Chapter Text
Dean goes missing in mid May, when the Kansas heat leaks from the pavement, bubbles up from the ground. Sam isn’t worried.
Dean is a creature of habit, and he’s been working alcohol into the routine since he turned 14, working in fast cars and fast drugs and fast girls. At 17 he spends more time out of the house than in, tucked into corners of his friends basements, breathing neon of college parties, chasing inebriation like he’s hungry for it.
So Sam isn’t worried, 12 hours in. Dean’ll stumble in at some time past 2 a.m., reeking of liquor and motor oil, cheap weed, and sex. He’ll flash that cocky, smarmy grin that shows all his teeth, teeter and crash down the hallway to his bedroom, lock the door behind him with a dull click.
And Dad is angry. Dad is seething, the classic ritual. He calls Mom before work, Mom who is no longer Mom and now just Mary, who’s been situated in South Dakota with an old friend, a new dog for almost five years, muttering things like military school and juvie and rehab into the receiver. He heaves a breath after he hangs up, this huge, tight sound, too jagged for Sam to quite ignore. Later, when he comes back from his shift at the garage, he’s still buzzing with that anger, lets out a sardonic laugh when he sees Dean’s still not home, fixes the two of them dinner with the sloppiness of someone thoroughly pissed.
But he stares a little, at the phone on its hook. When Sam stands next to him to dry their dishes, Dad just scrubs and scrubs and scrubs, eyes fixed outside the window, corner of his angry, tight mouth twitching down into a grimace.
He goes to work the next morning. He sends Sam off to school with little fanfare. Dad forgets to pick him up after soccer practice, so he walks the 40 minutes home. The porch lights aren’t turned on, and when Sam walks through the front door, Dad is on the couch in the dark with his head in his hands, and Dean still hasn’t come home.
After a silent dinner, Dad calls the police. They tell him they’ll arrange for a search party in the morning. He wraps Sam into his huge, tired arms with the force of latent hysteria, like he’s his little boy again, squeezing, and Sam finally, horrifically, begins to feel afraid.
Dean blinks into consciousness. His jeans are wet. The smell of decay is thick in his nose, pennies, wet dog. His stomach hurts. When he opens his eyes, the sun is a cacophony of light, of sun, and there are birds above him, circling, freewheeling into the oblivion of the sky. He turns his head, neck a hinge of stiff pain, and there is something on the riverbed beside him, something pale and bobbing.
Darkness shutters in an out, like radio static, like flipping through channels of awareness. When he opens his eyes again, there are hands on his cheeks. There are arms underneath his armpits, hauling him from the water and further back onto the shore. Someone is talking to him, but the words are impossible to decipher, a babel of incoherence, far away and intangible. Just like the grown-ups in Charlie Brown.
When Dean looks down, pain in his stomach swelling into sharp hot heat, red leaking into the corners of his vision, he’s holding his insides in with his hands. When he looks beside him, the something becomes a body, becomes a crimson-white tangle of limbs, of empty eyes, an agape mouth, a bloodless face.
And the body becomes Bryce Harmon, the guy Dean buys weed from, and he is still, and he is dead, and there is a bird pecking at the viscera that used to be his chest.
And it’s then that Dean screams.
It only took the police 4 hours to find Dean. The police say he was on the riverbank, legs half submerged into the water. They say Bryce Harmon was 5 feet from him, floating in the eddy. They say that Dean was conscious, barely, with his hands curled over his bloody stomach, and they say that Bryce Harmon, who dropped out just 3 months before, who’s mother works in the registrar's office of KU, was dead.
Sam probably could’ve found him in 30 minutes– the river has been Dean’s favorite haunt since he hit high school. It’s all he can think about, waiting in the fluorescent hell that is Lawrence Memorial Hospital, with his Dad beside him and a policeman on the other side of Dad, still covered in Dean’s blood. Dean, who’s off in surgery, who went missing for three days, who may be dying in that operating theater, may be destined for a casket 6 feet deep just like Bryce. And Sam didn’t even try to bother with worry, not until the very end. The police think a wild animal, bobcat, coyote, maybe.
Either that or goddamn Wolverine. Bobcats have never killed a human. Coyotes killed a three year old in California in the 80s, but Bryce, 17, former baseball champion– his chest was in ribbons. And Dean is still in surgery, even after hours. The doctors told Dad about the state of the bones in Dean’s right hand, like he was punching at something hard enough for them to break.
Dad is sitting vigil in his plastic waiting room chair, elbows on his knees, hulking shoulders a dark outline against the linoleum. He’d been a whirlwind after the phone call, slipped into something Sam barely recognized, compartmentalized panic replaced by silent control.
Sometimes he forgets that Dad was ever a Marine.
The policeman clears his throat, moving to stand. He puts his hand on Dad’s back.
“You got a brave kid in there, John,” he says, nodding his head back towards the doors. “Didn’t even cry.”
Dad grunts. The policeman leaves. They are surrounded by silence again, sharpened and twisted, dull and straight.
And Sam guesses Dean is a little brave. It isn’t the first word that comes to mind when thinking about Dean’s fast driving, his excess, his loud disregard for safety. Stupidly brave, maybe, or just plain stupid. Reckless, sure. The policeman doesn’t know shit about Dean, never will, and Sam is glad he’s gone.
Beside him, Dad lets out a heavy breath, resuming his poise of exhaustion.
Sam interlocks his fingers in his lap. He bows his head, tucks his chin to his chest. A mockery, a mimic.
He’s never been to church.
An almost prayer.
Recovery is a long process. Dean spends 3 weeks in that hospital, 2 weeks locked in psychiatric, a week back home until Dad gives up on the charade of care and throws himself back into work at the garage. There are bills. Mary is too far away, Dad too proud to ask for help, so he works late hours, early mornings, and when he comes home he smells like motor oil, cigarettes.
Sam is worried Dad’s drinking again.
Sam is keeping watch. It’s fully summer now, heat oppressive and sticky even with the windows open, screen door firmly shut, and he could have better things to do. Jeff McClintock invited him to the pool with the rest of the soccer team, and Amy Lipinski wants him to come with her to the movies, but Sam is keeping vigil over Dean.
All Dean does is watch TV. He’ll eat, if Sam puts food in front of him, mechanic and slow. He’ll take his medication, if Sam puts it in front of him. And he gets up to piss, which is something, sometimes stumbles out the back door for a cigarette, but he doesn’t talk much. He barely even complains.
And Sam can picture it, almost. Dean, in the river, those three days he was missing. Fading in and out of consciousness, with his fingers and arm broken, bleeding, bloody, with Bryce Harmon’s pale body rotting and stinking in the heat. His brother, stubborn, stupid, selfish Dean, with his grin curated to mean danger, with his childlike swagger, with his back pressed up against the silt and rocks on the bank of the Kansas River, hitching half-gasps in through the pain. Three days left dying. Three days, with Sam in their small, worn house, unworried.
And he can imagine Dean, still in the hospital, thrashing against the nurses holding him down. Can imagine the late night that landed him in psychiatric, his cold, empty stare, bleeding freely from where he’d ripped his IV out, determined to smash his own skull in against the railing of his bed, desperate to bash his brains in against the wall.
Dad’s locked his gun up. Dean isn’t allowed in the kitchen, not allowed a razor, and when they came home that first night, Dad’s silhouette a monster against the chipped plaster of the living room, Dean a shaky, loose wisp of something else, Dad sat Dean down on the toilet lid and shaved his face.
But it doesn’t matter, now, because all Dean does is watch TV. And all Sam can cook is PB & J. A week before Dean went missing, Sam finally turned 13.
Most nights, Dad doesn’t return until after the daylight has stretched into twilight, long after Sam had gone to bed, but Sam can imagine it. When Dad comes home, Kansas will come off his boots in clumps against the welcome mat by the door, and he’ll crack open a soda— he’s been sober since the summer after him and Mary split—, maybe collapse into his dusty recliner, watch the late night TV Dean has on, Frasier or Dateline or whatever other garbage. Maybe he’ll stand in the doorway of Sam’s room, just to check he’s still breathing, stuck in the security rounds of his military service. And then maybe he’ll return to the living room, collapse back into his recliner with an explosion of dust motes, and look over at stubborn, stupid, selfish, still silent Dean, place his huge hand on his sleeping shoulder, and take another sip of his soda.
Dean knows what he saw.
They’d told him differently in the hospital, pumped him with drugs and sleeping meds and psychobabble, attributed it all to a wild animal.
Dean’s never seen a wild animal in Kansas that could crack open Bryce’s chest like that. Never seen a wild animal that walked on two legs with that loping, powerful gait, thats mouth unhinged like an apocalypse, with nails long enough to claw up Dean’s abdomen, his shoulder, tear into Bryce with the wet squelching of bloody meat. Bobcats don’t do that. Coyotes don’t do that. Bears haven’t been in the state since the 1880s, either.
Dean knows what he saw.
That first week, with Sam vigilant by his side, Angie Ruiz had dropped by. She’d been Bryce’s girl, or at least something close to that. She’d placed her small hand attached to her bone-skinny arm on his shoulder, smiled with the poise of someone wiser, told him she was sorry for what he’d been through.
He hadn’t told her that Bryce had screamed. Hadn’t told her that he whimpered into that long and terrifying first night, when Dean was still aware enough to feel his ruined fingers grind against each other as he breathed, packing his shirt into his gaping stomach, trying to stay awake enough to fight off whatever it was that attacked in case it came back. Hadn’t told her that Bryce was nothing more than viscera, after, even alive, that he had grunted and gurgled and choked, and Dean listened to him drown in the blood bubbling up his throat. Hadn’t told her about how Bryce’s body had begun to stink.
And when Angie leaned over to hug him goodbye, she slipped a bag of ketamine into his casted hand, and told him they played Pink Floyd at the funeral.
He’d flushed the K, Sam in the other room, his hand shaking on the white porcelain of the toilet lid. And then he’d been sick in the sink.
But it’s been months now. Been months since the last time Dean had a drink, at this point. And weed is out of the picture, because Bryce was his dealer, and Bryce is dead. With the cast off, with all fingers minus his pinky back to working order, he can manage to pretend on positivity, haul himself from the couch and to his room, chainsmoke on the porch, shower long enough to fog up the mirror. Take his meds, sleep a normal amount, make himself food. Dad still doesn’t trust him with razors, but he’s allowed back in the kitchen, Sam too poor a cook and Dad too tired after his shifts to complain.
It’s a load of righteous bullshit, the lock and key they have him under. He can’t even drive his car, waiting and rotting in the driveway, Dad still driving the truck. Dean’s not crazy. He was bored in the hospital, maybe. Confused. Drugged up to his gills.
He knows what he saw. It wasn’t an animal, didn’t walk like prey. Walked like something hunting, upright, too fluid to be human, too big to be anything else. He’s not crazy.
Except sometimes, when he’s bored, stewing and smoking and picking at his memories like a scab, he thinks he maybe is.
He keeps dreaming about the fire that burned their old house down. Keeps thinking about the thick taste of smoke in the back of his throat, balanced on Mom’s hip, Sam in Dad’s arms, watching. Standing out in their front yard and watching it all go up in fire and brimstone and ash. He’d been four.
He’d thought he’d seen a man through the window of Sam’s nursery, backlit by inferno.
Dean doesn’t know why he keeps dreaming about it, four and with his mother still there, the outline in the window with eyes like molten amber. Doesn’t know why he keeps dreaming about it when living, breathing feels like an open wound. Not when Sam watches Dean with that too old look on his face, not when Dad comes back weary and worried about the hospital bills, not when Mom left the three of them years ago, shacked up in Sioux Falls with some dickhead named Bobby.
It’s probably the Ambien, but still.
Mom, with her long blonde hair, the familiar smell of her floral shampoo. She’d found him on the stairs, picked him up and ran, brought his pajama shirt above his nose and mouth to filter out the smoke. She’d moved with them to the small house they live in now, with its chipped paint and battered porch, shared the bed with Dad, worked at the post office and picked Sam and Dean up from school. And Dad had taken up drinking, the two of them had taken up fighting, and in the end she left the autumn before Dean turned 14.
There’s something under Dean’s skin, a desperation. He waits until Dad is off at work, Sam is in the shower, and he calls his mother.
“Singer Salvage, Bobby speaking. Who is this?”
“Is Mary around?”
“Who is this?”
“Her son. Tell her it’s Dean.”
“...”
“Hello?”
“...”
“Hello? Mom?”
“Dean?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I have a question.”
“Your Dad called me to let me know you were back home. How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay. Look, I really need to ask you something.”
“That’s good. How’s the hand?”
“Mom, Jesus. Fucking listen.”
“I can’t talk long, sweetheart.”
“Was there a man in the window of Sam’s nursery the night the old house burned down?”
“Of course not.”
“You would’ve seen, Mom, y’know, just waving. With these kinda. Kinda yellow eyes. Just standing there, waving at us in the yard.”
“...”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Kiddo–”
“Fuck. It wasn’t a bobcat, Mom. It ate Bryce. I could hear it. Not even rapid bobcats do that shit.”
“...”
“I know what I saw. It walked on two legs, Mom, just this mouth full of these tiny little teeth, these huge nails. And I can’t tell Dad, cause they think I tried to off myself in the hospital but I swear. I swear it wasn’t that. I’m not crazy.”
“Dean.”
“Mom?”
“I never thought I’d have this conversation with you.”
“I’m not crazy, Mom, I swear.”
“You’re not. Dean. Dean. I need you to listen close.”
Dad and Dean are fighting out in the hall. Outside the window, the streetlights have just come on. Dean has stumbled out of the apathy of those first weeks and straight into anger, and Dad is just wired enough to always be raring for a fight. They don’t, usually.
School’s starting in a week. 9th grade for Sam, Dean’s senior year.
“I’m not going,” Dean says, a coiled snake up against the doorframe of the kitchen, arms crossed across his chest. He’s looking older and older, the last of the blond of childhood having leached out of his hair in favor of a tawny brown. The cut on his chin has finally healed into the silvery pink of scar tissue. He hasn’t been sleeping well, Sam can tell.
“What do you mean, you're not going?” And maybe Dad looks older, too, the line of his shoulder wearier, five-o’clock shadow making the shadows of his cheeks deeper.
“I’m dropping out.”
“No, you’re not.”
Dean stiffens.
“You didn’t finish high school.”
Sam’s been reading lots. Sat beside Dean’s endless attention on the TV, flipping voraciously through his summer reading, Mary’s collection of mystery novels packed away in the attic, the backs of cereal boxes, Dad’s car magazines, the Sunday news.
The look on Dad’s face is impossible to read. Sam doesn’t even know how to begin to decipher it, whether to start at the pinched corners of his mouth, the serene forehead, the pulse thudding in his jaw.
When Dad speaks, it’s calm. Final.
“I’m not letting you drop out of high school so you can drink yourself into an early grave, Dean.”
“Says you,” Dean scoffs.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, is what I’m saying. It’s not like high school actually matters. I’m going up to visit Mom.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I already told her I’m coming over the phone.”
And Dad is really angry now, this tangle of muscle and energy. His brow is furrowed.
“She left, Dean. She left us here because she wanted nothing to do with this family. Do you understand that, Dean? Can you get that through your thick skull?”
And this Dean is something else, something separate from that empty shell in the hospital, something separate from the rowdy teenager from before. He walks forward, and it’s not the curated danger of naivety. Sam can see Dad blink.
“You’re the one who pushed her away. You’re the one that–”
For a second, Sam thinks Dad is going to smack Dean. But then Dean takes a step back, eyes shuttering. And Dad takes a careful, sloppy breath.
“Jesus Christ, Dean.”
“You can’t keep me here. It’s not like I can even get high, cause my fucking dealer is dead.”
“You are not dropping out.”
Dean sighs, throwing up his arms.
“At least let me see Mom for the weekend.”
Dad stares for a long, long time.
“I’m calling her first.”
And Sam loves his father, loves his brother. Maybe hates them both a little bit, too. Hates his Dad, because he hands over the keys to the Impala, only talks to Mary for quiet minutes, shuts the door behind Dean to not let the cold air out. And Sam wants to shake him, grab him by the shoulders, scream in his face. Because can’t he see it? Dean, who is stupid and selfish and still won’t talk about what happened, is leaving their chipped house in that huge car, and he’s never going to come back. He’s slipping out the door, slipping back into the bottle. Can’t Dad see that? And maybe the Dean who didn’t remember to eat, to shower, to do anything but sit slouched in front of the TV was better, because at least he was safe.
And he hates Dean because he spent the first 10 years of Sam’s life close by and kind, led Sam to his room whenever Mom and Dad fought, spent the 3 years after Mom left this erratic mess who’d come home high and drunk and barely coherent. Spent the past 2 months quiet and volatile and apathetic. And he hates him because Sam already mourned him slipping away once.
Hates Dean, loves him, for leaving at all.