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annabethbigbangThe light over the city is silver, like a metallic sheet of liquid sky. Far, far below, a young man throws his arms out wide, and the city starts to burn.
Dean stands, looking up at the red-brick house in front of him. Sam comes up beside him after a minute, their weapons duffel slung over his broad shoulder. He squints against the sun, close enough to Dean that if Dean shifts on his feet just a little, his own shoulder brushes up against Sam's. It's a comforting reassurance, knowing that Sam is always only inches away from him at any given moment.
"What do you think?" Sam asks, reaching up to shade his eyes with his hand.
"It doesn't look haunted," Dean replies, shrugging. "But of course, that doesn't mean anything."
"The girl in town said this was the place," says Sam. "She said that there's funny lights going on and off in the windows all night, even when the owners were out of town."
"Yeah, but did anyone actually check with the owners to see if they'd noticed anything weird?" Dean scrounges around in his pocket until he finds the EMF, pulls it out and switches it on. Nothing.
"No," Sam answers slowly. "No, they didn't. And there's been no deaths or anything, just the strange lights."
"Could be will 'o the wisps," Dean remarks, "but not inside a house, really."
"She was pretty specific about it being a haunting." Sam drops the duffel to the ground next to the Impala. "But there's no real evidence. So: either we can pick the lock and give it a once-over with the EMF, or we can park the Impala across the street and keep an eye on it tonight."
"Or both," Dean muses, flipping the EMF back off and stuffing it back into the depths of his pocket. "Or we should blow this joint until there's a reason to think we're needed."
"Dean," Sam says. "You know we can't just ignore a lead. Not even if you're pissed with Castiel."
"But like you said, no deaths that we know of. Not even the news article mentioned any strange or bizarre deaths or mutilations. And, for fuck's sake, why can't it be a timer? If the--"
"You're right. Back to town to question more people?"
"What are we doing here, again, Sam?" Dean asks absentmindedly.
"You know perfectly well, Dean," Sam replies, shortness to his tone, and it's true; Dean remembers just as well as Sam that a few nights ago, he woke up in a cold sweat with a dream on his lips.
And the midnight research he did into the town he dreamt about, before he even mentioned it to Sam. The strange news reports, the brief mention of local folklore with the headline, 'No Longer Dormant in Downtown?'
Dean picks at his teeth with a fingernail, still staring at the innocuous looking red-brick. The sun is slanting brightly down over the roof, and there's no-one around in the spacious green yard, no cars parked nearby, nothing but quiet and stillness.
Stillness.
"Fuck," Dean swears. "It's too fucking quiet."
"Yeah," Sam says, still shading his eyes. "But to answer your question anyway, Dean, we're here because you had a dream and in it Castiel told you there was a seal in this town."
"Don't be mocking the dreams, Sam," Dean smirks. "I seem to recall that--"
"Shut up, dumb-ass," Sam says. "At least I didn't have 'I dreamed of an angel' every night playing on a loop in my brain."
"No, you had the Shining, which is worse. Sammy, though, do you hear anything? Birds? Dogs barking? Even people talking down the street?"
"No, I don't," Sam lowers his hand, faces Dean. "No insects either. Just--" and he stops, cocking his head, listening -- "just rustling. Something's muting all ambient noise."
"Right. Maybe this isn't such a fuck-off after all." Dean drops to his knees and fishes his sawed-off out of the duffel. "C'mon, Sam, let's take a peek inside."
Sam snags his own sawed-off, shoulders the duffel again, and takes point with the shotgun. Dean slips up behind him, and suddenly, the air around them bursts with bird song, and Sam lowers the shotgun.
"Okay, that's weird," he mumbles. "Dean?"
Dean's on his knees with the lock-pick slipping in and out of the tumblers of the front-door lock, and after a second it clicks open and slowly swings inward. Sam looks at the door, then at Dean, who's just getting to his feet.
And then the birds stop singing again.
"Did you push the door open?" Sam whispers, raising the shotgun again and pointing it into inky darkness.
"No," Dean hisses back. "Dude, it's the middle of the day, any spirit should be either dormant or too weak to manifest."
"Just what did Castiel send us here to deal with?" Sam queries, swinging the shotgun from side to side. "And I can't see a damn thing, Dean. Listen, this is fucked up. The sun is like a furnace outside, it should be brighter in here."
And then Dean hears it: chanting, coming from somewhere in the darkness, distant enough that it might be emanating from the second story. He tosses a look over at Sam, and his brother quirks an eyebrow; he must hear it too.
"Okay, spirits usually don't chant," Dean mutters. "And this house was definitely deserted a minute ago, according to the EMF."
Sam grimaces, entering the creeping darkness slowly, and when Dean looks back over his shoulder, he realises that it is indeed doing just that. There's now an oval spread of darkness over the front stoop, and he punches Sam in the shoulder, getting his brother's attention. Sam turns around, stares at the way the sun is bleeding away, and meets Dean's eyes. That 'oh, fuck,' expression on his face is probably mirrored on Dean's own.
"I think we need to do more research," Sam suggests, walking back towards the stairs. Figures that Sam would pussy out and want to bury his nose in more dusty books and newspapers. And then, almost as soon as Sam gets back to the stairs, the chanting fades away, the sun brightly floods back into the darkened area, and all around them the house is suddenly illuminated. Dean takes in the bare floors, the expansive room empty of all furniture, the gleam like it's been scrubbed recently, and cocks an eyebrow back at Sam.
"Sammy," he says. "I think we fucked up."
"That girl in town," Sam starts. "She said people lived here. She said she'd been inside once to sell magazine subscriptions and that their house was cluttered and grimy around the edges. This isn't -- did they move?"
"Or something else. A demon?"
"If it were a demon, Dean, it would have shown itself by now. It would have attacked us."
"Not necessarily. C'mon, dude, let's go back to the Impala and just, I don't know, keep an eye on the place for awhile."
"You don't wanna go inside?"
"Sam, I think we missed the boat on this one. Whatever was happening here, it's over for now. There's no point in exploring -- not if the house is empty."
"Dean--"
"I'm not being a pussy, Sam, I'm being practical."
"I'm sure," Sam says dryly. "Look, I think we should go back into town and--"
The air shudders around them, goes hot and still and heavy, and then Dean whirls, ready for anything, only to be faced with his own personal angel.
"Did you stop it?" Castiel asks urgently. "Did you do as I said?"
"Dude, fuck, you gotta give us more'n--" but Dean stops at the look on Castiel's face.
"You don't have time, Dean," the angel says with just as much force and urgency. "If you don't stop it, terrible things are going to come to pass."
"Look," Sam says reasonably, "we just got here. We saw -- well, nothing, actually, but we heard chanting and then nothing. You said this was a haunting."
"No," Castiel growls. "I said it was a seal."
"Well, maybe if you'd been more specific," Dean snorts. "I mean, go here, stop this, no other details? And you wonder why it's taking too long?"
"It's too late," Castiel says in a low voice. "It's already started. The seal -- it's breaking."
"How?" Sam glances up at the house, front door still open, all of the windows shining in the late-afternoon heat. "What did you expect us to do?"
"I expected you to stop it." And Castiel looks at them gravely. "There might still be time. Hurry." And then Dean opens his eyes, immediately seeks out Sam in the sunshine, and his brother is standing, looking slightly dazed with his forehead creased.
"Dean, do you think that your angel could be more helpful, maybe?"
"I don't get it." Dean turns back to the house. "I mean, sure, we're here, we followed the lead, but -- there was no-one in that house, Sam. So who was chanting? And to what purpose?"
"Samhain?" Sam claps Dean on the shoulder, palm lingering for long breathless seconds as he thinks. When he steps back, his attention is focused entirely on the problem, and not on Dean at all. "Samhain was a demon, and those witches raised him. So this has gotta be something similar. But, I don't understand it either."
"Witches that can apparate?" Dean says sarcastically. "Dude, it must have been a demon."
"But, dude, why not come after us? Seems like every demon in the world knows who we are by now."
"Maybe instead of arguing, we should go inside and sweep the second floor, looking for EMF or sulphur?"
"You know..." Sam trails off, looking confused. "I mean, we could be wrong. How would we know from down here if there was someone up there? Maybe some kids?"
"Chanting in another language?" Dean doesn't mean to scoff, but sometimes Sam's too easy, ready to believe the mundane just so he doesn't have to face the fantastical.
"Dean, kids fuck around with shit like that all the time. They might not even know what they're doing."
"Sammy, ten minutes ago, there were no sounds anywhere. So if there were kids--"
"Demonic possession."
"--then they -- wait, what?"
"The house." Sam squints again, looking up. "Rustling. Scratching. A malevolent spirit. Demonic possession."
"Then someone would have died." Dean follows Sam's gaze, and that's when he sees it, flies crawling all over an upper window. Flies that weren't there a minute ago.
"Maybe they did," Sam says quietly. "Maybe the owners didn't go out of town."
"Oh, we are so fucked," Dean groans. "You think the owners are up there?"
"Dean... we gotta go check it out."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Explains a lot -- the door, the lights, the lack of normal noises."
"And the chanting."
"Yeah, that too." Dean lifts his sawed-off, then looks at it for a second. "Crap, this is gonna be no good. You got the holy water flasks?"
"That's not gonna help either, Dean."
"No. No way."
"Dean. I don't think a regular exorcism is gonna work."
"Well, that's what we're gonna try first. C'mon, Sam, let's get our asses in gear. Castiel's right about one thing: we're just wasting time, standing around with our junk in our hands."
"Now you're all gung-ho to go inside?" Sam sounds incredulous, but Dean's not about to dignify that with an answer.
He enters the room again, clicks on his flashlight, shines it around. The room's dark again, and as they walk forward, Sam with his hands crossed, sawed-off in one and flashlight in the other, Dean comes to a sudden stop, staring down at the floor, at a crucifix. It looks like it's been melted into the floor, upside down, and Dean exchanges a look with Sam.
"Dean," Sam whispers. "That wasn't there before."
"I know." He walks forward again, stepping around it, but when he looks back, it's gone.
They don't find anything else weird until they make it up the stairs, and then Sam and Dean both stop and look at each other, arrested by the sight in front of them.
Every stick of furniture that might have been in the house is pressed up against each other, forming an impenetrable sea of desks and chairs and sofas, and behind that morass is an open door with what looks like orange light glowing in the room.
"Okay, yeah, this is-- fuck." Sam breaks off, coughs a little and covers his nose. He trains his flashlight on the furniture again, and towards the middle of the mess is what looks like the master bed, and in it is a couple, hair stringy and skin mottled and hanging off their skulls, coated in flies and clearly rotting.
"Yeah, dude, those strange lights? Someone's fucking around up here, and it ain't kids."
"We gotta get to that room, Dean. Whatever's going on in this house, that's clearly the epicentre."
"Thank you, college boy. Well, you wanna start climbing first, or should I?" But Dean doesn't wait for an answer, just commences scrambling over broken bits of furniture and swears colourfully when he catches his leg in the arm of a chair. Yanking it out, he flips his gaze back to Sam, who's climbing on top of a desk.
And then the door slams shut and the air turns frigid, and underneath Dean the sofa he's traversing begins to shake violently.
"Okay, Dean," Sam shouts over the sudden noise of all of the furniture grinding up against each other, "this is not good. Not good at all."
"Start in with the Latin, dude," Dean yells back, and it takes all of his concentration to keep his balance on the sofa. Obediently Sam starts reciting the exorcism, and everything goes quiet, but not quiet like in relief, but quiet like any second something's going to explode. Behind the closed door, the light flares so that it shines in brilliant rays from every crack.
"What the fuck is going on?" Dean shouts, resuming crawling over the furniture.
"We're being hunted, I think," Sam says, and he pulls up level with Dean, his hair wind-tossed despite being inside a building.
"So what's in that room that's so--" and then they both hear it again, Sam's nose wrinkling as he takes in the sound.
Chanting, coming from within the room. And then a blast of supercharged light, so bright Dean's eyes close of their own accord and he can still see it through the arm he throws in front of his face. He moves sideways blindly, trying to protect Sam with his body, and waits.
The frigid air seems to crystallise, and once again everything falls silent. The light fades and Dean cautiously peers around his forearm. The door's gone, completely incinerated by whatever that was, not even ash left behind, and the room is lit only by sunlight. The hairs on Dean's body were standing on end before, and they aren't any more.
Dean looks back at Sam, and Sam shrugs one shoulder. "I don't know, dude. I think we're too late."
"Fuck," Dean says eloquently, and that pretty much covers it.
Sam sits back on the table he's perched on, studies the room. Dean does too. It's empty, but there's some kind of residue on the floor.
"Well, you wanna or should I?" Dean asks, and starts moving towards it again.
"Ten bucks it's sulphur or some other kind of spell residue," Sam says archly, and Dean snorts.
"Yeah, that's not even a worthy bet, little brother," he says, and finally reaches the doorway. It's right about then that the sky darkens outside, dramatically like it would during a summer thunderstorm, and blankets everything in gray scummy light.
He jumps down from the buffet table he was kneeling on and crouches down on the floor, doesn't look up when Sam's weight makes the floor groan angrily as he does the same. The EMF lights up, but Dean knew that it would. He sticks his finger in the yellowish substance, scowls.
"Demon all right."
"So what just happened?" Sam stands, crosses over to the window. When Dean looks over, he notices that the sill is covered with the bodies of what looks like hundreds of flies.
"If I had to hazard a guess? The seal just broke and we fucked up royally." Dean gets to his feet and goes to stand next to Sam. Looking down out of the window, the wind is kicking up, making little tornadoes of leaves in the yard.
"Oh man," Sam mutters. And then, just like that, his eyes roll back and he lists backwards, boneless, and Dean barely manages to keep him from striking his head on the hardwood. He checks Sam's pulse, but it's strong and regular, and his colour is good, but he's totally unconscious, eyelids fluttering.
Like maybe he's having a seizure, but there's no other sign, his body is lax on the floor, head a dead weight against Dean's forearm, and he's not overly warm. Dean rubs a finger over Sam's forehead and comes away with sweat collected on the pad of it, but nothing else. Sam's not feverish, he's just -- passed out.
And then Sam groans, rolls into a foetal position on his side, clutching at his head, moaning and thrashing. And that looks like a vision, but Sam hasn't had one of those in so long--
Dean tries to untangle his brother, untwist him out of the pretzel he's made himself into, but Sam just keeps resisting, keening in the back of his throat and grabbing at his skull.
And as suddenly as it all started, it's over. Sam flops onto his back, quiet and still, and opens his eyes.
And the room around them is suddenly nothing but flames from every angle. Dean's breath actually chokes him for a second as he drags Sam to his feet, pocketing the EMF and the flashlight and shoving his shotgun into his waistband. But there's no-where to go, not even to the window, and Dean's pretty damn sure they are fucking screwed as hell, when Sam closes one eye, grabs his temple, and exhales noisily.
And right in front of the door, some of the flames go out, like they never existed, scorch marks on the floor the only indication that seconds ago it was a writhing mass of fire.
Dean doesn't stop to ask Sam about it; there'll be time for that later. He just grabs Sam's forearm and pulls him forward, and then they're up on top of the furniture, heat chasing them with every step and movement forward, and Dean's pretty sure that this place is gonna burn to the ground. He only hopes they're not still inside when it happens.
When they reach the staircase again, Dean takes one look backward just long enough to see the rotted flesh of the owners start to bubble and stink, and then he and Sam are going crashing down the stairs as fast as they can, boots ringing out loud on the wooden steps.
By the time they make it out the front door, the whole second floor is engulfed, and rapidly spreading down towards the lower level. They sprint for the Impala, and even though Sam's still clearly reeling from whatever happened to him up there, he doesn't complain as he wrenches the door open and throws himself inside.
Dean doesn't even wait for the door to fully close before backing out of the driveway in a screech of the tires, which hurts his heart to do to his baby, but what're you gonna do? They make their getaway before the cops can come and investigate, and Dean doesn't ask Sam about the malevolent spirit and whether it was still inside the house.
But he can't stop himself from wondering if it was another yellow-eyed demon.
And then Sam speaks, hoarsely from the smoke, flipping his hair out of his eyes. "Dean, something's wrong."
"Yeah, man, I know. It was kinda hard not to notice."
"That's not what I mean." Sam looks out the window, apparently making eye contact with his reflection.
"Sammy, look, it'll be okay. Whatever we did, we'll just take care of it. if it's a demon, we'll exorcise it."
"Won't matter, Dean. The seal's broken."
"She's gotta break sixty-six, Sam, we oughta be able to find at least one she can't break."
"Out of six hundred? Face it, Dean, we're fucked."
"Not gonna worry about that now, Sammy, sorry." Dean turns the car onto the road towards their motel. "What the hell happened up there?"
"Try out there," Sam says, gloom in his voice. Outside the car, the wind is hurtling objects around, leaves and grass and other detritus, and it's still dark as pitch, like it's the middle of the night.
"Well, dude, I'm sure Castiel will be around to gloat," Dean grumbles. "This sucks out loud, man."
He pulls the car into the parking lot of the motel, throws open the car door and gets to his feet, fishing the key card out of his pocket. Next to him, Sam's just climbing out too, the duffel a forlorn lump at his feet.
By the time they get into the room, there's a torrential rain falling, and Dean drops onto his bed with a hiss of breath, boots hanging over the edge. Sam doesn't lie down though, because after a minute or two his face fills Dean's field of vision.
"Dean, you don't get it. I did that."
"Sammy, look, you had some kinda seizure or something, we'll--"
"No, Dean, I've..." Sam shoves against Dean's shoulder hard, forces him over on the bed, and plasters himself to the bed, up on one elbow and staring down at Dean. "I've been noticing things. Like, I used to be able to control the dreams. Once I worked with, uh, Ruby, I got some influence over them, sometimes I could stop myself from having them. Not any more. Not even with all of the mastery I have over the powers now."
Dean rolls onto his side, props himself up on one elbow too and stares at Sam hard. Sam's actually flushing a little in the lamplight.
"Go on," he says carefully. Sam cringes a little but continues.
"And when I exorcise demons, it's a lot easier than it used to be, even without practising, like the abilities are getting stronger."
"So, maybe they are, you just keep on not--"
"Dean, listen to me. Whatever happened in that room? My head was killing me, like someone was taking a pick-axe to my skull repeatedly. And then I opened my eyes, and everything was orange, and when I blinked to clear them, everything was on fire. I did that, Dean."
That gets Dean's complete attention, and he sits straight up, so fast his head whirls a little. Sam doesn't look surprised as much as resigned.
"What the fuck, Sammy," is all Dean can manage to get out through a throat squeezed tight by anxiety.
"You got me," Sam replies, though. "I don't understand it any better than you do."
And then Castiel is standing in the middle of the room, looking gloomy and unhappy as per usual.
"It's too late," he intones. "The seal has been broken, and this is just the beginning of the end, Dean."
"And Sam? What's happening to him?" Dean demands, sliding off the bed and standing nose to nose with the angel. "What the fuck is going on?"
Castiel looks mournfully over at Sam, then back to Dean. "I do not know." He spreads his hands, palms upward. "Might just be incidental."
From the bed, Sam mumbles, "I'll believe that if you will," and Dean can't say as he really blames Sam much at all.
"Sam's right. There's no way this was an accident. What happened, Castiel? That house--"
"You have bigger things to worry about," Castiel says cryptically, and then he's gone, Dean standing and arguing with nothing.
"Dude, I wish he wouldn't do that," Dean grumbles, and then adds, "let's just get some sleep. Worry about whatever it is in the morning."
"Dean, that's--"
"Without knowing what's going on, Sam, there's nothing we can do. And we won't know what's going on until we let it start to happen."
And happen it does.
Dean falls asleep in Sam's bed because Sam refuses to get out of his own, and his last thought before he drifts under is that he's starving, like he hasn't eaten enough in the last week.
When Dean wakes up, the sun is shining again, the downpour a thing of memory, and Sam's tapping away on his laptop. And as soon as Dean groans and stretches, Sam spears him with his eyes.
"You're not hungry, are you, Dean?" he asks casually, or at least, it seems that way until Dean reads the glitter in those eyes and realises that he's even hungrier now than he was last night.
"How'd you know?" he asks, knuckling the sleep out of his eyes. Sammy looks a little strange in the sunlight, like his outline is blurred. His brother draws in a deep breath.
"Famine," he says, turns the computer screen towards Dean. Dean scratches himself, ambles over close enough to look at the webpage, and then his eyes widen.
"Famine," he repeats. "Not the Famine."
"Yes, Dean, that Famine."
"Fuck," Dean says succinctly. Sam nods a little ruefully.
"It's a demon, as near as I can tell. But uh, yeah, one of the harbingers of the apocalypse."
"Well, we knew the apocalypse was coming. So... y'know, Sammy, I bet Lilith tries to raise all of 'em. So all we gotta do is keep her from raising the rest of them."
"I don't think we're gonna like it much if she summons Death," Sam mutters. "I don't fancy dying again, and I really don't want you to go that route again either. Not sure Castiel could help this time."
"So, what? We got to that house just in time to watch -- er, listen -- to Famine get summoned? And now we're screwed?"
"We're screwed unless we find the demon and exorcise it, Dean."
"And how the fuck are we gonna do that?"
Sam flinches a little, cheeks glowing red. "I uh. I can track it, maybe."
"Not with those freaky-ass mind powers," Dean says with finality. "We'll track it same as we always do, by following omens."
"Dean, we don't have time." Sam throws his arms out wide. "You have any idea how this works? It starts with a little hunger, but in a matter of hours people start dropping from starvation. We can't risk it. We don't have time. We already wasted--"
"Well, I'm sorry!" Dean explodes, trying not to think about how it's all his fault again. "I didn't know, Sam, dammit."
"I'm not blaming you, Dean, I'm just trying to point out--"
"Point taken, Sam. But we are not going to use your powers, because you know what--"
"We don't have time, Dean. And you can't stop me."
Dean tucks his fingers under, holds up his fist. "Watch me."
"Dean, dude, if you knock me unconscious, how will you deal with the demon?"
Dean kind of hates the fact that Sam is right. Kind of hates it a lot. "Sure, fine. Whatever."
And Sam closes his eyes.
They make it to the three-story clapboard house just in time to see the young woman who works as a cleaning lady come bursting out the front door, shrieking at the top of her lungs and being followed by a man in a suit, walking purposefully behind her.
And then he halts, eyes trained on Sam and Dean. Dean forces himself to stand his ground, even though this guy is oozing evil like it's a viscous black oil under his feet. And his eyes -- yeah, they're black all right, and Dean is less than pleased that he has to admit Sam was right, because if they had gotten here any later that young woman would probably be dead.
Which is right about when Dean doubles over in pain, suddenly so hungry and dizzy he can't see straight, arm wrapped around his belly trying to ease some of the intense ache.
Sam's not brought in half by the pain, though; Sam's staring at the stranger, mouth moving silently, and Dean hopes like crazy that Sam's reciting the exorcism ritual, sticking to the plan, and that's about when Dean feels his whole body go weightless, flying backward, and hears, distantly, the thunderous quality of Sam's voice as he yells, "Dean!"
Dean can barely hear or feel anything any more, stomach cramping wildly, brain fuzzing in and out, eyes slitted open and fixed on the black obsidian eyes of the demon, and Dean wonders, briefly, if he's going to die, right now, of the pain lancing through him.
And then Sam puts his palm out, fingers spread, and Dean wants to scream, to land a right hook on Sam's jaw before he can do what he's so clearly planning to do, but it's right about there that he loses consciousness.
He comes to with Sam kneeling next to him, hands running over his face, and the first thing he notices is that the agony of hunger is gone, replaced by the dull distant throb that means he hasn't eaten breakfast, but not that he's about to die any second.
"You stupid fucker," he says weakly to Sam as his brother helps him back to his feet. "I thought we discussed--"
"Dean, I'm not going to let you die," Sam says, cutting off his tirade. "It's done, anyway. The demon is gone."
"From your brain," Dean can't resist adding snidely. Sam doesn't react, not even a roll of his eyes or the swagger of his lips when he thinks Dean's not looking.
"C'mon, let's get breakfast," he says instead. "I could eat."
"Yeah," Dean agrees, "I could, too."
When Dean was seven years old, Sammy was still just a toddler, and John had once, just once when they were that young, gone out and given Dean an order.
"Feed Sammy dinner and don't leave him alone," John had said, and Dean had nodded solemnly, perfectly prepared to follow those instructions to the letter.
Sam didn't want the canned soup Dad had left in the microwave to be reheated, and Dean was too little to use the stove, he knew that. So he took his own dinner, the hamburger that John had cooked for him before he left, and cut it up into tiny pieces, feeding each one to Sam on the tines of Sammy's favourite fork, the one with the dinosaur on the end.
Sammy went to sleep listening to Dean read one of his schoolbooks, because they didn't have any other books; Dad had gotten rid of those a long time ago when they'd moved in a hurry.
But there was something strange about his little brother, and as Dean watched Sammy sleep, his little chest going up and down with his breath, he wondered why his baby brother always looked so worried with his eyes closed. Dean, though, went to bed hungry, curled up around Sam with his arms wrapped up in Sam's, and even though at one point in the middle of the night he thought he vaguely heard the door, he didn't wake up.
But Dad didn't come back the next day, and he'd made Dean swear that he wouldn't go outside, that he would feed Sammy, that he would keep Sammy safe.
Dean didn't eat for three days that week, because every evening he scrounged something out of the refrigerator for Sammy, even if it was just dry bread, until there was nothing left but juice and milk, and Dean was smart, knew that he should drink plenty of water, all the while he gave the juice and milk to Sam.
Daddy never said where he went or why he was gone so long, but he brought them both fast food when he got back, and Dean swore then and there that was the best food he'd ever tasted.
