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He gives himself three days to hide in bed, and another two weeks drunk on the couch. And Miranda lets him. She makes sure she eats, she makes sure he makes it to bed, she forces him into the shower. She keeps an eye out and makes sure he doesn’t drink himself to death.Really, Dean’s no good at inaction, so one morning he gets up early for a shower, and then makes a pot of coffee. He thinks about making breakfast too, but before he can get started, Miranda stumbles into the kitchen, a little bleary-eyed and, to be quite honest, fucking adorable. Her messy copper-red hair and pouty lips and tiny tank top and tinier sleep shorts prove to be too much for Dean. He walks over, lifts her over his shoulder and wanders back to bed. She complains, but only a little, and then those complaints turn into moans and gasps and all the noises Dean likes best as he slides down her body, taking her sleep shorts with him. Miranda opens the shop a little late that day.***** He didn’t even know the shop had a basement, but here it is, filled, like the rest of the shop, with books and weapons and odd-looking artifacts. “What is all this stuff?” Dean asks, bewildered. “Well,” Miranda says sheepishly. “See...Julius was cataloging and categorizing all of these things before he died.” She looks around, her eyes a little sad. “He never got to finish, and I just...running the shop, and everything that happened with the world almost ending, I haven’t had time to finish it for him.” Dean slips an arm around her waist, holding her close. Julius had been like a father to her; like Bobby’s been to him all these years, so he gets how she feels. He’d be wrecked if Bobby bit it. And he’s already lost Sam...“I’ll take a crack at it,” he says. She looks up at him worriedly. “Dean…” “C’mon, what else am I gonna do?” he asks. “Who knows, maybe I can find something down here that’ll help bust Sammy out.” “Sam said-” “Sam didn't know squat,” Dean snaps. “We don’t know anything, and I gotta try. I told him I wouldn’t but….” he swallows and looks over the basement. “I gotta.” Miranda leaves him to it for a while, with the promise of ordering sandwiches for lunch, and he hunkers down, with Julius’ old card catalog and his texts on mystical and ancient weaponry. Dean doesn’t find anything that’ll help Sam, not yet, but he keeps going. Eventually the lights start to flicker in the basement, and he groans as the room suddenly gets cold. “Fuck. Really?” “Don’t you curse in my house, boy.” It’s a booming voice, one that Dean remembers from long, long ago, and he gets to his feet, looking around. Sitting on the steps is an older man, his bald head a shiny deep umber in the light of the old lamps. On his nose sits a pair of wire glasses, and he looks up at Dean with judgemental, coffee-brown eyes. “Julius,” Dean says. “You’re still here?” The older man waves a hand and gets to his feet, walking around the basement and looking at his old artifacts. “I come and go as I please.” “But you’re stuck here.”“Hell no,” Julius snorts. “You hunt as long as I did, you pick up a few tricks. Before I died, I learned about ways to shift between realms after you kick the bucket. I mostly stay in heaven, but with you here full-time I thought I’d come for a little visit. Have a talk with your dumb Winchester ass.” Dean wrinkles his nose, offended and shocked at the insult.Julius sighs and takes a seat. “Thanks for tackling this, by the way. I think part of the reason Miranda never did was because she was just too sad I was gone. Somewhere in the back of that big brain, she realized that once this is finished...well...all my worldly crap is wrapped up.” “And she’d have to really move on,” Dean says quietly. “Smarter than you look,” Julius snorts. “Wow. Rude.” Julius chuckles a little. “Sorry, kid. I knew your daddy. I’m used to Winchesters being idiots. Leaving his babies in motel rooms and feedin’ ‘em outta vending machines? No life for children.” Dean shifts uncomfortable. “Well...he was pretty screwed up. He tried at least.” “You won’t remember, cuz you were five at the time, but I had you here for dinner once,” Julius grins. “Your brother was one, and he slept through everything, but you, you had energy. And an appetite. That was back before my wife passed away. She made you the biggest, best meal you ever had. Chicken and dumplings and she roasted carrots in honey and garlic. Pie for dessert. I’ve never seen a child eat like you ate.” Dean grins sheepishly. “Yeah, that hasn’t changed.” He tilts his head curiously. “I...I kind of remember. Your wife was tall, right?” “Oh, yes she was,” Julius grins sadly. “Tall and beautiful. She died a couple years after we met you Winchesters. She thought she could handle a Nazi necromancer alone, and...well...we were getting old by then. But she was stubborn, and the better hunter out of the two of us. I was the book guy, if you couldn’t tell.” Dean blinks rapidly. “I’m sorry did you say ‘Nazi Necromancer’?” “Never mind that. I’m here because I need a favor,” Julius says, his wrinkled face going serious.Dean stands up straight, turning to him. “I worry that something might be coming for Miranda,” Julius tells him. “I can’t be sure, but I’ve heard some whispers about the British Men of Letters coming here. And that could spell trouble.” “The who?” Suddenly, two books fall from the overstock shelves and onto the concrete floor, making an echoing thump. Dean turns to look, and when he turns back, Julius is gone.“Friggin’ ghosts,” Dean grumbles, stomping over to the fallen books and sweeping them up. ***** “Hullo, you,” Miranda beams as he trudges up the stairs, books in hand. “As promised, I ordered sandwiches.” She waves a sub, wrapped in glaring tinfoil. “Meatball parm?” Dean hasn’t been terribly hungry since Stull Cemetery, but his stomach gives an interested lurch, and he grins. “Thanks, babe.” As she hands it over, she leans over the counter to get a look at the books. “Where’d those come from?” “Funny story,” he tells her as he unwraps his sandwich. “Oi,” Miranda snaps. “Eat that in the back.” “Only if you eat with me,” Dean orders. “Lock up for lunch, c’mon.” It takes a little more convincing, but eventually she presses the “back in 1 hr” sign to the front door of the shop and locks up, before joining him in the back room with a chicken salad sandwich and a couple of sodas. “Did we run outta beer?” Dean asks, narrowing his eyes at his can. “Yes, you drank it all,” Miranda tells him, unimpressed. “...I only kinda remember that,” Dean admits. They stare at each other for a long moment, before he looks away, a little ashamed. It’s new for him to feel guilty about drinking too much. “So uh...the books.” She nods. “Right. Yes.” “I had a run-in with a ghost in the basement.” “What?!” Miranda cries, getting to her feet. “I’ll go get the iron and the salt and-” “He’s gone now,” Dean says, gently, taking her by the arm and pulling her back down into her chair. “It was Julius.” She frowns, her eyes going sad. “Oh,” she says softly, looking at the table. “Babe, I’m so sorry,” he says, taking her hand gently. “I know you miss him.” “What’d he say?” she asks, looking at him finally, her face unreadable. Dean reaches out with his free hand and brushes her hair away from her eyes. “He said to take care of you.” “I’m fine,” Miranda says quickly, almost automatically. “Well yeah, but you’ve been takin’ care of me,” he points out. “Figure I can return the favor.” She grins a little and rests her forehead on his shoulder, closing her eyes.“He also wanted me to read up on these guys,” Dean says, pulling a hand away to pick up the books and set them in front of her. She lifts her head, and her face immediately goes an odd shade of gray. Much more sickly than the normal pale pink of her complexion. “Oh.” “The Men of Letters,” Dean reads out loud. “Something tells me the British ones are the douches you almost worked for.” Miranda nods slowly. “That’s them...but I haven’t heard much about the American chapter...rumor has it they died out in the late fifties.” “So what exactly are they?” Dean asks, watching her carefully. She sits back and shrugs. “Well, in the case of the British chapter, like I said: a hundreds of years old organization dedicated to controlling monsters. They claim that they keep Britain free from monsters and ghosts and demons. They’re wrong.” Dean nods. “Okay. So what about the American chapter?” “From what I remember reading about them,” Miranda replies, taking the book, “they were mostly chroniclers. They had a team of hunters on retainer to help with bigger jobs, but...mostly, they recorded information about the supernatural. They didn’t fight.” “Sounds boring,” Dean comments. “To say nothing of irresponsible. They knew about all the bad and just wrote in their journals about it and nothing else?” “They fancied themselves scholars,” she says. “From what I remember, relationships with hunters were strained. They thought hunters were brutish and ape-like. Made for killing, not so much for thinking.” “So you go from one extreme, of turning kids into killing machines, to the other where you do nothing,” Dean snorts. “I’m so glad you ran away.” Miranda grins at him a little and opens up the book on the American Men of Letters, glancing over a random page, freezing as she reads. “What?” Dean asks as he digs into his sandwich, a little cheese hanging from his lip. She looked up at him and then does a double-take. “De-” she shakes her head and laughs, pulling out a napkin and wiping his face. “You are such a mess sometimes.” He grins widely as he chews. “What’d you see in the book?” he asks as he gulps down some soda. She swallows and reads out loud. “Junior chapter member...Henry Winchester.” Dean sprays Coke across the table in shock.***** “Right,” Miranda says as she closes her laptop. They’ve long finished lunch and have spent their time researching. “There was never a missing person’s report filed. There’s no real death certificate. Your dad says he disappeared in 1958, and after that time...there’s just no trace.” “Jesus, he really didn’t wanna be found,” Dean mutters as he sits back. “What about his car?” “Police reported it abandoned on a side street in Indiana. It was returned to your grandmother and your father shortly after,” Miranda says. “Why didn’t your grandmother file a police report?” Dean shrugs, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Dad never really said. I guess...I don’t know. Maybe she was expecting him to leave eventually.” “Was the marriage that bad?” Miranda asks. “Dad never mentioned,” Dean says. “He wasn’t exactly a chatty guy. Anything before he met our mom was vague at best, and anything after was either the perfect marriage, or...well...hunting.” “Well, maybe these Men of Letters know what happened to your grandfather. Might be worth looking into.” “Maybe,” Dean says quietly. “Although, I’m more interested in your British asshats. You think they’ll come after you and your friend again?” Miranda shrugs. “Dunno. They said they wouldn’t but in my book that means next to nothing.” Dean shakes his head, leaning back in his chair. “Y’know, when Sammy told me to find you and live some apple pie life, I don’t think he meant this.” She grins and bumps his shoulder with her own. “You’d be dreadfully bored with normal.” He chuckles. “What? You don’t think I couldn’t hack in the ‘burbs? White picket fence? Lawn care? Potlucks?” “I think you’d try to drown yourself in a bowl of ambrosia salad.” For the first time a weeks, Dean actually laughs.
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Months pass, and they do their best to research. They find nothing current on the American chapter of the Men of Letters, and there’s still no trace of a way to save Sam.Nightmares wake Dean up often. Cold sweat, shouting, the whole nine. He shakes so hard that he thinks the bed’s gonna start moving, and he feels damn guilty that he wakes Miranda up with this crap so often. She’s sitting up with him, her hands soothing over his skin, and the shakes die down. He doesn’t even notice they’re lying down again until his head hits the pillow. His arms wrap around her tightly, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair, twirling the soft stands slowly. “I gotta help Sam,” he says quietly. “I gotta keep trying.” Miranda says nothing for a long moment. “I gotta, Babe,” Dean tells her. “He’s down there, and I can’t- I can’t just leave him.” She leans up and kisses him softly. “We’ll start looking again in the morning.” He nods and kisses her again, pulling her close. It’s slow and soft and eventually, he’s rolling her onto her back, pressing against her insistently, almost desperately. Clothing is slid down and tugged aside, the two of them lost in the sighs and the moans; Of “yes” and “more” and “please,” until there’s nothing but the thrust of his hips and the way her thighs squeeze around him; her skin soft and so good.She gasps out his name when she comes, and he follows not long after with a soft moan, eventually rolling to lay on his back as he catches his breath. He slips his arm around her, pulling her to his side, taking comfort in the feel of her hand resting on his chest. The words just fall out of his mouth without any real thought. “I love you.” Miranda rests her head on his shoulder, and her voice is breathy as she utters it back to him. “I love you, too.” There’s no awkward conversation about it. There’s no tears or drama or fanfare. It’s just three words that hang in the air for a little while, until Dean falls into a dreamless sleep.*****Their morning is spent downstairs in the back room with a pot of coffee and a stack of books about hell and cages and pits and they get nowhere. They spend a lot of mornings this way.Dean rubs his face. “What if there’s just no way to get him out?” Miranda rubs his shoulder gently. “Then...then you’ll have to do what Sam originally asked, and let him go.” He closes his eyes. “I’m not done. I’m not done lookin.” She leaves him to it, taking her coffee to the front of the shop to man the counter and to shelve new arrivals from a collection that turned up at an estate sale down south: seven voodoo indexes, all from different voodoo queens. Quite the find.The bell on the door dings, and Miranda looks up with a polite smile as a burly man step in. “Hullo. Welcome to Ravenwood.” The older man nods, looking around. He looks uncomfortable with his surroundings. As if this many books in one place makes him nervous. He’s well-mannered though. “Hi, there. I uh...I’m looking for a good reference on shifters. I heard you were the lady to see.” “I’ve got a few,” Miranda tells him, stepping out from behind the counter. There’s something in his face that seems familiar to her. He’s older; bald, and grizzled. Obviously been hunting a long time. “Have you been in before?” she asks, going to one of the back sections. “No, Miss,” he says. “I don’t make it into New York very often. Just passin’ through on a job.” She nods slowly, climbing the step ladder to get at a high shelf. “Babe, I was gonna go grab some grub, you want-” Miranda blinks and leans over the bookcase to get a look at Dean, who’s standing frozen in place as he stares at the older man. “Dean,” the man says. “Oh, this is just hilarious,” Dean growls, pulling a gun from the back of his pants.“Oi!” Miranda cries. “No shoot-em-ups round the books. Take it outside.” Dean ignores her. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, wearing my dead grandfather’s face, but-” The man puts his hands up slowly. “It’s really me, Dean. I swear to you.” “Prove it.” “The shop is warded against demons and monsters, Dean,” Miranda says softly. “Whoever this is, he’s human.” “Samuel Campbell,” the man tells her, glancing up at her. “Dean’s maternal grandfather.” “Undead maternal grandfather,” Dean snaps. “How the hell are you here?” Samuel goes silent, staring at Dean for a long moment. “Let’s just say...somebody else wound up getting dragged back...and we think it dragged me along with him.” Dean shakes his head. “What does that even-” “Dean.” Everyone turns to the door as the bell dings, and as it dies down, Sam Winchester steps inside the shop.***** “I...I don’t know,” Sam admits as they sit in the back room. Dean passes out coffees. “I don’t know what brought me back or why, but...one minute, I’m in the box, and then the next...I’m...I’m standing outside of Stull Cemetery.” “So how did you two find each other?” Dean asks, looking from Samuel to Sam.“I came back at about the same time,” Samuel explains. “So did a few Campbell cousins. Gwen, Christian. Mark.” “So you guys have been...what?” Dean asks. “Hunting together?” “Well...yeah.” “How long have you been back?” Miranda asks. Sam opens his mouth, and then closes it again, looking at Dean nervously. “How long?” Dean asks, eyebrows lifting. “Eight uh…” Sam takes a breath. “Eight months.” “Eight months,” Dean repeats. “You’ve been back eight months.” Sam nods slowly. “You got out, Dean. I didn’t wanna screw with that.” “Look around, Sam,” Dean snaps, waving his arms. “I’m up to my neck in lore and hunters looking for research and ancient weapons all day, every day. I am not as out as you like to tell yourself.” “But you’ve got a home!” Sam cries, getting to his feet. “And somebody to come home to! My coming back screws that up!” “Wow,” Dean shakes his head. Samuel clears his throat as he looks between the boys. “Look...Dean, your brother thought he was doing what was best for you.” “That’s funny,” Dean says. “I’ve been wracking my brains for eight months trying to find a way to help him; to get him out of that box, and it turns out, I did all that worrying for nothing, because he’s been traipsing around with you.” The room goes quiet for a long moment, before Dean heads to the door. “It sounded like you guys were in the middle of doing some research. So don’t let me stand in the way,” he says. He leans in and kisses Miranda’s cheek quickly. “I’ll back out back.” As he disappears, and the bell on the door rings, signalling his exit, Miranda takes a breath, looking at Sam. “You know him better than all this.” “He woulda left you in the dust,” Sam points out. “We’d be back on the road in a heartbeat, and I don’t want that for him anymore.” Miranda sighs softly and sips her coffee before turning to head back to the counter. “Before you go back and apologize, I’d go buy a pie if I were you. There’s a nice bakery just down the way.” Sam rubs his eyes.***** Sam, of course, does what Miranda says. He finds an appealingly glazed cherry pie and buys the entire thing before stepping through the alley and to the back of the shop, where Dean is leaning over the Impala’s engine. “I uh…” Sam sighs softly as Dean steps back, looking at him expectantly. He holds out the pie. “I’m not hungry,” Dean tells him. “Dean, I’m sorry,” Sam blurts out. “I am. Okay? I just-” he shakes his head. “I wanted you to be happy. Miranda makes you happy. Weirdly enough, this place makes you happy. You love the city, this shop...that girl.” He says nothing, just watching him. “You’re pissed. I get it.” “No, you don’t,” Dean snaps. “You don’t get it. When I got dragged out of hell, the first thing I did was hit Bobby’s, and the second thing I did was look for you. I didn’t know where you were. You knew where I’d be. Or you at least had a square one to start looking. And you just...what? Hunted alone until you ran into Samuel?” Sam looks away. Dean nods. “I get not wanting to screw with me. With...I don’t know. With whatever it is I have here. But I’ve done almost nothing but look for ways to get you out. And it turns out, I didn’t have to do that. Because you’ve been topside this whole time.” Sam sighs. “I’m sorry, Dean.” He looks down, guiltily. “You’ve never had this before. The...place and the girl. As short-lived as it was, I had Jessica. And...and I have those memories of her to cling to in the bad times. And I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I wanted this for you, man.” Dean takes a deep breath, looking around, before gazing at his brother again. “Okay. Here’s how it is. You’re crashin’ in the guestroom. For a few days at least. I wanna dig into what brought you back. And what brought Samuel back, because as nice as it is to have a little more family around? I don’t trust it.” “Dean-” “Do you trust Samuel? Or anything of this? At all?” “...not...really.” “Right. So we dig into this,” Dean nods. “And then...and then we figure out where to go from there.” “You’re not going anywhere,” Sam says. “Sam- ““Do you want to hunt anymore?” Sam asks quickly. “Do you wanna live off of crappy gas station food and sleep in the car anymore?” He gets no response. They stand there in silence for a long, long moment, before a soft voice speaks up from the back door. “I’ve brought forks,” Miranda says, holding up two of them. “For the pie.” Sam huffs softly and walks over to get them, before turning his back to her, and giving Dean a look that clearly says ‘I know you’re not gonna leave all this. She brought forks. For pie. Marry her.’ Dean, for his part, rolls his eyes and shakes his head as if to say ‘shut up, Sam.’ ***** Samuel doesn’t go so easily.“I wanna help.” “That’s nice,” Dean tells him. “We’ll call if we need any.” “Dean-” “Don’t you have a shifter to hunt?” Dean asks as he goes around the shop, slipping books into their proper place. “You came in here looking for lore on shifters. Miranda got a book for you.” Samuel shakes his head. “Y’know...other hunters...the ones your age? They tell stories about you. How good you are. I gotta say...seeing you now? I don’t see it.” Dean just chuckles and shakes his head. “What?” Samuel asks. “Nah, it’s just funny that you think I care about your opinion,” Dean grins. “Anyways. Sammy an’ I got work to do. And there’s a ‘no loitering’ sign by the door. We’ll catch you on the flip side.” Samuel huffs out an annoyed breath before turning to Sam. “Seriously?” “I’ll call,” Sam promises. “In a few days. I’ll call.” It’s clear as the older man heads for the door, that he thinks that’s bullshit.