Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The shadows bleed across the ground under his feet as he creeps through the dorm room, wincing at every creak and groan of the floorboards. There’s no movement from inside yet, so he doesn’t stop, but he does keep himself pressed against the walls as tightly as he can, keeping his breaths shallow and light, just like he was taught.

He still can’t believe the window was left unlocked, can’t believe that it had been this easy to get in, that there haven’t even been any traps yet to trip him up. The most he’s found is some clothes strewn about the place, but those hadn’t been anything malicious at all.

Dean’s actually a bit disappointed.

He knows that Sam’s been out of the game for a while now - years, actually - but John taught him better than that. Dean taught him better than that.

There are too many things that go bump in the night for Sam to stop protecting himself.

It takes another five minutes of poking around before something stirs in the bedroom, and Dean grins to himself as he melts back into the dimness of the night. He settles his weight, braces his knees, prepares himself for the sloppy punch he knows will be coming any moment now. He can hear Sammy’s feet shift over the floorboards, can hear the whisper of his clothes as he eases through the darkness.

Rusty, but not a total loss, then.

Dean grins to himself and slips into the next room, making sure that his silhouette catches in the beaded doorway just right. Sam takes the bait, going still and silent as he catches a glimpse of the movement, and then he’s trailing Dean into the open space, and even though it grates on all of Dean’s instincts, he makes sure his baby brother has a shot at his open back.

He knows it's coming, but the arm that slips around his neck takes him off guard, and he lashes out instinctively, throwing Sam’s grip off and turning around so that they’re face to face in the tussle. Sam’s got the height and the bulk, but Dean’s lithe and he’s quick and he’s been hunting for years now, so he throws Sam backwards with relative ease and chases after him with a raised fist.

Sam parries the blow, and Dean shoves him back again, and then Sam swings on him but it’s wide and it’s sloppy, and Dean ducks underneath it and throws a punch at his brother’s face. It connects, even though Dean didn’t actually mean for it to, and Sam staggers away for a second before coming back with a brutal kick that Dean only barely manages to scramble away from. He strikes back quick, catches Sam’s by the wrist and drags him forward just enough that Dean can unbalance him and slam him to the ground.

Sam hits the wood with a thump, air wheezing out of him, and Dean pins him there, breathless but pleased.

“Woah!” He puffs, cocky and buzzing with the thrill of being near his baby brother once again. “Easy tiger.”

Sam pants, brows furrowing. “Dean?”

Dean laughs, because he hasn’t heard Sammy say his name in years, and he’s missed the petulant annoyance. Doesn’t matter how much Sammy’s voice changes, doesn’t matter how many years pass, Dean’s always gonna be able to find his pain-in-the-ass little brother buried underneath that ridiculous mop of hair, gonna be able to find him tucked away inside that ridiculously lanky body.

“You scared the crap out of me,” Sam scowls.

Dean tilts his head. “That’s cause you’re out of practice,” he teases.

Sam’s mouth pinches in indignant offence, and then he’s latching on to Dean’s arm and throwing his entire body weight forward. His leg locks behind Dean’s back and propels him to the side, and between one blink and the next, Dean’s hitting the hardwood floor and Sam is looming over the top of him, shin to his throat and eyes glittering dangerously in the dimness.

Dean chokes out another laugh. “Or not,” he says, and then when Sam doesn't move, he taps the leg pinning him down. “Get off me.”

Sammy peels away from him, gripping his hand to yank him to his feet, and Dean brushes off his jacket once he’s got his bearings again. Sam is bathed in shadows in front of him, freakishly tall and still awkward in his own skin, and Dean looks him over out of habit, searching for any trace of injuries or hurt.

He doesn’t find anything, and something inside him goes slack with relief and disappointment in equal measure.

He’d thought that maybe Stanford might’ve been a little ill-fitting. Might’ve chafed parts of Sammy raw. Might’ve pressed fingers into those bruises that Sammy pretends not to have tucked behind his ribcage.

But Dean looks, and he sees none of that. His brother looks healthy, looks happy, looks at ease and content in a way that he never was during those long years on the road.

Looks like he’s never held a gun in his life.

“Dean, what the hell are you doing here?”

The question snaps him out of it, and Dean swallows down those wandering, dangerous feelings and pretends they don’t taste like longing on the way down.

“Well, I was looking for a beer,” he answers blithely, clapping Sammy on the shoulders.

There are other things he should say, other questions that he should ask, but he doesn’t, because now that the elation of seeing Sammy again is fading, that weather-worn anger is starting to burn his bones again. He doesn’t know how to drown it, doesn’t know how to set it aside long enough to tell Sam about John, doesn’t know how to introduce hunting back into Sam’s perfect life without blaming him for leaving in the first place.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Sam repeats, slower this time, darker.

“Okay, alright,” Dean says. “We gotta talk.”

“Uh, the phone?”

And that’s not fair, actually, because Dean’s not the one who stopped calling.

“If I’d called,” he challenged, pointed and cutting, “would you have picked up?”

Sam doesn’t answer straight away, and they’re spared from the brewing argument when the light flicks on and a gentle voice calls out Sam’s name.

When Dean looks over to the third body in the room, the first thing he really sees is his mom.

His breath catches.

The woman is shorter than them, and she’s petite, and she’s exactly his type, but the only thing he finds his eyes stuck on is the waterfall of wavy blonde hair that cascades down her back. It gleams in the glow of the room, almost ethereal, and suddenly there’s a lump in his throat and he feels-

He-

She shifts further into the room, and he rips his eyes away from her hair to finally take in the rest of her.

She’s wearing what can loosely be called a shirt, cropped and very low-cut, and all at once, the familiar heat of attraction thaws the icy grief that had gripped the back of his neck. She’s stunning - more than stunning, actually, and way too good for his geek little brother. He didn’t even know girls like this went to somewhere like Stanford.

“Jess,” Sam says, like he’s surprised she’s there. “Hey. Dean, this is my girlfriend, Jessica.”

Jessica. Dean tries the name in his mouth, likes the way it feels on his tongue.

Jess’s full lips curve into a curious half-smile. “Wait, your brother Dean?”

Oh, so she knows who he is.

The knowledge that Sam’s talked about him, enough for his girlfriend to know his name, sits awkwardly at the back of Dean’s mind, but he ignores it for the time being and steps towards her, easing into that cocky smirk he likes to wear these days.

“I love the Smurfs,” he says coyly, gesturing at her shirt. At what the shirt’s covering. “You know, I gotta tell you. You are completely out of my brother’s league.”

The look she gives him is utterly uninterested, her eyes flickering over his shoulder to Sam for just a second before returning to Dean. She tilts backwards. “Just let me put something on.”

Sam’s frustration and annoyance is a simmering force at Dean’s back, a rumble in the air that nestles in against Dean’s long-dormant instincts to be a dick of an older brother.

“No, no,” he says, making sure to keep his expression genuine and his voice moulded into a lazy drawl, just to get under Sam’s skin. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Seriously.”

Sam’s next breath out is on the edge of too-sharp, and his fingers curl into a loose fist, and Jess isn’t biting the bait Dean’s laying out. Joke’s over. Alright. Dean knows when to stop pushing. Let it not be said he’s not a gentleman.

He drifts back towards Sam, letting go of the teasing for now. “Anyway,” he says, louder now, reeling himself back from the domestic life Sammy’s built for himself here. “I gotta borrow your boyfriend here, talk about some private family business, but, uh, it’s nice meeting you.”

It is nice to meet her, but not entirely for the reason she thinks.

But Dean doesn’t want to think about that right now, so he looks at Sam expectantly and waits.

Except Sam moves away from him with a firm, “No.” He steps over to Jess’s side, wrapping a long arm around her as he stares challengingly at Dean. “Whatever you wanna say, you can say in front of her.”

“Okay.”

It’s not okay, though, and Dean’s teeth ache with the force of holding it back. The anger, the accusations, the bitterness. The jealousy that Sam’s managed to find this perfect little fantasy, and it wasn’t even that hard for him, and he doesn’t even seem to care about what he left behind. About who he left behind.

He stands beside his pretty girlfriend, in their pretty dorm, near their pretty university.

Dean hates it. Hates Sam, just a little bit. Hates him for getting everything he ever wanted and not having to sacrifice a damn thing except his own family.

“Uh.” Dean thinks on his feet for a moment, searching for a way to say what he needs to say without revealing the truth. He wants Sam to remember where he came from, but he doesn’t want to do it by staining Jessica with the horrors her boyfriend has lived through. “Dad hasn’t been home in a few days.”

Sam inhales deeply, his face still closed off and petulant. Jess, tucked into his side, only looks uncertain.

“So?” Sam lifts his chin, like he’s trying to seem mature and disinterested. Dean almost coos at the effort. “He’s working overtime on a Miller time shift. He’ll stumble back in sooner or later.”

‘Stumble back in’, because Sam used to hate when John drank, used to hate when they were woken up by him coming home from the bar, even though it never happened regularly, even though John never said a damn word to him until the next morning, when they were getting ready to move on to the next hunt.

So many years later, and Sam’s still punishing their father for the crime of being human.

Dean purses his lips as he swallows down the retorts that spring up, nodding vacantly as he instead searches for another way to say it, another way that might pierce through Sammy’s childish rebellion and hammer home why Dean bothered to come here.

“Dad’s on a hunting trip,” Dean says, the words heavy and solemn, “and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”

A hazard of the job, John used to say when other hunters stopped showing up. A risk, but a necessary one.

Sometimes, when Dean made time to join up with him, and it was just the two of them tucked away in a tiny hotel room with an entire world between them, John used to say that vanishing was a sign of sloppy work. That a real hunter - a good hunter - knew better than to let himself be taken off guard like that. And if they didn’t know, if they didn’t care enough to do better, then they were at least smart enough not to have anybody who’d care enough to go looking for them.

Sometimes, back then at least, Dean used to want to ask his father if that’s what John thought about his own son. If he thought that Dean should know better. If he would care if Dean stopped answering the phone, if he stopped showing up at the bars they agreed on, if he stopped taking the cases that John gave him.

Sometimes, Dean wanted to ask if John would go looking for him if Dean went missing, but he was too scared of what his dad might say, so he just kept quiet and cleaned the guns instead.

In front of him, here and now, Dean watches Sam’s face shift. Watches the understanding creep into those families but distant eyes, watches as Sam straightens and digs deep for the training that John carved into his very bones.

“Jess, excuse us,” Sam says, “We have to go outside.”

She lets him go without complaint, and Dean tries not to feel ugly and smug about the fact he can lure Sam away from her so easily, with so few words, but he thinks some of it shows in his smile because she frowns when she looks at him.

Sam doesn’t seem to notice, and Dean leads him away before Jess has a chance to say something.

They head for the stairs, because everything Dean needs to convince his brother to come back to the family is tucked away in the Impala, and Sam follows him begrudgingly. His shock has already worn off though, and Dean huffs as the complaints start, and the agitated scolding that pales in comparison to the scoldings that John used to give him.

“Come on,” Sam is saying as they trot down the first few stairs, “you can’t just break in, middle of the night, and expect me to hit the road with you.”

Dean rolls his eyes. Christ, with the way Sam was bitching, you’d think he’d been asked to cut his own arm off and give it to a monster to chew on.

“You’re not hearing me, Sammy,” he says. “Dad’s missing. I need you to help me find him.”

But Sammy’s always had a stubborn streak wider than a mile, and it seems that spending all those years at Stanford only made it worse. “You remember the poltergeist in Amherst?” he argues. “Or the Devil’s Gate in Clifton? He was missing then, too. He’s always missing, and he’s always fine.”

Dean’s jaw feathers, because Sam is wrong. He doesn’t get it. He never has. He’s never understood this life the way that Dean has, and he’s never forgiven them for it either. He’s never forgiven the weeks spent in a rented room, never moved past the days on the road after leaving their lives behind yet again. He hasn’t forgotten the weeks, sometimes the months, where it was up to Dean to get him fed and bathed and ready for school.

He says their dad was missing, that he’s always missing, but Dean knows better. John was never missing, not really. Not like this.

“Not for this long,” is what he grits out instead, stopping abruptly and turning on Sam, who towers over him from a step up. “Now, are you gonna come with me or not?”

“I’m not.”

And Dean knows the answer, but-

“Why not?” He demands.

There’s a familiar scorching anger buried under an unfamiliar calm plastered across Sam’s features, and his tone is low and serious when he says, “I swore I was done hunting. For good.”

You were young, Dean wants to say. You were stupid. You were mad at Dad. You didn’t mean it. Say you didn’t mean it. Come with me.

But he can’t say that, not without admitting that he never managed to shake the hurt, so instead he just does a little half-shrug and leans into the incredulity of it all. “Come on. It wasn’t easy,” he admits breezily, and spins on his heel to keep moving down, “but it wasn’t that bad.”

Just as he’d predicted, Sam follows him, easily baited by Dean’s dismissiveness. Changed so much, but deep down, he’s still the same pain-in-the-ass little brother Dean remembers from all those years ago.

“Yeah?” Sam challenges. “When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in the closet, he gave me a .45.”

Yeah, because that’s what you use against things that go bump in the night. The first rule of hunting is to always be armed, to never face the darkness without a way to protect yourself. Because that’s how people go missing.

That’s how people stop looking for you.

“Well, what was he supposed to do?” It’s a rhetorical question, and Den punctuates it by stopping again, crowding Sam in the gloomy hallway just before the door to outside.

“I was nine years old! He was supposed to say ‘don’t be afraid of the dark’.”

Well, that’s just dumb and naive.

“Don’t be afraid of the dark?” Dean echoes, eyebrows raised. “Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what’s out there.”

Sam’s face scrunches. “Yeah, I know. But still, the way we grew up after Mom was killed, and Dad’s obsession to find the thing that killed her-”

Dean looks away. He has to. He doesn’t know what’s going to be visible in his expression, doesn’t know what Sam might be able to glean at the dismissive reference to the worst part of Dean’s life. The worst part of both their lives. The thing that drove them to this, that set them on this path - and Sam doesn’t even seem like he cares.

Dean can’t believe he doesn’t care.

Sam is still talking. “But we still haven’t found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find.”

“We save a lot of people doing it, too.”

Because that’s the point. That’s the point, damn it. That’s why they put up with the hotels, with the greasy food, with the lumpy mattresses and the heaters that don’t work. Why they stopped making friends at school, why they never went to homecoming or prom.

It’s why Dean learned to shoot a gun, why he learned how to drive, why he watched his father kill a man in a parking lot while baby Sammy cried inside. It’s why he never looked at the college brochures, why he never paid attention during career day, why he never bothered playing sports once he got into high school.

Save people. Kill the bad things. Avenge their mom. Follow in their dad’s footsteps.

Sam’s eyes glitter in the low light. “You think Mom would have wanted this for us?”

I think Mom is dead.

Dean slams out the door without another word, thumping up the outside set of stairs that lead up to the parking lot where the Impala gleams under the moon. He hates that it comes back to this, hates that for all Sam has grown up, he still hasn’t grown past the stupid need to have their mother’s pride, to have her approval, all the while not giving a crap that she was murdered by a fucking demon.

Sam keeps pace behind him, and he’s still going, and Dean knows that he started this, but he suddenly - viciously - wishes he’d never come here at all.

“The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets?” Sam is ruthless, because he’s a Winchester and Dean taught him to be, but it still bites. “Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors.”

Not warriors. Sons of a soldier who was fighting a war alone.

John did what he had to do. He did the best with what he had. Nothing else matters. Nothing else counts. There’s only the war.

Dean makes for the Impala, doesn’t falter in stride even as Sam’s words dig under his skin. “So what are you gonna do?” He snaps. “You’re just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?”

“No, not normal.” Sam makes him stop again, brings him round face to face, like this is important and he doesn’t think Dean gets it. It’s patronising. “Safe.”

And it’s cruel, putting it like that, because Dean kept him safe. Dean kept him protected, kept him fed, kept him as happy as Sammy could be at twelve years old. That’s the whole reason Dean’s around, the whole point of him being here, the whole purpose that he was made for.

Watch out for Sammy.

“And that’s why you ran away,” he pushes with a scoff, because the anger is easier than the hurt.

But Sam’s temper is cooling again, soothed by the fresh air and the fatigue of an age-old argument. “I was just going to college,” he says, and sounds like he means it. “It was Dad who said if I was gonna go, I should stay gone. And that’s what I’m doing.”

Dad didn’t mean it, Dean thinks. Dad never means it. He just gets angry sometimes, and you were always such a hot-head, and-

It doesn’t matter now. The past is the past. There’s too much to do, too much ground to cover, for them to go back over it now.

“Yeah, well.” Dean scuffs his feet and drops the subject. “Dad’s in real trouble right now, if he’s not dead already. I can feel it.”

It’s like a sickness, clogging his lungs and festering in his blood. It’s a shadow that haunts his steps, a ghost that lingers in the background of every call that goes unanswered and every voicemail he leaves on a phone that his dad may not even have anymore. It’s the silence at every rendezvous point they’ve ever set up, it’s the squeak of the Impala’s tyres as she creeps over dirt roads she’s never tasted before, it’s the wisp of smoke in the air of a graveyard.

And Dean has been hunting on his own for years now, has been going solo since eighteen years old, but he’s never felt so alone before in his life.

But Sammy still doesn’t look convinced, still has that stubborn set to his jaw that says he’s too far gone to reason with, so Dean picks the road less travelled and dips a pinky into the emotion he usually does his best to ignore.

“I can’t do this alone,” he tells Sam, and hopes that’s enough.

It’s not.

Sam squints at him, doubtful. “Yes, you can.”

So many years gone, so much distance between them, and Sammy still knows how to call him on his bullshit. If it weren’t so annoying, Dean might think it’s endearing.

He drops his gaze, chews on the pathetic honesty, considers cutting his losses and leaving Sam to his law degree and his hot girlfriend and his life that’s so much better without his brother in it. He could do it, because John raised him to be a good hunter and would expect more from him than this, and yet…

“Yeah,” he mutters, and can’t bring himself to look at Sam as he forces out his confession. “Well, I don’t want to.”

It’s the gods-honest truth, and it’s rich with everything that Dean wants to say but doesn’t, and he knows it works by the way Sam goes silent and stares at him. He knows it works because that’s how he designed it, that’s why he said it, that’s what this whole test has been about.

Seeing if Sam still cares. If not about their dad, if not about hunting, then about Dean.

It’s dirty, and it doesn’t make him feel very good, but Dean was never raised to play fair, and Sam’s been gone too long to remember that.

Finally, after a long stretch of silence, Sam sighs heavily, shoulders slumping, and Dean knows he’s won.

“What was he hunting?” Sam bites out.

Dean keeps the triumph tucked inside his ribcage as he leads his brother over to the Impala and cracks the boot, propping it open with the same sawed-off shotgun he’s been using for years. He wonders for a second if Sammy feels anything about seeing the car again, wonders if Sam ever wishes they could go for a drive like they used to, wonders if he remembers the army men crammed into the vent.

He doesn’t ask. He’s already taken the first victory, and he doesn’t dare push any harder right now.

“All right, let's see,” he mumbles to himself absent-mindedly, digging through the clutter of weapons. “Where the hell did I put that thing?”

Sam shifts his weight, leaning against the Impala. “So when Dad left, why didn’t you go with him?”

“I was working my own gig,” Dean answers, fingers closing around the folder he’s been searching for. “This, uh, voodoo thing down in New Orleans.”

Sam scoffs. “Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?”

Dean almost has to pause, because he’d been doing hunts by himself since before Sam ran off to Stanford. He’s been doing hunts by himself since seventeen years old, since that tired old church and the nuns trapped inside, since he realised that his father had seen him down to his bones and hated what he found.

Dean’s been strong enough to hunt on his own for years, but Sammy hasn’t been around, so Sam doesn’t know.

Dean looks at him, askance, and says, “I’m twenty-six, dude.”

There’s a peculiar look on Sam’s face, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Dean decides to let the subject drop and instead pulls out a few sheets of paper. “All right, here we go.” He straightens up, scanning each page intently. “So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy-” he hands a page to Sam, who takes it with only the slightest hesitation, “-they found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA.”

Sam studies the information, unconvinced. “So maybe he was kidnapped.”

Irritation swells, sharp and sudden, but it ebbs just as fast, and Dean just pulls out another page. “Yeah, well, here’s another one in April.” He gathers another page, and then another. “Another one in December ‘04, ‘03, ‘98, ‘92. Ten of them over the past twenty years.” He plucks the paper out of Sam’s hand, ignoring the scowl he gets in return. “All men. All the same five-mile stretch of road.”

Sam doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, doesn’t look even the slightest bit in agreement that something’s going on here, but he also hasn’t turned tail and run back to Jess and his normal, little life, so Dean keeps digging, keeps talking.

“It started happening more and more,” he says, “so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I hadn’t heard from him since, which is bad enough.” He bites back the familiar crushing worry that’s been nibbling on his insides for the past few days, reaches for the tape recorder instead. “Then I get this voicemail yesterday.”

The recording itself is staticky, fizzing with crackles and hisses that overlap John’s voice until it’s almost incomprehensible.

“Dean, something big is starting to happen. I need to try and figure out what’s going on.” There’s a second or two of mashed up words that he still hasn’t been able to decipher, and then, “Be very careful, Dean. We’re all in danger.”

He flicks the tape recorder off again and makes sure there’s no trace of desperate emotion on his face when he turns to glance up at Sam. It’s been days of listening to the voicemail, days of tracking his last movements, days of wondering over and over if this is the hunt where his dad finally got himself killed and if he expects Dean to come looking for him. If he expects Dean to take his place. If he expects Dean to keep fighting the war.

Sam looks back at him steadily, but there’s a light in his eyes now that Dean hasn’t seen in years and years.

“You know there’s EVP on that?” Sam asks casually.

Pride blooms in Dean’s stomach, warm and bright, and he grins. “Not bad, Sammy,” he says. “Kinda like riding a bit, isn’t it?”

Sam smiles weakly, but doesn’t answer.

Dean doesn’t push. “Alright, I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got.”

He clicks play, waits for the recording to kick in, and makes sure he’s watching Sam when the sound starts.

“I can never go home.”

It’s eerie, which is saying a lot because Dean deals with eerie every day of his life, but there’s something about the strange woman’s voice that sends a chill skittering down his spine. Next to him, Sam’s expression wrinkles and shifts, his aloof blankness stripped away and replaced by an interested curiosity. He has that furrow between his brow again, the one that Dean used to see when he was working through a math problem or buried deep in the lore books their dad brought home.

It’s Sammy’s hunting look.

He tries very hard not to smile.

“Never go home,” Sam repeats slowly, tasting the words in his mouth.

Dean lets him mull it over while he throws the recorder back into the clutter, not even bothering to tuck it away before he’s dropping down the shotgun and slamming the trunk shut. Not even the sudden thump chases Sam out of his musing. It’s familiar - achingly so - and it makes Dean wish, more than anything, that he hadn’t let Sam walk out that door. That he’d told John to cool it. That he’d called more, or he’d found the right words to say, or that he’d been a bit nicer to Sammy when they were kids so that Sammy didn’t want to leave him so badly.

But they’re here, now, and John is missing, and Sam still has both feet planted firmly on the Stanford side of the line that he’d drawn all those years ago.

“You know,” Dean says, faux-casual and deliberate, “in almost two years I’ve never bothered you, never asked you for a thing.”

Even though it was Sam that stopped calling, Sam that never answered, Sam that changed his number and never gave the new one to his own brother. Even though Dean would sometimes make the drive out just to make sure Sam was safe, make sure he was happy, make sure the darkness that had taken so much from them already wasn’t about to take this too.

Their dad had done the same thing.

Dean doesn’t think Sam would ever believe that if Dean told him.

But he waits, lets Sam look away and gather himself, because Dean won’t force him. He won’t make this choice for his baby brother. Either Sam stays or Sam goes, but either way, it’s going to be his choice and Dean will know where he stands. He’ll know what Sammy thinks about their family.

He’ll know what Sammy thinks about him.

Eventually, after a moment, Sam sighs, shoulders slumping.

“Alright,” he says, not sounding entirely thrilled about it. “I’ll go. I’ll help you find him. But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here.”

And Dean shouldn’t push his luck, shouldn’t press on the bruise, but…

“What’s first thing Monday?”

“I have this…” Sam hesitates. “I have an interview.”

“What, a job interview?” Dean fights the urge to snort. “Skip it.”

That familiar annoyance and impatience flickers back to life on Sam’s face, potent and tense, and his mouth quirks into that irritated smile he gets when he thinks Dean is being purposefully obtuse. It’s the same face he made a teenager. Dean’s missed it.

“It’s a law school interview,” Sam grits out, “and it’s my whole future on a plate.”

“Law school?” Dean echoes, and it tastes sour on his tongue.

It’s not new information. It’s one of the only things Dean really remembers from that fight before Sam left, but it still stings a bit that even after all these years, Sam still puts being a lawyer over being with his family. Over avenging their mom. Over helping their dad.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. It doesn’t matter. We’ll find Dad, and he’ll talk some sense into both of us, and Sammy will forget about Stanford and Jess, and this whole mess will be over.

Sam stares at him unflinchingly from a few steps away. “So, we got a deal or not?”

Dean stares back for a moment, before nodding once, sharply.

Watching Sam walk away for a second time makes his chest go a little funny, so he looks down at his boots until Sam’s footsteps fade from his awareness.

The drive is…awkward, at first.

Sam is stiff and stilted in the passenger seat, and he doesn’t sing along to the radio, and he doesn’t respond to Dean’s taunts and teases. He has some kind of textbook in his lap, and he uses the research Dean’s compiled as a bookmark whenever they stop for food or gas or a leak.

Eventually, Dean stops trying to poke some life back into him and just cranks the music, tapping along to AC/DC on the steering wheel and losing himself in the familiar wailing guitars. He hears his dad in each song, can still smell the lingering scent of his aftershave from the slightly-too-big jacket slung around his shoulders, and sometimes he wonders if those are the last reminders he’s ever going to have of the man.

He wonders how he feels about that.

Eventually, after countless hours on the road with as few pit stops as they can spare, Sam huffs a breath and sets aside his textbook, melting into the seat and rubbing at his eyes.

“Fine,” he sulks, even though Dean literally hasn’t said anything. “What do you want to know?”

Dean reaches over to turn the volume on the cassette player down, raising his eyebrows at his little brother. “What?”

“What do you want to know?” Sam repeats, waving his hand around like that’s meant to clear anything up. When Dean just gives him another confused look, he sighs again and scratches at his jaw. “Look, you’re clearly dying to ask me about what happened after I left, so just…I don’t know. Ask.”

Dean squints at the road. “Dude, I literally haven’t said anything.”

“Fine, if you don’t wanna know-”

“No, no, no, I didn’t say that.”

Sam rolls his eyes, but stops arguing, leaving the door open for Dean. A rare opportunity, and one that he hadn’t been expecting; getting things out of Sammy when he’s brooding is a skill that he’s gotten rusty at, and he genuinely hadn’t even been trying to pry. He just…hadn’t known what to say.

But if Sam’s giving him the opportunity to probe, he’s not going to pass it up.

“Tell me about Jessica,” he says after a moment, and takes note of the way Sam blinks in surprise. “What, you thought I wouldn’t want to know how a beanpole like you landed a babe like her? She’s totally out of your league, man.”

Sam laughs, and it’s only a little sound and it's mostly exasperated, but it’s the first time in over two years that Dean’s heard it, so he takes it as a win. “Yeah, okay,” Sam mutters. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Dean grins at him, and Sam scowls at him but not in a mean way, and all of a sudden it’s like there was never any time spent apart.

“No, uh, believe it or not, my friend Brady introduced us,” Sam says, and there’s a real fondness there that Dean isn’t expecting for some reason. He swallows, but doesn’t interrupt. “Turns out she and I are taking a lot of the same classes, so we ended up pairing up together for projects.”

There’s a softness to him when he talks about Jess, a lightness to him that Dean doesn’t remember seeing their entire lives. He’s still dangerous, still sharp in places, still a hunter’s son, but the tension that used to live permanently between his shoulder blades is conspicuously missing, and he doesn’t clench his fists like he wants to throw a punch anymore.

He looks…happy. Content.

Dean doesn’t really know how to feel about that.

“So, what?” He drawls after a minute, keeping his tone light. “You guys just bonded over, what, Constitutional Law for Dummies?”

“Our first paper was on Family Law, actually.”

Dean hums and doesn’t comment on that, even though maybe he should. John would’ve jumped on the opening, would’ve used it to start throwing accusations around, to press his thumb on the bruise of that fight back then, but Dean’s not enough like his father to try.

Instead, he just says, blithely, “Family Law, huh? Sounds riveting.”

He actually can’t think of anything more droll and boring in his life, but then again, he did once have to sit through an entire two-hour lecture on the industrial revolution because he’d been caught skipping fifth period and had been personally escorted to his next class by the principal.

Sam gives one of his little half-shrugs. “Some of it’s actually pretty interesting.”

“Yeah?” Dean glances sideways at him, considering. “You guys study some juicy divorce settlements? Got any good stories?”

“Custody battles, mostly.”

“Well that’s depressing.”

Sam tilts his head, shifting in his seat. “Yeah, it kind of is. A lot of it’s just…people trying to hurt each other, you know? And using the law to do it.”

Dean knows about the ways people like to hurt each other. He knows why John always used to tell him during those long nights spent side by side at the bar why humans were the scariest monsters out there.

He lets out a short laugh through his nose. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “People are the worst, we know.”

Sam’s mouth twitches briefly before he looks back out the front windshield, eyes catching on the signs that flash by and the slice of headlights through the dimness. “There was this one case we covered that Jess absolutely hated. The parents spent like two years fighting over visitation rights just because each of them wanted to look like the better parent. Didn’t even care about the kid. Just didn’t want the other person to win. Jess said neither of them should have visitation.”

Something tightens unpleasantly in Dean’s stomach.

Because that kind of anger makes sense to him. That kind of spite. The urge to keep fighting long after the actual point gets buried beneath the wreckage.

John would understand it too.

“Did Jess get what she wanted?” He manages.

Sam shakes his head. “No. The mom won in the end. Jess got so upset she refused to actually do the essay on it. I ended up writing it for both of us. She said she’d never go into family law. She wants to be a prosecutor.”

And he just sounds so smitten, so happy, so disgustingly gooey, that Dean just can’t help himself.

“You really like her, huh?”

Sam watches the world go by for a moment, and then says, quietly, “Yeah.”

And for a second, Dean really looks at his brother.

Sam’s sitting slouched down in the passenger seat now instead of rigidly upright, one knee hooked up against the dash, textbook abandoned between the seats. The clenching of his jaw has eased enough that he almost looks like that young brat Dean remembers again.

Not young-young. Not twelve years old and still sweet.

But close enough that Dean’s chest aches a little anyway.

He swallows around something uncomfortable in his throat and looks back out at the road before Sam can notice anything on his face. Outside, the world is all darkness and telephone poles and the occasional lonely wash of gas station neon in the distance. He chews on it for a while, this strange feeling, and he says nothing.

Sam notices eventually. Of course he does.

“What?”

Dean purses his lips. “Nothing.”

“Dean.”

“It’s nothing, Sammy.”

Sam works his jaw for a second, frustration visibly bubbling up before he forcibly swats it away and turns back towards the window. Dean lets him, hands tightening around the wheel as he curses himself for being so transparent, so weak, so emotional about all the wrong things. He’d forgotten, somehow, that Sammy was so sensitive to his moods, that he was so apt at telling what Dean was really thinking. The one person Dean could never lie to.

The one person he never wanted to lie to, not really. Not about the important things.

The silence settles again, colder this time, and Dean doesn’t know how to undo what he’s done. Doesn’t know how to bridge the chasm that’s opened up between him and his brother since Sam walked out the door and never came back.

But the burden doesn’t rest with him, because after a while, Sam lets out a slow breath and says, quiet and soft, “You’d like her too. Jess, I mean.”

It’s an olive branch, a rare opening into the life that Sam’s been so hellbent on protecting from him.

So Dean does what he’s always done and takes a mile when he’s given an inch. “Of course I would,” he says, incredulous. “I mean, you’ve seen her. She’s gorgeous!”

Sam quirks a strange little half-smile, but doesn’t rise to the bait. “She’s smart too,” is all he says, and Dean gets it suddenly. Gets why Sammy’s holding on so tight. “She’s way smarter than me, honestly.”

“I didn’t think anyone could be geekier than you.”

It’s a weak jab, tempered by Sam’s unusual gentleness. It falls between them, flat and unacknowledged, and somehow Dean’s okay with that, even though he didn’t think he would be. Even though he doesn’t want Sam to talk like this, like there’s a spot in his new normal for Dean to fit in, but not for their dad or the hunting or the war.

“She’s funny,” Sam continues, a little wistful now. “Like, funnier than anyone else I know. And she’s super kind, and sweet, and she doesn’t ask about why I’m always alone on holidays. She just…she just makes things easy, you know? I can be myself around her.”

And there’s something there that curdles in Dean’s stomach, because he’d thought for so long that maybe after Stanford, Sam might be willing to come back. That he might miss them, that he might understand why they had to spend their childhood moving around and why their dad was so overprotective and why Dean had to be a shitty older brother so he could be a good hunter. He’d thought that maybe Stanford was a breather, a gap for Sammy to get his rebellion out, and then he’d-

But no. No, Sammy left and he found a new life and new people to love, and it’s perfect. It’s everything he ever wanted, because Dean isn’t there and John isn’t there and there are no monsters hiding under his bed.

Dean wonders, suddenly and sharply, if Sam ever missed him at all.

It’s not fair, though, to ask that, because Sam’s here. Sam came when Dean asked. It doesn’t matter that he’s going back on Monday, doesn’t matter that his ties to law school are stronger than his ties to family.

Still, Dean hears himself ask, casual as he can make it, “So why’d you say yes?”

“What?”

“You have your whole life back there.” Dean makes sure to watch the strip of road ahead of them, makes sure to guide the Impala smoothly around the bends, makes sure that he doesn’t actually meet Sam’s eyes as he keeps his voice light. “I mean, you have the girl, the interviews, law school. You could’ve told me to screw off and just gone back to your apartment.”

It’s a vulnerable question, no matter how much he pretends it isn’t, and he knows that it takes Sam off guard because he doesn’t respond for a long, long time.

But then, just when Dean’s about to change the topic and pretend he never asked anything at all, Sam speaks.

“You’re my brother.”

It’s almost defensive, the way he says it, like he thinks that Dean’s going to jump on him for it. Like he thinks it’s a pathetic thing to say and like he thinks that Dean will think that too, so he’s already trying to write it off before the teasing starts.

But Dean doesn’t think it’s pathetic. Sappy as hell, yeah, but never pathetic.

It’s a family business, after all.

He clears his throat, and ignores the way Sam winces in anticipation beside him.

“You’re such a chick,” he says. “I seriously don’t know how you convinced Jess to give you a chance.”

But he’s smiling now, and so is Sam, and they don’t need to talk about it anymore so they don’t. Sam settles deeper in the seat, and Dean leans over to turn the music back up, and a little while later, he catches his baby brother singing along under his breath like he used to when they were kids.

And for a horrible, selfish heartbeat, Dean hopes they never find John Winchester so that he can live in this moment forever.

They stop at a dusty, run-down gas station just outside Jericho, California as the sun rises, and Dean groans in relief as he drags himself out of the car and stretches his aching limbs for the first time in hours. His spine pops and snaps as he releases the built up tension accumulated there, and he hears Sam echo the sounds as he hauls his freakishly long legs out the passenger door and sprawls across the Impala’s front seat.

They’re both bigger than they used to be, and as much as Dean loves the Impala, he also loves fresh air and the shitty snacks from the middle of nowhere. He sets the gas up, pays with a credit card that technically isn’t his, and ducks inside to clear out the shelves. There’s no point in grabbing too much because they’re only a few miles out from town, but he hasn’t had breakfast yet and he’s sure Sam’s bound to get snacky soon, so he makes sure he gets a nice mix of the old favourites and pays with a flirty wink at the girl behind the counter.

He scampers outside, where Sam has sat back up and is flicking through Dean’s cassette tape collection.

“Hey,” he calls out around the snack bar pinned between his teeth, holding up the food. “Do you want breakfast?”

Sam’s face screws up. “No thanks.”

Dean rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue, even though Sam hasn’t eaten anything since they’d stopped at the diner early the night before. He just sets his treats down on the Impala’s boot and starts fiddling with the gas pump to check if it’s finished.

Sam peers over at him. “So how’d you pay for that stuff? You and Dad still running credit card scams?”

It’s been a decade since Dean last had to worry about having enough cash, a decade since the cops busted him in that hotel room with his clothes off, but the accusation in Sam’s voice conjures the shame anyway.

He sets the gas pump back in its place and puts the Impala’s fuel cap back on, and pushes past the memories. “Yeah, well, hunting ain’t exactly a pro-ball career.” He shrugs. “Besides, all we do is apply. It’s not our fault they send us the cards.”

“Yeah,” Sam scoffs derisively. “And what names did you write on the application this time?”

Dean gathers his snacks and rounds the car, creaking the door open and discarding his armful of stuff on the seat between them. “Uh, Bert Aframian,” he says, bundling himself back up into the driver’s seat. “And his son, Hector. Scored two cards out of the deal.”

Sam shakes his head. “Sounds about right.” His hands go back to fiddling with the cassette tapes still balanced in his lap, and sighs. “I swear, man, you’ve got to update your cassette tape collection.”

Dean frowns. “Why?”

Sam gives him a look like he’s an idiot. “Well, for once, they’re cassette tapes,” he says slowly, like he thinks Dean’s an idiot, and then digs around to shove a few in his face. “And two, Black Sabbath? Motorhead? Metallica?” Dean snatches the Metallica cassette tape out of his hand. “It’s the greatest hits of mullet rock.”

It’s Dad’s music, Dean thinks but doesn’t say, feeding the cassette tape into the player. It’s my music.

“House rules, Sammy,” he says as the first chords start to whine through the speakers. “Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole.”

Sam watches, exasperated, as Dean coaxes the engine to life and throws her into gear. “You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve year old,” he says crossly. “It’s Sam, okay?”

Dean cranks the music louder and gestures to his ears. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. The music’s too loud.”

He grins at the look on his baby brother’s face, and Sam huffs at him, and Dean peels away from the gas station with a whoop and a holler as the drums kick in like a wild heartbeat.

They spend the first few miles lost in thought, drowned out by the Metallica tape, before Sam pulls the phonebook out and his mobile, and reaches to turn the volume down. Dean doesn’t protest, not even for the fun of it, but he does give his brother a withering look that Sam ignores as he tracks down the first number he needs.

“Dad still looks the same?” He checks before he presses dial.

Dean nods at him, and Sam seems to think something over before he finally connects the call and raises his phone to his ear.

The conversations are brief and easy, and Sammy’s voice doesn’t stutter once as he feeds through John’s details and listens to the answer on the other side of the line. Dean knows what’s being said without having to hear it, because they’re the same questions he’d asked when their dad had first gone missing, but he lets Sammy work it out of his system, lets him fall back into the rhythm of hunting.

“Alright,” Sam says after the final call, snapping his phone shut. “There’s no one matching Dad at the hospital or morgue, so that’s something, I guess.”

Dean absorbs the news without breaking face, but whatever he was going to say in response dries up in his mouth as he notices the commotion coming up on the left. There’s police cars, caution tape. A crime scene, and one that matches too many of the others that they’d found in the pattern.

“Check it out,” he tells Sam as they cruise by, and Sam obediently twists to peer out Dean’s window to take in what details he can see.

Dean pulls over, easing the Impala down to a low rumble before turning the engine off, eyeing the scene critically as he considers their options. There’s no guarantee it’s related to what they’re hunting, but with John missing and only a handful of flimsy leads, they can’t be too picky about what they investigate.

Making up his mind, he leans down across Sam to pop open the glove box, snatching up the familiar worn case that holds every single ID he’s ever had. Most of them are FBI, because small town cops hate the Feds enough to never look too closely, but he picks out the federal marshals ID instead.

No use dragging Sam into playing FBI. Not with that haircut.

He smiles at his brother, who just looks at him disapprovingly, and says, “Let’s go.”

It’s gratifying to hear Sam’s door slam shut just after his. At least he still knows to follow Dean’s lead.

He takes note of the chatter as they wander across the old bridge, keeps his ears pricked to hear the divers confirm they haven’t found anything, keeps his lips pursed in thought as the cops confirm the missing kid is definitely missing. They know him. That means the police presence will be infinitely heavier, which is more than a little annoying.

He waits until there’s a break in conversation, the tone falling flat, before he pipes up.

“You fellas had another one like this just last month, didn’t you?”

The officer pushes away from the car, straightening up and staring at him with an unreadable expression. “And who are you?”

Dean flashes the badge non-commitally, making sure to close it and tuck it back away before the guy can get too close a look. “Federal marshals,” he says, like it means nothing.

The officer doesn’t look convinced. “You two are a little young for marshals, aren’t you?”

Dean laughs, aloof and a little too cocky. “Thanks,” he preens, “that’s awfully kind of you.” Without waiting, he moves back over towards the car, checking for blood or a body, for some kind of sign that this isn’t their kind of thing. “You did have another one just like this, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s right. About a mile up the road. There have been others before that.”

Sam steps forward before Dean has to formulate a response. “So this victim, you knew him?”

The officer nods, almost reluctantly. “Town like this, everybody knows everybody.”

Dean scans the bonnet, the windshield, the empty front seats. “Any connections between the victims, besides that they’re all men?”

“No,” the officer answers flatly. “Not so far as we can tell.”

Dean fights the urge to roll his eyes, used to the lacklustre performance of small town cops by now. It’s no wonder hunters hate local LEOs when this is the standard they’re working with. He could do better with his eyes blindfolded and his arms tied behind his back. John wouldn’t have settled for anything less than that.

But John is missing.

Dean should’ve been able to find him by now.

“So what’s the theory?” Sam asks, drifting over so he’s back at Dean’s side, but Dean can tell his heart’s not really in it.

The officer follows them a few steps, but keeps his distance. “Honestly,” he says, “we don’t know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?”

And Dean can’t help it. “Well,” he drawls. “That is exactly the kind of crack police work I’d expect out of you guys.”

It’s about a second later that he has to bite back a grunt of pain as Sam’s heel connects directly on top of his foot, and pain ricochets up his leg. He grimaces, but doesn’t speak, because Sam is already thanking the officer for his time and walking away. Dean manages a small, pained smile and then he’s marching after his brother, waiting until they’re far enough away that he can slap him over the back of the head.

“Ow!” Sam hisses, stumbling a bit. “What was that for?!”

“Why’d you have to step on my foot?” Dean hisses back.

“Why’d you have to talk to police like that?”

Dean whirls on him, forcing him to a stop as some of that frustration boils over. “Come on,” he says, because Sam doesn’t seem to get it. “They don’t really know what’s going on. We’re all alone on this. I mean, if we’re going to find Dad, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves.”

For a second it looks like Sam wants to respond, but then he’s glancing over Dean’s shoulder and clenching his jaw. He clears his throat, the tiniest movement, and Dean turns to look, almost jumping when he realises the sheriff and two genuine FBI agents are standing there watching them.

“Can I help you boys?” The sheriff rumbles.

“No, sir,” Dean says hastily, scrubbing the emotion out of his voice. “We were just leaving.” He nods at the agents as they slip past him. “Agent Mulder. Agent Scully.”

The sharp sigh behind him tells him that Sam didn’t think that was funny, but Dean does, so it doesn’t matter.

He stalks off without another word, Sam trailing at his heels, and they don’t say another word on the matter until they’re back in the car and on their way into town centre. It’s quaint, in that way that small towns usually are, and it doesn’t take long for them to follow the trail of ‘missing’ posters. Dean parks the Impala a street over just to make sure.

The missing guy - Trevor, Dean thinks his name is - looks mournful on the photo his girlfriend is tacking up around the place, but Dean ignores it as he zeros in on the dark-haired girl currently grappling with several more of the posters. She’s attractive in that goth kind of way, but he’s never really been attracted to very obviously taken women, so he pushes past the baseline attraction and nudges Sam.

“I’ll bet you that’s her.”

Sam hums. “Yeah.”

Up close, she’s even shorter than he thought, and her dark eyeliner is like a slash across her face when she turns to face them.

“You must be Amy,” he says, as friendly and unthreatening as he can be.

She looks him up and down suspiciously. “Yeah.”

“Troy told us about you. We’re his uncles. I’m Dean, and this is Sammy.”

Sammy gives him a deadpan stare, both at the lie and at the nickname, but Amy is already moving away to put up another poster. “He never mentioned you to me.”

Dean moves with her, grinning sheepishly. “Well, that’s Troy, I guess. We’re not around much, we’re up in Modesto-”

“So, we’re looking for him too,” Sam cuts him off, and Dean backs away. “And we’re asking around.”

Amy studies them both for another long second, distrust still written all over her face, before another girl wanders over from a short distance away and presses a gentle hand to her arm.

“Hey,” she says quietly. “Are you okay?”

Amy reassures her, but the girl doesn’t go away. Friends then, Dean assumes, and likely close ones. Maybe there was something there - some kind of affair that needed covering up? Not that it mattered to the case. Monsters kill who they want to kill. Human drama doesn’t really bother them.

Beside him, Sam has softened a bit around the edges, that stubborn line between his brows melting away as sympathy creeps in. Dean remembers this bit all too well, remembers being unreasonably jealous of the way Sammy, at eighteen years old, could be so much better at this part than Dean. Better at empathy, at making people feel listened to and comforted. Dean’s used to flirting or intimidation or subterfuge to get what he wants from someone, but all Sam has to do is care.

“You mind if we ask you a couple of questions?” Sam asks.

The two girls glance at each other.

Dean catches the flash of uncertainty there and presses while the opening’s still cracked. “Look, we’re just trying to figure out what happened to Troy.”

Amy worries at her lip for a second before finally dipping her head and agreement. “Okay.”

The diner she leads them to is just down the road, and it smells like burnt coffee and old grease. Dean sinks into the booth next to Sam with a groan of relief to be out of the bright sunlight, and ignores the way Sam jostles him intentionally when they end up pressed a little too close together. Dean grits his teeth, but obliges enough that they aren’t touching, choosing instead to throw his arm over the back of the booth seat and then immediately refocuses on the two girls sitting opposite them.

“I was on the phone with Tony,” Amy says once they’ve settled, her voice small and shaky as she twists her necklace nervously between her fingers. “He was driving home. He said he’d call me right back, and…he never did.”

Sam leans forward, and he still sounds so much gentler than usual. Dean watches him at work, tries not to fall back into that envy over how easily it seems to come to his baby brother, how easily he seems to connect with everyone he meets.

Tries not to think about how it’s never been like that for Dean.

Tries not to think that maybe that’s why he’s never quite been able to make his dad proud of him the way Sam had.

“He didn’t say anything strange?” Sam asks, drawing Dean back to the moment. “Or out of the ordinary?”

Amy shakes her head, still playing with her pendant. “No. Nothing that I can remember.”

Sam looks down, following the movement, and his mouth twitches. “I like your necklace.”

Amy looks down too. “Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents with all that devil stuff.” She laughs miserably.

Sam puffs a little laugh as well, and clears his throat. Dean glances at him out of the corner of his eye, because there’s no way Sam is about to-

“Actually,” Sam says, in that tone that says he’s way too excited about something not that important, “it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing.”

Amy looks at him strangely.

Dean clicks his tongue. “Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries.” Sam scowls at him, but Dean just drops his arm from the back of the booth and leans forward as well, not even bothering to match his brother’s empathetic approach. “Here’s the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something’s not right. So if you’ve heard anything…” He trails off and raises his eyebrows.

The girls look at each other again, but Amy doesn’t seem inclined to share with them. Her friend - Rachel, she’d told them her name was - tilts her head.

Dean narrows his eyes when the pause stretches out. “What is it?”

Rachel’s the one to break first, returning her attention back to them while Amy sinks into the booth. “Well, it’s just…I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk.”

In perfect unison, Dean and Sam ask, “What do they talk about?”

It’s weird. It’s a weird feeling that they just did that. They haven’t been that in sync since Dean was in school and they’d been trapped in a motel room together for a month and a half with nobody else to keep them company. Sam hasn’t even blinked at the strange moment, but Dean tucks it away to think about later.

“It’s kind of this local legend,” Rachel explains. “This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like, decades ago.” Dean can’t help the way he twists to watch Sam, but Sam stays focused on Rachel, nodding slightly as she continues. “She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever.”

Finally, Sam returns Dean’s pointed look, instincts just as honed as Dean’s are, and there’s a glint of satisfaction in his eyes as the truth of what they’re hunting comes into focus.

Ghost.

Dean’s good at dealing with those.