Fic: A Town Called Rhoda (Sam/Dean, NC-17) Part 3 of 7

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Back to Part 2

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Dean looked back at his property, trying to see it through Sam’s eyes. Both of the cabins that Eleanor had left them were on the small side, along with about one hundred acres of third-growth redwoods and mixed forest. About five acres was fairly well cleared and set up for planting. There was the barn with three stalls, attached to a garage/workshop with woodworking tools that Dean had completely mastered. He’d done a lot of work over the years he’d lived here. He’d even started doing custom woodworking for people in Rhoda and nearby towns all the way up to Arcata, which was considered the “big time” for that sort of thing in the area.

As he led Sam into the cabin he had offered him the use of last night, Dean thought about how this place was supposed to be used. Back then he’d put the majority of his time into fixing up the intended-for-Airbnb cabin, hoping to make the money back that he invested. Dean had outfitted it with an all-new modern kitchen and bath. It also had a big picture window that overlooked the bend in the river that his property included. All the new interior woodwork had been done by Dean, and Sam had no idea at first that this was all his brother’s doing.

“Whoever you got to do this woodworking really knows their shit,” Sam said, smoothing one hand over the nearly invisible joins in the gleaming new stairway banister.

“Thanks, that’s nice of you to say so,” Dean said with a smirk.

“No way, you did all this yourself?” Sam asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise and suspicion.

“What, did you think I was doing with my time up here? I wasn’t sitting around pining after you,” Dean said.

“No, I didn’t think that, but you never said you’d learned how to do all this. It’s fucking amazing.”

“You never asked,” Dean said, cutting himself off from bitching about all the other things Sam should have been asking him about on the phone.

“I should have,” Sam said. “You always asked me about how school and teaching was going, and I just blabbed and assumed you’d speak up if you wanted to share something.”

“You assumed?” Dean asked. “C’mon, Sam, I taught you better than that, what’s all that assuming do? Makes an ass outta you and me.”

“Now you’re quoting the Bad News Bears to me. Look, I shouldn’t have assumed any of that. I mean, I know you have trouble talking about anything that’s important to you. And the way things were between us, it was even harder. I’m an idiot, I know that now, okay?”

“It’s about time I get to hear those words,” Dean said, trying to hold back a laugh.

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve said that too many times already, but I really am, Dean, for all of it.”

“I know, I get it, stop apologizing, it’s already getting old, and start unpacking and get yourself moved in,” Dean said.

“I can really just stay in here? It’s all new and fancy, don’t you want to live in this cabin yourself?”

“I like the original cabin just fine, and it’s the one with the solar setup. So this one is all yours, for as long as you want it,” Dean said, knowing he should have probably put some limits on things right here at the beginning, but he wasn’t that kind of guy. Even if he should have been self-protective, set boundaries, all that. He guessed that Blair was going to read him the riot act when they found out.

Sam didn’t say anything, so Dean walked towards the main windows and pointed out at the expansive deck he’d built last summer. “You’re gonna love the view from the deck in the evening.”

“Thanks, Dean,” Sam said, looking at him with that intense stare that had always made Dean weak in the knees.

“You’re welcome, I’m glad you’re here, Sammy,” Dean said, hand going up to the back of his own neck with the weight of all that stood between them. “So, I’m gonna be gone at least a few hours. Help yourself to anything you need,” Dean said, leaving through the open cabin door.

“Ok, I will, I’ll see you later,” Sam said with a wave from the porch.

It felt strange to just take off and leave Sam like this, after so many months of thinking he was dead and gone. But Dean needed the time alone on the way into town to sort his thoughts out. He had to come up with a good plan to tell Blair and all the other town folk about their new resident. As far as he was concerned, Sam was staying put. They’d work out all the other prickly shit at some point. But now that he’d come back, they needed to stick together from here on out.

***

The town meeting was held as usual in Smokey’s Bar, because it was the biggest room in town. No one was drinking this early in the morning, and all the lights were on, which highlighted all the varied shades of redwood making up the walls and ceiling. The unofficial town leader, not really a mayor because he was unelected, was Blair’s father, Ed. He was talking about the effort to get a late summer planting going in the fields that people had under cultivation. Dean settled into the seat Blair had left beside them, he leaned over and waved to Blair’s Mom, Helen. She smiled and waved back, her green eyes flashing between Dean and Blair, always examining, weighing whether he was good enough for Blair. Which was totally a mother’s job, he supposed, not having had the experience himself.

“Where are the twins?” Dean whispered in Blair’s ear.

Blair turned into him and answered quietly, “They’re supposed to be working our corn field, but knowing them, they’re probably fishing or goofing around. Why were you late?”

Dean just smiled and twined his hand with Blair’s. It was easy to picture Mika and Martin not doing the gardening chores and fishing instead. Mika had been the one to teach Dean how to really bait a hook properly, and Martin hadn’t given up on Dean until he’d gotten the hang of casting.

Helen leaned forward, her curly red hair falling over her face to tap Dean’s knee, she then pointed towards the front of the room where Ed was asking for volunteers to help get the fields planted. Dean let go of Blair’s hand so he could raise his hand. He was relieved to see there were many others volunteering as well. He had no idea what was going to be involved, but he wanted to help where he could. At least there were people here who understood planting and growing. Sure, most of them had been pot growers, but the knowledge applied to other crops too.

That topic of discussion finished, Ed asked the assembled group if there was any new business. One of the off-the-grid prepper types, Hank asked if anyone needed help with their solar systems. A few people voiced the need. No one brought up anything else, so Dean decided it was his turn.

“I wanted to get an idea about what the general feeling of adding newcomers to town? If say, a relative or close friend comes to live with us?” Dean asked.

There were some immediate grumbles or negative sounding noises. Ed calmed the crowd down with a barked ‘Hey!’ Then he led a discussion on the pros and cons of the idea. The general consensus was that it wasn’t up to the town to say yes or no, but that it was all of their responsibility to make sure the new people understood the general rules of life in Rhoda. Dean was relieved that he’d brought it up and that the majority of the town folks were at least accepting of the idea. That meant it was possible for Sam to stay if he wanted to without a lot of hassle.

As the meeting broke up soon after, Blair turned to him with a questioning look flashing in their green eyes. “What’s with that question?”

“I don’t want to talk about it here,” Dean said, still feeling the need for a little bit of secrecy on the subject of Sam the Returned.

“Okay, Mr. Secretive, whatever,” Blair said with an exaggerated eye roll.

Dean had always compared that expression to one of Sam’s bitch-faces. Now that he’d seen one from Sam this morning, he realized Blair’s version really didn’t come close, it was something altogether different. “Hey, uh, why don’t you come back to my place. I got a surprise waiting to show you.”

“Like I said, Mr. Secretive, whatever. Sure, I’ll come over after I get the okay from Mom. Not sure if she wanted me to work in the store, sometimes it gets busier after these meetings.”

“See you there soon,” Dean said, leaning down for a very brief kiss, usually he made a bigger deal out of kissing Blair in front of people, like he still needed to make the point. But there was a lot on his mind today.

Several people nearby whistled, and laughed. Dean realized that it felt like good-natured teasing now, not like it had been at first. The people he’d already gotten along with had been fine when he and Blair had paired off. It was the ones he didn’t know well that had given them some static, mostly because they just weren’t accepting of Blair and their ‘lifestyle’. There were a few that had been protective because they didn’t want Blair to be taken advantage of by some outsider. For example, like Blair’s folks had at first. But once all the townsfolk had gotten to know Dean and he’d proved to them that he wasn’t up to something nefarious with Blair, they’d all let down their guard and accepted him. Volunteering for everything hadn’t hurt matters either.

He rode back to his place with a satchel full of stuff he’d traded for and plans for what to make for dinner with Blair and Sam. Dean couldn’t wait to surprise Blair with the good news.

***

Blair wished that they didn’t have to wear a helmet riding the electric motorcycle that Dean had fixed up for them. But he insisted, and so did Blair’s mom. They wished the wind was whipping through their hair, to get all these unwelcome thoughts out out out and away from their brain. When they’d shown up at the town meeting this morning, they’d expected to be greeted by Dean with the usual embarrassing as hell mega movie star kiss in front of everyone. But he’d been quiet and restrained instead. And then after the meeting broke up, he’d insisted on talking back at his place. He was being all mysterious about it, mumbled something about having big news. Blair had asked for the rest of the day off, and what were Mom and Dad going to say, no? It wasn’t like they really needed three people staffing their family store. Wasn’t much left on the shelves to sell.

Blair caught up to Dean part way out to his property, and followed him up the final hill. Passing through the main gate, Blair was surprised to see that there was a horse. The curliest freaking horse that Blair had ever seen was munching away in the pasture, Dean’s small flock of black chickens were scrabbling between its hooves. Was this Dean’s news? He’d decided to invest in a horse? But then there was a figure standing on the porch of the new cabin, Blair could tell the guy was almost as tall as the door he stood in front of, waving a little as the motorcycles passed nearby.

Blair parked in their usual spot near the garage where Dean kept his car that he called Baby and never drove these days. As soon as Blair got their helmet off and their hair squared away they turned to say, ‘who the heck is this guy?’ and they noticed Dean’s eyes. Glued like super glue in the direction of the new cabin and the man now approaching. The guy walked like a panther, graceful but with this constrained power. Dean still hadn’t said a thing.

“So who is this dude and do I need my gun?” Blair finally asked, hand on the saddlebag where their gun was always handy.

“Shit…sorry, that’s—he’s my big news. It’s Sam, that’s my little brother,” Dean said with this note of wonder and joy in his voice that was so beautiful to hear that Blair hated the twist in their heart at hearing it.

“Not so little, and not so dead, huh?” Blair said, going with snark since that’s what Dean would be expecting.

“Nope and nope,” Dean said, smiling wide and open as his brother approached. He slipped an arm around Blair’s waist. “Hey, Sammy, c’mon and meet Blair.”

“Hi, Blair, it’s great to meet you. Please call me Sam though, I’ve never been able to get Dean to do it consistently,” Sam said, shaking Blair’s hand.

Blair looked up and up and up at him, and was struck by the kindness in his eyes even though there was a pinch of wariness too. Blair shook Sam’s hand back. “It’s good to meet you, Sam. Didn’t think I’d ever get the opportunity, you know?”

“See, Sammy, it wasn’t just me thinking you were a goner,” Dean said, elbowing out at Sam.

Sam dropped Blair’s hand, ducked out of the way of Dean’s strike and bumped their shoulders together instead. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it, which Blair totally got. They wouldn’t want to share thoughts about their own mortality with a complete stranger either.

“Lets go inside and I’ll get started on fixing us an early dinner,” Dean said.

“You need some help?” Sam asked.

“No, you and Blair sit and get acquainted while I get chopping,” Dean said, pointing at the counter and two barstools.

Blair got three beers out of the refrigerator and opened them. They set one next to Dean where he’d begun chopping the center stalks out of a bunch of kale. He gave Blair a kiss on the cheek in thanks. Blair turned to see Sam hiding a scowl and handed him a beer.

“You still have beer? How?” Sam asked.

“Part of the haul from BevMo like I was telling you last night. I’ve just been careful with how many I drink, trying to make ‘em last until Bill gets his brewery restarted.”

“Who’s Bill?” Sam asked.

“Bill is my uncle, he had a brew pub over in Arcata for a while, and got tired of the restaurant business. He moved his brewery operations over here last year, and was just getting it going when Boom-Day hit. They’ve been hooking up the solar conversion over the last month, I think the first batch is going in this weekend,” Blair said.

“Wow, that’s going to be amazing to have local beer,” Sam said.

“As long as we can keep the inputs coming, someone’s got to grow hops and barley. Luckily both are crops we can do up here,” Blair said.

“That’s good, don’t want people to run out of beer,” Sam said.

“Don’t forget the recycling of the bottles, that was a whole subject at the town meeting today. Since we don’t have garbage service up here, there was a discussion about what we used to just throw away or recycle, and how to start reusing absolutely everything.”

“Yeah, who knows how long it’ll be before a new beer bottle gets made, right?” Sam asked.

“I’m worried they’re gonna run out of caps,” Dean said over his shoulder.

“I don’t even know how bottle caps are made, but I’d guess some kind of metal press, right? That could be a thing you could use old aluminum cans for that aren’t getting recycled now,” Sam said.

“Good point, you should have been there to add that today,” Blair said. “The rest of those yahoos just went on and on about how we could just cut up pieces of silicone and heat them to seal the bottles.”

“Dean said he didn’t think I should come to the meeting,” Sam said.

“Yeah, that was probably a good call today, it was a tense one. It’s going to be a surprise to people that we’ve got somebody new in town.”

“I’m a good worker, I won’t just be a free-loader or anything. And I might not even be staying too long, we haven’t worked that out yet. I don’t want to cramp Dean’s style or anything, you know,” Sam said.

“Sammy, you’re staying as long as you want to, that’s the deal,” Dean said, not looking back at them.

Blair considered what that meant, that Dean had already decided. It meant there were going to be big changes ahead.

“Don’t worry, Blair. I’m not here to…you know, get between you two or anything like that,” Sam said.

“Oh I’m not worried, me and Dean are pretty solid. It’s just going to be an adjustment is all. It’ll work out,” Blair said.

They sat and watched Dean cook dinner, side by side at the counter with the brother who wasn’t supposed to be alive, casually perched on barstools like it was nothing extraordinary. Blair marveled at how Sam’s eyes never seemed to stray far from Dean, even when they were conversing. He was so tall, Blair felt like a shrimp next to him, Dean had always talked about him as the little brother, so it wasn’t the picture Blair had formed in their mind. Even though Dean had the one photograph framed and on his dresser of the two of them, arms around their waists, hips tucked together, Sam’s head at least four inches above Dean’s, both grinning like they’d gotten away with something. And maybe they had, who knew?

Sam hadn’t been as big in that photo though, the man was a brick house now, full of muscles on top of muscles. But still so gentle, especially with his horse. Blair was still tickled by how formally Sam had introduced them. “Blair, I’d like you to meet Poppy. Poppy, this is Blair, be nice now.” Poppy had snuffled in Blair’s hand at the bits of grain Sam had give them and Poppy had allowed Blair to sink their fingers into her curly mane. She reminded Blair of an old mutt their family had years ago, Dad had always said she had at least some poodle. Poppy’s hair was like that.

The stir fry Dean was cooking up was smelling good. He’d gotten better at cooking with fresh vegetables over the last month that Blair had been showing him.

“I can’t believe you’re actually cooking leafy greens, Dean,” Sam said with a chuckle. “Never thought I’d see it.”

“Took a nuclear war, but yep, I’m into it now, thanks to Blair here for teaching me how to do it right.”

“Our family has always eaten what we grew, and one of the things that grows really well up here is leafy greens. Mom has a setup with a greenhouse so we have it year-round.”

“I’m going to try and build my own greenhouse this year if I can scrounge up enough materials,” Dean said, his back still to them, working between the stove and chopping stuff at the counter.

After dinner, Blair decided they needed to get out of there, it was all too much, too confusing. There was so much between these two, and after hearing all those stories from Dean, they knew it was probably a lot for him too.

“Wait, you’re leaving? Thought you’d be staying over like usual,” Dean said, sounding disappointed.

“I need to get my mind wrapped around all this, don’t take it personal, okay?” Blair said, kissing him soundly, not caring that Sam was watching them like a hawk. Blair would swear they heard a low growl, but they might have been imagining things.

They were pushing their bike as fast as it could go on these batteries, but it wasn’t fast enough to outrun what they were feeling. It was too much, all they wanted to do was to get home and hide in their room. Blair knew that they had to make it there before Mom and Dad came in from the store. They needed to get themselves locked away, so their parents couldn’t ask all the questions that were no doubt coming. Because they were so not ready to face it, not ready to voice it out loud. They took the turn onto their road off the main highway and grimaced at the washboard surface battering their kidneys. That should have worked to shake it all off, but nope, it all came crashing in again when Blair thought about how the two brothers hadn’t been able to take their eyes off each other just about the whole time Blair had been there.

Sure, there had been the whole Dean had thought that his brother was dead thing, and the whole Sam had traveled all that way just to get there to Dean thing. But it was a whole lot more than just that. It was how Blair had felt left out of the silent communication thing the brothers had going. On top of that there was the brother’s shared monster-hunting history, their messed-up relationship, and well…everything else. Just like that, Blair had felt like a third wheel in a place where it had always just been the two of them, Dean and Blair.

At first, when they’d gotten together, the way Dean had always talked about Sam, it had seemed like he was an ex-lover that he’d broken up with and was struggling to get over. Which had not made a whole lot of sense, because Sam was Dean’s brother. Dean had finally been honest after too much whisky one night, and sure enough Blair had been right about the ex-lover thing. It hadn’t been too surprising, especially after he shared what their lives had really been like, how they’d been on the road together, isolated from the world since they were small children, raised in the business of hunting actual monsters. Sure it was wrong and illegal, the relationship they had, it was immoral or whatever, but Blair could tell from Dean’s description that the brother’s relationship hadn’t been just about sex.

It had seemed hopeless that Dean would ever be able to get over the loss of Sam. Blair figured out that they had a chance of making it work with Dean when he began to share about the many times Sam had made it clear he had no place for Dean in his fancy San Francisco lawyer life. Before they’d met Sam, Blair had always figured their breakup was just sibling rivalry or simple jealousy behind it all. But not now, not after seeing the brothers together. Even though they’d been broken up before Boom-Day, they were still a whole lot more than just brothers, it was as obvious as the freckles on Dean’s face.

Blair couldn’t help but remember back to when they’d first met. How they’d told each other their stories in dribs and drabs, not all at once.

“How’d you end up way out here anyway?” Blair asked.

“I inherited the place, well my brother and I did. Remember the whole I used to hunt monsters thing I told you about the other day?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, a little hard to forget that bit,” Blair said with a laugh.

“Well, the woman who used to own this place was a monster. Her name was Eleanor Visayak, and she was the nicest Leviathan we ever met.”

“Leviathan? Like the sea monster in the bible?”

“Yeah, she was from Purgatory, but she had the form of a beautiful woman here,” Dean said.

“Of course,” Blair scoffed.

“And I met her when we had to fight dragons, she had a sword that’d kill them.”

“Dragons? Swords? Leviathans from Purgatory? What is this? Like an episode of Game of Thrones that I somehow missed?”

“It’s a long story, but a bunch of stuff happened, and she left her estate to a man who my brother and I kind of considered as our second dad, his name was Bobby Singer. He got killed by another Leviathan and…uh, Bobby left us everything, so Sam and I split it up. He took her beautiful, gigantic house in San Francisco, and I took the land and the cabins out here.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Blair said.

“It’s just how it worked out, I wasn’t happy in the city, and Sammy didn’t like how remote this place was.”

Blair didn’t comment, they guessed this was probably the source of most of Dean’s issues, this split that had happened. But Dean hadn’t talked about that too much yet. And why did he sometimes call him Sammy instead of Sam? There was something to that, something to the way his voice changed when he said the name Sammy.

****
To Part 4