rotting face under his brother’s chin.

“No.” Dean’s sweating, swallowing compulsively. He can’t look at his hands because he’s seen burns like this and he doesn’t want to know for a fact what’s hanging from the ends of his arms, the gray flesh sliding sideways, the green and the bone showing through. “You’re not doing that to him.”

Jack frowns as he pulls away. His spine cracks as he turns to face Dean. “That’s what I was concerned about.” He’s at arm’s length from Sam but just barely, fingers still in his shirt. “Dean had an awfully negative reaction. You made him sound so fun before, Sam.”

“Don’t,” Sam says, immediate, grabbing Jack’s shoulders. “Jack, listen, he’s not used to this whole thing, it’s new. And it looks strange, I’m sorry but it does, you can’t expect him to just be on board with it the minute he finds out.” Jack hesitates, and Sam’s grip eases as he smiles, says, “He’ll come around. He doesn’t even believe in angels yet, is all.”

“Angels,” Dean repeats. He can’t do anything, not without his hands. He could tackle the kid, who can’t break 5’10” or a hundred pounds, but that gets him away from Sam for about five seconds and Sam won’t run. “Sam, you gotta snap the hell out of this, man, I don’t know what this parasite did to your head in between yeerking around in dolls and dead dudes, but I need you to wake up—” He hits the wall hard enough to empty his lungs and jar his spine so it feels like all his ribs popped loose.

Jack has a hand out but never touched him, isn’t touching him now. The pressure against Dean’s chest increases in increments. “Maybe he would change his mind about me,” he says. “But he’s kind of mean. I don’t think I’d like him to stay.”

“No.” Sam tears himself out of Jack’s grasp and backs up. “Jack, stop it. Right now. I mean it.”

“It’ll be okay.” He’s desperate, attention split. The weight eases and Dean gets enough room to take a gulp of oxygen. “I’ll make you happy again. I can’t hold everything together very well right now. Switching vessels and making this one move around when it’s dead—but in a few days you won’t even miss Dean. It’ll be just like it was before.”

“What? Jack, I didn’t… Of course I miss Dean. All the time. I was happy to have you, but I never stopped missing my family.”

“But…” Jack’s hand drops slowly. “No. No, that isn’t how it works, I’m your family. Your real family. My father must have made a mistake. I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to see him, but I’ll ask him to come back and fix you and then everything will be all right.” Something goes wrong in Dean’s chest, a dull grinding pain, and on his next breath he tastes blood. He can’t move. Even if he could do fuck-all against this thing that doesn’t die when its body breaks, he can’t move. He’ll drown standing up and Sam will be stuck here with his head washed empty and their dad missing. No one will even know. No one will help Dad.

Sam backs up another few steps even as his hands close into fists. “If you kill him, I’m leaving. I’m fucking serious, Jack, I’ll leave you.”

The force holding Dean against the wall lets up, abrupt and entire. He slides down and his hands hit the floor and the world blinks in and out of focus. It’s not getting any easier to breathe. Rib in his lung, he thinks, probably a couple of them, in both lungs if the kid has any sense.

“No you won’t.” Jack’s focus is all on Sam now. “No you won’t. You can’t. Tell me you’re staying. Say it.” The ringing is back, the vibration like a plucked string in the roof of Dean’s skull, winding up to a piercing pain ear to ear. The empty sockets in Jack’s head glow blinding white before they flicker down to gold.

When Sam’s eyes do too, when he reflects the light back and his face goes slack, Dean spits blood and shoves his elbows into the wall, trying to gain enough purchase to lever himself up. “Sam,” he says, “Sammy—”

“No.” Sam’s a little distant, a little dreamy. But he says, “I stayed because I care about you, Jack. If you hurt Dean I’m going to stop caring about you and I’m leaving for good.” He frowns, touches the side of his head. His fingers come away from his ear smeared with blood.

“Jack.” Dean pushes off the wall and makes it one step closer before his left knee gives. If this thing wants to pretend to care about Sam it better keep it up. “You can’t make him stay.” He’s not sure, not really, but he winds the memory of the night Sam left all around himself and clings to it, the sick gut-empty betrayal of it and the envy that’s coated his insides ever since, the pride. Whatever he cut out of himself at least Sam still has it. “You’ll kill him before he gives it up.” He doesn’t get through the sentence intelligibly, can’t hear himself over the ringing, but it works, maybe. Something does. The noise cuts off and the light goes out of both their eyes, his skull stops threatening to split along some new seam.

“But—” Jack says. “But if I don’t kill Dean can you stay?”

“No,” Dean says. Tries to say. It’s getting harder to spit out enough blood to speak.

Sam smiles at him. He still has that loopy-calm look like when he was little and on fever meds. “It’s okay, Dean, I got him.” And then: “Yeah, Jack, I’ll stay with you as long as you want. If Dean’s safe. And—you know. Until your father gets back.”

Jack pauses. He frowns the way Sam used to while he worked out whether a deal Dean offered was really to his advantage, whether it was worth going to bed early if it meant marshmallows in his breakfast cereal or whether there was some hidden way Dean stood to get more out of this. That wouldn’t be fair. Sam was obsessive about things being fair. As a kid, Dean thinks, but that wasn’t it. Right up until the day he left them. “All right,” Jack says, and snaps his fingers.

Dean collapses in the sudden dizzying euphoric absence of pain, every nerve ending in his body grasping suddenly at nothing. There’s air in his lungs which are whole, his vision isn’t blacking out, his chest doesn’t seize, he catches himself and flinches away from the floor before he realizes his hands are back, unmarred skin over muscle and bone and tendon all where they should be.

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to leave.” Jack pushes his hands together and faces Dean. “I understand why you’re upset,” he says carefully. “But I won’t let this happen to Sam.” He gestures at his own face. The face he’s using. “I’m so much more careful now.”

He wants Dad. He’s sick with it. He wants Dad here, to fix this; or he wants to be with Dad anywhere else so he doesn’t know this is happening. He says, hopeless, “Sam, he’s eating people.” He’s eating you, just slower.

“Yeah. Yeah.” Sam backs up another step before he sits down, suddenly at eye level, more or less. “Remember when we were kids, how if Dad left for too long and the money ran out—”

“That’s not the same, it’s not the fucking same and you know it.” It drags other memories up, hooks them and pulls them out of the mud. Not just fairness but legality; Sam was always worried about whether stuff was legal like that was the same as right, like it all existed on a flat plane. Like shoplifting was just as bad as hustling pool was just as bad as credit card scams was just as bad as—“I stole a couple boxes of Lucky Charms, Sam, I didn’t murder anybody.”

“I know it’s not the same. And I’m sorry I didn’t get it before. But I do now. Seriously, Dean, we needed to eat, I needed to eat, and you made it happen, so thank you. But if I needed…” Dean can’t make out the rest of it, shaking his head and letting the static of his thoughts drown it out, but by the time that’s stopped working he’s already seen it. If a vampire had gotten to Sam, or a werewolf. It wouldn’t be his fault. He’d still need to eat and it would still be Dean’s job. “It’s all right,” Sam continues, relentless. “He’s an angel. This was always going to happen, this is why we had to grow up the way we did. It was all worth it, Dean, see, you had to do that for me so I could for him. So I’d be ready. But you don’t even have to believe that part. Even if it’s wrong. You can’t kill him and I can’t watch him starve.”

“Dean…” Jack lowers himself to his knees. Another one of those grinding pops as he forces his ankles into a new position. There’s no trace of it on his placid face. “I won’t take Sam away from you. You can stay too, if you want.” His mouth tugs and his eyes pinch, and Dean thinks wistful and then thinks hungry. But sure. It’ll take him longer to drain Sam if he’s got options, probably. Maybe long enough for Dean to figure out how to kill Jack first.

“You can’t, actually,” Ruby says. She’s in the hallway just outside the room, dark hair catching the light from downstairs and blazing red like a crown. Her voice is thick. “None of us can stay. Jack—” She breaks there, breathless, sighing off into reverent silence.

“Why not?”

“If you’re serious about keeping them alive,” she tries again. She turns as she speaks, enough for the light to catch her face. Teartracks and her eyes are fever-bright. She believes it, Dean realizes, this angel shit. She thinks it’s true. “We need to leave. What you did set off a hell of a flare.” She glares at Dean, a fraction of a second of scorching rage before she turns away. Which is good. Which is mutual. She believes hard enough to run this house like a petting zoo right up until butchering day. Dean bets he can kill her just fine. “Your father will have noticed.”

“Oh…” Jack looks from her to Sam. “I won’t let him. I can explain everything to him.”

Sam pulls his legs in toward himself one after the other, wraps an arm around his knees. He looks over Jack’s head at Ruby and even now, after all that, they share some lead-heavy silent message Dean doesn’t have the first damn clue about and it crawls all the way through his stomach and out his throat before Sam says, “I don’t think he’s going to listen, Jack.”

Jack scrubs at his forehead. He might have rubbed his eyes if he had any. That kind of petulant little-kid gesture. “But—”

“It sounds scary, leaving this place.” Ruby glows, almost, not literally the way Jack had earlier but she’s lifted toward him so completely it lights her up. “But you’re ready, if you want to. You’ve grown so much. Look at you, in a human vessel already, Jack, you’re so strong. I’ll help you, whatever you choose.” She tears her gaze away, one last glance at Sam. “I just want you to understand your choices. If we stay, and your father comes home, you know what Sam and I discussed with you. Your dad can get you someone else, just like always. Sam wants me to end it for him.”

“No,” Jack starts. “I don’t want a new one again, it has to be Sam, it was always going to—”

Sam’s looking at Dean, this pale smudged panic on his face, and their options are collapsing down to nothing. If Sam can’t take it Dean doesn’t want to try. Dad will be all alone out there. “Jack,” Dean says. “Let’s just leave, huh, kid? You don’t gotta be worried. I’ll take care of you. We all will.”

Jack meets his eyes—more or less, an awful lot less. The holes where they should be are dark, like they go too deep, deeper than a skull can hold. He pushes himself closer along the floor until he can take Dean’s hand. “Do you promise?”

“Cross my heart.” Dean knows what a corpse feels like, and he knew Jack would be colder than that. It’s worse than he thought it would be. The hand is still frozen solid, still feels more like a mannequin than anything that was ever alive. “We’re gonna go find our dad, okay? We just have to find him and he’ll know what to do,” and that’s true, that’s exactly true.

“Oh.” Jack sits up straighter. “I can help. If you lost him. As long as he’s not warded I can find him more easily than you can.”

Dean doesn’t let himself believe it’ll be that easy, he doesn’t, but he just went from nothing but some coordinates to where Dad was at some point to maybe getting a bead on where he is now. “Sure,” Dean says, looks to Ruby but she’s past him. She gets an arm under Sam’s and hauls him to his feet.

“If we’re going, we’re going now.”

“And he won’t—can’t he follow us?” Sam weaves in place.

Ruby holds him up, easy, like it’s nothing. She can’t be half his size. She meets Dean’s gaze now, dead girl walking and crackling with it, electric. “Yeah, Sam. I can buy us time, but you don’t stop an archangel any more than you stop an earthquake.”

“You don’t,” Jack says. He stands. It looks fluid but he cracks again. Dean’s starting to wonder what happens when this body stops working, what it’s going to mean that it sounds like the next one should be alive. “I can.” He tugs on Dean’s hand, pulls him up. “I love my father, but I won’t let him hurt you.”

Ruby grins with all her teeth and Sam looks at Jack all soft-eyed, opposites. Sam believes what he’s saying is the truth and Ruby doesn’t. What Ruby has is faith and that’s worse. She thinks they’re all going to die and that it’ll be worth it. They’re a few more corpses Jack has to shed on his way to become whatever he’s going to be. Ruby’s the one who says, “We know that, Jack.”

She doesn’t have to be right. Just because she’s whatever the hell she is—and from the stairs the front door is visible, both heavy wooden sides splintered off their hinges and scattered across the front hall on her way in, so whatever the hell she is isn’t human—that doesn’t mean she knows better than Sam. It’s happening again, the chrysalis skin folding around his brain and liquifying his thoughts; Jack leads him right to the car and says, “I think Sam and I will sit together” and he doesn’t object, and he doesn’t object when Ruby scratches some sigils into Baby’s paint. He feels it against the bones in his chest but he can’t see his way to saying so out loud.

The rot of the sea has climbed the cliff in the fog, intertwined itself with the ax-hack scent of the evergreens bleeding. He starts the car and the headlights are brought up short in the mist, glare back without illuminating anything. “Shit,” he says, picturing the road, a ribbon with nothing between them and the drop.

“It’s all right. I won’t let us fall.” In the rearview mirror he watches Jack open and close his hands a few times, fingers snapping like kindling until they move free at every joint, and then comb them through Sam’s hair with wonder on his face. “I like being in a human much more.”

Dean looks sideways at Ruby, who shrugs. “Kids. He can multitask.”

Dean’s seen some compelling evidence recently that he can’t. Still. If they go over the edge that’s better than whatever got Sam into a suicide pact.

“Shit,” he says again, but eases Baby into first and follows the narrow slice of illuminated pavement, an edge of sandy gold soil. “Sam?” Just that, but Sam will know the question is you good?

Sam hums, an affirmative only in that Dean can sort an answer out of his nothing noises, could since he was a baby. He checks the rearview again and Sam’s slumped sideways, curled down until he can rest his head on Jack’s shoulder, eyes bleary slits glinting in the headlights.

“If we make it…” Ruby slides down beside him, closer than Sam would. His skin crawls where she’s close, like his circulation is just kicking back in. Her hair rucks up the seat behind her and she kicks a heel up against the dashboard. “You’ve got problems you can’t even fucking imagine.” Her voice is low, tone pleased and playful, nothing that would call attention from the backseat. “But you don’t have your worst problem anymore, do you? Sammy's going to need help. He can’t go right back to college the second this is handled if he has a kid to raise.”

Dean turns onto the road, half on instinct. Hopes there aren’t any cars coming the other way. “Shut up.”

But it hums in his skull, in his teeth. The night Sam left them spins back through his head, slightly off, like someone’s repeating a story they weren’t present for. He can hear Jack, whose lips aren’t moving. “I want to give you a gift.” And then, aloud: “It’s true. Sam won’t leave us, will you, Sam?”

“Hm?” Sam stirs when Jack twists two locks of his hair around one another, a child’s imitation of a braid. “’Course not. We’re together.”

Which is all that matters, all that’s ever mattered.

Dean watches the speedometer climb. For the first time in a long time, he prays.