“Say cheese.”
November 3
Sam knew that Dean was drugging him when he gave him two sleeping pills and a bottle of water. Sam just didn’t care because he wanted - needed - to sleep.
Or, he did need to sleep, until Dumbledore showed up and decided that Sam’s baby brother was going to fight a freaking dragon.
A dragon.
Thanks to a contract with a minor.
Sam’s baby brother - who couldn’t remember Sam’s name if he went too long without hearing it - fighting a dragon. Sam didn’t even know they were real, and Harry was going to face off against one?
Screw that.
It gave Sam something to work on, something new to focus on so he could push everything else out of his mind. Sam started by pulling up every instance of England laws citing contracts with minors that he could. That was the easy part, the harder part was finding how much of the magical world collaborated with the non-magical.
The laws were surely the same… but then Sam remembered that Sirius Black went to prison for twelve years with no trial and he stopped making assumptions. So Sam put in a call to White, left a message asking him to call him back, and went back to the internet.
It was rare for the internet to fail him, but there weren’t exactly archives online for magical law.
Stupid, archaic, wizards with their damned dragons and illegal contracts.
Sam also helped Dean send a letter to the mom of Harry’s friend, begging and bribing her to go to Harry’s medical appointment with him. If Sam and Dean couldn’t be there, there had to be one adult that could advocate for him.
Harry needed a freaking magical guardian ad litem. If Dean thought that Molly Weasley was good enough for the moment though, Sam turned his focus back on the super illegal contract.
At least, he did, until the Ambien kicked in and Sam fell asleep at the table with his books, notebooks, and laptop all scattered around where his head dropped.
Sam was groggy and half-asleep when someone tugged him to his feet. It didn’t matter if Sam’s sleep-brain didn’t recognize his own feet to help move them, he still recognized Dean.
“For a lightweight, you’re heavy,” Dean grumbled as he all but carried Sam toward his room.
“Mm.” Sam’s head was on Dean’s shoulder and it was difficult to think of anything beneath the fog. “Dragons and werewolves,” he murmured, trying to explain why he didn’t want to sleep.
It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone except for Dean.
“You won’t dream, dude,” Dean told him, keeping Sam upright even when Sam sagged on a wall. “And Harry will be fine will you get some shut eye, Sammy. Everything will be better after you’ve slept.”
Sam didn’t believe him. Dean wouldn’t intentionally lie to Sam, but he couldn’t see what Sam saw as he tossed and turned, locked in a nightmare he couldn’t escape.
“Sam, please.” Madison was crying silently, maybe she didn’t even know she was crying. Sam knew though, he knew she was crying just as he knew he couldn’t keep himself from crying.
“You can’t ask me to do this,” Sam said. He reached out and cupped her face, swiping away her tears with his thumb. “Please, you can’t.”
Madison used her grip on Sam’s hip to pull herself as close to his chest as she could. Sam kept one hand on her face and his other on the curve of her lower back, pulling her even closer.
It felt like driving a knife through his own chest.
Madison was beautiful, yes. She was smart and funny. Those didn’t make her especially unique… it was the lycanthropy that flowed through her veins and made her an unwilling monster that hurt Sam.
Sam wanted to save her. Sam wanted to think that if someone didn’t ask to be a monster, they didn’t have to be treated like one.
Sam wanted that for Madison and - as the calendar ticked closer to the day that Azazel warned Sam of - he wanted it for himself.
If Madison could kill people at night, would Sam be capable of leading a demon army?
“I don’t want to risk ever hurting anyone else,” Madison whispered in Sam’s face, her naked body flush with his. “I can’t do it myself though, Sam. I’m not - I’m not strong.”
Sam’s face crumpled and the wrecked sound from his throat wasn’t human, it was only emotion. It was a wordless cry for someone to save her, because it wasn’t going to be Sam.
“No,” Sam said, holding her tightly. He ducked his head and pushed his face in her shoulder, hating himself for all of it.
All of it.
“Sam… please?”
Sam didn’t know how long he slept, how long he heard the echo of that gunshot. Sam had no idea how many times he watched the life drain out of Madison’s eyes.
It was over and over and over and over.
An endless loop of someone dying for an affliction they never asked for.
And when Sam woke up, peeling himself from yellow eyes that laughed every time - Madison, Jessica, Harry, Dean - died in his sleep, he wasn’t alone.
Sam kicked out, bit down on his tongue, and someone was beside him. Sam rolled, ready to fight, and found green eyes instead of yellow.
“Harry?” Sam gasped, feeling disoriented. It had been light out when he fell asleep in the dining room and Sam got the feeling that he had slept for a long time. Long enough to wake up to daylight and in his room.
Sam looked around to orient himself and the only thing out of place was his fourteen year old brother laying in Sam’s bed.
“You were having a nightmare,” Harry said, no judgement, just a factual statement. “I tried to wake you up, but you were really out.”
“Christ.” Sam rolled on his side and snatched at the clock on his nightstand. It was eight… am.
Which meant that Sam had slept for over twenty hours.
“Why didn’t anyone wake me up?!” Sam cried, forgetting that Harry just said he had tried. Sam had so much to do - he couldn’t just sleep while - while—
“I failed my exam and I still have to compete,” Harry told him as Sam practically rolled out of his bed. Sam landed on his feet then whipped his head back around to stare at Harry as his brain desperately tried to catch up.
Exam… compete…
Dragons.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Sam snarled with his fists balling up at his sides. Judging from Harry’s expression, and the way his eyes ticked quickly to Sam’s fists, he was not kidding.
“The first task is on the twenty-fourth so I have exactly three weeks left to live,” Harry said, flashing a smile that was as sarcastic as it was probably meant to be charming.
All it did was knock the air from Sam’s lungs, surely leaving a dark bruise. Harry saying that after Sam watched him die in his sleep, taking Madison’s place… it wasn’t a joke.
“That’s not funny,” Sam said when he felt like he could breathe again.
Harry shrugged breezily, too nonchalant with his own sick prediction.
“It might not be a joke,” he said. “If a baby dragon could kick my arse, I don’t love my chances against a fully grown one.”
“Harry…” Sam ran his fingers through his hair, pulling on the sweat-dampened strands as he tried to decide what he was supposed to do. Harry didn’t pass a medical exam and they were still making him compete? And it wasn’t like he could duck out, not if he’d just get magically zapped right in the arena.
“Where’s Dean?” Sam settled for asking. He moved over to his closet and yanked some clothes out at random, deciding that a shower might help him wake up so he could get back to research.
“He’s passed out,” Harry said, watching Sam grab clothes. “He’s rather furious.”
Yeah, Sam could relate.
Sam took a quick shower, scrubbing away the nightmare that clung to him, while he forced himself to focus.
If the British Wizarding Government was another monster, Sam needed to learn how to beat it. It wasn’t a great distraction, since Sam felt cold in the pit of his stomach when he thought of Harry’s ‘joke’ —
“I have exactly three weeks to live.”
Harry would live to be an old man if Sam had to sell his soul to make it happen.
Sam felt sharper after his shower and even if his legs ached with the desire to go run, Sam clamped down on that. He needed to find a way to break a magical contract first. And, baring that goal, Sam needed to find a foolproof way to kill a dragon.
Or, at least, an anomic aphasia proof way, since apparently Sam missed more than Harry let on.
The usually neat living room was trashed, for one. Sam could see the proof of Dean’s anger in the trail of beer bottles, a whiskey bottle, an ashtray.
Sam could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Dean smoke and they were all under heavy duress. Sam grimaced in disgust when he grabbed the ashtray off the coffee table in the living room and he sighed when he passed the hallway that led to Dean’s room.
“Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t wake you up,” Harry commented from the dining table when Sam stopped to inspect the Dean-fist-sized hole in the wall.
“I’m surprised you slept through any of it,” Sam said, dragging his fingertips over the jagged edges of the hole.
“Oh, I didn’t,” Harry said. He watched Sam move toward the kitchen, carelessly throwing away the ashtray. “I went to…”
Sam looked over when he heard Harry unfolding a paper and he watched curiously as Harry scanned it quickly.
“Bobby’s,” Harry said. He looked up and grinned at Sam, clearly really pleased with himself. “Dean and I had, er… a bit of a spat and so I left. I only came home a couple of hours ago.”
Awesome. So Dean had gotten drunk and fought with their brother.
Sam waited to ask for any more details until he turned on the coffee pot and filled it. If Dean was being a jerk, Sam would need coffee.
“A spat?” Sam repeated after the quiet hissing assured him that he would have fortification soon. In the meantime, the kitchen looked like a tornado had ripped through it.
As soon as Sam started picking up the trash strewn across the counters, Harry was on his feet and cleaning the living room. Sam didn’t mean for him to feel obligated to clean, Sam just knew he wouldn’t be able to focus with all the mess.
“It was mostly my fault,” Harry said, causing Sam to snort disbelievingly. If Dean was worried, he got pissed. And if Dean decided to get shit-faced to deal with it, then Sam knew Harry could have sneezed loudly and had Dean screaming.
Maybe if Dean let himself feel emotions more than once every six months…
Sam shook that thought off, feeling like a dick almost instantly. Dean was a rock, Sam couldn’t be shitty that he reached his boiling point.
“What kind of spat?” Sam asked Harry again when Harry brought an armful of bottles to the kitchen to toss. Sam really needed to get them a recycling bin… at least make Dean’s addiction eco-friendly.
“Just yelling,” Harry said. “I think he wanted me to cry or something.”
Harry shrugged and Sam shook his head, trying to make that make sense.
Why would Dean want Harry to cry? Dean didn’t like when anyone cried, ever. Plus, Dean loved Harry, so Sam didn’t see him trying to bully Harry to tears either.
Sam sent a longing glance to the coffee pot and wondered if they had a straw that he could stick in the pot to drink down the quarter inch of coffee prepared. Probably not… but Sam would buy straws on his next grocery run.
“Why did Dean want you to cry?” Sam asked, choosing to knead his forehead instead of finding a beer for himself to hold him over until the coffee was brewed.
Harry hopped up on the counter beside the coffee machine and shrugged again.
“I mean, he didn’t say that, but he seemed mad that I wasn’t crying about the tournament,” Harry said, shedding light on the matter.
Sam could see that. Wasn’t Sam mildly annoyed - just a low buzz of ‘what the fuck?’ - about Harry’s too calm attitude about the tournament? Dean didn’t want Harry to cry, Dean wanted Harry to lose the cocky mask.
Aka, Dean got a good look at Dean Junior and couldn’t handle his own personality being reflected back at him.
“Gotcha,” Sam sighed. Sam wasn’t sure what any of the articles he read about raising kids with unstable backgrounds would say about how to handle it, which meant Sam was on his own. Sam hadn’t really been doing great on his own lately though…
What would sober Dean do?
“Have you ate breakfast yet?” Sam asked, latching on the first idea he had. Harry shook his head and Sam figured that was a good enough place to start.
“Tell me what all happened yesterday,” Sam told Harry while he got started on something easy for breakfast. The only thing Sam found that he could cook without screwing up were frozen hot pockets from the freezer, it was better than nothing.
Harry filled Sam in while Sam popped four hot pockets in the microwave.
Sam missed a lot.
Harry took longer than the eight minutes the hot pockets did to tell Sam about his exam and the appointment he was given for a follow up at the hospital. Sam could feel his nostrils flaring and he tried to hide it - if Dean hadn’t scammed the doctor…
It was Sam’s fault, Sam wrecked the car. But Dean exacerbated the injury by letting the teenager with the underdeveloped brain leave the hospital without medical clearance.
Harry told Sam about the plan his teenage friends made for the tournament and Bobby’s assistance in writing down all the names that Harry couldn’t remember while Sam read over the hospital report. With a hot pocket in one hand, his mug of coffee finally on the table before him, Sam was able to focus on the underlying diagnosis.
“Anomic aphasia,” Sam read aloud, interrupting Harry. Sam didn’t recognize the term, outside of aphasia. It was a speech disorder, probably a good guess that it was caused by a traumatic brain injury. Sam flipped through the pages, looking for a treatment plan.
It wasn’t there.
“I’ll probably have a letter from… Hermione… explaining what it means by tomorrow,” Harry said, glancing down at his name cheat sheet as he spoke.
“And this is…” Sam carefully put down the paperwork from the hospital and slid Harry’s paper over to him. Right at the very top was Sam’s name, just under Harry’s:
Harry James Potter-Winchester: that’s you
Sam Winchester: tall brother
Dean Winchester: oldest brother
Sam snorted; Dean would love that description.
Hermione Granger: best friend
Ron Weasley: best friend
Bobby Singer: neighbor/family
That was nice.
Sirius Black: godfather
Lily Potter: mum
James Potter: dad
John Winchester: S & D’s dad
Sam stopped reading then, though he noted half a dozen other names on there.
“Smart,” Sam said, returning the list while a weight settled on his chest. That list sucked, it sucked and Sam hated the necessity of it.
“I thought so,” Harry said, still so casual that it made Sam want to scream. Sam had to stare hard at him, like real hard, to try and find any signs that Harry was under any stress at all.
Harry didn’t look tired, he didn’t look worried. If Sam had to name the perfectly blank face he got from his brother, it would be… calm, complacent.
“Dude.” Sam couldn’t figure out what had Harry so freaking peaceful when Sam probably developed an ulcer in the last ten minutes and Dean was punching holes in walls.
“Why aren’t you freaking out?” Sam asked. “This is a lot, Harry.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot,” Harry agreed mildly, blinking at Sam as if it were nothing. “But here’s what I’m thinking, okay? So life’s been pretty good, I mean-” Harry blushed and stammered some, “- I’ve got you and Dean, right? And, er…” Harry waved vaguely at the list he made.
“All these people want to help me, which is more than I usually have when I’m doing something terrible. so really, I might not die in this tournament. The thing is,” Harry huffed and made the biggest and saddest eyes at Sam, “what if I do?”
“You won’t,” Sam assured him quickly, swearing it would be true. It lifted Sam’s spirits to know that his presence in Harry’s life meant as much to Harry as it did Sam; Sam couldn’t lose him. He wouldn’t.
Logically, Sam had to believe that a tournament hosted by a school of not-yet-fully-educated students wouldn't actually stand by while those kids were killed.
Yeah, they were forcing Harry to do the tournament, but if it got out of control surely an adult —
Sam cut off his own thoughts, scolding himself. Since when did Sam ever assume that an adult knew their ass from their mouth? Just because they had magic didn’t make them better, clearly.
Magic couldn’t fix everything… Sam knew that.
“Maybe,” Harry hedged, clearly not believing Sam but still too calm about his own possible death. He looked so pathetically sad that Sam suddenly understood a phrase Dean had used before - weaponized puppy eyes.
“It’s sort of made me think about things I haven’t done yet,” Harry went on, carefully looking at Sam upward through his lashes.
Sam was being manipulated, he knew he was, he just wanted to see where it ended.
“Yeah?” Sam asked carefully, waiting for the punchline. “Like what?”
“Like…” Harry gave Sam his most Dean-like smile as he whipped a piece of paper from his pajama pants pockets. “All of these things!”
Sam kept his face very blank and he absolutely did not let even a muscle twitch when his little brother presented him with the most morbid bucket list Sam had ever read.
Kiss Hermionea girl someone
Try 31 flavors at that ice cream place
Have photos of brothers
Help on a not horrible case, save a life
Learn to drive and not hate being in a car
Sam read it all once, then again.
Jesus Christ…
Sam couldn’t even compare the childish request to try thirty-one flavors of ice cream to the horrible connotations with Harry learning to drive.
“Dude… is this a bucket list?” Sam asked, just making sure he had the facts straight. Sam didn’t even know where to start, it was just… jacked.
The whole situation was so jacked that Sam couldn’t even tell if he wanted to laugh or cry. Maybe he’d end up making his own hole in the wall; Dean was making a lot more sense to Sam.
Sam settled for something in between all the options and choked down the rest of his hot coffee, immediately refilling the cup when he finished.
“I mean… there’s probably other things I haven’t thought of, but- I dunno, if I died in three weeks, I’d be happy already, but,” Harry leaned across the table toward Sam, his eyes flickering quickly toward the hallway that held Dean’s room. When he started whispering, Sam thought it was going to be some secret he shared.
“Sam, I’ve never snogged anyone,” Harry whispered. “And I’ve got a family now and it’s brilliant. I just think these things would be brilliant too.”
Sam looked at Harry’s list and wondered abruptly what he would want to do if he were in Harry’s shoes? If there was a chance that Sam would die in three weeks (and there was zero chance that Harry would die; Sam wouldn’t let him), what things would he want to do?
Probably not kiss a girl or try thirty-one flavors of ice cream, but…
“You want to save a life?” Sam asked, reading the list again. He furrowed his brows as he thought about the many horrifying stories Harry had from school. “Didn’t you save some chick’s life? Ginny?”
Sam was sure he did, he distinctly remembered finding a basilisk in a book at Bobby’s and had to imagine Harry standing across from one at twelve.
The reminder actually made Sam feel a little bit better about the dragon. Harry was a Winchester and Winchesters were hard to kill.
Not impossible, their family of only three proved that, but Sam thought they were harder to kill than other people anyway.
“Sort of,” Harry said, pulling a face like Sam made him uncomfortable. “But that was before I said that I hoped someone else died in the tournament.”
Why…
Sam groaned and snatched his coffee cup for a refill that he desperately needed.
“Why would you say you hoped someone died in a tournament?” Sam asked while he filled his cup back to the top. That was just tempting God to make sure Harry regret ever saying that.
“It was forever ago!” Harry cried defensively. “It’s that bloke that, er, Hermione told me fancied her! And he’s actually competing now, Sam!”
Sam sat back down and felt twice his actual age when he studied Harry over the rim of his mug. Even if Dean thought it was bullshit, Sam thought karma was real - very real.
Every single thing a person did came back to them in one way or another. Every life Sam took, every life he was never good enough to save, they had to be balanced.
Sam was drowning in red, but he wanted to think that he’d even it out eventually. He was trying, that had to count for something.
“Fine,” Sam decided abruptly. Sam probably would have caved anyway - there was no harm in any of the things that Harry wanted to do. Maybe getting pictures of Dean carried a hazard to their health, but the rest of it was innocent enough.
Sam smirked at the triumphant light in Harry’s eyes though.
“But I’m not kissing you, so you’re on your own there.”
Harry laughed and Sam’s worries eased just a little bit more. Sam could go to MACUSA Headquarters, get all the information on British law that he could. So they’d make the drive a road trip - stop for ice cream, take pictures, find a hunt.
An easy hunt, something like a low-level ghost that Sam could log for work and Harry could salt himself.
Picturing Harry digging up a grave reminded Sam of something he’d been neglecting lately, something that he needed to get back on track immediately, especially with a tournament possibly happening.
“Go get dressed,” Sam told Harry. “We’re picking training back up today.”
Sam couldn’t make his little brother fireproof, but he could make him fast. Fast enough to outrun a dragon might be a stretch, but any edge Sam could give him, he would.
And if it all kept Sam’s mind busy, then that was just a private bonus.
They had gotten off their routine and Sam forgot how easy Harry was to talk with while they trained. Harry hesitantly asked how Sam was feeling and Sam found that he could be honest when it was just the two of them running back through the woods.
“Crappy,” Sam said, flashing a bitter smile. “Then I feel like a dick bag for feeling crappy because you’re the one with aphasia and entered in some freaking tournament.”
“Really?” Harry seemed surprised. “That’s funny, sort of. I felt bloody terrible yesterday when I worried about the tournament because I figured you were feeling much worse.”
Sam huffed, “Jesus.”
As much shit as Sam silently gave Dean for handing down his unhealthiest habits to Harry and it was Sam who couldn’t cope without a case that Harry was choosing to mimic.
“You’re allowed to be worried,” Sam told Harry after they ran half the length back and Sam sorted out his big brotherly speech in his head. “In fact, if you weren’t worried I’d be concerned. This sucks, all of it. But - I mean, don’t be scared, you know? Because you’re going to be fine.”
Sam felt an itch in his chest and wished he knew how to put in words his fierce belief that Harry would be fine because Sam wouldn’t accept any other outcome.
Not this time.
Sam couldn’t find the right words though so he settled for letting Harry get a couple of hits in when they sparred instead. As far as Sam knew, that was kind of the gold standard for an older brother to do. It made Harry grin anyway, just as thrilled with himself as Sam remembered being when Dean had been the one letting Sam feel like he was winning.
Then, because nobody ever got good at fighting by being handed matches, Sam kicked his ass three or four times before they called it.
That was also the gold standard: build his confidence, make him better.
Sam learned it from the best.
‘The best’ was hungover and bitchy when Sam and Harry returned to the trailer that Sam was beginning to begrudgingly consider home. It wasn’t on purpose, Sam didn’t fully trust that the sense of permanence would last, but it felt like a home anyway.
Even with Dean glaring at Sam from his recliner the second Sam and Harry walked through the front door, it felt like home.
“Morning, sunshine,” Sam said, the chirp in his voice making Dean wince. Sam chuckled and let Harry dodge around him to get a shower. Sam told him that they’d start to New York after lunch, which meant Sam had to convince Dean to go with them.
It wasn’t hard, as it turned out.
“I need to go to New York,” Sam told Dean casually as he peeled his running shoes off. “You in?”
“Yeah,” Dean agreed, much too easily. When Sam couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at him, Dean scoffed.
“What? I figured you’d want to go to your wizards to get our wizard out of the damn wizard death contest,” Dean snarked. Sam didn’t take his tone personally, Dean was a douche when he was hungover.
“Are you starting to feel like magic is sort of taking over our lives?” Sam asked, adding a grin so it sounded like a joke. It wasn’t, but Sam didn’t mind it until it couldn’t save a life - until it threatened his little brother.
“Dude, you’ve got no idea,” Dean agreed. He threw his head back and covered his face with his arm. It made his next words muffled, but not incoherent. “That’s what happens when Dad screws a witch.”
Sam chuckled at a joke that was never going to get old to him and then - because Dean couldn’t see him do it - Sam snapped a photo of Dean with his cell phone.
Harry wanted pictures, Sam was only being a good brother.
Whatever ‘spat’ Harry and Dean had the night before didn’t seem to leave much of a mark on either of them. Maybe Dean was being more hands in that usual - carrying Harry’s bag for him to the car, ruffling his hair twice, landing a soft hit to Harry’s shoulder playfully - but Sam was relieved to know that there wasn’t any weird tension between them.
The tension came when Dean said he would drive and Sam cleared his throat.
“Just until we get to the highway, why don’t you let Harry drive?” Sam suggested.
Every muscle in Dean’s body went taut while Harry visibly perked right up. Sam didn’t tell Dean that they had some side missions on their way to New York, he got the feeling that Dean would refuse to indulge Harry on principle.
Sam could just hear him complaining -
“We’re not doing some ‘shit I wanna do before I die because nobody is dying’.”
It didn’t hurt anything to knock some stuff off Harry’s list though. It was a decent enough distraction for Sam and Harry both, they would just keep it between them.
“You want to let Harry drive my car?” Dean asked Sam. He clenched his keys hard in his fist as if Sam would fight him for them. “No.”
“Come on, Dean, we were both driving when we were his age,” Sam said in his most logical voice. Logic didn’t usually work on Dean though, so Sam switched tactics quickly as he leaned across the hood of the car and lowered his voice. “He’s terrified of cars now, shouldn’t we put him back on that horse?”
“That horse is my baby,” Dean hissed.
Sam almost hated to do it, almost.
“Dean,” Sam made a pleading face, “just until we get to the highway?”
Dean scowled, he bitched, but he also tossed Harry the keys and kicked Sam to the backseat.
Sam and Harry exchanged private grins when they swapped around.
And then Sam quit grinning as soon as Harry got on the road because, Jesus, he was a terrible driver.
Dean let Harry drive them at a whopping speed of fifteen for a few miles before he, much more nicely than Sam recalled being taught to drive, began pushing him to go faster.
“Come on, kid, baby’s a racehorse,” Dean told him. He reached over to tap one of Harry’s white knuckles on the steering wheel. “Loosen up and go faster. You have to drive at least the speed limit.”
“I can’t,” Harry said, his voice tight and alarming. “Turn on those flashing lights, please. I can’t do this.”
“No,” Dean said, firm but not cruel. “Harry, if Sam and I were hurt and you had to drive us to a hospital, you’ve got to know what to do.”
That had been how Sam was pushed to learn to drive, except he’d been thirteen and John had been an ass about it:
“If your brother was dying in the backseat, is this how you’d drive, Sam? Good Lord, boy, give it some gas.”
Dean was a better teacher, a better man, than John and Sam had always know it. When Harry managed the twenty mile drive to the highway - even getting up to thirty-five at one point - it was just confirmed for Sam.
Then, just when Sam thought his chest was going to burst with misplaced pride in his older brother, Dean shot him a smug smirk from up front.
“And if we’re getting back on horses today, I’m sure Sammy won’t mind letting Harry have shotgun.”
Sammy with his long legs that were cramped in the backseat absolutely did mind, but if Dean could let Harry drive his car then Sam could put up with being squished for a while. Not the entire thirteen hundred miles, but Sam could deal for a couple of hours.
Dean drove breezily down the interstate with the music blaring and the heat on to combat Harry’s opened window. Sam had his laptop out, cruising through news pages for anything that looked like a case.
The mention of dead and heartless bodies that cropped up in Arizona the last week flooded Sam with guilt. It was another human being who had no idea that when the moon rose, they turned into a monster.
Someone else could track that case, Sam wasn’t doing it.
Sam found a decent electronics store that was on their route instead and convinced Dean to make a stop. Dean’s laptop, their internet router, and phones on an actual, honest to God, phone plan were already being shipped to the house, but Sam wanted to grab something for Harry.
Also Sam’s legs were tired of the backseat and he wanted to swap seats, sue him.
Sam made Harry and Dean in the car while he went inside. He had already looked up what he wanted to make sure it was in stock, so it was a quick trip.
“Happy birthday,” Sam quipped when he made it back outside and tossed the bag to Harry. Harry stood on the passenger side of the car and caught it easily, Sam knew he would.
“Er… it’s not my birthday?” Harry said as he peeked in the bag. Dean moved over to look as well and he frowned at the exact same time that Harry smiled.
“Oh! This is brilliant!” Harry pulled the box holding the digital camera from the bag and looked so thrilled with it that Sam felt warm. “I could have bought it,” he said.
Sam rolled his eyes - the kid had a serious hang up about money.
“Call it payback for the books,” Sam reminded him. “There’s batteries in here too, and a case so you don’t break it.”
“What d’you need a camera for?” Dean asked while Harry quickly began putting the camera together. Harry didn’t answer him until he had it turned on, then he aimed the lens at Dean and laughed when the flash blinded Dean.
“For that,” Harry said simply. When he looked at Sam expectantly, Sam couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what was coming.
“You could smile,” Harry said deadpan as he aimed the camera at Sam
“I thought I was?” Sam said, holding his smile in place.
Dean let out a loud laugh and lunged at Sam to try and grab him in a headlock. Sam ducked out of it and aimed a half-assed punch to Dean’s abs.
“Hangovers make you sloppy,” Sam taunted him.
“Oh yeah?” Dean grabbed Sam’s elbow and twisted, spinning him around or letting his arm break. Dean laughed again. “Harry, get a picture.”
Sam waited a beat, let Dean get complacent in his cockiness, then he kicked behind himself and caught Dean in the shin. The shift of Dean’s weight was all Sam needed to get the advantage and when Harry blinded them both with another flash, it was Dean who was in a headlock.
Not that it mattered, they had both been laughing like idiots anyway.
For a roadtrip to get information on how to break a magical contract filled with pit-stops for the morbid bucket list of a fourteen year old, it was off to a good start.
The camera got real old, real quick, though and Sam confiscated it when he talked Dean into stopping at a Baskin Robbins. Dean didn’t actually need much prodding, Sam just said “Hey, let’s get ice cream”. Then Harry tried to take a picture of Sam eating ice cream and he snatched the camera.
“Say cheese,” he said sarcastically, aiming the camera at Harry and Dean on the opposite side of the booth instead.
Damn. It was a good picture though. Sam had clicked just in time to catch both of his brothers rolling identical green eyes at him. Dean’s cheeks were puffed with the monstrosity that was his choice of ice cream, Harry had his nose scrunched.
“You two are the same person,” Sam said, showing them the picture he took. Dean and Harry looked at it, looked at each other, then rolled their eyes in tangent again.
“That’s Mini-Sam,” Dean said, jerking his thumb at Harry. “Clear down to his smartass mouth and floppy freaking hair.”
“My hair is not floppy,” Harry argued, patting down his hair indignantly.
They even argued the same.
With most of the stuff on Harry’s list checked off, Sam put a new effort in finding them an easy case they could knock off on their way to New York. Sam didn’t want anything risky, just something simple where Harry could feel like he won something with it.
There was something happening in Moreland, Ohio. It seemed serial, supernatural. Eight victims over eight years, all found in the same location, all dead with no discernible cause. Their ages varied from twenty-five to sixty-eight, so more likely to be supernatural than human.
Just by looking through the news reports and the autopsies he hacked, Sam would guess it was a spirit. Sam was wrong, but he didn’t know that at the time.