Chapter 3 of Looping
bloodwritesChapter 3
When Dean wakes up, he's different. Figures. Sam without a soul didn't work. Sam without his soul still wanted to stop looping. Taking Sam's soul away just got him out of bed and back to work.
The joke is on Chuck, though, because Dean still wants to get out of the loop, and he needs Sam to do it.
He looks for Sam in the library. Sam's not there, so Dean looks for Sam in his room.
Sam's still in bed.
"Leave me alone," Sam says.
"Your soul's back," Dean says. He doesn't bother trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. He wants that cold, indifferent Sam. That Sam gets a lot more done. He'd probably be more fun, too. "Get your ass out of bed, Sammy. We got work to do."
"The things I saidâ"
"You wanna fuck me, whatever." Hell, if Dean didn't want to get the hell out of this loop as he is now, he might even explore that a little, but they don't have the time. "You didn't have a soul, now you do, you can go back to keeping it to yourself, if that's what you want. But we got to get this angel summoned. Where's the list?"
Sam slowly pushes back the blankets and sits up. He's bare-chested, and there are the telltale signs of what he was doing on Monday night crusted in the hair below his belly button. Dean stares, and he smirks.
"You were thinking about me, weren't you?"
"Dean," Sam gasps, yanking up the blankets. He looks horrified.
Dean shakes his head, grinning. "Get your ass in the shower. Wash away the evidence of your filthy incestuous thoughts. I'll meet you in the library."
Sam watches Dean with wary eyes when he finally appears in the library. He's showered, hair still damp and dripping down the back of his shirt, and he's tense, on edge.
"List," Dean says.
Sam fetches pen and paper, and starts writing.
It's a long list. There's the usual things, holy water and lamb's blood, plant matter and bones. Then there's some more arcane stuff, the things they usually have Cas fetch for them, because it's on the other side of the world, or deep in the ocean, or hasn't existed for thousands of years and someone has to go back in time for it.
"Fuck," Dean says. "How the hell are we supposed to get this shit?"
"There's a section of the archives for relics. We might find some there. There's a Micheal Stone, I know that much. There could be more."
There's no way Dean's gonna be able to pick through a dusty old box of holy relics. "You hit the archives," Dean says, and this time he makes an effort to seem nonchalant. "You know what you're looking for. I'll get the other stuff."
Sam seems eager to get away. Dean watches him go, and then heads off with the list in his hand to get the easy stuff.
They've got a drawer in the kitchen full of various spell ingredients. Dean picks through it with the tip of a blade, pulls things out with the cuff of his shirt, because half of this stuff will burn his skin.
He brings it back to the library, and he lays it all out, and he waits for Sam to return.
He's three glasses of whiskey into a bottle before Sam gets back with a wooden bowl full of crap.
"You got it all?" Dean asks.
"I think so, yeah. We got stones and bones and hair and all sorts of stuff. I wonder if the Vatican knows the Men of Letters ended up with the Holy Prepuce."
Dean pulls a face. "The spell needs Jesus' foreskin? What the hell?"
Sam smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "No. But it's there."
"Weird," Dean says, then waves his hands over the collected spell ingredients. "Okay, go. Summon us an angel. Let's get this show on the road."
Dean watches, ready, as Sam follows the recipe, dropping ingredient after ingredient into the bowl. He speaks the spell, in perfect Enochianâleast as far as Dean can tell. It sounds good, anyway.
Sam picks up a blade. "It needs our blood," he says, and pulls the blade through his palm, hissing as it cuts into the flesh and releases a coppery scent into the air.
Sam wipes the blade on his jeans, then holds it out. "Your turn."
Fuck. It's iron. Was that part of the spell? Dean wasn't paying attention.
He takes it from Sam. The hilt is bone, no problem there, but the blade...
Dean pulls it through his closed fist, and adds his blood to the bowl, and then it doesn't matter that his palm hurts like a bitch and there's smoke rising from the wound, because there's smoke rising from the bowl, too.
All that shit, holy water, holy oil, consecrated objects and holy relics, and it's fizzing, and it's smoking, and Dean doesn't care that he's outed himself, because there's an angel coming, and Dean's got a blade.
He pulls the angel blade from his coat, and he turns to the room, waiting for the angel to show up, because he's got a plan.
The angel kicks them out of the loop, or the angel dies.
Sam doesn't concern him anymore. Sam isn't important. Sam is something he'll toy with later, perhaps on Wednesday, after the loop ends. He's not paying attention to Sam when Sam comes up beside him and snaps a pair of binding cuffs around his wrists.
Dean drops the blade and roars, but he's stuck. "I'm gonna kill you," he spits, letting go of the ruse, of the mask of humanity he's been wearing since he woke up that morning, doesn't care that his eyes are black and his lips are drawn back from teeth that want to sink into the meaty parts of Sam Winchester. "This time, I'm going to fucking kill you."
"It worries me, Dean," Sam says, dragging Dean out of the library and down the corridor, heading in the direction of the dungeon. "Like it really concerns me that you think I'm that stupid. You thought you could fool me into thinking you were human? Human Dean is a jerk, but you dialed it way up, like you didn't even care."
"Either I get out of this fucking nightmare via angel, or I rip your guts out and paint the walls with them," Dean hisses. "Either way, I win."
"Also," Sam continues, like Dean didn't even speak. "It was the next logical step after Chuck gave up on me without a soul. If he wants one of us to kill the other, if he wants Cain and Abel, then he just has to look at the closest we ever came. When you were a demon."
"Yeah," Dean says. "Fuck the angel." He shakes the cuffs. "Let me outta these things and I'll finish it. Give him what he wants. I'll even make it quick."
Sam shoves Dean into the devil's trap painted on the floor and steps back. "Now, why don't I believe you?"
Dean paces the floor, looking for a crack, a scratch, in the trap that's been on the floor for years. They've been walking over it all this time, chairs scuffing the paint, rubber soles wearing down the marksâ
The place smells like fresh paint, and there are no cracks. "You weren't searching for relics down here. You were fixing the place up."
"I wanted it to look nice for you, Dean."
"That wasn't even the spell, was it?"
"No," Sam says. He's backing away, disappearing into the shadows of the stacks. "Some trinkets. A bit of holy water so your blood would sizzle. It's all the proof I needed."
The doors slam shut behind him, and Dean's alone.
It's gonna be a long day.
Dean wakes up cuffed to his bed. "Sam," he growls, and then louder, "Sam."
"I wake up before you," Sam says, when he finally appears in the open door. "I always wake up before you."
"I'll get free," Dean spits, jerking on the cuffs until the bed frame creaks. "And when I do, I'm gonna gut you like a pig."
"Good luck with that," Sam says, and glances up at the ceiling.
There's a devils trap above the bed, but it's not paint, and it's not chalk, and there's no way Sam got up there without waking Dean. "What theâ"
"Projector," Sam says, his eyes flicking to where it's sitting on Dean's dresser. "Connected wirelessly from my computer in the library. Even if you shake the bed apart, you'll still be cuffed and you'll still be stuck, so don't waste your energy."
Dean roars and pulls at the cuffs, violence and rage his only outlet as Sam walks away.
Dean wakes up cuffed to his bed. There's a devil's trap on the ceiling. He screams himself hoarse and thrashes until the headboard breaks.
Dean wakes cuffed to the bed with a devil's trap above him on the ceiling. "Fuck," he says, to an empty room.
Dean loses count of the times he's woken up cuffed to his own bed, and he's fed up with it, fatigued, done.
"Sam," he calls. "Come on, Sammy. I just wanna talk."
When Sam appears, wearing his best bitchy expression, Dean sighs.
"I'm done," he says. "Kill me, or summon your damn angel. Either way we get out of here, and if I'm still breathing, I'm gone. You'll never see me again."
"I can't do that, Dean," Sam says.
"That's bullshit," Dean shouts. "The whole can't live without you crap? It's twisted, Sam. You gotta know that. Hell, I'm a demon, and even I know it's fucked up. The best thing for us both is for me to split, for me to be what I am, because you know it's the only way I'll let you go."
"You're right," Sam says. "It is the only way you'd leave. But I'd never stop looking for you, never stop trying to cure you."
Dean slumps, drops his head back down to the pillow. "I like you better when you don't have a soul. Chuck had any sense, he'd take that away again."
"I'm gonna cure you, Dean."
Dean pulls himself up to sitting. "No, you're not. If you were going to do that you'd have done it already."
"I had other priorities. Every morning, I make sure you can't get into trouble, then I find the things I need for the spell. I'm almost there. I'm going to cure you, tomorrow, and then we'll do the spell and get the hell out of here."
"No," Dean says. "Don't do it, Sammy."
"I have to," Sam says, and walks away.
Dean starts working the headboard. He's done this enough times now that he knows where the weak spots are, he knows where it'll break.
This is his last chance.
The headboard comes apart. Dean's still stuck on the bed, but he pulls the pillowcase off the pillow and winds it, like a dishtowel.
It's awkward, trying to flick it above his head with his wrists still cuffed together, but he does it, and finallyâfinallyâhe hits the right spot in the air that it breaks just enough of the projected image for just long enough, and Dean rolls off the bed.
He's free. Still cuffed, but free.
He slips out the door on silent feet.