Stacked Against
“It’s right around this corner, Dean.” Sam was reading the map in the passenger seat of the Impala as Dean ran a stop sign to round the bend.
Only to come upon five cop cars nearly blocking the street.
“Crap,” Dean said, slowing to a crawl. “You think someone tip the cops?”
“About what?” Sam peered out of the windshield as Dean pulled to the side of the road a good distance from the flashing lights. “The smell?”
Dean rolled his eyes. “So do we want to come back later?”
“No, they’re all at that house.” Sam pointed to the porch of a run-down, tan house with the front door open and a few officers on the porch. “Looking at the numbers, we need to be on that side.” He gestured to the opposite side. “That blue one, there.”
“Alright. Let’s go."
On foot, they circled around the back of a neighboring house and cut through the woods behind the next few yards to the blue house. Dean went to work on the door lock while Sam tried his knife in the window catch. Sam won, and so they crawled through the old, rickety opening into a well lit kitchen. A pot was on the stove smoking and boiling over. Sam rushed to turn off the heat but the smoke detector started going off.
“Fan it!” Sam called.
Dean grabbed a towel and waved it frantically at the smoke detector on the ceiling as it yelled at him, “Fire. Fire.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dean said.
Sam opened the back door to let some air in, but then hit Dean in the arm to get his attention and pointed at the metal pipe running from the fire alarm into the wall. “It’s hardwired. The fire department has already been notified.”
“Of course they have,” Dean said throwing the towel on the table. “Better hurry up then. It knows we’re here now anyway.”
Dean closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as he reach for his gun tucked into the back of his pants and stalked out. Sam followed suit.
That was one way to get rid of the evidence, Dean figured, burn the house down after killing the inhabitant. Compared to the kitchen, the rest of the house was dark. A long hallway leading towards the front of the house. Various doorways leading off of it. They checked each room, the sound of the smoke detector ringing in their ears.
With the bottom floor clear, they moved upstairs and started checking those rooms.
One door seemed promising in that it wouldn’t open. It wasn’t locked; the handle turned easily and the door even swung every so slightly. Together, Sam and Dean muscled the door open to find a large bookcase on its side holding the door shut. The room was a study with a large wooden desk centered near a window in the far wall. A sleek, modern lamp was smashed on the ground and when Sam walked around the desk he found the owner of the house.
Ainsley Handler, a man they had saved from a werewolf the year before, had called earlier in the night to warn them. Sam checked the pulse and shook his head for Dean’s benefit.
“He knew it was in here with him,” Sam said, standing and surveying the room.
“Yeah, but what was it?” Dean asked. He moved to the desk and picked up a framed photo. It showed Ainsley and another man proudly holding up keys in front of this very house. He turned it around to Sam. “You think friend?”
“Husband. Luckily away on business, but I doubt he’ll be staying in this house after he learned what happened.”
A few things happened at once.
There was a pounding at the door downstairs and Sam flew across the room when a powerful paw swatted at him from the shadows.
“Sam!”
Dean fired his gun into the shadow as the creature moved into the light. A large, brown and furry, puma-sized monster advanced on Sam, seemingly unaware of the bullets entering its body. Dean immediately placed himself between Sam and the creature, swapping his empty gun for a large knife from his belt.
“Sam?” Dean called not really looking behind him, “you ok?”
“Yeah.”
He heard Sam grunting and getting to his feet as the four legged creature moved towards him. The movement was slow and smooth. The eyes of the creature focused on Dean sizing him up.
Suddenly it lunged and even as Dean swung the knife at it, he knew that the thing was too fast. It had Dean in an awkward headlock and the knife clattered to the floor. Tighter and tighter the grip got around Dean’s neck as the creature screamed a high-pitched wail. Dean refused to go out like this, not again.
Yet, there were stars here with them, Dean could see them floating before him. He tried to reach out and touch them. They were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he didn’t want this moment to end. He could vaguely hear someone calling his name, and a high whine and a pounding, but none of that mattered as he weakly reached for the stars.
The wailing stopped and the arm around his neck loosened, but Dean couldn’t immediately figure out what that meant. Then a new arm, picking him up and dragging him to the window.
“Come on, Dean. Come on,” a voice said. “The firefighters have broken the door down.”
Sammy, it was Sammy. He shook his head to clear it as the blood returned to his brain, and looked around. The furry monster was motionless on the floor, its blood forming a pool around it.
“What happened?” Dean asked, struggling to get his feet to cooperate.
“Silver knife to the heart,” Sam said pulling Dean towards a window. “The noise it was making reminded me of something I had read. Stricta Tenaci. Likes to choke its victims to death and vulnerable to silver. Can we talk about this later?”
Dean finally had his wits back about him and could hear footsteps on the stairs. Ushering Sam out first they both climbed out the window onto a lower roof and shimmied down the drain pipe into the back yard. They ran back into the treeline and stopped to watch the house from there for a moment. Dean could feel Sam looking at him.
“What?” Dean snapped in a whisper.
“Nothing,” Sam said defensively. “Just want to make sure you’re ok.”
“I’m fine, Sammy,” Dean said. “Don’t be so lame. It’s not like I haven’t been suffocated before.”
Sam just scoffed and went back to looking at the house.
Of course he was fine. Just because being choked out like that reminded him of being buried alive didn’t mean he was going to follow that memory back to the reason he was in that coffin in the first place.
They circled back to the Impala. As Sam worked in the trunk, dumping his weapons, Dean climbed into the driver’s seat, closed his eyes in the darkness, and took deep breaths.
Let it go, Dean thought, you made it out of another one.
By the time Sam got in the car, Dean was fine.
Believe me.
Created for the 2018 Louden Swain FanFic/FanArt Project (feat. The Station Breaks) on tumblr. @mrswhozeewhatsis
Song: Leg Up off of No Time Like The Present
Crossposted on AO3