Supernatural - Time Travelling pt. 2
Apr. 30th, 2010 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rahmiDean could really live without having his most shameful moments spread all over this dorm room, up to and including that time he accidentally hit on a transvestite, the time he might have kissed a transmogrified frog, and the time he cried because the Impala ate his favorite tape.
In defence of the last one, he'd been eight at the time.
"You were not," the guy says with a little smirk. "You can lie all you want, dude, but I was there. You were seventeen. And you cried like a little girl."
Totally eight. No matter what this dude tries to sell you, okay?
Dean rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. "So, you're the amazing timetravelling Sam," he mumbles. "I'm the Easter Bunny, Dad's Santa Claus, and none of this sounds crazy. At all."
The guy spreads his arms and looks sheepish. "Yeah, about that. I can't timetravel," he says helpfully. Dean wants to just shoot him in the face and be done with it. So, he spends three hours regaling him with tales from their childhood and almost convincing him that this dude might just be Sam from the future and now all of a sudden--
"You can't timetravel," Dean says flatly.
The guy shakes his head. "No. Humans can't do it. And I can't tell you what can."
"But you still need my help," Dean says, even flatter than before.
"Uh." Not-Sam bites his lip and then sort of shrugs. "I'm pretty sure I don't have the stuff lying around for summoning an--for finding what sent me back. And I could use the help."
"I'm still not sure I shouldn't be calling the loony bin, dude." But he's lowered the gun and he's sitting against the door instead of really blocking the exit, and he figures that might sort of give his position on this away pretty clear. "Tell me what the fuck happened, how you ended up here, and I might think about helping you."
"You know," the guy says on a sigh. "You were seriously dicky when you were younger."
"Right back at you."
Dean crosses his arms and waits. It'd probably look a lot more intimidating if he were standing and the dude that's maybe his kid brother all grown up wasn't the size of godzilla, but he doesn't let that bother him. He's intimidating, dammit. He's scared a grown man into peeing himself before.
Though that might have been because he'd shot the man's jumped up cat familiar and threatened to off him too if he tried "dabbling" in witchcraft again. Jesus.
"I can't tell you," the guy finally says. He flicks his hair back with the back of one hand and tries out the puppy dog eyes again. Dean's immune. He'd raised Sam. He's not going to fall for some thirty year old dude's puppy face, even if it looks alarmingly like his Sam's.
"Tough," Dean snaps back. "Cause I ain't helpin' if you don't."
"Not even if your Sam's in trouble too?" the guy wants to know. He backs the fuck up real fast when Dean whips his gun back up, trained squarely on the guy's chest. "I'm not threatening myself, Dean," he says, both hands in the air, even though a little smile is hovering around his mouth. "But what went after me isn't going to just let him go.
"If he can't take me out, he'll just take the younger me out. Easier that way." The guy's fingers tapped against his leg, the first nervous sign Dean's seen out of him this entire time. "I have a lot more, um, protections than he does."
"So tell me. What. Happened," Dean bites out. He needs to know. He needs to know where the fuck his baby brother is and what the hell is going on. If this guy isn't responsible for it, then he's pointing his gun at the wrong person and he needs a new target. Now.
The guy hesitates for another long moment, then says, "I got jumped on my way to the store." He tucks his hands back in his pockets and shrugs a little. "I wasn't expecting it, but I'm usually pretty careful, now. I heard..." he stops, twists his mouth, "We're gonna have to call him something other than his name, man. I can't tell you who he is."
Dean wants to protest that. If he doesn't know who the guy is, how the hell is he supposed to stop him before he can put all this shit into motion?
"The future's fixed, Dean." The looks down, a quirky, werid lookin' grin across his face. Dean's never seen that expression on Sam before. It makes another shiver of unease crawl down his spine.
The guy might know the ins and outs of Dean and Sam's childhood, but that didn't mean he wasn't a monster or, hell, maybe even the thing that killed Mom, watching them creepily this entire time.
"All roads lead to the same destination," the guy continues. "Trying to change it just means that it has to take a slightly different path to get to the same place. Trust me. It's not worth it."
Dean chews that over for a few seconds. If he could go back in time, he'd have saved Mom. Warned her and Dad about what was coming for them and damn the consequences. This guy? Is sounding further and further away from his brother.
But he can use him. He can pump him for information, if he has to. Find out a million and one things that could happen, things he could prevent.
"We'll call him Billy," Dean says.
The guy gives him a faint smile. "I was thinking that Jacob would probably be a good name for him," he says.
Dean's not the walking dictionary his little brother is, but he makes a mental note to look up the name Jacob in revelence to anything supernatural. Might give him a clue, an edge.
"I heard Jacob calling me. And then I woke up here."
"Jacob a hunter?" Dean asks, frowning. Why else would he know the guy's name and not want to share it? Dude was a hunter. Although, why the fuck would a hunter be goin' after Sam? Last he knew, the Winchesters were respected, dammit, heroes to anyone who mattered.
"No," not-Sam says. "No, he's not a hunter."
"Great. Yeah, whatever. Where the hell is mybrother in all of this?"
The guy twitches. "I'm... pretty sure he's with you. Just. A way younger you." While Dean tries to wrap that around his freakin' mind, the guy gives him another little smile (seriously, does he ever stop doing those uncomfortable things?), and says, "You don't remember?"
No, Dean obviously does not remember shit that hasn't happened before. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I... spent a week with you when you were nine, ten?" The guy scratches the back of his head. "I don't really remember how old. I was pissed off at the time and Dad'd taken off before we swapped places. You really don't remember, Dean?"
He's pretty damn sure he'd remember having a grown up version of his brother hanging around and--"Where the fuck was six year old Sam then?"
"With my Dean," the guy says. This time the smile is genuine, dimples appearing and yeah, alright, Dean knows that smile. He knows this guy, even if the one he knows is about thirteen years younger. The smile is what does it in. The puppy eyes, the motions, they're... okay, they're his little brother, all over, except there's something kind of sardonic to him at the same time.
That big ol' doofus smile is still the same, the way the guy ducks his head like he's trying to hide it.
"Six year old Sam is with your Dean," Dean says, sort of flatly.
The guy nods. "Thirty four years this week," he says, sounding smug. "He's been complaining that he's over the hill for the last three years."
So he's still alive at thirty-four. And apparantly talking to Sam again. Score, he guesses. "And my Sam is with... ten year old me?"
"Yeah," the guy says again. "I'm sort of... pissy, actually. I'm glad you don't remember that."
"And you're here with me." That one obviously doesn't require an answer. "And you're Sam. From the future. But you cant timetravel."
"That sounds about right," Sam says. He smiles. "So, want to help me get back?"
"How?" Dean asks.
Sam rocks back on his heels, his hands still in his pockets, and shrugs a little. "I don't really know. I know that I'm the one who figures it out, though. Nineteen year old me is useless," he slides his eyes over to Dean, bright and happy, and says slyly, "I'm sort of a bitch. And I don't remember anything from my Dean except that I puked on him.
"So I'm pretty sure it's up to me. If I can figure out what I'm supposed to do."
"Awesome," Deans says. "You're buying me something to eat and I'm crashing first."
Sam gives him a sheepish look. "Money changes in 2010, dude. Anything I've got on me is not gonna work here." He pulls a fistful of something green out of his pocket and for a second, Dean doesn't see anything wrong with it.
Then he realizes that he doesn't recognize the face on that bill and Sam's stuffing them back in his pocket with an, "Oops. Forget you saw that, okay? New president."
Dean sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. This was so not fair. "I got no money on me. I was sort of busy gasing up and coming out to figure out what the hell was wrong with your head."
Sam's face brightens. "Pool?" he asks.
"Pool," Dean agrees with a sigh. He's got five or so on him and his credit card might be good for another couple hundred, if it hasn't been canceled yet. He's not holding his breath on that. They need to hustle pool or something, and he finds it curious and sort of gratifying that Sam seems just as willing to do it too.
Nice not to be stared at like he's out killin' babies or something because he has to make a living.
Dean finds himself curious and kind of pissed at this new, old dude Sam. It's not that he's that different or anything, contrary to what Dean'd thought to start with. Sure, he's a little scoffed around the edges, and there's some kind of grown up sorrow in his face now, instead of just the kind of teenage angst that'd been drivin' Dean up the wall two years ago.
It's still Sam, though. Just. Older. Sadder, maybe. But he smiles a lot more than the Sam he's used to, his eyes crinkling in well worn crow's feet, and Dean? He sort of can't wait to meet his Sam like this, happy and content.
Except for the whole thing about someone trying to kill him, that is.
They come out of the bar about a hundred and fifty dollars heftier, with Sam turning the money over in his ginormous hands, half wonderingly. "It's heavy," Sam says when Dean looks at him like he's grown another head. "They'll be making it out of micropaper in a," he must get a good look at Dean's face, which he's pretty sure is set into his default what the fuck, man expression, because he trails off sheepishly and shakes his head.
"Nevermind."
Dean opens his mouth to say something. Grill him about shit, maybe, while his guard's a little down from makin' an idiot about himself, but then.
"Samuel," a voice says. He spins around.
Sam's looking at some guy in a trench coat. His mouth's twisted a little, like he's confused but he doesn't want to show it. "Which one are you?" he finally asks.
The guy looks down at himself and smoothes his hands down the front of the beige trench he's got one. "I would think it were obvious, Sam," he says. There's something off about the way he's holding himself.
In three years, Dean'll know what this is. Possession, plain and simple, but right now, all he knows is that there's something not quiet right with this dude. Drunk, maybe, except that he knows Sam and Sam's relaxing back from the tense stance Dean hadn't even realized he'd fallen into.
"You're gonna have to forgive me for not being real happy to see you," Sam says, but he doesn't really sound like he means it.
Dean inserts himself into the conversation smoothly. "Who the hell are you?" Or, you know, as smoothly as he really wants to be. Honest to God, he's getting sick of this shit.
The man blinks at him a few times. "That's none of your concern, Dean," he says. His eyes are brown and wide and his eyebrows are plucked way high. Actually, Dean's sort of just stuck on the fact that the guy apparantly plucks his eyebrows, way high or not.
"I trust you can take care of yourself?" the guy says to Sam. His hands hang kind of limp, not like he doesn't know what to do with them, but like he's forgotten they're attached to his body.
The longer Dean stands there looking at the guy, the more he's sure that there's something seriously wrong with this picture.
"You can't just..." Sam waves his hands around and looks at the guy expectantly. "I don't know how to fix this and I know I'm going to let something slip sooner or later. Can you just put me back?"
The guy shrugs like a puppet or something. It's. Dean has to cut his eyes away from him, because it seriously looks like someone's got a nice fresh human puppet that's being jerked around on strings. It's gross, and he's just about to ask Sam what the hell the guy is when the man says,
"I could. However, I am far more concerned with your nineteen year old self." The guy makes eye contact with Sam and Dean twitches. Seriously. What the hell is wrong with this dude? "You can take care of yourself. Dean is more than capable of keeping your most vulnerable self safe. And even if he weren't, your 'friend' would rather die than allow harm to befall you."
Sam's nodding. "Dad, though..."
"Hey!" Dean snaps. "Dad's a damned good hunter."
"Of course," puppet dude agrees. "He is, however, rather inexperienced with the being that will be coming after Samuel and it would be best if I could keep the distortion contained."
"Time is fluid," Sam says like that makes sense.
The guy nods. "All roads lead to the same destination. You must not die then so that you may live now."
His... brother laughs. "Yeah, the big pictures."
"Of course." He turns to Dean, inclines his head in another one of those weird, unsettling jerky movements, says, "It has been a pleasure seeing you so young, Dean," and when Dean turns to give Sam a seriously, what the fuck? expression, there's a sound of...
Dean would say wings, if he were hard pressed to talk about it. He attributes it to the murder that's been hanging around in the alley with them, but when he turns back around to look, the guy's gone.
"That's, uh, another one of those things you shouldn't ask about," Sam says a few seconds after Dean's done pulling the gun from one pocket and the holy water from the other. He coughs. "And neither of those would have worked on him anyway. He's a friend, Dean. Don't worry about him."
"He a friend of your 'Jacob' too?" Dean asks flatly. He wants to look around for residue, but the EMF meter's been in his back pocket this entire time and it hasn't so much as burbled at him.
Sam shrugs a little. "Not really. They haven't gotten along for a long time, I think." He shakes his head and offers Dean a rueful grin.
"And he's just gonna leave you here. When he knows how to smack you back into your time."
"No," Sam denies. "I know how to slap me back into my time. I think. Eventually, anway. He's going to go make sure I don't get my teenage self killed doing something stupid while we figure it out."
So they have money now. Enough for dinner, anyway, and Dean squints in the damn sunlight and blows out a breath. "You been missin' greasy diner food?" he asks after a few seconds.
Sam gives a snort of laughter, his mouth pulling down in an effort to hide it. "Not really, man."
"Tough," Dean says cheerfully. "You're gonna eat some grease and maybe some goddamn pie while you're at it, and then you're really going to explain what the fuck you think I can do to help, if puppet man back there hasn't got a clue about where the fuck his buddy is."
"I like pie," Sam informs him. "I make a killer mud pie."
Mississippi mud pie, not that knock off shit that comes in a box, but the real stuff, homemade in some of the holes in the wall across the South? That shit's Dean's absolute goddamn favorite ever. Sam curls a small smile at him, because of course the bitch knows it.
He doesn't ask if Sam learned to make pie for him. That's a little girlie. Besides, Sam tells him anyway.
"You bitched for six weeks until I got the recipe right," he says.
Sam might be older, Dean thinks, staring at him with his eyebrows raised, but he's still a little girl at heart. "You make me pie?" he asks, just to be sure.
"Yeah."
The bitch of it is, Sam doesn't even look embarrassed about it. He shrugs off Dean's incredulous look with a smile, another one of those goddamn big things, with the eye crinkles and the dimples. "Sure, why not. You're useless in the kitchen."
"Dude, please stop making us sound like a gay couple doing the Suzie homemaker thing." Dean walks backwards, scuking on his teeth, while Sam barks out a laugh he tries to hide by turning his head to the side. "I do find a hot chick to settle down with, right?"
"Sorry, Dean. Can't tell you that."
He sounds entirely smug about it too, the bastard.
Dean's not even frickin' sure that Sam's not just teasing him, poking fun because he can. He can't see his Sam becoming this one, ready to smile instead of scream about how life wasn't fair. He just. He can't.
Sam nudges his shoulder. Dean flinches back from it, because he might have been used to someone having his side (his back) two years ago, but it's not the same body bumping into his, even if it's still, well, Sam. Grown up, smiling, maybe a lying bastard of a Sam.
"I think I know what I can do," Sam says. "But I'm gonna need some stuff."
"Some stuff" turns out to be, well, some random shit. Dean knows they've always tended towards ghetto with their spellwork, especially when it was left entirely up to Dean to find the ingrediants, but he thinks just randomly walking by and picking what they need off blooming trees is kind of off, even for them.
"Dude," Dean says when Sam stops to reach up to the tree with his giant gorilla arms. "What the hell?"
"Acacia," Sam says absently. He tucks the yellow flowers into his jacket pocket and the leaves get dropped in with them. Dean can't see what's so special about the damn tree, but Sam looks really pleased to have found it.
He's gonna have to trust that this old, crinkly, smiley version of Sammy knows what the fuck he's doing.
"Acacia's for protection, Dean," Sam says when Dean just keeps right on starin' at him anyway. "And for... something else. Don't worry about it. I need mugwort. There should be some around here somewhere."
Somewhere, in fact, turns out to be about ten feet away from the damn tree, hiding in the bushes. Sam makes a triumphant noise when he finds it and Dean bounces on his heels, wondering what the fuck the odds are that two of the things Sam needs are growin' frickin' wild in the middle of a city.
"Sage, sandalwood, and nutmeg. We can get all of those in the store," Sam says. He wipes his hands on his ass and the mugwort disappears into the same pocket as the acacia leaves.
Dean trails after him and tries not to feel completely and utterly useless.
"And you couldn't have done this shit by yourself?" he asks crankily. "Without freaking my ass out or putting someone in trouble?"
"No," Sam says absently. "I'm gonna need you as an anchor. I'll explain later."
Dean's really starting to feel like a dog on a leash. He might not be used to being an equal in a hunt, not when Dad just had to point and Dean would jump that direction without a thought (as Sam liked to point out, that blind faith thing actin' up again). But that didn't mean he was used to trailing along afterwards like some civilian.
And he's really not used to having to follow Sam around like Sam's the one who knows what he's doin'. Sam was so damn reluctant to hunt all the time that giving him a gun or being anywhere but firmly in front of him at all times was asking for trouble.
"If you don't stop treatin' me like a dog, dude, I'm gonna..."
He can't think up a suitable threat. He's, what, not gonna help? Shyeah, right. He wants his little brother back, even if he hasn't actually seen Sam face to face in two years and change.
Sam's dormmates might think he's some sort of creepy, threatening stalker, though. He really hopes Sam, either of them, doesn't know that he likes to drop by and stare sort of scarily at Sam every few months.
"Sorry," Sam says. He sidesteps a kid that's comin' barrelling at his legs like it's goin' out of style, a harried looking blonde woman walking along behind him.
"Sorry," she says. "He's a handful."
"I know how that is," Sam says with a laugh. "I think I've apologized more in the past few years for things that aren't my fault than I've ever apologized before. Comes with the territory."
Dean blinks and comes to a stop behind Sam. The kid who'd been running pauses next to him, turning to look over his shoulder at his mother before he looks up at Dean and frowns. "Giant," he whispers over at him, covertly pointing at Sam.
He misses whatever the woman says to his brother in the startled bark of laughter he can't keep under wraps. "Yeah he is," Dean tells the kid.
"You have children?" the woman's asking Sam when he looks back up. She's tucking her hair self-consciously behind her ears when Dean glances at her, looking down, all but screamin' you're hot and I'm single.
He catches a look to Sam's left hand and that's weird, because it hadn't even occured to Dean that Sam might find someone to marry. He'd tried that route last year, girl he loved and her incredulous, disbelieving expression when he told her what was out there.
Not that he thought Sam, king of repressing his "freak of a family" would share that with a woman.
Sam's laughing now. "I just know a lot of kids," he says evasively. If he notices her eyes on his hand, he doesn't give it away. Dean's not even real sure Sam knows the woman's flirting, but, then again, it's not like it could go anywhere.
If he thought, "I hunt supernatural shit," for a living was a relationship killer, than "I come from the future. Mind waiting ten years?" probably didn't go down real well either.
The kid scuffs one toe against the cement. "Mommy," he whines loudly.
"Just a minute, Nicky," she says. She tucks her hair back behind her eyes again and tries to make Sam ask her from sheer force of will. Sam's not payin' attention anymore, though, already looking through her politely.
It's a move Dean recognizes from Dad. He's never seen Sam pull it before.
"You got a kid?" Dean asks when the woman stops looking hopeful and starts looking between Sam and Dean like she's got their number. It's a pretty quick retreat after that.
Dean makes a face at her back. Sam doesn't even look surprised.
"Can't tell you," he says, long legs eating up ground like he's expecting Dean to trot along after him.
"That's a yes, then." Dean says.
He tries to imagine Sam with a kid. He looks at Sam's left hand again, but no ring has magically appeared on it. He guesses Sam oculd have slipped it off to keep Dean from realizing he's married in the future, but there's no tanline either.
"Not married," he says casually.
A corner of Sam's mouth pulls up. "You're not gonna get anything out of me about this, dude."
He makes a left at the next intersection and they run almost smack dab into the kind of building Dean would want to check for witches before he stumbled in. Sam pulls the door open with a jangle and a chime.
The shop's small and cramped and dim, the shelves taller than even Sam is and stuffed together like someone wants to get as much shit as possible into the tiny space. It's dark because the one window is covered with a heavy curtain. Dean's pretty sure it's black velvet, but he doesn't want to wander over their and finger the drapes for no reason. Sam'd think he was a girl or somethin'.
The smell of incense is gonna give Dean a throbbing headache in about three minutes, though. Jesus Christ.
Sam looks pretty much right at home.
The teenage girl sitting on the counter, kickin' her legs and snapping loudly on her gum, offers them a disinterested, "May the Goddess bless you," when she notices them. She's got an honest to God cape on, the hood pulled up around her dark, loose hair, but she's also wearing sparkly lipgloss and enough glitter to choke a small chupacabra.
Sam muffles a smirk by looking at the ground. Dean doesn't even bother stopping the snort.
"Yeah," the girl agrees, "But it's the store greetin', what're you gonna do about it?" She snaps her gum again and goes back to reading some teeny bopper magazine she's got spread over her lap. "And don't go knockin' the uniform. If you need anything, let me know."
"I think I remember where everything is," Sam says while Dean's, well, busy gaping at the thought of anyone deciding the store uniform involves a cape.
"Regular?" the girl asks. She looks up again with a squint. "Yeah, I recognize you. Angelica root and stuff, right? How did that Oil of Abramelin turn out?"
For a second, Sam looks about as blank as blank can be. Dean nudges him and doesn't even get a response, like lights are on and nobody's home.
He shakes himself a second later and grins at the girl, suddenly genuine and warm. "It was fine, Stephanie. Thanks for asking."
The girl grins up at him and blows a bubble. "It's supposed to be Moonlight Lovelygrace when I'm in here," she says, pointing to the embroidery on her cape. She gives Dean a conspirators look when he almost chokes himself trying not to burst into laughter.
"I'm not calling you that," Sam says. He's wandered two or three rows away, out of sight, and Dean's pretty sure that it's because he doesn't want that girl figuring out he looks too old to be the kid that...
Wait a fuckin' minute.
Stephanie shrugs. "Bosslady thinks it's a very spiritual name. You come back a few more times and you might find yourself Raven Starlight or something."
Dean stalks over to where Sam has disappeared behind the shelves when the girl goes right back to reading her magazine. "You come here?" he hisses, nudging Sam's belly with his elbow. "You came here often enough to be recognized?"
Sam looks over from the bottle of something he's turning over in his hands to lift an eyebrow at Dean. "Just because I wanted out doesn't mean I was stupid enough not to protect myself, Dean." He sets the bottle back on the shelf. "Besides, it's not like you didn't break in a few times and set up runes and salt lines under the furniture."
Dean doesn't bother trying to deny it. Sam gives him a quick half smile and reaches above his head to pull a bundle of sage from a hanging basket. "One down," he says, "Two more to go. I don't really remember where everything is. It's been a while since I was in here."
There's a sardonic tilt to his eyebrows, inviting Dean to share the joke. Yeah, he just bets it's been a while since Sam was in here.
The sandalwood is actually on top of the shelf two lanes over. Sam stands there under it looking like he wants to climb the damn shelf for so long that Dean finally gives up and just goes to find a stool.
"We don't have any," the girl says. She's moved up from gum and on to some kind of sucker, sucking more obnoxiously on it than Dean found the snapping gum to be. And Dean freakin' hates snapping gum. "Just climb the shelf. That's what we do. They're bolted in, it'll be fine."
Dean would be more willing to take her advice if she looked up from whatever article it was she was readin'. He spends another few moments just staring at the top of her hooded head before he spins away with a grunt.
Sam's still standing there looking mournfully up at the shelf the sandalwood's hidin' on. "I can't climb it," he says. He motions down at his body without looking up and Dean sort of has to admit that, yeah, getting a ginormous dude up on an itty bitty shelf, bolted or not, wasn't the smartest idea ever.
"I'm not goin' up it, dude."
"Baby," Sam taunts lightly. He looks up the shelf one more time while Dean's too busy staring at his grown up brother callin' him a wuss, and sighs again. "Fine, I'll do it."
Dean helpfully stands at the end of the shelf and braces it with his shoulder while Sam carefully scales it. It sort of does this alarming wobbly thing, bolted to the floor and ceiling or not, but it holds. Dean likes to think it's because he's Superman.
"You're not Superman," Sam says from the top of the shelf. He grabs whatever it is he was looking for from the tip top, gives a little huh noise, and says, "I think I see the nutmeg up here."
"Nutmeg's four shelves over," Stephanie says. "But it'll be cheaper just to buy that at the store. It's what we do. Mark ups are killer."
"Got it," Sam says. Dean keeps right on bracing his shelf, feeling curiously left out. He's had a couple quick and dirty lessons on his mojo herbs in the last few years, mainly because he doesn't have a Sam around anymore to make sure he doesn't fuck himself over trying to use the hyssop on a hag.
"What're you makin'?" Stephanie asks once Sam has managed to get down without killing himself.
Dean expects Sam to stutter out a lie, looking guilty as hell while he does it. Instead, Sam cradles the jar and the sage in the crook of one elbow and grins at her. "Potion and ritual to contact the future and hopefully pull my younger self back to where he's supposed to be."
Stephanie bobs her head and leans over to punch the price into the cash register without taking her ass off the counter. "Cool," she says. "Don't get high first. That'd be the pits, man."
"Yeah," Sam says. He shoots a twitching grin over Dean's way, mouth stretched wide to try to conceal it, and says, "I'll keep that in mind."
"Kay," Stephanie says. "You get the chips or the dust?"
"Chips."
She nods her head again. "Fifteen-thirty," she says, crunching through her sucker. "You want a bag?"
"No," Sam says while Dean fishes money out of his wallet with a scowl. Least Sam could do was pay for it himself, so Dean didn't look like his sugar daddy.
"Hey," Stephanie says when Sam's tucked his weird shit into his pockets and Dean hs gotten his change. "If you see anything weird comin' for us from the future, come back and lemme know, okay?"
"Sure thing," Sam says.
Dean ignores the irony of Sam already knowing what sort of shit is gonna go down. Stephanie ducks behind her hood and goes back to swinging her legs. Dean's sort of got to respect the kind of chick who could work in a place like this day in and day out without bein' high.
"You know weird people, dude," Dean says when they're back out in the sunlight. He takes a deep breath to clear out whatever the hell the smell in there had been. His sinuses hurt.
"I barely even remember her," Sam says. "I think she moves or something. Her mom runs the shop."
"Wouldn't be surprised if they were shut down by the health inspectors," Dean says.
Sam shrugs. "Let's get back to my dorm. I can set most of this stuff up and be ready to go in a couple of hours. It'll be better if we wait until dark anyway."
Dean doesn't ask why. He really, really wants to though.
"Do you think this'll work?" Sam's voice asks softly.
Dean brings his eyebrows together and stills. He's out in the hallway, back from fetching a bowl full of water like the good dog he is, so he knows it's not him Sam's talking to.
The noise that comes out of the room almost makes Dean drop the goddamn bowl. It's like static, turned up high and loud, screeching through Dean's skull, and he makes a choked noise of protest before he can think about it.
Instantly, the noise cuts off.
"Dean?" Sam asks. He pokes his head out the door and stares at Dean for a second, then reaches down to grab the bowl from his hands (seriously, when did Dean slide down to his knees?). Sam sets it on the floor inside the dorm room and comes back to get an arm around Dean's shoulders.
Dean shrugs him off with a scowl. "I'm fine," he hisses. "What the fuck was that?"
"Sorry." Sam watches him for a few seconds, making sure he's steady, before he turns around and picks up the bowl by the door. "That's, uh, one of those things you shouldn't worry about it."
Dean looks around the room when he comes in, but it's seriously just a square. There's one window that doesn't open wide enough for anyone to use it to sneak in or out, a bed, a desk, and, well, that's about it.
There's absolutely nobody that Sam could have been talkin' to.
"Help me out here, dude," Dean says slowly. He wants to massage away the headache that's setting in behind his eyeballs, poudning and constricting like it's goin' out of style. "Which one should I not be worryin' about, Sam? The fact that you're talkin' to an empty room or the fact that it answered?"
"Both," Sam says back steadily. He sets the bowl of water Dean fetched (woof he thinks mutinously) on the dresser, next to the cermic bowl he's got the sage steaming in.
"What if I don't want to?" Dean asks.
Sam gives him a flat look. "I know how much I told you, Dean," Sam says. "And it wasn't much. So you're just gonna have to trust me when I say that you need to drop it."
"Trust doesn't work real well when you've run out on us once already, Sam." Dean crosses his arms and watches as Sam drops a rosary into the water.
The fact that he snaps on a pair of latex gloves after he does it is kinda worrying. Dean's eyebrows draw together, but Sam's the one who knows what the fuck he's doing and if he needs to wear gloves while he messes around with what amounts to glorified baking, then Dean's willing to believe him.
On that at least.
"I know you don't know what I'm talking about," Sam says, sprinkling the yellow acacia flowers into the water. "But you don't get to hold that over my head, Dean. I'm not the only one in this family that's ever let someone down."
Dean has never, fuckin' never let Sam down. He's the one who drove the kid's lame ass to the bus stop when he ditched them. He's the one who beat the shit out of the dude who thought Sammy was easy prey. He was the one who took the brunt of Dad's anger whenever Sam did somethin' stupid.
He may have been too slow for some victims. He may have taken too damn long to figure out a hunt. But he'd never fuckin' let Sam down when his brother needed him.
"I think you're confusing us with someone else," Dean grinds out. He bares his teeth at Sam in a really freakin' insincere grin when Dean looks over at him, his gloves stained yellow on the fingertips. "Someone who ate the Jolly Green Giant and maybe Godzilla for good measure."
Sam snorts. "You're not gonna win this argument," he says. He grabs the smoking sage from the other bowl and waves it above the holy water so that ashes fall in.
The Latin that starts spilling from Sam's mouth is way out of Dean's depth. There's no scrap of paper he's reading off of either, he's just winging this shit, and the sandalwood chips trickle through his gloved fingers into the fire.
The huge puff of smoke is kind of disconcerting.
Dean glances up at the smoke detector, glances over at Sam, and climbs on the damn bed to pull the batteries out. Heaven freakin' forbid that Sam actually pays attention to the little things when he's got something on his mind. No, that's for Dean to do.
He tosses the batteries on the ground just as Sam does something that makes the entire damn room plunge into darkness.
"Sam?" Dean asks softly.
"I think it's supposed to do that," Sam's voice comes from the dark. He sounds a little puzzled though, so Dean is not gonna put his eggs in that basket, thanks.
"And the alternative would be?"
"That it's not supposed to do that," Sam says dryly. "Hold on. I'm gonna try something."
Trying something apparantly means that Sam manages to get the lights back on. Without moving. And it's not really the lights, because what lights the room up is almost blindingly white and then it sort of friggin' tears right down the goddamn middle to expose shimmering green.
"Got it," Sam says at his side. He sounds smug. Dean's too busy staring at what the fuck's just opened up in the room, stomach down in his toes.
"What the fuck is that?" Dean demands.
The shimmering, green edged freakin' tear in space just sort of hovers there. Expectantly. Dean throws a frantic glance Sam's way, but he's just lookin' at it like it's the holy grail and the answer to every damn prayer ever thought up, all rolled up into one puke shaded anomaly.
Dean clicks the safety off his gun without a second thought. It's pointed over at Sam, even though every goddamn instinct he has is screaming at him. This. Sam's not capable of this kind of shit, older or not, so that means this isn't Sam and Dean's been seriously dooped and--
"It's okay," the supernatural thing says. It looks at him from under floppy hair. "It's alright, Dean."
The fuck it's alright. He might'vev just helped open up a hole for something seriously nasty to crawl through and here this guy pretending to be his brother (oh, yeah, they've got his number, goddamn them) is telling him everything's peachy keen.
Fuck this shit.
Except.
The poison green shimmer dies down, until what he's lookin' at seems to be a... doorway. Not a doorway, ha, nothing simple like that, but it's almost a doorway. Dean doesn't even know what the shit he's babbling to himself, but there you have it.
It's like there's an archway in the middle of the goddamn dorm room, opening up into a room filled with sunshine and brightly colored toys.
Dean's gun lowers, almost against his will.
There's a kid. Kind of dirty blond, with grubby hands and his tie-dyed shirt on the wrong way, the tag sticking up under his chin. Dean looks away, because the kid reminds him of his Sam; not the obnoxious teenage brat , but the cute, fuzzy, puppy-eyed one.
Dammit. He misses Sammy.
Thinking about Sammy reminds him that there's a lovely fucker of a monster playing at being his brother from the future and Jesus, how stupid could he get? Dean half turns again, away from the kid, to raise his gun at the Not-Sam.
The guy's not paying attention to him. He looks like he's just found out the Backdown Dudes or whatever have magically gotten together again, just for him, and. Dean's never seen a monster pull off human that well, not in twenty-four years of hunting.
Maybe he wasn't wrong? Maybe he was. Dean keeps the gun and one eye on Sam (maybe-Sam, at any rate) and darts a glance back over towards the grubby tie-dye kid.
The kid looks up and smiles. "Sammy!" he calls. He drops the toy he's got in his hand and bolts towards them.
"Stop!" Sam barks out.
He sounds so much like Dad that Dean catches himself freezing into place. The kid does the same, doesn't move a muscle from where he's frozen, and Sam sighs. "Gotta be careful, Ry," he says. "What have we told you about stuff like this?"
The kid's nose scrunches up. "Weird shit is for grown ups," he says obediantly. "Cas 'n Ruby if no Sammy 'n Dean."
Wait a motherfuckin' minute. Sam and Dean? Dean feels his heart give a stupid lurch at the thought, hell, the conformation, that he'll be getting his brother back sometime. That Sam, eventually, starts answering the damn phone when he calls. He has a place in his brother's life, and, Jesus Christ, he just has something in his eyes, alright?
"Good boy," Sam says. Dean looks over at him in time to see the smile he's trying to hide behind his hand and thinks, huh. So this new grown up Sam smiles more like how he used to. "Where's Dean?" Sam asks.
"Baby Sammy got dirty," Ryan says. He pops two fingers into his mouth and waves the fingers of the other hand at Dean. Dean lifts his hand back automatically and the kid gives him a grin from around his fingers. "You gotta little Dean, too. How come?"
Dean would like to point out that he's not little. It's just that apparantly his friggin' cheater of a brother ate the Jolly Green Giant or something and is now the size of a small sky scraper. And there went his vague hope of maybe being a giant of giants in the future. What kind of world gave Sam more than four inches on him?
Bastards.
His gun dips lower. Obviously, there's some seriously weird shit going on here. But there's also a four year old brat dimpling at him, a streak of dirt over his nose, and Sam. This weird, open doorway space thingie looks like it's somewhere Sam belongs.
There're curtains up in the windows. Curtains. Dean hopes this is Sam's house or something and not his, because he better not have those filmy, girlie things up in his damn windows.
"I'll tell you later," Sam says to the kid. He runs a hand through his hair. "I need you to get Dean, buddy."
"Kay," the kid says. He turns around, takes a deep breath, and screams, "Daddy! Daddy, Sammy wants you!"
Dean's too busy reeling to really pay much attention to anything after that. Daddy? He's a daddy? He has a son and he's not dead or alone, and he has Sam still.
How the hell did things like that happen? How did he end up with the goddamn perfect endgame?
Sam's lookin' at him when he looks up, but Dean does not want to make eye contact right now. He's still not real sure about this new, improved Sam, now with ninety percent less glaring and screeching. Sure, he can tell it's his brother, but it's not his brother.
And now he knows that he has a family in the future, however far away it is from now. Jesus. How is he supposed to cope with that?
"Little Dean is crying," the kid observes from somewhere out of sight. "Wanna hug, Little Dean?"
"Dean doesn't cry, Ry," Sam says. He sounds friggin' gentle, the bastard, like he's trying not to break him. "Remember?"
"I've got somethin' in my eye, kiddo," he tells Ryan.
The kid gives him a big, brown solemn eyed gaze and nods his head. Most serious rugrat he's seen since Sam finally stopped pickin' his nose and hiding the boogers in his hair. "Dean says only girls, kids, and sissy named Sammy are 'llowed to cry," Ryan says.
Dean snorts and swallows hard. "Got that right."
That nets him a shy little smile, just the barest curve of the kid's mouth. He's the most serious kid Dean's seen in a while, at least since Sammy hit puberty and went from watchful eyes to screaming in about two point five seconds.
The kid doesn't really look like him, or Sam for that matter, but Dean would have sworn he acts more like a younger Sam. Goes to show what he knows. Apparantly, he finds a girl willing to settle for him quicker than Sam does.
"Sammy?" the kid asks while they stand around waiting. For his older self. His older self that has a kid.
Dean shoves his gun in his jacket pocket belatedly. Guns around kids were sort of a no-no unless there was something big, scary, and out to eat them in the immediate vicinity. Dean's willing to admit that early access to guns might have fucked him up a little.
He's hopin' that he doesn't do the same to his rugrat.
"Yeah?"
"Come home?" Ryan asks plaintively. One of his dirty thumbs migrates towards his mouth and his puppy eyes are almost as lethal as his little brother's used to be, before his giant genes began to make themselves known.
"I'm working on it, baby boy," Sam murmurs.
A mutinous look crosses the boy's face. "Work more fast," he demands. "I miss Sammy all the time." Ryan pauses for a few seconds, then adds, "Please," in the same grudging tone Sammy had used whenever Dean'd barked out, "What do you say?"
"This would go a lot faster if Dean would get his ass in here," Sam says.
They wait a few more seconds. The kid shoves a hotwheel car into his mouth and contemplatively turns another one over in his hands. Impala, Dean automatically catalogs. Wrong year, but the right color, and Ryan scowls down at it for a moment before attempting to fit it in his mouth with the other one.
Dean cuts his eyes over to Sam, who doesn't seem overly concerned with this. "You're going to choke," Sam informs Ryan dryly. "And Dean'll be pissed if you swallow his car."
Ryan spits both cars out. "Dean said," he says slowly, "Is my funral."
"You remember what we talked about, Ry?" Sam says, rubbing his forehead.
Dean leans forward at the same time that the kid nods twice and drops the cars on the ground. "Sometimes," Ryan says seriously, "Daddy's full of poo."
"This is one of those times, kiddo."
"Kay," Ryan murmurs.
Dean resents being told that he's full of shit sometimes. Really resents it. He's a fount of knowledge, alright? He's smart and he's a damn fine hunter and he did let Sammy eat little micro cars when he was little because he insisted he wnated to.
Dad wasn't real happy with Sammy's diapers for a while there.
So, ah, fair enough.
They wait for a little longer. Dean notices that the edges of the bubble world thing are starting to look a little ragged. It's starting to look more like a hole punched in cloth than it is a doorway. He's pretty sure that's not a good indication.
Sam probably comes to that same conclusion. Probably. "Dean, swear to God, man," Sam says to himself. His entire face scrunches up tight.
From the weird, wavery time bubble space comes a startled shout of, "Sam! God fucking dammit, you little bitch!"
Sam opens his eyes. "Your own fault, jerk," he shouts back. "I know you heard Ryan calling."
Seeing himself is really fuckin' weird. He thought Sammy all filled out and taller than Godzilla was a kick in the pants, but that's almost got nothin' on how it feels to stand there and stare at an older version of him.
The hair's shorter and the face has more lines on it, though Dean's gotta say he's lookin' pretty damn good for pushin' his mid-thirties. Hell, he hadn't ever imagined he'd make it past twenty-five. He can live with a few wrinkles.
It's the barfed on shirt he's having problems with. That, and the kid he's got under one arm, the little legs and ass wriggling and kicking to get free.
"You send pictures into my head again, Sam, and I'll kick your ass," barfed on Dean says. He leans over and drops his load on the bed. "I was cleaning up your weakass stomach's mess. Cut me some slack."
The person he's dropped on the bed wiggles over onto his stomach and looks at them with a very familiar face. Dean feels it like a sucker punch to the gut. God. Sam had been tiny and messy and Dean would've killed anyone who messed with him, even back then.
Seeing how small he is now, in relation to how big barfed on Dean is, and, fuck, how big jolly giant Sam is, makes Dean want to bury the kid in bubble wrap. Possibly get him one of those germ bubble things, one made out of indestructible plastic or something.
He's so goddamn tiny.
"Hi, Dean," Sammy says. He smiles upside down, gaptoothed and crooked on the bottom, and squirms around on the bed like a puppy.
Dean has to swallow hard a few times. "Hey, Sammy," he finally manages to choke out.
"Sammy," Sam says, and isn't that just a mindfuck, seeing teeny tiny Sammy and the giant Sam sort of juxtaposed together. "You ready to go home?"
"Uh-huh," Sammy says. He slides off the bed and turns to give the other Dean a pat on the leg. "Bye Dean," he says, then, "Bye Ryan."
Ryan waves a negligent hand from where he's decided his toy is seriously awesome and he has to play with it right now. "Bye Baby. Send Sammy back, 'kay?"
"Sam?" the other Dean asks. He steps forward to put a restraining hand on Sammy's shoulder. "You need me to do anything special before I send him on through?"
"No," Sam says. He rubs at his forehead like it hurts before he says lowly, "We're protected. It's why we got flung all over the damn place instead of just biting it."
That seems to make sense to the Dean on that side of the weird time bending mojo, even if it makes fuck all sense to him. He tilts his head slightly to the side and then lets go of Sammy. "Remind me to tell Castiel he's full of shit, huh?" he says.
He swats Sammy on the ass. "Go on home, kiddo."
What? Go on home? What the hell, what the hell...!
Sammy stumbles through the green space-y bubble time compression thing. Like. One second he's tripping foreward from the momentum of his wrinkled self thwapping him, and the next he's got one foot in Sam's dorm room and the other is pulling out of the room with the toys.
Talk about a mindfuck.
Dean catches him when he gets both feet on this side of Sam's time thing. For a second, his heart's in his throat, 'cause he remembers just how this kid smells and just how he smiles. Sammy raises his arms, expecting to be picked up, and Dean does it before he can even think about it.
His kid brother feels just like he remembers him, bird light and sharp boney knees in his sides. He even smells the same. "Hi, Dean," Sammy says again, into his throat.
"Hi Sammy," Dean says, very manfully, he thinks. He can't help it if the smell in the room is starting to get to him or something. He clears his throat a few times for good measure, trying to hawk up whatever's in there that's makin' him choke up.
The other Dean is smirking at him. Dean doesn't even care, man, except that that's himself looking at him like he wants to tease, and that's just not right.
"When're you gettin' back?" the other Dean asks. Dean's makin' himself confused over here, having to think of someone else as him too, and he's more than ready to just have his Sam back, pissy moodiness and all.
Though he's sort of willing to admit, privately at least, that he can't wait for the day he has a messy kid named Ryan and his little brother hangin' around again.
"As soon as I get the other me," Sam says. "Why? Miss me?"
"Yeah, right." The other Dean leans over to nudge the big black dog that's just wandered in. It looks over at him and Sam, gives a friendly kind of tail wag, and saunters out again. Dean feels his eyebrows shoot up.
In his experience, most dogs went batshit insane at the presence of supernatural phenomenon. He really wants to know what kind of weird shit older Winchesters have goin' on that the dog thinks it's nothin' worth getting worked up about.
His other self doesn't seem to care either way. "Your shoulder pair are driving me insane," he says, straightening up. "Seriously. Bury them in the backyard and damn the consequences bonkers."
"Shoulder pair?' Sam asks.
"Yeah, you know." He motions to one shoulder and says, "Angel," then motions to the other and says, "Demon. Your shoulder pair."
Sam laughs. Full on tilts his head back and gives into a serious case of the giggles. "She's gonna kick your ass, man," he says after he's got his laughter under control.
"She can try." The other Dean rubs a hand across his face, suddenly serious, and says, "Come home soon, okay? Ryan misses you. Little bastard keeps asking me to bring you back."
"You're going to give him a complex if you--"
"Don't stop calling him a bastard, I know."
They share a second of the sort of silent communication that Dean's used to having with his Sam. Or the Sam he had before the puberty monster ate his Sam and spat out one that wanted nothing more than to leave his ass in the dust.
Bitch of it is, even though Dean knows his expressions from the inside and there's pretty much nothing Sam can hide from him, he has no idea what this little moment of staring is about. None. He bounces Sammy in his arms and looks away from them, missing his Sam so much it aches.
"If..." Sam looks over at Dean for a second, not the other Dean, but him, and sighs. He motions towards his shoulder. "If that one shows up again, let him know that I think I've got it all sorted out. And, uh, if I'm not back soon, let him know that maybe I don't, okay?"
Other Dean snorts. "That's inspiring, Sam," he says. "My faith in you runneth over."
"Jerk," Sam says softly.
"Bitch."
Dean bounces Sammy's foot in one hand, needing to do something. Jesus. Rub it right in his face, thanks. We all get it. He doesn't have a kid or a brother that wants anything to do with him, he gets it. He doesn't need the future rubbing this sort of shit in.
He expected better of himself.
"You look like you're swallowing a lemon, dude," his voice observes. "Or listening to some of Sam's emo shit."
It takes Dean a few more seconds than it should to realize Dean's talking to him. Mind fuck. "I'm fine," he says tightly. Sammy's chubby fingers worm their way into his collar and latch on, his feet drumming out an obnoxious rhythym on Dean's spine.
He hand't really missed that part of holding Sam.
"Sure you are," the other Dean observes. Then he shrugs, leans over to grab Ryan by the hips, and flips the kid over to squint down at him. "Are you eating something you found on the floor?" he asks suspiciously.
Even from outside the green bubble time thing, Dean can see that the kid's mouth is that telltale, I just ate a crayon blue. Seriously. Ryan must take more after Sam than his own father, because Dean never ate random shit from the ground.
That was all Sam. In fact, Sammy's wriggling around now, trying to look at what Ryan has, and his mobile little face is pulling into a pout Dean can see out of the corner of his eye. Never was that big on sharing. Or being quiet when other people had things he thought he wanted.
The big Sam, on the other hand, makes a choking noise. "On that note, man, I'm gonna leave you to it. Enjoy."
"I am going to get you for this," Dean says direly.
Sam laughs as the bubble thing shimmers closed. Not closed, Dean sees a second later, just. Black. It shimmers black, like it has something it's hiding from tall of them, no more room, no more kid, no more older Dean.
He feels a curious sense of loss and stamps it down resolutely. No. He's not going there. Well, he is going there, eventually, because Sam'd said the future can't be changed and, Jesus, he never thought he'd hear that and relax, but there you go.
According to what he's just seen, everything turns out better than okay. Things are flat out awesome.
"I want cookies," Sammy says into his throat.
In defence of the last one, he'd been eight at the time.
"You were not," the guy says with a little smirk. "You can lie all you want, dude, but I was there. You were seventeen. And you cried like a little girl."
Totally eight. No matter what this dude tries to sell you, okay?
Dean rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. "So, you're the amazing timetravelling Sam," he mumbles. "I'm the Easter Bunny, Dad's Santa Claus, and none of this sounds crazy. At all."
The guy spreads his arms and looks sheepish. "Yeah, about that. I can't timetravel," he says helpfully. Dean wants to just shoot him in the face and be done with it. So, he spends three hours regaling him with tales from their childhood and almost convincing him that this dude might just be Sam from the future and now all of a sudden--
"You can't timetravel," Dean says flatly.
The guy shakes his head. "No. Humans can't do it. And I can't tell you what can."
"But you still need my help," Dean says, even flatter than before.
"Uh." Not-Sam bites his lip and then sort of shrugs. "I'm pretty sure I don't have the stuff lying around for summoning an--for finding what sent me back. And I could use the help."
"I'm still not sure I shouldn't be calling the loony bin, dude." But he's lowered the gun and he's sitting against the door instead of really blocking the exit, and he figures that might sort of give his position on this away pretty clear. "Tell me what the fuck happened, how you ended up here, and I might think about helping you."
"You know," the guy says on a sigh. "You were seriously dicky when you were younger."
"Right back at you."
Dean crosses his arms and waits. It'd probably look a lot more intimidating if he were standing and the dude that's maybe his kid brother all grown up wasn't the size of godzilla, but he doesn't let that bother him. He's intimidating, dammit. He's scared a grown man into peeing himself before.
Though that might have been because he'd shot the man's jumped up cat familiar and threatened to off him too if he tried "dabbling" in witchcraft again. Jesus.
"I can't tell you," the guy finally says. He flicks his hair back with the back of one hand and tries out the puppy dog eyes again. Dean's immune. He'd raised Sam. He's not going to fall for some thirty year old dude's puppy face, even if it looks alarmingly like his Sam's.
"Tough," Dean snaps back. "Cause I ain't helpin' if you don't."
"Not even if your Sam's in trouble too?" the guy wants to know. He backs the fuck up real fast when Dean whips his gun back up, trained squarely on the guy's chest. "I'm not threatening myself, Dean," he says, both hands in the air, even though a little smile is hovering around his mouth. "But what went after me isn't going to just let him go.
"If he can't take me out, he'll just take the younger me out. Easier that way." The guy's fingers tapped against his leg, the first nervous sign Dean's seen out of him this entire time. "I have a lot more, um, protections than he does."
"So tell me. What. Happened," Dean bites out. He needs to know. He needs to know where the fuck his baby brother is and what the hell is going on. If this guy isn't responsible for it, then he's pointing his gun at the wrong person and he needs a new target. Now.
The guy hesitates for another long moment, then says, "I got jumped on my way to the store." He tucks his hands back in his pockets and shrugs a little. "I wasn't expecting it, but I'm usually pretty careful, now. I heard..." he stops, twists his mouth, "We're gonna have to call him something other than his name, man. I can't tell you who he is."
Dean wants to protest that. If he doesn't know who the guy is, how the hell is he supposed to stop him before he can put all this shit into motion?
"The future's fixed, Dean." The looks down, a quirky, werid lookin' grin across his face. Dean's never seen that expression on Sam before. It makes another shiver of unease crawl down his spine.
The guy might know the ins and outs of Dean and Sam's childhood, but that didn't mean he wasn't a monster or, hell, maybe even the thing that killed Mom, watching them creepily this entire time.
"All roads lead to the same destination," the guy continues. "Trying to change it just means that it has to take a slightly different path to get to the same place. Trust me. It's not worth it."
Dean chews that over for a few seconds. If he could go back in time, he'd have saved Mom. Warned her and Dad about what was coming for them and damn the consequences. This guy? Is sounding further and further away from his brother.
But he can use him. He can pump him for information, if he has to. Find out a million and one things that could happen, things he could prevent.
"We'll call him Billy," Dean says.
The guy gives him a faint smile. "I was thinking that Jacob would probably be a good name for him," he says.
Dean's not the walking dictionary his little brother is, but he makes a mental note to look up the name Jacob in revelence to anything supernatural. Might give him a clue, an edge.
"I heard Jacob calling me. And then I woke up here."
"Jacob a hunter?" Dean asks, frowning. Why else would he know the guy's name and not want to share it? Dude was a hunter. Although, why the fuck would a hunter be goin' after Sam? Last he knew, the Winchesters were respected, dammit, heroes to anyone who mattered.
"No," not-Sam says. "No, he's not a hunter."
"Great. Yeah, whatever. Where the hell is mybrother in all of this?"
The guy twitches. "I'm... pretty sure he's with you. Just. A way younger you." While Dean tries to wrap that around his freakin' mind, the guy gives him another little smile (seriously, does he ever stop doing those uncomfortable things?), and says, "You don't remember?"
No, Dean obviously does not remember shit that hasn't happened before. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I... spent a week with you when you were nine, ten?" The guy scratches the back of his head. "I don't really remember how old. I was pissed off at the time and Dad'd taken off before we swapped places. You really don't remember, Dean?"
He's pretty damn sure he'd remember having a grown up version of his brother hanging around and--"Where the fuck was six year old Sam then?"
"With my Dean," the guy says. This time the smile is genuine, dimples appearing and yeah, alright, Dean knows that smile. He knows this guy, even if the one he knows is about thirteen years younger. The smile is what does it in. The puppy eyes, the motions, they're... okay, they're his little brother, all over, except there's something kind of sardonic to him at the same time.
That big ol' doofus smile is still the same, the way the guy ducks his head like he's trying to hide it.
"Six year old Sam is with your Dean," Dean says, sort of flatly.
The guy nods. "Thirty four years this week," he says, sounding smug. "He's been complaining that he's over the hill for the last three years."
So he's still alive at thirty-four. And apparantly talking to Sam again. Score, he guesses. "And my Sam is with... ten year old me?"
"Yeah," the guy says again. "I'm sort of... pissy, actually. I'm glad you don't remember that."
"And you're here with me." That one obviously doesn't require an answer. "And you're Sam. From the future. But you cant timetravel."
"That sounds about right," Sam says. He smiles. "So, want to help me get back?"
"How?" Dean asks.
Sam rocks back on his heels, his hands still in his pockets, and shrugs a little. "I don't really know. I know that I'm the one who figures it out, though. Nineteen year old me is useless," he slides his eyes over to Dean, bright and happy, and says slyly, "I'm sort of a bitch. And I don't remember anything from my Dean except that I puked on him.
"So I'm pretty sure it's up to me. If I can figure out what I'm supposed to do."
"Awesome," Deans says. "You're buying me something to eat and I'm crashing first."
Sam gives him a sheepish look. "Money changes in 2010, dude. Anything I've got on me is not gonna work here." He pulls a fistful of something green out of his pocket and for a second, Dean doesn't see anything wrong with it.
Then he realizes that he doesn't recognize the face on that bill and Sam's stuffing them back in his pocket with an, "Oops. Forget you saw that, okay? New president."
Dean sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. This was so not fair. "I got no money on me. I was sort of busy gasing up and coming out to figure out what the hell was wrong with your head."
Sam's face brightens. "Pool?" he asks.
"Pool," Dean agrees with a sigh. He's got five or so on him and his credit card might be good for another couple hundred, if it hasn't been canceled yet. He's not holding his breath on that. They need to hustle pool or something, and he finds it curious and sort of gratifying that Sam seems just as willing to do it too.
Nice not to be stared at like he's out killin' babies or something because he has to make a living.
Dean finds himself curious and kind of pissed at this new, old dude Sam. It's not that he's that different or anything, contrary to what Dean'd thought to start with. Sure, he's a little scoffed around the edges, and there's some kind of grown up sorrow in his face now, instead of just the kind of teenage angst that'd been drivin' Dean up the wall two years ago.
It's still Sam, though. Just. Older. Sadder, maybe. But he smiles a lot more than the Sam he's used to, his eyes crinkling in well worn crow's feet, and Dean? He sort of can't wait to meet his Sam like this, happy and content.
Except for the whole thing about someone trying to kill him, that is.
They come out of the bar about a hundred and fifty dollars heftier, with Sam turning the money over in his ginormous hands, half wonderingly. "It's heavy," Sam says when Dean looks at him like he's grown another head. "They'll be making it out of micropaper in a," he must get a good look at Dean's face, which he's pretty sure is set into his default what the fuck, man expression, because he trails off sheepishly and shakes his head.
"Nevermind."
Dean opens his mouth to say something. Grill him about shit, maybe, while his guard's a little down from makin' an idiot about himself, but then.
"Samuel," a voice says. He spins around.
Sam's looking at some guy in a trench coat. His mouth's twisted a little, like he's confused but he doesn't want to show it. "Which one are you?" he finally asks.
The guy looks down at himself and smoothes his hands down the front of the beige trench he's got one. "I would think it were obvious, Sam," he says. There's something off about the way he's holding himself.
In three years, Dean'll know what this is. Possession, plain and simple, but right now, all he knows is that there's something not quiet right with this dude. Drunk, maybe, except that he knows Sam and Sam's relaxing back from the tense stance Dean hadn't even realized he'd fallen into.
"You're gonna have to forgive me for not being real happy to see you," Sam says, but he doesn't really sound like he means it.
Dean inserts himself into the conversation smoothly. "Who the hell are you?" Or, you know, as smoothly as he really wants to be. Honest to God, he's getting sick of this shit.
The man blinks at him a few times. "That's none of your concern, Dean," he says. His eyes are brown and wide and his eyebrows are plucked way high. Actually, Dean's sort of just stuck on the fact that the guy apparantly plucks his eyebrows, way high or not.
"I trust you can take care of yourself?" the guy says to Sam. His hands hang kind of limp, not like he doesn't know what to do with them, but like he's forgotten they're attached to his body.
The longer Dean stands there looking at the guy, the more he's sure that there's something seriously wrong with this picture.
"You can't just..." Sam waves his hands around and looks at the guy expectantly. "I don't know how to fix this and I know I'm going to let something slip sooner or later. Can you just put me back?"
The guy shrugs like a puppet or something. It's. Dean has to cut his eyes away from him, because it seriously looks like someone's got a nice fresh human puppet that's being jerked around on strings. It's gross, and he's just about to ask Sam what the hell the guy is when the man says,
"I could. However, I am far more concerned with your nineteen year old self." The guy makes eye contact with Sam and Dean twitches. Seriously. What the hell is wrong with this dude? "You can take care of yourself. Dean is more than capable of keeping your most vulnerable self safe. And even if he weren't, your 'friend' would rather die than allow harm to befall you."
Sam's nodding. "Dad, though..."
"Hey!" Dean snaps. "Dad's a damned good hunter."
"Of course," puppet dude agrees. "He is, however, rather inexperienced with the being that will be coming after Samuel and it would be best if I could keep the distortion contained."
"Time is fluid," Sam says like that makes sense.
The guy nods. "All roads lead to the same destination. You must not die then so that you may live now."
His... brother laughs. "Yeah, the big pictures."
"Of course." He turns to Dean, inclines his head in another one of those weird, unsettling jerky movements, says, "It has been a pleasure seeing you so young, Dean," and when Dean turns to give Sam a seriously, what the fuck? expression, there's a sound of...
Dean would say wings, if he were hard pressed to talk about it. He attributes it to the murder that's been hanging around in the alley with them, but when he turns back around to look, the guy's gone.
"That's, uh, another one of those things you shouldn't ask about," Sam says a few seconds after Dean's done pulling the gun from one pocket and the holy water from the other. He coughs. "And neither of those would have worked on him anyway. He's a friend, Dean. Don't worry about him."
"He a friend of your 'Jacob' too?" Dean asks flatly. He wants to look around for residue, but the EMF meter's been in his back pocket this entire time and it hasn't so much as burbled at him.
Sam shrugs a little. "Not really. They haven't gotten along for a long time, I think." He shakes his head and offers Dean a rueful grin.
"And he's just gonna leave you here. When he knows how to smack you back into your time."
"No," Sam denies. "I know how to slap me back into my time. I think. Eventually, anway. He's going to go make sure I don't get my teenage self killed doing something stupid while we figure it out."
So they have money now. Enough for dinner, anyway, and Dean squints in the damn sunlight and blows out a breath. "You been missin' greasy diner food?" he asks after a few seconds.
Sam gives a snort of laughter, his mouth pulling down in an effort to hide it. "Not really, man."
"Tough," Dean says cheerfully. "You're gonna eat some grease and maybe some goddamn pie while you're at it, and then you're really going to explain what the fuck you think I can do to help, if puppet man back there hasn't got a clue about where the fuck his buddy is."
"I like pie," Sam informs him. "I make a killer mud pie."
Mississippi mud pie, not that knock off shit that comes in a box, but the real stuff, homemade in some of the holes in the wall across the South? That shit's Dean's absolute goddamn favorite ever. Sam curls a small smile at him, because of course the bitch knows it.
He doesn't ask if Sam learned to make pie for him. That's a little girlie. Besides, Sam tells him anyway.
"You bitched for six weeks until I got the recipe right," he says.
Sam might be older, Dean thinks, staring at him with his eyebrows raised, but he's still a little girl at heart. "You make me pie?" he asks, just to be sure.
"Yeah."
The bitch of it is, Sam doesn't even look embarrassed about it. He shrugs off Dean's incredulous look with a smile, another one of those goddamn big things, with the eye crinkles and the dimples. "Sure, why not. You're useless in the kitchen."
"Dude, please stop making us sound like a gay couple doing the Suzie homemaker thing." Dean walks backwards, scuking on his teeth, while Sam barks out a laugh he tries to hide by turning his head to the side. "I do find a hot chick to settle down with, right?"
"Sorry, Dean. Can't tell you that."
He sounds entirely smug about it too, the bastard.
Dean's not even frickin' sure that Sam's not just teasing him, poking fun because he can. He can't see his Sam becoming this one, ready to smile instead of scream about how life wasn't fair. He just. He can't.
Sam nudges his shoulder. Dean flinches back from it, because he might have been used to someone having his side (his back) two years ago, but it's not the same body bumping into his, even if it's still, well, Sam. Grown up, smiling, maybe a lying bastard of a Sam.
"I think I know what I can do," Sam says. "But I'm gonna need some stuff."
"Some stuff" turns out to be, well, some random shit. Dean knows they've always tended towards ghetto with their spellwork, especially when it was left entirely up to Dean to find the ingrediants, but he thinks just randomly walking by and picking what they need off blooming trees is kind of off, even for them.
"Dude," Dean says when Sam stops to reach up to the tree with his giant gorilla arms. "What the hell?"
"Acacia," Sam says absently. He tucks the yellow flowers into his jacket pocket and the leaves get dropped in with them. Dean can't see what's so special about the damn tree, but Sam looks really pleased to have found it.
He's gonna have to trust that this old, crinkly, smiley version of Sammy knows what the fuck he's doing.
"Acacia's for protection, Dean," Sam says when Dean just keeps right on starin' at him anyway. "And for... something else. Don't worry about it. I need mugwort. There should be some around here somewhere."
Somewhere, in fact, turns out to be about ten feet away from the damn tree, hiding in the bushes. Sam makes a triumphant noise when he finds it and Dean bounces on his heels, wondering what the fuck the odds are that two of the things Sam needs are growin' frickin' wild in the middle of a city.
"Sage, sandalwood, and nutmeg. We can get all of those in the store," Sam says. He wipes his hands on his ass and the mugwort disappears into the same pocket as the acacia leaves.
Dean trails after him and tries not to feel completely and utterly useless.
"And you couldn't have done this shit by yourself?" he asks crankily. "Without freaking my ass out or putting someone in trouble?"
"No," Sam says absently. "I'm gonna need you as an anchor. I'll explain later."
Dean's really starting to feel like a dog on a leash. He might not be used to being an equal in a hunt, not when Dad just had to point and Dean would jump that direction without a thought (as Sam liked to point out, that blind faith thing actin' up again). But that didn't mean he was used to trailing along afterwards like some civilian.
And he's really not used to having to follow Sam around like Sam's the one who knows what he's doin'. Sam was so damn reluctant to hunt all the time that giving him a gun or being anywhere but firmly in front of him at all times was asking for trouble.
"If you don't stop treatin' me like a dog, dude, I'm gonna..."
He can't think up a suitable threat. He's, what, not gonna help? Shyeah, right. He wants his little brother back, even if he hasn't actually seen Sam face to face in two years and change.
Sam's dormmates might think he's some sort of creepy, threatening stalker, though. He really hopes Sam, either of them, doesn't know that he likes to drop by and stare sort of scarily at Sam every few months.
"Sorry," Sam says. He sidesteps a kid that's comin' barrelling at his legs like it's goin' out of style, a harried looking blonde woman walking along behind him.
"Sorry," she says. "He's a handful."
"I know how that is," Sam says with a laugh. "I think I've apologized more in the past few years for things that aren't my fault than I've ever apologized before. Comes with the territory."
Dean blinks and comes to a stop behind Sam. The kid who'd been running pauses next to him, turning to look over his shoulder at his mother before he looks up at Dean and frowns. "Giant," he whispers over at him, covertly pointing at Sam.
He misses whatever the woman says to his brother in the startled bark of laughter he can't keep under wraps. "Yeah he is," Dean tells the kid.
"You have children?" the woman's asking Sam when he looks back up. She's tucking her hair self-consciously behind her ears when Dean glances at her, looking down, all but screamin' you're hot and I'm single.
He catches a look to Sam's left hand and that's weird, because it hadn't even occured to Dean that Sam might find someone to marry. He'd tried that route last year, girl he loved and her incredulous, disbelieving expression when he told her what was out there.
Not that he thought Sam, king of repressing his "freak of a family" would share that with a woman.
Sam's laughing now. "I just know a lot of kids," he says evasively. If he notices her eyes on his hand, he doesn't give it away. Dean's not even real sure Sam knows the woman's flirting, but, then again, it's not like it could go anywhere.
If he thought, "I hunt supernatural shit," for a living was a relationship killer, than "I come from the future. Mind waiting ten years?" probably didn't go down real well either.
The kid scuffs one toe against the cement. "Mommy," he whines loudly.
"Just a minute, Nicky," she says. She tucks her hair back behind her eyes again and tries to make Sam ask her from sheer force of will. Sam's not payin' attention anymore, though, already looking through her politely.
It's a move Dean recognizes from Dad. He's never seen Sam pull it before.
"You got a kid?" Dean asks when the woman stops looking hopeful and starts looking between Sam and Dean like she's got their number. It's a pretty quick retreat after that.
Dean makes a face at her back. Sam doesn't even look surprised.
"Can't tell you," he says, long legs eating up ground like he's expecting Dean to trot along after him.
"That's a yes, then." Dean says.
He tries to imagine Sam with a kid. He looks at Sam's left hand again, but no ring has magically appeared on it. He guesses Sam oculd have slipped it off to keep Dean from realizing he's married in the future, but there's no tanline either.
"Not married," he says casually.
A corner of Sam's mouth pulls up. "You're not gonna get anything out of me about this, dude."
He makes a left at the next intersection and they run almost smack dab into the kind of building Dean would want to check for witches before he stumbled in. Sam pulls the door open with a jangle and a chime.
The shop's small and cramped and dim, the shelves taller than even Sam is and stuffed together like someone wants to get as much shit as possible into the tiny space. It's dark because the one window is covered with a heavy curtain. Dean's pretty sure it's black velvet, but he doesn't want to wander over their and finger the drapes for no reason. Sam'd think he was a girl or somethin'.
The smell of incense is gonna give Dean a throbbing headache in about three minutes, though. Jesus Christ.
Sam looks pretty much right at home.
The teenage girl sitting on the counter, kickin' her legs and snapping loudly on her gum, offers them a disinterested, "May the Goddess bless you," when she notices them. She's got an honest to God cape on, the hood pulled up around her dark, loose hair, but she's also wearing sparkly lipgloss and enough glitter to choke a small chupacabra.
Sam muffles a smirk by looking at the ground. Dean doesn't even bother stopping the snort.
"Yeah," the girl agrees, "But it's the store greetin', what're you gonna do about it?" She snaps her gum again and goes back to reading some teeny bopper magazine she's got spread over her lap. "And don't go knockin' the uniform. If you need anything, let me know."
"I think I remember where everything is," Sam says while Dean's, well, busy gaping at the thought of anyone deciding the store uniform involves a cape.
"Regular?" the girl asks. She looks up again with a squint. "Yeah, I recognize you. Angelica root and stuff, right? How did that Oil of Abramelin turn out?"
For a second, Sam looks about as blank as blank can be. Dean nudges him and doesn't even get a response, like lights are on and nobody's home.
He shakes himself a second later and grins at the girl, suddenly genuine and warm. "It was fine, Stephanie. Thanks for asking."
The girl grins up at him and blows a bubble. "It's supposed to be Moonlight Lovelygrace when I'm in here," she says, pointing to the embroidery on her cape. She gives Dean a conspirators look when he almost chokes himself trying not to burst into laughter.
"I'm not calling you that," Sam says. He's wandered two or three rows away, out of sight, and Dean's pretty sure that it's because he doesn't want that girl figuring out he looks too old to be the kid that...
Wait a fuckin' minute.
Stephanie shrugs. "Bosslady thinks it's a very spiritual name. You come back a few more times and you might find yourself Raven Starlight or something."
Dean stalks over to where Sam has disappeared behind the shelves when the girl goes right back to reading her magazine. "You come here?" he hisses, nudging Sam's belly with his elbow. "You came here often enough to be recognized?"
Sam looks over from the bottle of something he's turning over in his hands to lift an eyebrow at Dean. "Just because I wanted out doesn't mean I was stupid enough not to protect myself, Dean." He sets the bottle back on the shelf. "Besides, it's not like you didn't break in a few times and set up runes and salt lines under the furniture."
Dean doesn't bother trying to deny it. Sam gives him a quick half smile and reaches above his head to pull a bundle of sage from a hanging basket. "One down," he says, "Two more to go. I don't really remember where everything is. It's been a while since I was in here."
There's a sardonic tilt to his eyebrows, inviting Dean to share the joke. Yeah, he just bets it's been a while since Sam was in here.
The sandalwood is actually on top of the shelf two lanes over. Sam stands there under it looking like he wants to climb the damn shelf for so long that Dean finally gives up and just goes to find a stool.
"We don't have any," the girl says. She's moved up from gum and on to some kind of sucker, sucking more obnoxiously on it than Dean found the snapping gum to be. And Dean freakin' hates snapping gum. "Just climb the shelf. That's what we do. They're bolted in, it'll be fine."
Dean would be more willing to take her advice if she looked up from whatever article it was she was readin'. He spends another few moments just staring at the top of her hooded head before he spins away with a grunt.
Sam's still standing there looking mournfully up at the shelf the sandalwood's hidin' on. "I can't climb it," he says. He motions down at his body without looking up and Dean sort of has to admit that, yeah, getting a ginormous dude up on an itty bitty shelf, bolted or not, wasn't the smartest idea ever.
"I'm not goin' up it, dude."
"Baby," Sam taunts lightly. He looks up the shelf one more time while Dean's too busy staring at his grown up brother callin' him a wuss, and sighs again. "Fine, I'll do it."
Dean helpfully stands at the end of the shelf and braces it with his shoulder while Sam carefully scales it. It sort of does this alarming wobbly thing, bolted to the floor and ceiling or not, but it holds. Dean likes to think it's because he's Superman.
"You're not Superman," Sam says from the top of the shelf. He grabs whatever it is he was looking for from the tip top, gives a little huh noise, and says, "I think I see the nutmeg up here."
"Nutmeg's four shelves over," Stephanie says. "But it'll be cheaper just to buy that at the store. It's what we do. Mark ups are killer."
"Got it," Sam says. Dean keeps right on bracing his shelf, feeling curiously left out. He's had a couple quick and dirty lessons on his mojo herbs in the last few years, mainly because he doesn't have a Sam around anymore to make sure he doesn't fuck himself over trying to use the hyssop on a hag.
"What're you makin'?" Stephanie asks once Sam has managed to get down without killing himself.
Dean expects Sam to stutter out a lie, looking guilty as hell while he does it. Instead, Sam cradles the jar and the sage in the crook of one elbow and grins at her. "Potion and ritual to contact the future and hopefully pull my younger self back to where he's supposed to be."
Stephanie bobs her head and leans over to punch the price into the cash register without taking her ass off the counter. "Cool," she says. "Don't get high first. That'd be the pits, man."
"Yeah," Sam says. He shoots a twitching grin over Dean's way, mouth stretched wide to try to conceal it, and says, "I'll keep that in mind."
"Kay," Stephanie says. "You get the chips or the dust?"
"Chips."
She nods her head again. "Fifteen-thirty," she says, crunching through her sucker. "You want a bag?"
"No," Sam says while Dean fishes money out of his wallet with a scowl. Least Sam could do was pay for it himself, so Dean didn't look like his sugar daddy.
"Hey," Stephanie says when Sam's tucked his weird shit into his pockets and Dean hs gotten his change. "If you see anything weird comin' for us from the future, come back and lemme know, okay?"
"Sure thing," Sam says.
Dean ignores the irony of Sam already knowing what sort of shit is gonna go down. Stephanie ducks behind her hood and goes back to swinging her legs. Dean's sort of got to respect the kind of chick who could work in a place like this day in and day out without bein' high.
"You know weird people, dude," Dean says when they're back out in the sunlight. He takes a deep breath to clear out whatever the hell the smell in there had been. His sinuses hurt.
"I barely even remember her," Sam says. "I think she moves or something. Her mom runs the shop."
"Wouldn't be surprised if they were shut down by the health inspectors," Dean says.
Sam shrugs. "Let's get back to my dorm. I can set most of this stuff up and be ready to go in a couple of hours. It'll be better if we wait until dark anyway."
Dean doesn't ask why. He really, really wants to though.
"Do you think this'll work?" Sam's voice asks softly.
Dean brings his eyebrows together and stills. He's out in the hallway, back from fetching a bowl full of water like the good dog he is, so he knows it's not him Sam's talking to.
The noise that comes out of the room almost makes Dean drop the goddamn bowl. It's like static, turned up high and loud, screeching through Dean's skull, and he makes a choked noise of protest before he can think about it.
Instantly, the noise cuts off.
"Dean?" Sam asks. He pokes his head out the door and stares at Dean for a second, then reaches down to grab the bowl from his hands (seriously, when did Dean slide down to his knees?). Sam sets it on the floor inside the dorm room and comes back to get an arm around Dean's shoulders.
Dean shrugs him off with a scowl. "I'm fine," he hisses. "What the fuck was that?"
"Sorry." Sam watches him for a few seconds, making sure he's steady, before he turns around and picks up the bowl by the door. "That's, uh, one of those things you shouldn't worry about it."
Dean looks around the room when he comes in, but it's seriously just a square. There's one window that doesn't open wide enough for anyone to use it to sneak in or out, a bed, a desk, and, well, that's about it.
There's absolutely nobody that Sam could have been talkin' to.
"Help me out here, dude," Dean says slowly. He wants to massage away the headache that's setting in behind his eyeballs, poudning and constricting like it's goin' out of style. "Which one should I not be worryin' about, Sam? The fact that you're talkin' to an empty room or the fact that it answered?"
"Both," Sam says back steadily. He sets the bowl of water Dean fetched (woof he thinks mutinously) on the dresser, next to the cermic bowl he's got the sage steaming in.
"What if I don't want to?" Dean asks.
Sam gives him a flat look. "I know how much I told you, Dean," Sam says. "And it wasn't much. So you're just gonna have to trust me when I say that you need to drop it."
"Trust doesn't work real well when you've run out on us once already, Sam." Dean crosses his arms and watches as Sam drops a rosary into the water.
The fact that he snaps on a pair of latex gloves after he does it is kinda worrying. Dean's eyebrows draw together, but Sam's the one who knows what the fuck he's doing and if he needs to wear gloves while he messes around with what amounts to glorified baking, then Dean's willing to believe him.
On that at least.
"I know you don't know what I'm talking about," Sam says, sprinkling the yellow acacia flowers into the water. "But you don't get to hold that over my head, Dean. I'm not the only one in this family that's ever let someone down."
Dean has never, fuckin' never let Sam down. He's the one who drove the kid's lame ass to the bus stop when he ditched them. He's the one who beat the shit out of the dude who thought Sammy was easy prey. He was the one who took the brunt of Dad's anger whenever Sam did somethin' stupid.
He may have been too slow for some victims. He may have taken too damn long to figure out a hunt. But he'd never fuckin' let Sam down when his brother needed him.
"I think you're confusing us with someone else," Dean grinds out. He bares his teeth at Sam in a really freakin' insincere grin when Dean looks over at him, his gloves stained yellow on the fingertips. "Someone who ate the Jolly Green Giant and maybe Godzilla for good measure."
Sam snorts. "You're not gonna win this argument," he says. He grabs the smoking sage from the other bowl and waves it above the holy water so that ashes fall in.
The Latin that starts spilling from Sam's mouth is way out of Dean's depth. There's no scrap of paper he's reading off of either, he's just winging this shit, and the sandalwood chips trickle through his gloved fingers into the fire.
The huge puff of smoke is kind of disconcerting.
Dean glances up at the smoke detector, glances over at Sam, and climbs on the damn bed to pull the batteries out. Heaven freakin' forbid that Sam actually pays attention to the little things when he's got something on his mind. No, that's for Dean to do.
He tosses the batteries on the ground just as Sam does something that makes the entire damn room plunge into darkness.
"Sam?" Dean asks softly.
"I think it's supposed to do that," Sam's voice comes from the dark. He sounds a little puzzled though, so Dean is not gonna put his eggs in that basket, thanks.
"And the alternative would be?"
"That it's not supposed to do that," Sam says dryly. "Hold on. I'm gonna try something."
Trying something apparantly means that Sam manages to get the lights back on. Without moving. And it's not really the lights, because what lights the room up is almost blindingly white and then it sort of friggin' tears right down the goddamn middle to expose shimmering green.
"Got it," Sam says at his side. He sounds smug. Dean's too busy staring at what the fuck's just opened up in the room, stomach down in his toes.
"What the fuck is that?" Dean demands.
The shimmering, green edged freakin' tear in space just sort of hovers there. Expectantly. Dean throws a frantic glance Sam's way, but he's just lookin' at it like it's the holy grail and the answer to every damn prayer ever thought up, all rolled up into one puke shaded anomaly.
Dean clicks the safety off his gun without a second thought. It's pointed over at Sam, even though every goddamn instinct he has is screaming at him. This. Sam's not capable of this kind of shit, older or not, so that means this isn't Sam and Dean's been seriously dooped and--
"It's okay," the supernatural thing says. It looks at him from under floppy hair. "It's alright, Dean."
The fuck it's alright. He might'vev just helped open up a hole for something seriously nasty to crawl through and here this guy pretending to be his brother (oh, yeah, they've got his number, goddamn them) is telling him everything's peachy keen.
Fuck this shit.
Except.
The poison green shimmer dies down, until what he's lookin' at seems to be a... doorway. Not a doorway, ha, nothing simple like that, but it's almost a doorway. Dean doesn't even know what the shit he's babbling to himself, but there you have it.
It's like there's an archway in the middle of the goddamn dorm room, opening up into a room filled with sunshine and brightly colored toys.
Dean's gun lowers, almost against his will.
There's a kid. Kind of dirty blond, with grubby hands and his tie-dyed shirt on the wrong way, the tag sticking up under his chin. Dean looks away, because the kid reminds him of his Sam; not the obnoxious teenage brat , but the cute, fuzzy, puppy-eyed one.
Dammit. He misses Sammy.
Thinking about Sammy reminds him that there's a lovely fucker of a monster playing at being his brother from the future and Jesus, how stupid could he get? Dean half turns again, away from the kid, to raise his gun at the Not-Sam.
The guy's not paying attention to him. He looks like he's just found out the Backdown Dudes or whatever have magically gotten together again, just for him, and. Dean's never seen a monster pull off human that well, not in twenty-four years of hunting.
Maybe he wasn't wrong? Maybe he was. Dean keeps the gun and one eye on Sam (maybe-Sam, at any rate) and darts a glance back over towards the grubby tie-dye kid.
The kid looks up and smiles. "Sammy!" he calls. He drops the toy he's got in his hand and bolts towards them.
"Stop!" Sam barks out.
He sounds so much like Dad that Dean catches himself freezing into place. The kid does the same, doesn't move a muscle from where he's frozen, and Sam sighs. "Gotta be careful, Ry," he says. "What have we told you about stuff like this?"
The kid's nose scrunches up. "Weird shit is for grown ups," he says obediantly. "Cas 'n Ruby if no Sammy 'n Dean."
Wait a motherfuckin' minute. Sam and Dean? Dean feels his heart give a stupid lurch at the thought, hell, the conformation, that he'll be getting his brother back sometime. That Sam, eventually, starts answering the damn phone when he calls. He has a place in his brother's life, and, Jesus Christ, he just has something in his eyes, alright?
"Good boy," Sam says. Dean looks over at him in time to see the smile he's trying to hide behind his hand and thinks, huh. So this new grown up Sam smiles more like how he used to. "Where's Dean?" Sam asks.
"Baby Sammy got dirty," Ryan says. He pops two fingers into his mouth and waves the fingers of the other hand at Dean. Dean lifts his hand back automatically and the kid gives him a grin from around his fingers. "You gotta little Dean, too. How come?"
Dean would like to point out that he's not little. It's just that apparantly his friggin' cheater of a brother ate the Jolly Green Giant or something and is now the size of a small sky scraper. And there went his vague hope of maybe being a giant of giants in the future. What kind of world gave Sam more than four inches on him?
Bastards.
His gun dips lower. Obviously, there's some seriously weird shit going on here. But there's also a four year old brat dimpling at him, a streak of dirt over his nose, and Sam. This weird, open doorway space thingie looks like it's somewhere Sam belongs.
There're curtains up in the windows. Curtains. Dean hopes this is Sam's house or something and not his, because he better not have those filmy, girlie things up in his damn windows.
"I'll tell you later," Sam says to the kid. He runs a hand through his hair. "I need you to get Dean, buddy."
"Kay," the kid says. He turns around, takes a deep breath, and screams, "Daddy! Daddy, Sammy wants you!"
Dean's too busy reeling to really pay much attention to anything after that. Daddy? He's a daddy? He has a son and he's not dead or alone, and he has Sam still.
How the hell did things like that happen? How did he end up with the goddamn perfect endgame?
Sam's lookin' at him when he looks up, but Dean does not want to make eye contact right now. He's still not real sure about this new, improved Sam, now with ninety percent less glaring and screeching. Sure, he can tell it's his brother, but it's not his brother.
And now he knows that he has a family in the future, however far away it is from now. Jesus. How is he supposed to cope with that?
"Little Dean is crying," the kid observes from somewhere out of sight. "Wanna hug, Little Dean?"
"Dean doesn't cry, Ry," Sam says. He sounds friggin' gentle, the bastard, like he's trying not to break him. "Remember?"
"I've got somethin' in my eye, kiddo," he tells Ryan.
The kid gives him a big, brown solemn eyed gaze and nods his head. Most serious rugrat he's seen since Sam finally stopped pickin' his nose and hiding the boogers in his hair. "Dean says only girls, kids, and sissy named Sammy are 'llowed to cry," Ryan says.
Dean snorts and swallows hard. "Got that right."
That nets him a shy little smile, just the barest curve of the kid's mouth. He's the most serious kid Dean's seen in a while, at least since Sammy hit puberty and went from watchful eyes to screaming in about two point five seconds.
The kid doesn't really look like him, or Sam for that matter, but Dean would have sworn he acts more like a younger Sam. Goes to show what he knows. Apparantly, he finds a girl willing to settle for him quicker than Sam does.
"Sammy?" the kid asks while they stand around waiting. For his older self. His older self that has a kid.
Dean shoves his gun in his jacket pocket belatedly. Guns around kids were sort of a no-no unless there was something big, scary, and out to eat them in the immediate vicinity. Dean's willing to admit that early access to guns might have fucked him up a little.
He's hopin' that he doesn't do the same to his rugrat.
"Yeah?"
"Come home?" Ryan asks plaintively. One of his dirty thumbs migrates towards his mouth and his puppy eyes are almost as lethal as his little brother's used to be, before his giant genes began to make themselves known.
"I'm working on it, baby boy," Sam murmurs.
A mutinous look crosses the boy's face. "Work more fast," he demands. "I miss Sammy all the time." Ryan pauses for a few seconds, then adds, "Please," in the same grudging tone Sammy had used whenever Dean'd barked out, "What do you say?"
"This would go a lot faster if Dean would get his ass in here," Sam says.
They wait a few more seconds. The kid shoves a hotwheel car into his mouth and contemplatively turns another one over in his hands. Impala, Dean automatically catalogs. Wrong year, but the right color, and Ryan scowls down at it for a moment before attempting to fit it in his mouth with the other one.
Dean cuts his eyes over to Sam, who doesn't seem overly concerned with this. "You're going to choke," Sam informs Ryan dryly. "And Dean'll be pissed if you swallow his car."
Ryan spits both cars out. "Dean said," he says slowly, "Is my funral."
"You remember what we talked about, Ry?" Sam says, rubbing his forehead.
Dean leans forward at the same time that the kid nods twice and drops the cars on the ground. "Sometimes," Ryan says seriously, "Daddy's full of poo."
"This is one of those times, kiddo."
"Kay," Ryan murmurs.
Dean resents being told that he's full of shit sometimes. Really resents it. He's a fount of knowledge, alright? He's smart and he's a damn fine hunter and he did let Sammy eat little micro cars when he was little because he insisted he wnated to.
Dad wasn't real happy with Sammy's diapers for a while there.
So, ah, fair enough.
They wait for a little longer. Dean notices that the edges of the bubble world thing are starting to look a little ragged. It's starting to look more like a hole punched in cloth than it is a doorway. He's pretty sure that's not a good indication.
Sam probably comes to that same conclusion. Probably. "Dean, swear to God, man," Sam says to himself. His entire face scrunches up tight.
From the weird, wavery time bubble space comes a startled shout of, "Sam! God fucking dammit, you little bitch!"
Sam opens his eyes. "Your own fault, jerk," he shouts back. "I know you heard Ryan calling."
Seeing himself is really fuckin' weird. He thought Sammy all filled out and taller than Godzilla was a kick in the pants, but that's almost got nothin' on how it feels to stand there and stare at an older version of him.
The hair's shorter and the face has more lines on it, though Dean's gotta say he's lookin' pretty damn good for pushin' his mid-thirties. Hell, he hadn't ever imagined he'd make it past twenty-five. He can live with a few wrinkles.
It's the barfed on shirt he's having problems with. That, and the kid he's got under one arm, the little legs and ass wriggling and kicking to get free.
"You send pictures into my head again, Sam, and I'll kick your ass," barfed on Dean says. He leans over and drops his load on the bed. "I was cleaning up your weakass stomach's mess. Cut me some slack."
The person he's dropped on the bed wiggles over onto his stomach and looks at them with a very familiar face. Dean feels it like a sucker punch to the gut. God. Sam had been tiny and messy and Dean would've killed anyone who messed with him, even back then.
Seeing how small he is now, in relation to how big barfed on Dean is, and, fuck, how big jolly giant Sam is, makes Dean want to bury the kid in bubble wrap. Possibly get him one of those germ bubble things, one made out of indestructible plastic or something.
He's so goddamn tiny.
"Hi, Dean," Sammy says. He smiles upside down, gaptoothed and crooked on the bottom, and squirms around on the bed like a puppy.
Dean has to swallow hard a few times. "Hey, Sammy," he finally manages to choke out.
"Sammy," Sam says, and isn't that just a mindfuck, seeing teeny tiny Sammy and the giant Sam sort of juxtaposed together. "You ready to go home?"
"Uh-huh," Sammy says. He slides off the bed and turns to give the other Dean a pat on the leg. "Bye Dean," he says, then, "Bye Ryan."
Ryan waves a negligent hand from where he's decided his toy is seriously awesome and he has to play with it right now. "Bye Baby. Send Sammy back, 'kay?"
"Sam?" the other Dean asks. He steps forward to put a restraining hand on Sammy's shoulder. "You need me to do anything special before I send him on through?"
"No," Sam says. He rubs at his forehead like it hurts before he says lowly, "We're protected. It's why we got flung all over the damn place instead of just biting it."
That seems to make sense to the Dean on that side of the weird time bending mojo, even if it makes fuck all sense to him. He tilts his head slightly to the side and then lets go of Sammy. "Remind me to tell Castiel he's full of shit, huh?" he says.
He swats Sammy on the ass. "Go on home, kiddo."
What? Go on home? What the hell, what the hell...!
Sammy stumbles through the green space-y bubble time compression thing. Like. One second he's tripping foreward from the momentum of his wrinkled self thwapping him, and the next he's got one foot in Sam's dorm room and the other is pulling out of the room with the toys.
Talk about a mindfuck.
Dean catches him when he gets both feet on this side of Sam's time thing. For a second, his heart's in his throat, 'cause he remembers just how this kid smells and just how he smiles. Sammy raises his arms, expecting to be picked up, and Dean does it before he can even think about it.
His kid brother feels just like he remembers him, bird light and sharp boney knees in his sides. He even smells the same. "Hi, Dean," Sammy says again, into his throat.
"Hi Sammy," Dean says, very manfully, he thinks. He can't help it if the smell in the room is starting to get to him or something. He clears his throat a few times for good measure, trying to hawk up whatever's in there that's makin' him choke up.
The other Dean is smirking at him. Dean doesn't even care, man, except that that's himself looking at him like he wants to tease, and that's just not right.
"When're you gettin' back?" the other Dean asks. Dean's makin' himself confused over here, having to think of someone else as him too, and he's more than ready to just have his Sam back, pissy moodiness and all.
Though he's sort of willing to admit, privately at least, that he can't wait for the day he has a messy kid named Ryan and his little brother hangin' around again.
"As soon as I get the other me," Sam says. "Why? Miss me?"
"Yeah, right." The other Dean leans over to nudge the big black dog that's just wandered in. It looks over at him and Sam, gives a friendly kind of tail wag, and saunters out again. Dean feels his eyebrows shoot up.
In his experience, most dogs went batshit insane at the presence of supernatural phenomenon. He really wants to know what kind of weird shit older Winchesters have goin' on that the dog thinks it's nothin' worth getting worked up about.
His other self doesn't seem to care either way. "Your shoulder pair are driving me insane," he says, straightening up. "Seriously. Bury them in the backyard and damn the consequences bonkers."
"Shoulder pair?' Sam asks.
"Yeah, you know." He motions to one shoulder and says, "Angel," then motions to the other and says, "Demon. Your shoulder pair."
Sam laughs. Full on tilts his head back and gives into a serious case of the giggles. "She's gonna kick your ass, man," he says after he's got his laughter under control.
"She can try." The other Dean rubs a hand across his face, suddenly serious, and says, "Come home soon, okay? Ryan misses you. Little bastard keeps asking me to bring you back."
"You're going to give him a complex if you--"
"Don't stop calling him a bastard, I know."
They share a second of the sort of silent communication that Dean's used to having with his Sam. Or the Sam he had before the puberty monster ate his Sam and spat out one that wanted nothing more than to leave his ass in the dust.
Bitch of it is, even though Dean knows his expressions from the inside and there's pretty much nothing Sam can hide from him, he has no idea what this little moment of staring is about. None. He bounces Sammy in his arms and looks away from them, missing his Sam so much it aches.
"If..." Sam looks over at Dean for a second, not the other Dean, but him, and sighs. He motions towards his shoulder. "If that one shows up again, let him know that I think I've got it all sorted out. And, uh, if I'm not back soon, let him know that maybe I don't, okay?"
Other Dean snorts. "That's inspiring, Sam," he says. "My faith in you runneth over."
"Jerk," Sam says softly.
"Bitch."
Dean bounces Sammy's foot in one hand, needing to do something. Jesus. Rub it right in his face, thanks. We all get it. He doesn't have a kid or a brother that wants anything to do with him, he gets it. He doesn't need the future rubbing this sort of shit in.
He expected better of himself.
"You look like you're swallowing a lemon, dude," his voice observes. "Or listening to some of Sam's emo shit."
It takes Dean a few more seconds than it should to realize Dean's talking to him. Mind fuck. "I'm fine," he says tightly. Sammy's chubby fingers worm their way into his collar and latch on, his feet drumming out an obnoxious rhythym on Dean's spine.
He hand't really missed that part of holding Sam.
"Sure you are," the other Dean observes. Then he shrugs, leans over to grab Ryan by the hips, and flips the kid over to squint down at him. "Are you eating something you found on the floor?" he asks suspiciously.
Even from outside the green bubble time thing, Dean can see that the kid's mouth is that telltale, I just ate a crayon blue. Seriously. Ryan must take more after Sam than his own father, because Dean never ate random shit from the ground.
That was all Sam. In fact, Sammy's wriggling around now, trying to look at what Ryan has, and his mobile little face is pulling into a pout Dean can see out of the corner of his eye. Never was that big on sharing. Or being quiet when other people had things he thought he wanted.
The big Sam, on the other hand, makes a choking noise. "On that note, man, I'm gonna leave you to it. Enjoy."
"I am going to get you for this," Dean says direly.
Sam laughs as the bubble thing shimmers closed. Not closed, Dean sees a second later, just. Black. It shimmers black, like it has something it's hiding from tall of them, no more room, no more kid, no more older Dean.
He feels a curious sense of loss and stamps it down resolutely. No. He's not going there. Well, he is going there, eventually, because Sam'd said the future can't be changed and, Jesus, he never thought he'd hear that and relax, but there you go.
According to what he's just seen, everything turns out better than okay. Things are flat out awesome.
"I want cookies," Sammy says into his throat.
