Chapter Text
It probably makes Sam a bad person but he can’t deny that this is beautiful.
He enlarges the picture to full screen and lets his eyes trace the thin, delicate lines where tissues mingle, intertwining into something as horrific as it is mesmerizing.
“Hey,” Dean says, sauntering into the library with a huge yawn.
“Hey.” Sam doesn’t look away from the screen.
Dean walks up to him, looming over his shoulder.
“You rewatching Hannibal?” He pats Sam’s back, and Sam can hear Dean’s lascivious grin. “Call me when you get to the girl-on-girl bit.”
“No, it’s—” Sam clicks back to the news article. “I think it’s a case.”
Dean keeps his hand on Sam’s back as he reads. Sam stays very still.
“A dude was grafted to a tree?” Dean sounds halfway between amazed and disgusted.
“Yeah.” Sam nods at the picture. “Tree fibers weaved through his veins and everything. They even stuffed poisonous flowers into the body, though they didn’t take the organs.”
“So, someone watched too much Hannibal.” Dean straightens up, taking his hand off Sam, and Sam suppresses a sigh. “Could be a regular psycho dude.” He pauses for a second. “A regular psycho doctor dude.”
Sam scrolls the article down.
“The tree wasn’t there yesterday,” he reads.
He can feel the way air shifts around Dean as his brain switches into active hunting mode.
“Okay.” Dean claps Sam’s shoulder. “It’s a case.”
“Norfolk, Nebraska,” Sam says, closing his laptop. “If we leave now, we’ll be there before dark.”
“No breakfast?” Dean says, a little whiny.
Sam stands up and gives him a stern look, even as he wants to laugh at Dean’s distraught face.
“No breakfast.”
Dean sighs but doesn’t protest.
They go to grab their bags and, when they settle in the car, Sam produces a wrapped bacon and egg sandwich he’d prepped as he was eating his own breakfast an hour ago.
“Here.” He hands it to Dean, who pokes into the wrapping and turns huge, lit-up eyes at Sam.
“You’re the best, Sammy.” He looks like a five-year-old who got a litter of puppies for Christmas.
Sam tries not to show how downright ecstatic he is, but he’s pretty sure he’s failing hard.
Dean digs into the sandwich as he drives, and Sam listens to his messy chewing and thinks that this is a great way to start a day.
He taps on his tablet, trying to learn what he can about the victim before they get to the crime scene, but there isn’t much. Steven Heaps, a widower with a young kid, working as a nurse at a local hospital, beloved by his co-workers—at least, judging by the outpouring of grief on his last Facebook post.
As he relays this information to Dean, he wonders if Steven was still alive when someone made a tree grow through him. He imagines these foreign strands weaving through a body, pushing life out of it, inch by excruciating inch.
The thought becomes too disturbing, and he shoos it away, focusing instead on the way morning sun brightens his brother’s eyes.
He finds this one of the most beautiful things in the world, which probably should be disturbing, too—the things Sam finds beautiful and the way he only thinks he should be ashamed of it.
Maybe it’s the impurity of his blood, maybe it’s what multiple deaths do to one’s frame of reference, maybe it’s the accident of his birth into this particular family at this particular time with this particular twist of mind.
Sam doesn’t know, and mostly, he doesn’t care.
Dean’s his brother. Sam thinks he’s beautiful. The Earth revolves around the Sun.
They got a job to do.
In Norfolk, the visit to the morgue yields nothing except another moment of macabre fascination. For anyone else, it would be nightmare fuel, but Sam’s always been a freak.
They move on to investigating the crime scene, which is a neatly manicured lawn in front of a neatly built house with an air of a neatly organized life.
Nothing here was prepared for a tragedy. Sam feels sorry. He also feels envious.
“Who are you?” a strict female voice whips through the yard.
Sam looks up to see a tall, strongly-built woman with coils of black hair and eyes full of daggers, standing on the porch, hands on her hips.
He reaches for his badge, Dean faster by a fraction of a second.
“Hello, ma’am,” he says, his smooth business voice, and if it were Sam on the receiving end of it, he wouldn’t just let him in his home; he’d ask him to move in. “Agents Roeser and Bloom, FBI.”
The woman studies their badges, nose wrinkled.
“The police already were here,” she says.
If only Sam got a nickel every time they hear that sentence.
Dean gives her the usual spiel: due diligence, a follow-up, not-at-liberty-to-discuss. She considers them for a few seconds, and Sam sees it, when her grief seeps through the mask of caution.
“Stella Heaps,” she says, quiet, voice catching at her last name, as if something about it hurts her. “Steve was my brother.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Sam says, and he is, he is every time.
Stella nods. She swipes quickly at her left eye and clears her throat.
“What can I do for you, Agents?”
“Do you know if anyone wanted to hurt Steve?” Dean starts.
Sam watches Stella’s face. She doesn’t look like she’s lying.
“Everyone loved Steve.” Her hand flies up to her eyes again. “I don’t—I can’t—A tree?” she asks abruptly, confusion wrinkling her features. “How could a tree grow overnight?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Dean says, quite honestly.
“Do you live here in Norfolk?” Sam asks.
She shakes her head.
“I just came from Omaha.” She glances behind her at the house. “To get Chris.”
Steven’s ten-year-old. The murder must have happened past his bedtime, based on the time of death in the coroner’s report, but the kid could still know something.
“Can we talk to him?” Dean asks.
Stella looks between them, hesitating.
“He’s—pretty shaken,” she says, her hands moving restlessly in front of her stomach.
“We’ll be brief,” Dean assures her.
There’s something about Dean’s rough charm that works on some witnesses and doesn’t work on others, just like Sam’s soft eyes can either endear or annoy. After this many years on the job, they’ve learned to read people well enough to know who has higher chances of inducing cooperation, but it’s still a gamble.
This time, they win.
“He’s in his room,” Stella says, walking back into the house and motioning for them to follow.
She leads them upstairs, stopping before a closed door with a Batman poster on it. Sam notices Dean nod approvingly out of the corner of his eye.
Stella shuffles on her feet for a moment, but raises her hand and knocks.
“Chris, dear?” she calls, gentle, but there’s no response. “Some nice people want to talk to you.”
Still no response.
She looks at Dean helplessly, but Dean gives her a swift smile, and the tight line of her shoulders relaxes.
Dean walks up to the door and raps his knuckles on it.
“Hello?” He leans against the door frame, easy and casual. “Detective Gordon calling.”
There’s a long silence, but the door slides open, just an inch.
Dean grins at Stella, pats her upper arm, and steps into Chris’s room. She slips behind him, hovering by the wall, an unobtrusive but reassuring presence for her nephew.
Sam follows them into the room, catches Dean wink at Stella, and tries not to feel too jealous.
As usual, he fails.
Chris is a thin, light-haired boy, a little small for his age. He stands in the middle of the room, his back to the window, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides. His blue eyes, just like his father’s, are huge, darting between Sam and Dean, like he’s trying to decide which one of them he can trust.
Sam isn’t surprised when Chris stops on Dean.
“You’re not Detective Gordon,” he says, more confused than angry.
Dean takes a few steps forward and crouches by Chris, looking up at him.
“No,” he agrees. “My name is Dean. But I do what Detective Gordon does.” He leans in, as if sharing a secret, and Chris mirrors him. “I catch bad guys.”
Sam lets Dean do his thing and moves slowly around the room, checking it for any clues.
“You do?” Chris is asking Dean in the meanwhile, and Sam can tell the kid really wants to believe it.
“I do,” Dean tells him. “And I need your help.”
Sam finds a slightly unsettling number of Batman action figures, but then again, maybe this is normal for kids who don’t have their lives uprooted every couple of weeks.
He listens to Dean coaxing Chris into sharing everything the kid knows about the last night, that warm, gentle voice that Sam associates with home.
This voice belongs to Sam, it should be Sam’s only, and Sam wants, madly, to put his hands over Chris’s ears to stop him from hearing Dean be kind.
He turns to the window as he tries to keep himself in check. It looks out on the neighbor’s house, a squat brown building with two floors and vines all over the roof.
What catches Sam’s eye is a tree that grows on the neighbor’s side of the fence between the two houses.
“Dean?” He waves to get Dean’s attention. “Look at this.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” Dean tells Chris and stands up, coming up to the window.
Chris turns around, his eyes growing even larger than when they first came in.
Sam points at the tree, and Dean’s eyebrows rise.
It’s a huge tree, common for this part of the country, nothing out of the ordinary, except that it looks like it’s been halved. The branches that should be reaching toward the Heaps’ residence are cut, yellowish stumps glaring at Sam from the other side of the fence.
Dean shares a look with Sam, his forehead wrinkling in a small frown.
“Chris?” He nods at the window. “What can you tell us about that tree?”
The kid starts shaking, his hands now firmly in fists.
“Bad tree,” he spits, stomping his leg. His eyes fill with tears. “Bad boy,” he adds, quieter, cheeks reddening quickly.
“Chris?” Dean steps forward, moving to crouch by the kid again, but Chris flinches.
“Go away,” he whispers, and it’s clear they aren’t getting anything else out of him.
“It’s all right, Chris,” Dean says, kind again, and Sam wants to swallow his words to have them for himself. “You really helped.”
Chris sniffles loudly, but they all pretend they didn’t notice.
Sam and Dean file out of the room, while Stella stays back for a moment to calm Chris down.
“Thoughts?” Dean asks.
“He thinks it’s his fault,” Sam says. That look in the kid’s eyes, Sam knows it intimately—the ever-growing guilt, dripping the blood of the person you love the most in the entire world.
Dean rubs his chin, thoughtful.
“Talk to the neighbors? They must know something Stella doesn’t,” he says, and Sam nods. “I’ll take the woman who found the vic, you take the tree person?”
Sam nods again.
They say goodbye to Stella, leaving her their business card.
“We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” she says, as she tucks the card into her dress pocket. “I don’t think this place is good for Chris.”
“Good plan,” Dean says.
He shakes Stella’s hand, and Sam wants to barge between them, break them apart, claim Dean as his, push her out of their lives until she’s less than a memory.
It’s been getting worse lately. Sam doesn’t know what to do, if he can do anything at all.
“Take care,” Dean tells Stella, oblivious, and turns to walk away.
Sam hurries after him. He doesn’t miss the little dreamy smile at the corner of Dean’s mouth.
They separate with a brief nod at each other, Dean going to the opposite house, while Sam approaches the one on the right.
The grass on the lawn is taller than commonly accepted, and it’s peppered with wild blooms, red, yellow, and purple petals bright in the sunlight. Bushes line the outside of the house, and the walls are covered with vines, just like the roof. Several trees tower in the yard, almost making it feel like a forest.
Sam straightens his tie and knocks on the door.
He’s greeted by a tall, thin white man in a brown suit with a green shirt. The man’s dark hair is all wild tangles, and there’s a smear of something that looks like dirt on his left cheek.
“Agent Bloom, FBI,” Sam says briskly, flashing his badge. “Can I ask you a few questions about your neighbor, Steven Heaps?”
The man frowns.
“A sordid affair, that.” He doesn’t sound particularly devastated.
“Did you notice anything strange in the last few days?” Sam asks.
The man opens the door a little wider to step onto the porch, and Sam notices a strange symbol painted on the wall behind him. It’s a circle with several wavy lines arranged across it. Something about it triggers Sam’s instincts, and he memorizes the symbol to look it up later.
“Strange like what?” the neighbor asks, and Sam gets an uncomfortable feeling that he’s being issued a challenge.
He keeps his tone neutral.
“Changes in behavior, new visitors, weird smells—”
“Smells?” the man interrupts him.
“Anything out of the ordinary,” Sam says, as if this is just any normal questioning.
The man thinks—or pretends to, Sam isn’t sure.
“No, nothing.” It’s curt, and now Sam’s pretty confident he’s being lied to.
He nods in the direction of the tree that should be straddling the two properties before it was all cut up.
“What happened to your tree?” he asks, and it must be the right question because the man flinches wildly.
“Look, I’m busy,” he says. Either he’s a very poor actor, or he isn’t bothering to hide his irritation. “So, if that’ll be all.”
He steps back and slams the door before Sam can ask another question.
Sam knows when people are being just rude and when people are being hinky.
This is obviously the second.
He meets Dean by the Impala, leaning on the hood and letting himself watch while Dean walks the short distance between the house and the car.
It’s nothing serious. He’s simply tracing the lines of Dean’s body as he swaggers down the street, maps them on the multiple images of Dean he has cataloged in his head, so he knows what Dean’s going to say before he opens his mouth.
“What’d you find out?” he asks, because Dean’s bursting with new information, Sam can see that in the slightly harder taps of his boots against ground.
Dean comes up to him and sneezes violently.
“First,” he says, somewhat miserably, “Mrs. Gilbert has way too many cats. Like, no person should have that many cats. It should be illegal.” He sneezes after each sentence.
Sam suppresses a chuckle and pushes away from the hood to pat Dean on the back.
“You’re safe from the evil kitties now,” he says lightly, earning himself a glare that’s half-lost behind another sneeze.
Dean shrugs his hand off and stomps toward the driver's side. Sam walks around to his own side, and they climb into the car, closing their respective doors in perfect sync.
Silly as it is, Sam really likes when they do that.
Dean starts the car, pulling it forward and through the city, driving slower than he usually does, and Sam knows he’s looking out for the most non-fancy vacancy signs.
“We’re staying?” Sam asks, not that he’s got anything against it. They’re still nowhere with the case, apart from a reticent tree-sharing neighbor.
“Steven had a beef with the tree guy,” Dean says. “Name’s Lorcan Woodward, by the way. He’s also a Gemini and his favorite fruit is blueberries.” He sounds like even relaying this information is torture.
Sam kinda wants to meet Mrs. Gilbert, if only to thank her for making Dean’s face twist into these delicious grimaces.
“Blueberries aren’t fruit,” he points out, prompting Dean to grimace harder.
“That’s your takeaway?” Dean sounds like he wants to punch Sam.
He probably does. Sam wouldn’t even blame him.
“What was the beef?” Sam asks politely, hands folded in his lap.
Dean throws him a look that means he isn’t nearly convinced by Sam’s seemingly good behavior, but the case comes first.
“One of Mrs. Gilbert’s cats got stuck in that tree,” Dean starts, fingers tapping at the wheel. “Before it was cut up, that is. Used to sprawl all the way to the kid’s window.”
Sam has a feeling he knows where this is going.
“So, the kid saved the furball,” Dean sounds unhappy about it, “and he kinda liked it a little too much.”
“How much?”
Dean sighs.
“You noticed how he likes Batman?”
“Yeah, Dean, that was hard to miss.”
“He’s got a cape and everything. Like you did.” He throws Sam a glance that’s mostly nostalgic and only a little jeering. Something warm pools in Sam’s chest, and he tries not to let it show. “So, the kid started to dress up like that and sneak out at night to, I’m quoting here, ‘patrol the neighborhood.’”
“Can’t judge him,” Sam says, perfectly true.
“Yeah, well, kid’s just being a kid.” Dean takes another turn, still looking for a place.
“Lemme guess.” Sam’s turn to sigh now. “He went Pollyanna with that tree.” No need to specify that he means the movie version; he’s pretty sure Dean never read the book.
“Yup.” Dean nods at something he sees out the window. “Didn’t break anything, but Daddy wasn’t amused.”
“He’s the one who cut off the branches.”
“Yup.”
Sam watches as Dean pulls the car into the parking lot of what is to be their motel for the night.
Sure, Sam likes living in the bunker. Something stable, something permanent, something theirs. Dean loves having his own room, and Sam’s happy to see him happy.
It’s just that he can never stop looking forward to sleeping in the same room with Dean again.
They settle in, order pizza, and find themselves sitting opposite each other at the kitchenette table, Dean opening his laptop, Sam waking up his tablet.
It’s cozy, and maybe Sam should be institutionalized for finding investigating a gruesome murder with his brother cozy, but screw that. He hasn’t had a lot of cozy things in his life, so he’ll take everything he can.
“I saw this at Lorcan’s,” he says, as he gets his notebook and draws the symbol from the guy’s house.
He slides the notebook toward Dean, who tilts his head, studying the drawing.
“Looks familiar,” he says with a light frown, like he’s trying hard to remember something. “Definitely saw squiggles like this in the lore.”
“Yeah, same.” Sam gets the notebook back and takes a picture of the symbol to upload it. “I’ll look it up.”
“You do that,” Dean says with an approving nod, while his fingers fly over his keyboard. “I’ll check this place for any other tree-related accidents.”
They set to work, each on one’s lead, and Sam’s as happy as he can be.
He scrolls through the search results, sneaking glances at Dean who’s devouring pizza while typing. Dean’s keyboard is probably the grossest in the country, with grease stains and pie crumbles and ketchup spills. The thought makes Sam hide a smile.
If there’s anything about Dean that Sam won’t interpret as endearing, he’s yet to find it.
“Gotcha,” they say at the same time, lifting their eyes to look at each other.
Sam wants to hug Dean. He keeps himself in check, like he does several times a day.
“You first,” Dean says, and Sam hands his tablet over to him.
“It’s a druidic protection sigil.” Sam watches Dean’s eyebrows bunch up in a frown as he skims the article about the symbol and nods along. “Nature magic.”
Dean hands the tablet back to Sam, face serious, though it’s a little undercut by a smudge of sauce on his chin. Sam grabs a tissue and reaches out to wipe it off.
“Dude,” Dean protests, flapping his hand at Sam, but he doesn’t really pull away.
Sam balls up the tissue and tosses it into the bin behind Dean. He looks at Dean expectantly.
“Fetch?” he says, as innocently as he can.
Dean’s glare is magnificent.
“It’s been three years,” he says dryly. “Find another joke.”
“You mean human years or dog years?”
Dean kicks him under the table.
“You wanna hear what I found or you wanna get your ears boxed?” Dean asks, though the threat is empty, and they both know it.
Sam clears his throat and folds his arms primly on the table.
“Tell me, o wise one, what secrets you have uncovered.” He widens his eyes a little, as befits a worshipful disciple.
Dean stares at him but decides to let this one slide.
“Not exactly a tree, but close enough,” he starts as he turns his laptop toward Sam. There’s a piece of mushroom stuck to the top corner of the screen. Sam is a little amazed at how Dean managed that. “The dude who lived there before Steven. Chemist, worked with herbicides.”
Sam recognizes the house in the photo Dean’s showing him, except the lawn looks completely different.
“What’s with the flowers?” he asks, studying the vivid blooms all over the grass.
“Grew there overnight.” Dean taps the top of the screen. “Ragwort, wolf’s bane, foxglove.”
“Poisonous flowers,” Sam says, nodding in recognition.
“Sounds druidic to you?” Dean asks, turning the laptop back.
“Very.”
They look at each other, sharing the satisfaction of hitting pay dirt with their research, and Sam’s swept by a wave of adoration, a deep joy of being able to have a moment like this with Dean.
How he ever thought he could live without it is unfathomable.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dean asks, and Sam knows what he means, but his heart still stutters, afraid that Dean would somehow find out what really goes on in Sam’s head.
“That tree beef ended bloody,” he says, dragging his thoughts back to the case.
Dean nods, face grim.
“Now,” he says, breaking the eye contact and turning his attention back to his laptop. “How do we gank a druid?”
Sam opens a new tab on his tablet.
“Druids aren’t witches,” he says, pulling up the Men of Letters files and running a search through them. “They follow the natural order.”
“You mean they’re just regular dudes?” Dean sounds a little disappointed.
Sam skims the search results.
“Yep,” he confirms. “Regular bullets will do. Or a knife. Or snapping the neck. Or using that Chinese mind-control technique. Or—”
“Yeah, okay, I got it.” Dean closes his laptop. “Man, we know too many ways how to kill someone.”
Sam looks at him warmly.
“You like that,” he says, and he finds this endearing, too.
Dean hesitates for a second before his lips tip up in a smirk.
“Yeah, I do.”
His phone starts buzzing before Sam can dissolve into an enamored puddle. Dean pulls it out and frowns at the screen.
“Stella?” he asks as he takes the call. “Whoa, slow down. What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t put her on speaker, and something roils uncomfortably in Sam’s stomach.
Dean listens to Stella, his frown deepening. He glances at Sam with hard eyes that say things just got a lot worse.
“Is his cape still there?” Dean asks, already standing up and going for his jacket. “His Batman cape.”
Sam rises, too, following Dean.
“Okay, sit tight,” Dean says into the phone, gentler than he usually talks to witnesses. “We’re on our way.”
He hangs up and turns to look at Sam, but Sam talks first.
“The kid’s missing?”
Dean nods. Sam doesn’t need to ask anything else.
They get into the car, and Dean speeds toward their destination, while Sam’s stomach grows spikes.
He shouldn’t feel like this, he doesn’t have the right to, and he knows that, he knows this very well, has known it his entire life.
The bad thing is, he can’t stop.
“Slow down, dude,” he says tightly as Dean swerves around a corner.
“A kid’s in danger,” Dean says, throwing Sam a shocked glance.
“Can’t help him if we’re smears on the road.”
“You know me better than that,” Dean says. He keeps speeding.
“Yeah, I do,” Sam says, sliding into bitterness. “You sure you ain’t just hurrying to get into Stella’s pants?”
Dean’s head snaps toward Sam, and he almost misses a red light.
“The fuck, Sam?” He hits the brakes hard, wincing at the screech. “You think we maybe have more important stuff right now?”
He’s right, of course, except nothing is more important to Sam than Dean.
“Fine,” he grumbles, sliding a little down in his seat.
“Fine,” Dean says, curt and angry, hands tight on the steering wheel.
He gets them to the Heaps’ house without causing any accidents. They find Stella pacing the porch, twisting something in her hands.
“Agents,” she says, darting their way as soon as they step on the lawn. “I just—” She stops to catch her breath. Her cheeks are red and wet. “I went out to get milk, and he—when I got back— he was—”
Dean puts his hands on her shoulders. A growl tangles up in Sam’s throat, barely suppressed.
“‘s okay,” Dean says, “we’re here, ‘s gonna be all right.”
Stella blinks at him, eyes big, trusting. She lifts her hand and opens it.
“I found this in his room.”
It’s a half-crushed black flower with what looks like whiskers sprouting from the center.
“Black bat flower,” Sam recognizes grimly. Their druid has a special sense of humor.
Dean drops his hands from Stella and looks at Sam, amazed but hiding it under a veneer of irritation.
“Dude, how do you even know that?”
Amelia loved flowers, especially exotic ones. Sam doesn’t want to think about it.
“I just do,” he says with a shrug that warns Dean off pressing further.
Stella looks between them, mouth open hesitantly.
Dean returns his attention to her.
“We think we know who took Chris,” he says, serious but kind. “Go inside and wait. We’ll get him back, promise.”
At least he’s including Sam in this promise. It still sounds too intimate for Sam’s liking.
Stella nods, crushing the flower even further, though probably unaware that she’s doing it. She glances once more between them before turning and walking toward the house. Dean watches her, a little too long.
“C’mon,” Sam says, and his irritation isn’t a cover for anything.
They round the fence between the two houses and reach Lorcan’s door. No one answers when they knock, but they sort of expected that.
Sam gets his lockpick kit out and gets to work. Dean watches his back, gun at the ready.
It soothes some of the unease in Sam’s stomach. They’re working together, and there’s an intimacy in that no one else can share with Dean.
No one, ever, not on Sam’s watch.
The door gives, and they slide into the house, guns and flashlights up. Dean checks the rooms on the right, while Sam takes the rooms on the left. They meet back by the front door, both shaking their heads.
Dean makes a few sharp gestures—I take upstairs, you take the basement—and Sam nods.
He approaches the door leading downstairs and turns the knob carefully, soundlessly, like he’s been trained to. As soon as he opens the thick door, he can hear Lorcan’s voice.
“This’ll make you be a good boy,” Lorcan’s saying, cloying-sweet, “who doesn’t talk to strangers, even if they’re the damn FBI.”
“I don’t wanna,” Chris’s voice comes, and Sam can tell he’s crying.
He pockets his flashlight and creeps down the stairs, keeps the gun steady in front of him.
Chris sees him first.
It’s unfortunate.
“Mr. FBI!” the kid yelps, just as Sam brings his finger to his lips.
Lorcan whirls around, and Sam jumps down the rest of the stairs, landing fluidly into a shooting stance, gun trained on Lorcan’s chest.
Behind the druid, Chris is tied to a chair with what looks like a crown made of tender light-purple blossoms on his head—false dragonhead, or the obedient plant. Lorcan’s flower language is really a bit on the nose.
“Let the kid go,” Sam says as Lorcan considers him. He doesn’t want to shoot a man in front of Chris, but he’ll do it if he has to.
“Agent Bloom, was it?” Lorcan’s still talking sweetly, like Sam’s just another kid for him to subdue. “Why don’t we have a little chat?”
“You killed Steven Heaps,” Sam says, taking a step forward, gun steady.
Lorcan rounds the chair, putting Chris between him and Sam.
“He hurt my tree,” he says, low and bitter now.
Chris sobs, his eyes huge and leaking hard.
“It hurts,” he whines, squirming in the chair.
Sam squints at his head and notices that the stems of the crown are moving, sprouting roots that disappear into Chris’s skin.
“Take it off,” he orders.
“Why?” Lorcan looks sincerely surprised. “I’ve told that brute to tame his child so many times.” He pats Chris’s head. Chris flinches and cries harder. “Now the child will finally learn to behave.”
“I’m not gonna ask twice,” Sam says, cocking his gun.
“Oh well.” Lorcan lets out an exaggerated sigh and makes a sharp gesture in the air.
Before Sam can pull the trigger, dark-green vines shoot down from the ceiling, grabbing Sam’s wrists and yanking them up. He shouts and drops the gun, as more vines rise from the floor, taking a hold of his ankles. Within seconds, he’s suspended in the air, immobilized.
“Lorcan,” he grits out, strained but with all the malice he has.
The druid saunters toward him and looks him over critically.
“Let’s see,” he murmurs, putting a hand on Sam’s chest. His fingers feel cold even through Sam’s layers. “Oh yes, I hear whispers. So many whispers.” He looks at Sam like he’s impressed. “You’re a naughty man, Agent Bloom.”
While Sam tries to find a response to that, Lorcan drags his shirts up, produces a knife off his belt, and starts carving something into Sam’s chest, right over his heart. Sam jerks violently, but the vines hold, too strong for Sam to do anything about it.
Lorcan works in swift strokes, chanting an incantation in a language Sam doesn’t recognize. As soon as the words stop, Lorcan brings his palm up, draws the knife across it, and smears his blood over the cuts in Sam’s chest.
Sharp pain lances through Sam’s entire body, he shouts, and everything goes dark.
*
“Sam? Sammy!” Dean’s yelling into his ear, and Sam wants to swat at him, tell him to stop trying to rupture his eardrums, he can hear him perfectly fine.
His right arm drops from somewhere high, swinging limply along his body, and Sam remembers that something very recently went very wrong.
“Dean?” He’s surprised at how weak he sounds, barely hears himself at all.
“Sammy,” Dean repeats, and Sam’s left arm drops, too.
His entire body drops, feeling like he’s been cut with a thousand glass shards from the inside. He blinks his eyes open and finds Dean crouched on the floor, cradling Sam in his arms, his face panicky but not devastated, so things didn’t go that wrong.
Sam slumps into Dean, inhales Dean’s stable, comforting smell, and lets himself have a moment of unadulterated infatuation with his brother.
God knows, he doesn’t let himself have such moments often enough.
“Talk to me, Sam,” Dean says, hand brushing over Sam’s hair. “You good?”
Sam doesn’t know, not really. On the one hand, his body feels all kinds of wrong, but on the other hand, Dean’s here, Dean’s gonna make it all right, Dean’s gonna save him.
“Yeah,” he says, nodding into Dean’s chest. “Yeah, ‘m good.”
It’s brief, and Sam’s senses are still a little swimming, but he thinks Dean presses a kiss to the top of his head before gently easing him up and away.
“I gotta,” Dean says, nodding at something behind him, and Sam looks around him to see Chris still tied to the chair, the flower crown digging into his head.
It’s probably a bad thing, that Dean’s ready to ignore the entire world if Sam’s hurt, but it makes something inside Sam’s chest grow all warm and tingly.
“Go,” he says, pushing Dean toward Chris, and Dean nods, standing up and dashing across the room.
Sam sees Lorcan’s body on the floor, his shirt soaked in blood, his eyes blank glass. Good riddance, that.
He stands up and steps toward Chris, too, helping Dean untie the kid. Dean carefully tears the crown off the kid’s head, the roots dangling off it, tips bloody. They inspect Chris, finding only surface wounds, no indication that the plants managed to penetrate the kid’s skull.
“You’re gonna be all right, kid,” Dean tells him, patting Chris on the shoulder.
Chris sniffles, gets up from the chair, a little wobbly, and throws himself at Dean, hugging his waist. Dean brushes his hand over the kid’s head, saying some more soothing nothings, while Sam pretends he doesn’t want to push Chris away and take his place.
They get Chris to Stella, who bursts into tears and proceeds to thank them, talking mostly to Dean. Sam gloomily expects her to hug Dean, too, and she does, of course. Dean pats her back, which kills the rest of the warm feelings in Sam’s chest.
“What about—him?” Stella glances at Lorcan’s house when she finally releases Dean.
“He won’t bother you anymore,” Dean says.
She nods and thanks Dean again, practically eating him up with her eyes.
“Do you want to come in for a cup of tea?” she asks, and Sam wants to strangle her a little.
Dean, astonishingly, shakes his head.
“Paperwork awaits,” he tells her with an apologetic smile. Sam tries not to stare too much. “Take care.” Dean winks at Chris and turns around, leaving Stella to watch him disappear into the car.
Sam hurries after him, torn between elated and suspicious.
“You sure you don’t wanna stay?” he asks Dean, because he wants to be sure himself.
Dean gives him a long, searching look.
“You sure you’re good?” he asks, brow furrowed a little. “You look pale.”
The warm feeling in Sam’s chest returns.
“Just tired,” he says, which feels true.
“Yeah, me too.” Dean’s eyes linger on Sam for a moment, almost like he can’t look away.
He does, eventually, starting the car and driving them back to the motel where they fall down in their respective beds, and Sam drifts asleep to the sound of Dean’s breathing close, so close to him.
At first, his dreams flow as usual—Dean, Dean, Dean again, smiling and laughing and loving. Almost real, almost tangible. Sam doesn’t try to touch him or talk to him, just watches. It’s enough. Been enough all his life, will have to be enough for the rest of it.
He almost doesn’t notice when things start to change, Dean’s outline blurring gradually until he’s not there anymore, displaced by someone else, a brown figure with a crown of green leaves. It looks almost like a human, but reminds Sam more of a scarecrow.
“Agent,” it says, and Sam recognizes the voice.
Lorcan.
Logically, Sam knows the druid can’t hurt him. He’s dead. Sam saw his body.
Logic doesn’t work in dreams.
The druid cackles, a grating, barking sound, and something sharp slashes through Sam’s insides. He drops to his knees, clutching at his stomach, but there’s nothing solid under him, and he looks down to find tree roots slithering under him, alive, bloodthirsty.
They rip through Sam’s jeans, latch onto his skin, pushing through it, and Sam screams.
“Sammy!” Dean’s voice drags him awake.
It’s dark in the room, and Sam can’t see Dean’s face clearly, just his eyes reflecting the neon lights from the outside. Dean’s bent over him, one hand on Sam’s shoulder, the other brushing Sam’s forehead.
His hands are so warm.
“Dean,” Sam says, weak, childlike.
“Right here,” Dean says, and he is, he always is. “You okay?”
Sam isn’t, not yet, but he will be. If Dean keeps touching him, he will be.
“Bad dream,” he says, hoping that’s all it was.
Dean nods and straightens, taking his hands off Sam, leaving Sam abruptly cold under the sheets. He walks away from Sam’s bed and into the bathroom. Sam almost calls after him.
He listens to water run and closes his eyes, telling himself that was enough. More than enough, actually.
Dean’s doing so much for him, Sam really shouldn’t be asking for more.
He doesn’t expect it when the mattress dips and Dean talks to him again.
“Here,” Dean says, soft, like he seldom is. “Drink.”
Sam opens his eyes and sits up, focusing on the glass of water Dean’s holding out for him. His throat feels rough, probably from the screaming, and he accepts the glass, chugging it all down in long, grateful gulps.
He hands the empty glass over to Dean, who looks at him intently, like he’s debating if he should say anything else.
Sam wonders what it could be. What he would like it to be.
In the end, Dean says nothing, but he ruffles Sam’s hair before standing up and returning to his own bed.
Sam’s heart races, and he doesn’t know if it’s the nightmare or Dean or both.
When he closes his eyes, vines twine around his wrists, tightening until they cut off his blood flow and his hands go numb. They grab his ankles, too, until he can’t feel his feet.
He doesn’t scream this time.
His throat is full of thorns.