“MIT?”
“Dean is going to kick our asses.”
Sam’s harder than Harry’s, but they were both definitely getting their asses kicked when they got back to Bobby’s. Sam knew he should have left Harry with Dean, it had just felt good that Harry wanted to go with Sam.
Harry didn’t think Sam was an idiot for wanting to follow up on a possible lead on the yellow-eyed demon. Sam ignored the thought that reminded him that Harry had no clue where they were headed. It was still cool that Harry wanted to go with him.
It wasn’t like it would be dangerous either. Bobby vouched for the woman, Ellen, and the place she ran. It was a place for hunters, a safe haven. Harry was probably safer with Sam than he would be with Dean.
And that was the argument Sam built in his head for when his phone rang with one of Dean’s numbers.
Harry had been relaxed in the passenger seat, but he rolled his shoulders after Sam said Dean would kick their asses.
“How mad is he going to be?” Harry asked, watching Sam closely. “Just, er… so I’m prepared.”
“At you?” Sam looked over at him and grinned. “Not much. Me though? I’ll get my ass kicked for sure.”
Sam added on to his mental defense he was building. Technically, Dean kidnapped Harry first, so it wasn’t like Sam did anything worse than he did. It was just a quick road trip with his little brother, nothing different than what Dean did with Sam all the time.
When Sam’s phone rang a minute later, Sam and Harry glanced at each other while Sam carefully pressed down on the accelerator of the minivan he swiped.
“Is Dean sort of in charge of you?” Harry asked when the phone stopped ringing. It started again before Sam could even find a way to describe his and Dean’s relationship.
“Dean’s always been in charge,” Sam said with a wry smile. “We grew up on the road with Dad and he would leave us behind a lot when he was working. It was always ‘Sam, listen to Dean. Dean, watch out for your brother’.”
Sam didn’t remember it, only what he had been told. But when their mom died and their house burned, it was four year old Dean who carried six month old Sam out of the house. Not Dad, Dean.
It made Sam feel guilty for letting Harry go with him while Dean was so firmly ‘anti-hunting’ but not guilty enough to answer the next time Dean called.
“So… Dean’s a bit bossy?” Harry asked with his voice lilting in a way that Sam was pretty sure was a teasing tone.
“Yeah,” Sam huffed out a laugh at that understatement. “Dean’s a little bossy, but he’s usually right.”
Not always, but usually. Dean was dead wrong then and Sam knew it. How could he say they needed to just ignore the demon that took their parents, took Jessica? That demon nearly killed Dean and had some crazy plot that Sam knew involved people like himself and Max Miller.
Dad would have wanted them to kill the demon, with or without the Colt. Sam didn’t know how they would do it, but he hoped that Ellen Harvelle might have some answers for him.
Time passed just as quickly in the car when Sam got to talking with Harry as it did when Sam listened to rock with Dean. Sam asked Harry about his school, which led to an interesting conversation about boarding schools for criminally inclined teenagers.
“Dude, Dean and I would have been sent there for school if it was an option,” Sam assured Harry. “What’d you do? Steal a car?”
“I did once, actually,” Harry said cheerfully. “But I was already a student then.”
And since Sam wanted to hear the story about the car, he forgot to ask what sent Harry to a school for criminals in the first place. It was probably just the Winchester genes, the boys had never made an honest living in their life.
Harry told Sam about stealing a car with his friend Ron and how they wrecked it in a tree. Sam told Harry a similar story about Dean hot wiring a Dodge when they had been eight and twelve and how the power steering failed and Dean smashed a light post with it.
Then Harry asked Sam about other stories from when he was a kid and Sam just sort of… started talking.
Talking about a lot of subjects with Dean was like navigating a loaded minefield. One misstep by either of them and they were blowing up on each other. Harry didn’t have his own view on anything though and so - for the first time in years - Sam was free to just talk.
Sam told Harry about the good and bad parts of growing up on the road. The newness that became ordinary after a while, the difficulty in keeping up with classes and making friends. There was always the feeling of being the odd man out in his classes, the odd man out in his family.
Sam talked about how Dad was gone so much of Sam’s childhood that he might as well have been raised by Dean. Dean was the one that made sure Sam had dinner at night and clean clothes for school. Dad only seemed to show up long enough to get drunk, announce they were leaving, then fight with Sam when Sam complained.
Then Sam felt guilty as hell for even complaining to Harry of all people about a man who Harry flew across the country and nearly died to meet.
“Sorry,” Sam muttered, ashamed. “Dad was… He was stubborn, but he was still our dad.”
Harry was staring out the front windshield when Sam looked at him. Harry didn’t seem like he was going to blow up for Sam’s critique, he just looked thoughtful and maybe a little sad.
“He doesn’t actually sound very nice,” Harry said quietly. “I thought he might have been.”
Sam wanted to argue, he did. Sam wanted to defend John Winchester to the son that never got to meet him. But Sam would rather someone be honest with him than lie and he gave Harry the same basic respect.
“Dad wasn’t nice, but he loved us,” Sam said firmly, believing it. Dean had been on death’s door after the demon wrecked in their car. The doctors were asking about organ donation and end of life measures. When Sam thought he was going to lose Dean, when there looked like no hope, suddenly Dean made a complete recovery.
And Dad died.
Sam didn’t bring it up to Dean, he didn’t want him to think the same thing Sam did, but Sam thought Dad made a deal with a demon at the end. His life for Dean’s, maybe he threw in the demon-killing-gun to sweeten the pot.
Maybe it made Sam a terrible son, but if that was what happened - if Dad traded his life for Dean’s - then Sam could get over all the other shit. All Sam had ever needed was Dean, though Sam doubted if Dad would have made the trade for Sam’s benefit.
Harry was quiet for the next fifty miles, not saying much of anything until they stopped an hour from the Roadhouse to get gas and drinks. Harry probably only spoke up then because Sam had just as many questions about Harry’s life as Harry had for Sam.
“What about you?” Sam asked him, watching Harry sip slowly at the fountain pop he got. “What’s your life like?”
“Right now? It’s a bit wild,” Harry grinned, but Sam didn’t think he seemed very amused. It was a very Dean-like expression, actually. Dean always did the same crooked grin when he was being sarcastic, sometimes it was the only way Sam could judge what he was thinking. When Sam waited for an actual answer, Harry sighed and looked away from him.
“I dunno… I grew up with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. We don’t get on much. Then I went to my school and met my best mates.”
Sam waited and then he laughed. “That’s it? That’s the whole story?”
“And then… and then my godfather told me I have brothers.” Harry looked over at Sam and shrugged a shoulder up. “The end.”
Sam couldn’t look away from the road as he tried to merge off the highway for the exit he needed, but he was sure Harry couldn’t miss his eye roll.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna cut it,” Sam told him. “On the drive back you owe me so many details, dude.”
Sam wanted to know everything. And even if Harry wasn’t much of a talker when it came to himself, Sam could drag it out. They were already well on their way to being closer as brothers - starting with a road trip together to get a lead on a demon.
Like the other brotherly relationship in Sam’s life.
Sam pulled the van in to what he assumed was the Roadhouse not much later. It was nothing more than a wooden motel with a bar upfront. There weren’t any cars in the lot and Sam saw that two of the windows were boarded.
“This seems really safe,” Harry quipped, peering out the window with curiosity. “Maybe you should call Dean, at least let him know we made it?”
Sam looked at the phone in the cup holder, the one with seventeen missed calls. Sam should call Dean, but… they were already there.
“I’ll call him when we have something to distract him,” Sam decided. He opened the car door and climbed out in one easy motion. Even though Harry had been making his little smartass comments, he followed Sam immediately.
“There’s a place close to my school, it’s called the Shrieking Shack,” Harry said, sticking by Sam’s side while they crossed the gravel lot. “Everyone thought it was haunted, you know? With ghosts or something.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, wondering what Harry thought of ghosts. If he already believed they were real… Dean couldn’t really be mad at Sam for just confirming it.
“Yeah? Remind you of this place?” Sam guessed. The door wasn’t locked and Sam went ahead and opened it, seeing no ‘open’ or ‘closed’ sign anywhere. Sam stepped in ahead of Harry, sweeping the room carefully.
There was a wooden receptionist area attached to a long bar with half a dozen beaten down stools against it. Nobody was manning the bar, or at any of the four or five tables and chair sets scattered around the room. There was some usual bar crap against a wall- a jukebox, a pool table, a few games, and a… a drunk passed out on the pool table.
“Stick by me,” Sam muttered from the corner of his mouth. All of Sam’s weapons were in his bag in the car, but the Roadhouse was meant to be a place for hunters. Sam led Harry around the tables, making his way to a swinging door behind the bar.
“So… the thing about the Shrieking Shack was that it wasn’t haunted, not really, but I still nearly died there,” Harry hissed. “The similarities are out of control, Sam.”
Sam would have said something about Mini-Dean being attached to his hip, sarcasm levels and all, but he no sooner swung the door open behind the bar and came face to face with a Ruger 10/22.
Harry whispered something that sounded like ‘I’d rather it be a werewolf’ (Sam was pretty sure he didn’t hear him right) while Sam was distracted by the woman holding the rifle. She was older, probably early forties, and had short brown hair around a sun-tanned and lightly wrinkled face.
“You start runnin’ and I won’t shoot ya if you’re gone before I say four,” the woman warned. She slid the chamber on the rifle, clicking a bullet in place. “One…”
“Wait! Wait!” Sam threw his hands up by his shoulders, Harry mimicking him immediately. “Are you Ellen?”
The rifle didn’t waver a centimeter.
“I am,” she - Ellen - replied. “And you are?”
“Sam Winchester,” Sam sighed, relieved it was just a paranoid hunter and not some psycho. Sam would get his ass kicked twice if he let Harry get shot. “This is Harry, my brother.”
Just when Sam thought he was in the clear, Ellen jabbed the barrel of the gun harder toward Sam and followed it with a quick step. The metal was on Sam’s sternum and if he knew she wouldn’t pull the trigger, he’d knock it from her hands. As it was, Harry was right up against Sam and in the line of fire.
“Nice try,” Ellen said, her voice cold as ice. “John Winchester doesn’t have a son named Harry.”
Sam opened his mouth to explain; Harry beat him to it.
“I was a secret,” he said without any embarrassment at all. “He shagged my mum on my mum’s honeymoon trip with my dad. John didn’t know about me, I’m a surprise.”
Finally, Ellen raised the barrel of the rifle so she could look at Harry. Sam breathed easily when she laid the gun over her shoulder and gave Harry a friendly smile as if she wasn’t planning on blowing his head off not ten seconds ago.
“Yeah, that does sound like John,” Ellen said. She looked from Harry to Sam and gave him the same perfectly friendly soccer mom smile. “Well, welcome, boys! Where’s your daddy at? Or Dean? Dean still hunting with you?”
“Dean’s busy,” Sam said quickly. He smiled nervously, not wanting to actually spill the hunting beans to Harry and make his ass-kicking even worse. “Hey, Ellen, any chance you have a bathroom? Harry probably has to go.”
Harry gave Sam the most insolent look after Ellen pointed where the bathrooms are.
“What are you going to talk about that I can’t hear?” he asked, proving he was smart enough, which Sam already knew.
“I- remember how I said Dean’s in charge? You have to ask him,” Sam said, giving Harry blunt honesty again. “Five minutes, please?”
Ellen watched Sam and Harry have a stare off. They were both pleading with the other and Sam was pretty close to caving when Harry finally rolled his eyes and walked through the kitchen door.
“Not a hunter?” Ellen guessed immediately. She led Sam back out to the bar and he took one of the stools while she stood behind it and leaned her elbows on the counter.
“No and Dean doesn’t want him involved in any of it,” Sam said. It wasn’t unreasonable; hell, Sam was jealous in a way. Sam wished his childhood hadn’t been filled with actual monsters and constant worries on when their luck would run out and one of them would die.
A big part of Sam wanted to hang it all up; go back to school, get his law degree. Dean could do something safe, Harry could go to school. They could be happy, normal, dudes. Dad would be disappointed, but that wasn’t anything new for him.
But Sam had to kill the yellow-eyed demon first; there was no debating that. That demon killed their mom, it killed Jessica. It nearly killed Dean, it killed Dad. If Sam wanted his brothers to be safe to have a normal life, it had to die. And if Sam could kill some other evil sons of bitches along the way, keep other people from losing their Jessicas, then he would.
Ellen hummed noncommittally and Sam quickly asked her about the message she left for dad. It had been short and cryptic, just a message telling Dad to stop being stubborn and let her help him.
“What were you going to help him with?” Sam asked after he explained how he found her.
“Well… the demon, of course,” Ellen frowned. “I still will if he wants it. I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I’ve been hearing things… he shouldn’t be tackling that demon alone.”
Sam shifted and felt a pang in his chest when he admitted Dad was gone.
“Oh.” Ellen reached out and put a hand on Sam’s arm. “I’m real sorry to hear that. How’s Dean?”
The kitchen door swung open and Harry walked out with a blonde chick just in time to hear Ellen’s question. Harry was a blushing mess and the chick was smirking. She was pretty enough, lean with a low-cut shirt and blonde curls on her shoulders. Sam would have called her Dean’s type if it didn’t seem like Harry called dibs.
“He’s probably going to be mad as hell,” Harry said cheerfully. He glanced up at the chick and when she winked, Harry turned even more red.
Jesus. Dean would laugh his ass off if he saw Harry. One cute chick and Harry was blushing harder than anything.
“I see you met my Jo,” Ellen said, laughing at Harry when he quickly took the seat beside Sam. Jo followed him and leaned against the bar, her arm brushing Harry’s in what seemed to be an intentionally teasing way.
Sam bit his lip to keep from laughing and raised his hand when Ellen introduced him to her daughter. Jo was around Sam’s age and while he really doubted she was interested in a fourteen year old, she did seem to like fluttering her long eyelashes at Harry.
“Jo, leave that poor boy alone,” Ellen laughed after Harry nearly knocked the stack of coasters over when Jo put a hand on his arm. “Good Lord, girl. Why don’t you take him to check out the pinball machine while I catch up with Sam here?”
“Oh, sure.” Jo had the same country accent as her mom and a pretty smile that she aimed at Harry like a weapon. “You like pinball, Harry? It’s just all about technique.”
“Jo’s a flirt, you ignore her,” Ellen told Harry warmly. “She just likes teasin’.”
Harry gave Sam a very clear ‘save me’ look that Sam only grinned at. When Jo put an arm around Harry’s shoulders to lead him across the floor of the bar, Sam finally laughed.
“She’s going to kill him,” Sam joked. “Poor kid.”
Ellen snorted and leaned back against the bar while her eyes tracked Jo in the way that Dean often tracked Sam.
“Eh, he looks like your daddy, better get used to it,” Ellen said casually. She shook her head and then focused back on Sam. “Now, about your daddy, he didn’t happen to take that demon down with him, did he?”
Sam dropped his voice low to match Ellen’s as he filled her in on the last interaction they had with the demon. The metallic sound of a pinball game and Jo’s occasional laughs were a cheery background music to Sam’s story.
Sam told Ellen how they had the demon, then it escaped. Sam had a chance to end it when it possessed their dad, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. The demon escaped, the Winchesters chased in the Impala. It was a blur after that - a crash, Sam screaming Dean’s name, black eyes mocking his devastation. Dean laying in a hospital bed, circling the drain. Sam and Dad fighting —
“DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT YOUR SON?!”
“DON’T EVER TELL ME I DON’T CARE ABOUT DEAN!”
— Dean’s miraculous recovery, Dad’s sudden death. The Colt, the only weapon they had to kill a demon of Yellow-Eyes’s strength, was gone.
They burned Dad’s body in a hunters funeral and had nothing but a damn hole in their chests.
“Jesus.” Ellen had poured them each a whiskey and coke while Sam told her what happened and he took a sip of his while she processed it all.
“Yeah,” Sam said hoarsely, hollowed out by rehashing it all. He stirred his drink between his hands and shrugged his shoulders up, feeling both much younger and much older than his twenty-two years.
“Well… if we can help you, we will,” Ellen said. She gripped Sam’s arm tightly and Sam felt his throat thicken at the unexpected kindness.
Sam swallowed hard and dropped his eyes away from hers back to his drink.
“Thanks,” he said, meaning it. “Do you know anything about the demon? Any way it can be killed?”
“Hell no,” Ellen said bluntly, straightening up and sticking her hands in the pockets of the half-apron she wore. “But I know someone who can help you track it.”
“Yeah?” Sam perked up at that good news. Tracking a demon was hard work, only Dad had ever had any knack for it. “Who?”
Ellen stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly. When Sam turned in his seat to see who she whistled at, he saw the drunk jerked upright off the pool table and gave a lazy and half-conscious salute before collapsing back on the table. Harry looked over at him from where he stood by the pinball game and laughed at whatever Jo said before they went back to it.
“Sam, meet Ash,” Ellen said brightly. “Ash is a genius.”
Sam had to stand up to get a better look at ‘Ash’. When he saw the dirty blonde mullet and the skull and crossbones tattoo on his bare shoulder, he stared deadpan at Ellen.
“That guy is a genius?” Sam asked skeptically.
Ellen’s smirk was a lot like her daughters. “Yep. Ash can track your demon and anything else you want.”
Sam thought she was full of shit, but Ash was actually a genius.
Ash got himself set up at a computer in the office behind the bar and started pulling up a programming software that had to be custom developed.
“Alright, so this demon is causin’ electric storms, right?” Ash drawled, his accent thick. “These are the points of latitude where the electric storms ain’t part of the natural weather and here- we got every omen we know that indicates demon presence.”
Sam was impressed by the numbers blipping across the screen, almost too quickly for him to follow. It was an entirely numeric and definitive way to actually track a demon using nothing more than just technology.
“Where’d you get this program?” Sam asked curiously. He had his hand on the back of Ash’s chair and leaned in to try and see where the recent demonic signs were at on the map flashing in the top left-hand corner of the screen.
“Built it,” Ash said. He paused to take a swig of his bottle of Pabst then put both hands on the keyboards and started typing away. “I built the prototype when I went to MIT, back before they expelled me for fightin’.”
“MIT?” Sam asked disbelievingly.
Ash turned his head and blinked blue eyes in Sam’s face. “Yeah, it’s a college in Boston.”
“I…” Sam huffed a short laugh and shook his head when Ash already went back to his work. “Yeah, my bad. Hey, what all can you track on this thing?”
“I can track your mom clear to my bed,” Ash muttered. He laughed when Sam smacked him in the back of his head. “Man, I can track anything. You name it, I’ll find it.”
“Yeah?” Sam checked over his shoulder, spotting Harry through the window of the door. Harry sat at the bar counter and had Ellen and Jo laughing about something he was saying with his hands moving around. Seeing he was distracted for at least a few more minutes, Sam grabbed another of the office chairs and pulled it up beside Ash.
“Can you get me a list of people whose mom’s died in nursery fires when they were six months old?” Sam asked. He rolled his eyes when Ash looked at him with both his eyebrows raised. “It’s important.”
Those would be the people like Sam - like Max Miller. They were all connected somehow, connected to the demon somehow. Maybe if Sam could find more of them, he could learn what connected them all. Sam with his visions… Max with his telekinesis… Max was a monster… Sam… Sam didn’t want to be. They just weren’t normal, Sam needed to know why.
“Fine… it’s all parametrical variants and ellipse equations,” Ash muttered. His right hand kept working while his left snagged his beer for another drink. “I can have you this list in… what time is it?”
Sam glanced at his watch, “One.”
“Then I need seventeen hours and… twenty five minutes,” Ash said. “No! Wait! Fourteen hours and eleven minutes, yeah… it’ll be a new best.”
Sam sat back and scrubbed his face with both hands. If Ash could get him that list in fourteen hours then Sam couldn’t head back to Bobby’s yet… which meant he needed to call Dean.
That ass kicking was just getting worse and worse, Sam was sure of it.