Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Kevin, why is there a pumpkin in our room?”

Every muscle Sam possessed tensed at the sight of the deceptively innocent miniature gourd sitting on his roommate’s desk.

Kevin had the decency to look apologetic.

“Charlie gave it to me — you know how she is,” he explained with a helpless shrug, “You’ve got to admit, it’s kind of cute.”

On any other day of the year, Sam might’ve agreed with him. Despite its association with one particular holiday, Sam didn’t hold this against pumpkins.

However, today was Halloween, and Kevin knew him well enough to know what that meant.

“Does it have to stay?” Sam asked. He tried to convince himself he wasn’t whining.

Kevin sighed before putting the pumpkin behind a stack of books.

“Better?”

“Thanks man,” Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly (because, stupidly enough, it did help).

"I told Charlie this would happen," he remarked, unphased. "She thought exposing you to a pumpkin would help alleviate your, um…distaste for today.”

Sam flopped onto his bed with a soul-deep grunt. “That’s the nicest way anyone’s put it.”

“Have you made up your mind about the Roadhouse party?”

“It’s been made up for me,” Sam said, lifting his head high enough to be heard. “Dean’s making the drive out. With his partner.”

“No way. Partner?”

“He specifically said partner. He could’ve just said boyfriend. When has he ever called any of his girlfriends ‘partners’?”

“Beats me. We all know he bats for both sides. Maybe it’s because he’s never dated a guy long-term,” Kevin said frankly, mouse clicking at a rate Sam knew meant he was checking things off his never-ending to-do list. “Why pick the Roadhouse?”

“I guess he thinks it’d be less awkward. Might’ve been if it weren’t for Halloween. ”

“Poor Sammy.”

Sam threw a pillow at him. Kevin hurled it back before standing and cracking his spine loud enough to make Sam wince.

“Well, in that case, it’s settled. You’re coming with us tonight.”

“Don’t sound so smug about it,” Sam groused, pulling the covers up to hide from Kevin’s grin. “I’ll be up in a bit.” He paused, tugging down the covers just enough to glare. “There better not be any Halloween pranks waiting for me when I get up.”

“No guarantees,” Kevin teased, but they both knew he wouldn’t do that to Sam.

Sam settled in for a nap, confident that, after fine-honing his sleep pattern, it would be short and refreshing.

It was anything but. Sleep swallowed him whole and spat him out into a void where cut-out scenes, spinning off a reel with a speed that made him nauseous, played out in sharp slashes of detail.

Flames soared upward from an artery of gasoline traced out through prairie grass. A raucous crowd danced in a smoky, living dark that writhed against their bodies. Smoke drifted up from a lit cigarette. A blood moon dripped red down a torn-open sky. A deer screamed; something wilder laughed back.

Faster and faster the images went until they were all reduced to base elements. Moon, laugh, bodies, moon, howl —

Sam's eyes snapped open, his left twitching with an ice-pick stab of pain deep in the socket. He couldn't remember waking; couldn't remember all the images that had danced across his eyelids. The only sign he'd been asleep at all were the sleep creases pressed into the skin across his face and tucked arm — that, and the cooling fear sweat drenching his shirt.

“Sam! If you don’t wake up soon you won’t have any time to get ready!”

Kevin’s voice from the living room, accompanied by the sounds of Call of Duty, made Sam flinch.

He inhaled deeply to quell the little gasps he’d been exhaling, shook his head firmly to clear the last of the dark filaments, and swung his feet over the edge of the bed.

“I’m up!” he called back, shuddering as he got to his feet. God, how he hated Halloween.

The forecast promised the night would be cold even for October, so Sam threw on his leather jacket over the usual layers; a Henley shirt, unbuttoned flannel, and jeans. Kevin, who was decked out in a surprisingly convincing Gandalf get-up—minus the jeans poking from the hem of his wizard robe—only rolled his eyes at Sam's lack of costume.

"You're usually so open-minded about stuff," Kevin complained while Sam arranged his hair (contrary to popular belief around campus, it wasn't all flawless genetics) to his liking. “And yet you draw the line at Halloween? The clown thing I get, but you have a serious addiction to serial killer podcasts. It doesn’t track, dude.”

“Everyone has their limits,” Sam said, grabbing his wallet and phone. “Are there any hobbits joining you? Perhaps an elf?”

“You could’ve been an elf with those legs.”

“I think I’d fit Aragorn better.”

Ash, their ride for the night, loitered at the curb in his massive pickup truck. Its exhaust pipe coughed up a smoke cloud that rivaled its owner's furious nicotine puffing.

“Did he run out of weed?” Sam asked Jo, who half-hung out the open window to greet them. Impressively gory makeup transformed her into the love child of a zombie and skeleton. If she was waitressing tonight, the patrons were in for a hell of a surprise.

“He left it in the wrong jacket. He’s always misplacing crap,” Charlie said, her circlet-adorned head appearing above Jo’s, “Gandalf, hurry your old ass up!”

“Ah, so she’s the elf," Sam said, turning to elbow Kevin good-naturedly, only to find his friend gazing off at the horizon.

“Freaky moon, isn’t it?”

Sam followed Kevin’s gaze to the low edge of the dusky sky. Rising above it, obscured by a half-crowned line of trees, was a large, almost full moon stained rust orange.

A chill ran down Sam’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold. Behind his eye, the sharp pain throbbed once before tapering off.

Charlie sighed wistfully, unperturbed in the least. "Too bad it's not full! A gibbous moon just isn't as intimidating."

“Who cares. I’m freezing,” Jo complained, rapping impatiently on the passenger door, “Get in before we leave you two behind!”

Sam and Kevin didn't need to be told twice. Charlie's pointed ears nearly came off when Kevin knocked his "staff" (a broken-off wooden mop handle from God knew where) into the side of her head as they crammed into the backseat.

“Ouch! You’re the worst Gandalf in existence.”

“Sorry! Sam, fold your stupidly long legs the other way.”

Somehow, they made it work. Sam sincerely hoped they weren’t picking anyone else up. The last time they exceeded five people, he’d ended up with Kevin and Jo perched on either of his knees, and that wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.

The Roadhouse wasn't the easiest place for students to access, as it sat on the outskirts of town and hid within the treeline of largely undeveloped land. This only heightened its popularity with older patrons and students who wanted to get away from the stereotypical haunts closer to campus. However, Ellen wasn't above leaning into the student clientele the town supplied on certain occasions, so the Roadhouse adopted a "the more elaborate the better" attitude towards costumes on Halloween weekend.

“Looks like we’ve got an early wave tonight,” Ash said, passing people trekking on the side of the road in various ranges of costume and sobriety. “Jesus, where are they all coming from?”

“I heard Four Hands had to close earlier this month for renos,” Jo said, “But I didn’t think they were still closed.”

“Biggest club in town closed on Halloween? No wonder they’re all flocking here,” Kevin said sagely. Four Hands was the “closest” drinking establishment to the Roadhouse. People with daring spirits raised by the holiday would’ve opened Google Maps, seen the proximity, and thrown caution to the wind in the name of a mild thrill gained by the hike.

“If only I’d had that weed,” Ash sighed, turning onto The Roadhouse’s gravel drive that led into the similarly treated lot. It was already mostly full, but Ash disregarded the cars and pulled into the grassy yard to the left that separated The Roadhouse from the woods.

Everyone slipped in through the side entrance. Ash and Jo disappeared to fill in now sorely wanting positions, while Kevin and Charlie eagerly ran off to locate other members of the Tolkien party. Sam followed at a more sedate pace, confusion at the decibel level coming from the main room melting into surprise.

The rustic-leaning wood interior was barely visible through the throngs of patrons. An impromptu dance floor dominated the long length of the room, which Sam suspected would soon spill out into the front yard—the double front doors were already propped open to allow people to mingle on the wide porch. Sam had seen The Roadhouse busy, but never had it been this packed on Halloween.

Even with his height, it took Sam a minute to find Dean seated at the bar wearing a cowboy hat. To Dean’s right was a man sporting a matching cowboy hat.

Sam decided to sneak up behind them — a task made easy by the crowd. He clapped his hands on Dean’s shoulders, successfully making him drop his glass of half-drunk whiskey with a thump on the bar.

“Howdy, jerk!” Sam exclaimed, grinning at the success of his little jump scare.

“Oh, you bitch,” Dean said after a startled second, half-getting up from his stool to give him a proper backslapping hug. “I knew you weren’t going to wear a costume. Party pooper.”

"I can get drunk just fine without a costume," Sam said, stepping back as much as the crowd would allow so he could look between Dean and the mystery man, who'd half-turned to face them. He was the sad-eyed, dark-haired type, shoulders tucked high from discomfort. "So, are you going to introduce me or be an ass about it?"

“Jesus, Sam, give a man some breathing room,” Dean whined, but his expression softened into a real smile as he looked at his partner. “This is Castiel Novak. Cas, this is Sammy.”

“You can call me Cas. Everyone does now that Dean started it,” Castiel said, voice deeper than Sam expected.

Sam instantly took a liking to him. Castiel had a stoic quality about him that wasn't typical of Dean's type of lover, yet he never failed to return Dean's smile.

The din of the bar prevented deeper conversation, but Sam got the basics. They'd been dating for six months (a record for Dean), had already met their parents (oh to be a fly on the wall of the Winchester house for that meeting), and, while it wasn’t explicitly said, looked as if they’d be moving in together in town when Castiel started an academic program focused on melittology.

“He’s smart as hell,” Dean bragged. Sam offered an impressed nod to a bashful Castiel. “Just don’t get him started on bees when he’s drunk.”

“Which I won’t be tonight,” Castiel said, “It takes a liquor store and a half to get me properly drunk.”

That sealed the deal for Sam on what looked to be Dean’s best relationship yet. Winchesters always gravitated towards people with strong livers, and the ones with the strongest got rings.

“I did have a question for you, Sam,” Castiel continued, eyes cutting between him and Dean. He hesitated, then took the plunge. “Is there really a Winchester family story about the Devil?”

Sam’s smile slipped a bit. He glared at Dean, who raised his free hand in a half-hearted, conciliatory gesture.

“ It’s not like he’s asking you to tell it. Everyone knows you don’t do that.”

“I don’t. But yes, there’s a family tradition of telling this story about how a Winchester bested the Devil,” Sam said, putting enough distaste into his tone to make his point.

It wasn't that he had anything against the tradition—from a historical standpoint, it was insanely impressive the story had survived the generational telephone game as long as it had. No one knew how old it was, or its real origins. The consensus was that it was an entertaining way to explain all the strangeness that plagued Winchesters.

And there was a lot of strangeness. Truck-driving cousins claimed encounters with creatures best left to lore while cruising down the I-90 under a full moon. Lightning once struck a family member three times in as many years. Dean alone had half a dozen bizarre near-death encounters under his belt before he turned 18.

“It’s fun,” Dean protested, “Especially when the story versions get raunchy or boozy. Dad’s got a good version about outdrinking the Devil.”

"Wait, so it's not the same story?" Castiel asked, tilting his head in a manner that Sam just knew probably made Dean consistently sappy.

Sure enough, Dean's face softened in adoration before he responded.

"There's the original version and the tales everyone tells to spice things up. Keeps it from going stale. It's told at every family gathering."

“Even funerals,” Sam muttered.

“But everyone knows you’re telling the story because it starts the same way every time,” Dean said, leaning in slightly.

Despite his indifference, Sam leaned in with Castiel. Something about the first line, uttered a thousand times over by family stretching back an uncountable number of years, managed to awe even him.

“‘In a place and time lost to God, a Winchester made the Devil laugh.’”

The brothers watched as Castiel turned the words over, a crease in his brow.

“It sounds ominous,” he said, furrowed brow smoothing as a thought hit him. “Dean, do you have a version of the story?”

Sam groaned, leaning back to announce his departure.

“He does, and it’s totally gross,” he said, rolling his eyes at Dean’s delighted laugh.

Sam promised to circle back so they could chat properly somewhere quieter. After failing to locate Kevin and Charlie to see if they’d found the rest of their Tolkien party, he decided to get a drink.

Ellen was nowhere to be found behind the bar. He did find Jo, Ash, a couple of part-timers who he only recognized by face, and an exorbitant number of drinks lined up on trays waiting to be taken out.

“Where’s your mom?” Sam asked Jo.

“She’s not here! Something about a messed-up shipment she had to check on,” Jo replied, wisps of blond hair sticking to her makeup. “Take a free reject.”

There was a crooked row of messed up drinks on the back bar to choose from. Sam shrugged and went for a glaringly orange drink that looked more juice than alcohol and made himself scarce. He could always return for harder stuff later.

Just before he made it to the door, somebody slammed into his side. Sam bounced back a bit, startled before catching a flash of red. Charlie.

“Sam! Finally found you. I almost forgot to give you these,” Charlie said, pressing a strangely shaped headband into his hand. “I know Halloween isn’t your thing, but you’ve got to make an exception for these.” She smiled conspiratorially. “Also, I saw you know who in the crowd. Good luck!”

With that, she melted back into the crowd, leaving Sam with a costume item he didn’t want and a jackrabbiting heart.

Gabriel Milton —you know who—was a graduate assistant in Sam’s elective class on mythology. Sam’s bisexuality, lying latent after a brief introspection in high school, reemerged with roaring strength as soon as he’d seen Gabriel perched on one of the desks, passing out syllabi with dramatic flair.

“Oh, you’re tall,” Gabriel had said, pulling out a lollipop from a bag next to his thigh. His eyes glowed beneath the shitty fluorescent lights.  “You’re my projector screen man for the semester. Up for the task?”

From there, Sam had been a goner. He pulled the projector down, exchanged sarcastic quips with Gabriel, and engaged in slightly deeper conversation over the readings. His life began to pivot around Tuesdays and Thursdays when he would show up early, linger after class, and accept every piece of candy Gabriel offered from his magically endless supply.

Not that any of his efforts mattered. Sam was too shy and tangled up in himself; too unsure of acting on something that felt dangerously close to infatuation with someone outside his normal type. Jess had been sassy, but ultimately sweet; so were the few other girls he listed as exes. It was nothing more than a maddening crush his friends teased him about. 

Sam fled to the porch, resting his arms on a spare bit of railing with a sigh.

Gabriel was an irreverent asshole; a master at pushing buttons and pestering a select few into boiling rages. Sam had caught glimpses of his more scathing commentary on essays. He was also an unrepentant flirt, with a hedonistic streak that would’ve made Dionysus proud. But he was also the guy who never failed to say at least one kind thing to Sam every class out of a group of nearly 200.

He sipped his drink, considering his options. Gabriel was here. Should Sam go looking for him? What would he even say?

Hey Gabe— I've liked you since the first day I walked into class and would really like to take you out because I'm so into you that I listened to Asia's entire discography to figure out why the hell you're so into them.

He scoffed to himself. As if that would get him anything other than a laugh to his face.

“Sam-a-lam! You look remarkably glum considering the festivities surrounding us.”

Stay calm, he thought to himself as Gabriel approached from around the porch corner with a red solo cup in hand. He hadn’t anticipated Gabriel seeking him out. Stay calmstaycalm —

Despite the temperature, Gabriel had gone all out for Halloween: a short toga, a glittery halo, and surprisingly elaborate white wings decorated with golden eyes made from metallic craft paper. From his belt, a small bugle horn dangled in honor of his namesake.

“Nice costume,” he couldn’t help saying, even though Gabriel must’ve heard it a thousand times already that night. “Biblically semi-accurate.”

“Copped most of this stuff from my theater associates,” Gabriel said, striking a pose that put his wings and thighs on full display. “Great, isn’t it? I’ve been an angel a few times, but this is my best rendition yet.”

“Aren’t you cold?” Sam asked, taking a fortifying sip from his cup. Gabriel’s bare thighs were going to haunt his already lust-plagued dreams.

“A little, but getting drunk will cure me of that ailment in no time,” Gabriel admitted, sidling up beside him. He procured a lollipop from thin air—his fondest magic trick. “It’s about time we ran into each other at a party.”

He said this with a suggestive tone that would’ve given Sam high hopes if flirting wasn’t encoded in Gabriel’s DNA. He still blushed anyway.

“I’m not a secret party animal,” Sam said, referencing one of the many little jokes they had in class where Gabriel proclaimed his certainty that, beneath his studious exterior, Sam was a wild child.

“Maybe not, but you’re interesting nonetheless,” Gabriel pressed. “For instance, there seems to be a story behind those wonderful antlers you look as if you’d rather hurl into the bushes below us. What gives?”

“It’s an inside joke some of my friends have kept going since the, uh, inciting event this past summer," Sam said, scratching his cheek with one of the antlers. He had the best and worst friends in the world. "I may or may not have faced off with a moose on a summer camping trip."

Now that they were standing so close, Sam could see the dark and shimmery makeup around Gabriel’s wide eyes.

“No way. What the hell made you do that?”

Sam retold an abbreviated version of the events: they’d all been tipsy and camping by a nearby lake shore when the moose had swam up. Sam managed to spook it back into the water mostly out of sheer luck.

“You weren’t hurt, were you?” Gabriel asked, setting his hand on his bicep in concern.

"Nope, but after that, people started calling me Moose. Apparently, we were around the same height."

Gabriel chuckled, his hand sliding down to rest in a friendly clasp on his forearm. Sam forced himself to keep breathing.

“I can believe that. So, you don’t want to add fuel to the fire by wearing the antlers?”

“It’s not that,” Sam said, wondering how much he should tell Gabriel. “The real reason is stupid.”

“C’mon. How bad can it be?”

Sam grimaced, gulping down the rest of his weak drink. It wasn’t as if it was a big secret. He was only being reticent because it might impact his chances with Gabriel, who’d openly expressed excitement all October for the holiday. But realistically speaking, what were his chances?

“I hate Halloween,” he revealed, tapping his empty cup on the railing, “I have since I was a kid and don’t expect to like it at any point in my life.”

Gabriel absorbed this news with arched eyebrows. “Bad experience as a kid?”

“A clown,” Sam admitted reluctantly. The chance he’d had was circling the drain. So much for that fantasy date. “I’d already found clowns creepy before Halloween, but a clown on Halloween was the final straw.”

“You break a man’s heart, Sammy,” Gabriel sighed dramatically, but with a smile that soothed the sting. He draped himself onto Sam’s arm. “That’s alright, though. I can work around that.”

“Oh, really?” Sam asked, heart in his throat as he recalculated his chances with Gabriel. He had a feeling he’d be doing the math all night.

In response, Gabriel pulled him towards the front door.

“Another drink for us both, I think,” Gabriel said. His eyes fixed on Sam with the same intensity he reserved for things that got his absolute attention—a rarity coming from him. With his eyes still on Sam, he laced their fingers together. “And then some dancing.”

Gabriel’s hand, autumn-chilled and unexpectedly callused, fit in his like they’d been holding hands the entire time they’d known each other. Sam tried not to read into it, but he let his confidence soar at such an open proposition.

The crowd inside the Roadhouse was unlike anything Sam had experienced before. Gabriel would’ve been swept away if Sam hadn’t pulled them towards the edge of the room where tables and chairs, pushed aside to widen the impromptu dance floor, languished. What few lights remained on were rendered half-useless by a haze of smoke amalgamated from every drug under the sun.

“This is insane,” Gabriel said into Sam’s ear, waving his empty cup at the dancing crowd. His other hand clutched Sam’s sleeve.

Sam agreed. He couldn’t even hear what they were dancing to. Everyone had simply decided to move to whatever their imaginations conjured. Ellen wouldn’t be pleased by this. With great profit also came broken fire safety regulations and furniture.

“Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll get us drinks,” Sam suggested, letting Gabriel use him as a brace while he perched on a table to avoid having his exposed toes trampled.

“Sure. I trust you. Just bring me something strong—I don’t care what it is,” Gabriel said, saying the last part with a playful tug on Sam’s jacket collar.

He stammered an affirmative (Should he casually touch Gabriel back? Was this a signal?) before deciding to put himself out of his misery by throwing himself at the mercy of the crowd.

There wasn’t much mercy to be found. Sam had recently gained some breadth to even out his height and even then, it took all he had not to be swept towards the center. Setting aside his habitual politeness, he shouldered his way towards the island of doubtful refuge the bar counter offered, emerging triumphantly to find—

Nobody.

“What the hell?” Sam muttered, peering over the counter in case the staff were playing some kind of jump scare prank. No dice.

Nobody was sitting at the bar either, including Dean and Castiel, but that was only slightly less strange–there was hardly any breathing room left due to the dancers.

“Looking for something?”

Sam’s shoulders jerked with surprise at the voice of a man about two bar stools down from him. He could’ve sworn he hadn’t been there a second ago.

Almost immediately, he noticed several strange things about the stranger. The first was that he could hear him perfectly over the crowd, even though he hadn't raised his voice at all. There was also his drink—a full glass of wine and the accompanying bottle. Sam recognized it from the summers he worked at the Roadhouse as one of Ellen's few specialty bottles. It hadn't been brought out in months.

But what unnerved Sam the most were the stranger's eyes. They were blue, containing a dark, depthless nature that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. As a whole, his face reminded Sam of a facsimile—something close to, but not quite, human.

The ice pick of pain returned. Sam’s eyelid physically twitched with it.

“Not the shabbiest place I’ve patronized,” the stranger continued, brushing Sam’s silence aside like an errant fly. “Of course, I’ve been in literal holes in the wall before the saying was ever coined.”

“Uh, do I know you?” Sam asked, growing more unnerved by the second.

“Not yet,” the stranger said, sipping his wine. He made a show of surveying the bottles lined up against the far wall, rolling his head slowly until he fully faced Sam. He smiled. “But we’ll get to know each other pretty well tonight, I think. It’s been a while since I’ve met a Winchester as tough as you.”

Later, Sam was convinced it was the smile that stayed his tongue. It was worse than a shark's. At least a shark had some faint biological link to humanity. There was none in the stranger's smile.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam watched limbs slow; the background noise dimming and distorting to a low hum. Time slowed for the crowd and remained preserved for him and the stranger, running on a track hurtling towards a growing unknown.

Sam couldn’t process the impossibility of it, and so stood still, as if the world would right itself if he did so. The pain behind his eye was getting worse.

“Have a seat, Sam,” the stranger said with a grand gesture to the stool in front of him.

“I’m fine,” Sam said, desperately clinging to the false sense of security standing gave him over the stranger. Maybe his drink had been spiked—that’d suck, but anything would be better than the conclusion forming against his desperate wishes.

“Suit yourself. I’ve got all night,” the stranger said nonchalantly. Another sip of wine. “Hmm. Ellen has good taste. What do you want to drink?”

“Nothing.”

“Not even something to take back to your little friend?”

The fear that had slowly been building throughout the conversation froze over in Sam’s stomach.

“No.”

The stranger blinked at Sam’s vehemence before cackling. It was surprisingly boisterous; the most human sound to escape him yet.

“Oh, for a second there, it was like the first time,” the stranger said, eyes momentarily becoming unfocused with…nostalgia? It was hard to tell when every emotion he expressed seemed to be pried from a labeled can. “Now, that was a good Halloween. Or Samhain, in those days. It’s lovely I get to come full circle with a Sam.” His eyes sharpened. “Samuel Winchester. The doubter. Didn’t you listen to the stories?”

Sam swallowed, digging his fingers into the meat of his palm. “Yeah. But…weren’t they just stories?”

He sounded like a child and hated it.  The stranger cooed mockingly, leaning forward to trail a finger down Sam’s cheek. His touch seared with an icy cold that matched the one in his head, piercing right down into his molars.

"You poor thing," the stranger sighed when Sam had to flinch away, spots blossoming in his vision. "The modern world has done a number on the storytelling tradition. Here's your first lesson of the night: all stories have a seed of truth to them, and yours has a seed as dark as they come."

Time slowed even more. The dancers barely moved at all to the distorted bass thump, reduced to formless impressions. Shadows traveled across the stranger’s face, sourced from the slow procession of flickering lights overhead. He took another sip of wine, considering him with blue eyes that were not his own.

“Sit down,” he repeated. “Tell me how it starts, Winchester.”

Sam sat. He’d never started the story before. There’d been no point—nobody in his family, not even Dean, had been able to convince him to create his own version.

His mouth shaped the words like a Bible verse.

“In a place and time lost to God, a Winchester made the Devil laugh.”

“I rarely go by that name when I’m topside,” the stranger (because there was no way Sam was applying the D-name to him if he wanted to keep his wits) said with a saucy, conspiratorial wink, “You can call me Nick. That was this man’s name before he did some very bad things.”

Despite it all, Sam found himself leaning forward like he did in lectures when the professor presented a perplexing hypothetical.

"Possession? Is that something you can do to anyone or just people that did, uh, very bad things?"

‘Nick’ didn’t seem fooled by Sam’s attempt at nonchalance. He replied with patronizing indulgence.

“Unredeemable sinners, to put it in lame Christian terms, are the easiest. But that’s not what you really want to ask.”

A plethora of questions bloomed from the “lame Christian terms” comment, but Sam forced himself to get back on track. Dean would kill him for getting intellectual at a time like this.

“Right. So…at the end of the first story, you gave the Winchester a gift that was also a curse,” Sam said slowly.

“Adam,” Nick supplied, procuring a lit cigarette from behind his ear with eerie grace and taking a drag. The flame changed color like a cursed LED light. “His name was Adam.”

At whatever expression was on Sam’s face, he laughed, politely turning his head to the side. Exhaled smoke dispersed in a distinctly red haze beneath the lights.

“Not the Adam, but the Adam of your line. I can’t believe his name has been forgotten.”

“It’s a pretty old story,” Sam said defensively, trying not to be thrown by Nick’s parlor tricks. “Medieval ages old?”

“Medieval? Oh no, Adam lived much longer ago than that,” Nick remarked, counting for show on his fingers. “When did Rome invade Britain?”

Sam did the mental math and decided that the large number didn’t merit further analysis at the moment.

“Well, it was thereabouts,” Nick said dismissively. “The point is my gift.”

“The gift causes…everything,” Sam said, finishing with a vague gesture at himself. “All the weird stuff.”

"Weird stuff," Nick echoed, amused. "Yes. Adam, as any man of his era, was most concerned with propagation. A plague had taken most of his children from him. As a result, he wanted protection from the plague. A very straightforward desire."

“Wait. That’s not in the story,” Sam said, frowning.

“Think about it,” Nick said, “How does the one line go?”

The words floated up in Sam’s mind; the vague phrasing suddenly clear with the added context Nick had provided.

“Blood shall be protected by begetting blood,” Sam muttered.

“You know, considering duplicity is my nature, my gift was quite lovely. Not a single Winchester has gotten sick since Adam —not even so much as a sniffle. Sure, you guys die of just about everything else in strange manners,” Nick said, waving his hand dismissively, “but the universe has to have its balance. A gift of that caliber, even given freely on my end, has to be settled by somebody in the grand scheme of things.

And all I asked in return was a bit of acknowledgment. Adam made sure his descendants learned the story because that's all his bloodline had to do: keep telling the story.”

Sam’s stomach sank. “I take it you’ve heard of my stance on it.”

“Something like that,” Nick said airily in a way that didn’t match his darkening countenance. Luckily, he became thoughtful before Sam could witness true anger. “But, then I thought about it. It’s been ages since Adam, and humans can be so forgetful. Your history repeats itself in stupid little circles every century. From that perspective, it’s quite gratifying that the story has lasted as long as it has.

“So, I decided I’d give the Winchesters a second chance before retracting my gift,” Nick finished magnanimously, refilling his glass. “The original story must be losing its shine if you’re not telling it. That’s why I’m here tonight—to give you material to create a new one.”

Sam didn’t like the sound of that at all.

“Me? What are you going to do?”

“Haven’t decided,” Nick replied blasely, swirling his wine with the delicacy of a connoisseur. He countered the image by tapping cigarette ashes into the glass. “I came up here with thoughts of thumbscrews, but you resemble Adam quite a bit. Strange, how human genetics will repeat a face ad nauseam for generations.” Nick pinned him with a considering look. “So, for that, I’ll spare you torture and instead go with something more fitting for a family story by the fireplace.”

“I appreciate that,” Sam said faintly.

Nick straightened, assuming the air of someone ready to designate orders to an underling with no choice. Sam’s head throbbed in tandem with his heartbeat.

“I’ll set three tasks before you that must be completed before the night is up, in the order I give them to you,” Nick declared, raising a hand to count them off.

One finger down. “Tell the original story to someone who hasn’t heard it at all.”

Second finger down. “Bury a witch’s heart at a crossroads.”

Third finger down. “Catch a hellhound and bring it to me.”

Sam did his utmost best to wrap his mind around tasks that, to him, seemed to go from 0 to 100 disturbingly quickly. Nick continued.

“Do all those things, and the gift will remain intact. If you don’t complete these tasks, I will retract the gift and turn it inside out.” Nick’s eyes glinted with bright malice—an emotion that suited him better than any of the others he’d parodied. “What do you think a millennia’s worth of sickness and poor health brought down on the heads of the current generations of Winchesters would look like?”

Sam swallowed roughly. He’d long passed the point of hoping this was some drug-induced fever dream.

“I’ll complete the tasks. Do I get any more clarification?”

Nick pretended to consider this. “No.”

Sam was still in the middle of deciding if this meant he was dismissed (and where did he go from here?) when time started to speed up again. Nick turned his head towards the crowd, surprise briefly flickering across his human mask.

“Someone is looking for you,” he murmured. “How interesting. Let’s let them in.”

Sam could only think of two people who would be actively looking for him on a night like this. He selfishly, fervently hoped it was one so the other could remain safe, but tonight, luck wasn't on his side.

“Samshine! There you are!” Gabriel called out, shoving his way between a couple of rowdy dancers and nearly losing his angel wings in the process. He stumbled, caught himself on the stool in between Sam and Nick, and glanced back and forth between them. His hand drifted up to tug nervously at a fresh lollipop stick. “Who’s this?”

Time returned to normal, but the auditory distortion lingered. Sam could see Gabriel registering the offness of the situation as his overly cheerful (to hide jealousy?) tone faded into a mix of confusion and wariness. Wariness took over completely when Nick tipped his wine glass towards him and smiled.

He senses it, Sam thought, catching Gabriel by the waist when he stepped back towards him.

“What a pretty little angel. I’d start with him if I were you,” Nick suggested, looking Gabriel up and down with a smile that turned lazy. Sam was torn between shoving Gabriel behind him and unwisely getting heated with Nick. “Well, I for one can’t wait to see how things will turn out. It’s going to be a good Samhain.”

Nick propped what remained of his cigarette in his mouth, picked up his glass and bottle, and sinuously slid off the stool. On his feet, the unnatural, illusory atmosphere surrounding him only intensified.

Gabriel crunched down on his lollipop as Nick’s eyes momentarily gleamed red under the weight of a passing shadow that shrouded his face. He shot them a wink before disappearing into the crowd, somehow disturbing none of the dancers, yet finding enough walking room to get through.

A second later, the lights over the bar gave out completely, plunging them into smoky darkness alleviated only by weak, fluttering light from windows and phone screens.

“Who the fuck was that?” Gabriel asked.

“I honestly don’t know if you’d believe me if I told you.”

Sam felt it more than anything when Gabriel turned to face him. “Try me.”

Every instinct Sam possessed was evenly split between wanting to tell Gabriel to get the hell out of The Roadhouse while he still could and begging him to stay. His indecision hung between them, taut and fragile.

Gabriel’s hand slid up his arm; a comforting touch in the dark. “Sam.”

“Okay,” Sam said, hoping he wouldn’t regret this later. “Okay. Let’s get somewhere quieter.”

The break room was empty. Sam tried not to think too hard about who, if anyone, was running The Roadhouse. He sat Gabriel down at the table and retold the encounter—right down to Nick’s eyes and magical cigarette.

Gabriel listened intently, eyes widening at the appropriate moments and face settling into a frown at the end. It was the same contemplative frown he wore when he read particularly dense texts he often read before class started, which weirdly comforted Sam.

“That explains the heebie jeebies I got just from looking at him,” Gabriel said, shuddering at the memory. “Holy cow, Sam, what have you gotten mixed up in?”

“It all goes back to that stupid story,” Sam sighed, running his hands through his hair.

Gabriel leaned forward. “That’s the first task, right? Tell it to me.”

Sam's residual panic from talking to Nick settled at Gabriel's no-nonsense tone. He tried to picture it as a story they were dissecting in class—something ancient and wholly removed from him.

“I…it’s not so easy,” he stammered.

“Try remembering a time someone told it really well,” Gabriel suggested.

Sam bit his lip. A memory floated up through the chaos of his mind, hazy around the edges with age. He must’ve been five or six, curled up in the corner of some family member’s couch at a gathering that had run late into the night. He’d been allowed to stay with the adults and woken from his stupor at the sudden hush that filled the room as the person began to speak.

He couldn’t remember how it’d been told or who had told it that night. All he remembered with clarity was the way Dean, curled up beside him, whispered for him to pay attention.

“It always starts the same way,” Sam explained, as those before him sometimes had. An easy entrance into an old world. “That’s how you know someone is telling the story. It goes like this…”

…

In a place and time lost to God, a Winchester made the Devil laugh.

Sickness came from across the sea and descended on the land. The man’s family had been decimated, and what few were left were hungry. Winter, coming in the sickness’s shadow, might kill the rest. So, the man went hunting to bring home meat.

For three days and nights, he followed deer far from home, slowly catching up to the wandering herd. On the third night, he realized he'd followed them into unknown lands. The trees rose through the thick mist around him like giants, untouched by man's ax.

The man didn’t trouble himself with this. He would find his way back after he caught a deer, which were now close enough for him to take aim.

A stag, whose magnificent antlers scraped against trees as he walked and whose dark coat gleamed like the night, caught his eye. He aimed and fired, but the arrow failed.

All the deer scattered, and in their wake, a man walked out of the fog. He looked like a brother from his village, but the man knew better as soon as he smiled. No threat could ward this stranger off —not if he was what he suspected him to be. 

The man decided to play along with whatever story the stranger told him. Killing the Devil is impossible, but turning the trickery he employs against you can forge a blade better than any hunting knife.

The stranger pretended to be lost and in need of assistance. They wandered through the mist for the rest of the night, talking all the while. The stranger told fantastical stories that betrayed his depth of knowledge; the kind no mortal man could possess. The man never remarked on these, instead offering stories of his family and village in return. He knew them to be paltry, but they were sufficient to entertain the stranger.

He bided his time and knew that he had chosen the right course when, on the cusp of dawn, the stranger suddenly stopped.

“Well done,” the Devil said, changing into a creature of antlers and smoke before the man’s eyes. “You have made me laugh, and for that, you have earned a reward. What do you desire most in all the world? Gold? Infamy? Immortality?”

Accepting a gift from the Devil surely meant inviting trouble into his household, but the man saw no way to refuse without causing offense. Besides, what had God done for him when half of his family died from the sickness?

The man had never cared much about either the Devil or God, and still didn’t: he only cared about one thing.

“Sickness has taken children from me. I wish to take care of what family I have left.”

“You don’t want your loved ones back?”

“What good would that do them?” the man asked. “They have lived and gone on. It angers me, but isn’t that life for us? The dead remain out of reach for a reason. Let me take care of those that live, as the living are my responsibility.”

The Devil considered this as the sun rose red behind him.

“Very well. Blood shall be protected by begetting blood as long as your descendants who bear your name, and theirs, tell this story.”

There was no handshake or sworn oath, yet the man knew the words to be true. As the sun rose, the Devil fully turned into the stag he’d failed to kill. He looked upon him once with knowing eyes before disappearing into the fog.

The man, alone once more in the woods, took up his hunt again. When he found the herd, he settled on a doe to bring back home. The night’s walk had taken him back into land he knew, so the man did not get lost a second time.

When he returned home, he told his family all that had occurred. They agreed to tell the tale, and so it grew, passed from one generation to the next, in the hopes that it would always continue to ward off the dark.

…

“Well,” Gabriel started, propping his chin in his hand. His expression was a confounding mixture of gleeful and cross. “Why have I been debating the finer points of Beowulf with you when I could’ve been sinking my teeth into this?”

“It’s just a story,” Sam protested weakly despite having had most of his old stance on the Winchester family tale cut out from under his feet not fifteen minutes ago. What could he say? Old habits died hard. “Not to mention it’s undergone one of the world’s longest telephone games. The version I told you is a standard version dating back a hundred or so years. We lost Adam’s name a long time ago, and we could never figure the details of the gift out.”

Sam didn’t mention that at the beginning of October, when the full force of the season began to infiltrate stores and students, he’d seriously debated telling Gabriel about it. He’d known it would impress him, and his crush had been (and still was) serious enough that he would’ve cast aside his long-held distaste for the tradition in the hopes of impressing Gabriel.

“Not dying from sickness,” Gabriel said, rubbing a temple in disbelief. “Out of all those generations of Winchesters, not one of you noticed that?”

“We did! But we just chalked it up to a side effect of the gift. It’s hard to figure out what we’re supposed to be protected from when it seems like the world is out to get us. Freaky accidents—you name it and we’ve had someone experience it,” Sam said, waving his hands in an indecipherable gesture. “It’s hard to know what’s literal and what’s not. On one hand, the “bear your name” bit is very literal, but did Adam really go hunting for three days and three nights?”

“Three is a commonly used number in literature,” Gabriel admitted before backtracking. “Wait, what do you mean by that first bit?”

“The gift extends to anyone who marries into the family too. My mom swears she only had weird stuff start happening to her when she married my dad, but now that I think about it…she hasn’t gotten sick either.”

Gabriel contemplated this. “Interesting. So, the story has been around for so long that telling it is more tradition than anything?”

"Basically," Sam said, "There's been a spectrum of hardcore believers of the story to doubters. Most just use it as a kicking-off point to tell stories about the weird shit they've experienced at family reunions because there's always a story to tell, but the original—as we knew it anyway— is dusted off now and then in a “hell, just in case” approach. I was the only one who never bothered whatsoever with it.”

“But you did have weird stuff happen to you?”

“Sure,” Sam shrugged. “The amount of near-death experiences I’ve had is higher than average, but I always thought they were coincidences. Coincidences do happen.”

Gabriel shook his head disapprovingly. Sam could only shrug again. He knew that Gabriel possessed a karmic-based view of the universe cobbled together from superstitions, nitpicked ideals, and a strong streak of retributive justice. It was probably why he was responding so well to what was going on thus far.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. We’ve completed the first task,” Gabriel said, tapping his chin thoughtfully, “Now we have to find a witch’s heart and bury it at a crossroads. Easy peasy.”

“I have to find one and bury it,” Sam corrected, warmed beyond measure by Gabriel’s use of “we,” but unwilling to involve him any more than he already had.

“No, we will,” Gabriel emphasized. “I’m going to see this through with you Sam. You can’t do it alone!”

"Sure I can. My ancestor did, so I can too," he said with more confidence than he felt. "If you're worried, I'll just ask my brother Dean. He's somewhere out in the crowd tonight."

Gabriel fiddled with one of the rings he wore, his eyes avoiding Sam’s.

“Sammo…if the staff disappeared because Nick found them inconvenient, then—don’t you think he might’ve done the same to Dean?”

Sam blinked twice before the true meaning of Gabriel’s hypothesis sunk in. When it did, he stood so quickly that he knocked his chair over.

It was one of the worst kinds of magic tricks; the exact kind that made him hate Halloween so much.

“Sam, wait—”

He didn’t listen to Gabriel—couldn’t. He had to find Dean.

Sam hardly recognized The Roadhouse. The crowd lurched against the walls in animalistic revelry, as if trying to bring the building down with them. He could dimly hear Gabriel behind him, but Sam was wholly absorbed in locating Dean, diving deeper into the fray.

A hard pit formed in his stomach. Dean wasn't the most stringent believer in the old Winchester tale. He told an obnoxiously crass version of the story because he thought the tradition was a fun time and because he knew it bugged Sam when he occasionally bought into it.

But Dean would help him with these tasks without a single question asked. When he was younger, he’d found Dean’s overprotective streak smothering. Now, Sam would give anything to have Dean take some of this impossible burden off of him. And Nick would have known that.

The pit in his stomach bottomed out into a pervasive fear. Nick was just a useful, harmless moniker for an entity Sam had unknowingly prodded into irritation—evil incarnate; a being with a bone to pick with him and the perfect night to do so.

He couldn’t find Dean or Castiel anywhere. When he dialed Dean’s number, it went straight to his voicemail before his phone lost service entirely. Logically, Sam knew that they could’ve just left for fresh air. His gut told him otherwise.

Sam had to do this by himself.

The crowd began to move Sam towards the center. Costumes flashed around him, momentarily turning people into the creatures and figures they’d dressed up as: cats, witches, vampires, nurses, bunnies; prey and predators, monsters and menaces.

Sam let it happen. Maybe it’d be easier to grab a bottle from behind the bar and pretend it had all been a horrible dream….

A hand seized his, pulling him free from the dark, seductive flow of the crowd. Sam’s head cleared enough to see that Gabriel had caught up to him, mouth set in a scowl that meant business.

“You’re so—ow—fucking hard to keep track of,” Gabriel huffed, elbowing a dancer off of his foot. “C’mon! While you were running around, I had an epiphany. Get out of the way!”

Gabriel bullied his way through the crowd, utilizing the energy he spent gesticulating and acting out scenes from readings in class to make his presence known. Sam, awed, trailed in his wake.

His awe abated when Gabriel stopped abruptly enough at the door for him to run into his winged back. Sam coughed out a feather and frowned, his question dying on his lips at the sight of the front lot.

People danced in the yard, some far more nimble than drunk people should’ve been, and some far more nude than the cold night should’ve allowed for. They darted between sloppily parked cars, skirting the main road and flitting among trees in frenzied, show-stopping force.

At some point, a bonfire had been erected by the woods, drawing enough attention for a circle to form around the flames. There wasn’t any chanting, but the cackles of delight as people fed the flames with whatever was on hand were enough to draw a preternatural shiver from Sam.

“It’s like they’re possessed,” Gabriel said.

“Maybe they are. Who knows how much Nick is meddling tonight,” Sam said grimly.

They exchanged looks and, with that pleasant thought, mutually decided to keep their heads down and make a run for Gabriel’s car.

“How am I going to fit in there?” Sam asked incredulously, pointing at what looked like all the graded coursework from the first half of the semester lying in strewn piles around Gabriel’s messy coupe.

“I forgot about those,” Gabriel said, scratching his head. He knocked his halo crooked in the process. “Help me get them in the trunk?”

Sam did, because Gabriel was being a literal angel to him tonight and, despite his dismay at Gabriel’s messy habits, his crush continued unchecked. If anything, it only intensified when Gabriel tried, and failed, to get his costume wings off on his own.

“Can’t drive with those,” he laughed as Sam took the wings.

Half of Gabriel’s back was bare due to the drape of the toga. He was more muscular than Sam anticipated.

Keep it together, Sam thought firmly when Gabriel shivered, goosebumps visibly coursing across his skin. Keep it together, keepittogether—

Gabriel looked over his shoulder. He’d parked worryingly close to the impromptu and highly illegal bonfire; close enough for the firelight to catch the glitter of his makeup and reflect in his eyes.

Fuck.

Sam shrugged off his jacket and draped it over Gabriel before he could think twice.

“You’re going to freeze to death. Hurry up and get in.”

Gabriel blinked owlishly after him as Sam hurriedly folded himself up into the passenger seat to hide his flushed face. He tried to focus on the insurmountable situation at hand; anything but the way his sleeves draped over the backs of Gabriel’s hands, hiding his knuckles as he started the car.

His eyes landed on a silver pendant dangling from the rearview mirror. It was of the Archangel Gabriel, horn poised to blow. Of course he owns something like that.

“You said you had an idea?” Sam asked after Gabriel maneuvered his way around dancing and screaming people. He somehow managed to do so without hitting anyone.

“Of a sort,” Gabriel replied. “Finding a witch’s heart leads to the first assumption that we’d have to find a witch and do some nasty things to acquire said heart.” He jerked the wheel to the left just in time to avoid someone darting across the road for the woods with nothing more than a sigh of annoyance.  “But! Nick didn’t specify how we had to get it.”

Sam, between his panicking and rearranging his preconceptions of the universe, had indeed been caught in an intense moral dilemma about how he was to go about getting a witch’s heart. He perked up at Gabriel’s line of thought.

“So you’re thinking of locating some kind of facsimile?”

“Exactly. And lucky for you, I know where to start.”

“You’re taking all this much better than I am,” Sam remarked.

Gabriel laughed, patting Sam's knee. "Oh, I'm freaked out. Nick was terrifying, but it'd be a dick move to let you handle this on your own." He wiggled his eyebrows mischievously. "Besides, how could I say no to a little spooky quest?"

A little spooky quest. The pithy categorization of the Herculean tasks ahead of him somehow made the whole experience easier to process.

Gabriel drove them to the outskirts of town, and then out of it entirely. Sam had a plethora of questions, but since Gabriel seemed to know where he was going, he kept them to himself.

Eventually, they pulled off onto an unmarked gravel lane that stretched in a precise line through acres of cleared land.  At the end of the lane, a white farmhouse awaited. Every window it possessed blazed with light. Behind it, the blood moon rose, impaled on the lazily spinning weathervane.

There were around half a dozen in total parked around a garage that sat in the house’s shadow, including a Cadillac older than the national highway system. The closest car Gabriel parked near bore a bumper sticker that said, “RIDE MY ASS AND I’LL HEX YOU.”

“Looks like Rowena has a full house tonight,” Gabriel said. “Rowena is…well, I’d say a witch, but not New Age or Wiccan. She’s in a class of her own.”

“I’ll keep the distinction in mind,” Sam said dryly.

Gabriel didn’t elaborate further, leaving them to pick their way through a barely contained garden filled with every herb imaginable (and some Sam wasn’t sure anyone outside witches could identify) to get to a back door covered in esoteric symbols carved into the wood.

Sam tried to keep his apprehension in check. The place certainly fit the bill for a source of unexpected and potentially supernatural aid.

Before Gabriel could knock, a woman about their age smoking a cigarette opened the door.

“Meg! Long time, no see,” Gabriel said, spreading his hands with a disarming smile.

Meg wasn't impressed. Her eyes cut to Sam, sweeping down his form with an expression that made Sam sidestep to half-hide behind Gabriel.

“You two have gotten yourselves in some deep shit,” she finally drawled, exhaling a stream of smoke that the wind carried down into the garden. “Come on. Rowena’s waiting.”

Without further ado, she turned and walked inside. Gabriel and Sam had a wordless exchange that ended with Gabriel shrugging in a “what do you want me to do?” manner and Sam sighing hard enough to ruffle his fringe.

Meg walked fast, so Sam only caught glimpses of rooms—a kitchen and the massive iron pot squatting on the wooden table; walls crammed with framed paintings and black and white photos; a mud room stacked with heels and black boots.

Feminine giggles drifted from the stairs as they walked past. The sound and the mingled scent of perfume and incense that drifted down from unseen landings overhead were the only signs of the night’s gathering.

They were led into an actual parlor room—furnishings and all—at the front of the house. A handful of occult relics decorated the walls and side tables, but they all paled in comparison to the redheaded woman standing by the far end of the velvet couch.

“Ah! Our damned gentlemen,” Rowena (because who else could she possibly be?) said, spreading her pale, thin hands in a welcoming gesture. “Come in, come in. Don’t be shy! Especially you, Gabriel.”

Sam stiffened at the familiar tone Rowena adopted. She hadn't shortened Gabriel's name like almost everyone did, but she might as well have called him sweetheart.

“It’s been a while, Rowena,” Gabriel said with a polite smile as he sat. Sam quickly followed suit, slightly mollified. Surely, if there was still some connection between the two, they would’ve greeted each other more warmly. “I’m assuming you know something about our problem.”

Rowena arched an eyebrow. “Yes, I’m aware of the Winchester’s dilemma. I thought something was afoot this Samhain, what with all the revelry going on in town, but I must admit, I didn’t expect this level of…drama.” Her eyes flicked between the two of them. “I think I can squeeze in a consultation session before the ladies and I prepare for the blood ritual. Tell me what’s going on.”

While Sam tried to wrap his head around the idea of a coven performing a blood ritual in the 21^st century (how literal was Rowena being?) Gabriel outlined the tasks they had to perform and why.

Incredibly, Rowena seemed to know about some of Sam’s family history.

“I have a journal of an old coven leader somewhere or other that mentions a Winchester as a bed conquest. He told her the tale as pillow talk.”

Somehow, this was the least surprising news of the night.

“Old magic is the worst to meddle with,” Rowena remarked once Gabriel finished. “We’re talking about a gift that has operated uninterrupted for at least a thousand years. It’s so rooted in the bloodline that I shudder to think what might happen if it’s removed. At the very least, there could be a minor shift in the grand balance of things.”

“Wouldn’t Nick know about that?” Sam blurted out—his first addition to the conversation.

Rowena appeared momentarily confused before smiling faintly. “Nick. Yes, we might as well call him Nick.” Her smile faded. “Oh, he knows. He just doesn’t particularly care one way or another.”

Sam had gotten that impression, but having Rowena confirm it disheartened him. Sensing this, Gabriel quickly took over.

“You can help us, right?”

“To a degree,” Rowena said ambiguously, continuing with a nonchalant air, “And for a price, of course.”

Sam’s bank account cried out in anticipatory agony. Gabriel didn’t seem nearly as worried.

“What kind of price?”

Rowena didn’t hesitate. “After tonight, I want to study the Winchester.”

“My first name’s Sam,” Sam stressed, then paused as he processed Rowena’s statement. “What am I, a supernatural guinea pig?”

“You present a unique opportunity for my coven. A whole bloodline of unconscious conductors of oddity, and largely unstudied to boot,” Rowena said, leaning forward with gleaming eyes. For a moment, past the heavy eye makeup and powder, she shone with the bright flame of youth. “Having you around could shed light on some concepts and rituals that have boggled witches for many years.”

“As long as you don’t hurt him,” Gabriel interjected, crossing his arms. His attempt at appearing threatening was only mildly levied by the remnants of his costume. Sam was still charmed at the attempt.

“I won’t. He’s more useful alive,” Rowena said glibly. “So, do you agree?”

They spent ten minutes working out how long he’d have to be poked and prodded by witches (six months starting a week before the winter solstice, right after finals were done) before Rowena told them how they could handle the witch’s heart business.

“There’s one in the old McCallum residence,” Rowena said, “Pickled in a jar by some sadist magistrate. Gabriel can tell you the backstory since he’s the local budding historian, but the current situation as it stands is that Madeline Goodfellow—the unfortunate witch—haunts that house in the worst case of vengeful spirit I’ve seen on this side of the Mississippi.”

Sam gulped. He’d heard of the McCallum house as a kid, and he’d grown up over four hours away. It was one of the state’s urban legends; a haunted house that stood out from the rest because of the level of violence to the supernatural occurrences people claimed to have experienced.

“Why haven’t you done anything about it?” Gabriel asked suspiciously, pulling Sam from his dumbfounded reverie that he was about to brave a legitimately haunted house to save his eternal soul and the rest of his family.

Rowena shrugged gracefully. "Vengeful spirits come back with a purpose. I respected that as a witch and let her be—that, and she helped drum up business for us. People like their protective charms and doodads." She sighed. "However, she's grown to be a handful. If she's allowed to remain for much longer, she could wreak all sorts of havoc on the area's energy balance."

“More than she already has?” Gabriel asked incredulously.

Foreboding washed over Sam. If even half of the stories of the McCallum house were true, he was screwed.

“Once you get her heart, you’ll have to salt and burn her body before sunrise. Otherwise, you’ll have a witch ghost focused on you since you’ve stolen her heart.” Rowena paused, considering the severity of the situation. “Now that I think about it, you’ll probably have to burn the house too. She’s simply too ingrained in the structure. Ah, what a shame!”

Burning down a historical landmark and desecrating a grave was not what Sam anticipated adding to his Halloween itinerary. What happened to just getting the heart?

Gabriel, astoundingly, only allowed himself a second of surprise before his eyebrows furrowed.

“Anything else?”

“I do believe that should do the trick.”

“Chin up, dear,” Rowena said to Sam once they’d settled that she would neither a) provide them the salt and kerosene nor b) provide any witch power to their ranks (“best not to stretch the rules of the game you’re playing with Nick any more than necessary”) but that she would a) let Gabriel use her bathroom to change and b) try to figure out how to find a hellhound. “At least you have a sweet boy to do this all with.”

Sam blushed, then frowned to cover it up. “How does Gabriel know you anyway?”

“Oh, it started as simple lore interest. Then we fell into a little dalliance, but that petered out quickly. Just a bit of fun,” Rowena explained matter-of-factly. “Gabriel’s heart, however flighty it may appear, is destined for someone else.”

Sam’s heart dropped at the admittance that there had been something between the two before bouncing right back up.

“Now you sound like a fortune teller.”

“Palm reading is my preferred method,” Rowena admitted, wiggling her manicured fingers at him in a “gimme” gesture. “Do let me read yours. I bet your lifeline is simply—”

Gabriel's entrance, punctuated by the purposeful drop of a duffel bag onto the floor, stopped Rowena from trying to read Sam's hands. He'd washed off most of the makeup and changed into jeans and a wrinkled, buttoned-up flannel.

“I was wondering where I’d left this,” Gabriel said casually, toeing the bag with his bare foot. Shoes, it seemed, weren’t something he’d left behind at Rowena’s. “Ready to go, Sam-a-lam?”

“Without shoes?”

"I'm pretty sure I've got a pair beneath the backseat of my car." Gabriel sheepishly wiggled his toes. "If you wouldn't mind?"

There is absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for you.

Instead of saying that, Sam took the car keys from Gabriel, letting the now brisk wind slap his stupidly sappy thoughts from his head.

After retrieving a pair of grass-caked Yellow Converse, Sam decided to clean them off before heading back in. He tried calling Dean again and managed to reach his voicemail with a bar of service Nick (or his cellular provider—did everything have to be chalked up to Nick?) mercifully granted him.

This time, Sam decided to leave a message.

“This is going to sound weird, Dean, but I’ve met the Devil tonight,” Sam said, studying the cars one by one to avoid looking at the garden or the moon overhead. “He’s not happy with me and has me doing a few tasks for him. If I don’t, we’re all screwed. I’ve got a, uh, friend helping me out though, so don’t worry too much. I’ve met a witch? I’m skipping over so much, but this isn’t exactly voicemail material.” Sam huffed out a laugh. “I don’t know when you’ll get this. Hoping we can laugh about it together in the morning. It’s going to be a long night. Wherever you are, stay safe.”

Sam hung up and resisted the urge to toss his useless phone into the garden. Instead, he sat down and took his frustrations out on the shoes, which he began to beat clean on the edge of the porch.

A rectangle of light appeared behind him as the door opened, illuminating his menial task.

“You know I’ll probably just get those dirty again.”

“Still bothers me,” Sam said, not talking about the shoes and not looking at Gabriel. He didn’t trust himself to do so with anything less than too sincere emotions in his eyes.

Gabriel shuffled out. His socked feet (pink skulls and bones—borrowed from one of Rowena’s assistants?) were the first thing to appear by Sam’s side, replaced by his thighs and then Gabriel himself as he hunched over with his elbows on his knees. He still wore Sam’s jacket.

"Always neat and proper, like your classwork," Gabriel said. There was a distance in his pleasant expression as if he was gauging Sam's response. But for what?

Sam averted his gaze and went for evasion.

“So…you and Rowena?”

Smart. Real smart, Sam, he promptly thought, giving Gabriel’s left shoe a harder thwack against the step in panicked regret. This is why Dean always jokes you’re only book smart.

Gabriel snorted, taking the question with remarkable casualness.

“I like being with people. And sex, but mostly people,” he winked, and Sam was grateful that the night hid his blush. Gabriel shrugged. “It wasn’t serious. None of my trysts have ever been. But that doesn’t mean I’m not up for learning.”

Thwack.

“I wasn’t judging. Just interested,” Sam clarified, clearing his throat. Eyes back on the shoes. Thwack. “I think these are good now.”

"I would hope so. Those poor things have been abused," Gabriel said, but with no real heat as he accepted the cleaner shoes. "Rowena told me more about hellhounds. They're invisible and impossible to call to yourself if you're not the owner once they're on the loose."

Of course they are. “So, how are we supposed to—?”

"Catch one?" Gabriel finished, pulling out a chain from within his shirt. Dangling from the end was a vial filled with an oily liquid about the size of Sam's thumb. "This stuff will let us see the hellhound. No topical application, so we'll have to add glasses to the shopping list."

Sam grunted, doing his best to take the explanation at face value. If Rowena had told him that he needed to do a split in a tutu to catch the thing, Sam wouldn’t have thought twice.

Rowena and Meg saw them off from the back porch. Meg took the time to smile at Sam.

“If you survive, this winter will be a lot of fun,” she called out after him, tapping her painted lips with a fresh cigarette.

"Goodbye Meg,” Gabriel hollered back before Sam could respond, sounding distinctly put out.

The blood moon still occupied the same position, reddening by the hour. From inside the car, Sam shivered at both the sight and at a phantom echo of the earlier pain.

“Oh fuck,” Gabriel blurted out, catching Sam’s shiver. “I’m still wearing your jacket. I totally forgot Sam.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Sam said, waving off Gabriel’s protestations. “I run hot, promise.”

“I bet.”

By the time Sam realized Gabriel had made an innuendo, Gabriel was breezing past the exchange and hurtling down the gravel lane as if he’d never said it at all.

“Have you been keeping track of the time tonight?”

“Um…not really?” Sam asked. “Why?”

“I think it’s moving slower for us,” Gabriel explained, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “We left the Roadhouse just before ten. It takes half an hour to get to Rowena’s, and we spent over an hour there, but…”

Sam pulled out his phone to check. 10:12 P.M.

“Are you sure?”

"I'm pretty sure," Gabriel said, handing him his phone to double check. "I'm not sure what gives, but the distortion of time has always been a common feature in quests. Even with all our modern amenities, it'll be tough. I think the night will draw out long enough for us to complete them."

"That's…alright, I'm just going to accept it because if I try to work out the mechanism behind it, my brain is going to hurt as much as it did in high school physics," Sam confessed.

Gabriel laughed. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you. You’re so damn curious about everything, and you gotta have a why for things if you can.”

“It’s a reasonable impulse,” Sam grumbled, ears hot at how fond Gabriel sounded.

“Some things you just have to accept you’ll never have an answer for,” Gabriel countered, rerunning the tracks of an argument they’d had in class a few times.

“I don’t want an answer to everything. That’s impossible,” Sam said, “I just want an answer to some things.”

“Like?”

If you like me back, or if we’re just going to have this bat-shit crazy Halloween night and you’ll never want to talk to me again because it’ll probably give us nightmares for the rest of our life. We’ll forever have this secret night linking us and nothing more, and you’ll always see me as a harbinger of bad things—

“Just stuff,” Sam said lamely, pointedly turning his head to look out the window.

They drove back to campus, or rather, the apartments on the fringe favored by grad students like Gabriel. Along the way, they noticed that if the streets weren't filled with rampant trick-or-treaters and partiers, then they were dead silent in a way that made the hairs on the back of Sam's neck rise. There was no discernable pattern as to what streets had activity versus which didn't, but the closer they got to campus, the more parties there were.

Gabriel’s apartment complex was one of several similarly designed brick, U-shaped structures with outdoor wooden steps leading up to upper floors that filled the area. Balconies decorated with everything from Halloween décor to forgotten laundry completed the appearance of unofficial-official student housing.

Music pulsed from at least three separate apartments. In the courtyard centered at the bottom of the U, people danced to an elaborate sound system blasting from the second-floor balcony overhead.

“Jesus,” Gabriel muttered, parking on the opposite side of the street. “I forgot about the parties here.”

"Why didn't you go to the parties around here?" Sam asked as they took a side entrance set in the left wing of the building.

“Little birdies told me that the people I wanted to see would be at the Roadhouse tonight,” Gabriel replied, looking over his shoulder consideringly.

Sam’s heart skipped a beat. He hoped his smile back didn’t come off as dorkily infatuated as he felt.

Gabriel’s apartment was located on the third floor, which seemed clear of the action save for a couple at the end of the hall making the most of the shadows the irregular lighting cast. Sam hurriedly looked away.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked as he followed Gabriel into his tiny apartment. Closet door to the immediate left, a small kitchen to the right a few paces in, and a living room filled with amorphous shapes that, when Gabriel turned on the lights, turned themselves into stacks of paperwork, files, books, clothes, and just straight up weird stuff. Was that a plaster bust missing half a head?

“Sorry about the mess. I resell to make ends meet,” Gabriel explained, leading him into the much more orderly kitchen with a rueful smile. “The plan is…hold on, where did I put it?” He turned to open a cabinet, revealing mismatched mugs, more books, and stashes of candy. “Hmm. Oh, I know!” He shut the door and stepped back, craning his neck to a smaller door set above the first. “Shit. Why did I do that?”

Sam stifled a smile at Gabriel’s obvious dilemma. “Need a hand?”

“If you would,” Gabriel said magnanimously, “There’s a money jar up there.”

Sam stretched an arm above him to reach. However, instead of shuffling to the side, Gabriel stayed put, making it so that as Sam loomed over him, his side pressed against Gabriel’s chest. Sam did his best to be quick as he got the (larger than he’d expected) opaque jar down.

“Excellent,” Gabriel said, eyes gleaming as he promptly emptied the contents onto the counter. No coins clinked and rolled off to the floor; it was all bills. “So we need salt and kerosene in quantities that are suspicious as heck, and I’m not sure Nick’s dubious goodwill extends to making us invisible to like, security cameras and stuff. This is the 21^st century after all. To minimize suspicion, we’ll hit up multiple places and use this cash for all purchases.” He paused in counting bills, looking off into the living room. “We’ll also need a shovel for grave digging, but I don’t think I’ve got one. We’ll add that to the list.”

It hadn’t been the first time tonight that Gabriel had demonstrated how level-headed he could be, but Sam was struck by it all over again in the best way possible. Gabriel could gripe like no one else about the tiniest non-inconveniences, but when it came down to the wire, he was clever in all the ways that mattered.

So much for trying to minimize my crush.

“How do you feel about coffee?”

“Right now?” Sam asked after processing the mundane request. With the night he’d been having, sharing a coffee with Gabriel sounded laughingly ludicrous.

“Why not? Time’s slowed for us,” Gabriel pointed out, already pulling out mugs. He looked back long enough to give Sam a cheeky wink. “And this way we can finally share that coffee we always talked about having. Seems proper before going into battle together.”

Sam intended to laugh, but somewhere in the space between the pessimistic gut feeling that they might die tonight (mostly the thought of Gabriel dying because of his mess) and his mouth, the sound became strangled.

Oh no, he thought, the world collapsing around him like a house of cards. All the familiar symptoms were creeping in. He couldn’t feel his hands.  No, not now—

Gabriel’s hand squeezed around his wrist, fingers digging into Sam’s pulse with such accuracy that Sam gasped, pulled back from hurtling completely over the precipice of panic.

"It'll be okay," Gabriel said, so firmly that for a half-second, Sam believed him. "I don't have any paper bags to regulate your breathing. Will a Walmart bag do?"

The joke tipped Sam into the safer, yet still somewhat humiliating area of startled laughing that quickly morphed into crying. Sam wasn't averse to crying in front of others—had done it enough around friends and family that he felt no idiotic masculine shame about the act—but anyone would be embarrassed to cry in front of someone they were so enamored by.

Gabriel didn’t seem to mind though. He let Sam gasp sobs out from the tight vise in his chest into the crook of his neck, despite the height difference, and ran his fingers through the back of his hair. You’re alright.

“M’really not,” Sam sniffed, loath to pull away from Gabriel to gauge his reaction, but wanting to do so as he continued. “I’m a panicker. And an overthinker.”

“So am I,” Gabriel said easily, “And I’m a massive asshole to boot.”

Sam snorted, hands reflexively clutching at Gabriel’s back. Structure returned to the world in bits and pieces.

“I don’t come off as one, but I’ve been told I can be a little mean at times.”

Gabriel made a noise between a guffaw and a cough.

“Well, I wasn’t going to be the one to say it, but…”

Sam pulled back, and whatever expression was on his face only made Gabriel chuckle properly.

“See, that’s exactly it, Sam-a-lam,” he said, grinning like a menace. “Just one of the many bitch faces I’ve seen you aim at your more idiotic peers.”

“I can’t help it,” Sam huffed, looking away pointedly.

“Mhmm,” Gabriel replied, unconvinced and seemingly unphased. “I think your prissiness is wonderful.”

“Prissiness?”

They hashed out their itinerary and a rough working plan over coffee and hastily thrown together sandwiches. Sam remained shaky throughout, spilling some of his coffee at one point. Gabriel only poured him a fresh cup.

Sam could physically feel himself falling in love with Gabriel even more if that was possible. He somehow managed to walk the fine line between helping him without smothering him.

All in all, they used what felt like an hour. In reality, it shaved 19 minutes off of what Gabriel was calling the “Spooky Time Zone” or “STZ” for short.

“Sounds like STD,” Sam quipped.

“Does not,” Gabriel pouted, even though they both knew he was right.

They left Gabriel's party-dominated apartment complex in the dust. Sam got his jacket back after Gabriel donned a hunter-green canvas jacket he proclaimed could be sacrificed to exploring grimy houses and graves.

Stepping into stores for supplies was like stepping in and out of pockets of time. They never came across other customers, but there were always employees. None of the employees were exactly alert, but neither were they notably changed. They always acted as if they'd caught them at the register dozing, partly emerging from a stupor glassy-eyed and confused. Sam suspected that in the morning, the employees would have no recollection of working their shifts.

“It’s creepy as hell,” Gabriel remarked after the third gas station, by which point neither of them could continue chalking up the weird interactions to the hour and holiday.

“It works in our favor,” Sam sighed, sipping on a newly acquired coffee. Tonight, caffeine would be his friend.

Along the way, Gabriel told Sam the story of Madeline Goodfellow. She'd been part of one of the first waves of people chasing gold and made a widow by the journey West, but possessed enough business sense and herbal knowledge to set herself up nicely by the time she reached Kansas. Paul McCallum, the local magistrate, saw a powerful woman and proposed marriage. Where his intentions fell on the spectrum of romantic-pragmatic, few could say, but what was known was Goodfellow's firm refusal and Johnson's resulting ire.

McCallum accused her of various crimes and successfully saw her hung in the public square. Technically, it wasn’t for witchcraft (Gabriel emphasized this), but for socially equivalent charges. The rumor her heart had been taken began shortly after the paranormal activity started in McCallum’s house while he was still alive. It drove him and his few descendants from the property, and after his line became extant, the house became a historical landmark.

“McCallum ended up dying in some tavern shootout. They say he hardly went home. Serves him right,” Gabriel said, concluding the story with a sigh. “Pass me a Redbull.”

Sam cracked one open and handed it to Gabriel. “Have you been there?”

“Haunted house with free admission on weekday nights? I sure did in my undergrad. Excellent college student entertainment.”

Sam tipped his coffee cup towards Gabriel to toast his flawless logic.

“Nothing major happened to me the couple times I went, but I hated the way the house felt,” Gabriel continued, “It was like…” He visibly cast about for an apt comparison. “Like you were walking inside someone’s clenched fist, hoping they wouldn’t crush you before you got out.”

Just as Sam was walking through the Devil’s fist, hoping it wouldn’t squeeze shut on him before dawn. He hid his unease by chugging his coffee, then hid his scalded tongue by swiping a piece of Gabriel’s candy stash.

The farther they drove past strips of sleeping small-town, darkened farmhouses, and harvested fields, the louder Gabriel grew. He coped by cracking high-strung jokes and eating far too much candy for his own good. None of this quite hid the way he clutched the steering wheel, and how a sudden crackle in the radio reception (tuned to some god-awful 80s station) made him flinch.

Meanwhile, Sam had crested the peak of his anxiety and sailed into the deceptively crystal-clear waters of collected calm. He’d had his near breakdown for the night, and now he meant business.

It was why, when they were about a half hour from the McCallum house and the radio began to careen through the station dials on its own, Sam grabbed the steering wheel before Gabriel’s knee-jerk reaction sent them into the ditch.

Gabriel punched the brakes hard enough to make them both jolt forward. Sam winced thinking of the state of the tires.

“God, that scared the shit out of me,” Gabriel exhaled, staring at where Sam’s hand still held the wheel. “That was good.”

“Not bad at all,” a familiar voice whispered through the radio. “Toying with you guys is so much fun!”

Gabriel slammed back into his seat, one hand fumbling for the car door handle as he reached out for Sam. Sam mimicked him, except he threw his arm out in a stupid, instinctive attempt to shield Gabriel from the radio. The result was a confusion of tangled limbs and neither of them making it out of the car.

“Just checking in on you guys,” Nick remarked, voice rising and falling with static bursts. “I’m impressed. Perhaps modernity won’t suck all the fun out of tonight.”

“Do you want anything, or are you just messing with us?” Sam asked in a (mostly) false show of bravado.

The radio played nothing but static for a moment—Nick pausing to think?

“I can’t help myself. Going to the witches was a fun interlude, but the story needs more…pizazz. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to make some wonderful little additions to this last stretch of road.”

Thunder rumbled overhead. Violent clouds scuttled in, obscuring the moon in a matter of seconds. Gabriel hissed in frightened displeasure as plant debris careened across his windshield with the force of the rising wind.

“You’re clever, Sam,” Nick remarked, “And so is your lovely little companion. It’s why I can’t help putting you to the test by pushing the boundaries. It’s my Achilles heel; my original sin.” The radio static started evening out into warped music stations. “Besides: who doesn’t love a good plot twist?”

Nick didn't depart with a movie villain cackle, but the abrupt return to normal radio was somehow worse. Rain began to fall; big, heavy drops that suggested hail would start coming down.

“Shit,” Gabriel said, rolling the windows up before any more rain got inside, “Shit, shit, shit—”

He punched the steering wheel. That made Sam jump, but more out of its unexpectedness than the noise. He couldn’t tell if Gabriel was freaking out from fear or anger—likely both.

For a moment, the interior contained only the sounds of Gabriel’s harsh breaths, the pouring rain, and the opening strains of “Bad Moon Rising.”

Gabriel reached out to cut the radio off. His eyes burned fire-bright, mouth pressed in a line so thin Sam could’ve cut himself on it. He swallowed as Gabriel glared through a fallen sweep of hair at him.

“We’re going to get that witch’s heart,” he declared, throwing the car into drive. “And when we do, I’m personally putting it on a silver platter for that fucker.”

Gabriel gave the radio an emphatic middle finger, and before Sam could do more than clutch at his seatbelt, drove them head-on into the storm.