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apocalypsosTitle: Good Times For a Change
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,800 words
Spoilers: "Devil's Trap"
Pairing: None (Gen)
Warnings: Bad language
Disclaimer: Look, Kripke, a block of cheese carved to look like William Shatner's head! *grabs onto Winchester family and runs off with them to make them amuse me*
Summary: What Dean remembers most isn't the offer. It's never the offer.
*****
Good Times For a Change
*****
What Dean remembers most isn't the offer. It's never the offer.
It's the demon kneeling beside him, the knees of its black pants glistening a little in the dim light as the material soaks up his blood. Winchester blood. There's only so much of it left in the world, a precious endangered resource, and Dean's spilling a lot of it all over the floor of some dingy old church just outside Lawrence.
The rest of it's still flowing through Sam's veins, wherever the hell he is.
The demon said Sam was standing over a crib somewhere. What Dean remembers most is trying too hard not to think about that.
*****
During the fifth try, Sam's sheets smolder one night from the heat coming off his skin. He cries out in his sleep and it's like a sick release, because one minute the bedding covering his trembling body is giving off smoke and the next the television is on fire.
Dean shoots out of bed -- "Jesus Christ, Sam, what the hell?", he says, but not with any real surprise -- and puts out the fire with his blanket and some water from the bathroom sink. The entire room reeks of melted plastic and hot metal and acrid smoke. Dean rolls the television out of the room and down to the front office, getting loud and noisy about a fried wire or something, how he and his brother could have burned to death in their bed. The desk clerk, a middle-aged woman with an ever-present cigarette dangling from her lips, manages to look appropriately thrown at that and falls over herself apologizing like it was her fault or something.
Sam sleeps through the whole thing.
Maybe he doesn't know, Dean thinks. Maybe this time it's not even his fault.
Seven's supposed to be a lucky number, but times like this make Dean positive its real meaning got lost in translation somewhere.
*****
During the fourth try, he'd told Sam. That much he thinks he remembers, even if everything always gets a little hazy after Dean's got more than a few months under his belt.
That last time, Dean told Sam, and Sam flipped out, and it happened sooner and he did it anyway.
So this time, Dean doesn't say a fucking word about the fires. Not at first.
*****
Maybe he's asking for trouble, but he finally talks Sam into letting Dean train him in using his powers. Not the dreams, okay, never those. Those come like flashes from a lighthouse with the demon as the shoreline and the nightmares as that whipcrack pass of light overhead.
But the telekinesis ... that, maybe he can handle.
"Look, Sam," he says, after the five-thousandth complaint from Sam about how hard it is getting that part of his brain to work, "you ever think about how handy this will come in when you're backed up against a wall by something and there's not a weapon in sight?"
"I guess."
Sam stuffs his hands in his pockets, looks down at the ground, toes at the grass with his sneaker. He looks like a sulky five-year-old with a pituitary disorder.
Dean would throttle him for it, if he didn't already want to throttle him for not realizing how fucking dire their situation is.
"You need to do this eventually," he says.
Sam lifts his head up a little, looking past his overgrown hair in that way that drives Dean nuts. "Yeah, because I'm not a big enough freak already."
Dean frowns. "Not knowing how to use this doesn't stop you from being a freak. It just makes you a stupid freak."
There's this sigh, and then ... "You're right."
"Damn straight I am," Dean says.
And then he smiles, and Sam smiles back, and two hours later Sam can lift a pencil in midair without thinking about it too hard.
It's probably a bad idea, but if the first four tries have proven anything to Dean, it's that ignoring the problem won't make it go away.
*****
Dean told Sam the truth after the incident with Max and his family. There's no way in hell he's letting his little brother turn out like Max, that's for damn sure.
There are worse people Sam could turn out like, and Dean knows it.
*****
The fire thing happens a couple more times before Dean has to say something, before he can't just let Sam sleep in, crack open the windows, and mutter something about a fried radiator when Sam wakes in the morning. Up until then, it's been things Dean can get rid of easily, a chair, the television, the drapes.
This time, it's Dean.
It's just his arm, really, a patch of skin on his left wrist that he won't miss, but he can't hide this one.
If for no other reason than the smell of burning flesh being the one thing Sam may never sleep through again.
*****
It's easier when he's drunk, Dean realizes. Maybe he's more approachable when he ducks out on Sam, heads to the nearest bar, and pounds back longnecks for an hour or so. It's been a year since the car accident, since they tucked Dad's ashes into the trunk of the Mustang Bobby gave them and headed out again. A year, and Sam feels more like a real threat to the demon's health and well-being with every passing day.
On second thought, maybe that's why this is when the demon comes at times like this, and not his blood alcohol content.
Dean downs another beer anyway. It can't hurt.
This time, the damn thing's a girl and a hot one at that, which never stops being annoying. All gorgeous tits and firm little ass, long legs that reach the ground and then some and these ridiculously wide bashful blue eyes that only flicker gold for a split second. They don't even have to anymore, not with Dean.
He leans over to whisper in Dean's ear, and he smells like vanilla and chocolate, like a fucking ice cream shoppe.
"So this time we're making him capable," the demon says. Dean doesn't need to tilt his head for a better look. He can hear the smile in that taunting voice. "That's new."
Dean shrugs, tries to play it casual.
"It's worth a shot," he says.
The demon chuckles at that, the sound deep and rusty. It's foreign and grating coming from the beautiful redhead practically draping herself over Dean.
Dean wonders how tightly he would have to squeeze the beer bottle in his hand before it shattered.
"Here's hoping this turns out to be as much fun as the last time," the demon says.
Dean smirks. "Oh, I bet it'll be all sorts of interesting."
The demon pulls back a little at that. His small delicate hand was on Dean's thigh, and nothing's ever made Dean think less of sex, but now it's tightening on his leg. Maybe the damn demon's pinching a nerve or something. It doesn't seem enough pressure to make it hurt this much.
"We have a deal, Dean," the demon says.
Dean nods. That, they certainly do.
Somewhere in the afterlife, John Winchester is screaming.
*****
Two years after the car accident, Sam can make things move with his mind with the same sort of ease he uses to take a breath or get out of bed. He sits in their motel rooms, in the passenger seat of the Mustang, and makes a tiny flame dance across his fingertips. He responds to things Dean hasn't even said out loud.
His dreams don't hurt anymore, and maybe that should have been the first sign.
*****
There's this legend about unicorns, and the fact that Dean even remembers is something he finds patently ridiculous. There's no such thing as unicorns, at least not anymore if they ever did exist, but supposedly it's only virginal females who can go near them. Untouched and pure, just like the unicorns.
In the less polite parts of his brain, Dean always wonders if there aren't any unicorns anymore because guys like him are working on keeping the virgin population down.
But there's something to that, he thinks.
What happened to a unicorn if someone who wasn't a virgin touched it? What happened if a guy like him touched one? Did it explode or something? One minute you're a beautiful mythical creature and the next you're ground chuck.
Made you wonder if that worked with all mythical creatures.
So, say, if you were full of hate, if you were a seething mass of evil and cruelty, if all you were was death and destruction, what if you came up against something that wasn't? What if the only thing standing between you and the thing you wanted was the only thing that could destroy you?
Dean thinks about that sometimes, about the caress of Mom's hand over baby Sammy's rounded belly and the soft smile on Jessica's face when she'd looked at Sam.
He has nightmares every time the mental images drift through his mind, and his curse is that he never wakes up screaming from any of them.
*****
The first time Dean starts to suspect he's screwed up this time around, they end the hunt with Sam covered in blood, standing under the harsh glow of a streetlight with his fists clenched. Every muscle in his body is tense, and the air tears out of his lungs like he's just run a marathon. His clothes soak and pull down against his skin, dark and growing stiff.
Dean isn't worried about Sam being injured. It's not his blood.
Sam's fists unclench, and the blood's even seeped into the creases in his palms. It still reflect a little in the light, wet and ominous. Kid's going to stick to the upholstery the way it's looking.
Dean won't complain. Not about that, anyway.
"Let's get out of here," Sam says. He tilts his head just so but doesn't look back at Dean, sprawled on the ground like he is.
His voice doesn't sound like his own.
"Yeah," Dean says, swallowing something back. "Yeah, let's go."
*****
Free will means that Sam has a choice.
If Dean keeps telling himself that, he thinks to himself, Sam will make the right one.
You know, eventually.
*****
The damn thing approaches Dean in a pool hall outside Boise in the body of an overweight redneck with some serious body odor problems, flashing him a smile consisting almost entirely of rotten teeth. Dean expects one of them to fall out when he shoves the demon against the nearest wall, because if Dean's teeth are rattling this guy's set of choppers has to be quaking in his gums.
Dean tightens his fingers in the guy's shirt and hisses, "What the hell did you do to him?"
"Didn't touch poor little Sammy, Dean." The demon's smile widens. "That's not part of our arrangement, remember?"
Sam's back at the motel scrubbing the last of the blood from his hair, from under his nails, from his teeth. When Dean last saw him, he didn't look the least bit bothered by any of it.
When the demon exhales, Dean takes a hit of his breath and wonders if something died.
"You're not supposed to go anywhere near him."
"I didn't."
Dean knows damn well he's lying. He knows.
"Watching you try to save Sam is so fucking entertaining, Dean." The demon's hands don't move from his side, but Dean can almost feel them wrapped around his wrists like cold bands of steel. "It's almost precious."
"You leave him the hell alone," Dean says.
"Who says I've come within a hundred feet of the kid?"
Dean slams the demon back against the wall again. It doesn't accomplish anything, but it makes Dean feel better. "You don't have to," he practically growls.
The demon just shrugs. "That wasn't part of our arrangement either."
Dean's fingers twist the fabric of the guy's T-shirt so tight it starts to hurt his palms, and it suddenly strikes him just then. He's had the demon in his grasp before, just like this, shoved up against a wall or thrown to the ground or dragged out of a bar to ensure privacy. He's had his hands on the thing before.
But it's always been someone else's skin, someone else's body.
Not the demon's real body. Oh, never that.
Dean lets go of the demon's shirt, steps back without thinking. If his hands were cold before, they're positively freezing now.
"I still have two more tries," he hears himself say.
"You'll need them," the demon says.
Somehow, Dean doubts that.
*****
Sam fails.
Dean hates to admit it, but he expected that.
This is the fifth try, the fifth chance he's been given to get things right, and somehow Dean knew this one wouldn't work out either. The first time had just been a template for every other time. The night of the car crash, the night at Rosie's house, the day Jess burned on the ceiling -- days he can change, turning points he can pick and choose from.
This time, it had been the day Sam had gone off to Stanford. Dean finally knew what to say, and Dad left Sam go, and Dean went with him just for the hell of it. He dragged Sam to parties, and Sam used him as a study buddy. Hell, if nothing else, Dean would be able to defend himself in a court of law after questioning Sam on a thousand different mind-numbingly boring court cases.
Things had been okay until they hadn't anymore.
Until it was the same ending all over again, Dean dying on the cold floor of some abandoned church in Kansas in a pool of is own blood and Sam nowhere to be seen and the demon leaning over him, smug amusement dancing in someone else's eyes as it says, "Running out of tries there, aren't you, kid?"
Dean just closes his eyes and concentrates.
This try is going to be a hell of a ride, Dean knows, but hell, desperate times and desperate measures, right?
*****
When Dean comes to again, the demon stands over his bed like a nightmare in sharp focus.
And he could be imagining the scent of pumpkin pie and baby powder, the faint rumble of his father's snores from downstairs, a painfully familiar soft babbling from down the hall. But there's no imagining how big the world's gotten, and how goddamn small his hands are.
The demon doesn't say anything, just moves past his bed with a threatening flash of golden eyes.
Dean thinks of Sammy torn apart in his dreams until there's nothing good left in him, thinks of how fast he'd throw himself between that kid and a fucking bullet if he had to, thinks of grasping at unicorns.
And he pounces.
*****
"Sweetie?"
Dean looks up from the floor, startled awake at the voice from the doorway. He thinks he heard someone scream somewhere, dark and terrifying, but then he shakes his head and the sound's not there anymore. It's just little Dean on the floor with bedsheets decorated with firetrucks wrapped around his legs.
Mommy kneels beside him, strokes his thick hair away from his eyes. "Roll out of bed, kiddo?"
After a moment, he nods. It makes sense, 'cause he probably did, but it doesn't feel right.
She smiles then, and it hurts something in his tummy like when he'd eaten too much Halloween candy last night. She takes his hands and they're covered in soot, a thick layer of the stuff that comes away gray and greasy. For some weird reason, Dean feels like he should remember where it came from, like he jammed his hand into a campfire and wasn't even asleep for it. "Hey, where'd this come from?"
"I dunno," Dean says, and sniffles.
She looks at him with suspicious eyes, then sighs. "How about we go wash your hands and say goodnight to your little brother, then?"
Dean can't stop smiling at that, a contented smile that's still gracing his face when Mommy wakes him up the next morning.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,800 words
Spoilers: "Devil's Trap"
Pairing: None (Gen)
Warnings: Bad language
Disclaimer: Look, Kripke, a block of cheese carved to look like William Shatner's head! *grabs onto Winchester family and runs off with them to make them amuse me*
Summary: What Dean remembers most isn't the offer. It's never the offer.
Good Times For a Change
*****
What Dean remembers most isn't the offer. It's never the offer.
It's the demon kneeling beside him, the knees of its black pants glistening a little in the dim light as the material soaks up his blood. Winchester blood. There's only so much of it left in the world, a precious endangered resource, and Dean's spilling a lot of it all over the floor of some dingy old church just outside Lawrence.
The rest of it's still flowing through Sam's veins, wherever the hell he is.
The demon said Sam was standing over a crib somewhere. What Dean remembers most is trying too hard not to think about that.
During the fifth try, Sam's sheets smolder one night from the heat coming off his skin. He cries out in his sleep and it's like a sick release, because one minute the bedding covering his trembling body is giving off smoke and the next the television is on fire.
Dean shoots out of bed -- "Jesus Christ, Sam, what the hell?", he says, but not with any real surprise -- and puts out the fire with his blanket and some water from the bathroom sink. The entire room reeks of melted plastic and hot metal and acrid smoke. Dean rolls the television out of the room and down to the front office, getting loud and noisy about a fried wire or something, how he and his brother could have burned to death in their bed. The desk clerk, a middle-aged woman with an ever-present cigarette dangling from her lips, manages to look appropriately thrown at that and falls over herself apologizing like it was her fault or something.
Sam sleeps through the whole thing.
Maybe he doesn't know, Dean thinks. Maybe this time it's not even his fault.
Seven's supposed to be a lucky number, but times like this make Dean positive its real meaning got lost in translation somewhere.
During the fourth try, he'd told Sam. That much he thinks he remembers, even if everything always gets a little hazy after Dean's got more than a few months under his belt.
That last time, Dean told Sam, and Sam flipped out, and it happened sooner and he did it anyway.
So this time, Dean doesn't say a fucking word about the fires. Not at first.
Maybe he's asking for trouble, but he finally talks Sam into letting Dean train him in using his powers. Not the dreams, okay, never those. Those come like flashes from a lighthouse with the demon as the shoreline and the nightmares as that whipcrack pass of light overhead.
But the telekinesis ... that, maybe he can handle.
"Look, Sam," he says, after the five-thousandth complaint from Sam about how hard it is getting that part of his brain to work, "you ever think about how handy this will come in when you're backed up against a wall by something and there's not a weapon in sight?"
"I guess."
Sam stuffs his hands in his pockets, looks down at the ground, toes at the grass with his sneaker. He looks like a sulky five-year-old with a pituitary disorder.
Dean would throttle him for it, if he didn't already want to throttle him for not realizing how fucking dire their situation is.
"You need to do this eventually," he says.
Sam lifts his head up a little, looking past his overgrown hair in that way that drives Dean nuts. "Yeah, because I'm not a big enough freak already."
Dean frowns. "Not knowing how to use this doesn't stop you from being a freak. It just makes you a stupid freak."
There's this sigh, and then ... "You're right."
"Damn straight I am," Dean says.
And then he smiles, and Sam smiles back, and two hours later Sam can lift a pencil in midair without thinking about it too hard.
It's probably a bad idea, but if the first four tries have proven anything to Dean, it's that ignoring the problem won't make it go away.
Dean told Sam the truth after the incident with Max and his family. There's no way in hell he's letting his little brother turn out like Max, that's for damn sure.
There are worse people Sam could turn out like, and Dean knows it.
The fire thing happens a couple more times before Dean has to say something, before he can't just let Sam sleep in, crack open the windows, and mutter something about a fried radiator when Sam wakes in the morning. Up until then, it's been things Dean can get rid of easily, a chair, the television, the drapes.
This time, it's Dean.
It's just his arm, really, a patch of skin on his left wrist that he won't miss, but he can't hide this one.
If for no other reason than the smell of burning flesh being the one thing Sam may never sleep through again.
It's easier when he's drunk, Dean realizes. Maybe he's more approachable when he ducks out on Sam, heads to the nearest bar, and pounds back longnecks for an hour or so. It's been a year since the car accident, since they tucked Dad's ashes into the trunk of the Mustang Bobby gave them and headed out again. A year, and Sam feels more like a real threat to the demon's health and well-being with every passing day.
On second thought, maybe that's why this is when the demon comes at times like this, and not his blood alcohol content.
Dean downs another beer anyway. It can't hurt.
This time, the damn thing's a girl and a hot one at that, which never stops being annoying. All gorgeous tits and firm little ass, long legs that reach the ground and then some and these ridiculously wide bashful blue eyes that only flicker gold for a split second. They don't even have to anymore, not with Dean.
He leans over to whisper in Dean's ear, and he smells like vanilla and chocolate, like a fucking ice cream shoppe.
"So this time we're making him capable," the demon says. Dean doesn't need to tilt his head for a better look. He can hear the smile in that taunting voice. "That's new."
Dean shrugs, tries to play it casual.
"It's worth a shot," he says.
The demon chuckles at that, the sound deep and rusty. It's foreign and grating coming from the beautiful redhead practically draping herself over Dean.
Dean wonders how tightly he would have to squeeze the beer bottle in his hand before it shattered.
"Here's hoping this turns out to be as much fun as the last time," the demon says.
Dean smirks. "Oh, I bet it'll be all sorts of interesting."
The demon pulls back a little at that. His small delicate hand was on Dean's thigh, and nothing's ever made Dean think less of sex, but now it's tightening on his leg. Maybe the damn demon's pinching a nerve or something. It doesn't seem enough pressure to make it hurt this much.
"We have a deal, Dean," the demon says.
Dean nods. That, they certainly do.
Somewhere in the afterlife, John Winchester is screaming.
Two years after the car accident, Sam can make things move with his mind with the same sort of ease he uses to take a breath or get out of bed. He sits in their motel rooms, in the passenger seat of the Mustang, and makes a tiny flame dance across his fingertips. He responds to things Dean hasn't even said out loud.
His dreams don't hurt anymore, and maybe that should have been the first sign.
There's this legend about unicorns, and the fact that Dean even remembers is something he finds patently ridiculous. There's no such thing as unicorns, at least not anymore if they ever did exist, but supposedly it's only virginal females who can go near them. Untouched and pure, just like the unicorns.
In the less polite parts of his brain, Dean always wonders if there aren't any unicorns anymore because guys like him are working on keeping the virgin population down.
But there's something to that, he thinks.
What happened to a unicorn if someone who wasn't a virgin touched it? What happened if a guy like him touched one? Did it explode or something? One minute you're a beautiful mythical creature and the next you're ground chuck.
Made you wonder if that worked with all mythical creatures.
So, say, if you were full of hate, if you were a seething mass of evil and cruelty, if all you were was death and destruction, what if you came up against something that wasn't? What if the only thing standing between you and the thing you wanted was the only thing that could destroy you?
Dean thinks about that sometimes, about the caress of Mom's hand over baby Sammy's rounded belly and the soft smile on Jessica's face when she'd looked at Sam.
He has nightmares every time the mental images drift through his mind, and his curse is that he never wakes up screaming from any of them.
The first time Dean starts to suspect he's screwed up this time around, they end the hunt with Sam covered in blood, standing under the harsh glow of a streetlight with his fists clenched. Every muscle in his body is tense, and the air tears out of his lungs like he's just run a marathon. His clothes soak and pull down against his skin, dark and growing stiff.
Dean isn't worried about Sam being injured. It's not his blood.
Sam's fists unclench, and the blood's even seeped into the creases in his palms. It still reflect a little in the light, wet and ominous. Kid's going to stick to the upholstery the way it's looking.
Dean won't complain. Not about that, anyway.
"Let's get out of here," Sam says. He tilts his head just so but doesn't look back at Dean, sprawled on the ground like he is.
His voice doesn't sound like his own.
"Yeah," Dean says, swallowing something back. "Yeah, let's go."
Free will means that Sam has a choice.
If Dean keeps telling himself that, he thinks to himself, Sam will make the right one.
You know, eventually.
The damn thing approaches Dean in a pool hall outside Boise in the body of an overweight redneck with some serious body odor problems, flashing him a smile consisting almost entirely of rotten teeth. Dean expects one of them to fall out when he shoves the demon against the nearest wall, because if Dean's teeth are rattling this guy's set of choppers has to be quaking in his gums.
Dean tightens his fingers in the guy's shirt and hisses, "What the hell did you do to him?"
"Didn't touch poor little Sammy, Dean." The demon's smile widens. "That's not part of our arrangement, remember?"
Sam's back at the motel scrubbing the last of the blood from his hair, from under his nails, from his teeth. When Dean last saw him, he didn't look the least bit bothered by any of it.
When the demon exhales, Dean takes a hit of his breath and wonders if something died.
"You're not supposed to go anywhere near him."
"I didn't."
Dean knows damn well he's lying. He knows.
"Watching you try to save Sam is so fucking entertaining, Dean." The demon's hands don't move from his side, but Dean can almost feel them wrapped around his wrists like cold bands of steel. "It's almost precious."
"You leave him the hell alone," Dean says.
"Who says I've come within a hundred feet of the kid?"
Dean slams the demon back against the wall again. It doesn't accomplish anything, but it makes Dean feel better. "You don't have to," he practically growls.
The demon just shrugs. "That wasn't part of our arrangement either."
Dean's fingers twist the fabric of the guy's T-shirt so tight it starts to hurt his palms, and it suddenly strikes him just then. He's had the demon in his grasp before, just like this, shoved up against a wall or thrown to the ground or dragged out of a bar to ensure privacy. He's had his hands on the thing before.
But it's always been someone else's skin, someone else's body.
Not the demon's real body. Oh, never that.
Dean lets go of the demon's shirt, steps back without thinking. If his hands were cold before, they're positively freezing now.
"I still have two more tries," he hears himself say.
"You'll need them," the demon says.
Somehow, Dean doubts that.
Sam fails.
Dean hates to admit it, but he expected that.
This is the fifth try, the fifth chance he's been given to get things right, and somehow Dean knew this one wouldn't work out either. The first time had just been a template for every other time. The night of the car crash, the night at Rosie's house, the day Jess burned on the ceiling -- days he can change, turning points he can pick and choose from.
This time, it had been the day Sam had gone off to Stanford. Dean finally knew what to say, and Dad left Sam go, and Dean went with him just for the hell of it. He dragged Sam to parties, and Sam used him as a study buddy. Hell, if nothing else, Dean would be able to defend himself in a court of law after questioning Sam on a thousand different mind-numbingly boring court cases.
Things had been okay until they hadn't anymore.
Until it was the same ending all over again, Dean dying on the cold floor of some abandoned church in Kansas in a pool of is own blood and Sam nowhere to be seen and the demon leaning over him, smug amusement dancing in someone else's eyes as it says, "Running out of tries there, aren't you, kid?"
Dean just closes his eyes and concentrates.
This try is going to be a hell of a ride, Dean knows, but hell, desperate times and desperate measures, right?
When Dean comes to again, the demon stands over his bed like a nightmare in sharp focus.
And he could be imagining the scent of pumpkin pie and baby powder, the faint rumble of his father's snores from downstairs, a painfully familiar soft babbling from down the hall. But there's no imagining how big the world's gotten, and how goddamn small his hands are.
The demon doesn't say anything, just moves past his bed with a threatening flash of golden eyes.
Dean thinks of Sammy torn apart in his dreams until there's nothing good left in him, thinks of how fast he'd throw himself between that kid and a fucking bullet if he had to, thinks of grasping at unicorns.
And he pounces.
"Sweetie?"
Dean looks up from the floor, startled awake at the voice from the doorway. He thinks he heard someone scream somewhere, dark and terrifying, but then he shakes his head and the sound's not there anymore. It's just little Dean on the floor with bedsheets decorated with firetrucks wrapped around his legs.
Mommy kneels beside him, strokes his thick hair away from his eyes. "Roll out of bed, kiddo?"
After a moment, he nods. It makes sense, 'cause he probably did, but it doesn't feel right.
She smiles then, and it hurts something in his tummy like when he'd eaten too much Halloween candy last night. She takes his hands and they're covered in soot, a thick layer of the stuff that comes away gray and greasy. For some weird reason, Dean feels like he should remember where it came from, like he jammed his hand into a campfire and wasn't even asleep for it. "Hey, where'd this come from?"
"I dunno," Dean says, and sniffles.
She looks at him with suspicious eyes, then sighs. "How about we go wash your hands and say goodnight to your little brother, then?"
Dean can't stop smiling at that, a contented smile that's still gracing his face when Mommy wakes him up the next morning.
