With the sun streaking through the back passenger window Sam was just starting to wake when they pulled up to the house. There was a dull ache on his temple from resting his head against the window all car ride, but it wasn’t strong enough to get him to move. In front of him Dean moved around in his seat. Dean had sat in the front seat the entire ride. Typical. Sam always got relegated to the back. It took Dean poking Sam a number of times before Sam opened his eyes. Dean leaned over the seat and smirked.
“Mornin’ Sunshine!” Dean said. Sam had been giving Dean the silent treatment for the last few days and it wasn’t clear if Dean was intentionally becoming more annoying to break Sam or if Sam really was just done with Dean’s shit, but either way Dean was way too cheery for Sam’s tastes this morning.
Sam closed his eyes and shifted onto the back car bench like it was a bed. Sleep didn’t last long, though.
“Sammy! Wake up and get out here,” Dad hollered outside the car.
Sam’s eyes fluttered open. Looking over at Dean, still firmly planted halfway over the seat but now with a stupid looking grin on his face, it was obvious that if he continued to delay it would only be Sam in trouble. Letting out a huge, overdone sigh Sam sat up and finally got out of the car. Dad waited by the walkway, arms crossed and eyes glaring. He didn’t say a word as Sam lazily stepped out of the vehicle and slowly closed the back door, but Dad did start to tap his foot very obviously.
Dad took the lead down the walkway. Their destination was a rickety, old house with chipping paint. It laid in the back of a junkyard. Cars and car parts piled around the yard. Dean peeled off from his brother and father to check out an old Chevy.
“It’s rusted out, Dean,” Dad said.
“Nah, she just needs a little TLC.” Dean ran his hand over the hood, probably catching tetanus while doing so.
Sam and Dad continued up the porch. Dad knocked and opened the screen door. “Bobby!” he said. Dad actually sounded happy for once.
“Come on in,” Bobby Singer’s gruff voice echoed through the halls.
Sam and Dad entered the house. There was a small hallway that they followed to the living room. The wallpaper was peeling. In the living room Bobby sat at a messy desk with too many phones, each labeled with the name of a different government agency. Books were scattered across the floor.
“You give my agent anything he needs,” Bobby said before hanging up a phone. It had FBI labeled on top of it. He looked over at his new guests and smiled. “Glad to see you guys made it here in one piece.” His eyes shifted between Dad and Sam. “Dean?”
“Admiring your junkers,” Dad said.
“He’ll have plenty of time for that over the next few days…how long are you planning on being away anyway?”
Sam walked away from the adults. The room was filled with cases of books. Lore of Demonlogy. History of Witchcraft. Mythology of American Monsters.
Dad and Bobby were both hunters. Monster hunters, that is. They spent their whole lives tracking down the things that go bump in the night, things most people didn’t think actually existed, and killing them. Sam and Dean had been raised in that life after their mother was killed by one of those creatures.
“Not sure,” Dad said. “Don’t think it’ll be more than a week.”
Sam picked up a book off the shelf. It was covered in dust. He blew on it, dust particles flying into the air. Humanoid Creatures.
“See anything interesting?” Bobby asked.
Sam put the book back on the shelf. “Not exactly New York Best Sellers, in here.”
Dean entered the living room before anyone had a chance to reply to Sam. His fingers were black with oil. “You need help around the junkyard?” Dean asked.
“You’ve been teaching this boy mechanics?” Bobby asked, now interested in Dean instead. It wasn’t hard for Sam to wander out of the room unnoticed. He slipped upstairs and checked the second floor of the house out.
Dad was going on another hunting trip, this one apparently too dangerous to bring his sons along. Dean had asked to come along, but Dad told him they’d just slow him down. Dean had pouted but never said a word in argument. Dean never argued with their dad. No, that was Sam’s job.
“Why go at all, then?” Sam had asked. The argument had occurred in their motel room two days ago, back in Oregon. Dad had just finished hunting a coven of witches. He’d taken Dean along him on that hunt, but as usual Sam stayed back at the motel. Dean was eighteen and been hunting with their father on the regular for a few years now. Dad and Dean wanted to start training fourteen-year-old Sam to join their hunts, but he showed little interest. The hunter lifestyle of moving town to town every few weeks was terrible enough as it was.
After the Oregon hunt his family deserved a little R&R, but before they knew it they were packing up to hit the road again. Dad had received a phone call about a hunt in southern California.
Dean had cracked jokes about working on his tan and learning to surf before Dad had dropped the bombshell that the boys weren’t coming along on this one. They’d be staying with their uncle Bobby in a small town called Sunnydale. There was a brief argument but when Dad said stop, Dean predictably did as he was told. He didn’t fool Sam, though. Dean was still angry. So Sam took up the mantle.
“If it’s so dangerous that Dean can’t come, then why are you going alone?” Sam had asked. As much as he hated the hunter life he loved his father more. This hunt sounded too dangerous.
“I don’t get to pick and choose which monsters to hunt,” Dad had said. “People’s live depend on me.”
Sam had tried arguing more, telling his father that he was ruining their lives by risking making them orphans, but that only upset Dad more. Now the topic had moved on to Mom, and Sam was the bad guy for bringing her up.
If that’s what he gets for trying to defend Dean and keep Dad safe then he was better off keeping his mouth shut. Dean, ever the martyr, would lay down his own life before questioning their father’s orders. Sam wasn’t going to live a life like that. If they didn’t care about his wants and needs then he wasn’t going to care about theirs.
Sam wandered down the upstairs hallway. There were three rooms upstairs, and a bathroom. Despite knowing Bobby for many years Sam had never been to his house before. Bobby always met up with Dad for hunts.
Sam entered the room at the end of the hallway. It was a small room filled with another jam-packed bookcase. A small bed fit in the corner of the room. This was clearly one of the guest rooms he or Dean would be staying in. It didn’t seem like much, but it brought a smile to Sam’s face nonetheless. It was his own room, however temporarily that may be for. He’d never had his own room before. He’d spent his whole live traveling from motel room to motel room, sharing it with his dad and brother. The closest he’d ever gotten to his own room before was when Dad and Dean went off on hunts. But this was different. In a room like this Sam could at least pretend his life was normal, if only for a few days.
Footsteps echoed up the stairs and Dean appeared in the hallway.
“There you are,” Dean said.
Sam turned to face his brother but didn’t speak.
“Dad’s about to leave. You should say goodbye.”
He should just walk back into the room and close the door on Dean’s stupid, smug face, forgetting everything that laid behind it. But he didn’t. He followed Dean down the stairs. This was his one last chance to finally get some information from dad and no matter how slim that chance was it he couldn’t just pass on it.
Dean gave Dad a hug. “Just a week,” Dad promised. Experience said that that promise would probably be broken.
Sam waited at the bottom of the stairs. “What, no hug?” Dad asked.
“Are you at least going to tell us what this hunt’s about?” Sam asked, his first words in days.
Dean shot Sam a glare. Everyone wanted him to just shut up and let things be, but Sam couldn’t help himself. This wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair.
“What’s so terrible that you have to abandon us at Bobby’s?” Abandon was probably too strong a word, espeically considering the fact that Sam was actually looking forward to the visit, but it was the only word choice that might make Dad question his decision and finally cop to giving them some information. Either that, or it would piss Dad off even more.
“Sam, stop it,” Dean said..
“Listen to your brother,” Dad warned. “I’m not having this fight again.”
“Whatever,” Sam said and went back upstairs. If Dad wouldn’t talk to him he wouldn’t talk to Dad either.
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