Radio Star, for becc_j

[summergen-mod.livejournal.com]

Title: Radio Star
Recipient: becc_j
Ratings: Gen
Warnings: none; spoilers for early S10.
Word Count: 1623
Prompt: “Sam still has some angel mojo in his veins from Gadreel's possession, Dean is missing (he has the mark), and Sam's going to use everything he has to find him.”

Summary: Dean told him not to follow, but Sam’s got a hot lead, and Dear Sam letter or no Dear Sam letter he can’t shake the idea that Dean wants to be found.

At first, the thing Sam found the weirdest about Castiel and the other angels was that listening thing they did, heads tilted to one side and their eyes slightly unfocused, like dogs hearing high-pitched noises, Dean called it once. Sam made a key distinction here: most of what the angels did he found disturbing, infuriating, or at least annoying. But the head-tilt thing, that was just weird, even after Castiel explained that what they were actually doing was listening to each other.

Sam had furrowed his brow. As powerful as they were, shouldn’t they have just… known?

“Shouldn’t you guys get better reception?” he’d asked, which made Dean laugh. But then they hadn’t seen Castiel for a few days, and Dean swore afterwards that the smell of burnt feathers lingered over the couch for a few hours.

So angels were sensitive. Whatever. Angel radio, Dean’s term for it, became a thing, like angel mojo, angelic weaponry and the fact that most of them were, in point of fact, dicks, as Castiel kept finding opportunities to prove to them. And nothing in Sam’s up closely and overly personal experience of angels contradicted that basic impression. Angels were dicks, no doubt about it. And angel radio reception pretty much sucked.

Which may be why he doesn’t quite figure out what’s going on until it happens again.

*

The first time, he puts it down to traffic noise. The motel he’s in is about six inches off the main drag in Pontiac, Illinois, and the walls are so thin Dean could have identified the cars passing by without looking out a window, just from the sounds of their engines. (Well, the pre-1980 ones, anyways; Dean didn’t actually give a shit about anything later than that.) But Dean’s not here, which is why Sam is, and when that equation doesn’t change, Sam forgets about the voices he’d heard in the pre-dawn quiet, when he shoulda been asleep anyways.

The second time it happens it’s a couple weeks later. Sam’s heading through Madison, Wisconsin, on his way to chase down a lead in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, the biggest town in Portage County. He’s got time. The lead’s probably nothing, like all the other leads have been since Dean took off with Crowley, telling Sam – well. Sam doesn’t really want to think about the implied fuck you in Dean’s note.

Especially since he hadn’t actually planned to pay attention to it, a fact that Dean should maybe have figured out.

Or maybe he has, and he’s counting on Sam to – no, wait, that way lies madness, Sam reflected, since his brother isn’t usually devious so much as he is bad at forward planning where Sam is concerned. The idea that Dean’s run off with Crowley to sacrifice himself on the Great Altar of Sam’s Continued Survival, that Sam can buy. The idea that he’s not answering his phone because he wants Sam to rescue him from Crowley-slash-himself, not so much.

For one thing, Sam’s not sure Dean’s got that much attention span left, not since the Mark of Cain took over.

For another, well, Sam’s always figured Dean would make a pretty good bad guy. Most of them weren’t really good at forward planning either, but they were awesome at the kind of booze and bar brawls that should have been Dean’s life.

*

For some reason Sam finds this last thought unspeakably depressing. But he’s in Madison, and it’s still pretty early - the sun hasn’t even started its fall toward the trees in the west yet, and Portage County is only, as far as he can tell, a few farms north of where he is. And Sam could use a decent coffee. University towns, he remembers, are good for a few things, and the coffee is definitely one of them.

Madison is as unlike Pontiac – or Kansas, for that matter - as it is possible to be and still remain in the midwest. Madison was an actual city, with tall buildings and the high dome of a capitol building reflected in the lake at the city’s feet. The university is all big brick buildings and careful landscaping, and Sam scans the streets for a likely coffee shop. But something is off, somehow. Maybe it’s the traffic or the damp heat pressing down onto the throngs of pedestrians that gets him. Or maybe there’s something about the way he’s now the one looking for Dean. Sam’s not sure, but when the traffic comes to a sudden stop amid the blare of horns and he looks up into a frightened pair of blue eyes attached to a girl six inches to the left of his front fender, it’s a gut-punch. Not the fact that she’s nearly walked into the side of the car, but the fact that it’s been ten years, give or take, and he can still see the unholy glee in Dean’s eyes when he’d busted into Sam’s apartment in Stanford. Wouldn’t take Sam’s no, just flat-out wouldn’t, so Sam had followed him.

Let me go,Dean’s note said, but didn’t he know Sam better than that?

Fuck coffee. Sam knows where he needs to be, and it’s back on the highway, not dicking around picking daisies on Memory Lane.

*

Afterwards, Sam wonders if somehow he hadn’t known all along that Dean was dead. If he hadn’t, well, the black eyes at the end of the grainy surveillance video are evidence enough. He’d watched the video a half a dozen times, maybe more, hitting the rewind and replay buttons on the keyboard until the detective in charge of the case pushed his chair back from his desk, stood up, and started clearing his throat.

“Well, that’s about all we can do tonight, Agent. The Gas ‘n Sip’ll be open in the morning and you can talk to, ah –“ He roots around ostentatiously through the piles of paper balanced on the end of the desk Sam’s sitting at, finally unearthing a small notebook. “-Mickey,” he continues.

“Mickey?” Sam says blankly, the dead black eyes in his brother’s face the only thing he can really process at the moment. Dean had fixed the camera with an unwavering stare, as if he’d known Sam would be seeing it at some point. He turns back to the monitor, his hand hovering over the computer’s mouse.

A heavy hand drops down onto his shoulder. “First time you’ve seen someone die?” The detective’s voice is gruffly kind.

He shakes his head. “Not hardly,” he says, and gets to his feet. “Thanks, Detective. I’ll go out to the Gas ‘n Sip in the morning, see if this kid noticed anything the camera didn’t pick up.”

The detective looks him up and down. “Wanna grab a beer?” He reaches around Sam and shuts the monitor off.

Again, Sam shakes his head. “Gonna get checked into a motel and go for a run. SAC’s going to want a report, preferably in person, tomorrow. Which means a bunch more hours in the car.” With one last glance at the screen, as if the image he’d been staring at was burned into the glass, he stands up.

“Thanks, though. I’ll check back in tomorrow.” He walks out to the parking lot, climbs into his car, and twists the key in the ignition, his mind still blank. He checks into the first motel that’s got a Vacancy sign and, without turning on the lights or laying a salt line, drops onto the floor at the foot of the room’s single bed.

Dean, he thinks, and lets his head drop forward, onto his knees.

*

The music wakes him up. Must be a car that’s pulled into the parking lot, or maybe there’s someone in the room next door with a hot date and an Atlanta Rhythm Section cassette tape. Sam’s on his feet and pulling the door open, ready to tell whoever the fuck that it’s way too late for bad 70s pop, but the parking lot is empty. No trucks, and no cars except the beater he’s been driving and the black SUV he’d barely registered when he parked earlier that evening. Weirder still, although not surprising given the lack of cars, the rooms on each side of his are dark.

But the Rhythm Section is still pounding out Imaginary Lover, and now Sam can make out the words, sung in a gravelly, off-key voice that sounds an awful like Dean’s.

Holy crap, he thinks, and bolts inside for his phone. “CASTIEL!” he yells when Cas answers, and then he’s sliding down to the floor again, and he’s pissed, he’s pissed, he’s really, really pissed, goddamn Gadreel and his brother both, but it’s kind of a relief as well, because if Dean was really gone, wouldn’t that mean angel radio couldn’t tune him in?

“Are you sure?” Castiel asks, and the kindness in his voice almost breaks Sam in half.

“Yeah,” he says, “I am. Angel radio. Didn’t you always say that was how you talked to your sisters and brothers?”

There’s a long pause, and Sam can hear Castiel coughing. “Cas? You okay?”

There’s more coughing, and more silence, and finally Castiel says, “Angel radio, yes. Sam, if Dean is talking to you –“

“Well, singing, but yeah. It means he’s alive.”


“It does indeed.”

This, this is something Sam can work with. He looks at his watch, and up at the slowly-lightening sky. He’s got an appointment at a Gas ‘n Sip, and then he’s going to kick his brother’s ass all the way to California if he has to.

end