forthedog | (no subject)

He doesn't think about where he's going, in the end. He just goes.

Outside the club he pulls out his phone, practically running toward where his bike is parked. The call takes less than a minute. He doesn't have more than that to spare. Get the gun. Get the girls. Lock the door and don't answer it. Especially don't answer if it's Dean. I'll explain later.

Though how he'll do that is pretty low on his list of things to figure out.

Later he'll wonder why he didn't go to Castiel. He'll wonder and he'll sense the answer without actually wanting to get too into it. More than one answer. More than one kind of difficulty.

He needs someone like him. He needs a hunter.

He could stop in, see Neil, try to tell him just enough. But he's already heading toward Sam's. Too late to turn back now.

It always has been.

It's beyond late, and it occurs to him as he stops outside the door that he doesn't even know for sure if Sam is here, but what the fuck. He raises a fist, pounds on the door. Hard.

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Sam honestly isn't sure he wants to know all the details. But he also knows he can't avoid them now; he has to be aware of everything, needs every piece of information he can get to figure out where the hell Dean -- or the demon, whichever -- might have gone.

And what Mike reveals... Sam isn't surprised. He doesn't like it, the images that come to mind making his skin crawl and his stomach queasy, but some part of him also understands. Sam hasn't the faintest idea what those things did to his brother in Hell, but he knows what demons are capable above ground and that's bad enough. So whatever happened, whatever Dean had to endure down there, Sam knows it fucked him up. Maybe even fucked him up more than watching his brother get taken in by Lucifer.

Maybe.

"I need specifics," Sam says, his voice low and almost eerily calm as he heads immediately for his bedroom, for the hidden latch behind a piece of art he'd found at an import store (and that had given him a weird laugh at the time -- where exactly are they importing from here?), revealing the arsenal of weaponry carefully arranged behind it. "Tell me exactly what he said to you. Every word you can remember. Did he mention anyone else?"

He follows, eyebrows rising only slightly when the collection comes into view. It's not like he's actually surprised, given what he knows about Sam. It's actually comforting.

And Sam isn't trying to kill him again. It's probably a little perverse that if he's going to let the Obsidian cat out of its bag, it should be at a time when there's something this big to distract from it.

"He asked me if I knew where demons came from. He said they were made. In Hell. He pretty much implied that's what's happening to Dean. What I was seeing." He said I was right there with him. But no, he's not going to say that. That's for him. And it's not that he's bothered by it.

Because he actually isn't. He is what he is. He knows at least half of what he is is pretty fucking awful.

He lifts a hand to his mouth, chews absently on a jagged fingernail as his gaze moves over blades.

"He told me I had one chance to kill him and end everything. Tried to get me to pick up the knife. What... Y'know, what I think he'd been trying to get me to do all along." His gaze slides over to Sam's again. "I didn't. So he laughed at me and bolted." He pauses, briefly turned inward. "I don't know why he didn't kill me."

Edited 2013-04-02 23:20 (UTC)

Ruby's knife is near the bottom, carefully placed as to appear perfectly ordinary. Not that Sam's under any delusions that any demon worth his inky fucking eyes wouldn't know just exactly what it is. But at least some extremely lucky intruder who happened to find his way back here might not have any idea.

Sam grabs it first, along with a pistol and a container of rock salt buck shots.

"He wanted you to find me," Sam says, lips drawn in a thin line as he gives Mike another quick glance. "Or Castiel. He's counting on you to spill the beans."

After tucking one more gun under his arm, Sam shuts the door back in place, locks it with a quick flick of his wrist. "Demons have a flair for the dramatic," he explains. There's absolute no humor in his tone, nothing but maybe a bite of sarcasm. "It's one of their more appealing attributes."

"Yeah, I'm getting that." His attention is flickering everywhere, from the knife in Sam's hand to the guns to the ammo. Wheels turning. Yes, he could have a specific role to play. He can believe that.

He's not sure that he does, though. Not entirely.

"Is he? Is he possessed? Or was that actually him talking?"

The question catches for a second, makes Sam hesitate as he heads back for the main room, stopping at the hall closet where he keeps a few extra sacks of rock salt.

"I'd say you know Dean as well as I do by now," he says, though he know it isn't true. Dean may not be exactly the same as Sam remembers, he may be broken in a way Sam never could've imagined, but he's still Dean. He's still Sam's brother. And there are still some things Sam knows no one else could ever touch, not even angels and mysterious, tropical islands. "Did it feel like him?"

Honestly, Sam doesn't want to entertain the possibility that it could just be Dean, that he's finally shattered into something unrecognizable. If it's demon possession, Sam knows what to do.

If it isn't...

Well.

He knows what to do there, too. But it's even more complicated.

He considers. But he doesn't have to, not for more than a minute or so. Because while he doesn't imagine that he knows Dean the way a brother could, the way blood knows blood... He knows Dean. Has seen him stripped, naked in more ways than one, helpless and weak with all his walls beaten down. Terror laid bare. A kind of intimacy that's too deep and too raw to really even be sexual.

And it's not just the eyes, the way the face had twisted. The cadence of the voice, the rhythm of the words. It's so much more than that, and now he understands that whatever the demon had been trying to make him believe, it was lying, and he had known it the instant it opened Dean's mouth to speak.

"It wasn't him." He pauses, teeth briefly closing on the inside of his cheek. "He's in there. He's fighting. But he's getting tired."

Having Mike's confirmation doesn't come as any sort of relief. Sam figures he should at least be grateful that Mike had enough sense to come to him, but right now he has other matters to focus on.

He grabs one bag and shoves it into Mike's arms before closing the door, mind whirling.

"There's no telling how long it's been in him," Sam says, his frown deepening for a moment as he meets Mike's eyes. "The tattoo on his chest. It's still there, right? You didn't... tear his skin there?"

The thought of Mike tying his brother down and torturing him, whether it be by Dean's choice or not, still doesn't sit well with him. Not at all. But he has to ask right now, he has to know. Mike's seen more Dean that Sam has, he knows more. As much as it pains Sam to admit, Mike is valuable.

He takes the bag without a word, then - freezes. At the question. Though he knows what the tattoo is, what it's for, and it makes sense to ask it.

Bizarrely, he's a little offended.

"I don't touch ink. Common courtesy."

There's a flicker in Mike's eye then, like he's actually insulted by the question. Not that Sam particularly cares. He knows there's an etiquette, remembers Mike trying to explain it all to him the first time he'd stepped into the place. Maybe Sam should have more respect for it all, but right now he just doesn't care. He needs answers.

"Did you see anything else on him?" Sam asks. "Any fresh tattoos. Or brandings. Anything at all out of the ordinary."

"Anything else? No." Aside from the many scars, the obvious marks of a body that's been through all manner of hell aside from Hell itself. But nothing new. Nothing strange.

But was there? Should he have noticed something?

His eyes narrow slightly. "Why?"

"You've seen more of him than I have lately," Sam says with a shrug, resolutely not thinking about how true that is in more than one sense. "Figured you might've noticed something that could lead us to him. Anything could help right now."

Sam gives Mike another look-over then, scrutinizing. Some demons work alone, others together. It's impossible right now to know if the one in Dean is solitary or if there's a wider a web here. And there's still a significant part of Sam that isn't sure whether or not to trust Mike.

Without another thought, Sam flicks a slit in the bag of salt in Mike's arms, freeing just enough granules to start a small river of white over Mike's hands.

He isn't expecting it, and he almost flinches, on a gut level wondering if Sam might be about to take a chunk out of him after all. But then it's just... the bag, salt, and he lifts one hand, rolling the grains between his fingers, puzzled.

"The hell was that about?"