Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Present Day
The sun sits at a sharp angle to the shore, golden light beginning to dip towards sunset. Waves roll and crash against the sand, pounding out an insistent rhythm beneath the graceful gulls that sweep and dive against a backdrop of perfect pale blue.
It’s exactly the way he’d remembered it.
Sam stands on the beach, a man-made of patchwork pieces, love and hope, tall and thin, his mind a tangle of memories that pull at the corners of his mouth. The sun is warm against his skin, breeze light through his hair, and if he closes his eyes he can almost…
He senses the presence next to him before it even speaks.
“What is this place?” Castiel asks, and he can hear the angel frown, see Castiel’s expression without opening his eyes at all.
The gulls cry with a longing he remembers, that he still feels. He breathes deep, the scent of waves and wet sand filling him, smile still lingering on his lips, face upturned to catch the sun.
“Sam,” Castiel says, his voice filled with warning. “You can’t stay here. She’s coming.” Castiel hesitates, and Sam can feel his frustration, hear the rustle of his overcoat as he moves.
Castiel…beautiful and immortal, wide face and deep blue eyes, voice like gravel and still failing to understand humanity after all these years.
“I can’t stop her.” Castiel admits the words like the worst kind of failure, sadness and irrevocable finality laced through them.
“I know.” Sam opens his eyes, turns towards him. “It’s okay, Cas.”
“Why are you here?” Castiel asks, his eyes crystalline blue in the afternoon sun, and Sam can hear the confusion in him, true curiosity layered just beneath. “I thought you would…”
Castiel trails off and Sam pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans, waits.
“I don’t understand,” Castiel finally admits. “If you won’t run…why would you choose…” Castiel shifts within his coat, shoulders hanging at an uncomfortable angle. “What is the significance of this place?”
The wind rustles through Sam’s hair, breeze caressing his face and carrying with it the brief sound of Calliope music, sad and sweet, same as the smile it brings to his face.
“I fell in love here,” Sam confesses after a moment. “The first time I fell in love, it was here.”
“Love?” Castiel echoes, still confused. “Sam. She’s coming. Any moment now, and I can’t…”
“This place is where I felt alive for the first time.” Sam stares out across the open water of the ocean.
And then he says, “It might as well be the place I die.”
---
Shell Beach, Florida, 1999
The Impala turns into a white concrete parking lot beneath bright sunlight, the motion too familiar as it slows, and Sam thinks it should be like home, like turning into a driveway, like everything known and loved should be a few short steps away.
It isn’t, though. It never is. It’s just another motel.
The Blue Moon Motel is an artifact from the 1960s, metal and wood painted a light shade of aqua blue with white trim, clusters of sparse palm trees rising up and hanging over it with fronds like a sad umbrella made out of hair. Sunlight falls in patches as they sway in the mild breeze that comes in off the ocean, smell of salt and brine and the distant sound of crashing waves. The sun is bright and hot, a glowing white ball that makes Sam squint through the car window of the Impala at his surroundings.
His dad kills the engine, radio dying into silence, barely hesitating before he opens the car door and climbs out. Dean follows close behind, and Sam sits there for a moment, tilting his head against the sunlight, gazing up through the long fronds of palm trees, green interlaced against the wide blue sky. He’s been to Florida before but the memory is hazy, half-lost to childhood and crowded out by so many others. It’s prettier than he would have expected, but there’s something else about it…something a little wild, he thinks, in the graceful curve of crowded palms and their rough, spiky leaves, the long grasses that hang over the edges of pavement, as if longing to devour it, the hungry mouths of the wildflowers scattered throughout.
A loose fist smacks against the window as Dean passes by, startling Sam into the moment.
Sam opens the door, unfolds his long legs from the car and steps into the Florida midday heat that hangs wet and heavy, a palpable thing even through his thin, gray t-shirt. He shades his eyes against the sun, taking in the tangle of purple flowers that obscures the bottom of the motel office completely. The corners of the building stick up at an angle from the ground, spreading outward as they rise from the wild greenery.
Through the huge glass pane window that reveals the inside, their dad is talking to a rail-thin, gray-haired woman wearing a white, wide-brimmed hat and white sunglasses with tiny pink flamingos perched on the brims. A pair of flimsy, white cotton pants billow around her legs, matched by a sleeveless button up shirt, her nails long and nearly the same shade of pink as the flamingos on her glasses as she makes a gesture in the direction of the rooms. Music drifts out through the open office door, the sound high and tinny, a song Sam knows from the oldies stations his dad flips on from time to time.
He likes this one; Surfer Girl. There’s something about it. Sweet and sad at the same time. Wistful, maybe?
Wanting. That’s the word.
“You gonna stand there all day taking in the scenery, Sammy?” Dean asks, and Sam turns to see him standing there, two bags dangling from his hands, another strapped across his back. Light glints off the amulet that rests at the base of his throat.
“This is gonna be like a vacation,” Dean says with a wide grin.
When Dean smiles like that it’s like the sun coming down out of the sky, brilliant and burning a thousand different ways, and for a moment, Sam feels scorched by it, wants to grin back.
He takes a breath and glances away, skeptical. The motel looks ordinary—sand and sea and sky and a bit run down—like all the things a normal family would enjoy if they were on vacation. Sam can’t remember the last time they did something normal. He’s sure Dean doesn’t either.
“It’s gonna be fun,” Dean says, in that way he has that’s completely convincing, even when he knows it isn’t true.
Sam wants to believe him. But they’re not here for anything fun.
Dean lifts the bag in his hand, muscles flexing beneath tanned skin, bicep curling, bare beyond the short sleeve of his black Metallica t-shirt, and Sam is mesmerized by the motion for a moment. There’s a scattering of freckles on the inside of Dean’s arm, their color darker now that Dean’s getting a tan.
“Sam, you in there?” Dean asks, like he’s actually a little concerned this time.
“Yeah.” Sam looks away from his brother again. “I’ll get the rest of the bags.”
He moves to the trunk, lifts a bag onto each shoulder, glimpsing a gold streak of keys through the air, flying from his father’s hands to Dean’s. Dean jingles them at the end of his fingers, motioning with his head for Sam to follow.
They move to the wrought-iron gate set into the low wall beside the office. The wildness is held back here; to each side, hydrangea bushes spill over the confines of carefully mulched soil, blossoms pale blue to vivid midnight scattering petals over the concrete sidewalk like fine snow.
He guesses it’s pretty.
The iron gate creaks and Sam follows Dean into the courtyard. More palm trees loom, more blossoms litter the ground, and there’s a pool, deep and aquamarine, sunk deep into the cement at the center, flanked on three sides by the two-story building. Rows of doors stretch behind the aluminum railings, each of them with a number on it crowned by a small, crescent moon cut from seashell, tiny starfish caught inside the inner curve. Their room is on the second floor; it rests under the shadow of the roof where two building corners meet around the courtyard.
He follows Dean up the stairs, watching his brother’s shoulder muscles flex beneath the tight stretch of his black shirt. Something about it bothers Sam, something he can’t quite put a name to. Dean could use some new shirts though, he supposes, ones that wouldn’t be stretched quite so tight across his shoulders like that, but Dean would wear hot pink before he’d get rid of that Metallica shirt.
“This is us,” Dean says, keys jingling.
The seashell on their door has fine, hairline cracks running through it, but it’s intact, the number nine glinting dull and brassy.
Inside, white mosquito netting drapes from the ceiling down over each of the double beds—slightly fancy and completely practical—and they set the bags down on the floor instead of tossing them on the bed like they usually would. The wallpaper surrounds them in pale blue, printed with faded white sand dollars and seashells, all the furniture made from white wicker and adorned with aqua cushions. There’s a TV and a VCR set on a table across from the beds, and a kitchenette with white appliances arranged neatly beneath skinny white cabinets. Real seashells litter the shelves and surfaces, some smooth and some ridged, some colorful, others the color of bone, pitted and pocked.
“Not bad, huh Sammy?” Dean asks with a grin.
It’s a little nicer than the places they usually stay, blue carpet immaculate and the smell of freshly laundered bedding, but Sam just shrugs.
“I saw a carnival on the way in,” Dean goes on, kneeling to open one of the bags. “We can probably walk to it from here.”
“I’m a little old for carnivals,” Sam remarks, eyeing Dean skeptically.
“You’re never too old for a carnival,” Dean shoots back with an easy smile over his shoulder. “Popcorn, cotton candy, funnel cakes and all the creaky rides you can handle.”
“And clowns,” Sam adds, sullen.
“Comes with the territory,” Dean agrees with a light shrug. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you, Sammy.” He throws Sam a quick wink over his shoulder.
Sam can’t quite hold back a smile. “My hero,” he says, wry.
“Damned straight.” Dean grins, and Sam can’t resist it this time.
“Okay,” Sam agrees, still not quite convinced. “We’ll go to the crappy carnival. Maybe it’ll even be fun.”
“’Course it will,” Dean scoffs. “You’re going with me .”
Daylight illuminates the room again, their Dad opening the door and shouldering through with the last of their bags. Faint dust motes dance in the heavy beams of yellow light that stream in behind him, leaving his features shadowy and indistinct.
“You boys getting settled in?” he asks.
“Yessir,” Dean responds, smooth and easy, hands digging through his bag.
Sam swallows and gives a half nod, moving to sort through his own bags. They’ll be here a couple weeks, at least, according to their Dad, so he might as well find somewhere for his clothes.
*
June means there’s no school, and in Florida, it means most places are deserted, tourists preferring to visit during the winter months, gray skies and snow driving them south. Shell Beach probably isn’t a big tourist town anyway, too small and too far north to get much notice. Sam likes that about it though; it’s quiet here, no loud voices in the motel, no banging doors or crying children. He sees one elderly couple when his dad sends him out for ice, both of them dressed in pastel colors and wearing straw hats, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else around.
When he returns to their room, ice cubes already beginning to melt, his dad and Dean are bent over the kitchenette table, journals and papers spilling across it as they speak in low tones. Dean doesn’t always go on hunts with their dad, but now that Sam is older he goes more often.
Sam guesses this is going to be one of those cases.
Dean’s elbows are splayed wide on the table, body leaning forward between them, and the Metallica shirt is stretched to its limits across his shoulders. Dean doesn’t turn except to give Sam a quick glance, caught up in whatever their Dad is saying. Sam stands just inside the doorway, ice bucket in his hands, thoughts of the carnival filling his head, mingling with disappointment.
It’s just a crappy carnival , he thinks, throat clicking as he swallows hard, trying to push down the feeling. You didn’t want to go anyway.
He watches them a moment longer and then sets the bucket on a wicker table, turning and letting himself back out into the heat.
*
The beach is bereft of tourists and the colors that would fill it in the winter months in the more popular areas further south. Pale sand stretches out ahead as far as the eye can see, high grass rustling at the edges furthest from the water. All around the sky is pale blue and clear, save a few stray white clouds that linger, as if painted by a stipple brush. Wind blows in off the low waves, catching and tousling his long hair, and he doesn’t bother to take his hands from his pockets to brush it away, long having grown accustomed to it being in his face.
In the distance, he can see the shape of a Ferris wheel rising into the sky, the tips of colorful tents poking at the bottom edge of clouds.
The carnival, he thinks, feeling disappointment churn inside him again. He bites down against the feeling, pulls his eyes from the sight, and keeps walking.
The shore is very nearly deserted, but not quite. Her bikini is a light blue that nearly blends into the open sky behind her, as if the material had been cut from the sky itself, long expanses of tanned skin between. Hair straight and light brown, it descends in a line to the middle of her back, and she bends to one knee as Sam approaches, hand moving lightning quick to snatch something from the greedy tide.
She’s tall and slender, well-muscled with long, coltish legs, and she can’t be more than a year younger or older than Sam, he decides as he walks closer to her.
She cocks her head, squinting against the sun as she regards him, hand closed in a light fist pulled close to her chest. Sam’s debating whether or not to just keep walking past her when she smiles, plush, pink lips pulling in a broad smile.
“Hey. My name’s Dawn,” she says, rising to her feet.
“I’m Sam,” he says, pushing his hands deeper into his jeans pockets.
She’s maybe three inches shorter than he is, and he’s tall for sixteen. Freckles are scattered across her nose and cheeks above full, round lips, her jawline descending at sharp angles to a point at her chin. But nothing is as remarkable as her eyes, a brilliant shade of emerald that glints almost crystalline clear where the sunlight catches in them.
“What are you doing out here?” she asks.
He lifts his shoulders. “Just going for a walk.”
“Well, you didn’t look like you were going for a swim,” she says, grinning as he looks him up and down.
“What about you?” he asks.
Her eyes move back to her loosely curled fingers, considering. “I made a grab for some shark’s teeth before the tide pulled them back out. Not sure if I got them or not.”
The wind cascades through his hair, and he tosses it back from his eyes as he looks out across the vibrant blue ocean. “You ever see any of the sharks those belong to?” he asks, nodding at her closed hand. He means it mostly as a joke, but he is curious.
She looks down at her hand, and then out across the ocean, long strands of brown hair lashing against her cheek. “No,” she says, the corner of her mouth curving in a small smile as she looks back to Sam. “But the water here is full of sharks.” She lifts a shoulder, shrugging. “So hopefully.”
“Hopefully?” he asks, arching a brow.
Her nod is barely perceptible. “Sharks rarely try to eat people. I think it’d be neat.”
Sam thinks about that, glancing down at the sand. “I guess they’re less dangerous than a lot of other things.”
She regards him, thoughtful for a long moment. “You’re brave. Are you from Australia?”
He finally laughs, shoulders relaxing as he leans back a fraction, hands still deep in his pockets.
“Yeah,” she says and grins, and Sam can see her relax as well. “You don’t sound like you’re from Australia.” And then, “Wanna see what I caught?”
In the distance, the Ferris wheel moves against the sky, long flags in every color of the rainbow flying from the tent tops. He gives them one last look and then focuses on her again, smiling.
“Sure.”
She holds his eyes for a moment, smile playing about her lips, and then unfurls her fingers. A small, smooth, curved shark’s tooth rests within her palm, black shape stark amidst pale sand and white pebbles. She pokes at it with the tip of one aqua-blue painted fingernail, lifting it to the surface.
“Thresher shark,” she tells him, moving closer to him. “They never eat humans,” she adds, smile growing wider.
She’s so close, and so beautiful, emerald eyes stunning in the sunlight, body lean and tanned, curved and graceful, bare skin and the smell of sun and sea. Sam feels his throat catch, tongue sticking when it’s supposed to be making words, and she laughs, tossing her long hair back over one shoulder.
“I promise they’re not scary,” she reassures him.
“I…” He means to say he believes her, rummaging around his brain for what little he knows about sharks.
Her attention moves from him, head cocking as if listening to a distant sound. Sam can’t hear anything except the slow roll and splash of waves.
“My sister’s calling for me,” she says after a moment, eyes rolling to one side. “I have to go.”
She wriggles her fingers, letting the sand sift between them like heavy rain, shark’s tooth and a few stray pebbles left behind, lying against the paleness of her palm.
Without a word, without warning, she takes his hand, turning it over, his hand resting between both of hers for a moment, and then she drops something tiny and nearly weightless into it, her lips curving in a teasing smile.
Sam’s far too aware of the nearness of her, the scent of her, the sun-warmed heat of her skin where it touches his.
“Don’t get eaten by sharks, Sam,” she tells him with a grin before she pulls away.
In the palm of his hand, the small Thresher shark tooth nestles, a few grains of sand still clinging to it.
When he looks up to say ‘Thanks’ she’s already gone.
*
“Where’d you go?” Dean asks, arching a brow at Sam as he enters the motel room.
Dean’s lying on one of the beds, one knee drawn up, one arm wrapped underneath the pillow he’s resting his head on. He’s still wearing the Metallica shirt and his faded blue jeans, blown out at the knees with stray loose threads hanging from them, bare feet poking out at the frayed ends. Sam’s caught for a moment by the appearance of them—Dean rarely goes barefoot—they make him seem more exposed, vulnerable despite the fact that he’s splayed out on the bed, lazy and languid and graceful, like a lion. The mosquito netting around the bed is pulled back so he can watch something on the tv screen, fingers of his free hand curled around the remote.
Sam touches the sharp tip of the shark tooth in his pocket and shrugs. “The beach.” And then, “I thought you were busy with Dad, anyway.”
“Just details on the case.” Dean flips off the TV, sits up on the bed and tosses the remote aside. “Why? You jealous, Sammy?” Dean asks with a teasing grin. “Don’t worry, I didn’t forget about our date.”
That gets under Sam’s skin, for reasons he can’t quite explain. Maybe because Dean’s right and he was jealous, but the feeling is strange and unfamiliar, the way it squirms and prickles inside him. He turns away from his brother, slight heat warming his cheeks and mutters, “Whatever.”
“Okay.” The tone of Dean’s voice is uncertain, like he isn’t sure what he said to make Sam upset.
Sam walks to the fridge on the pretense of finding something to drink, but the fridge is empty, spotlessly clean and gleaming white like some kind of Arctic wasteland. He stands there for a few seconds anyway, bathed in bright light and not really thirsty, but needing something to do.
“Listen,” Dean says after a moment. “Dad wants me to help him with some of the legwork on this case, talking to the locals and stuff. So I figure in a couple-few days, we can hit the carnival.”
Which means they might get to go. But they also might not, depending on what their Dad wants Dean to do. No one’s ever cared much about what Sam wants, except for Dean, but Dean’s not the one in charge. Sam has learned better than to expect anything normal or fun to happen in his life, and so he tries to let the idea go, little hurt on top of hurts piled up over the years. Sam lifts his shoulders in a shrug and lets the fridge door fall closed as he turns back toward his brother.
“Where is Dad?” Sam asks, as much to change the subject as anything else.
“He went to get food.” Dean stretches, Metallica shirt rising to reveal a thin strip of skin just above his low-hanging jeans, and then gets up from the bed, moving toward Sam and the kitchen.
“You hungry?” Dean asks as he passes by. “Did you get food at the beach?”
Sam turns, eyes following his brother’s movement, gaze still drawn to the edge of Dean’s shirt.
“No.” Sam answers, distracted. “I met a girl though.”
“That’s my boy.” Dean’s smile is proud as he turns, fingers squeezing Sam’s shoulder briefly. “She pretty?”
The warmth of Dean’s fingers against his shoulder lingers, and it takes Sam a moment to focus. “Yeah,” he replies, and then huffs out an appreciative breath. “She’s beautiful.”
Dean whistles, low and appreciative. “Watch out for those kind, Sammy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam asks, half-curious and half-suspicious.
Dean shakes his head once and shrugs off the question. “Nothing. Just be careful, that’s all. Beautiful women have a way of getting you to do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
Dean knows a lot about certain things when it comes to girls, but there are other things Sam’s beginning to realize his brother doesn’t understand about them at all. Dean’s never mean to them, but he doesn’t take them very seriously, either.
“Have there been girls that got you to do things you wouldn’t normally do?” Sam asks.
Dean’s answering smile is both dazzlingly pleased and full of chagrin. “Once or twice,” he says with a nod, and Sam can tell he’s thinking about something sexual just from the glint in his brother’s eyes. “Once or twice. There was this girl one time in Memphis…” Dean trails off with a disbelieving shake of his head, lips pursed as if about to say more.
Sometimes Sam is curious enough to listen to some of Dean’s sex stories—Sam’s only ever kissed one girl, and if anyone has pointers, it’s his brother—but he usually has to stop Dean before he gives too many details. Beautiful girls in obscure hotel rooms, too much skin and breath, lips and hips and the spaces in between, red and pink, soft and tight, and Sam doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to understand the irresistibility of the girl in Memphis. The length of her lashes, the shortness of her skirt, the color of her panties barely hidden beneath. The way she’d gotten Dean to do whatever she’d wanted.
Sam shakes his head. “I really don’t want to know.”
“You might learn something,” Dean says, slow, dirty grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. The sight of it sends a hot flash of sudden irritation through Sam.
“Not everything is about sex, Dean.” The words come out harsher than Sam intends them, and he knows the moment he says them that they’re too much.
Dean’s smile fades, Sam’s anger leaving him confused. But he doesn’t retaliate, doesn’t rise up to meet Sam head-on, eyes dropping off to one side and then upward as he seems to consider. And then a strange curiosity lights in his brother’s eyes, angle of his chin tilting as he meets San’s eyes. “Wow. You really like this girl, huh?”
Dean thinks he’s got it all figured out, just like he always does, subtle smirk at the corner of his mouth, green eyes lit from within with amusement, and Sam’s teeth come together with a hard click, frustration and annoyance bubbling like slow lava, rising. His cheeks burn, muscles knotted into tapestries between his shoulders, stories written across them he doesn’t understand.
“You got it bad,” Dean remarks, teasing lilt to his tone.
Sam rolls his eyes and spins around, stalking towards the door. He opens it and lets it slam shut behind him, taking the stairs at a quick clip, wet heat already hitting him like a wall.
A few minutes later, still breathing hard as he sits by the pool, he wonders what the hell he’s so angry about.
It isn’t Dawn. He doesn’t think it’s about Dawn, anyway. But if it’s not about her then what?
Long moments pass, sun gold against blood-red as it begins to set.
His brother pads across the smooth concrete on nearly silent bare feet, sitting down at the edge of the pool next to Sam. He doesn’t say anything, just rolls up the frayed cuffs on his jeans all the way to the knees, bare feet and calves making ripples in the water as he dips them in, letting them hang over the edge. Dean swings his legs back and forth lazily through the water, hands braced on either side of him, so close to Sam that Sam can feel the warmth of him.
“I don’t know what I did,” Dean admits.
Sam breathes out a hard laugh. “Me neither.”
“Then we’re even,” Dean decides, like it’s fair, like any of this makes sense.
“So we’re okay,” Dean says, quiet and sincere, and he doesn’t say he’s sorry but Sam hears it anyway.
They sit in silence for a while, anger slowly dissipating inside Sam, curling like smoke, drifting away on the light breeze.
“Yeah,” Sam says, just as quiet and sincere.
Dean slings an arm around Sam, fingers squeezing Sam’s shoulder and pulling him in close. They don’t touch that often anymore, ‘family’ a bond spoken and felt more than shown, but the weight and warmth of Dean feels like comfort, and Sam leans sideways, lets himself sink into it. The sun is setting, pink-orange light dancing on the ripples of the pool, and the sky is deep gold where it disappears into the shadows of palm trees in the distance. They sit side by side in silence, feet swinging in the water, watching it together until the pink and gold clouds fade into purple, slowly deepening into dark blue. Fireflies begin to blink all around them, tiny green-gold lights against the backdrop of tall grasses, crickets beginning a rising chorus all around them.
Bullfrogs lend their voices to the song, and Sam can hardly hear the ocean over the sounds around them. Sam rests his head against Dean’s shoulder, and for a moment, in the twilight, everything feels right.
