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* * *
“Seriously, dude, what is with you and clowns? Did one touch you inappropriately as a kid or something?” Dean teased.
“No, of course not,” Sam muttered.
Dean paused. He prided himself on knowing every posture and facial expression his little brother could make. Sam was always self-conscious, even embarrassed about his fear of clowns. He always became defensive and tense when it came up, but this was something else. He went rigid, but it was his expression that Dean zeroed in on. It was one of faux or forced indifference; one he typically tried when he wanted to hide that Dean was actually irritating him or hitting home on something he didn’t want Dean to know. “Holy shit,” Dean says, staring at his brother.
“Wh-what?” Sam swallowed, his shoulders raising.
“Holy shit you were.”
Sam’s brows pinched and he shook his head as he crossed his arms. “No, I said I wasn’t.” He tried to make his voice even but it raised in volume.
“When the hell did this happen?”
“Dean, I said I wasn’t.”
“Sam, shut up, when the fuck did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sam's jaw was clenched and he was looking more and more pale and more and more tense. “Dean.”
“Sam, when the hell did this happen? Don’t fucking tell me it was at that damn Pennywhistle’s menagerie place?”
Sam swallowed and turned away. “I said I wasn’t,” he says again but quieter.
“Sam, cut the crap, we both know you’re lying, tell me dammit.”
Sam’s hands came together, thumbing his palm and his shoulders curled forward making him look smaller. “It was… just—just t-touching, it-it’s not like he, um, y-you know, r-raped me or anything.”
“Jesus, don’t do that, Sammy, it was fucking traumatic either way. Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?”
Sam shrugs and it took a moment for him to answer verbally. “I just… I guess I didn’t want you to… look down on me because I… because I… just let it happen.”
“Sam, I… You didn’t just let it happen, man. You were a fucking kid, you were obviously scared. And I’d have never looked down on you, okay? You should have told me, I would have helped you. I would have beat the shit out of him—no, I would have fucking killed him for you.”
“I know. I knew that but… I-I don’t know it… it was… humiliating. And… And after a while, I knew you’d blame yourself.”
“I fucking left you there.”
“You thought I’d be safe there.”
“I did, and look how damn wrong I was. I’m so sorry, Sammy.”
“Don’t apologize, Dean, I don’t blame you.”
“I’m gonna find this guy and I’m gonna gut him.”
“Dean, it was like twenty-something years ago.”
“I promise you, Sammy, I’m gonna find this guy and he’s gonna pay for hurting you.”
Sam shrugs. “He could already be dead.”
“And I’m gonna make sure of that.” Dean leaned forward to try and meet Sam’s eyes. “What else, Sam?”
“Wh-what?” he says startled, voice a little shaky.
“You have that look, that you wanna tell me something, there’s something else?”
Sam swallowed and looked away. It was a moment longer before Sam opened his mouth again, and even then it took a few tries to get the words out. “There were… others too… When I was… a kid.”
“Others? Other clowns?” Dean ground his teeth. Sam shook his head, swallowed again. “Who else?” Dean urged.
“It, um…” Sam looked uncertain.
“Don’t say it doesn’t matter, Sam.”
“No, I… I mean it-it doesn’t because they-they’re already dead now, so it-it doesn’t really matter.”
“What? Who is?”
“My, uh… teachers, some of them, um…”
“Shit, your teachers too?”
“It was, um, they were possessed by demons. It was just a little bit of, uh, fondling, less than the clown ever did.”
“And they’re dead? How do you know they were demons?”
“Uh… L-Lucifer, when I was, um… he kind of… When I said yes to Lucifer, when he was possessing me, he rounded up some demons that were, uh, Azazel's gang. Apparently he had been watching me even as a kid.”
“And a few of them touched you?”
Sam nods.
“And you’re sure they’re dead?”
Sam nods. “Lucifer… he ripped them apart with… with my hands.”
“Good.”
Sam cringes. “It was awful, I could… I could feel… it was… gruesome.”
“I bet it was but it’s good that they’re dead, they deserve that for hurting you. I just wish I could do it myself, but I’ll get that fucking clown, don’t you worry.”
“Dean—”
“Don’t, don’t you dare tell me I shouldn’t. He’s a monster like any other thing we hunt and nobody—fucking nobody gets to lay a hand on you. I’m hunting that son of a bitch down whether you like it or not and I’m getting you justice. I’m just sorry that I didn’t notice, I was supposed to watch out for you and all this just flew under the radar. I’m gonna make him pay though.”
“Dean, I made sure you didn’t know. I made sure that… I didn’t want you to know. I-I’m sorry.”
“I told you, Sam, don’t you apologize, not to me, not to anyone for that.”
Sam meekly nodded.
He had always made fun of Sam for being scared of clowns and played all manner of pranks on him, but now Dean felt like crap for all of it. He knew it wasn’t like he knew why Sam was scared of them, but knowing now he felt like a horrible brother. A failure.
He failed Sam. It was his fault that his brother was tormented by a clown, and was traumatized by it. Dean was the one who left Sam at Plucky’s, who didn’t pick up the signs that his brother was being hurt, it didn’t matter if Sam made sure he didn’t know because Dean should have still known.
Sam had begged him not to drop him off at Plucky’s anymore and had even threatened to tell their dad. Dean had been pissed at Sam for that.
And when he found out Sam was scared of clowns, he tormented his own brother. Probably gave him nightmares and flashbacks and made him feel like he was back with the clown that started it all.
He was a horrible brother.
So he immersed himself in finding that son of a bitch, and ideas of what he was going to do to him ran through his head. He was determined to make it up to Sam, to fix how little he could fix.
* * *
Sam flinched when he saw what was on Dean’s screen. “D-Dean.”
“Oh, shit.” Dean closes the lid a little, hiding the group photo of clowns. “Sorry, I thought you went to bed.”
“Couldn’t sleep, definitely not going to now.”
“Sorry. Finding the guy from Plucky’s.”
“He most likely doesn’t even work there anymore,” Sam mutters sitting down across from his brother so he wouldn’t have to see the screen. He takes his brother’s glass filled with a finger of whiskey and knocks it back.
“They keep surprisingly good records of who worked there over a few dozen years.”
“How’d you get the records? Hacked in?”
“I guess that would have worked too, but no, I used my FBI alias.” Dean looks a little put off. “Uh, look… I hate to ask but, um, I’m not going to know which one of these creeps hurt you unless, you know… I get a description.”
Sam nods, then reaches over to grab the decanter to refill the glass. “They all mostly looked the same; green hair and a big yellow bow.”
Dean grunts.
“I don’t even remember that much, but, uh, he… his finger…”
“What about it?”
“It was… crooked. Like it was broken then set and healed wrong. Is that—is that enough to go on?”
“Maybe. I’d assume there ain’t a lot of guys who worked there and had a broken finger. You remember the year? Even the state we were in would help.”
Sam sighed. “I think… I was eight… maybe nine? So… the years about 1991-ish, 1992-ish. Just to be safe you could look between 1990 and 1993.”
“I’ll check out 1991 and 1992 first, if I come up with nothing I spread out the search.”
Sam drinks a few glasses of whiskey while his brother taps and scrolls quietly on the laptop with a determined look on his face. “You're really serious about this, aren’t you?”
Dean frowns. “Of course I am, Sammy.”
His brother’s resolve caused a smile on his face. “You really don’t need to do this, though, it’s been nearly two decades.”
“Yet, here you are still scared of clowns.”
He looked away. “I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t what caused… my coulrophobia.”
“You’re scared of tight spaces too?”
Sam huffed a laugh. “No.” Sam tilted his head. “Well, a little, but it’s not exactly the tight space that gets me, uh, anxious, it’s more like being trapped. And being scared, being frightened, being anxious about something is different from having a phobia. The tight spaces you were talking about is claustro- phobia. I said coulro - phobia, fear of clowns. And you have aero - phobia; the fear of flying.”
“Okay, nerd.”
Sam chuckled before knocking back his drink. After a few minutes, he sighs. “You know, sometimes I think… I wonder how many more kids had gotten traumatized by this guy because I didn’t… I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s not your fault, Sammy, it’s this fucked-up bastard.”
Sam nods and lowers his head. “I get it, I do, but… I still feel like I could have just… ended it. Sorry I didn’t say anything, Dean.”
Dean sighed. “It’s okay, Sam. We’re gonna get him now.”
“I feel like it won’t change much. The damage was already done. It’s been so long.”
The damage was done, and sure maybe it won’t change much, but Dean was still determined to kill this son of a bitch.
“Dean, I’m… I’m a little worried.”
“About what?”
“Well you, uh… you’re very… adamant about going after this guy and you… you say you’re gonna get justice for me and stuff but… you said you’d kill him and I actually believe you’ll do it but this guy—this guy is human, Dean, not-not a vampire or a werewolf or—”
“Sam, I am killing this guy, I am. I don’t care if he’s human or not, I just am, of course after I torture the guy first. Just because he's not a vampire or a werewolf doesn't make him any less of a monster. Plus he hurt you, so that earns him a bullet to the head in its own right.”
“We don’t hunt human-monsters,” he reminded him.
“Yeah, well, sometimes we do.”
“Technically we don’t, we usually point the cops in their direction.”
“Cops suck at their job.”
“Should I tell Jody and Donna you said that?”
“That I said, what? They’re both hunters, man, not cops.” Sam raised a brow. “Sammy, we’ve tipped off the cops when things not in our wheelhouse come up, but a lot of times it doesn’t come to anything. There’s little they can do a lot of the time. Some of the people who got arrested got to walk, we should have dealt with it ourselves. I’m not saying we should hunt human-monsters too, just that if we run into something we should take care of it ourselves.”
Sam frowned. “You mean, if you find someone that hurts me you’ll end them.”
Dean merely shrugged. “Sure, but it’s not like I’m gonna let some kid or a woman get hurt by some civvie either.”
His brother gave him a soft smile that made him embarrassed.
* * *
He researched, interviewed, and hounded Plucky workers, ex-workers, and higher-ups for days, until finally—finally, he found the bastard. And he was still alive.
He cleaned his guns and knives as he played the plan in his head. What blade he's going to use first, how he's to work him over, and what the killing blow in the end is going to be. He’ll make him suffer just as he made Sammy suffer.
He cooked dinner for himself and Sammy, and as they cleaned up their dishes he told him, “I’m pretty sure I found him.”
“Found who—” Sam flinched. “Oh, uh…”
“I’m just informing you, I’m gonna go, you know, tch. You want to come with? You can sit in the car, or lounge around a motel while I sort it out.”
“Uh… n-no, I… no.”
“Okay, I’ll be back in a day or so. You good?”
“Yeah, just…” Sam set his plate in the sink. “Look, I’m not going to stop you, Dean, just be careful, I don’t want to get a call saying you were arrested for murder.”
“It ain’t murder, Sammy, it’s ganking another monster and, uh, I don’t know, enhancing the world.”
Sam snorts. “Right, that’s not exactly how the cops will see it. Just—just be careful. Alright?”
“I will, Sammy. And anyway if I do get arrested you’ll be my one jail call.” Dean winked at him.
Sam scoffed at him.
“Don’t stay up too late, okay? And call me whenever, alright?”
His little brother rolled his eyes. “Yeah, mom. I better not get a call from a police station, Dean, I’m serious.”
* * *
He worried about Sammy the whole time he was gone. He debated on waiting until the morning to haul the clown-freak somewhere for some one-on-one time, but he didn’t want Sam to be left alone in the bunker for longer than he had to. So the very moment he had an opportunity he took it.
He wanted to work the guy over for days upon days, but he’d make due with causing tremendous pain in a short amount of time just to get back to Sam’s side more quickly.
He enjoyed every moment of it. The sick freak deserved it. Deserved every fucking moment.
He made sure to clean himself up before he made his way back to the bunker. It was nearly two in the morning and he wanted to sleep as well as get smashed, but before anything else he checked on his little brother, who had his nose pressed in a book.
“Thought I told you to not stay up too late,” he greeted.
Sam looked up, startled. “Dean, you’re back already?” He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Sammy.”
“No, no, it’s not nothing. Did something happen?”
“Nah, according to plan.”
His little brother gave him a look between pity and hurt. “You shouldn’t have forced yourself to kill him, to hurt him. I already told you—”
“No, Sam, that’s not—no. I had no problem with that part, not a damn one. The guy deserved it, he deserved much more than what I did to him.”
Sam watched him intently as he went over to the decanter.
“Then, what happened?”
He didn’t want to tell Sam, he didn't want Sammy to feel more guilty than he already felt. The kid had no reason to feel guilty.
Sam let him toss back two fingers before getting up and confronting him. Dean sighed. There was nothing he wouldn’t let Sam do, or get away with. “Just… the bastard he… He had a wife and-and a kid, man, he was… to his own kid. That sick fucking bastard.”
Sam lowered his head. “I should have—”
Dean grabbed his face and yanked it up to meet his eyes. “No, Sam, don’t think like that, look, there were kids before you and kids after you. Maybe the kids before you thought the same thing, if one of them said something maybe the guy would have been caught and he wouldn’t’ve touched you. Don’t you dare punish yourself for this. Okay? It ain’t your fault.”
Sam nods, but Dean knows that Sam would continue to feel as if it was, just as Dean blamed himself. “Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“I’m good, Sam. I just… the guy made me sick.” Dean’s lip curled. “I feel better knowing what I did to him, knowing he’s in Hell now going through it all over again. I gave Crowley a heads-up to let the fucker suffer real good. I even got him to confess on tape, let his kid get the help he needs, but shit… he’s got one hell of a therapy session coming.”
“You didn’t like, kill him in front of the kid, did you?”
“What? Course not. Although it could have been a bit therapeutic for him.”
Sam shakes his head. “I doubt it. Um… I read, um, that they typically escalate, it’s just thinking about it, then searching out victims, getting close, then touch—touching, then they—”
“God, Sam, why are you punishing yourself like that?”
Sam gnawed on his lip. “Just… how-how bad off is the kid?”
“Stop it, Sam, the guy’s gone now, burning in Hell, and that kid will get the help he needs. Now I need a drink or five, so come on, Sammy, have a drink with me. A celebratory drink.” Dean throws an arm around Sam to lead him to the table with the decanter and two glasses. He knew they both weren’t going to sleep well.
“It… it doesn’t really change much, even with him gone… I still don’t like clowns,” Sam murmured.
“Hey, you said it yourself, some clowns kill.” And some clowns were even worse, he added in his head. “I honestly don’t like clowns much either, little brother. Forget those freaks, let’s drink a few then head into my room and watch something. I’ll let you pick the movie if you’re still conscious by then.”
Sam snorted.
* * *