Chapter Text
Dean wanted to know what it took to get a pass so Sam could go out on his own. Sam told him they’d have to go to the local courthouse so that’s where they went. The window for Stock was next to a couple of windows for people paying parking tickets. There weren’t many people in line for it; Jericho was not a town with a lot of slaves.
Sam presented his hand to be scanned and studied his shoes while Dean handed the clerk the title transfer. When the clerk wanted to know where John was, Sam said quietly, “I work for father and son. It’s a family business.”
The clerk looked at Dean. “Yeah,” Dean said. “My dad just bought him. I’m still figuring everything out.”
She sniffed but took Sam’s photo and printed out the pass. It looked like a driver’s license except it was turquoise. “Give it to him when you want him to be on his own. Anyone can demand it at any time and call the contact number to verify that the slave is doing owner approved tasks.” She looked Sam up and down and her expression suggested she didn’t think he should be on his own. “Is he chipped?”
Dean didn’t understand.
“Yes ma’am,” Sam said.
“Good. Don’t let him wander off much,” she said.
Outside Dean said, “Chipped?”
Sam nodded. “Microchip.” He touched the back of his neck, under his hair. “They can check it out with an RF reader. Like they have at animal shelters.”
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Dean muttered.
Shame flooded Sam.
#
Dean was wondering how much more screwed up things could get. Winchester luck, of course. He found out. He headed out late that afternoon to get more fast food—kind of anticipating the look on Sam’s face when he tried a vanilla shake—and almost ran straight into the arms of the cops. He barely managed to call Sam and tell him to get out, go out the bathroom window, and work the case, find dad, before he was chest down on the hood of a cruiser, wisecracking to the local PD.
He’s pretty sure Sam is next. He wonders if they’ll hold him for John to pick up or if they’ll just declare him stolen property or something and he feels vaguely ashamed for not taking better care of things.
Two PD officers go inside the room and come back out fifteen minutes later shaking their heads. Dean’s already sitting in the backseat of a patrol car with his hands cuffed behind him.
“What?” asks the officer standing by the car.
“Bug fuck crazy man,” says another officer. “Shit tacked up all over the walls about devils and ghosts.” He holds up John’s journal. “This is full of that stuff.”
They haul him back to the courthouse where he got Sam’s pass. Apparently Sam did go out the back window. Hopefully he’s got a head start on finding dad. Maybe he’ll run. Dean would. Part of him hopes the kid heads for Canada or something.
He gets booked. Fingerprints (which are already on record for Dean Winchester but it will take hours for that info to come back.) Holding cell with a drunk guy who is sleeping rough and who smells like sweat and piss. Luckily the drunk guy sleeps on the floor under the bunk for the couple of hours that Dean is there.
It’s a small outfit, just a holding cell and a couple of deputies. He finally gets interviewed by the sheriff.
“I made the big time, huh,” Dean says. “Interviewed by the head honcho.”
The sheriff just looks tired. “So you want to give us your real name?”
“I told you, it's Nugent. Ted Nugent.” Dean grins. The guy is slow and not used to much crime.
The sheriff does the threatening stare which is nothing compared to John Winchester’s threatening stare. “I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here,” the sheriff says.
“We talkin', like, misdemeanor kind of trouble or, uh,” Dean smirks, “squeal like a pig trouble?”
“You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall.”
Okay. So they want to link him with a crime. Not good. Totally not good because even if it’s absurd it can tie him up for months.
The sheriff adds, “Along with a whole lot of Satanic mumbo-jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect.”
Dean hates stupid people. “That makes sense,” he points out, “Because when the first one went missing in '82 I was three.”
The sheriff says that they know he’s got accomplices including an older guy, implying what? That John is some sort of killer and he’s some deranged kid following his crazy dad around murdering people?
It’s royally fucked. Then the sheriff tosses John’s journal onto the desk between them. On the first blank page is ‘DEAN – 35-111’.
Dean figures he’s going to be sitting there for a long time.
He’s right. He tells them it’s his old high school locker number without bothering to mention he went to five high schools before he dropped out. The sheriff has the patience of a stone, just keeps asking again and again. Sometimes he pages through the journal and pauses at a newspaper clipping or a drawing of a black eyes.
Dean thinks he will go crazy if he loses John’s journal. The 35-111 proves it, John left it for him to find. 35-111 are coordinates. He knows it. His dad is there and expects him to show up with, Dean is pretty sure, the journal. The information in that journal is irreplaceable.
A deputy leans in the door. “Sheriff? We just got a 911, shots fired over at Whiteford Road.”
The sheriff looks at Dean, “You have to go to the bathroom?”
“No,” Dean says.
“Good.”
The sheriff gets up and starts getting his stuff and it dawns on Dean that the guy is going to leave him sitting here cuffed. Because handcuffs are enough. The sheriff probably figures that by the time he gets back Dean will be hungry and thirsty and need a bathroom and that will be that much easier to interrogate.
There are paperclips in the journal.
Dean is climbing out of the second story office with the journal before they’ve probably left the parking lot.
He’s gonna have to get Sam a cell phone. He has no idea where the kid is. He told him to work the case.
Where would he go next if he were working the case? Hard to tell, the guy has never worked a case before. Maybe the widower of the late Constance? He should have checked addresses before he left…
#
Sam doesn’t know how he feels about driving the Impala. He drove Tom’s Ford Pilot when he picked up his medication but it was a car nobody paid any attention to. This car just begged for attention.
He heard a phone ringing from the glove box. Curious, he reached over and opened it. “Hello?”
“Sam, it’s Dean. Where are you?” Dean’s voice sounded tinny and clipped in his ear.
“I’m driving to the house where Constance is supposed to be buried,” Sam said. “Um…did they let you out?”
“They got a call about shots fired. I let myself out when they left.”
“Oh, good. Um, Whiteford Road is where Walt lives.”
“How did you know…”
“Um, I remembered Walt and Roy bragging about how no jail could hold them. I thought fewer people there was better.”
“Damn, Sammy. You know a fake 911 call is illegal, right?” There was a long pause. “Joke, Sam. You did good.”
Sam let out the breath he was holding. “How did you get away? Did they have you in a cell?”
“Left me cuffed in an office full of small wiry things like paper clips that can be used to pick the locks on cuffs. Should have used zip ties. That takes a lot longer to get out of.”
Sam wondered if he should ask how Dean got out of zipties but decided to hold that thought.
“Listen, my dad left Jericho,” Dean said. “But he left me a message in his journal, coordinates to where he wants me to go next.”
Sam tries to close the glove box but he keeps missing it until he glances at it and sees it’s a little farther away than he thought—the front seat on this car is wide—he slams it shut and looks up and there’s someone right there in the road. Sam hits the brakes but there’s no way he can stop the car in time and before he even has the time to try to turn the car…
…he’s past but there was no collision. He drove right through her. He stops the car, shaken. If he had done something to Dean’s car. And holy fuck, not another ghost. It had to be the ghost. The woman in white.
He’s dropped the phone. He can hear Dean saying, “Sam? Sam!”
He has to take a breath. He glances into the rearview mirror to make sure no ones coming up behind him, he should really pull over—
Constance is sitting in the back seat. She says sadly, “Take me home.”
He almost starts driving. She’s a free woman and she gave him an order. But she’s dead and he doesn’t have to obey dead people. There’s no one she can tell. So he sits, unable to think of what to do next, just thinking, ‘there’s a ghost in the back seat.’
The car is idling.
“Take me home,” she says, more emphatic this time. She is beautiful, with huge dark eyes. She’s ethereal.
“I can’t,” he says.
“Take me home,” she begs.
Stupidly, he holds up his hand and shows her his slave tattoo. He can’t. He can’t because he’s driving a car owned by his master and he’s not allowed.
Constance’s glare is so human and so expected—failure failure failure—and the doors lock themselves. He tries to unlock the driver’s door and can’t although he really can’t leave her in the car, it’s Dean’s. He brought it here. She’s a ghost. She’ll kill him. He has no idea what to do.
“Please,” he says.
Under his foot he feels the gas pedal going down by itself and the black car lurches forward. He grabs the wheel and tries to brake. No no nononono.
In his rearview mirror he sees Constance flicker. It’s terrifying. It’s so cold in the car that when he exhales he sees his breath. He remembers the ghost in the massage parlor and it was cold, too.
It is a terrifying few minutes and Sam never stops trying to get control back of the car. Then they turn off the road onto what used to be a driveway and is now only ruts. The car stops in front of an old clapboard house, abandoned. The engine shuts off. The headlights go off. In the darkness, Sam can hear insects. He’s shivering with fear and cold.
“Let me go, don’t do this,” Sam says.
Constance flickers, ghostly, in the back seat and says in a voice that is all of sadness, “I can never go home.”
She brought them here but now, she doesn’t want to be here? Ghost, his brain offers. Stuck repeating and repeating. He looks at the empty place. Her kids died here. He has never expected to have children, too big to be bred but in this moment he imagines all her failures are right here. “You’re scared to go home,” Sam says.
He looks in back, ready to talk to her but she’s gone.
The she’s in the passenger seat and he makes a startled noise he can’t stop. She climbs into his lap. She’s a free person. She’s a ghost. He should push her off but he can’t bring himself to do it, some part of his brain screaming that if he pushes a free person he’ll be put down. She shoves hard enough the seat reclines and he reacts instinctively, trying to get out, away.
“Hold me,” Constance says. “I’m so cold.”
She is. Everywhere she touches him she leeches the warmth out.
“You can’t kill me,” Sam says desperately (because reasoning with a ghost, right? Brilliant.) “I’m not unfaithful. I’ve never been!”
“You’ve always been unfaithful in your head, slave,” she says. “Just hold me.”
It’s true. He’s always tried to keep a part of himself, the skeptical part that says he isn’t any different than a free person. The part that pretends to be aroused but really isn’t. The calculating part that watches the client and does what ever the client needs and wants but isn’t really part of the act.
She kisses him and her lips are so cold that his lips burn. He tries to reach for the keys and manages to start the car. She pulls back and for a second before she disappears he sees the dead face behind the human one, not decayed but something else, some essential thing that is the ghost and is so wrong.
She’s gone. He has to get out. He needs to take care of the car but he’s going to die if he stays in this car. Think. He’s been in horrible situations before. THINK. Then he feels burning on his chest and can’t help yelling into the night. He yanks his hoodie open and there are five new holes burned through it, his new hoodie. Constance flickers in front of him, on his lap, there and not there, a ghostly weight. He smells mildew. Her fingers fit into the holes in his hoodie and she’s reaching into his chest—
A gunshot shatters the window.
Sam jumps and Constance stops and looks. Dean. Dean is walking towards them, gun in his hand, steady and hard and Sam feels a flood of disbelief. Someone here. Someone to save him. Constance stares furious at Dean and then disappears. She reappears and Dean fires again and again and she disappears.
Think. She’s afraid of something. Sam’s motto is ‘go towards the fear’ and some gut feeling says that to do otherwise is to be a ghost. Walk towards the fear.
“I’m taking you home,” Sam says and guns the car.
The big car spits turf from beneath the back wheels and rockets into and through the rotten front of the house. The wood splinters and pieces of clapboard rain down and the car wedges itself.
Sam can hear Dean clambering through wreckage and then he’s yelling, “Sam! Sam! You okay?”
Maybe in retrospect Sam will realize this is the moment he gave himself to Dean. No free man had ever done this, had wanted to know, really know, that Sam was okay. Not just in the middle of sex and able to keep going okay but really, genuinely okay.
Sam doesn’t know if he is or not but he says, “I think so.”
“Can you move?” Dean asks.
I wrecked your car, Sam thinks. I’m a slave and I wrecked your car.
“Hey,” Dean says and leans through the window to give Sam a hand.
Climbing out, Sam see Constance is in the house. She’s picking up a big photograph of her and two kids.
“You’re good,” Dean says quietly, steadying Sam. “You’re good.”
Constance sees them and her face goes murderous. There’s furniture, a mildewing armchair, and a big heavy bureau. The bureau slides across the floor as if pushed and slams into them, pinning them against the car. Sam pushes against it—sees Dean doing the same. It doesn’t matter.
Sam wants to say that Dean shouldn’t have come here. Sam probably is going to get him killed.
Everything flickers and for a moment the bureau budges before going inert and rooted again.
Constance is scared.
There’s the sound of trickling water and it starts running down the staircase like a creek over rocks. Then it’s pouring. This house couldn’t have running water. It’s just not possible. There are two children, a boy and a girl standing on the landing of the stairs, their hair slicked to their heads, their clothes soaked. A boy and a littler girl, maybe seven and five? They are dressed as if they just got home from school; jackets and shoes…
“You’ve come home to us, Mommy,” they sing-song in unison.
The look on Constance’s face is heartbreaking. Love and fear. She takes a thoughtless step towards them.
Then they are behind her. She whirls around and they lunge to embrace her, a feral, frightening thing. For an instance Sam thinks maybe this is what she really wants, but she howls in rage and fear and there’s something unholy, something twisting reality. Sam see the real Constance, the decayed body of Constance, and something of hate, all at the same time and moisture is vaporizing off of the three of them like smoke.
Then they’re gone.
Sam is aware of Dean against his side, hip to hip, arm to arm. Dean shoves the bureau away and Sam sags against the car. His chest hurts where the ghost touched him.
“This is where she drowned her kids,” Dean says. He walks over to look at the place where she vanished.
“That’s why she could never go home,” he says. “She was too scared to face them.” It sounds like an explanation but really he’s figuring it out as he speaks, brain catching up to intuition.
“You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy.”
Dean checks the car.
“You shot her.”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Bullets don’t really affect ghosts. But they can startle them. Saved your ass.”
“Yeah,” Sam says.
“Ah man, busted headlight. Look at the scratches, you tool.”
Sam thinks that Dean sounds like he’s sort of joking. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should have figured something else out.”
“Next time you do that. For now I’m taking this out of your hide in laundry duty and car washes. If I can trust you to wash her.”
Her? Sure, whatever. “Of course,” Sam says.
#
The kid was cool under fire. Dean thinks maybe he can actually help with hunting. Until Dean figures out what to do with him or Dad says to sell him. Fucker did scratch the living hell out of Baby.
He doesn’t like the idea of selling Sam. He tells himself it’s because slavery and an under-regulated, barbaric institution. His Dad is pro-union and anti-slavery because of it. Slaves undercut unions. They’re inefficient. Usually unskilled. Dean’s not a political animal, he knows it. It’s not like he’s writing letters to his congressman about the mistreatment of slaves. (He doesn’t really think he has a congress critter, he’s pretty sure you have to have an address to do that.)
Still, Sam came through. Thrown into a situation that had already killed eight men, Sam figured out to take Constance home. He’s smart. And steady under fire. And loyal. He could have tried taking off but he did what Dean asked (told him) he worked the case.
The Impala still runs fine. Just down to one headlight.
They can’t stay, of course. Dean doesn’t even want to risk going back to the hotel. The guns are in the trunk, they’ll hit more thrift stores and fuck he’s going to have to hustle some cash.
Sam is tense in his seat for the first hour or so but Dean puts on Metallica and after awhile he can see the adrenaline has drained away and Sam is on the verge of dozing.
“Why didn’t you run?” Dean asks.
“You told me to work the case,” Sam says.
“Yeah. So why didn’t you run?”
Sam looks a little cornered. “I’m not like that.”
“You’re a good and loyal slave,” Dean says, not keeping the sarcasm out.
Sam nods.
“Look, you barely know me. My dad left you in a motel room for over a week. Don’t bullshit me. Why didn’t you run?”
“There’s no where to run,” Sam says.
“Canada,” Dean says.
“Bounty hunters bring back runaways all the time.”
“Yeah,” Dean said. “But you might get away and even if you don’t, at least you’d be free for awhile.”
“They bring runaways to the stock farms and they execute them in front of the kids and breeders,” Sam says. “Make an example.”
“What? I thought there were laws about killing slaves.”
Sam nods. “It’s illegal to kill a slave unless they have assaulted a free person, murdered a free person, run away, or committed felony theft of greater than $1,000. But people do it anyway.”
Dean realizes he doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to think about what hangs over the head of a slave. What hangs over his head if he isn’t careful. Hell, Sam has seen him commit crimes which means Sam could get him enslaved. If he sells Sam, it’s like leaving a loaded gun out there.
“Can slaves testify in court?” Dean asks.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Kids do, so slaves can. I think it’s kind of the same. People don’t think slaves are reliable.”
“You could turn me in,” Dean says.
“For what?” Sam says, looking genuinely startled.
“Identification fraud. Escaping custody.”
“Why would I do that?” Sam asks.
“I dunno. Get a better owner? Make yourself a hero?”
“I’m not a hero,” Sam says. “If anyone is a hero, it’s you. You’re the one facing stuff like that woman all the time.”
Dean grins. “Well it’s not like that all the time.” Sam knows about ghosts because he lived in a place with one. Hell, he was owned by a hunter. “So is Walt a hero?”
There is just the barest of hesitations and then Sam looks out the window and says, “Of course.”
“Walt is a moron and an asshole,” Dean says. “Constance would have eaten him alive.”
Sam tries to hide his smile but Dean is amused at the sharp crease of Sam’s dimples.
“Let’s find a drive through and then a motel. I’ll get you a strawberry milkshake, princess.”
Sam laughs, an easy laugh.
#
The place only has a king but the drop after adrenaline has Sam so tired that Dean thinks he wouldn’t know if they re-routed the freeway through the motel room. He eats his burger and fries and barely has the energy to really enjoy his strawberry milkshake. “I think this is my favorite,” he says. “Better than chocolate.”
“We’ll get you a tutu and pony.”
Sam smirks and starts to lie down on the floor.
“Nah,” Dean says. “You take that side.”
It’s hard to decipher the look on Sam’s face. Dean ignores it and lays down on his side and flicks on the TV.
“I’m going to watch a little TV and finish my beer,” Dean says. “Go to sleep.”
“Yessir,” Sam says but Dean doesn’t correct him. Sam curls up on top of the comforter.
“Jesus, dude. Get under the blankets.”
Sam obediently does and in moments is asleep, mouth slightly open, breathing like a child.
He looks innocent. Dean reminds himself that he’s not.
#
The television is the only light in the room when Dean wakes up with a gasp. He had been dreaming and then in the dream a woman sat down next to him in a bar and started fondling his dick. He was still wearing pants and it was like the zipper was up so no one else could see and it made no sense but it was a dream.
The feeling builds and builds until it brings him awake, and when he awakes there is a spike of arousal that ripples through him.
“What?” he says.
“Shhhhh,” says Sam quietly in his ear. “Let me do this.”
Dean is so close to coming.
“Do you want my mouth on your cock, Dean?” Sam says and it almost feels like the dream.
“Nooooo,” Dean sighs. He should clock Sam. Knock him off. But he’s muddled from sleep and the exhaustion of the hunt and he thought he was okay for the night with the salt at the doors and windows.
The feeling recedes enough for him to at least try to gather his thoughts but it’s hard to think around Sam’s hand on his dick. Sam gently drags his fingernails across Dean’s balls and it’s electric and Dean gasps.
“Your cock is so big,” Sam whispers. “It’s so hot in my hand. Your skin is so hot and it’s shining red…”
Dean feels it building, the orgasm. He’s tired. It feels so good. He should stop Sam. He tenses, chasing it, chasing it.
When he comes his whole body shakes with it. He curls his toes and everything locks up for a moment. Sam is holding him, not stroking, just letting him come.
He lays there and shudders with the aftershocks. After a moment Sam gets up. He can feel the cool where Sam was pressed against him and he rolls onto his back. The light is on in the bathroom and the water comes on.
He was watching the history channel before he fell asleep and now there is something on about super weapons and the third Reich. This is screwed up. Sam just gave him a hand job. He isn’t sure he wants hand jobs from Sam. In fact he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want hand jobs from Sam.
Sam pads back with a glass of water and a warm wet washcloth.
Dean grabs the washcloth from him. “I’ll do it.” He cleans himself up. He’s wide awake now. “What was that!”
Sam blinks. “I’m sorry. I should have used my mouth.” He sounds like a schoolboy realizing he did the assignment wrong. Studious. It’s an ‘I’ll do it right the next time,’ tone.
“NO!”
Then Sam is suddenly still.
“Look! I don’t want that from you!” Dean says.
“Yessir,” Sam says. “I’m sorry sir.”
“Is that what you did for Walt?” Dean snaps.
“No sir! I mean, I blew Walt but only when he ordered me.”
There is some distinction here. Sam only blew Walt when ordered but he gave Dean a hand job without being asked. “So that was, what, a gift?”
Sam is sitting on the edge of the bed, his bangs hanging down, staring at his hands. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Don’t fucking call me ‘sir’! And don’t so that! I don’t want to have sex with you!”
“Yes, um, yes, Dean.”
“Fuck.” Dean flops back on the bed.
On the television, they drone on about a giant gun that would shoot shells that weighed seven tons. Dean doesn’t really want to hear about shooting guns at the moment so he fumbles with the remote and turns off the television. The only light is the light from the bathroom. He has a flash of the feeling of Sam’s hand on him.
“Do you want to change sides?” Sam asks quietly.
“What?” Dean is so pissed right now.
“There’s a wet spot. It’s my fault.”
“Shut up, turn off the light and come back to bed. And don’t touch me.”
“Yessir—Dean.”
Dean listens as Sam does what he’s told and climbs into bed.
#
In the morning they don’t talk about it. Dean takes them to a drive through and gets breakfast. Sam doesn’t like coffee, Dean can tell, but Sam won’t say anything and Dean is happy to let him suffer through it.
Apparently, when they were dealing with Constance, they were out of cell phone range because Dean sees only then that he has a message from John.
“Dean, check the journal. Take care of Sam.”
Nothing more.
# # #