Work Text:
What kind of clockmaker
builds a clock inside a body…
What kind of body
holds a clock that can’t keep
the time.
“Clock,” Maggie Smith
The motel key jolts Dean’s fingers when he pulls it from his pocket, static electricity, and he almost laughs. Makes sense. There’s a current in his blood again. Weeks of dead air but he’s back. Door’s unlocked anyway, and the key spins redundant. There’s the second of adjustment as he steps in—the bed farthest from the door is made, hotel-fresh, Cas sitting there ramrod straight. Dean’s clothes spilling from his duffle, Dean’s toothbrush in the bathroom, nothing else. “Cas—fuck’s sake, would you leave a light on if you’re going to sit around in the dark?” Sam would have jumped on that but Cas doesn’t even blink. “And would you keep the door locked? Not sure you noticed, but half the people we know want us dead.”
“I suspected you might be inebriated. The door is easier to open when it’s unlocked.” That note of disapproval, the sour satisfaction of being right. He sounds just like. “And I can see perfectly well without the lamp.”
“Inebriated, give me a break.” He locks the door, to model correct behavior, and flips the light on. It’s a weak orange flicker, better for hiding stains on the carpet. “I’ve had a few drinks, I’m not too sloshed to use a—you know what, forget it. I don’t need a domestic with you right now, I got good news.”
“Oh?”
It’s cautious, and Dean shoves the answering irritation down. It’s a long shot, everything’s a long shot. They take it anyway, every time, whether Cas nags him first or not, so why not skip the useless step. “I was with Tracy—”
“Oh?” The tone’s different this time. “You do smell of intercourse. She’s quite a bit younger than you are, as humans rate these things, isn’t she?”
“Fuck’s sake. Whatever, maybe, I didn’t ask for her ID.” One of those seasick moments—this isn’t even something Cas would have cared about before, or if he did he never said. It’s like. It’s like someone has to say it. She seemed pretty grown and filled out to me, he’d say just to see Sam cringe, but Cas will only ask if that means Tracy’s taken up bodybuilding or some shit. “I was with Tracy, blowing off steam as two legal adults are entitled to do in this great country, and she told me—” He digs it out of his pocket, a receipt with Tracy’s number and then, below that, a cluster of symbols. “She did ’em off the cuff so it isn’t perfect, but we can work with this. Supposed to be the name of a monster. She called it Pontypool, after that movie, since we can’t pronounce this shit.” He waves the slip of paper, ballpoint in clumps and wavering lines. “It fucking—it eats words. It crawls in somebody’s brain and sits there, chomping down on—language, you know, like the whole concept. Everything they hear or try to say or write.”
Now that he’s said it aloud, said it to Cas, it thrums against his face, close and hot. What are the odds. What are the fucking chances.
“Dean,” Cas says. Gentle.
“We don’t know. Until we check we don’t know. So we research this thing. Figure out how to extract it and kill it. We try that, then we’ll see.” Cas inhales, careful, opens his mouth. Useless. “Don’t you fucking start with me. Just get him on it.” He drops the receipt on the bedside table, stalks into the bathroom and closes the door hard. Leaves the light out. Breathes into his hands like they’re cold. It sounded plausible a half hour ago, ten minutes ago, five. Endorphins and Tracy’s big brown eyes and the buzz all wearing off together.
He runs the shower a hell of a lot longer than he’s in it.
“I won’t leave you a drooling mess when I’m done with you,” Michael promised Dean once. It’s funny to think about it this way now, after all the shit he pulled, but: He kept his word. Different guy, technically, but still. Dean thinks about that a lot recently. Wonders whether Lucifer ever made a similar promise to Sam.
It’s just—funny isn’t the word, but after everything. The possession, the Cage, Sam losing his mind and nearly ending up strapped down in a psych ward on a Thorazine drip thanks to Lucifer. After all that. Here they are. Funny isn’t the right word because it makes Dean want to crack someone’s ribcage wide open to both sides but he wonders whether Chuck’s laughing.
When he comes back Cas is exactly where he left him, receipt flattened on his thigh now, phone on his knee. “Jack will check the archives.”
“Well, hey. That’s all I’m asking.” He scrubs at his hair, gets water down his neck. “Didn’t realize it was gonna be some crazy imposition, after everything Sam’s done for you, but hey.”
“Of course Jack is going to look. He did, however, raise the possibility—”
“I’m not going over this again. They’re staying put.”
“I think if you read the articles Jack’s sent, the evidence is persuasive—”
“Sure, for this—for the condition, maybe that’d be better. This ain’t about managing symptoms, it’s about Sam.” Cas’s jaw is set, eyebrows climbing, and they don’t have time for this. “I’m not saying Jack’s wrong. I’m saying it’s not worth the risk. We take them hunting, some freak follows us to the motel, sooner or later there’s nothing left to fix.” He pitches it low, sits across from Cas on his bed and leans in.
It takes a second but Cas nods. “I suppose that’s… not untrue.”
“Look, I get this is hard on the kid. We’ll go back tomorrow. Check in, give him a break.”
Cas sighs, unknotting at the joints. Echoes Dean’s posture, hands dangling from his knees, close enough to touch. His slacks are crisp again, the midnight reset after rumpling all day. “That would be wise. Jack mentioned the holidays. I believe he’s lonely. And likely watching too much television.”
“Shit.” Dean turns his phone over. The date’s there, accusatory white pixels. “We’ll go back. Let him know, would you? I gotta catch my 20 winks.”
“I believe 40 are traditional.” Solemn. Just that hint of warmth. Dean’s out of the doghouse.
“Hey.” He pats Cas’s knee, shoves himself back onto the pillows. “You know what they say. The fewer the winks, the sooner we’re home.”
Sam isn’t in his room. Jack isn’t worried, not yet. His phone is overheated because he used it to talk to Cas, and he’s thinking about that, mostly; they didn’t even speak that long. There’s something wrong with the phone. His instinct is to ask Sam whether it can be fixed. The heat of it in his palm lends an odd, thready urgency to the search, pressing in from the outside.
Jack checks the dungeon first. The storage room is empty, and he tugs the dungeon door to be sure it’s locked. Listens briefly, ear pressed against it. Dean’s room next, and then the line-up of empty rooms toward the front. With a note of alarm so muffled he’s not sure whether it’s his own or a proxy for Dean he tries the exit. It’s locked, and when he opens it the heat gasps past him into the night. Eddies of snow race in. Light from behind him reaches for the flakes still falling, sputters out in midair. He sets a foot outside experimentally. The cold doesn’t register, and then it stings. He breaks through a crust of ice when he bears down. Sam would have left footprints.
Sam grabs his arm and hauls him back.
He forgets sometimes. Sam is still fast when he wants to be, still strong. “You scared me,” Jack says. This is what people in movies say when they can’t find someone, and also when someone they didn’t know was nearby grabs them.
Sam doesn’t answer. He sits down on the concrete of the crow’s nest and he tugs at Jack’s ankle, makes a two-tone sound in his throat. Jack lets him pull the foot up onto his lap before he notices the blood. There’s no cut beneath it now, but Sam mops absently at it with his sleeve. They'll toss that shirt before Dean gets back. Jack doesn’t want to explain a bloodstain.
It’s not like before, not really. Sam sitting on the stoop in the cold and damp over something that’s not even a real injury, he wouldn’t have done that. But the rough shape of it, of concern and responsibility for Jack’s wellbeing. That’s not so different. “Sam?” Jack says.
Sam looks up—he recognizes the tone of a question, Jack thinks, not his name—and it breaks the spell, distracts him. He sees the night pressed at the open door and he stands, moves to step outside himself.
“Not now.” Jack yanks back on his shirt, darts to pull the door shut and lock it. There's a second, trapped between the door and Sam, that he braces himself. But Sam doesn't do anything and it's been ages since last time he had one of those fits of anger, so it's silly of Jack to worry about, really. “Come on, you should be asleep.” He drops his hand into Sam’s and pulls, heads down the stairs without looking back. It works, sometimes. If he acts confident, or casual. Sam will just follow along. Sometimes.
It works now. Jack sighs off the tension, the cold. He wasn’t sure how he was going to get Sam down without hurting him, if he fought. He should find a way to block off the stairs. An uneven surface at a significant height is an unnecessary hurdle.
On level ground he loosens his grip. “What do you want?” If Sam is up for water or the bathroom or some other harmless thing, that will be all right.
Sam stares past Jack’s ear. His eyes glaze over and Jack is alone.
He has a feeling. He lets Sam’s hand drop and backs his way toward the kitchen, just long enough to glance in. Every drawer is open, every cupboard. He scrubs at his face with both palms. “Son of a bitch,” he says. Dean would know what to do and he can’t ask Dean. He goes back to Sam, takes his hand again and twists so his leverage is better, so it would hurt Sam’s wrist if he tried to hang back. “You have to get some sleep.” Sam has shadows under his eyes. Jack hadn’t noticed before but these things stand out once he knows Dean will be home soon. “It’s important for brain injuries. The brain does a lot of healing during sleep.” Sam is very pale, too. Dean doesn’t like that they go outside but he doesn’t like it when Sam looks like he hasn’t been outside, either. “If you sleep right away, we can go out first thing tomorrow.”
Sam’s steps have begun to drag. At the door of his room he stops, braces his free hand on the wall.
“Sam…” Jack pulls. It’s halfhearted. He could really hurt Sam’s wrist, but the pain won’t change Sam’s mind. He could force Sam into the room, but it wouldn’t make Sam get any sleep or even stay put. A few times, months and months ago, Jack put him in the infirmary for the night because there are restraints on those beds. Sam had dislocated both thumbs and a shoulder and gotten out. “All right, then.” He keeps going, passes Sam’s room, one door down. “Wait. I have to find something.” He looks up at Sam, like he expects a response. Sam’s eyes trail after a mote of dust in the light from the lamp by Jack's bed. His hands hang when Jack lets go, fingers curled loose. Sam used to always have something in his hands, something to do.
“You got me this.” Jack rummages through his desk drawers, the sheafs of printouts. Pages of different articles are drifting together. He should organize them. Dean won’t listen if he doesn’t present things right—the way Sam would have. “Remember?” He shakes it loose, holds it up.
Sam looks up. He’s back, a little. He even smiles, like maybe he recognizes the notebook.
“It has special paper and pen, so that computers can read pictures of it the way they can read documents in a word processor. It wasn’t even an occasion, you just gave it to me.” Sam’s eyeline is drifting. “Do you? Remember?” Jack says this as though it’s urgent. It drags Sam back in, pushes his eyebrows together. Like the question was hard but he’ll figure it out, he’ll answer. “Well, I appreciated it.” He’s not sure he said so at the time. He was sick, and human, and he wanted to hunt with Sam more than he wanted Sam to bring him presents. He sets it on the desk and bends over it with his phone open to the photograph Castiel sent him. “Another hunter told Dean this might be what’s wrong with you.” It’s not. Dean wants him to look, so he will. But if there were something inside Sam, a foreign body, Jack would know. He would have fixed that. “Is this the same, do you think?” He holds them up, phone and his clumsy copy on paper. “It isn’t very good. Here.” He pulls Sam’s elbow, gets him over to the desk, molds Sam’s fingers around the pen.
It works. Whatever splinters of Sam are left, this is the most complete of the pieces. Sam wants to help. He cleans the guns, does the dishes, puts books back on shelves. His string of symbols is more like what’s written on the receipt than Jack’s is.
“Thank you, Sam.” He takes a picture with his tablet. Now he can run the image as a search through the archives, at least the records Sam got around to digitizing. It closes tight around his chest some days, how much of Sam is here, how close he is. “I mean it this time. You have to sleep.” He always intends not to do this, but it’s hard to argue with the guarantee of it.
He’d pulled the cushions from scattered chairs a few months back, the blankets and pillows from a half-dozen empty rooms, and he’d built something approaching a pillow fort in the Dean Cave. Since then he’s put it away every time Dean and Cas come home, but he keeps building it again. Sam doesn’t mind the Dean Cave the way he minds most of the bedrooms. It buys Jack some cooperation, and then he can make this work: “Here,” he says. He walks Sam backwards a step, pushes against his chest when his ankles hit the cushions so he’ll fold down before he has time to get anxious.
It’s one of those moments, decreasing in frequency. Nausea bubbles from Jack’s gut to his throat and he thinks—worse than if Dean could see you—he thinks if Sam could see you. What if Sam looks up, his vision clear, says, “What was that for?” wounded at first and then angry and then nothing, that cool absence of trust creeping in and Jack can never make it up to him, never earn it back—
But that’s not now. Right now, Sam is only vaguely startled. Not hurt, not angry. The gray under his eyes isn’t so bad. One good night and Dean will never know.
Sam lets Jack close them into the fort, loop the last sheet over a chair. Even lets Jack push him back so he’s lying down. He startles when Jack climbs on top of him, would like to get up. Jack locks him in place, knees tight at Sam’s hips and hands on his shoulders, uses his powers just a little. Stronger doesn’t matter so much when it comes to bodyweight. Sam could throw him off, if he didn’t cheat. It takes a while and the pressure of his powers is building, a high whining note played on the bones of his jaw, but finally Sam gives up. His muscles are coiled but locked in place rather than attempting to move. His eyes are glassy, breath shallow. Jack slumps over him and worms his way down to lie with his ear to Sam’s chest. Props the tablet against a spare pillow and pulls one of the blankets over them. It won’t take long now. Sam hums with tension under him but he’s only human. In another hour or so he’ll go limp with exhaustion, still glazed over, and after that he’ll see Jack isn’t going to hurt him and he’ll fall asleep. This is also not very nice of Jack, he knows that. But it’s better than the times he lets Sam go too long without sleep. Then he starts flinching at nothing and staring at Jack like there’s something terrible just behind him Sam doesn’t want to see.
“It’s okay.” Sam can’t understand him and wouldn’t believe him. His heart thuds in Jack’s ear, echoes, galloping back on itself. Jack’s eyelids are heavy and everything in the archival search looks the same: a little like the monster’s name but not close enough. He can look again in the morning. He switches over to Netflix.
Dean likes Christmas movies. Jack knows this because Dean watches them even though they embarrass him. Once when Jack came into the Dean Cave, Dean scrambled to shut off the TV and left the room in a hurry. He cleared his throat a lot and listed several things he needed to do which weren’t urgent. Jack assumed he’d been watching porn and turned the TV back on to see. Dean has what Cas calls “eccentric and catholic” taste but sometimes Jack can see the appeal of some strange new kink. It wasn’t porn, although the production quality was similar, and it opened an equally strange new world to Jack.
Jack doesn’t like these movies, exactly, but he feels compelled to watch them sometimes. He’s always waiting for the moment someone states that the motivation for their actions is, It’s Christmas. He appreciates that about them, the negative space. 364 days of the year the businesswoman would catch her flight back to the city, or the bank would foreclose on the house, or the prodigal son wouldn't get another chance. It’s honest by omission.
The opening credits are gold scrawled on red with sleigh bells tinkling. Jack locks both his hands to Sam’s, so he’ll know. “It’s okay, Sam. It’s just me.”
There’s Christmas music. Dean’s not sure how he’s missed it, the last few days. Weeks. Music playing, lights up, inflatable Santas on every third roof. He likes this stuff but it’s got him on edge this year. He keeps thinking about climbing a ladder up the face of a house, his house, with a hammer and nails, coil of lights over his shoulder, Lisa holding everything steady. The spike of glee, the one that hooked inward. It would all—if he could show Sam, if Sam were there to show—
The grocery’s lousy with holiday cheer. A display at the end of every aisle, ornaments or advent calenders or candy canes. “Go easy, would you?” Their cart is also lousy with it, and Dean pulls three rolls of wrapping paper back out as soon as Cas drops them in. “We don’t even have a present yet, how much square footage we looking to cover?”
Cas peers down at the pile of dollar store-grade tin ornaments. “Perhaps I’m being unreasonable.” He stops center-aisle. “It’s just that we’re asking a great deal of Jack, and it’s rare he expresses an interest in anything so easily obtainable.”
“Easily attainable… It ain’t your wallet on the line.” It’s not as satisfying as he thought it’d be, Cas’s stricken expression, and anyway traffic is building up. “Forget it. Look—” He drops a roll back in, the one with reindeer and pine trees. “Let’s find him an actual present. What, electronics? They got movies over there?”
Cas steadies with permission and a purpose, shoves the cart on like a battering ram. There’s that flicker though, gratitude where he’d been taking things for granted.
Dean trails behind. Pulls out his phone. He’s hit dial before he decides to do it, a series of tics. Like going for the fridge, untwisting the cap.
“Dean,” Mom says. So she picks up, anyway. “Is everything all right?”
It’s an advantage, living like this. Sometimes. She can’t ignore too many calls because it’s not paranoia, it’s just the odds. Who died. “Same old, same old.” His throat’s dry. “Just letting you know me and Cas are headed home. Not sure you noticed the date, but. The kid’s got a bug up his ass about the holidays.” A shapely soccer mom in a red sweater gives him a filthy look. He grins and winks, just in case. Some chicks want to slum it. “It’d make him happy if you showed.”
Silence drips down the line, all the small sounds that go into absence. The grind of the engine, car key swinging, her breath. “I can’t leave this hunt halfway through.”
“Yeah, I figured. Being in the same room as your son for ten minutes, I get that’s more than you signed up for. I thought since you like Jack so much. But sure. I’ll tell Sam you say hey. We fix him, and he’s gonna remember that, he’ll be holding it close. Heartwarming stuff.” He hangs up. Watches the face of the phone as it blinks the call away. Mom, 48 seconds. It lapses to her contact. Goes dark.
“I’ve made a selection,” Cas announces. He’s holding a blue-and-yellow box with a cellophane front. A teddy bear stares out. The box swears it can talk.
“For—what, for Jack?”
“It says we can record things, and the bear will repeat them on request.” He turns the box around, studies it. “After all, he’s two years old.”
Dean would roll his eyes, but hell. Sure. Jack’s there for Sam, Cas is there. More than he can say for Mom. “You got it.” He gestures to the cart. Cas does that thing, small uptilted angles appearing at the corners of his eyes and mouth. “Call me friggen Santa Claus, I’ll be hauling this shit out of the car all night…”
“I can of course call you that, if you like.” Stilted, but he means it as a joke so Dean gives him a smile and it helps, some.
“Hey, they got any Christmas stockings? I always kind of wanted to put oranges in one of those. Shitty present but it looks good. Sam’ll like them. And if we’re doing a tree anyway we might as well get candy canes.”
“Are we doing a tree?”
The music’s loud. They could at least play the classics, maybe some Bing. Please, please, please, please, please, please please, please, says Mariah Carey. But Dean is coasting on it now, like a sugar rush. It’ll be fun. And by the time it’s over, maybe. “Be funny if we fix Sam just in time to help us clean up. Serve him right.”
They’re outside, when Dean and Cas get home. Snow knee high in the shallows, waist and shoulders in the drifts. There’s a path shoveled away from the bunker door and carved in a loop up the hill out back. It keeps coming, the snow, filling the path back in slow and quiet. The footprints are sinking under the surface. “Fuck me,” Dean says.
“This is good,” Cas says. “I’ll put things away. You might distract Jack for a while.”
“Ah, man.” But he can’t trade jobs, knowing Sam’s out there. He stomps after them, heels dug in. He tries to match Sam’s footprints and can’t, the eight-foot freak. The pressure is there, the seconds before he sees them. Like every time. This will be the day he comes back and Sam is gone, dead or wandered off. He’s wrong, so far. Again. They’re out back, building shit in the snow like kids behind a picket fence in town.
“A snowman wasn’t gonna do it, huh?”
Like every time—he finds a reason—this will be the day. But no, not this loss, either: Sam knows him. Slack shock, so large it would be mocking if Sam still did that. And then a smile, open and honest, a face-splitter. He’s an easy read, Sam. These days he is. Dean’ll miss that. Sam leaves the block he’s molding and runs full-tilt, stumbles and hits Dean so they both go down. Snow down Dean’s collar, up his sleeves, and he screeches. Top volume, so Sam will laugh, which he does. His beard scratches Dean’s neck. God, he’s here, he’s fine. All eight feet and three hundred pounds of him, wet wool and sweat and fruity conditioner. “Jesus, Sammy, you’re a lumberjack again.”
“Yes.” Jack, standing right where he was. “He won’t let me shave him.”
Dean groans as he shoves Sam up so he can sit straight, meet Jack’s eyes. The kid fiddles with his gloves, hanging damp from his pocket. “He was managing that himself, last I knew.”
“Not anymore.” A little catch to it, like not exactly the whole truth and nothing but.
Dean doesn’t want to hear it. Sam’s not, can’t be, that much worse. He knows Dean, has settled beside him head on his shoulder like they’re kids in bed with a picture book. “He helping you build the igloo?” He nods past Jack at the wall of packed-snow bricks, stacked and fusing.
Jack brightens. “He’s better at corners. I think if I could show him I want a roof he could make one. I’ll find a way to ask him.” And then, after a brief attempt to stifle the correction, “It’s not an igloo.”
“Whatever. Looks pretty damn good for a treehouse in a county with three whole trees,” and Jack goes up a couple watts, proud of his construction work. “You did good with Sam, too, kiddo.” Doesn’t say he’s sorry for nitpicking the first thing he found wrong. He remembers, though. John back from a hunt and all he sees is the one window missing a salt line, the one nap or bath or snack Sam didn’t get. “Rested and fed, huh?” A couple months back Sam was dropping toward that rawboned look he had during the Trials, and Dean—but that’s over, clearly. Jack’s got him eating.
Jack nods. Doesn’t smile but loses more and more of that poised tension like he’s about to run for it, throw a punch. “Where’s Castiel?”
“He went in to set some stuff up. I’m supposed to keep you out here.” Broad wink and still Jack doesn’t get it, tenses up again. “He’s wrapping your present.”
Jack slopes back, pleased, surprised into it. Carefully: “I didn’t mean to ask for a gift.”
He looks younger some days than others. It’s the hat, today. Plasters his bangs flat, rounds his face. Sam’s wearing one too, ice clumped on loose wool and still going down Dean’s neck. It bugs Dean some. Find three things wrong with this picture. Sam wouldn’t have bothered with it. One of those little tells someone else handed him clothes and he put them on rote, obedient. The red-bobbled brown beanie Dean used to stuff on Sam’s head. It was Sam’s only in that it used to be Dean’s, only in that Dean put it on him and Sam didn’t stop him.
“Crap.” Dean shakes himself out of it. Swipes the hat off Sam’s head and pockets it. He has to drag Sam sideways to get them started, dislodge Sam but only enough to show him they’re standing up. “Well, sorry you don’t have a roof yet, but I tell you what a Berkubane like that is good for.” He hauls himself up, packing snow as he goes, and pitches it underhand. it leaves a white slash across Jack’s coat when it hits, a mark like a deer’s tail in retreat. He looks down at it and then up, expression blank, and Dean tells himself, Yeah, dumbass, you shoot him a few times and throwing games are off the roster.
Then, right past it, computer-chip whirr as he categorizes the fire as friendly: “We can have a snowball fight?”
“Not if you stand in the open, dude, you’re five points down. That was a direct hit.” Jack smiles. Not as bright as he used to, but it’s there. He clambers behind the wall. Dean hands the next snowball to Sam. He’ll catch on. He molds Sam’s hands around it, frying pan mitts pliant the way they were when they both fit in Dad’s palm. “Guess I fucked us on tactical advantage, huh Sammy? No problem. We’re two against one and we’re unbeatable.” Sam watches him, intent, that focus and effort like he’s translating. Any second he’ll break through to what Dean’s saying the way a passage in Sumerian will click for him if he turns it over long enough.
Jack hits him twice dead center, calls, “Now you’re ten points down. How many before we’re dead?”
“As many as I can take before frostbite sets in.” He launches one high, like playing Battleship. Kid’ll work out to stop giving his position away soon. Sam follows its trajectory. He frowns at his own, fusing to ice at the surface. Tosses it.
Jack pops up, snow on his hat and down his face. “What if I don’t tell you that you hit me?”
Dean shrugs. “Honor system? Anyway, that was Sam. You going to rob a sick man of his points?”
“All right.” Measured, cool. Then he smiles again and he’s gone. “We’re even.”
They go in once Dean’s soaked through and freezing, which he figures means Sam is too. “It looks as though you lost,” Cas says gravely.
Dean glares. The snow in his eyebrows does most of the heavy lifting. “I got stabbed in the back.” He starts on Sam’s coat but Sam bats him away, takes over. “Sammy’s on no man’s side but his own.”
“I think he was trying to even the odds.” Jack is downright contemplative about it now.
“Okay, Sun Tzu. You thought it was pretty funny five minutes ago.”
Jack grins at Cas. “Sam smashed a snowball in Dean’s face. Hi, Cas.”
“Hello, Jack. Sam.” The pause none of them can help, like Sam will answer. He smiles, goes to hug Cas. It looks normal, almost, like he just didn’t bother to say it out loud.
“All right. Let’s go, Sam. I want that off your face, mountain man.”
“Oh—” Jack darts away, wet boots and all.
“Come on, man, the floors…” Dean kicks at a pile of slush but gives up and sinks down at the map table to get his own boots off. It gives him a chance to peer down the barrel of the place into the library. It’s threadbare, no way around it. Place is too damn big for the handful of decorations they grabbed. There’s a cluster of them around the reading table, and three presents wrapped like military mattresses. They’re bunched under a lamp like it’s a tree, and them big as cuckoo eggs. “Looks good,” he says, just to see Cas’s nod, that slide into satisfaction.
“What does?” Jack sets a box on the table and goes back to Sam, gets the coat Sam unbuttoned but didn’t bother to take off. When he crouches to unlace his boots Sam follows suit. Not good enough when Dean did the same thing, apparently.
“Christmas.” Dean jerks a thumb at the library. “What’s this?” He lays a hand on the box.
“The razors. I had to hide them.” He steadies Sam as they stand. Coordinated, habitual. “I didn’t want him to see them and get upset again. I’m sure you’ll have better luck. He trusts you most.” He’s sneaking glances sideways like Dean left a porn mag out.
“It’s unwrapping the present you’re not supposed to do early, you can look at the tinsel, man.” He slides the shoebox closer. He should throw some of these razors away. He’s not even sure how Jack dug them all up. “Sure be easier if he just did it himself. You make any headway with that Pontypool lead before you had recess?”
“I dont think it’s in the digital archives, but some of the symbols are similar. If they weren’t exactly right in the picture I guess they wouldn’t match. But it narrowed down the books I can try.” He stiffens but doesn’t try it, any of that why-bother-it-won’t-help crap.
Sam makes a funny little humming sound, frowns, touches Jack’s hand.
“Sure. Sounds like we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.” He stands, takes the shoebox in one hand and Sam’s arm in the other. Pulls harder than he means to and Sam stumbles. Not like it makes any difference to him now, one way or the other. “Let’s get this done.”
Cas holds up the scrap of paper with the name on it. It’s creased, the printed ink of the bill already fading though the name in pen is dark and only a little smudged. “Maybe with the original and my help…”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s still a secondhand account.” He learned this phrase from Sam. “And it’s not what’s wrong with Sam.” His pulse is loud, hurts in his throat. Don’t drag him like that, he’d almost snapped at Dean, but he does it too. When Dean isn’t here. Don’t drag him like that in front of me, he would have meant, and the righteousness rotted on his tongue. “It isn’t going to help.” He enunciates, projects. Dean is probably in the bathroom by now.
“No,” Cas says. “Almost certainly not. But if it were one of us, Sam would keep trying. We owe him that.”
That’s not why you’re doing this, and it comes on an upwell of scorn that startles him, scalding.
“Jack.” Cas holds his shoulders, and Jack scrapes a hand over his eyes. Cas is all soft, all concern—the way Sam was sometimes—and Jack doesn’t deserve it now any more than he did then. Less, because he never used to think such ugly things about them, either of them.
“You’re right. Sam would keep looking.” He takes the paper, smooths it between his fingers. It looks the same as Sam’s drawing. It’s not going to refine their results at all. “If it’s not this Pontypool thing,” he says to Cas’s shoes. He lists forward to rest his head on Cas’s shoulder. “Then can we talk about coming with you? All the recent literature says variety is good for victims of traumatic brain injury and dementia. Sam would try that for us, too. He would help us in the meantime, not just hold out for…”
“I know.” Cas pats his head. It’s experimental, not like the easy way Dean hugs, when he does. “It’s difficult for Dean to accept half-measures. They feel like failure to him, and it’s frightening. To think Sam might really be gone.”
“This is Sam.” But he says it into Cas’s coat, sulking, and he wants Sam back too. It doesn’t matter. Convincing Cas won’t help anyway. “Thank you for the present.”
“Well, you deserve it. You’ve taken on an immense responsibility. I’m sure Santa would agree with my assessment of your behavior.”
Jack groans. “I know not to trust Santa because anything claiming to be him is probably evil. Sam told me.”
“Ah, well.” Cas holds on tighter before he lets go. “It’s true what the parenting books say. Every year, they learn younger.”
“There we go.” Dean nudges Sam’s chin to turn his head, swipes the razor down the slope under his cheekbone. Not too pronounced. He really is eating. “It’s no problem, huh? You were just holding out for a steadier hand. Jack shaves, what, once every fiscal quarter? Comes at you like Wolverine with this thing. No sir. Your big brother’s got it, right?”
Sam blinks at him, stupid and warm. Dean breaks off the patter, unease finally breaking over the seawall edge of pleased pride that Sam hadn’t balked at any of it. Not the bathroom or the lather or the razor, not Dean looming over him and touching his neck. That one can be tough, and he hasn’t even flinched. Maybe Dean can get away with more than Jack, but he can also read more than Jack, and the thing is, there’s nothing to read.
He hands the razor over. Jostles Sam’s elbow to get him started.
Procedural memory, Cas calls it. Sam’s is good. He takes over, maneuvering blind but they’ve both had to do that plenty. He’s indifferent as a fucking cow. Dean can do it, Sam will. Jack could. Dean lets him keep at it, some of it sloppy where Sam doesn’t bother to twist his face for a better angle.
“Hey.” He crouches, elbows on Sam’s knees. “Sam? Look, did something happen?”
Nothing. Sam stops shaving. Smiles like Dean’s doing this as a joke, that baffled indulgent expression.
Dean smiles back, strained. He trusts you most, but Sam does trust Jack, always has. Before he should, more than he should. He swipes foam off Sam’s face, takes the razor back and goes in for the patchwork remains. There are fine lines around Sam’s eyes, those worry lines in his forehead setting in for good. He can feel where his dimples used to be when he smiled that big. He tugs Sam’s jaw around, his mouth, the way he used to pull his own face out of shape to make Sam laugh as a toddler. Hard planes and stubble under his fingers but Sam just lets him. It’s like a bone healed straight. It’s worse than that—better than that. Like he’s swallowed a fishhook and it’s set all the way down in his stomach. Some sick satisfaction in a line from lips to guts. It’s nauseating. He’ll fix Sam and he’ll never feel this again.
“You gotta give me a yes or a no.” A few final touches under the lip. He wipes Sam’s face clean. One last scrub to the tip of his nose, another habit from when Sam was a toddler. It doesn’t make him laugh anymore. Tougher crowd. “Just a shake or a nod, man. Did something—” He’s got to charge right at it. “Did Jack do something to you?” He can see it. He couldn’t a half hour ago or he wouldn’t have left his baby brother with Jack, but. Sure, Jack thinks the world of Sam; sure, even soulless, he’ll take a bullet for Sam. But he’s two, and bored. But he’s got a temper.
Sam meets his eyes, serious and searching. Like he’s the one who asked Dean a question. Like he’s thinking hard before he answers.
“Sam?” He tilts Sam’s chin for him, makes him nod yes, shake his head no. “Did Jack hurt you?”
Sam keeps it up, solemn, urgent. In the mirror off to the left Dean sees it, the same expression on his own face.
“Fuck!" He spins and the razor hits the corner when he throws it. Tile chips green to white under the handle and the blade spins off into some shower. “Would you fucking—just try, Sam.” He wheels back, hands on Sam’s shoulders, shakes him. “I got through to you when I had to reach beyond the grave and use a goddamn ouija board, I’m asking you to use the English language for two seconds.”
Sam shrinks up, caves in on himself sullen the way he used to when Dad came home drunk. Confused, hurt held close, nursed to resentment. “There’s no talking to him,” John would say when Sam brooded rather than accept an apology the next day. You had no idea, Dean thinks. Feels fucking crazy. That’s all he needs, to start talking to his dead father.
“Fine.” He shoves himself away. Everything in the room echoes, ranks of military showers and rows of sinks. “Sam,” one last time. But he might just as well be alone.
Dean is upset. Again. Already. Jack knew this would happen but that doesn’t help the weight hooked in his chest, like he’s dragging Dean’s disapproval behind him. He guesses it’s because he hasn’t found Pontypool yet, so he leaves Sam with Dean in the kitchen and he retreats to the library.
The books at the back of the collection smell funny. Some of them are handwritten, some of them on vellum that makes his stomach flip when he touches it. He sets those aside for last. One of the books has pages so thin they curl up when he opens it, and the type is set in columns two to a page. The letters are so tiny his eyes skid. He runs the receipt down the margin, looking for anything close enough to bother—well, Cas. Not Sam. He can ask Cas when he gets back from running his errand. If he doesn’t find anything here he’ll have to go to the very back, the storeroom. There are boxes there, unbound manuscripts stored flat in gray files with numbers for a system no one uses. They’re not digitized yet. He doesn’t want to go back there. It’s not his turn, not with the others home.
“Sam,” he says when he realizes. He’s not alone, can’t place how long he hasn’t been. He knew Sam was there, but Sam’s always there. It’s gotten hard to sense him coming, to pinpoint his location.
Sam sidles closer, clenched on himself. He moves like he’s bruised.
Jack rubs his eyes clear of the floating columns of type. Doesn’t say it: What did you expect. Why would this time be different. You’re not who he wants. “Hello,” he says instead. Minds his tone. Sometimes he thinks they’ll fix Sam and he’ll remember this, that Jack was here every time to clean up Dean’s messes. If he thinks hard he knows it won’t matter, but if he takes the thought and swallows fast the taste lingers.
Sam settles on the floor beside him. He could be folding himself down with that same wince and sigh to give Jack a gentle talking-to about minding Dean or keeping his powers under control. Sam is almost graceful but there’s too much of him to get there and that’s the same, even now.
“I hope it feels better. Your face. I’m sorry about that.” He rubs his own chin. Maybe it won’t matter, going forward; maybe they won’t have to stay here alone.
Sam nods, which he does sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything.
“You’d know where to look.” He turns the book on his lap to face Sam. “You could tell me, if—it would make Dean very happy if we found something.”
And Sam would like to help. He’d say yes if he could. One of the bright edges keen enough to cut through to him even now: He recognizes what a book is, knows Jack wants something out of it. He turns pages, fingers careful and eyes racing blank over the words in rabbit-chase trails before he turns to Jack and grabs his wrist.
Jack flinches. He might have jerked away, even though Sam hasn't lashed out recently. But it has been a long time, and Sam’s grip is sure. He drags Jack’s hand up to his forehead.
Jack’s throat hurts, and his stomach. It’s like. Like Sam knows, always knew. Like he’s Sam again. “All right,” he says. “Thank you.” It stings in his mouth, acidic. He flattens his palm to Sam’s temple and wades in.
It’s awful. It always is. He’s checked on good days with no excuse other than hoping that it won’t be like this, but it’s the same. A numbing mist, pooling darker and hemming him in, slowing thoughts and movements, filling his eyes his nose his lungs his ears. Flickering infuriating glimpses of lucidity. A few thin spots, things bright enough to make out in silhouette. He stumbles after them though the reason why he bothers diminishes. He’s losing what it was to make contact.
This isn’t me, Jack tells himself. He can leave. He thinks—every time—about the moment he saved Kelly’s life when she cut herself. He remembers the moment he realized he could do something she wouldn’t because he wasn’t her.
He calls, waits for the echo.
He ignores the urge to look for Sam. He tried that, tried until his ears bled. There’s no finding Sam in Sam. The suffocating desperation, the cast-about plea always on the edge of oh-there-you-are because it has to be, because this is intolerable, it has to stop because it can’t go on—it doesn’t lead anywhere. This is all Sam is, all that's left. White stones equidistant in every direction. They don’t lead home.
He can’t find Sam. What he can find is:
Pontypool, and the echo. The memories are there even if Sam can’t parse them any longer. In swirls dissipating in the mist, ink in water: A horror novel Sam read lying stretched on the grass next to a blond boy. A movie Sam watched on a huge heavy laptop. A book bound in red leather, in a crumbling old house surrounded by wrecked cars. Another book, huge with marbled edges and spidery brown letters handwritten at an angle across the page.
Jack surfaces, propels himself back. The stupefying despair of that place, the drumbeat of panic too distant to locate. It sticks to him after, to his hands and his eyes. He doesn’t like to be around Sam after, to feel the edges of the tide dragging at him, to know Sam’s drowning. But he’s one of the bright spots, he knows he is. Him and Dean and Cas. It has to get through, some of it does.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He closes the distance he put there, smiles big and clear the way he does at civilians on hunts. “You found it for me, Sam, thank you.”
Sam studies him, fierce, brow creased. When his face relaxes Jack’s not sure whether it’s satisfaction or whether he’s just lost it, his grip on the moment and on Jack, on the world outside his head.
“Does it help?” He asks it impulsively as he stands, as he tugs at the shoulder of Sam’s shirt so he’ll follow. He’s seen that book, the big one. He knows which shelf it’s on, he’s almost certain. “When I’m in there with you, is it any better?” But Sam can’t answer and Jack can’t compare, can’t see what’s there when he isn’t looking. He wonders what it would do to him if he just stayed, left his body, crawled into Sam for good. How long his mind would hold out. Whether Cas would move him around, dress him, feed him. Or. Or would they just put him somewhere, the way—
It doesn’t matter. He can’t do it. He’s sorry, if it would help he’s sorry. He couldn’t stand it. He’s glad he doesn’t know for sure. Maybe it doesn’t help Sam at all, maybe Sam doesn’t even notice.
When Dean comes to check on them, and ask why Jack rearranged the whole damn kitchen and where he’s hiding the silverware, Jack has something for him. The huge green book, open to a page Sam read once years ago. They’ll need Cas’s help to translate it, Rowena’s help to get the ingredients, but there’s a ritual. There’s something to do. That changes things, clears the heaviness in the air. Dean is different, with a new breadcrumb trail to follow.
It’s not going to lead anywhere. Language isn’t the only thing Sam’s missing, and if there were something in there with him Jack would know, and—but Jack wants to enjoy Dean while he’s happy.
Cas comes home with a tree. Dean plays it off, tries to—it’s for the kid, he knows that—but it’s been a while. Kind of a fun change. And they’ve got a lead. And Jack didn’t do shit to Sam, he knows that. Sure he does. He had the kid help him in the kitchen, handed him a knife from one of the reshuffled drawers, and Sam never flinched, didn't even blink. No issues with Jack and sharp objects. The shaving, it’s just one of those things. Could be it won’t matter soon.
“There’s only so many ways to arrange three boxes, man.”
Cas looks up from shuffling them around, eyes pinched. “I’m certain Jack expects something more like the Christmas scenes in film. Like Home Alone, or Krampus. They have a great many boxes in those movies.” He pushes between the tree and the nearest shelf. It’s not huge, their tree, but it’s plenty fat enough to be inconvenient in the library. Dean doesn’t mind. Enjoys it, even. Maybe they’ll fix Sam in time for him to bitch about it being in his way, about the pine needles on the table.
“Jesus, Cas.” He kicks back, feet on the table. “There’s not 18 of us in the family, is why. Plus you shot yourself in the foot when you got the finest tree on the lot. The Dutch in a sea of Hawkins. Hard to fill that much space with cardboard, is all.”
Cas shoots him this look—annoyed, fond. Same as always. It’s been rocky, but… “You like it, then.”
“Nothing wrong with a man partaking in a little seasonal cheer every decade or so. I got a fine whiskey, hardly any back pain, the kids are in bed. Really all I need out of Christmas.”
“One of the presents is for you.”
“No way.” He jerks upright, scanning them, categorizing shapes and theoretical possibilities. “Aw, shit, Cas, I thought we were just doing the kid.”
He shakes his head. He's Hallmark-soft in the low light. It was a bitch getting the brights in the front room off, but it’s good they did. The lights in the tree show up better. “I don’t require material possessions. I wanted to show my appreciation for your effort.” He gestures to the plate of cookies still on the table, the empty platter of potatoes and steak. “You didn’t want to take time for this, but I’m glad you have. Jack deserves it. So do you.”
It works its way through him, hot and too large. And Cas sees it, no matter how hard he shoves it down. Cas sees him, and without Sam sometimes Dean thinks he’ll disappear. He shoves himself to his feet, out of the depths of it, cranes his neck. “So are these labeled or we just Battle Royale-ing for the biggest box—”
But it starts then, the screaming. The first one is the hardest to take, full-throated, flensed. It’s nails slit under Dean’s, each time he’s here for it.
It’s funny, sort of. Another rib-cracker. It’d take Alastair himself hours to get that sound out of Sam if he were awake.
Even now, the way he is now, he chokes himself off by the next cry. Teeth grinding, lips folded, neck corded with the twin efforts to scream and to stay silent. Dean can’t hear it from here but he knows the routine. Waves Cas off and runs for Sam’s room.
Jack’s there already. Dean lets it buy him some time. Slows his breathing. Cry wolf—the thing is sooner or later the wolf comes calling. But Sam’s safe in bed, Jack holding his hand and muttering, pleading with him to open his eyes, so Dean takes it. Lets his heart rate drop.
Calls Mom.
It goes to voicemail. He knew it would. He stands silent, holds the phone and stares down watching the seconds tick by on the message. Sam’s audible from here. His screams splinter at the center as he works toward tears. Dean hangs up. “Hey, Jack.” He pushes the door. “I got it.”
Jack looks tired, eyes shadowed in a way they haven’t been since he was human. “I almost have him back. I’ve gotten good at this.”
“I know you can do it, kid. Just, he wouldn’t want you to see him like this. Get some rest.”
Jack lingers, moving in starts, skeptical. It’d piss Dean off most days. Right now he remembers too clearly the nights Dad was home and Dean was so sure his own clumsy routine was the right way, that John was screwing everything up with Sammy. Gave him dinner too late, put him to bed too early, read him the wrong bedtime story.
Sam is locked up, back arched against a pain that isn’t there. Dean pushes hair off his damp forehead, squeezes his elbow until it unlocks and he can lift his hand to hold it. It’ll take a few minutes, but it’ll come. He’ll open his eyes and he’ll know Dean when he sees him.
Mom texted. It’s what Dean wakes to, the second thing he notices after Sam’s hand in his. Maybe the third, after the cold ache up his spine and through his hips because he can’t sleep like this anymore. They should get a more comfortable chair by Sam’s bed, he thinks occasionally, but soon it won’t matter. The important thing is it worked. Sam’s asleep, has turned from his back to his stomach, one arm curled under the pillow. The way he sleeps, actually Sam, not the placeholder.
Get rid of him, the text says. I can’t come back while he’s there.
Dean sighs. The sound wakes Sam, who frowns and turns, arm trapped under himself to hold onto Dean. Can’t be getting any circulation. He looks at Dean, though. Just looks. That quirk to his lips like he’s any second going to say he’s sorry for keeping Dean up. And none of that second flush of shame, the third wave where he shuts down. Dean tugs his hand. “Anything you want to tell me?”
He would. Dean thinks about it, splitting the difference. Get Sam speaking again but keep him this transparent, this honest. Finally hear every buried thing that crawls through his brother’s head. Flayed, still, but not hollow.
Half of Sam is trapdoors and dead ends, false fronts. Always, since he was small. So that wouldn’t be Sam either, the version that lets its tongue run just because Dean asks.
Sam slides his hand free, sits up against the headboard. Pulls his knees up, spindly under the sheet, and looks Dean over. That expression, expectant, patient, like he asked how Dean’s holding up. They do this, both of them, after nightmares that bad. Dean’s never figured out how Sam makes it sound the way he does—I’m sorry, I know, thank you for helping me, can I help you back—any more than he’s figured out how to avoid the way he says it himself. Back off, like you’re better off than I am, like you could handle the shit in my head—he can hear it once he says it.
He’ll do better. Once he gets Sam back. Next time he’ll do it right.
“I’m gonna fix this,” he says. “I swear, Sam. I’m getting you out.”
Sam rasps, somewhere in the back of his throat. Nothing like a word.
“I gotta take care of something. You stay put, yeah?” He smooths Sam’s hair into place, the same as Sam used to in the mornings, the double finger-comb from bedhead to glam shot. Sam lets him but then goes to get up with him. “Hang tight, man, I mean it.” He pats Sam’s chest to take the sting out of the little shove to keep him down. “Jack’ll be in soon.”
The dungeon isn’t set up for long-term care. Dean keeps forgetting how much harder it is to keep humans alive. Human on a technicality, but Nick requires a lot more upkeep than Crowley ever did.
Anyway, it’s just until they fix Sam.
“Were those sugar cookies I smelled, or are the hallucinations going olfactory?” Nick rolls his head to the side, sees it’s Dean. Doesn’t react as much as he used to. “So no chance I could score one, huh?”
Dean sets the glass of water and the bowl of overcooked oatmeal out of reach of the chains, spins the chair and takes a seat. “I don’t know how you smell fuck-all from this room. It’s rank. But hey, that’s the point. Nothing like stewing in your own sweat and shit to really appreciate the human condition. How’s it feel not being the Devil?”
This used to really get to him. Not at first, but for a while in the middle. The rage is there but it’s burning low. Not a whole lot of Nick left to rage with. He can just about open both eyes all the way. Even so the glare is halfhearted, more resentment than threat. Not that Nick ever posed much of a threat. Just some guy, pathetic, useless, a placeholder while Lucifer waited for Sam. Pathetic and useless and, once, really fucking lucky.
“You couldn’t have taken him, you know that?” It’s unprofessional. Not what he planned to say. It spills out anyway. He can’t seem to find his groove, with Nick. Alastair would be disappointed. “Fair fight, Sam beats you ever time.”
“You keep saying. Way I remember it, I brought a rock to a gun fight and won.”
“Lucifer won that fight. He put in two hundred years of construction and you wandered in at the last second with your thumb up your ass, slapped your name on the door.” Nick shrugs. He’s eyeing the glass of water. His lips are chapped. He’s creased and white, aging and folding on himself in the dark. “I’m gonna be honest with you, Nick, it doesn’t look like Jack’s keeping on top of his chores, and I can only ride the kid so hard. You think one of these months he forgets the water a few too many days in a row, makes his life simpler? How much longer you think you’re gonna last?”
“Tell you what.” He smiles, blood in his gums. “You throw a little nurse outfit on Sam and send him in here, you’ll add a decade. Especially now he’s not running his mouth constantly. I did you a favor, you think about it that way.”
Dean hits him, chair still spinning on the ground behind him. It’s cold and clear and good as ice cracking, just twice—he only hits him twice—and then once more for good measure. It drains something overfull in Dean, calms him. Makes things easier.
“Mom told me to kill you.” He squats there, Nick’s jaw in his hand. Even if he weren’t cuffed, he’s rotting. Muscle fibers dissolving, body eating itself with disuse. “She says she’ll come home if I stop keeping a guy in the basement. You’re really in a generational vise.”
“Mm.” Nick coughs, spits out a tooth. They’re going fast, the last few times Dean’s been in. “His conditioner’s all over your hands. Same as Jack. I guess I just don’t see what difference it’d make to him if I got a turn. Does he even recognize you?”
Dean hits him, perfunctory. He should lay off. Nick’s face will swell worse and Dean wants to see his expression when he asks. “You’re lucky I haven’t let him in here. His impulse control the way it is, he’d take your throat out with his fingernails.”
Nick looks up at him, solemn like he gets sometimes. Distant. “He’ll get in,” he says. “I feel him out there. Did you read that fairy tale? The girl who cuts off her own finger and uses the bone as a key? He’ll find a way in. Just a matter of time. It’s supposed to be that way.” Then he smiles again. “Guess we’ll see how he deals with this face when that happens. I bet he recognizes it, Dean.”
“Uh-huh. Well, time is tricky. You’re running short.” Dean twists the manacle around Nick’s wrist, looking for a good finger. They’re all busted, which is funny. He could have sworn he saved a few. “Finish this sentence for me. Sam is stuck like this because…” He twists an old break, sloppy, rushed.
Nick screams, trails off with a whimper. He’s not really made of the stuff Dean deals with generally. “You want—you want my honest-to-God best guess?” He’s panting. His breath is foul, something badly wrong inside.
“You feel strongly enough about it to put the father of the groom’s name in your mouth, sure.”
“He was always going to end up like this. You’re right, I didn’t win, not alone. I didn’t get Him back but I did this much for Him—Sam didn’t deserve to be His true vessel—he’s a drooling idiot like any motherfucker out of the telephone book would be—”
Dean’s less perfunctory this time. He digs the heel of his hand into the kneecap he shattered a few months back, grinds it around.
Nick’s breath whistles. Dean’s pretty sure he never broke any ribs. Nick doesn't have much in him to throw up but there's bile on his chin by the time he can speak again. “Angels can’t heal him because God doesn’t want him healed. Ungrateful bitch—”
“How about this for a theory.” He pats Nick’s cheek. “You rode Lucifer’s coattails, but you’re the one who did this. Not God, because he’s on permanent vacation. And I’m gonna undo it, because I’m onto you. Try this one on for size: Pontypool.”
Nick’s face is swollen. Sagging. His expressions have to be large to make it through the grime, the exhaustion, the pain. So, maybe. Maybe that’s sullen displeasure that Dean’s onto him. Or maybe it’s blank incomprehension. Or mild annoyance that Dean’s not playing ball with his Lucifer-comes-home-to-roost theory.
If he knew how close. How often Dean thinks that same fucking thing.
“Yeah.” Dean presses on, long strides like he doesn’t notice how thin the ice is. “We’ve got the method, we’re halfway there. The ritual's simmering on the stove. I stopped Sam last time, but I promise you this. The second I fix him, I’m gonna let him have you.” He shoves Nick away, stands and leaves. Boot tracks in the water, oatmeal upright but unreachable. Later. Jack’ll be in eventually. Dean’s blind with it, the sick marrow-deep sway. If this is another dead end—
But it’s not. There was something there when Nick’s eyes flickered, some knowing thing. He recognized the name. They’ve got this.
It’s not the 25th, not even the 24th, but they’re calling it close enough. A few of the ingredients for the ritual will take some getting, so Dean and Cas are headed out again. Dean puts the last batch of lights on the tree with Sam’s help and it’s like normal, like Sam’s quiet because he’s focused or because he’s distracted. They’re the kind that phase through different colors in slow blinks, and Sam notices. Watches them while he picks at the orange Dean gave him, and Dean thinks he looks pleased.
Dean’s concerned the kid doesn’t know enough to fake a smile about the present, that he’ll hurt Cas’s feelings, but he seems jazzed. Even soulless, maybe he just likes the thing. He’s barely got it settled on his lap before Dean takes Cas’s beginning of a turn his way as the go-ahead to tear in. It’s a Walkman, the original deal, and he’s already laughing out a thanks before the thread of discomfort—he smashed his old one during a fight with Cas, he’s pretty sure. But whatever, Cas smiles back open and easy, he doesn’t mean anything by it.
“I did get something for Sam,” Cas says, hesitant. “I’m not sure…” He retrieves the last one from under the tree and slides it across the table.
Jack catches it automatically, starts to pick back the tape for Sam. “Nah, let him.” Dean shoves it under Sam’s hand. “They’ll tell you Christmas ain’t about presents, but here’s a life lesson for you, Jack. That’s about halfway true. It’s not about having presents. It sure as hell is about getting them. Best part is opening it up.”
Sam peels the tape and ribbon away obediently. He’s fine at stuff like this, he’s so fucking close. The illusion is gone when he pulls out the dino-tooth looking object inside without a trace of reaction.
There’s a flicker on Cas’s face, like he forgot, or hoped. “Well, it will… It’s a gorgon tooth. Sam’s expressed interest in that kind of curio. When he gets better…”
“He’ll love it. You pair of nerds.” He tugs Sam’s shoulder and he tips, leaning into Dean’s side with a huff. He turns the tooth over and back, fingers down the curve to the point. “Yeah, we should pick him up a few more geek things like that. A little collection, surprise him when he wakes up. Make it feel less like he missed a year.” His phone rings and he glances at the ID. Of fucking course. “Jack, you want to line up Die Hard? We’ll be in with the cookies in a sec.”
Jack hesitates. He’s watching Sam.
“I got him.”
He nods, finally. Collects Marvin the teddy bear and heads toward the Dean Cave.
“Hey, Mom.” Dean says it hard, toneless, but he bites off the next thing he’d like to add. Maybe this is it. She’s on her way, she’s sorry. It’s Christmas.
“Dean.” Her voice is rough. Good. Whatever sleepless night or crying jag, fucking good. “We have to talk about Nick.”
“Oh, we don’t. Actually.”
“It’s been over a year. He doesn’t know anything. God, Dean, I’ll kill him. What he did to Sam—but he can’t help us.”
The tree blurs over them, lights merged and hazy. Whatever it’s like for Sam in there, wherever he is, Dean’s left him alone for a year. He’s lost a year.
“What keeping him like that is doing to you—”
“I’m hanging up.” He blinks it away. Pulls Sam in tighter. He’s here, he’s right here. He’s opening presents, he recognized the tree, he knows Dean.
“Okay, okay, wait.” She sighs. “Forget it. Can I—would you put me on with Sam?”
“Put you on with him?” Dean sits straight. Lets Sam tug away, tense suddenly. She didn’t even come and she’s still managing to send it all to shit.
“He knows it’s me. Jack swears—”
“No. No, you want to talk to Sam you can show up. Jesus, put him on. That’s not even going through the motions.”
“That’s not fair. You talk to him on the phone.”
It’s sinking in, slow, sideways with the current. How often she must talk to Jack. “I talk to him when I’m not home, and then I come back—”
Sam brings the fang down. It’s not even that sharp. He punches it through the palm he’s braced on the table and the wood beneath splinters.
Dean drops the phone, dives too late to stop it, grabs Sam in case there’s more to stop. “Cas—”
Who’s on it, grabs the tooth and slides it free. Angelic strength so it comes out easy even if it turns Sam’s hand inside-out. Cas is calm, all focus, as he claps a hand to Sam’s forehead and heals him. It’s too visible, small splintered bones pulling themselves in, muscles knitting them into place, skin closing last.
Cas sags, expression staggering off toward shock, only once he’s done. He’s pale and sweating, too big a job too suddenly on his reduced mojo, but that’ll mend. Sam feels at the unblemished skin of his palm and keens between his teeth. Leaves it, though; he doesn’t go for the tooth. When Dean loosens his grip Sam only crumples into his chair, head against Dean’s chest. Dean presses him close. The call, Mom’s still on the phone. He ends it, turns the phone off.
Jack is standing in the doorway when Dean can bring himself to look up. Miserable and certain.
“Okay.” Dean folds Sam up, can’t handle the catatonic glaze, the loose limbs, but it’ll pass. Jack’s face promises that. It’s all happened before, this whole sequence. “Cas, keep an eye on him. Jack—you and me need to have a conversation.”
It’s a relief, is the thing. It’s an answer, a solid answer, and it’s one they can work with.
“I left him alone.” The kid’s wilting over himself on the edge of his bed, picking at the hem of the teddy bear’s pants.
Dean went from thinking Jack’s been smacking Sammy around with a razor in hand to thinking Sam’s declining so fast he might be a vegetable by the end of the month. So this, this he can handle. He handles it initially by staying silent, arms crossed. Lets Jack cough it all out.
“I was—I was so bored, and tired, and Sam wouldn’t—I miss the way he was before. Eliot asked if I wanted to come to his house. When I got back—”
“How close was it?”
He shakes his head. “He wouldn’t have bled out. But he keeps trying. I had to hide the knives and the razors. He only started because he was alone. I was playing video games.”
Dean holds out. Sighs, sits beside Jack on the bed. Thinks about Dad, and that’s not how you’re gonna get through to Jack, and a litany of sitcom dads in black-and-white who never need to raise their voices. “Okay,” he says.
“I didn’t even enjoy the game very much. But Eliot talks to me. I needed someone to talk to.”
Dean drags a hand down his face. “And I need an enchanted fridge that never runs out of ice-cold beer.” He pats Jack’s shoulder. “And Sam needs the tendons in his hand to work.” He shakes the kid, gently, just enough to sway him. “You’re doing a lot for him. You get one free screwup.”
Jack curls further over the bear. “Maybe you can’t trust me with this. Sam and I should go with you. I’ll still take care of him, but if we’re at the motel you’ll be able to check—”
“No. We’ve been over this. Don’t pretend you’re dumb, we both know you’re not. And don’t pretend one fuckup makes you incapable.” Jack goes in easy when Dean pulls, same as Sam, leaning into his side. “It’s not fair, it being on you. But it is, and you can do it.”
Jack nods.
“I know you can, because you’ve done it already. You took care of Sam, you took care of Nick, this whole time. You did that. I know you got it a little longer.” He squeezes Jack’s shoulder before he pulls away. “And I know this ain’t gonna happen again.”
“No.”
“Speaking of… Look, fine. You’re stuck here alone, you got to talk to Mom—go for it. But she doesn’t talk to Sam. No putting her on so she can feel better about fucking off and leaving us with the mess.”
“But—” He gets a read on Dean’s expression and nods. “All right.”
“I don't need to tell you, but I'll say it again, don't listen to Nick. He’s got 15 new stories every time I go in there and they're all bullshit.”
“I won't."
“That’s my man. Look, this is temporary. Once Sam’s back to bugging you about food groups and crystals this’ll fade in the rearview before you know it. You’ll only wish he’d shut up for a year solid.”
Cas is waiting, when Dean comes back in to check on Sam. He’s running a thumb over the splinters in the table. Sam is slumped forward onto his arms, folded like he’s sleeping in his chair, eyes open and blank. It’s dark, the Christmas lights washing them green, red, blue. Stupid, Dean thinks. Of course they don’t get to have this. Not until he fixes Sam.
“I hope you weren’t hard on him,” Cas says.
“Nah. He knows he fucked up.” He tugs Sam’s shirt straight at the spine. Adjusts his cuff so the button isn’t digging into his cheek. Nothing.
“I take it this has happened before.”
“Yeah. He should have told us, but I get—”
“Then he used his powers to heal Sam.”
Dean pauses. There’s blood on the table. Dried already. It’ll be hard to get out of the new divot carved into the surface. “’Course he did. What, he was supposed to wrap a rag around it and wait for us to get back? Sam can’t even tell him when he needs a painkiller. That’s the last thing I need, Sam wakes up and Jack accidentally got him hooked on oxy.”
“No, I—naturally I don’t want Sam to suffer. But if Jack continues to sacrifice himself by degrees, we stand to lose him too.”
“Lose him too, what’s that—we haven’t lost Sam. We’re just about to fix him.”
Cas looks up at him directly, that exhausted pitying expression. If he says it Dean’s going to hit him. What Cas says is, “And when we do, he’ll be as concerned about Jack as I am.”
“Sure. Sam’ll be a bitch about what we had to do to protect him, that’ll be a first. We’re all making sacrifices, and Jack’s not an emergency. He’s not the one stabbing himself.” Sam is breathing. Dean has to check when he gets like this. It’s shallow, like he’s doing one of those tricks—monks who can walk on coals and slow their heart rates to nothing. With a palm on Sam’s back he can feel the slight rise and fall. “It worked,” he says suddenly. It’s drawn out of him, quiet and close like poison. He sinks into the chair at Sam’s side. His eyes are slits and there’s this urge to close them. Dean settles for tucking his hair back, leaving his hand in place. He can’t see the blank stare now. “Jack, when Nick—Jack saved Sam’s life, sure, but I mean it really worked. Sam was fine for a couple hours. Quiet, I guess. But the—nonverbal, that whole thing. It didn’t start right away.”
“But… Dean, why didn’t you—”
“It didn’t matter. Come on, you gonna tell me we missed something in the research—you saw something that fit all Sam’s symptoms but the timeline was three hours off so you never fucking mentioned?” It’s sarcastic, he means it to be, but the plea seeps through.
“No.” Gentle again. Dean is brittle. How much use, for how much longer. Cas would keep looking if Dean snapped. Not with any hope or conviction, but he’d keep going.
“He asked me—” Dean clears his throat. It’s an albatross, a millstone. “He was normal on the drive back, but—we got here, we were waiting for Mom and Jack, and he went to call them. He couldn’t unlock his phone. Right, like… But he was still talking.” He strokes Sam’s hair. Scalp, blood, skull. Brain. If Jack hadn’t healed him there would be a divot like the one in the table. “I made some dumb joke about senior moments. Told him I’d book us that room at Oak Park. He even laughed at that. And then he asked me to come find him. He said, uh, he said my name. And then exactly that, he said, ‘would you come find me?’ Like he was calling me from the side of some highway, but he was, I mean, he was standing there, man, he was looking right at me. And that was it, those were his last—” But he can feel Sam’s pulse in his temple. “He asked me. He asked me to—so I don’t want to hear shit about this being tough on any of us. Not until we’re finished. And we’re finished when we find him.”
He can feel it, the naked fear, the need, the failure. It sloughs off him like bad flesh now he’s unwrapped the bandage. But it works. Cas never could walk away from a bleeding Winchester. He nods. Puts a hand out, careful, and strokes Sam’s back. “We will,” he says. Not hopeful. But the til'-death clamped jaws in it. Close enough.
“Good. Good. You got that list from Rowena?” But he knows Cas does, swipes his eyes rather than wait for an answer. Tugs Sam’s shoulder to make him sit up, dislodging Cas. “I’ll drop him off with Jack. Wheels up in 15.”
When Dean and Castiel leave that evening, it’s the same as every time. Sam is crushed, lifeless like a bug with the wings and legs torn off. Jack doesn’t bother with their routine, with dragging Sam through an evening walk, with prodding him to eat and brush his teeth and wash his face. He hides the knives again, and he brings Nick a sandwich. Sometimes he walks into the dungeon and he misses his father, wants to turn and see the blaze of him tearing through at Nick’s eyes and mouth. At least things would change. But then he looks at Nick and the hope drains, the fear. Nick is nothing, can offer him nothing, take nothing from him.
Except once.
He rebuilds their fort in the Cave and holds Sam down in case he won’t settle, but he doesn’t even fight. Jack doesn’t care for it. It’s lonely.
“I had an argument ready,” he tells Sam. “I was going to explain to Dean, the routine makes you easier to manage but that’s not the same as good for you. I know it's not real, in movies, when they say it's Christmas, but—” He’s angry about it, a dull throb. But it’s a relief, too, the way he was derailed. The secret has been snared in him. “It doesn’t matter. Dean wouldn’t ever have listened." He adjusts the collar of Sam's shirt, tugs it straight where it's twisted at his throat. "He doesn’t care what’s good for you, he only cares about getting his Sammy back.”
Sam thrashes. He’s been empty, but now he yanks his hands free of where Jack pinned them with his knees. Jack has to use his powers, shoves him down harder than he meant to. It releases some larger pressure, and Jack feels better once he’s done it. Anyway it’s good to have Sam back, present, even in shards. Better than the shell that’s left when he drains away completely. “You’re not the only one who’s sad they’re gone.” Jack checks the back of Sam’s head but the pillows are enough, he’s not hurt. “Here. We can share.” He holds up the bear, makes sure Sam’s eyes are tracking it before he squeezes. “—alone much of the time. And he’s very fond of the video Kelly left him.”
It catches him. He knows Cas’s voice, jerks for the source before he lands back on the bear. “Uh, Jack—I’m proud of you,” Jack squeezes out of it, in Dean’s voice now. “Everything you do for Sam, and you never complain. Hang in there, bud. Not much longer.” He lets one of Sam’s hands go and hands it over.
“We’re both proud of you. Kelly would be as well. Sam will be, when—when we wake him," it says when Sam’s fingers close, and then back to the beginning: “—alone much of the time.”
Sam looks up at him, meets his eyes for the first time since that morning. He sees, he does. The bleak wounded question, really, really they left us with this?
Jack slides off, to the side. He keeps his leg locked over Sam’s in case, his head on Sam’s chest. “I would have liked this if you were awake,” he says. “You would have hated it. If Nick hurt you some other way, your body instead of your brain. I'd take such good care of you and I think I'd enjoy it. I’m sorry, I know that isn’t good of me.”
Sam pats his shoulder, the same as Dean had. It stings in Jack’s eyes, his throat. It feels like a response, like forgiveness, and it isn’t.
“You’re just doing it to wake up, when you hurt yourself.” He burrows into Sam’s flannel. It’s sour, because he hadn’t made him change for bed. It smells faintly like blood, but that’s probably Jack’s imagination. Cas would have fixed all that. “If it helped I’d let you do it. Maybe that isn’t good of me either.”
Sam moves his hand to Jack’s hair and combs through it, careful the way Cas is. He sets the bear down on his chest, nose to Jack’s, and presses down. “Uh, Jack—I'm proud of you. Everything you do for Sam, and you never complain. Hang in there, bud. Not much longer.”
“I’m sorry.” Jack props himself up, moves fast so Sam will look at him at least out of instinct if not interest or understanding. “I shouldn’t have said Dean doesn’t care about you.” Sam’s eyes drift and Jack nudges him to pull him back. “It’s okay, Sam. Dean still loves you. I love you, too. I’ll never leave you.”