l i k e . g o d ' s . e y e s . i n . m y . h e a d l i g h t s

Like God's Eyes in My Headlights
[by victoria p.]

Rating: pg

Summary: Dean is missing. Sam is worried. See Sam worry. Worry, Sam, worry.

Spoilers: None

Notes: Thanks to Luzdeestrellas for betaing All remaining errors are mine.

Word count: 2,555 words

Date: October 4, 2007

After the third time Dean's phone rolls over to voicemail, Sam's sick of the sound, has to grit his teeth against the urge to throw his own phone against the wall in frustration. Worry is congealing in a cold, hard knot in his belly, and the nauseating taste of fear creeps up the back of his throat.

Dean is smart and strong and can handle himself in almost any situation. Sam knows this like he knows his own name. But the djinn is powerful and dangerous and still mostly unknown, and they've been pushing hard, not sleeping much, trying to stay ahead of the police and the FBI, and Dean's always been prone to a ridiculous belief in his own invincibility, no matter how many times he's proved vulnerable in the past.

Sam tries not to think about all the times he's seen Dean injured, face pale and freckles standing out in sharp relief as blood rushes from some wound or other, his breathing labored and the bright white of his bones protruding through shredded skin.

He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to force his brain into seeing... something. The future, instead of the past. Nothing comes. What the hell use are these goddamn visions if he can't have one when he needs one?

They have plans for this--their father was big on contingency, training them to always have back-up plans in place, code words and routines and strategies for tracking each other down, things they still use now when they get separated (Sam tries not to think about all the times they've gone into some dangerous situation without anything but salt and silver and the ridiculous belief that they couldn't be killed; how Dean still does it sometimes, even as smart and wary a hunter as he's become over the years)--but it's too soon, just over an hour since Dean stopped answering his phone, and it could be anything from a bad battery to limited reception to a pretty girl with a willing mouth that's keeping Dean from answering. It doesn't have to be the djinn.

Sam just knows it is.

If he's wrong, he'll take the mocking happily, as long as Dean's okay.

When they were kids, he would always worry, and there was no pattern to it that he could see--sometimes Dad would come home injured, and sometimes he would be fine, so there was no one ritual for Sam to cling to, no pair of lucky socks or surefire prayer for safety, nothing but Dean's assurances that everything would be okay. And though Sam had never doubted Dean when he'd said that (still believes him, even now, when everything has gone to hell), he'd also never stopped worrying, because he was always convinced this time would be the time Dad didn't come home at all.

At least then, he'd had no real idea of how bad things could go, and he'd had Dean to promise him things would be okay, that Dad would be back, that nothing could beat him. Sam still worried, but Dean always made him feel safer.

He'd lost even that comfort when Dean started hunting with Dad, and Sam was left alone in a dark apartment or motel room, or the backseat of the car, with nothing but his books and morbid thoughts for company, and no reassurances to be found in any of it.

He'd hated being left behind, like he was useless, a baby--it was always, Watch out for Sammy, and It's for your own good, Sammy, and he'd grown sick of it early on. As hard as it is to believe now (and he had conveniently forgotten it for years), when he was little, he'd wanted to hunt, or he'd wanted to help, anyway. Once they'd started taking him along, he'd been able to translate the worry into action--learning everything he could about whatever it was they were hunting, checking his weapons, making sure he had Dean's back, always knowing where the nearest hospital was, just in case. He'd hated it, though, had felt like he could never live up to Dad's expectations, always felt like he came in second to Dean. He'd wished he and Dean both were back in the motel room, safe, and ignorant of the dangers that lurked in the darkness. Dad had always said facing your fears was the best way to get over them, but Sam had found that knowing what they were up against just made it that much easier to imagine how everything could go wrong. Dad had also always said Sam had an overactive imagination, which was kind of funny, all things considered.

When he'd left for California, after the first flush of anger had worn off, he'd been sick with worry for weeks before the first postcard arrived, postmarked Altoona, PA, watch the police and the taxman miss me scribbled on it in Dean's barely legible script.

The postcards hadn't come regularly, and they'd never contained more than snatches of lyrics like some kind of secret language only Dean could speak (Many times I've gazed along the open road), that Sam had learned to translate out of need (Trust you gave, a child to save, left you cold and him in a grave), but they'd come often enough to ease Sam's mind. He'd known they would take more chances, choose more dangerous hunts, without him there--he'd always been the weakest member of the team, and when Dad died, he'd promised himself that he wouldn't be anymore, that he'd step up whenever Dean needed him, have Dean's back no matter what.

He's failed time and again over the past few months, and now Dean is missing.

He grits his teeth to clamp down on the nausea Dean's absence brings, and wonders if this is how Dean feels every time he leaves, wonders how he stands it, bears up under the weight of everything Dad laid on his shoulders, the weight Sam has added the past few months.

One thing he knows is that Dean wouldn't sit around with his thumb up his ass, waiting for the worst to happen.

Sam grabs the laptop, logs into his cell phone account, and calls the carrier to activate the GPS chip in Dean's phone.

Ten minutes later, he's casing the parking lot, looking for a car to steal.

Sam was twelve the first time he hotwired a car. Dean was leaning over him, whispering directions in his ear, though they'd gone over it half a dozen times already.

He can still hear Dean saying, "American's easier to jimmy than Japanese," as he slipped him the slimjim. Dad had gone off on a hunt by himself, saying it was too dangerous even for Dean, and he'd called every night for a week. And then the calls had stopped.

Dean had been trying to distract him, distract them both, with the thievery lessons, though Sam thinks now that Dean had probably had some crazy plan to go after Dad in a stolen car. By the time Dad had come back, two days later, Sam had gotten pretty good at it, though it was a while before he was as proficient as Dean. The slimjim wasn't as sensitive as the lock picks Sam was used to, and it had taken him a while to get a feel for it.

Even with car makers beefing up security, there aren't many anti-theft measures he doesn't know how to circumvent. He'd once jimmied Jess's car when she'd locked her keys inside, and she'd looked at him like he was a hero. He tries not to think about how she'd have looked at him if he'd told her the truth, and these days, he mostly succeeds.

He bypasses a beat-up Maxima that would probably have decent legroom and heads right for the dusty Dodge pick-up in the far corner of the lot, hoping the owner won't miss it too badly; if he's lucky, Sam'll be done with it in half an hour, and will leave it parked neatly on the side of the highway, waiting to be found.

The road is deserted, but he's alert, wired, determined not to miss anything. He knows where Dean is, abandoned warehouse off the county road, or, at least, that's where Dean's phone is. He forces himself not to look at his own phone; glaring at it hasn't made it ring, so maybe ignoring it will. He laughs at how ridiculously childish a strategy it is, but the laugh sounds more like a choked sob, and he can't afford that. He pulls himself together, forces himself to concentrate on the task at hand instead of leaping ahead five steps and tripping over his own feet in the process.

The last time he got distracted while driving, he was arguing with Dad as Dean was bleeding out in the backseat, and that had ended with all three of them in the hospital. Sam knows Dean doesn't blame him--probably doesn't even remember the crash itself, let alone the argument beforehand--but Sam also knows that it was his fault, another in a long list of screw-ups he can never fix.

They haunt him at times like this, ghosts that can't be laid to rest with a simple salt and burn, the endless loop of fighting with Dad while Dean tried to keep the peace without choosing sides. Dean was always the one who ended up paying the price when Sam and their father fought.

The months before he'd left for Stanford had been the worst. Dad had dragged them on hunt after hunt, and Sam hadn't wanted to be there--he'd had finals to study for--and hadn't been quiet about it.

"What the hell do you care, Sammy?" Dean had said, slapping his shoulder, the only way he showed affection anymore. "You're graduating. It's all over but the shouting. Those tests don't mean anything."

Even though it was true--and Sam knew he was in the top five percent, possibly among the top five students, of his class--it still mattered. He didn't want to have a dip in his fourth quarter grades, didn't want to give Stanford any reason to rescind his scholarship--he still couldn't believe he'd been accepted, couldn't believe he'd sent back the letter saying he'd be attending in the fall, though he still wasn't sure he was actually going to go (wasn't sure Dad would let him, wasn't sure he could leave Dean behind)--but he couldn't tell Dean that. Instead, he'd just shrugged and continued packing the supplies Dad had said they needed to clear the poltergeist from the school.

Dad had taken the basement and the first floor, and sent Sam and Dean up to the second and third floors. Dean was getting off on causing damage to school property, gleefully knocking holes in the baseboards, while Sam held the flashlight and muttered about not failing his AP Physics final.

"The Lorentz Force Law is force equals velocity times charge," he whispered, as they headed up the stairs, hand automatically falling into position for the right hand rule.

He felt a whoosh of air and then Dean was being shoved down the stairs by an invisible force that had to be their pissed off poltergeist, and Sam had no weapon to use against it. He clattered down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God, please let him be okay."

Dean was sprawled on the landing and for a long, nauseating moment, Sam couldn't tell if he was breathing. He felt a cold prickling of fear on his skin that had nothing to do with the poltergeist, which was still hovering around somewhere, probably hoping to knock him down the next flight.

"Dean," Sam felt for and found a pulse, fluttering rapidly under his fingers, panic and relief making him rougher than he should have been, "come on, man, wake up."

Dean stubbornly refused to comply. He was out cold, a pale, still figure in the darkness, so much smaller somehow in his silence, the rapid, shallow rise and fall of breathing not as comforting as his usual steady stream of wisecracks or curses.

Sam was going to have to finish the job himself, pissed off poltergeist at his heels. He ran back up the stairs, again taking them two at a time and clinging to the banister, dialing his phone with his other hand.

"Sam?" Dad barked after half a ring.

"Dean--It shoved Dean down the stairs." Dad drew a breath and Sam recognized the fear in it. "He's okay," he added hastily. "Just knocked out. I'm going to the third floor to finish the job."

"No, stay with your brother. I'll be up in a minute."

"Dad--"

"Now, Sam." Even Sam didn't argue with that tone, not during a hunt, anyway. He skittered back down the stairs to kneel by Dean's head, raising it up to rest on his thigh. Dean's forehead was damp with sweat and Sam gently brushed his hair back, the way Dean had used to do for him when he'd woken up scared; it was something Dean never would have allowed had he been conscious, and Sam took comfort from it.

Dad had taken care of the top floor, and Dean had taken the blame as Dad harangued them about not paying attention and how easy it was to get killed when your head wasn't in the game, but Sam had known it was his fault. He was supposed to have Dean's back, and he'd failed. He hated hunting, had always hated it, and was a liability because of it. This just proved that he'd made the right decision--he was better off at Stanford, and Dad and Dean were better off without him getting in the way and always needing to be protected.

Leaving had been easier when he'd believed he wasn't doing it for purely selfish reasons.

He knows now that he's a good hunter, and he can't bear to lose Dean now that he's made peace with the fact that this is his--their--life.

The road is dark and it's started to rain, and Sam nearly misses the turn-off, exit sign obscured by overgrown scrub and only visible when his headlights hit the reflectors. He laughs and shakes his head, can almost hear Dean's muttered, Stop thinking so damn much, Sammy, as he steers the truck onto the service road. He flicks on his brights, yellow beams guiding him through the darkness, and catches a reflection of dull chrome and broken glass in his peripheral vision. Jackpot.

He pulls in next to the Impala, closes his eyes and offers a silent prayer that's both thanks and urgent hope that Dean will be close by, and in one piece. He can't break the habit, and isn't even sure he wants to, though he's been questioning his own assumptions for months now.

He grabs the knife dipped in lamb's blood--and the symbolism is not lost on him, though he'd rather not think about anybody laying their life down at the moment--and heads into the warehouse, flashlight in hand, jaw set in determination.

He's going to save Dean, and God help anything that gets in his way.

end

***

Note: Title from Soundgarden. Dean's postcard lyrics are cribbed from The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Metallica, respectively.

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