the losing kind

....and I'm done.

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:05:16 GMT

This LJ is no longer updating.

I was tossing up flocking the NC-17 and the John/Dean, but I’ll probably leave it up at least for now. Just putting this announcement up here so that I won’t go back on it later.

Oh, and please feel free to leave concrit here about anything I’ve written (comments screened)! I heartily encourage it, since it can’t exactly scare me off posting fics here anymore :)

ETA: NC-17 deleted. Sorry.

SPN Fic: There's Someone In The Backseat

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:33:08 GMT

Title: There’s Someone In The Backseat
Pairing: Dean/Anna
Rating: hard R
Warnings: Incesty themes
Spoilers: General season four.

Dean had first noticed it ages ago, back when Sam was still at school. He’d come home with a girl once to find his dad home early from a hunt, already asleep in the room with the curtains drawn. Luckily, the hotel room they were in had a bedroom with a door, but Dean had resigned himself to making out awkwardly on the sofa for a while. Because asleep or not, having a family member in the next room should have been a real mood dampener, right?

But once he started he found that something about the fear was… well, it was great. He felt more alive, somehow, his senses all turned on at once, like the rare times his dad let him join in on a real hunt. Granted, there wasn’t much of a sample pool back then, but it was the best sex of his life. Even if he was weirded out afterwards.

He didn’t want to think much about why, obviously, but it happened again a few times after that; it was bound to, what with the close quarters and everything. And he’s sure that his dad was aware of it at least some of the time, but he never complained about it at all, just kind of ignored it like he was above it all. So Dean had a lot of times to test out his theory.

It had still bothered him, though, and years later he’d worked up the courage to ask Sam about it. Really obliquely, over dinner, putting everything in vague terms and not specifically mentioning Dad, of course. And Sam immediately started talking about neural pathways and the anxiety response and arousal and stuff and it was obvious that he had actually researched this at some point.

“So it’s like, just linked to fear?” Dean had looked away and taken a drink from his beer and studied the wall of the diner very carefully.

“Yeah.”

“So you’re saying that after a hunt, you – you sometimes get…”

Sam had shrugged and looked down at his food and said something about it being natural.

Dean had laughed, and Sam looked up sharply. “What?”

“Well, I mean, you’re so stoic about it.”

Sam shrugged again and looked back down.

Actually, Dean was delighted. Because Sam is right, and the hunting thing applies to him as well, and he had never really connected the two! But he had been still so distracted by the hilarity of Sam saying the word ‘arousal’ that he hadn’t thought on it more at the time.

Anna appears one night when they’re resting in the car. Sam is reading a book by flashlight in the front seat, Dean in the back curled up against the window. The beam moves slightly as he reads every line, and it should be annoying, but it’s actually kind of comforting.

He is drifting off, face against the cold glass, when all of a sudden he knows, like a tug inside of him, and he sits up and looks out the window and she is there.

He gives her a look and then opens the door. Sam turns and says “What is it?” and Dean makes a face at him, rolls his eyes.

He closes the door behind him, shivering slightly. It’s so quiet out here, black, nothing but trees for miles and miles. He rubs his face.

“Hi Dean,” she says.

“So, what is it? What’s going on? You need me to do something?”

“I wanted to see you.”

The words make him run out of steam, and Dean feels weird suddenly, embarrassed almost. He looks away, face going hot. “Let’s get in the car. You’ll get cold.”

“No I won’t.”

“Okay, well, I will.”

He opens the door for her and she gets in. In the front seat Sam half-looks around and mumbles an awkward greeting. He looks back at Dean as he sits down beside her.

Dean kind of shrugs at him and closes the back door again. He feels – well, if he ever felt shy, then this would be it. He draws on Sam’s even higher level of current awkwardness to gives him courage, and smiles at Anna. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

“I know.” She puts her hand on the side of his face, and Dean can actually see Sam twitch: the flashlight beam moves. Dean smiles to himself, and then he notices it: all his skin kind of prickly, like an electric shock. The way he’d felt that time in the hotel room. And he wishes he could ask Anna if she minded –

“I’ll go for a walk,” Sam says loudly, starting to close his book, and Dean reaches forward and grabs his shoulder without even thinking.

Sam turns to him, face frozen. There is a tiny fraction of a second when they just look at each other in mutual shock, then Sam quickly turns away to face the front.

“It’s too cold out there, Sammy. You should stay.” Dean grins at him brightly, and turns back to Anna.

“I don’t mind,” she says, and shrugs.

The grin freezes on Dean’s face.

He’d been expecting Sam to yell and storm off and her to yell and hit him for suggesting it, like a normal person would. He hadn’t thought it through too much, obviously, the fact that it might not be something that someone like her cares about. This alternative hadn’t occurred to him, and now he doesn’t know what to do.

He looks back to Sam, whose shoulder he is still holding.

Sam is sitting back against the seat. Eyes down like he’s pretending to read again. Even in the dim light from the flashlight Dean can see him blushing. He hopes like hell he isn’t blushing as well. He opens his mouth to speak, and nothing comes out. After a second, he slips his hand off his brother’s shoulder and despite what he’s half-hoping, Sam doesn’t move.

He turns back to Anna. She doesn’t look concerned, and now he is sure he’s blushing. Sam is there and Dean doesn’t know what to do.

So, he does the only thing he can think of to distract himself, which is bravely pulling her towards him. He kisses her, and he hopes it looks like something you would see at the end of a movie, but it comes out all desperate instead, needy.

“Slow down,” she says when he breaks off, and sure, now she’s being all assertive and sensible and stuff. She touches his face with her palm, and starts kissing him really gentle, soft, and he can’t concentrate at all. God this is awful. He hadn’t meant for this; his mind isn’t on her.

If Sam wasn’t here, he would have said something to her about how weird this is, and how it’s kind of blasphemous, or at least asked her if it was, but now there’s no option but to keep up the game face.

He shrugs off the moment of passivity and pulls her into his lap, fingers digging tight into the sides of her hips through her jeans. He tries to focus his attention on her mouth, her hips rocking against his own as he moves a hand round to her front, across her stomach.

He fumbles on the cold metal and gets her jeans open. It’s a struggle, in this position; that’s why skirts are a gift from god – damn, it kind of feels wrong to think that now. He does his best, slides as much of his hand as he can in the tight space between denim and skin.

He pulls her in closer, his other hand at her waist, and she starts to rock against him, slowly, her head on his shoulder, hair in his mouth. Her own hand goes down to touch him; uneven, she can’t concentrate enough to do it right, and that fact turns him on. Dean forces down every distraction, and concentrates all his energy on just keeping the rhythm, letting her move against his hand just right. She is smooth and wet under his fingers, warm against his hand.

“Don’t stop,” she says, and Dean can ignore how matter-of-fact it is, like she is giving traffic directions. He is safely inside his giving-a-woman-an-orgasm-quickly-because-my-brother-is-watching Zen state, and it’s easy to do.

When she comes, it’s like everything is frozen for a moment, his focus only on her, the awareness of where they both are pushed into a nice far away background.

She lifts her head. “That was good,” she says, quiet, close to his mouth.

While his mind was distracted it’d been building up, welling up beneath the surface while he thought he was so calm and focused, and now the need hits him so strong, in his throat, his stomach. And god, that tension is there as well, he can’t pretend it’s not anymore, making it so much worse.

This isn’t fear or anxiety, like Sam had said. This is something way past that.

“I need to –” He turns slightly, sees Sam’s back out of the corner of his eye.

“I know,” she says, close, so calm.

“God, Anna, I need to –” And he is struggling now with whoever idiot invented jeans for women. Gets them off enough finally, pulls her back up into his lap.

When he moves in it’s beautiful, for one second, forgetting everything else, like everything just fades white. And then the urgency crowds back, and he is saying something else, the words rushing out beyond his control. His arm around her, across her back, hand on her shoulder, pulling her down, forward into him. He gasps in air to his too-tense body, feels the rush of it. Feels her tight shudder around him, left over from before, and god he must last about twenty seconds before it’s over.

Tied to her, like he’ll never let go, hands in fists, tears in his eyes.

The world fades back in. Dean meets her eyes, close to his, and feels blinded with shame, too open, the need so strong. He can’t hold the gaze. She’ll see into his longing and it’s eternal and she’ll be scared off.

He looks down, rests his forehead against hers.

And as everything else starts to come back he can just hear Sam’s breathing as well, in then out, and it’s obvious that Sam is concentrating on his own breathing because…

Dean shifts his arms, loosening the hold enough for the two of them to break apart slightly, and as he does so he hears the loud noise of the passenger’s side door opening.

Sam is gone by the time he looks, in a rush of cold air that stings his heated skin.

“Dammit.”

“What did you expect?”

He shakes his head, an apology, and Anna moves her hand quickly over his hair as she moves off him. Which he appreciates, but doesn’t say anything. Dean sits back in the seat, pulls his jeans up quickly, cursing to himself under his breath. He glances out of the fogged side window as he’s doing them up, and when he looks back Anna is gone.

“Son of a…”

The car is empty, the still silence achingly sudden.

Dean wants to make a joke into the empty air about how he was holding out for some cuddling afterwards, but then it wouldn’t really have been a joke, so he doesn’t.

He goes to open the door, and that’s when it really hits him what’s happened. He breathes in the pain of the realization, the agony, that his little brother had just heard him begging like a little kid during sex and then fucking coming after half a minute. For god’s sake, Dean might as well have sat there and cried for a while instead.

He shakes his head, pushes it down like it didn’t happen.

He opens the door. The air out here stings through his shirt after the warmth of the car, of her skin, like a slap in the face. He can still feel the stiffness in his muscles, the rush of hormones that make him feel all –

No, don’t think about that now. Sam’s what’s important now.

A little way down the empty road, he can see the light of the flashlight Sam’s still carrying. “Sam,” he calls. “Sam, get back here.”

The distant figure keeps walking.

Dean sighs.

It doesn’t take long to catch up; Sam doesn’t make an effort to run or anything, just keeps walking. “Sam. Sam. It’s okay. She’s gone now. Come back.”

He catches up to him, grabs his shoulder firmly. Sam lets him, doesn’t resist as Dean turns him back to face the distant car, but he doesn’t move. His face is red.

“Hey – I’m sorry, okay? Come on.”

“Dean –”

The look on Sam’s face had made him expect anger, but the tone is more hurt, almost pleading. Makes him feel cold, uncomfortable, quite apart from the night air.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, helplessly. And he is lucky because Sam doesn’t move away, doesn’t flinch from the hand on his shoulder that guides him back, steady, towards the Impala. Keeps his eyes on the ground, body stiff beside him. When they reach the car, Sam glances in the window, then back down. Dean sighs.

“Okay, Sammy.” He grins. “How’s this? You can do it as well. Get back at me. Except – let’s try someone human, okay? Not – you know.”

Sam makes a face, and Dean goes on, turning his brother to face him. “It won’t be a problem getting you laid.” He straightens Sam’s jacket, pushes his hair back, pats his cheek. “Because - you are gorgeous, Sammy. Look at you. Ladies love this shit.”

Sam glares at him, but when Dean opens the passenger door next to them he doesn’t flinch.

Dean puts him in the car and then goes around the other side, gets in the driver’s seat. Hits Sam on the leg, through his jeans. “We can totally get you laid. Calm you down a bit.”

“No, Dean,” he says softly.

“Why not?”

He turns to look at him. “Because I’m not dragging some girl into this.”

“If you’re dragging her you’re doing it wrong, Sam. Well, unless she asks –”

“Dean. I mean I don’t want some innocent girl to get involved with us!”

“Involved? It would just be –”

“We can’t risk it, Dean! What if the condom breaks? Or we… fall in love or something? Do you know what could happen to her?”

Dean sighs and leans back against the seat. He has just had sex, which is so rare these days, and it had been awkward enough, and Sam has to leach all of the remaining fun out of the situation.

“Okay. Okay, Sam. I give in. She doesn’t have to be human. Or alive, even. I don’t mind. You can - ”

“NO.”

“Okay. Okay, fine.” Glances at him sideways, then grabs his leg again. Feels the way Sam sort of freezes there, doesn’t move.

“Okay,” he says again. He lets go, and starts the car.

SPN Fic: The Wild Moor

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:35:08 GMT

Title: The Wild Moor
Pairing: John/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, incest, dub con, everything that comes with the pairing
Spoilers: None.
Author’s notes: This is old; I just dragged it up and posted it now.

“This is what's going to happen,” John says. They’re back at the cabin, or outside it anyway, in the cold midnight air. The weight of the corpse on the ground between them. “You are going to dig the grave, and then you are going to put the body in and burn it. I'm going inside. Don't come in until you're done.”

He doesn't see Dean's reaction before he turns away. He expects his face to look the same as it did on the drive back here: white, frozen. Like he’d seen a ghost, a normal person would say.

No one will find the woman missing tonight; he and Dean should be safe here until morning. Inside the cabin, John turns on the gas lamp, ignores the faint sounds coming from the woods outside.

He is packing up the weapons when Dean comes in. He closes the old door behind him, and then stands just inside it, like he’s awaiting further instructions. Dean’s head is down, and when he glances up John sees the sweat on his skin, even in the cold.

He puts down the gun he’s holding, motions to the single bed. “Sit down. Let me see where you’re hurt.”

Dean sits down, stiffly. Sam used to always shut down when John needed to do anything like this; sort of curl up mentally and let his eyes glaze over. Dean is the one who would yell and complain, and although John told him off for it, he’d always secretly preferred it to Sam’s silence. At least with Dean you could tell when you were hurting him.

Now, though, Dean is silent, motionless as he lets his father check him over. He’d got cut up when the accident had happened; there’d been some glass. The worst of the cuts John had patched up in the car, and the stitches are still holding fine. There is nothing else too serious. Dean isn’t the one the spirit had been after.

"Go to bed,” John says when he’s done. He hands Dean his shirt. “We’ll leave after dawn."

He is silent for a second, eyes on the ground. “Dad, I – ”

“We don't need to talk about it anymore, Dean.”

Dean glances up briefly. He doesn't look much happier, like he had expected them to have some kind of cry party about what had happened. He takes a breath like he's going to speak, but then looks down again and starts undoing his boots. He pulls back the covers and crawls into the bed, lying still on his side as John sits down at the ancient wooden table to write in his journal. The small room quickly goes too silent.

It’s dark, later, and someone is next to him, lifting him up, gentle but insistent, the presence too familiar for John to wake properly. An arm around his shoulder, supporting his weight as they move through the black towards the bed.

Dean eases him down and pulls the blanket up over him, crawling over him to get between his father and the wall. The sheets under him are heated from where Dean had been there before. Dean curls up a bit facing him, his warm hand brushing over John's shoulder before it rests on the mattress, in the narrow space between them.

John is aware of this all, the faint sound of the wind through the trees outside the cabin, the warmth from the sheets on his cooled skin, the breathing next to him. Just vaguely aware.

He goes back to sleep.

“You're… not what I was expecting,” the woman says to them.

Beside him, Dean smiles brightly and changes the subject. “Where's the problem?”

“In the basement.” She is nervous, grabbing at her waist. The house she’s just let them in to is like a twenty-times-larger version of the cabin they’re in, a version with a second storey and running water and electricity. It’s bright up here, close to cheerful.

“You said it was 'bad energy'?”

She nods vaguely. Glances at John, then back to Dean, holding herself tighter.

“And the guy you spoke to told you to not go down there again?"

She nods again. “He said you could help. What - what exactly are you going to do?”

Dean looks at his father. “Oh, you know, the usual, crystals, exorcism, maybe some... yoga.”

“What form did the energy take?” John interrupts him.

She looks even more uncomfortable.

“What is it?” he prompts, keeping it gentle.

“It… wasn't just energy.”

“It was a person?”

She nods, and then begins to cry. “A man,” she sobs out. “He was trying to –” She turns away, covering her face.

"Why don't you go get yourself a drink while we check it out," John says.

“I don't want to - ”

“Sweetheart, it's okay.”

She nods and clutches her arms around herself tighter. Dean flashes her an apologetic grin.

When she’s disappeared into the kitchen he says: “Dean. Stay up here and keep her distracted.”

He is pretty sure the guy's buried in the basement. You'd think people would check this stuff before they bought houses.

“What? I can –”

“Dean, that woman has two strange men in her house in the middle of nowhere. She’s about thirty seconds away from either calling the cops or trying to admit herself. Stay with her.”

He looks away, mumbles something strangled.

“Dean.”

Dean turns back to face him, his posture tense.

“She can’t go down there. And don’t leave her alone.”

He nods, but John feels the gaze on his back as he heads down underground.

There is movement in the dark next to him, yelling, and John grabs at it before thinking, before someone can get hurt.

“Wake up,” he says loudly, and then somewhere in the quick struggle he says: “Sam.”

His mind goes clear, then, as soon as he says it: it’s Dean who is next to him, and Dean doesn’t get nightmares.

Dean isn’t awake enough to have noticed: he is grabbing on to John so hard it's painful, like he is trying to crawl into his skin.

“Dean. Wake up.” He shakes him and he stops moving, stiff in his arms. John doesn’t know if he’s awake. His hands slide, and grabbing John’s shirt, the other the skin on the side of his neck. Presses against him close, tight. He is sweating even in the cold air, his skin hot and damp.

John moves to ease him into a looser hold, shifting Dean’s weight onto his back. It takes a while to calm him, get him to let go, but he’s used to this with Sam and he knows what to do. Dean’s breathing gradually slows as John holds him like that. His arm loose over him, steady.

He lies awake for a long time.

“How much time do you want off?” he asks Dean the next day when they stop for food.

“I don’t need any time off.” He keeps his eyes down on his burger.

He ignores the denial. Dean is nervous, he can tell, too fake-happy. He doesn’t seem to remember the dream, but then you can’t tell.

“You could head up and see that girl in -”

He looks up finally. “Dad, I’m fine. Look at me, I’m fine.”

He looks at him carefully. Dean smiles broadly, and he does look okay. A thought flashes through his head, how long has it been since Dean did go after a girl? Keep note of that.

But he caves in, and nods.

They don’t talk about why they are leaving the area, and then the state. When they finally stop at a motel to settle in and look for another job, Dean turns on the TV straight away and watches the screen like he’s never seen one before.

Normal distractions just aren’t enough at this point, for either of them, and John finds a job right when they need it. There’s something a few hours away that sounds like a possession. The type of job he would usually go alone on, even if Dean was at full capacity, which he’s clearly not, but something about the way Dean is acting makes John give in when he asks to come along. Leaving him alone in the room seems wrong at this point.

Once they’re there, he parks the car out on the road, about a hundred yards from the old farmhouse. It’s a dirt track, empty of cars. It’s only late afternoon and the area seems utterly deserted, which is good. Dean follows him as he gets out, stands by the passenger door.

“Wait here by the car,” John says. “Make sure no one comes near the house.”

Dean stops. “Wait, that’s it? I get to stand guard?”

“Someone has to.”

Dean looks around at the empty landscape. He takes a breath, then seems to stop himself. “I told you I was fine,” he says steadily.

John ignores him and opens the Impala’s trunk. Dean slams the passenger door with a crash, turns to face him. His whole body primed, breathing deep. John ignores him and grabs what he needs, closes the trunk again, and starts up the drive.

Dean calls behind him. “Who the hell is going to come out here anyway?”

John doesn’t answer.

“This is stupid.”

He turns, slowly. “It’s very important that no one gets near. Make sure no one does. Maybe you’ll learn to get better at it.”

In the corner of his vision, Dean freezes and looks down.

The property is silent, and there’s a familiar smell as John approaches the house. He goes to the window on the front porch next to the door: sure enough, there’s a body inside. It’s male, in its fifties, and it looks like it’s been stabbed.

He goes back to knock on the door. After a minute or two a teenaged boy answers. His hands are empty.

“Where is he?” John asks.

He nods, understands, lets him inside.

When he gets back to the car three hours later the sun has gone down, and it’s getting hard to see. Dean is sitting on the ground next to the car, in the dirt, resting against the driver’s side. He has a hipflask next to him and is about halfway to drunk.

John decides not to comment on that right at this moment. “Stand up, Dean. Let’s go.”

Dean does it, too slowly, his face defiant. He steadies himself against the car door as he stands, watches John put his bag back in the trunk.

“You didn’t even need me here,” he says. “Keeping watch? That’s like a job you’d give to –” He stops before the name. “To a kid.”

John closes the trunk, opens the passenger door for him. “Dean, that thing in more was way more than you could handle right now.”

“I knew what was happening. You were just exorcising some kid. I looked in the window.”

John looks at him sharply, but still doesn’t answer. Dean grins at the reaction, face twisted.

“Didn’t even see me when I got close,” he spits out. “Some hunter.”

John takes a breath. “We will talk about this later. Get in the car.”

He shakes his head. Hits his palm against the back window. “It’s not my fault she died, dad! I can’t keep a grown woman from going into her own basement if she -”

“Save it.”

“It was a dumb plan!”

“Don't blame me for your screwups, Dean. Alright?”

Dean takes that in, then laughs. “Fine. You know what? I quit.” He reaches back to pull out the pistol that’s in his waistband, sets it on the roof of the car. He turns away.

John does not have time for this, not now. The kid will be gone for a couple of hours and come back drunk, he knows it. “Dean, get back here.”

Dean keeps walking, fading from view in the growing dark.

“Dean, get back here right now or I’m driving away.”

He stops.

“I will drive away and that will be it, Dean. Get in the car.”

“I said I – ”

“Get in the car.”

Dean turns, comes back towards him. Hate on his face.

“Move.”

Dean shoves past him, knocking his shoulder.

“Get your gun.”

He turns and does it, puts it back in his waistband. John grabs his arm to lead him down onto the seat, and Dean pulls back automatically, body hitting the side of the car. "I hate you," he says and shoves him away, hard.

There’s a sudden, odd flare of suspicion: John thinks of the victim in the house he’d just left, the way he had acted. He ignores the thought and grabs Dean again, pushing him down into the seat.

“I hate you,” he spits up at him again, and that’s enough.

John isn’t sure how much of it is pure, real suspicion, and how much of it is teaching him a lesson; he doesn’t care. He shoves Dean back across the seat, hard, pinning him when he tries to get up. It happens quick, Dean’s confused struggling. “Dad – what are you – ”

John pulls the flask from his pocket, the one with the leftover holy water from before. He opens the lid and throws the contents in Dean’s face.

Dean freezes. It’s as if John had punched him. He feels all the tension leave the body under him, everything quiet, still suddenly.

He moves back off him as Dean stays motionless against the seat, eyes on the car ceiling.

John stands up by the open passenger seat door. He glances towards the distant house behind them, then back at Dean.

“Going to the house was pretty much the stupidest thing you could have done,” he says down at him. Dean has begun to curl up on his side slightly, still silent. “If something had gone wrong in there you could have been possessed. The demon would have gone straight for you. The way you are now, you’re wide open for it. And you probably would have died.”

Dean doesn’t answer. He sits up only gradually. When John turns away to move over to the driver’s side, Dean grabs him.

He wraps his arms around his waist, slipping down to his knees in the dust, face pressing against his stomach, hands clinging to the hem of his jeans at the back. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Let go, Dean.” He takes his arms, trying to pry him off.

Dean shakes his head against the denim. “Please.”

“Come on,” John says weakly. Grabs at his head to pull him back, but the hand ends up just moving over the wet hair.

“I'll do anything for you,” Dean says close to his skin. He can feel the faint wet from his skin through the clothes, his lips moving against his jeans. Dean’s voice choked, desperate. “I'll do anything.”

“I don't want anything from you, Dean.” It’s so dark now, out here. His hand in his hair, still, like it’s stuck there.

He should pull back, but this is just a harsher repeat of what’s happened before, a thousand times over. Dean was always like this, and this was always there, just not this close to the light.

He should pull back but he doesn't. He stays completely still until Dean lets go and pulls away, his head down.

When they’re both in the car John asks him “Do you really wanna quit?"

“No,” Dean says without looking up. His voice is flat. In the new dim light in the car he can see all the dust on him, on the knees of his jeans, his hands.

“Then enough with the attitude, alright?”

He nods.

Really he had just wanted to say something, to clear the air in the car, but Dean barely reacts. His attitude from before has dissipated, leaving behind it something worse, something thick and cloying and dangerous.

John starts the car.

Back at the motel, he puts the guns down on the bed, his jacket, the empty flask. Dean follows him, silent, watching. Whatever had gotten in to him before, out near the old house, is still there. John can see it in the way he’s standing, his silence. That strange compliance still in his limbs, halfway between pleading and hateful.

“Come have a drink,” he says finally.

Dean sits down opposite him at the small table below the window as John gets out the bottle from his bag. He looks at the walls, the floor, anything but his father. He gulps down whatever John puts in front of him, hand tight on the shotglass. Nods at everything he says. Quiet, closed.

John is not sure how far he is from it, the idea in Dean’s head, but he doesn’t run away from it now. He can’t, really. It is like a duty, like something they are both being pushed towards. Like some horrible chore they have to get through, like burying an old corpse together.

When he goes towards the bed, close to an hour later, Dean just follows him.

Dean doesn't pretend to enjoy it, which is something.

John keeps his eyes closed, because the light’s still on and he is afraid the sight will fill him with disgust and even more afraid that it won’t. His hands on Dean’s neck, his shoulders. Like a sick repeat of before, beside the car, in the dark when it was safer.

He can't blame any sheer mechanical need for the strength of it, the deep warmth it sparks in him. He pushes it down, so it becomes something low and soft, in the background with everything else he’s done like this since his wife died.

After, sitting next to him on the covers, Dean wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His voice is low, cautious as it breaks the silence.

“It'll – it’ll be better. I never... I'll do it better next time, dad, I promise.”

John had gone and fetched the bottle from the table afterwards, and now he passes it to him.

"Dean,” he says when he has drunk from it. “What did you – did you like doing this?"

He turns in time see the rush of confusion on Dean’s face: Dean is trying to read him, he realizes, trying to find out the answer his father wants so he can give it to him. The emptiness of it makes John flinch. "I – dad – "

John shakes his head, dismisses the idea. “You should shower.”

He nods. Relief at the firm tone obvious in his face. John takes the bottle back off him as Dean stands up, and drinks again.

They drive during the day, and at dinner John says: “We should go separately for a while.”

Dean barely reacts, which is surprising until he realizes that Dean must have seen it coming, must have known it since last night. As it is he just nods, and keeps eating.

"This isn't healthy," he goes on.

Dean doesn’t respond. There’s a very slight new stiffness in the way he’s sitting, but that’s all.

"I'll head off tomorrow and let you know when I find a job for you.”

Dean nods again without looking up.

John has been leaving him alone since he was eight, Dean has been hunting alone for years, but this is different. It’s different than if he had given Dean time off a week back. He doesn’t speak, still, but he can read his body language by now and it's like he’s told him that he'll die tomorrow.

They stop off at another motel, and he starts packing up his stuff, dividing the weapons that have gotten mixed up. Dean watches, his face like it was back at the cabin, after the accident.

He turns to bring the first bag out to the car, and Dean blocks him. "Wait.”

“What is it?”

He shakes his head. Can’t meet his eye. His face is tortured.

“Please, don't leave. I’ll do anything, god. Please, daddy.” He drops to his knees.

Dean had been drinking, through the meal and afterwards, but not enough for this.

“Stand up,” John says.

He does it, keeps his head down, shoulders hunched.

The words and the tone are cutting at him, some of the horror at what they’d done starting to bubble up to the surface. Something dark and endless has changed, something he knows he can’t face and come out of afterwards. It’s there like a haunting, irreversible as a death.

John puts the bag down, hears the metal inside clink. In front of him, Dean doesn’t move.

He has never deliberately hurt his son before, had never needed to. Dean had never been in need of corporal punishment, not anything serious. A few harsh words could keep him in line for months.

Maybe John is just too weak to resist now. But if he can’t fix this, can't make it better, maybe he can at least keep Dean from coming back.

Whatever it is, they’ve come to this now. He grabs him, fingers in Dean’s short hair, over his scalp. Leads him over to the bed, firm, hard.

When his hand changes direction, pulling him down, Dean flinches at the pain but moves immediately. Moves wherever he wants: down over the bed, across it. His body is tense with a kind of horror, but compliant. Doesn’t move as John strips him, the movements automatic.

It is not working: he has to drag this out, make more of it.

“Do you know what’s going to happen now?” he asks.

Dean nods into the bedcovers.

“Answer me. Do you know?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

It’s quiet. The tension in Dean’s back; he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move away.

Dean – poor, brave, stupid Dean – seems to think this is just something John wants, needs; he has rationalized it that way, has no idea what's going on. He is utterly silent, the whole time.

John sees the extent to which he’s hurt him only afterwards. He hadn’t considered the injuries from before, from the spirit last week – it’d seemed like such a long time ago. Dean is favoring one leg slightly as John leads him to the shower, gritting his teeth. When they’re in there, in the bright light, he can see the new bleeding, the cuts he’d torn open seeping new blood.

He’s seen Dean hurt worse before, but this is different. Dean stands calm, compliant still, his stare focused like he is deep in thought. Doesn’t move under John’s hands and the water, staring at the tiled wall.

When they’re back in the other room John sits him down and then gives him two pills from the first aid kit. Dean takes them from him and swallows without asking what they are, without even looking at them. The trust is like a new wound. But Dean is silent, not looking at him still, and for a little while John thinks it might have worked.

He leaves him sitting alone in the room, drugged, bleeding.

Dean screwed up a lot when he was a kid – he was a kid, after all – but no matter what he did, John could never get an ounce of resentment out of him. That seemed to be his brother’s primary emotion, but it didn’t matter what John did, at the end of it Dean was always there. He’d wait until Sam was asleep and then come back to him.

John would tell him to go to bed, to stay with his brother, and Dean would ignore him and fall asleep on the sofa, or the floor next to the bed, next to him. A part of him knew it wasn’t right even back then, and a part of him tried to push him away, half-heartedly, but never enough. It didn’t change, not even after Sam was gone and things got worse.

“Do you want to meet up?” John says when he calls him a week later.

There is a pause. He realizes dimly that it’s because Dean is not used to being asked what he wants. “Do - do you want me to?”

The question is genuine. So it hasn’t worked. Hurting him that much hadn’t worked.

And that is bad for Dean, but he won’t pretend it doesn’t calm him somewhat, make him feel more focused, like he can breathe easier.

He hates himself for that.

So when they’re together, this time, he doesn't bother with pretending, with the mind games. He lets Dean start it, and then just strokes his head, gentle, keeps saying “It's okay, it's okay,” although it's the worst fuckup of his life.

Dean doesn’t know how to react, he can tell. He doesn’t know what John wants and he’s awkward, nervous, so unlike his usual self. So unlike how he is around others.

But then afterwards, it’s different. He kneels at John’s feet and rests his head near his knee on the denim.

It fits. It isn’t bad. They’re both calmer. Like revealing a body, the rot, like burning it clean. For now he can forget everything else, all the horror; for now he can push it back under.

“It’s okay now,” he says again, down at him. Touches his face, gives in.

Dean sleeps well that night, silent.

SPN Fic: Circuit

Sun, 31 May 2009 02:54:15 GMT

Title: Circuit
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: angst, breathplay
Notes: Set after 4.22. Possibly AU, in that it ignores likely consequences of some events at the very end of that episode.

The freezer in Bobby’s house is well stocked with ice packs, and Dean grabs the first one he sees, pulling it from between some dubious looking cuts of meat. His mistake is to stop and look in the fridge afterwards, because by the time he closes the door and turns to go back upstairs, Bobby in the kitchen doorway.

Dean freezes, and he knows the guilt in his stance is obvious. Bobby isn’t in the dark on this: he remembers Bobby confronting him about it years back, when Sam was a teenager.

Sure enough, Bobby frowns, puts down the gun he’d been carrying on the counter near the door.

“Someone hurt?” he says, looking at the pack. His tone makes it not really a question.

“Between me and Sam,” Dean says vaguely, crossing his arms.

Bobby crosses his in return. “That ain’t gonna cut it, boy.”

Dean takes a breath, and looks at him steadily. “It’s nothing,”

“I’m going to go right up there and check on – ”

“It hasn’t happened yet.”

His eyes narrow, suspicion turning to certainty. “You’re not serious.”

Dean doesn’t answer. He shifts on his feet a little, awkwardly, beside the fridge.

“You still after all this time – ”

He shrugs, a bit forced. “Yeah. So what?”

“He’s twenty-six.”

Dean shrugs again. “He still needs it, doesn’t he?”

“This is crazy, Dean. Even for you two.”

Dean shakes his head and goes to move past him: Bobby steps sideways to block his way. “No, Dean. I’m not going to let you hurt your brother under this roof. I don’t care what sick ideas you’ve both got about it.”

Dean bristles, the ice pack is starting to sting his hand now. “I’m barely going to hurt him.” Bobby’s expression is mistrustful, and he goes on. “I swear. It’s nothing.”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps looking at him like that, so Dean pushes past him.

“Dean. Stop.”

He turns, impatient.

“Back when Sam was younger, and I found out that you -" Dean flinches, and he trails off. "I went to talk to your dad about it first, and he told me to take it up with you. I was hell angry at him, because he didn’t even seem to care. But now… I think it’s because he trusted you so much when it came to Sam, he wasn’t worried.” He stops. “Would your dad still be right trusting you like that, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t answer, turns away.

Upstairs, the spare bedroom is sunny with the late afternoon light from the window. Sam is still sitting where Dean had told him to wait, hunched over on the single bed. When Dean comes in, he looks down at the floor.

Dean closes the door behind him, the world with it. He figures he’s probably not in danger of being interrupted, but he bolts the door anyway. He can feel Sam’s eyes on him, but when Dean turns he quickly looks back down.

“Take your shirt off,” Dean says. He grabs a chair from beside the door, jams it in front of the handle with his free hand.

Sam does it. Pulls off the t-shirt under it as well without being told, puts the layers carefully down on the wooden floor beside the bed. He looks up at him again. “Dean, I’m s – ”

“Save it.”

He shuts up, looks at the ground once again. God damn, Dean thinks.

Sam still thinks, after everything, that he can just make that face and apologize and he will get away with it. He still honestly thinks that. And the worst part is that he’s right. That thought makes Dean’s hand twitch on the ice pack.

“Things go better when I’m in charge, Sammy,” he says, as he goes over to the dresser beside the bed. Sam doesn’t look up, but Dean can see the resistance in his bare shoulders, his back. “You gotta learn that.” Sam twitches a bit. “I mean, you gotta really learn that.”

He doesn’t answer. An idea is forming in Dean's head, one that has been there for a while now, still vague and shapeless. What has happened, what Sam’s done, is something different, something entirely separate to anything that could be conveyed by just beating the crap out of his brother. Because if there’s one thing Sam is skilled at, it’s dealing with pain. It’ll have no effect, not unless Dean goes way further than he’s willing to go. They both know this. He thinks of what Bobby had said, and it hurts. He’s not going to really hurt Sam. He can’t.

And Sam seems to be able to tell this, that they’ve gone far past the normal point. He doesn’t look surprised when Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t take off his belt. He stays still, eyes on the ground, but it’s like he’s forcing himself to do it.

Dean sets the pack down on the dresser, makes his decision. “Okay, Sam. Lie down. On your back.”

It takes half a second, but Sam does as he’s told again, lying on top of the covers. Dean glances over his shoulder to the door, then gets onto the mattress. His brother draws in a slight breath when Dean sits down on top of him, setting his jaw. His eyes are focused on the ceiling. Dean lets the weight settle slowly across Sam’s abdomen, pinning his arms by his sides. Sam clearly has no idea what is going on, and he’s trying to stay composed anyway; it’s so easy to see that. And goddam, it makes it almost fun.

Dean leans forward a bit, brushes away some of the hair that’s fallen in Sam’s face. Brushes his cheek, touches the skin just next to his mouth, sees Sam’s eyes glaze slightly. Dean takes a breath to clear his head and then moves his hands. Watches the realization dawn on Sam’s face as Dean shifts his hands to close around his brother’s neck.

Sam gasps and his eyes open wide, meeting Dean’s for only a second before looking away. Dean watches Sam’s expression carefully, as his brother’s mind reacts, processes what is happening. Dean is only barely squeezing, just a firm hold on his throat, but he can feel the tension in the muscles trapped under him, Sam fighting back the natural urge to move or try to throw him off.

Dean lets him get used to the hold, lets him start to calm, and then gently starts to squeeze his hands together.

Sam must have known that this was coming. The grip’s not enough to cut off the air, but enough to make it a struggle. And fuck, the look on Sam’s face is priceless. Dean hates himself for liking it so much, but he does: Sam’s eyes on the ceiling, still some disbelief in there, but god he’s accepting it, he knows exactly what Dean is doing. And why.

He squeezes his neck just a touch harder, and one of Sam’s arms jerks under where Dean’s leg is pinning it. He leans forward to increase the pressure again. “You know, some people get off on this,” he says. “You getting off, Sam?”

Sam shakes his head, as much as he can in the grip. His face is going red now, eyes filling with tears; they still don’t meet Dean's. His breathing so loud in the quiet room, every uneven gasp a small battle.

Dean is the one getting off, actually, and he’s sure Sam can tell, the way he’s leaning forward sitting on him. But if he does feel it, he doesn’t react.

He holds the grip for a second longer and then relaxes his hands, keeps the grip firm on his neck but loose enough for Sam to breathe again. Long new breaths, but apart from that Sam is still. And quiet, for once.

Dean stays like that, counting the seconds, hands resting on the flushed skin as Sam looks determinedly at the ceiling over his head. Strokes his thumb gently against the skin on his brother's throat. He lets them breathe together, slow.

He waits, and waits, and then he starts to squeeze his hands again.

Sam could throw him off, even now. He is trying hard to keep still, muscles jerking in his body, his legs. He is fighting it and he is doing it to show Dean and Dean loves it. It turns him on like hell and he shifts his weight, moves against Sam's abdomen to get better friction, watches Sam’s face as he does so. Sam’s eyes are leaking tears steadily now, face all twisted and desperate, body twitching, but still he barely moves.

When he loosens his grip again Sam breathes deeper, chest heaving with the breaths, harsh and uneven, awful sounding this time. His throat moves like he’s going to speak, but he doesn’t say anything, and the look on his face is feeding Dean like a sick drug. It’s kind of weird though, peaceful, like time is standing still, everything silent apart from that sound. Like this whole thing is a series of breaths, like they are getting through something together.

The next time, it’s different, harder, like Dean is watching it from far away now. Sam goes to breathe, and the air has gone from limited to not at all. He makes a choked noise and finally bucks under him, red eyes meeting Dean’s again, wide. The look makes him squeeze a bit harder, feeling the bones and tendons start to give way. He is so hard now it’s painful. Because this is dangerous, so much worse than hitting him with a belt could ever be, and his little brother is letting him, he is trying so hard to be good even now. Dean can feel the hard tension in the muscles under him, steady furious beat of the arteries trapped under his palms.

He’s trying, oh god Sam is trying like he always does, eyes still on him. And Dean looks and starts talking, he can’t help it, he’s kind of embarrassed later when he thinks of what he says, about how he’s going to do this to Sam all the time now, about how it doesn’t matter if Sam runs away again because Dean will find him, he is always going to find him even if he dies, it’s always going to be this way and Sam is going to learn that...

Sam is crying now, for real, he can tell even through the strain on his face. His brother twists under him, but the movement’s automatic, he’s still trying not to even as his eyes start to go dull, and when he spasms under him again, weaker, fading, Dean finally lets go.

Sam sucks in air hard, deep breaths between the panicked sobs, hands going to his own neck finally as Dean shifts back, off the shaking body.

He sits down on the edge of the bed beside Sam. Means to stand up after he’s got his head together, because he is still turned on as hell and it just seems really wrong now. But then Sam is pulling him back down towards him, grip strong on his shoulder. Sobs out something choked that might be his name.

Dean feels light, breathless, and when Sam pulls him in closer against him he comes, hard, rides it out with his fingers gripping deep into Sam’s arm, head against his bare shoulder.

He gives himself just a couple of seconds like that, after. Mouth close to Sam’s hot skin, head down, grasping on his composure. He can feel Sam’s heart pounding in his chest against him. Feels his skin clammy even against the heat of his brother. Then he lets go.

Sam makes a miserable sound as he pulls away, but Dean stands up, tries to steady himself mentally. The bruising will be coming up soon, he tells himself. He has to fix it before Bobby sees and calls him on it.

The ice pack on the dresser has started to melt, but it’ll still do the job. Dean picks it up, just holds it for a second, breathing again, looking out the window. He turns to face Sam. “Sit up.”

Sam does so, with some difficulty. Dean resists the urge to help him. “Put this against your neck." Sam does it. "You okay? You can breathe fine?”

Sam nods. His face is flushed still. He wipes his eyes with the back of his free hand.

Dean has one hand on the dresser to steady himself. He feels dirty now, sticky with it. He could pretend that it had been something deliberate, another one of the small violations of Sam’s space that Dean had used to keep him in line for years now. But it won't work, he knows, because Sam clearly isn't the one who is bothered by it.

He wants to say something more, give some more orders, get back in control, but he can’t think of anything. He is holding back the urge to stroke Sam’s hair, to sit back down on the bed with him. He can’t leave, stands uneasy.

“Sometimes I want to punch you for making me love you so much, Sam.”

Sam sniffs and doesn’t answer - Dean's not sure he can yet – back hunched, his eyes at the ground again. Then he reaches out and grabs on to Dean's wrist, hand wrapping around it. Dean lets him for a second: the contact like a drug.

He pulls away. Shakes his head a little and holds back from mumbling an apology. He sighs, and starts unbarricading the door so he can go clean up.

SPN 4 21: When The Levee Breaks

Sat, 09 May 2009 02:01:25 GMT

Okay, uh... there are some things I like in fanfic and don't like in real shows, you know?

I think the thing that hurt the most in that episode was this: in my view of the characters one of the main differences between the brothers is that Sam has always been certain that he's loved, and Dean hasn't. Which is why Sam can so often come off a brat: he can do pretty much anything he wants because he subconsciously knows he is never in danger of rejection. Whereas Dean does the 'right thing' more often not because he's a better person, but because he doesn't have that kind of certainty, he 'knows' that if he doesn't please the people he loves, they might just leave him. And which is why Sam is so much more psychologically resiliant after episodes like Sex and Violence and Skin: it simply doesn't occur to him that any of the things Dean said to him might be true.

And that hurts in this episode, because you could see clearly that even after Sam has been locked up for hours (days?) by Dean and Bobby, he is still yelling out and calling them "guys" like he expects them to come get him! As if he's saying "Okay, I know you put me in here, but there's some mistake, I don't think you realized that it's actually quite unpleasant. You're going to let me out now, right?" Because being betrayed/hurt/rejected just isn't in his personal experience at all. And then even afterwards with Ruby, he is so optimistic: "It was all just a misunderstanding! I'm sure we'll figure it out!" The guy is like a little puppy! And then...

I mean, ow.

I guess I won't even start on Dean :)

SPN Fic: In Her Right Hand, A Silver Dagger, Part II

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:21:35 GMT

Dean comes over to the other bed, finally, after one of Sam’s nightmares. Later, Sam kind of wishes that he’d thought even for a moment that this was something normal or innocent, but really, he doesn’t have that sort of background.

And of course Sam is not in the mood at all, for fuck’s sake, and so it ends like it always used to before he went to college, picks up at that degenerated point. Dean stroking his hair, saying that Sam is still so good at this, that he hasn’t forgotten anything.

And really it should be something horrifying, but the fact that Dean could possibly think that Sam sucking him off is somehow something right and appropriate for this situation, something comforting, the same thing as bringing Sam food or talking to him or keeping him distracted, is just so incredible that Sam can look at it from far away, as something he might write an essay about.

Afterwards he holds Sam for a while and looks him over; Sam figures out after a few minutes that he is checking for new scars. There aren’t any, though. Fuck, he’d never even played any sports while he was away. Even after all these years apart Sam doesn’t recoil; he is so used to it.

Eventually Dean says: “Do you want me to…” He kind of gestures, and Sam looks at him blankly. “Return the favor.”

Sam pulls back a bit out of his grip. “You never asked me that before.”

He shrugs. “I’m asking you now.”

“No.” He looks away.

Dean shrugs. “Okay, dude. Get off me.”

Sam lets go of him, and turns back over to his side. Dean goes back to his own bed, and eventually he falls asleep there.

In the morning when they’re packing up Sam says: “Can we not do that again.”

Dean is shoving clothes into his duffel bag on the bed behind him. “What?”

Sam stops, fumbles. He shrugs slightly, looking down at his laundry. “You know.”

There’s a pause. In all the years and years since it started, it’s the first thing either of them has ever said about it, at a time when it’s not happening.

But Dean just says “Yeah, sure.”

Sam had been expecting arguing or resentment or denial or something, but Dean reacts like he has just requested that they stop off for coffee somewhere. He smiles at Sam as he goes past, like everything’s just awesome.

And incredibly, it almost works. Because the next time is not for a long time, not until after their father is dead.

Sam isn’t that drunk, and he should know how to react, should remind Dean of what he said, because he can tell by now when it’s coming. It’s just been so long since it started.

Dean doesn’t ask, doesn’t say anything about why, or anything about it at all. Sam lets him stroke his hair, guide him down, on to his knees on the floor this time. His thumb dragging along the side of Sam’s face, into his mouth, and it all goes on, so familiar.

When it comes to sex Dean will usually act as if Sam were the only person in the world, like he was doing him the biggest favor in history, and really, Sam has never seen anything so genuine. Sam keeps his eyes down now, but he can hear it still: “I love you… here for me… oh my god. Oh my god. Sammy. Jesus. Oh my god.”

He swallows afterwards, like usual, and Dean pulls him back up to the bed and it’s not until Sam’s on his back with his jeans already undone that he really wakes up.

He half sits up. “Stop. Stop.”

Dean is kneeling beside his legs, hand firm at his waist, holding him still. Sam grabs at his hair, and Dean actually looks up.

His voice catches, panicking. He takes a breath. Dean’s face so open, earnest.

“Only one person has ever done this before,” Sam manages finally.

Dean nods, hand moving just slightly across the denim near Sam's hip. “I understand. It’ll be okay.”

Sam closes his eyes, drops his head back down into the pillow.

It’s nothing. It’s just nothing.

He had thought he’d lost control before, all these years, thought Dean had seen everything, but he should have known this world be worse. He can’t stop the moans that come from the back of his throat, doesn’t want to (it’s inside his fucking mind now) and Dean can tell this, Dean likes it and when his brother is determined to be good at something it’s fucking relentless.

He loses control, moves his hips and Dean almost chokes. He stops, looks up at him as he flexes his jaw.

“Fuck, Sammy,” he says and grins. Sam turns away.

“Was there ever… another guy?” Sam asks him afterwards, when he is sitting up on the bed. He figures that they can talk about it now, if it’s happening.

Dean had gone to the kitchen, and now he hands him a beer. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, have you ever…” He stops, looks down at his drink. He is blushing. “With another guy.”

Dean gives him a disgusted look. “No. Have you?”

“You know I haven’t,” he says softly.

Dean nods, sits down next to him. “This one time, when you were in college, this couple asked me to go home with them. In a bar. And the girl was… wow. I was almost tempted.” He smiles. “But then I thought, hey, there are other women in the world.”

Sam shifts uncomfortably. “So… what is it about me, then?”

Dean hits him on the leg. “Enough of the psychiatrist bullshit, Sam.”

He won’t answer any more questions.

The next day Sam catches himself looking at his brother, running over the short conversation they’d had that morning last year, again and again.

Something about it makes an old familiar thought well up from deep in his childhood: this feeling of real distance, when something in him would suspect that Dean and his father were not only different but somehow not quite… right.

He thinks about it for a long time.

Even much much later, sometimes, something will come up and then a part of him will still think about how he would have thought about this a year ago. How back then it was like something Sam was almost interested in, like he was doing research on something. He could do that back then; he used to be able to do a lot of things.

Now he will sometimes try to analyze it still, make it all abstract, but mostly he doesn’t have the energy.

“I don’t care if I’m in hell, Sam,” Dean says. He is next to him, on his bed. Sam is looking at the window, the curtains they’d pulled closed as soon as they arrived; he’d been wondering if the room was secure enough. “If I hear you ever let anyone else do this to you I will come back and kill you both. Okay?”

Sam nods.

Dean pulls him into his arms, one hand in his hair, and he says: “Why am I special, Sammy?”

“Because you’re my brother,” he says to the empty air in front of him, and god hearing that out loud makes something spark inside him, but it goes nowhere.

“Come on, move back.” Dean shifts him back further onto the mattress, so that Sam’s back is resting against his chest, like he used to when they were younger.

And it feels so good, Dean’s arms around him, cradling him, warm against his skin. They’re both clothed still, and after the questions Sam had been waiting for something else, but Dean doesn’t do much more, just keeps rubbing him, over his ribs, around his lower back, his waist. Like he can feel how sensitive he is there.

Sam relaxes into it, lets his eyes half-close, his mind drift until he is in deep, drugged. He can feel Dean hard against his back, but his brother barely moves against him. He has no idea what Dean is doing, and doesn’t have the energy to imagine. When Dean eventually shifts and leans over, Sam barely turns to look as he slowly pushes up the hem of his jeans, pulls out the knife tucked in there next to his boot.

Sam just looks at it, and he should be asking his brother what the hell are you doing, but the words get scrambled on the way. The question turns into a gasp, his head dropping down, everything going blurry.

“You okay?” One arm still around him, the other hand with the knife resting on the bed, like nothing has happened, like pulling out a knife in a situation like this is totally normal.

Sam nods. He should have reacted, should have moved to protect himself; that’s his training, Dean or not. But he still doesn’t. Dean nods and then moves him forward slightly, bending him over. He lifts Sam's shirt, and Sam feels the knife against him, pressed sudden and hard into the skin on his back, between old scars.

“Can I cut you?” Dean says from behind him.

Sam breathes in again, pressure in his chest, his stomach. He nods. Vision still blurred, closed off. All he can think is oh god and Dean.

Dean pushes him forward a bit more, making room between them. The blade is so sharp Sam barely feels the cut, pressure slowly blending in to something too neat and contained to be pain. The dull ache comes afterwards, with the wetness of new blood.

Dean’s fingers are there, smearing it over his skin, across the cut, which flares with hurt. And then he lifts his hand, and in a rush of awareness Sam realizes what his brother is doing.

“Don’t – ” He pulls away, twisting around on the bed, grabs Dean’s hand as he brings it to his mouth.

Dean looks at him blankly. “What is it?”

“Just don’t, okay? It’s not – it’s not safe,” he stutters.

He laughs; it sounds only slightly bitter. “Well it’s sweet of you to think that way Sam, but I’ve got three months left before I die, I’m not worried about catching hepatitis off – ”

“Dean, please.”

He is smiling slightly, confused mainly, but there’s a flicker of something else there, something stronger that Sam can’t face. Sam looks away, down, Dean’s hand still trapped in his.

“Fine,” Dean says, and he wipes the blood on the sheets.

Sam doesn’t know what to do then. He keeps his eyes down as Dean wraps his arms back around him, pulling Sam back in against his front. Tightness in his chest again as he tries to keep down the panic. Dean tilts his head back. Sam breathes in, tries to relax.

Dean moves the knife up over his neck, to his face.

“Can I cut you here?”

Sam’s stomach rolls, he feels sick, but it’s nothing compared to the relief from before. He nods, swallows under Dean’s fingers on his throat. His mouth is dry.

Dean pulls him sideways to get a better angle and then runs the flat side of the knife across the sharp edge of his jaw, light, then up, across the softer skin there.

He isn’t afraid. He doesn’t quite feel anything. He is frozen. Dean is almost still as well, just that faint friction as he moves his hips. Sam feels the knife, feels it move slightly with his pulse.

“Where can I do it?” he asks.

“Anywhere,” Sam says.

Dean gasps, and comes in a hard sudden movement against him. Pulls Sam’s head back a little as it happens and the blade slips just slightly, cuts into his jaw.

Later when Sam looks in the mirror, the cut is tiny, along the bone, something you could do shaving.

“He didn’t get my girlfriend killed.”

Ruby rolls her eyes. She steps in front of him as Sam turns away from her, putting herself in his field of vision. “How do you think Azazel tracked you down? Your dad was smart enough to take precautions when he visited you. And then Dean goes barging on in without him and leads the guy right to your front door.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe. What do you think?”

Sam can’t answer. The ground feels like the only thing steady under him now, as all of the words sink in. He takes a breath that stutters, doesn’t seem to reach his lungs. He keeps his vision focused on something past her, across the length of the bright room.

“How long was it, Sam?” she says again. “Before he started fucking you again? After what he did?”

“Please, Ruby.” Sam hears himself whisper it. Feels her hands, vaguely, still touching him. “Please stop.”

“How long, Sam?”

“Almost a week,” he says softly. He is still looking past her.

“You’re better off without him, Sam. You’re smart, you know that.”

“Why are you doing this.”

“Because it will be easier for you if you can see what kind of guy he was!”

Sam turns back to her sharply. Something is welling up, strong like he hasn’t felt in months. She is implying that Dean would hurt him, deliberately, that Dean is someone who would do that. She doesn’t even really know him.

His fists are clenched on the bed beside him but he pushes the feeling down, concentrates on keeping still. He used to be able to do this. “You don’t understand,” he says.

Ruby lets go of him, and she laughs. “What’s there to understand about what he did? We have a name for them where I come from, they’re called -”

“That’s enough,” Sam says, and Ruby steps back like she’s been shoved, the back of her legs hitting the bed so that she almost loses her balance. Sam is up by the time she steadies, and what has just happened passes by his mind in a blur.

“That’s good, Sam,” she says, and he grabs her arm pulls her forward violently, up close against him.

“Wow.” She looks down. “You’re even more fucked up than I thought.”

Sam sucks in breath as she shifts her weight, and she hooks a hand up around the back of his neck and pulls him back into the bed.

He can tell the difference, now: it’s more hard and focused than anything with Dean, now he has the unfortunate chance to compare. Hot, fulfilling. And so good, without that coffin of guilt and morality enclosing everything, holding it down. He can’t keep his eyes on her face, closes them tight. Hears the helpless noises he is making, the same ones, out of control.

“Sam.” She cries it out, voice half alarmed. He knows it hurts her, can feel it in the tension across her stomach, in her legs. So wet, and it still hurts her. Her fingers are little, delicate, bunched in his hair.

He pulls her head to the side, says at her ear: “Call me Sammy.”

She does it, and he pulls in her closer. Her head curls back and spine arches under the weight. She says it again and Sam groans. Holds on to her too hard, and suddenly remembers Dean like this, when they were young, looking impressed. He comes.

Afterwards, half on top of her still, his face pressed near her collarbone, her skin smooth and silky. He strokes her hair. Long, pretty. “I hurt you, didn’t I.”

She doesn’t answer that. “Did you feel it?” she asks. “Before. You pushed me.”

He closes his eyes. The memory makes him wince.

“You love your brother. It’s powerful.”

He doesn’t answer, hand on her little waist.

“It’s okay, Sam. I was just trying to help you.”

He is quiet for a second.

“My dad would leave us in these rooms when we were little, and Dean wouldn’t let me go outside. It was broad daylight and he wouldn’t let me go six feet outside the room. What the hell could have happened to me in an empty motel parking lot? And he wouldn’t let me, ever.”

Her hand is in his hair, at the back of his neck, stroking.

“And then when I was sixteen, they kept me in this fucking motel room in fucking Ohio for weeks, and Dean couldn’t go out either, and he started - ”

“It’s okay, Sam. It’s okay.”

“I hated him. I fucking hated him.”

She makes gentle noises and pulls him up to meet her face, kisses him.

When she is asleep, he wraps his arms around her like he always does, treasuring how soft the skin is, how fragile. It’s nice, but the deep relief he’d been vaguely expecting doesn’t materialize. It had almost felt like a lie.

The idea of Dean turning him down had never once occurred to Sam, not in his whole life, his wildest imagination. When Dean comes back he is too distracted, mostly, like he is thinking about something else. Or maybe he’s mad about Ruby, who knows. Sam has ways of making it obvious, he’s learnt that by now, but it doesn’t work.

So he gives up on being subtle after a while, when they’re drunk, together in a hotel, like always. He cups his hand around the back of Dean’s neck, touches him.

No reaction. Sam grabs his shoulder. Pulls him toward him.

“No, Sam,” Dean says softly.

He is leaning away slightly. Sam gets a look at his face, and Dean doesn’t just look not in the mood, he looks disgusted.

“What is it?”

“The blood,” he spits out, and Sam looks away.

“For fuck’s sake, Sam. For fuck’s sake.”

Sam stands up and then sits down on the other bed, across from him. Dean looks at him and shakes his head.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me,” It’s a question but it comes out flat, defeated.

Sam doesn’t answer, looks down.

“God, Sam.” He stands up.

Sam looks up at him, sneers a little. “You worried you caught something?”

Dean shakes his head. There’s a slight smile on his face, close to a smirk. “I came back clean as the driven snow, Sam..”

“So… you won’t…” Sam feels like he can’t breathe suddenly. His eyes hot and stinging. “You think I’m too… dirty, or something? I don’t…”

“Sam, I…” He trails off. Doesn’t move. “It’s not like that. We should just… slow down and…” He won’t look at him.

He takes a breath. Experience has taught him to expect Dean to come to him, to wait for a hand on his shoulder, his neck. It doesn’t come, and Sam takes another deep helpless breath, shaky.

Silence from Dean, no movement. He breathes through the new pain that’s like fire through his chest. Ruby’s words come back, and he feels himself tense up. It feels like he’s been shocked.

Sam stands up, and as soon as he does it Dean takes a step back, eyes wide.

Sam had been planning on walking away, nothing more, but now he sees it. Dean knows he sees it. He steps forward, Dean moves back again, and there is some tiny motion that triggers it: Sam standing up straight properly, or a look on his face, he doesn’t know. Dean’s eyes drop, whole frame wilting somehow, face going blank. Sam has seen Dean do this, has seen it a million times before, but not with Sam, never with Sam.

And now, suddenly, he can’t imagine a time when he didn’t know that he could ultimately make Dean do anything he wanted. Everything is suddenly so clear, exposed. The way Dean is these days, jerking awake in the middle of the night, crying, babbling in his sleep, is different only in degree, not in kind, to how he’d been before. This whole time, Dean has just been trying to convince himself…

He smiles. Shakes his head at Dean’s expression, feels himself relax.

“I’m going out,” he says.

Dean’s question doesn’t come. He doesn’t move.

Sam closes the door behind him, and pulls out his cell phone.

SPN Fic: In Her Right Hand, A Silver Dagger

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:14:53 GMT

Title: In Her Right Hand, A Silver Dagger
Pairing: Sam/Dean, mainly
Rating: Hard R
Spoilers: To present
Warnings: Angst, underage, possible dub con, violence

Notes: Um. This kind of just happened. Sorry.

Dean hands him the silver flask that dad had given him last year and says: “Here. This will calm you down.”

Sam drinks from it. Warm, bitter. “Good,” Dean says. He sits down on the bed opposite, and Sam hands it back and Dean takes a swig. He passes it back, watches Sam through the dark.

Sam looks down, at his hands in front of him, red-colored in the glow of the streetlight through the curtains. His grip on the flask is too tight.

Then Dean says “Come here.”

He is aching and hungover at school the next day, and at lunch he throws up in the bathroom, as quiet as he can. At the end of the day he finds himself hanging around his locker for too long, until Dean calls his phone.

“Sammy, I’m outside. Get out here, it’s frickin’ freezing.”

Sam hangs up and closes his locker, and the bang echoes in the empty corridor.

Outside it’s windy, sky getting dark already. The car is there, waiting, just like it has been every day for the last two weeks. He doesn’t know what he expected; Dean to skip out on him?

“Is that your boyfriend?”

Sam turns, halfway down the front steps on the way to the car: there is a guy his age sitting on a step, arm around a girl who is pressed up against him in the cold. Sam watches his face for a second, blank with surprise: he had thought he’d been doing a good job of being invisible here, had got through the last couple of schools without this kind of direct address.

It isn’t the reaction the guy expected, and he looks away, uncomfortable, pulls his girlfriend tighter. Sam frowns slightly as he turns away and gets into the car.

Dean keeps the music up loud for the drive home. There’s no real tension coming off him, though, nothing more than the usual anyway. When Sam tries to think about it at all it doesn’t work, his mind skipping over it like a swearword cut out in a movie.

When they reach the motel he turns the engine off, and the music stops. “I’m sorry, Sam,” he says.

Sam tenses, automatically pulls his school bag in closer in his lap. “For what?”

“I told you we’d be leaving today. I haven’t heard from dad, so…”

Sam laughs.

“What?” He glares at him.

“It hadn’t occurred to me that we might be leaving when you said we would be.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Dean looks back towards the windscreen. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

His shoulders slump slightly as he says it. Sam wants to tell him that it’s okay, then, put his hand on his shoulder or something. That turns into an image of his hand near Dean’s waist, under his jacket, where he would be warm with body heat...

He looks away. Dean sighs and opens the door. “Let’s go inside.”

Inside, Dean heats up two of the microwave meals for them out of the freezer, and they eat them at the table in the kitchen area. The room has a freezer, at least, and a kitchen, and a separate bedroom, which is something, he supposes.

“I’m going out for a minute, Sam.”

Dean has only left the room three times when he’s been here since they got to this town, and it’s been the same every time: don’t leave the house, don’t tell dad that I left. Sam has been tense to the point of sickness all through the meal, waiting, but now he isn’t relieved; instead there is a weird sense of loss.

He turns on the TV, and after about twenty minutes Dean comes back with some beer and snacks. Sam slides as far over on the sofa as he can, but he takes the drink when Dean offers it.

“You know I could use real ID for this.”

“You don’t have any real ID, Dean.”

“Yeah, I know.” He shrugs. Then he takes back Sam’s beer and opens it for him and hands it back. “Don’t you have homework?”

Sam shrugs, and Dean laughs. He feels his face start to burn and turns back to the screen.

It’s slower this time, kissing, Dean’s arm hooked around his shoulder. At first Sam is panicking again, everything tight and frantic, and thinking about when it’s over. But this time it takes so long he can’t help but relax, focus on what’s happening. Dean gets him pinned down on the sofa, mouth open against his neck, pushing at him steadily through his jeans. He comes against his leg when Sam says his name, breath hard against his jaw.

“Oh man,” he says as he sits up. Sam hears the sofa creak under his weight. “God.” He laughs, like one of them has just tripped over or something, and then reaches for his beer, which he’d put down on the coffee table. “You need a shower.”

Sam sits up, and the spit feels cold against his neck, his mouth. He doesn’t look at Dean, makes it through the bedroom into the bathroom.

He is still in the shower when Dean comes into the room. “Dad called,” he calls out. “He said four days.”

Sam doesn’t answer, and he pulls back the curtain in a rush of new cold air. “Sammy?”

“Okay.” Sam says. Faces the bright wall.

Behind him, he can feel Dean looking in for a second longer. The curtain falls back down, but he knows Dean is there behind it. He is taking off his clothes.

It is bright-white and hot and Sam can’t breathe. The air is thick, vision blocked as the curtain moves back again. And he knows, suddenly, even through his drunkenness, that if he hadn’t turned away before Dean would not be in here. The thought won’t go further than that, but he knows this.

He pulls Sam towards him, turns him. “Hey,” He smiles. “Come on, dude. I’ve seen you naked before.” He pauses, still smiling. “Wow. That’s kind of fucked up.”

Sam leans into his shoulder. Wants to ask what they’re doing, but the clarity in his brain doesn’t reach his mouth.

“Come on,” Dean says after a minute. Hand slides wet across his shoulder, down his arm. “Let’s go sit down.”

Sam follows him out.

He is sitting on the sidelines at gym class the next day, having handed in the usual forged note from his father, when he hears someone come up beside him.

“Are you okay?”

Sam looks up from the book on his lap. It’s the same guy from outside, the one who had called out to him the other day. His girlfriend isn’t around. He is looking down at Sam, whose mind had been elsewhere: by the time he figures out an answer, the guy has moved on to another question. “So, who was that guy? In the car?”

Sam lets his eyes move briefly over the slightly self-conscious expression. “My brother.”

The guy nods. Shifts slightly on one foot. “Are you okay?” he asks again, voice quieter. His mouth is twisted in discomfort, but a bit of gentleness is almost getting out from behind the boundary. Sam realizes that this is an attempt at conversation.

He could do this. He knows all the rules about what to do and what to say. But the motivation towards any form of friendship is not there, not anymore.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” He looks down at his book, hands hard on the pages.

I am going to have so many fucking friends, he thinks to himself. One day. And then I’ll invite dad and Dean over and they can see how many friends I have and I’ll...

Above him the boy says “Okay,” and turns away. Sam doesn’t react, keeps his eyes on the book, even when he can tell the guy is looking at him over his shoulder.

Dean takes him home after school again. He watches TV while Sam sits at the table and does the homework he should have done last night. Sam almost doesn’t mind how far behind he’d dropped in the last couple of schools, now; it has given him something to do with all the time he’s been trapped in here with Dean. It makes it easier to tune out whatever crap Dean watches every night, and to ignore it when he goes into the other room to jerk off.

Around ten, Dean comes over to where he’s working and opens the fridge.

“You should get to bed pretty soon,” he says absently towards its interior.

The pencil Sam is holding is suddenly digging hard into his hand. “You didn’t remind me to breathe yet today, Dean. You gonna do that too?”

Dean gives him a look and then closes the fridge door hard, milk carton in one hand. “Whatever, dude.” He takes a drink.

Sam looks down, kicks at the chair next to him.

Dean puts the milk down on the counter. “What’s your problem?”

Sam laughs. “Okay. How about, you and dad have been keeping me prisoner in a motel room for weeks now, and you won’t even tell me – ”

“I don’t know why we have to stay in here either, Sam! I didn’t ask!” He says that last part like he’s proud of it. Sam kicks the chair over.

Dean looks down at it, and then opens the fridge again to put the milk back in. “That shit doesn’t work on me, Sammy.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re such a little brat.”

Sam picks up one of his books and throws it at him. Dean ducks to the side, and the book hits the side of the fridge, and then the floor. Dean is in front of him suddenly, leaning over the table, hands resting on his open textbooks and creasing the thin paper.

“I had to argue to let you go to school here, Sammy,” he says. “I had to work on him for hours.”

Sam hears it and looks away from him, glares towards the barred, salted-up window next to the door. Dean turns away, and then the door to the bedroom slams.

He looks back down, then goes to retrieve the book he’d thrown. His eyes are sore, but he keeps on reading. After about half an hour, the phone rings.

“Hey, Sammy.”

“What is it, dad?” Usually it would be weird for him to call him instead of Dean, but in this place his father been calling almost nightly.

“I’m checking you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He doesn’t answer that. “You been doing everything I told you to?”

“Why won’t you let me go outside?”

“It’s not safe. Is – ”

“Dad, no, answer me. I won’t do it, I swear. I won’t go outside at night. Just tell me why.”

“Sam – ”

“Tell me.”

“Sam. You just gotta do what I say here.”

He wants to say “Or what?” but by then the moment has passed and his dad has changed the subject.

The usual instructions again. Don’t go outside, don’t talk to anyone, wear the charm Bobby gave you. When he’s done, Sam closes the phone and puts it down carefully next to his books. His vision is blurred.

His hands are shaking. It scares him. He takes several deep breaths, but it doesn’t help.

He stands up. In the bedroom, Dean is on one of the beds, asleep with the lamp still on, a magazine next to him.

Sam shoves it aside, grabs Dean by the shoulder. Leans in as he wakes up and kisses him hard. Underneath him Dean starts, then grins against his mouth, relaxing slightly. Sam’s hands are too strong on his face, in his hair, but when he breaks away, pulling in urgent breath to his shaking body, Dean has a look on his face like he is impressed.

Sam kisses him again, moving onto the bed now, pinning Dean’s legs, and then Dean’s phone rings in his jacket pocket.

Dean breathes in, mouth still on his, moves. Sam pulls his hair tighter. Dean goes to pull it out of his jacket, leg sliding in between Sam’s, and Sam grabs his arm.

“Sam – “ he says, pulls his head away. The phone rings again, then again. Dean wrenches his arm away and Sam catches it.

“Sam, for fuck’s sake!” Dean shoves him off and lunges. Sam gets hold of the phone and throws it across the room. It bounces sharply off the wall and hits the floor. The ringing stops.

Dean sits up, looking at him. Sam is still hanging onto his arm. For a second, his face is the same weird mix of surprised and impressed, but then it creases in anger and he says “That was probably dad, you know, you little bitch.”

“I hope it was. I hope he needed your help and now he’s dead.”

Dean shoves him off again, harder this time, so he hits the mattress. He stands up and goes to pick up the phone, frowns, looks at it carefully in the lamplight. Then he holds it out so that Sam can see the thin crack in the side. “Fucking great.” He dials.

Sam sits up on the bed slightly, wiping his mouth. He is still shaking, and his jaw hurts now from clenching his teeth. There is a faint taste of blood; he doesn’t know if it’s his or Dean’s.

“Hi dad,” Dean says. “Yeah, I was asleep. Sorry.” Pause. “I know.” He keeps his eyes on Sam as he talks. “Yeah, he…okay.” Sam tries to hear, but the other voice is too soft. “No, he’s here. He’s fine. Yeah.” He pauses and frowns again. “Yeah, I’ll take care of it. Okay.”

Sam lies back on the bed. Dean closes the phone and looks again at the break in its side. Sam turns away from him, towards the dim wall. Behind him, he hears Dean sigh. His brother is next to the bed straight away, shoving the phone aside onto the dresser.

He touches Sam’s hair, firm, gentle.

“I don’t care what you do,” Sam says to the wall. “I hate him. I hate you both.”

“Move over.”

Sam moves, and he sits down on the edge of the bed, touches his hair again. Sam wishes he could take this over, just grab him again, but whatever had been there before has gone.

“You shouldn’t say things like that about dad.” His voice is absent, and Sam kind of wants to stab him.

Dean’s hand moves down, across his back, his waist. Sam keeps still, his eyes on the wall, but it isn’t working. Dean just touches him, briefly, to see if he’s still interested. He isn’t.

“Here,” Dean says. “Sit up.” Moves his other hand down his spine, and Sam breathes in. The tears come up out of nowhere.

Dean pulls him up, so that Sam’s sitting between his legs, lying back against his chest.

“We won’t be here for much longer, okay?”

It’s not real crying, just tears on his face; he’s shaking, like whatever had built up before is finally coming out. Dean rubs his shoulder, rocks him. Sam closes his eyes, and lets him. He wants to say something, about how the frustration when he sees the car after school is always mixed up with something else; how he thinks about him every day, at school, that he hates himself for it. But then there’s a bigger part of him that doesn’t want Dean to know.

“I love you,” Dean says against his skin. “We both love you so much, you know that?”

He clenches his jaw, and nods.

Sam had gotten twin beds at reception, out of habit. When he realizes what he’s done, when they’re in the room, he just closes his eyes and sighs.

“I’ll go down and ask them to change it,” he says and starts to turn.

“Don’t worry about it.” Ruby sits down on one of the beds, the one closer to the door.

“It’s no problem. Get your jacket.”

She shrugs and doesn’t move. Sam gives up, and dumps their bags down on the other bed.

“I don’t know why you bothered,” she says as he’s opening his. “Everyone knew.”

Sam stops what he’s doing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She motions to the separate beds. “You and Dean. Maybe the people around you were fooled, but us? The bad guys? We’ve seen everything. You don’t have to pretend.”

He shakes his head. The denial is so automatic he doesn’t even think, or panic. “That’s sick, Ruby.”

She leans forward. “I was in hell, remember. I know Dean’s secrets.” When he doesn’t answer she says it again. “I know, Sam.”

He looks at her, blankly, and it takes him a second to answer. “No,” he says, and the word comes out choked.

She stands up. “It’s okay, Sam. You don’t have to pretend.”

He doesn’t pretend, but then her tone changes, gentle, softer. And she is close, helping him sit down on the bed, hand on his hair, standing over him. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

And it feels like five years ago suddenly, the last time anyone had said anything like this to him. It’s so familiar that Sam can’t speak, just swallows, won’t look up. He starts to talk: “It wasn’t like that – he wasn’t – Dean wasn’t very well socialized, he didn’t… it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just Dean. It didn’t mean anything.” The words come out automatic, and too familiar, like they’re outside of his control.

“Yeah, Sam. Totally normal.” The gentle tone subsides somewhat. “Why are making excuses for the guy? You think anyone else sees him like that?”

Sam doesn’t answer. He looks at the ground. He will argue further; he needs to pull his mind back together, then he can make them understand…

He is almost there, almost ready to answer, when Ruby turns his head up towards her, and asks him how long it took Dean to start fucking him after he got his girlfriend killed.

Part II

SPN Fic: Hell's Gates, Part II

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:09:20 GMT

You can't just fire guns in town, so a while after John gets back, he decides to take Sam back out to the woods for a weekend for more training. That means camping, with tents, but Sam seems surprisingly resigned about the whole thing. He packs up and then gets in the car without an argument as Dean helps his father load up the trunk.

When his dad has gone inside the house, Dean opens the Impala’s passenger door. Sam is concentrating on what looks like a textbook.

"Hey. Shove over."

Sam obeys without looking up. "Why aren't you coming," he murmurs towards the book.

"You know dad doesn't need me there. Besides, I've got stuff to do here." He grins, but Sam doesn't respond.

"It won't be that bad, Sammy. Just try not to shoot each other."

Sam still doesn't look up, kicks at the car floor very slightly. Dean had pulled his sleeves up a bit when he was helping pack the weapons, and after a moment Sam grabs his arm where it’s resting near his lap. He turns it over absently, runs his thumb over the healing scar there.

"It'll be fine, dude," Dean says.

Sam nods, and brushes hair out of his eyes without looking up. Dean squeezes his leg, then pries loose from Sam's grip and climbs out.

With the two of them away the house seems so big, which is weird because they have squatted in bigger, emptier houses before. Dean sleeps in the double bed in the main bedroom both nights, even though he's only with someone on the first.

He volunteers to go with them the next time. Okay, so technically Dean isn’t needed, but no way is he going to let Sam and Dad be alone together too often doing weapons training. It’s getting increasingly less likely that either of them will come back alive.

It's not too bad back out in the woods, despite the camping, and it's actually a relief to see Sam and Dad yelling at each other again. It's like coming home, after the silence their interaction has been turning into.

On the second night out there it rains, harder than usual. Inside their tent, Dean tries to sleep for a while as Sam reads some book by flashlight next to him. Eventually he turns over and watches the ceiling of the narrow tent, which is moving faintly with the steady thudding on the canvas. It's too early to be sleeping, really, but what else is there to do out here? From what he can tell in this noise, the other tent next to them is silent.

"Sammy,” he says after a while. “There's a magazine in the bottom of my bag. Grab it for me."

Sam looks towards the shuddering tent walls and frowns. "What do you want to shoot now?"

"No, dude, one with paper."

Sam sighs and puts down the book, but he opens the bag, grabs the magazine and shoves it in Dean's direction. A mildly disgusted expression on his face as he pulls the thick sleeping bag back up around his shoulders, lying down on his front.

Dean grins at him. "Want to look?"

Sam glances over, and then carefully back at the page in front of him. He takes a breath that Dean can hear over the noise of the rain.

Dean pushes the magazine across the tiny strip of tent floor between them and props himself up on his elbows on the mattress, mimicking Sam’s position. Sam turns his head towards it again, very slightly. Dean grins, flips a few pages, and then jabs the glossy paper with his finger.

"This one's my favorite.” He pauses. “Fuck, Sam, can you imagine having your hands on those."

Next to him Sam is frowning, expression halfway between worried and angry. His eyes flicker up to Dean’s face, then down again. He glances at the canvas wall, in the general direction of the other tent. "This is weird…" he mumbles.

"It's not weird if you just look at her."

Sam looks over towards the dim tent wall again and Dean flips to a better picture, the same woman spread out across the hood of a car.

"Okay. Oh yeah, look at that." He adjusts the angle, and next to him Sam is looking. Sees him bite his lip. "Bet she'd let you fuck her right there. Can you imagine?"

Sam makes a faint noise, and shifts in his sleeping bag. He looks like he's in pain.

Dean figures that he shouldn’t look, so he turns back to the picture, keeps his eyes on the image. Next to him Sam is so close, almost touching, and that might have been too much if Dean still really cared, if it wasn’t pushed down along with the weird tightness in his throat, his stomach. The rain is loud, and he keeps his eyes fixed on the page. Keeps his mind on the sound of his own breath, only just staying even.

"Shame you didn't get a look at the girl last week," he says, and his voice comes out strange, low. "She had a rack just like that." Next to him, Sam’s breath catches. "Do you remember what she sounded like, Sammy? When –"

Sam shudders, his head dropping forward, moaning loudly as he presses his face into his pillow.

Dean stays still, head down, resists looking over at him for as long as he can. Sam finally moves, turning onto his side next to him, and Dean looks. And then Sam looks so cute, his face flushed red and so shocked, like nothing like this has ever happened before to anyone, that Dean leans over the short distance between them and kisses him.

Just lightly, smiling as he pulls away, but he feels Sam shrink back, tensing up in a way that Dean wouldn’t be able to feel if he weren't so close. And Dean can tell why, straight away, just from the expression on Sam's face.

"Jesus Christ, Sam," he says, "Is that the first time anyone –"

Sam goes even redder.

Oh god, he’s never even…

The realization should be horror, but it's something else that goes straight through him instead, makes him breathless with the strength of it.

Dean shoves himself up, mumbling something about needing to go to the bathroom, and pulls open the tent door and crawls outside.

Out here the rain is still coming down hard, and the cold and wet solves his new problem pretty quickly. Next to him in the clearing, the other tent is dark, the forest around them black. Dean ignores the surroundings and closes his eyes, lets the rain get him.

He sees Sam turn off the flashlight quickly as he is coming back in. Dean zips the door closed after him carefully and turns back. In the fading glow, he can see just the faint outline of the figure in the dark, curled up a little on his side.

Dean doesn't know why he does it, again, after that. He crawls over to his own side but then leans over and kisses him, long and deep.

Sam doesn't respond, but he doesn't pull away either. His skin hot as Dean smears water on it, tilts his head back with his hands.

"I love you," Dean says against his mouth. "You know that, right? I love you."

Sam nods, and wraps his hand tight around his wrist as Dean pulls back. Letting go takes longer than it should. Sam’s grip loosens finally and then Dean lies back alone, dripping rain water onto his warm mattress.

**
John goes away again almost as soon as they’re back in town. He is gone for a while, and in his absence, Sam starts arriving home late after school. Dean gives him a warning a few times, tells him to be back by sundown, and Sam mumbles an agreement and then the next night stays out even later.

Finally one night he is gone well after it’s dark outside. He doesn't even answer his phone. Dean waits for him at the house, letting his anger win out over fear. It has been what, a few months since Sam ran away in the middle of the fucking woods? And he hasn't learnt anything? It's like the kid wants to get into trouble.

When Sam finally arrives back he ignores Dean’s questions, pushing past him into the house. Dean follows him up the stairs and into the bedroom. Sam sits down on his bed and switches on the light on the table beside it, still ignoring him.

Dean stands in front of him. "Okay Sam," he says. "What is it. You meet a girl or something?"

"It's none of your business." Sam opens his school bag. Dean picks it up and drops it onto the floor with a loud thud.

Sam looks down at it, and says nothing.

"You're going to tell me right now, Sam."

He looks up at him. "Why don't you ever leave me alone?"

"Because I'm trying to keep you safe."

Sam rolls his eyes.

"Christ Sam, you should be happy that someone fucking cares about you!"

He doesn't answer, staring down at the carpet like it personally makes him angry.

"Tell me where the fuck you were or I'll tell dad that you were out late."

Silence. "Come on, Sam,” he says.

Sam’s eyes are still on the floor, and he takes a deep breath that sounds unsteady. Dean sees his shoulders move slightly in the light from the lamp.

He drops his voice. "You have a problem with school or something? Come on, you can tell me."

Sam shakes his head.

"Is some kid there giving you trouble?"

"No," he mumbles. "Everyone's really nice here."

"Is it some teacher again? Because I swear to God…"

"No, Dean. The teachers are all fine. And they have all this stuff after school… they're helping me catch up."

"So what's the problem?"

He turns away, looking towards the door.

"What is it?"

Sam looks up at him. "I like it here, Dean! I don't want to go! Dad will come back and…"

Dean sighs. Okay. Trust his brother to complain about things being too good. "I'm sure the next place will be fine, Sammy."

Sam shakes his head. "No. I want to stay here. Until I graduate. It's not that long."

"Sammy," he says patiently, "You know we can't. Dad has important stuff to do."

"He can go, then, Dean! He left us alone for like six weeks last year. It's not that much longer."

"Not by yourself."

He pauses, looks at the floor in front of the bed again. "You – you could stay too."

When Dean stops and doesn't answer right away, Sam looks up at him.

Dean frowns. "You… you want me to – "

"I talked to Bobby. He said we could probably keep this place for a while longer. Or he'll help dad find somewhere else. He thinks I should stay, too! Dad doesn't need us trailing around after him all the time. He'd probably be glad!"

He shakes his head. "Yeah, Sam. Dad would be thrilled to have his sons abandon him."

"We're not abandoning him. I'm talking about a few months, Dean! We can - "

"Sam, no."

Sam's head ducks down, and he sees his fists clench by his sides. "You're not even listening to me."

"That's because you're being crazy!"

Sam looks away, his face twisting. "I can't do college applications properly if I don't have a stable address – "

Dean takes in a sharp breath. "Okay. Sam. We are not discussing this anymore."

"Dean – " he whines.

"Shut up."

Sam looks up at him, sets his jaw. "I'm going to ask him."

"No you're not."

He stands up. He is close in front of him suddenly, back straight so that Dean has to look up at him. "Or what?"

Dean doesn't move. "I will hit you again, Sam."

"I'll still ask him."

He lowers his voice. "I told you what I'd do, Sam. I warned you."

Sam twitches. "I don't care." But Dean can see the signs, the way Sam's shoulders move forward very slightly, the way his voice wavers. Dean folds his arms. Sam’s jaw clenches again, and he doesn’t move.

"Okay, Sam," he says. "On the bed."

"No." he says.

Dean grabs his arm, and Sam tries to pulls loose, pushing at him with his free hand. Dean shoves him back towards the bed, and he is surprised at how much force there is in it suddenly, like the beginning of something that he has to hold down.

And it’s all it takes. Sam drops his eyes, going limp as Dean guides him back and down onto the covers.

"Don't," he says softly.

But he has to, now. Sam is too old for anything else, was too old last time. "Lie down."

Sam does it, sucking breath in between his teeth as he gets on to his front. His body stiff as he rests his weight on his forearms, head lowered.

"Lift your shirt up," Dean says.

Sam does it, keeps his face down.

Dean kicks aside the schoolbag to get in closer beside the bed, looks down at him. Dad had hit Dean exactly once since he was eight, and that was pushing his head into a wall, last year. Hard, but it hadn't really hurt; it was just the shock of it mostly. The worst part was that Sam had been watching.

He remembers, feels the tension of the memory go through him as he unbuckles his belt and pulls it off. Just hard and quick, he thinks. That's enough to get the message through.

In front of him, on the covers, Sam is perfectly still, barely breathing.

"You know why I'm doing this?" His own voice sounds strange, unfamiliar.

Sam nods. They both know why, and they both know that it has nothing to do Sam with staying out late. But Dean doesn't think about that now.

He draws back his arm and brings down the belt as hard as he can, the leather catching across the skin on Sam's back.

Sam makes a strained noise, his body jerking. Silence, and then a long unsteady breath out. The force of it makes him want to flinch. He is surprised again at how he can watch himself so calmly, at the strength in his arm.

He does it again, and Sam screams.

The next blow he doesn't, silent. When he moves slightly, his breath stopped, his hands gripping on the covers, Dean sees tears on his face.

"Okay," he says. "Get up."

Sam sits up slowly, jerkily, his shirt falling down across his chest as he gets upright, hair in his face. Dean slides the belt back on and does it up. "I don't want to hear any more of this crap about abandoning dad, okay Sam?"

Sam doesn't look up. "Dean," he sobs out, broken, and Dean goes to him before he is even aware of what he is doing.

Sam has his arms reached out and Dean lets him grab on to him, pulling Sam in close next to him on the bed.

"Sh, look. It's okay." Sam presses his wet face against his neck, and Dean rocks him, pushes a hand through his hair. He can feel his breath hot against his throat, and then Sam looks down.

"Dean," he says. He stops, swallows. "Dean, I…" He trails off miserably into silence. His hands grip on him tighter.

Dean smiles, which takes a bit of effort, and strokes his hair again. "You kiss anyone else yet, Sam?”

Sam turns his head away, his face flushing with blood. Dean laughs. He pulls Sam back closer towards him, because it's so damn adorable, and then Sam lifts his head, and quickly and clumsily presses his mouth against his.

It’s not unexpected, not really, Sam’s mouth warm and soft, hands grabbing at him awkwardly. Dean lets his arms slide tighter around him, and it all just seems natural. Everything feels so warm, safe. All red and glowing. It's like Dean isn’t really there, like all of this is something outside of his control. Something is fighting deep under the surface, but Christ, it is so different, like something Dean had never known wasn’t there.

Sam breaks off and drops his head again, near his shoulder.

Dean takes an uneven breath, closes his eyes for a second. Sam’s body is stiff against him, shuddering like he's terrified. Skin hot through the layers of clothing and his hands at Dean’s waist, his fingers digging in to the skin through his shirt. The grip is solid and real and Dean, trying to breathe steady, pulls him in by the hips.

"Dean," Sam is moaning next to his mouth. The words broken, worshipful. "Dean, please…"

That low whisper, the sound of it, stirs something in his mind, catching on something buried. No one had ever said his name like that, no one –

“Dean,” he says again, and then consciousness is forcing its way back up, breaking through too sudden and violent. Dean pulls away from him quickly and stands up.

Sam only looks up at him for a second. Dean stares back down towards him, dumbly, his mind blank. He can’t think, can barely see his brother in front of him as Sam’s gaze drops quickly back down to the ground.

He takes a breath in, but he can’t speak. He can't even say "I'm sorry." He just turns around.

He barely remembers getting out of the room, reaching to the other bedroom. Once he’s inside, he closes the door firmly and sits down on his father's bed. Concentrates on slowing his breathing, his hands gripping on the sheets under him. His skin feels cold with new sweat.

His mind isn’t working right. Trying to think his way out will not work this time. Eventually he stands up and goes into the bathroom, locks the door behind him. Dean turns on the shower, and then sits down on the cold floor next to it, braced against the side of the bathtub as the room fills with steam.

He works on bringing up carefully selected images in his mind to block it all out; the warm skin, the tone of voice, everything that brings up the feeling that twists in him like a cramp. When he comes there is absolutely no relief; he just feels drained and blank, and like he can’t quite breathe.

He sleeps in that bedroom that night, under the covers, and a week later they're gone.

Sam usually complains loudly when they leave a place he likes, but this time he is completely silent. He follows every order without a word, quiet to the point of actual politeness. On the drive out of town he sits in the back of the car, and whenever Dean glances back from where he’s sitting up front with dad, Sam keeps his eyes down on the book he’s reading like he thinks that looking up from it will kill him.

**

Dean tracks his brother down three months after he leaves. When he knocks on the door to the apartment Sam opens it for him and lets him in without a word.

The place is tiny, run down even by Dean's standards. There’s barely any furniture, and what he does have looks empty under the thin spread of possessions. Sam doesn’t look good, his face pale in the bright light of the living room. He gets Dean a beer and they sit down on the old sofa set and Dean talks about random crap, what's been going on, and Sam nods and is silent, taking it in or ignoring him, Dean can't tell.

Finally Dean leans forward in his tattered armchair and says: “You can come back, Sam. Dad didn’t mean what he said.”

Sam nods, and takes a drink. His gaze is fixed somewhere across the room. “I don’t care whether he meant it or not, Dean."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don’t want to go back."

Dean sighs, but then smiles tightly, putting the empty beer bottle down firmly on the bare coffee table between them. "Okay, Sammy. You made your point. I get it."

Sam lets out a breath. He leans back on the sofa, and looks up at the low ceiling. "You're not listening to me, Dean."

Dean shakes his head. He had been trying to be delicate, but this whole thing is getting too stupid to even bother arguing with. He stands up. “Come on, Sam. We’re going back.”

“No,” he says. He still doesn’t look at Dean.

"Sam –" He steps forward and finally Sam looks up, his face hard.

"I said no."

Dean goes to grab him by the shoulder, and Sam pushes him off. Dean hits him across the face, hard, and Sam falls back against the sofa.

Dean takes a breath, steadies himself. In front of him Sam sits up, slowly, one hand at his face. With the other he gently puts the near-empty beer bottle down on the table. He takes a careful breath, flexes his jaw.

Dean is keeping himself back by force. "I told you not to run away again! You can’t just leave us like that. You're going to get yourself killed!"

Sam doesn't respond. His expression is flat, empty; he is looking up at Dean like he is a mildly threatening stranger.

Dean kicks the table aside and grabs him by the hair. He pulls his hand into a fist, and Sam finally makes a noise as Dean yanks him towards him. "What the hell is wrong with you, Sam? Don't you care about yourself at all?!"

No response. Dean hits him again, and then it's like something has burst through to the surface; everything is over. Sam doesn’t fight, stays closed and passive under the third and forth blows and the ones after that.

When Dean finally pulls back there is nothing. Sam falls back when he lets go of him, to the ground in front of the sofa. He moves slowly, lifting himself up on one arm. There is blood on his face.

Dean watches him for a few seconds, catching his breath, and then drops down to his knees and pulls him upright, pushing Sam’s back up against the front of the sofa. Sam stays silent, his jaw set. His eyes don’t meet Dean’s, look past him determinedly. Nothing there still, nothing but the sound of his breathing in the room. Around them, the world seems too bright.

Dean feels his own expression start to shift now, but he breathes in and focuses, holds it under control. He takes hold of Sam’s face, turns it roughly towards him, and then shifts over, moving so he is sitting on top of Sam’s legs.

Under him Sam stiffens only slightly under his weight; it feels far away. He doesn't resist at all, barely reacts as Dean moves closer, pressing his fingers harder against Sam’s jaw to open his mouth, smearing the wet on his cheeks. Dean rests his forehead against his brother's, breathes in the scent of Sam’s hair and skin, familiar under the coppery blood.

Sam’s breath is slow against his own, only a little unsteady. Close enough to touch, and Dean moves closer, tastes blood. He closes his eyes.

“You have to be quiet about it...” Sam says softly, after a minute. It's almost too quiet to hear, even this close.

Dean pulls back a little, opening his eyes. “What?”

“The walls are really thin," Sam murmurs. He finally moves his eyes to meet Dean’s, and Dean finds he can't hold the gaze. "You have to be quiet, or the neighbors will hear. They’ll call the cops.”

Dean feels his grip on Sam’s face lessen, as he takes in a breath. He is aware suddenly of the amount of blood on his hands, warm and red and slick between Sam’s skin and his own. There are marks starting to come up on Sam’s face, swelling.

Dean lets go of his brother, and stands up.

He is in the tiny bathroom before he knows how he gets there, looking into the mirror. The words are still there in his mind. The idea of keeping Sam quiet while Sam is still like that, all blank and silent and...

As he watches himself his brain connects it, comes up with all the unforgivable things that he could do to Sam right now, not just as a way to get a reaction out of him, but as something planned, as a way to get Sam to follow him back into the car afterwards, to get him to sit back quietly in the passenger seat, like–

Dean looks back down at the sink. He washes his face, rinses out his mouth to get rid of the blood. Closes his eyes for a little while, leaning against the counter. The world seems unreal, unsolid.

His cell phone is in his jacket pocket, in the living room, and for a second he thinks about going to get it, but he doesn’t. He stays in the bathroom.

When he comes out, Sam is sitting up on the sofa, leaning forward, his hands on his side. Dean must have hit him in the ribs; he doesn't remember. Sam doesn’t look up. Dean stands awkwardly near the end of the sofa, the silence stretching.

“I have class tomorrow,” Sam mumbles, like he’s talking to himself.

Dean turns away.

In the kitchen, he finds paper towels, and some ice cubes in the otherwise empty freezer. He can't find a dishcloth so he takes off one of the shirts he's wearing and wraps it around them. He goes back to the living room.

“Here,” he says and Sam takes the ice and presses it against his ribs without looking at him.

Dean moves closer, wipes the worst of the blood off Sam's face with the paper towels. Sam keeps entirely still, and it's weird, like Dean is alone in the room. There's a part of him still alive that thinks Sam might squirm, move, look at him, but he doesn’t. What Dean had mistaken for despair or recklessness is actually a genuine indifference, and the knowledge is like a knife in his gut.

He washes his hands in the kitchen after, wipes them dry on his jeans. In the other room, Sam still doesn't make a noise. He is sitting still, head down, his hands near his ribs, frowning slightly like he is deep in thought. Silent as Dean watches from near the kitchen door.

Dean's throat feels closed off; his mind won't come up with anything to say. Sam barely seems to notice he is there.

"Keep the shirt," he says eventually.

Sam nods a little, vaguely. Dean picks up his jacket, turns away. He pulls the door closed quietly behind him as he leaves.

He thinks up a lot of good alternate reasons on the long drive back, but his father never does ask why.

SPN Fic: Hell's Gates

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:58:49 GMT

Title: Hell’s Gates
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Angst, heavy violence, dark themes
Notes: I will post this around at a more reasonable hour, so apologies in advance if anyone on my flist gets spammed. (Edited to fix bad formatting in some styles)

Sam's nightmares peaked at around age twelve. Later, when he's older, Dean sometimes still hears him wake up, jolting awake with a start that wakes Dean as well. But Sam always goes quiet immediately, swallowing whatever sound is in his throat, like he thinks that he's alone.

When it happens Dean stays awake, not moving but alert, listening to Sam next to him or across the room, always lying tense like he is expecting his dream to turn real. He monitors the breathing, measuring it against his father’s if he is there. He can never fully relax until he hears Sam gradually settle down and fall asleep again, the sound of one person sleeping turning into two.

By the time Sam is seventeen, the dreams seem to have stopped altogether.

**

John says that they've done all they can, and that it's best to go back to the house now that it is getting dark. So they pack up, and the three of them head back through the woods, in the rain. It's only just bright enough to see, and Dean keeps his eyes on his father in front of him, Sam slouching somewhere near his side.

Dean's arm is throbbing hot under the damp of the rain on his clothes, but the cut there isn’t that bad. The real reason they are going back is, of course, Sam. They could have stayed out here, and he and Dad could have finished this without him. In fact, the hunt probably would have been long over by now if Sam wasn't out here at all. The kid is tired, and he won't eat any of the food they have, and it has gone from being annoying to plain dangerous.

Dean doesn't say this though, just glances occasionally at his silent brother to make sure he doesn't do anything else dumb before they get back to the house they're squatting in.

The word is actually a bit of a stretch: the building has walls and a ceiling and not much else. But inflatable mattresses in what used to be the only bedroom are at least an improvement over camping.

"Dean, sit down until I get a look at you,” John says when they’re inside. He closes the ancient back door behind them: the tiny room used to be a kitchen, but there’s not much left except for a broken sink and an old wooden table. “Sammy, go check the windows in case it’s followed us."

"They're already boarded up." Sam says. He drops his bag and rifle on the floor with a thud. “They were boarded up when we got here.”

"Check that they're secure. And take your gun with you."

Sam looks at him for a second, then picks up the gun and turns without a word. It has been two weeks since dad pulled him out of school, and Sam still hasn't gotten over it. In fact, it's been getting worse.

His father doesn't react, just sits down on the chair next to Dean at the table. Its dusty surface is still loaded up with the weapons bag and the big first aid kit they’d left there. John turns on the gas lamp, and the dim light of the room lifts. "Okay. Show me your arm."

"It's fine." Dean pulls back the torn sleeves covering his left arm. The cut has mostly stopped bleeding.

His father takes his hand, cups his palm around Dean’s arm and pulls back the damp bandages he’d put on when they were out there. He presses at the edges of the cut gently, and Dean stops himself from drawing in a breath. Even after the temperature of the air outside, his hand is warm.

"Sammy?" John calls out, without looking up. "You done in there?"

Dean looks up as his brother reappears at the door. John lets go of his arm and stands up.

"Sit down. I want you to help your brother."

Both boys do a double take, and then Sam gives his father a look like he has just asked him to give Dean a sponge bath. "What? He can do it himself."

"You have to learn, Sammy. Sit down."

Sam's face turns red, but he comes over to them, yanking back the chair violently and sitting down with a loud crash. Dean glances at his father quickly, but John ignores the noise, turning away. Sam opens up the first aid kit, picks up a bottle of iodine. Across the room, John is starting to reattach the barricades they’d put up over the door.

"Does it need stitches?" Sam calls to him after he's cleaned it.

"Figure it out."

Sam sighs, pushing his wet hair out of his face. "I don't know."

Silence on both sides. Dean rolls his eyes. "It needs stitches."

Sam scowls, twisting Dean's arm slightly in his grip as he looks around in the kit for a suture needle. Dean is not looking forward to this part, but once he actually starts Sam's grip turns gentle, his movements measured and careful, not matching the expression on his face. Dean doesn't say anything about it, just holds still.

"This is stupid," Sam mumbles as he does it, almost under his breath. "They have hospitals for this."

"I wouldn't have it if just you'd shot the damn thing." Dean whispers back.

"I'm not going to shoot a baby."

"For the last fucking time Sam, it's not a real baby. That's just a trick it pulls."

Sam scowls. He's finished stitching, and he grabs for a bandage. "We couldn't be sure of that until it changed."

"You think someone would have just left a baby in the middle of the woods?” Dean’s voice rises. “In the same woods where there's a monster that disguises herself as a baby? You really thought that, Sam?"

Sam doesn't answer, just drops Dean's newly bandaged arm and stands up with another loud noise. He turns to head back to the bedroom.

"I didn't say you could go," John says, from across the room.

Dean tenses, and pulls his hurt arm in towards him. Sam nods, turns to his father slowly. "Can I go now, sir?"

There's a second of wait: Dean can tell what is coming in the way Sam is standing, can feel it in the air.

At that moment, there is a noise outside, from the woods.

They all turn. "Sammy, go and hide," John says.

Dean stands up quickly, thankful that practicality has beaten out stubbornness this one time. Sam doesn't argue, heads for the bedroom as Dean grabs his rifle from the floor beside him and follows his father towards the noise.

They stand, looking out into the dim light through the gaps in the broken door. It’s quiet out there now. Just the faint sound of the light rain. "Is it her?" Dean asks quietly.

"I think so."

"I thought you said they don't usually track you."

"Well, we probably pissed this one off a lot."

Dean looks down at his arm. "Do you think she's after me?"

"Maybe." He looks out towards the shield of trees. "They’re not usually great hunters. I should be able to get it when it comes out in the open. Sam?" he calls towards the bedroom. "You okay in there?"

No answer.

Dean sighs. "I'll go check on him."

"Tell him to get under cover. I don't want – " He cuts off at the sound of another noise, off to the left of where they'd been looking. They both freeze.

Silence.

"Where is it?" Dean mouths.

"It's disappeared again. Go round to –"

There's a crash from behind them, in the bedroom.

Dean doesn't remember much, then: he just thinks Sam, and the next second he is at the bedroom door, with the rifle already raised in his hands. The monster is in through the window already, halfway to the closed wooden cupboard across the room, and he knows straight away that Sam is in there and he goes to fire.

"Dean! Don't shoot."

Dean freezes at his father's voice, his finger twitching against the trigger as the thing reaches the cupboard, yanks the latched door off in one go. He is aware of his father saying something else, next to him, but the words never reach. From inside the cupboard Sam makes a muffled, terrified sound, and Dean fires.

It screams and falls sideways, but he's missed the back of the neck and it recovers, starts running back towards the window. His dad pushes past him and gets another shot in, but it keeps going, clearing the window and disappearing into the dark as his father swears loudly next to him.

It's gone, as quickly as it came. John is at the window now, and after a second he turns back to Dean.

Dean winces, lowering his gun. It is suddenly so quiet, and he can hear Sam across the room, loud unsteady breathing over the faint sound of the rain.

The look his father gives him lasts for only half a second, but it seems like ten.

“Look after him," John says.

Dean nods, clutches the gun down by his side. John disappears.

He turns back to the cupboard. His body feels stiff, his ears ringing.

He takes a deep breath. “Sammy, you alright?” he calls out.

From inside, Sam doesn’t answer, which would be more worrying if it weren’t so typical. Dean kicks aside the flashlight that Sam had left discarded on the floor, and pulls back the broken door. Sam is at the back, sitting on the filthy ground. He doesn’t look up at Dean.

“Sammy, god dammit. What the hell are you doing?!”

Sam doesn’t answer still. After a second he stands up, and shoves past Dean without looking at him. A moment later, the bedroom door slams behind him.

Dean turns around, switching hands with the rifle. Goes to the window, but there’s no sign of anything out there. It had got in easily: so Sam hadn't checked the windows here after dad told him to. What a surprise.

He waits for a moment, scanning outside in the last of the evening light, past the car, the dim line of trees. Then he goes to the kitchen to get the tools.

"Sammy?"

No answer, he's probably hiding in the bathroom, that's definitely not unusual. Dean gets the hammer and nails his father had been using on the door, and goes back and fixes the window as best he can. The thing definitely isn’t as dangerous anymore with two more holes in it, but it's still worth doing, considering Sam's sudden new desire for everyone to die.

The thought makes him wince. The images of what had happened keep reappearing in his head, against his will. Dean had thought, in that second, that his father had been worried that he would miss and hit Sam. Which is ridiculous, when he thinks about it now; his father knows that Dean is a better shot than that. No, it was that Sam had had a weapon and a close clear shot, and the thing wasn't a fast killer. Good kill for a seventeen year old. Dad had wanted Sam to help bring it down.

Dean doesn't know why, but once he figures that out it makes the whole thing seem even worse.

When he's done with the windows, he goes back to the kitchen and calls out "Sam?"

Still no answer. Dean frowns, and checks the bathroom now, and then every other part of the tiny house. Sam is gone. When he gets back to the kitchen, he sees that the part of the unfinished barricade over the door has been pulled open from the inside.

He goes back to the bedroom. Sam's gun is still there, where he’d left it.

For a few seconds, Dean just stands still. He takes a long deep breath, feels his fists clench.

Acting like a brat is one thing, but this, this is different. This is something entirely different.

"I am going to kill him," he says softly, to the empty house. "I am going to strangle him until he is dead."

Dean gets his own gun and follows Sam's path out the door. Outside, the night is black and silent, the rain almost stopped, no sign of evil creatures or of his father. The car is still in the driveway, and Dean can make a guess about the way Sam is headed. He gets the spare keys out of his jacket pocket and pulls open the door.

He finds Sam out on the old two-lane road, on the way into town. He has his head down, looking at the dark ground in front of him. When Dean pulls up beside him he makes no effort at resistance, just opens the passenger door and slides in.

Dean looks over at him, but beside him Sam doesn't say anything, slouched over in the seat. Dean turns the car around and begins the drive back.

“Okay, Sammy," he says over the silence, towards the dark road in front of them. "I accept that this is what we do sometimes. Alright? You run away and I come looking for you. Okay. That’s fine.”

Sam doesn’t answer.

“But did you ever think about maybe not doing it when there’s a fucking monster after you that obviously has a thing for your blood?"

Still no answer. Sam sits there like a corpse.

Dean grips the wheel tighter. “Sam, you better answer me because I am this close to kicking your ass right now.”

Sam mumbles something.

“What?”

“What’s the big deal? Dad's out there and it's injured. You shot it. You both did.”

“Yeah, maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if you carried a proper weapon like you were supposed to.”

“I don’t want to carry a weapon.”

“I don’t give a crap what you want.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

Dean jerks the wheel to the right, and stops the car with a heavy jolt that surprises even him. His brother looks over at him, eyes wide in the glow from the headlights.

Dean breathes in. They're half a mile from the driveway that leads back to the old house. The road is black and empty, deserted like the woods around them. “Okay. Back seat, now.”

Sam doesn’t move.

“Do I have to pull you out?”

Sam keeps looking at him like that, but he opens the door. He ducks in the back so quickly that he's back inside before Dean is out of the car.

Outside, Dean takes a second, breathes in the cold night air. The rifle is still on the front seat, but it's silent out here, so calm. The rain has turned to a light drizzle that blurs the Impala's headlights, cool on his skin.

Through the window he can dimly see Sam sitting on the back seat, looking down. Dean opens the door, and sits down next to him.

What's it been, three years? Four? It doesn't really seem to make a difference now.

He pulls the door closed and moves over on the seat. “Come on,” he says.

Sam opens his mouth like he’s going to answer, but then stops and looks down. He undoes the old jeans he’s wearing, pauses, and then pushes them down.

“Get here.”

Sam takes a breath, looks down. “Dean, I can’t – ”

“It’s either here or outside, Sam.”

Sam glances at the dark window, apparently decides the deserted road’s not deserted enough. He moves awkwardly in the cramped space and lies down across his lap. Dean shifts him forward slightly, and the skin on his legs is warm under his hands.

It takes about ten minutes to get him to break, way less than Dean had figured. He can tell when Sam's about to cry, when he starts, when the anger goes out of him. Nothing has changed from when Sam was five years old, except for how long it takes.

“Okay, Sam,” he says when he's done. "It’s okay. Okay. Sit up.”

Sam pulls himself up, scrambling back and pulling his jeans back up quickly, his face red, still crying. He sits up on the seat beside Dean, even though he knows that must be painful, and then leans forward, his hair in his face, sobbing.

“It’s okay, man,” Dean says. “It’s over.”

Sam doesn’t answer, hunched over in the seat.

Dean looks away. He gets out of the car, and stands beside it for a while, waiting for Sam to finish.

It takes longer than he’d thought: minutes pass, the rain gets heavier, and Sam stays slumped in the backseat, still crying, until the resignation Dean usually feels at disciplining him turns to a building tension in his stomach.

He pulls open the door again. “Okay, Sammy, that’s enough. Back in the front.”

Sam wipes his face with the back of his hand, and moves.

Dean gets back in after him, starts the engine. The palm of his hand feels bruised, painful when he grips on the wheel. His arm hurts as well, a dull ache where he'd pulled on the stitches.

“Next time I'll hit you with a fucking belt, I swear, Sam,” he mumbles.

No answer. Sam sits, silent, through the short drive back, occasionally sniffling.

The house is still empty, and barricaded, and Sam follows him back in by the door he had left by earlier. Dean closes it up after them as best he can. In the bedroom, he moves away the splinters of wood that the monster had left across the bed, as well as the wet leaves that have gotten in through the gaps. Sam stands watching, his sleeping bag wrapped around him.

When he is done, Dean picks up his rifle and flashlight and turns towards the other room. "Are you hungry?"

"No."

“Okay, then. Sleep.” He gestures with the light.

Sam looks at the floor. “Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“No.”

He expects an argument, but Sam just says “Please.”

Dean turns the flashlight's beam on him, and Sam looks up. His eyes are still red from the crying.

“I’m going to sit up and wait for dad. He won't be able to get back in.”

Sam sniffs. “I’ll stay out there with you, then.”

Yeah, right. Dad would come home and Dean would get told off for letting him stay up. Like Dean isn't in enough trouble already.

He sighs. “Fine, okay. I’ll stay in there.”

It's probably a good idea to keep an eye on him, anyway. Sam might decide to go for another solitary wander in the woods. Dean turns off the flashlight and sits down on his own mattress, across the room from Sam’s. He leans back against the creaky wall, gun next to him.

Sam crosses the small room in the dark, and lies down beside him. He is so too old for this it's not funny, but Dean can't stop thinking of him crying like that in the car, and so he lets him.

"Keep warm," he murmurs. Sam covers himself with the sleeping bag and curls up against him, his fingers moving around Dean's good arm, tensing into a grip. He lies still, breath evening out very slowly, and he doesn’t seem to dream. Eventually, Dean closes his eyes.

He is asleep when dad arrives back near dawn. Sam is twisted in his sleep next to him, hand still clutched on Dean's forearm. Dean wakes up with a start when John opens the door, his free hand moving to the gun. He relaxes when he sees him and follows at his father’s gesture, extracting himself carefully from his sleeping brother.

God knows how the guy got in so quietly. It’s colder now, and Dean pulls his jacket around him tighter as he follows the faint light coming from the lamp in the kitchen. John is already sitting down in there, weapons set out in front of him on the table. He barely looks up as Dean sits down opposite.

"Dean, when I tell you to hold off firing, what do you do?" The tone is flat, barely a question.

Dean looks at the worn wooden surface of the table in front of him. "I don't shoot, sir."

"Those things need a really close shot to bring them down. I told you that."

Dean nods.

"You didn't have a close shot. Sam did."

"I'm sorry sir, I –"

"You gotta stop protecting him so much."

He nods again, swallows.

His father doesn't say anything else. Dean had been braced for yelling, something with some strength behind it, and he wants to feel relieved when it doesn’t happen. The relief doesn't come though, like something is blocking it.

John still doesn't look up from cleaning his rifle. Dean can't stand the silence, so he says: “Did you get her?”

He nods. “Wasn’t hard, just finding the damn thing."

"Are – are you okay? Were you hurt?" He leans forward a little.

"I'm fine. How is Sammy now?”

“He’s fine.”

“Why was he sharing with you?”

Dean glances down at the table again. “He was scared.”

He nods. He is quiet for a while. Dean waits.

“I’ve been keeping you kids too close lately. Putting you in danger.” Dean goes to protest, but he interrupts. “I thought he was ready, but he’s not. Neither of you are." He sighs. "Sam should go back to school.”

“Dad, he’s ready. It’s just the attitude. Once you get past that, he -”

“By the time he gets past that he might be dead. It’s okay, Dean.”

Dean slumps back in the chair. His father is right, but –

"Dean."

"Yeah."

"I don't want you letting your brother sleep in your bed anymore. He's too big for that."

Dean nods. There is something else there, far away, something that makes the room seem too still, bright even with just the faint light from the lamp. The night air is cold here, outside of the half-cover of the sleeping bag.

"Help me with this,” John says, and Dean moves quickly so that it’s forgotten.

**

They go back into town and enroll Sam in the local school. A friend of Bobby's has an unoccupied house in the area, and they're able to stay there. Dad doesn't give Dean the details: he goes off on a solo hunt almost straight away and leaves him behind with Sam. Dean doesn't mind that much; he is too impressed about having real windows and actual furniture to really complain about anything.

Sam doesn't seem too grateful for the change. Mostly, he goes from being silent and angry to just silent. And it turns right back to anger the on the Saturday morning of the first weekend, when Dean invites a girl over.

"Why does she have to come here?" Sam is standing beside his bed, giving Dean a look he usually reserves for their father.

"Sammy, look at this place. It's a fucking castle! I'm not going to miss this chance."

Sam folds his arms, and looks around the room they’re sharing, which is a guest room with carpet and actual beds with sheets and covers. "It's okay..."

“Way better than okay, dude.”

He makes another face. "Can't you just have her over when I'm at school?"

"People have schedules, Sam. Don't you have homework to do or something?"

Sam shrugs, and looks over to the pile of books near his bed with unusual reluctance.

Dean moves forward, and hits him on the arm lightly. "I swear I'll make it up to you."

He turns away. "Don't come in here at all."

Dean snorts. "I wouldn't anyway, dude." He turns away. He can feel Sam’s eyes on his back as he leaves.

The main bedroom, the one which would be dad's if he was actually here, has a fucking en suite, for god's sake, and Dean has a shower in there after he has seen her out to her car. He goes downstairs to the kitchen afterwards, and opens the fridge. At some point, the house has gotten dark. Dean pulls out a carton of milk and takes a drink.

Man, he thinks, life is good.

The laundry room is next to the kitchen. Dean finds boxers in the clean pile, and one of Sam's t-shirts. He expects it to fit okay, but it's too big, which is bad, but not enough to dampen his mood. "Sammy?" he calls up the stairs to the bedroom. "You okay?"

No answer. He goes up. Inside the room, Sam is sitting on his bed, a thick book open on his lap. He gives Dean a look like Dean has just killed one of his pets in front of him.

Okay. So they might have got a bit loud there at the end, and Sam might be angry like he’s angry about everything, but it's not like Dean had been doing it deliberately. Who thinks about their little brother when they have a real live woman in front of them?

Dean closes the door behind him. "So, what, you don't answer me now, dude?"

"Go away."

"It's my bedroom too," Dean says. He'd actually had no intention of hanging around in here, had just wanted to check that Sam was okay, but now he sits down next to him, moving closer as Sam shifts away. "What are you reading?"

"Go away, Dean!" Sam's face is flushed. Dean can't help it; he grins and puts his arm around him. Sam doesn't move, which he hadn’t expected, but Dean can feel how tense he is, almost shaking.

He laughs. "What is it, Sammy, you jealous?"

Sam shoves him away with surprising force, the book falling to the side as he tries to stand up. Dean grabs his arm.

"Let go."

"What’s the problem, Sam? I said I'd make it up to you."

"The problem?" He laughs sharply. "I had to be in the next room while you and some librarian - "

"She's not a librarian. I met her at the library."

"Whatever, Dean." He tries again to pull his arm out of Dean's grip. "What were you doing at the library?"

"Research. For dad. I can read, you know."

Sam snorts again. Dean gets that he is changing the subject, and he lets him do it. He's not stupid, has some idea of why Sam's anger is so excessive, even if it's nothing that he really wants to dwell on.

Sam twists his arm again, and Dean finally lets go. Sam doesn't stand up, stays sitting awkwardly near the side of the bed, a foot of distance between them. He looks at the floor. "You – you shouldn't do that on dad's bed. It's weird."

"I'll wash the sheets."

"It's still weird."

"You'd prefer if I did it in here?" Sam turns to look at him, and Dean laughs at his expression. "Sammy, you have got to get yourself a girlfriend or something."

Sam goes red again, eyes dropping.

"I can help you. Seriously, dude, for your own health."

"I'm – I'm okay, Dean. I don't – "

"Sam, I know you steal my magazines, okay? But real women? A little bit better. Help you relax a little."

Sam finally meets his eye. Dean tries to tell what he could be thinking, but that’s never useful.

"Come here," he says and holds out his arm.

Sam waits a second but does it, shifting back towards him on the bed. Dean puts his arm back around his shoulder.

"It’s okay," he says, although he doesn't really know what he's referring to. And Sam caves in, leaning in towards him, head on his shoulder.

Dean pats his arm gently. "It's okay," he says again.

Sam shakes his head slightly and bites his lip, looking across the room. Dean moves his hand down, across his back. Next to him, Sam keeps still.

"Let's go downstairs. Get something to eat, okay?"

Sam nods, and takes a breath, leaning in a bit more for a second. He lets Dean pull him up off the bed, and then follows him out of the room.

Part II

SPN Fic: Bloodflow

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:41:20 GMT

Thanks for the comments on the last story, everyone. I haven’t responded because I don’t know what to say, but I do appreciate it!

Anyway, here is some more Supernatural angst. With vampires!

Bloodflow

"Why are you so upset over a car?"

The three survivors had grouped together in front of the Impala, blocking their way back. He should have tried to get through them, Sam thinks. Shouldn’t have worried so much about the girl. He probably would have made it. Now they’re both screwed.

He can hardly fit in this stupid car. Pale blue stick-shift Toyota Yaris. At least she’d had the presence of mind to keep the keys on her during an attempted vampire kidnapping.

He shoves the - empty, useless - sawed-off into the pocket of his jacket and ignores her question, keeps his eyes at the map he’d grabbed from the glove box.

"Well…" she says from the driver’s seat. She pauses. "Um. Can you tell me why we’re going away from town?"

He follows the line on the map with his eyes, small lines barely visible in the car’s overhead light. Looks up, out at the dark road as it rushes past. "Somewhere out here there’s a place we can get some more weapons."

She says something about police, and then when he doesn’t respond, tries again. "We could buy some."

"I don’t want to go into town."

"Why not?"

"They’ll follow us. More people will get hurt."

"Are you kidding me? How the hell would they find us?"

He looks up at the road again to gauge the location, sees her small hands white on the wheel. "Trust me. They will find us."

She seems to accept that. She has accepted a lot so far this evening. He looks back down. "We stock up and then we get back to the car."

"The car," she says. "Can you at least tell me why you are so obsessed with -"

"It was my brother’s," he murmurs.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her nod. "Okay," he says, looking up again. "I think I know where we’re going. Should be the next left."

"Here?"

He frowns, looks up, then checks the map again. The road outside is narrow, lined with occasional rows of oaks, repetitive in the dark. "No. Maybe the next one."

She looks sideways at him.

"It’s been a while," Sam says, annoyed. Looks at the map again. The thing’s vague, designed for the city. The proper location would be written somewhere in the journal, in the car. The map crinkles slightly in his hands.

Another gap in the trees approaches. "Okay. This is it."

She turns the wheel, on to the unpaved road. The trees open up into low fields.

"Keep driving until I say."

Her car’s not meant for this kind of road. It’s bumpy as hell and the dust thrown up by the wheels doesn’t help in the dark. "Here. Turn off," he says eventually when he sees the tiny structure approaching. She stops the car in the dirt. "I’ll be right back. Keep the headlights on."

He opens the door. In front of him there's an old, decaying wooden shed surrounded by clumps of dried grass. It looks a lot smaller than he’d remembered.

He’d briefly thought about stopping out here beforehand, but had decided there wasn’t time. He’d thought there’d be three, four, maybe, from what he’d seen of the trail. Fucking seven. Three new ones that they’d dragged off the road and turned like they’d been about to do with this girl.

Behind him, he hears the car door open. "Sam," she calls.

He ignores her and pushes the door to the shed, feeling himself tense. He doesn’t like something about the way she says his name. She is Dean’s type, blonde, little, and if he had been here Sam would have been watching the two of them flirting.

He never understood that. Not in a situation like this.

Inside, he can see dimly from the headlights coming in through the gaps between planks of wood in the walls. There’s nothing in here but a small table in the far corner, and Sam pushes this aside, hauling out the crate tucked underneath on the uneven wooden floorboards. He lays it down on the table and pulls open the lid. Food, water, flashlight, first aid kit, blankets, and not much else.

"What's there?" The girl is behind him, suddenly.

"Just a .22 rifle," he mumbles under his breath. He switches on the flashlight. And a few dozen rounds. Nothing else. He leans it heavily against the crate."That’s something, isn't it?"

"It’s not right." He frowns. "My dad would have left more here." Blades, a shotgun, grenades...

"Maybe he was worried about somebody finding it." She glances in the direction of the car, the lights of which are cutting the room into stripes.

"You don’t know my dad very well," Sam says absently. He’s trying to think, but all the memories of this place are blurred, difficult. Last time he’d been here, he hadn’t been paying attention.

"Will it kill them?"

He glances at the rifle. It would probably achieve more to throw rocks at them. "I don’t know."

"Why wouldn’t it?"

"Stop asking questions."

The girl goes quiet behind him, and Sam tries to concentrate. She might have been on to something before: the supply wasn’t well hidden, after all. Maybe his dad had stuck the gun in there to discourage people from looking elsewhere.

He tries again to remember. Last time they’d been here it had been daylight, bright, and Sam had stayed in the car and read a book. The book hadn’t been that interesting, or he wouldn’t remember this place at all. It had definitely been in this shed…

"Hey," she calls from behind him. "I think there’s something buried under here."

She steps back, and he hears the old floorboards shift under her weight. He nods, points the flashlight downwards. "Move back."

She steps away and he kneels down, works the pocketknife from his pocket in under the board. It lifts up easily, as does the one next to it, to reveal a shallow but neat hole in the dirt ground. Inside there’s another box, which he pulls out. This one is metal and locked.

He puts it on the table next to the crate, tries his birthday for the code, then Dean’s. It opens.

She laughs uneasily next to him and says something along the lines of "don’t thank me too hard" but he’s not paying attention, focused on the contents.

He breathes out. A dozen or so guns, which will be useful later, but which he mostly ignores in favor of the box of 12-gauge shells, and even more, the 18" D-handled field machete.

He pulls this out, and then on second thought, another shotgun. He loads both and puts the leftover shells in his pocket. "You take that. I’ll show you how to use it."

"I can already use it. Will this kill them?"

"It can, sometimes. If you’re close enough. Aim for the pelvis, it should drop them. Then go for the head."

"What if it doesn’t drop them?"

He doesn’t answer, closes the lid on the box and turns off the flashlight. "Let’s go."

She pauses, shifts the gun in her hands. "Sam."

"What."

"Do we really need to go back for the car? It’s just... I mean, it’s like we’re walking back into a trap."

He ignores her. "Come on."

"No."

He turns. "What?"

She clutches the gun defensively. "I’m not going back there to get your stupid car. We should go into town and get help."

He sighs. "Okay. Give me the keys."

"No."

"Give me the keys."

She shifts the gun to one hand and pulls them out of her pocket. He turns away, towards the door.

"I won’t stay here," she calls from behind him as he reaches the car. "I’ll start walking right back into town." Her voice cracks only slightly.

Sam takes a deep breath, turns back to her. There is a weird feeling in his stomach, a low flash of something that he doesn’t spend time trying to identify.

"Fine. We can both wait here then." He puts the keys in the pocket of his jeans, opens the car door and flicks off the headlights. The dark rushes in, fields around them turning ghostly.

Back inside, he sits down on the floor in the corner, after moving the heavier metal box in front of the door in an action that is mostly symbolic. Feels his body twitch.

Maybe she has a point. The go-back-to-the-car plan is based on his hope that the surviving vampires haven’t found the stuff in the trunk. They may as well be tracked down here as anywhere.

Three of them left, he thinks. He tries to plan it out in his head, but finds he doesn’t have the energy.

The girl sits, uneasily, on the floor a few feet away from him, knees pulled up to her chest. Sam has been waiting for shock to kick in for a while now, and the delay is making him annoyed.

It gets cooler as the night progresses, and she is only in a thin shirt. "There’s blankets and food in the box on the table," Sam mumbles eventually.

She nods and stands up, pulls out some from the bag on the table. "You want any?"

He shakes his head.

She lays out one of the blankets on the ground, opens one of the old packages, and starts eating. No shock, then. He sighs.

"How do you know about these guys?"

"My family fought them before."

"And uh…" Her voice goes too-casual. "Did you win?"

"Yeah, we won."

"Where is your family now?"

He doesn’t answer.

"They killed them?"

Sam realizes, with a dull sort of amusement, that she assumes that vampires are the only things out there. "No, they didn’t."

"Your brother –"

"A guy shot my brother. A human."

"I’m sorry."

"Are you still cold?"

"My name is Rachel."

He’d known that, seen it on the registration when he’d looked through her glove box. "Are you cold, Rachel?" he says flatly.

"No." Her voice is soft, weak. After a second, Sam takes off his jacket and hands it to her.

She falls asleep after an hour or two. The cold from the wall and the floor starts to hurt, seeping in to his skin, but it helps keep him awake. He has been tracking these things for days, and he can’t remember the last time he slept properly.

Dean wouldn’t be here, he thinks. Dean would have made her get in the car if he had to knock her out and carry her. Or he and Sam could have split up, taken care of it somehow. Dean would probably be yelling at him right now if he saw this.

He is slipping into the beginning of a nightmare when something wakes him. The moon is out when he opens his eyes, and Sam can make out the patches of dark blue between the black planks of the walls, the thin line of faint light between the door and its frame. He sits up, concentrates, hand on the gun next to him. When he stops breathing, he can almost hear the low sound of a car.

The girl is fast asleep a few feet away, on her side. Sam moves over to her, grabs her shoulder and puts a hand over her mouth.

She wakes up and gasps in a breath, stops when she realizes where she is. Sam gestures for her to be silent, and she must see it in the dark because she nods and he lets go. He pulls her by the shoulder to stand in the corner of the room, away from the door. He stands in front of her.

He racks the shotgun and whispers: "Cover your ears if I have to shoot."

It’s silent again, utterly still, and he could almost kid himself that it had been another car on the main road, but he knows it was closer than that.

Sure enough, after an eternity of silence, he hears what sounds like a faint footstep on the dirt outside. Behind him, she has stopped breathing.

Now he thinks of it, he could have planned this better: she still has her shotgun, is panicked, and Sam is between her and a possible target. He finds that it doesn’t bother him that much.

"I don’t want to die," she says quietly. It’s to herself, but he’s so close to her that he hears it. He tenses very slightly.

She yells, and then a second later he sees it, a dark shape moving over a gap in the wall, occluding the moonlight.

Sam shoots too quickly, not close enough: when he gets to the hole in the wall he’d just widened he can tell he’d missed the head. The guy is almost up again, starting to run. Sam aims this time, shoots, and this time it's a hit.

The old wood has splintered, and he shoves away a piece for a better aim. Shoots again, then again. The guy doesn’t move.

If it’s a trap, then he is standing in full view. He moves away from the gap, looks out through one of the other cracks.

It’s just light enough to see that the vampire is definitely down now. Sam hears her move behind him, motions for her to keep still and waits.

It’s silent outside, which isn’t saying much, considering that he'd just fired a shotgun next to his head. Where are the other two? It’s too black to see clearly past a few yards. He thinks about using the flashlight, but the beam wouldn’t go far enough to do much good and the bright would blind him for the next hour.

He bites his lip. It seems weird that they’d let one of their own die for a trap. Maybe they’d split up to scout the area. Or, more likely, the other two ran when he first fired and are regrouping.

Sam stays back by the wall, away from the hole, wood against his back. He keeps thinking of the girl saying I don’t want to die. The words repeating in his head, in the silence.

Tries to get inside that mindset. He used to be good at that. It used to be effortless.

In the dim light from outside, she is holding the weapon so hard her hands are shaking. "They’re vampires, aren’t they," she says softly. "They’re really vampires."

Finally, shock. Right when they are waiting for two vampires to come back and kill them. He frowns at the darkness as he reloads.

"Where are the others?" she whispers.

"I don’t know. Move away from the hole."

She doesn’t seem to hear that. "Do you think they’re dead?"

There’s a sound from outside. Distant, again.

"Do you see that?" she asks.

"What?"

"There’s somebody moving by the car." She moves in closer next to him and gestures with the gun.

Sam looks at the Toyota. "There’s no one there."

"No, the other car."

She points, and he can just see it, parked far away on the road. It’s his car. He can barely make out the silhouette, far dark shape against slightly darker background, but he can tell. He stiffens. "What are they doing?"

"I can’t see. Just something moving."

Sam stares at the darkness. Nothing. She shifts closer to the jagged hole, and Sam grabs her arm and pulls her out of view, so she’s against the wall next to him.

"What if they shoot at us?"

"They don’t kill like that. They want our blood."

She is close enough for him to feel her stiffen slightly, and he looks away, back outside.

Nothing. Through the jacket, the muscles in her arm are still tense. He closes his eyes for a second, opens them.

Then there’s a thud, horribly close, and she jumps. Sam turns, shoots through the wall in the general direction. She screams.

He seems to have missed: a cloud of dust, and silence again, and then he smells it just before he hears the faint splashing sound.

He takes a deep breath and lowers the gun slightly. They must have spread out, moved in an arc around the building. Must have -

He pulls the car keys his pocket and shoves them into her hand. "We have to break out. You run for the car and I’ll cover you."

"You said we should stay here!" Her voice is high, panicking. He grabs her shoulder, pulls her roughly towards the door, and then half of the back wall ignites.

She screams again. Sam stops for a second, fingers tight in her shoulder yanking her back, and grabs the machete as the flames spread quickly over dry wood. Then he kicks aside the box and pulls open the door in a rush of new smoke.

But this was well planned: they both go for him. One grabs his arm, neutralizing the machete, and in the second-long distraction the other one gets his neck.

Everything is unclear, the world turning faint orange around him as the ground impacts with his knees. The pressure on his neck feels like a kiss, even as he feels his face twist with pain, the blood on his neck. It’s okay, really, except they’ll get her after this. It hits him as a faint disappointment.

There is a noise, far away, like a door slamming closed, and then sharp pain in his shoulder which he thinks is another bite.

The pressure on his neck releases, and he falls forward. New weight on his back, movement, and it's instinct and practice and nothing else that makes him grab for the machete in the dust and turn over.

It’s next to him now, and he slices through the neck, the blade hitting the dirt as another bang echoes behind him. Everything is still orange and hot, the night lit up like hell. Two bodies, and just her standing, with the gun.

She grabs his right arm and pulls, and he gets to his knees. "Oh, God. I’m sorry Sam, I’m sorry."

Sam takes a breath, looks behind them. "The building. There’s ammunition in there."

She nods, tries to yank him up more, which achieves little, and he stands, makes it to the car with her. "Get in the passenger side!" she yells.

He slides in to the seat heavily, which causes another flash of pain. His vision blurs, and he closes his eyes as she starts the engine. His neck is wet, sticky.

The car stops moving in the dusty track about a hundred yards away. The lights aren’t on, and when he opens his eyes he can barely see. Just the faint orange and red of the burning shed.

"I’m sorry," she says again.

"What are you sorry for?" he mumbles vaguely.

"I shot you!"

She gestures, and Sam looks down, remembers his shoulder. He turns his head enough to see blood dark on the back of his shirt and on the seat in the distant fire-light.

She switches on the overhead light. Sam leans forward, pulls down his shirt. On the edge of his vision he can see the constellation of deep gouges on the back of his left shoulder.

"Most of it went into the vampire, Sam, I swear. He was on top of you and –"

He shakes his head. Touches his neck. It’s bleeding still, but nothing seems to be pumping out anywhere. "Are you hurt?"

"No."

He nods.

"God," she says. "We have to get you to a hospital."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it’s a gunshot and they’ll call the police."

"So?"

"Just take me back to my car."

She gestures to the distant patch of fire. "Your car doesn’t have gas, remember? We can drive mine back to town."

He considers arguing, but he’s tired and it’s probably the quickest way: get back to the motel, patch himself up, retrieve car somehow.

"Okay. Fine."

She reaches over to the glove box in front of him and retrieves a small first-aid kit. "Take your shirt off. I’ll –"

"I’m fine. Just give me some gauze."

She hands him some, and he bunches it up and holds it against his shoulder. He can’t help grimacing a little bit. She pulls out some more, moving forward awkwardly to get close enough, and presses them against his neck.

"Thank you," he says. Then she kisses him.

The seat hits his shoulder as he starts back, and the jolt of pain and new blood makes everything blur suddenly, unreal. He blames that on the rush of need that hits him immediately, the way he moves forward to grab her despite the searing pain and for a second, she seems small and fragile in his arms…

"No," Sam says and breaks his mouth away. "No. I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t."

"It’s okay. It’s okay. I shouldn’t have." She pulls back, sits back against the seat, looks down. Sam takes a deep breath. "I’m sorry," she says again.

Sam doesn’t answer, and she starts the car.

She pulls up in front of a large house in the suburbs dawn is breaking. "Come in and get cleaned up. Let me make you some food or something."

Sam isn’t in a position to argue, so he follows her. He keeps his head down and shoulders hunched as they go through the house, not looking up except to take in necessary details. The place smells of familiarity. He catches sight of her in a photo on a polished mantelpiece, her arm around a dark-haired man.

The bathroom is all bright and shiny, hurting his eyes. Getting the shower on takes about two minutes. Removing his shirt takes another five, and it leaves a smear of blood where he leaves it near the sink.

Her voice calls from outside. "Do you want me to help you with…"

"I’m fine."

He doesn’t like it in here. His chest is tight, and he feels like he can’t breath in this house. Outside the door, her world is enveloping, warm. He could break into that like it’s a bubble.

He stares at the floor, which is a good way to tell when the water turns clear, and then pulls on his shirt again. There’s a new load of fresh blood that soaks into the fabric. He opens the bathroom door silently; across the house, she is cooking something. He leaves by the front door.

She still has his jacket, and he has to keep in the shadows because of the blood on his shirt. It takes him about an hour to get back to the motel, and once there he can’t find the key and has to pick the lock. It’s probably in the car, and that thought makes him remember that he’d left his old shotgun in the dirt outside the shed. He sighs.

The closed-off smell of the motel room is welcoming. Sam gets the first aid kit he keeps in his bag and goes into the bathroom.

The wound on his shoulder isn't as bad as it had looked in the car, but it still takes forever to get all the buckshot out: he has to do it in the mirror, and the lights in the bathroom just aren’t bright enough to get a good view. Might have been better to let her help after all, but he doesn’t think about that for long. He disinfects the wounds and bandages his shoulder and neck up as best as he can, and then falls asleep on the bed as the sunlight starts to show through the curtains.

In the late afternoon there’s a knock at the door. Sam grabs the pistol from under his pillow with his good arm and goes to the door.

It’s her.

He leans against the door for a second, closing his eyes. Didn’t have to put up with this kind of thing when Dean was there, deflecting it all. He wonders for a second if Dean was ever normal once before he’d been turned that way by overly eager grateful rescuées. No, Dean had never been normal.

The thought is so habitual it pulls at him, like the first few times he’d gone for his phone before realizing there was no one to call.

He undoes the locks and opens the door. "How’d you find me?"

She hands him his jacket back, folded. It’s been washed. "The key was in the pocket."

Sam nods and tosses it aside, onto the bed. "What do you want?"

She crosses her arms. "I want to pay you back somehow. For helping me. I’m at law school, and my dad’s a lawyer. He’s good."

"So?"

"So, you didn’t want to go to the cops. If you turn yourself in, whatever you did, I can give you legal advice – "

He laughs, and it turns into a sneer. "I don’t need legal advice."

"Well, then I can vouch for you if -"

"And tell them what?"

She doesn’t answer.

"Go home."

He starts to turn away, and she grabs his good arm. Doesn’t try anything else, though, which is a relief. She’s been turned down once and isn’t going to be so forward again. "At least let me give you a ride back to your car."

He’d been planning to wait until dark and then steal a car to get back there, but this does make it easier. He nods, and grabs his jacket.

The trip is long, and he watches tiredly as the sun touches the horizon. Keeps the pistol in his jacket pocket, just in case, although it wouldn’t do much if any of them had miraculously survived.

Turns out there was no need, as the bodies are still lying there, headless and partially burnt. Behind them, the shed has been burnt down to nothing. With the wood and all the dry grass, they probably hadn’t even needed the gasoline.

The old sawed-off shotgun had survived, though, and Sam he wipes most of the dust off it and puts it back in his pocket.

She gives him a lift to the Impala, which is a few hundred yards away next to a group of scraggly trees, dusty but unharmed. The sight of it makes him take a breath, and Sam gets out of the car quickly. He checks the trunk, runs his eyes over its contents. Everything still there, in place, untouched. He puts the shotgun back in its place, carefully.

"It’s a nice car," she says from behind him and Sam closes the trunk hurriedly, turning around. She his holding a gas can, clutching on to the handle with both hands. "Help me out, here."

He nods, and takes it off her. He refills the tank, and then hands the empty can back. She drops it in the dirt, and takes his hand, looks up at him.

He stands awkwardly. The air is cool out here, not as cold as last night, but just as silent. Sam looks away, breaking the contact and moving towards the side of the Impala.

She follows him, close, ambushing him near the passenger door. Pressing too close.

"Is there someone else?" she asks.

"Not now." He breathes in. "You don’t have to…"

"I know I don’t. That’s what makes me want to, stupid."

Her hand is on his waist, shifting forward over the worn denim. Sam winces as she grabs him. His head falls back slightly, just at the feel of it. He hasn’t even thought about this since Dean died; it hadn’t seemed right to even let it cross his mind. She moves her hand, soft, confident.

Sam bites his lip. "My brother would have liked you." He forces a smile, but it comes out more like a grimace.

"Stop talking about him." Moves forward, looking up, and he feels her breath, faint, against the wound on his neck. He bites down on his lip again, looks away, clenched fists pressed hard against the windows behind him as she undoes his jeans. She slips down to her knees in the dust.

She smiles up at him like she has some idea what’s going on, like a window back into a world where rescuing her had still felt like something more than habit. The thought makes him feel unwell, empty. He wants to tell her to stop, but by now he’s too panicked.

He takes a breath and closes his eyes, and behind his lids there’s the same image as always. Opens them again, tries to concentrate as he looks up at the dull sky. She’s going slow, not trying too hard, and Sam lets his eyes go half closed as he tries to remember something like this, something before. His breath slowing slightly from the panic, still uneven. Bites back the fear growing in him.

He moans as she goes deeper, and the world goes vague. He moves one hand to slide over her blonde hair, the other still pressing the slick glass behind him.

"Wait. Wait," he moans. She stops, looks up and Sam pulls at her with his good arm, in close to him, lifting her as she wraps her arms around him despite the rushing pain from his shoulder. He turns and they fall back hard, against the metal of the car. The blow must hurt her, and a there's surge of reflexive guilt that wells up and it’s good.

"Backseat," he says against her mouth. The nod is tiny, her fingers tight in his hair, the back of his neck.

Sam has to let go to pull open the door, and she keeps her arms wrapped around him like the lack of touch would be painful. He pushes her forward, follows, keeping the contact. The air inside is thick, warm from absorbing the sun all day, enveloping. He has slept here a thousand times, but this isn’t his haven, not for this. Every inch of it is marked with absence.

Sam swallows, but she is right there, pushing her own jeans down and he helps her, body impatient, overpowering the numbness in his mind. He pushes the pistol aside into the footwell as he helps her, shifting her body on the seat in front of him, urgency closing off everything else in time and space.

He feels the wounds break open again as he pushes in, hard, too fast, they both hiss in pain, loud in the warm hush of the car. Sam opens his mouth to apologize, automatic, but it gets lost in the new hurt, the hot feel of her, blood running new and wet on his back. It’s too tight and he can barely move, breathing in as it hits him. "Oh god…"

"Fuck. Don’t stop, Sam…" She feels like a cramp around him, her teeth closed hard, head back but fingers still linked in his sweaty hair. The muscles in his arm are burning as he props himself up, trying not to crush her in the cramped space, awkward between planes of leather. She is warm and vital and alive, flushed with blood, and he is a relatively good approximation.

Her eyes drop to meet his and Sam looks away, towards the front seat, the steering wheel cutting shadows through the late sunlight.

"Look at me," she says. Her voice weaker now, forced through muscles clenched in pain but pulling him in.

He can’t, keeps his face turned, and she lets go of him to grab at the side of his jaw, above the gauze, gripping his face hard, turning. Sam kisses her mouth so he can’t see, moves forward, wraps an arm around her to pull her closer.

She's too hot against him now, sliding sweaty against the leather, and he presses his eyes closed as the feeling rises in him. Bites back the name, the images, tries to concentrate, not to let it in. He grabs the edge of the seat with one hand, next to her shoulder, and feels it hold firm under his grasping fingers. It makes him moan.

"Sam, oh god," Her fingers press into the gauze on his shoulder and he feels her spasm, digging in to the wound at the moment of inattention. It hurts, God it hurts and his fingers keep hold of the leather, his fingernails biting in as it overpowers him.

The interior is still when he opens his eyes, silent again. Sam pulls himself up slightly, wincing in the heat, and glances upwards. Through the dusty back window, the twilight is reflecting off her car like a blaze.

"I have a fiancé," she says. She is sitting up beside him. She pulls on of her shoes back on.

"I know," he says and she looks up. "I saw his picture in your house."

She breathes in and nods, then pulls on the other shoe. Sam can feel that he's blushing. He vaguely wants to talk some more, ask questions, but he has no idea what to say. He hunches over in the seat, looks out the other window.

"You could come back with me, Sam. Get your stuff sorted out."

Sam shakes his head, looks down. "You should go."

"I don’t want to leave you here."

He laughs at that, doesn’t look up.

"I’ll leave you my number at reception, okay. If you change your mind."

He nods. She reaches out and squeezes his leg, above the knee, and leans in and kisses him on the cheek. She doesn’t look back as she closes the door behind her.

Sam waits a minute before he climbs out of the backseat and goes round to the driver’s side.

Back inside, he leans back against the seat, closes his eyes for a few seconds as he hears the other engine start, wheels moving on the dirt. His shoulder aches in time with his heartbeat.

He turns the car around near the broken wreckage, and heads back to the road.

SPN Fic: Don't You Miss Her, Part III

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:08:59 GMT

Dean leans in over the bad music. “The trick is to aim high. Don’t go for ugly or self esteem issues, because she’ll think you’re a catch and cling to you. Always act like she’s doing you a favor, or you’ll attract the wrong type.”

He senses Sam’s lack of interest and ramps it up. “I could get you someone in half an hour, dude.” He grins. It’s only recently that he has seen Dean drunk at any regular intervals. He is far drunker than Sam.

“I’ll just wait here,” he mumbles. Dean probably doesn’t hear, but Sam’s expression is clear enough.

“You could watch,” he says. Sam looks at him sharply. He’s still grinning, but his expression underneath is hopeful. “I don’t mind.” He takes a drink quickly after he says it.

Sam looks back down at his own drink. He remembers the last time Dean had brought up the topic, months ago. Whatever Dean had got out of him then, he must have been satisfied with it, because the weird attention has dropped down close to zero now. Not like Dean is mad or something’s awkward; just the opposite, in fact. Dean should be freaking out about a lot of things by now, but about this, he seems ridiculously calm. Sometimes he just smiles to himself, in a way Sam can’t remember him doing since dad was alive.

It takes him a while to speak. “But what’s the point?”

“Do we have to have the talk again, Sammy?”

“I mean, sleeping with someone who doesn’t even know you? You may as well just - ”

He rolls his eyes. “Holy crap, it’s like dad all over again.”

Sam looks away, as Dean finishes his drink. The bar is emptying out, although it’s still more crowded than he’d prefer. He looks back to his brother.

“What did dad say after you told him?”

“Told him what?”

“You know.” He grips his glass tighter.

Dean stands up, shoving the chair back with a crash that Sam can hear even over the noise. “I’m getting more drinks.”

He assumes that means the subject is closed. But when Dean comes back a few minutes later he sits down with his chair pulled close to him, not enough to look weird, but closer than usual. Enough so he no longer has raise his voice.

He takes a sip of his drink and leans in, speaks close to Sam’s ear. “He held a gun to my head.”

Sam swallows. He glances at his brother: Dean is looking down at his drink. “He threatened you?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “Just, like, after I told him, he told me to sit down, and then he went and got the 9mm from his bag, and put it against my head.”

Sam pauses a second to process the information. “What happened?”

“I didn’t move, and he pulled the trigger. I don’t know if the clip was empty or if he’d left the safety on or just... I don’t remember much. It’s just blank, you know?”

“It would have been empty,” Sam says, and Dean looks up at him. “He was just trying to scare you. He wouldn’t have taken a chance about it.”

His voice goes quiet, weak. “I was so scared, Sammy. He didn’t – ”

“He was just making a point. Remember when he -”

“Making a point? He held a fucking gun to my head! How would you feel if he did that to you?”

“I would have got it off him. He taught us how.”

Dean looks at him with silent incomprehension, and shakes his head. He shifts back, and doesn’t speak for a long time. Underneath, Sam can see something that looks a lot like fear.

He takes a deep breath, trying to keep calm. “Dean,” he says quietly. “Stop looking at me like that.”

Dean finishes his drink, puts the glass down and stands up. “Here’s the keys. Go home.”

Sam takes the keys. He hesitates, looking up at Dean.

“Leave, Sam. You or me.”

Sam stands up, waits a moment longer. Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. Sam turns, and leaves the bar.

There’s no TV back at the house, but he wouldn’t have been able to pay attention anyway. He spends most of the night awake, staring at books. Dean doesn’t come back.

He makes it until near noon the next day before calling. He can’t remember in his life ever losing a game of phone chicken with his brother, but Dean doesn’t mention it.

“How you doing, Sammy.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m checking out tattoo places.”

Sam takes a deep breath, trying to hide his relief, although he’s not sure exactly what he was afraid of. “You wanna do that today?”

“Why not?”

“I guess...”

“I'll come pick you up when I find a good one.” He hangs up.

He turns up in the afternoon, and hits the horn from the driveway until Sam comes outside. Inside, he leans back against the window. He’s tired from not sleeping, and the light hurts his eyes. Dean is silent.

“Dean, if I said something – ”

“Yeah, I don’t really remember anyway.” He keeps his eyes on the road. Sam hadn’t thought it was possible to have anything else they didn’t talk about. But this is as close to accepting an apology as Dean is ever going to get, so he changes the subject. “So this place is good?”

“The tattooist is hot.”

Sam sighs.

“What? I’m not having some fat hairy dude touching me for half an hour.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

After all that work, the woman in the store picks up on Sam’s uncertainty. She smiles right past Dean and takes Sam reassuringly by the arm. “We can get you done first, so you don’t have to wait.”

Once she has left the room to make the stencil, Dean finally stops looking taken aback and grins at him. “You should totally go for that.”

“She has a spiderweb on her neck, Dean.”

“So?”

“So I think she’s more your type.”

“Who cares? Hey, I’ll leave if you want, you can - ”

“What? Take her home and show her the roaches in the house I'm squatting in? And then maybe we can get there in my brother’s car. Yeah, that’s real impressive.”

“It’ll be your car in a few - ” He stops as the woman reappears with the stencil.

“Okay, show me where to put it.”

“Wherever,” Sam snaps. The girl freezes.

He blushes and mumbles an apology, and Dean rolls his eyes and points. “There.”

“Are you sure?”

Sam nods without looking down. The girl smiles again, but the warmth from before is gone, and she spends most of the time talking to Dean.

Sam doesn’t mind much, because the needle is surprisingly painful, and the conversation takes Dean’s attention away from him wincing. He lets his mind wander and doesn’t pay attention to whatever story Dean is making up about the two of them. “Yeah, I just go along with this Wiccan shit for his sake. But Sammy, he’s really into it. Has a little wand and everything...”

After she’s done, Dean pulls him aside and shoves the keys into his hand. “You don’t have to stay. I’ve got this one down.”

“I want to – ”

“Dude. Cockblocking.”

Sam laughs and says “fine,” but his chest feels tight and it’s embarrassing.

Alone, back at the house, the fear comes back, so bad he wants to vomit. The more he tries to push it down, tells himself it’s irrational, the worse it gets.

Dean comes home in the early hours of the morning. Sam is sitting up against the wall on one of the old mattresses in the upstairs bedroom, reading a book on demonology by flashlight. When the door opens he pushes aside the book quickly, but Dean is apparently too drunk to notice. He comes and sits next to him, leaning back against the peeling wall.

“Hey, Dean.”

He pushes his head into Sam’s shoulder. "Let me see it,” he mumbles into the hem of Sam’s t-shirt, gesturing with his head slightly.

Sam pulls the shirt down, to the patch of plastic wrap held over the tattoo with medical tape.

"You put anything on it yet?"

“No.”

Dean pulls the shirt down further, over Sam’s shoulder, strokes his thumb across the covered skin. He smiles, hooks his arm tight around Sam’s neck and pulls him in.

"You waited up for me,” he says. “That's so hot."

“You’re really drunk.”

“We were drinking a lot. She has a boyfriend, you know. And then I was like, give me five minutes to prove myself.”

Sam shoves the book further away from them with his foot. “Did it work?”

He grins. “I’m good at this.” Presses his head against the side of his face. “Aren’t I.”

Sam looks away. The flashlight’s pointing at the wall, creating a weird arch of shadows. “Yeah.”

Dean pulls his arm around him a bit tighter. “You’re not tensing up so much anymore. That’s good.”

“Stop talking, Dean.”

He grins, face still pressed against his jaw. “I’m so happy.”

Sam doesn’t answer.

His voice gets low. “Here. Sammy.” He grabs Sam’s hand and pulls it towards him. Sam shifts a bit to start undoing his jeans.

“So hot,” Dean says again. He winces slightly. “Wait.” He lifts Sam’s hand close to his mouth and spits on it.

“Gross, Dean.”

“Shut up.”

With the flashlight on it’s bright enough to see, and Dean is looking at him, and that hasn’t happened for a long time. Sam keeps his eyes down, away from his.

Dean smiles, still so close to his face. “Imagine what everyone would say if they saw this. Me doing this to you.”

Sam cringes. The reaction just on the surface really, a reflex, or an old habit from something that doesn’t exist anymore.

Dean drops his voice and whispers. “Imagine what dad would say.”

Sam pushes him away, pulls himself to his feet. “Holy crap, Dean!”

Dean sits up, grinning brightly. “What’s wrong?”

“You - you don’t say things like that.” He starts doing up his jeans.

“Like what?”

“Like – ” Sam can’t finish.

Dean laughs. “Are there some rules you’re meant to follow when you’re having sex with your brother?”

The words hit like a blow, which must have been Dean’s intention. Sam stutters, feels himself go red.

Dean sighs. “Get back on the bed, Sam.” He gestures to the sleeping bag next to him, the twisted sheets.

“No.”

“Sam. Get back on the fucking bed.”

Sam breathes in. Just the air seems to untangle whatever resistance there is left. He does it, crawling back on to the mattress.

Dean reaches out, strokes his hair. Sam can’t look at him.

“You okay now?”

“Yeah.” He swallows. “I’m okay.”

“Lie down.” Dean starts to undo his pants again. “Looks like you liked it, anyway.”

Sam feels sick, but it’s faint under the emotion. The short time apart had been like a loss. As soon as Dean touches him he moans, leaning in closer. Says his name without thinking about it, and Dean pulls him in tighter. “That’s good, Sammy. Say it. That’s good.”

It doesn’t take him long to finish, but Dean ends up taking a while after. Eventually he shakes his head, frustrated. “Harder.”

“You’re drunk,” Sam says. “You’re not going to – ”

He pushes him away. “Fuck, I’ll do it. Lie back.”

Dean crawls on top of him, sits down across his hips. He pulls Sam’s t-shirt back down over his shoulder, and Sam hears the fabric tear.

It isn’t awful, but Sam doesn’t know what to do; he’s not used to being so passive. It’s never been like this, without Dean forcing something out of him, and it’s harder to keep his mind blank. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, and when he opens them Dean’s eyes are still focused on the tattoo.

Later, when Dean has fallen asleep, he sits up. He retrieves the flashlight from where it’d been kicked away and reattaches the tape that Dean had pulled off the tattoo at some stage. He goes through the motions of wondering whether Dean has a thing for tattoos he’d never known about, even though a part of him knows the real reason.

He switches off the flashlight and lies down next to Dean, who shifts slightly. There’s another mattress, and he is silently relieved that Dean’s too drunk to tell him to move.

**

Back when they were kids Dean used to say things to him just to get a reaction. It would always work, too, even when Sam knew what he was doing. Once, he’d been lying next to him on a sofa bed, dad in the next room barely twenty feet away, and Dean had leaned in and said: “Fuck, I wish you were a girl.”

He’d laughed when Sam squirmed away, like all of it was a big joke, even though Sam was blushing and so embarrassed he wanted to die.

Now he pulls away from Sam slightly, one arm still wrapped around him, holding him against the bed. He rocks his hips forward gently and says under his ear: “I want to fuck you...”

The words startle him into focus, and suddenly everything is too close. He shrinks back, suddenly on the verge of panic. “I can’t,” he says. He looks away. “I can’t. You’re my brother.”

Dean doesn’t laugh or get annoyed. “Okay,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t,” Sam says again, and his voice sounds all weak. “Please, Dean.”

“It’s okay. Hey, it’s okay.” The understanding makes it worse, makes him want to get away.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. Not after everything they’ve done, everything he’s done. It should just be a step further, like an escalation, not something different.

He goes to turn over, and Dean shifts his weight enough for him to move. Sam turns away from him. The light in the room is still on.

“Sammy, it’s okay.”

He nods. The knowledge is starting to settle in dully. Once he steps back and has a look at it, he can see where this is heading. Sam will pretend that there's some new boundary he will never cross and Dean will pretend to break it down, and Sam will try to pretend it matters at all anymore.

There’s only six weeks left.

He closes his eyes. “Dean,” he says, very low. He takes a deep breath and swallows. “If you want to – I don’t mind...”

“You don’t have to,” he says from behind him. He’s still close enough for Sam to feel his breath.

Sam nods.

“Say it, then.”

It takes Sam a second to activate his vocal chords again. “I want to.” It isn’t a lie, and that makes it feel like the ground is gone from under him.

He thinks Dean is going to make him say more, but he doesn’t. “Okay. Okay.”

He takes Sam by the arm to stop him from curling up away from him more. Gets the rest of his clothes off and then pushes him onto his front, and Sam feels like he’s about to black out. He is barely aware of what Dean is doing, keeps his mind blank.

Not a big deal, he tells himself, but it’s like he can’t feel his body, like everything’s far away. He vaguely feels the weight on the back of his legs. Dean is breathing deeply, skin hot, hard already from before. Sam’s mind is closing off like a machine shutting down.

Dean takes hold of Sam’s hand from where it’s gripping the covers, and twists it back awkwardly, like he’s restraining him. He closes it around himself and covers it with his own hand. Moves Sam’s hand with his once, twice, and then hisses loudly. Sam feels him come.

He falls forward, hot and sweaty against Sam’s back.

It takes a second for Sam to process what is happening, and he shoves Dean off quickly, twisting around to look at him. His breathing has been so bad that it is hard for him to speak.

“I thought - you...” He gives up.

“Yeah, well.” Dean smiles, turning onto his back. “It’s not really my thing. You know?”

“Then why did you - ”

“That was just what we call pillow talk, baby.”

Sam frowns and sits up. “Did - did you just quote Evil Dead?”

Dean stands up. He is grinning.

Sam wants to throw up. He clenches his fists as his head starts to clear. He can’t keep it in this time; the anger is like something alive inside of him.

“Dean,” he says, voice low and steady. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The words hit harder than intended, and Dean’s grin disappears. But then he smiles again, like nothing happened. “You don’t get to ask that question anymore, Sammy,” he says quietly.

Sam lies back down on the bed.

“Hey,” Dean says. “Don’t cry. Fuck, don’t cry.”

But he can’t stop. He sees Dean looking at him, eyes wide, before he turns away from him. Dean sits down next to him on the bed, pulls Sam up enough to wrap an arm around him. The hold is a bit stiff, awkward, and Sam hates himself for it but he leans into the contact, gripping Dean’s arm, head against his chest. The crying stops, eventually.

“Are you okay now?” Voice still confused. Sam nods. Dean pats him on the head hesitantly before breaking away.

He lies awake for a long time after Dean falls asleep.

We’re different, he tells himself. We are still different. I’m not the same as him.

He wakes up later in the middle of the night, afraid of something he can’t remember. Dean is still asleep in the other bed, and Sam sits up to look closer, to see that he’s breathing.

He lies back down, trying to get his own breathing under control. In the dark like this, it’s like the whole world is no longer real.

**

A week later Sam wakes up in the dark, alone. He sits up and grabs for his phone.

Dean’s voice on the line is breathless. Sam can recognize the tone, he’s heard it often enough. But Dean says: “Is everything okay?”

"Yeah, just... it's nothing." Sam blushes, voice cracking, but it’s not bad enough to hang up. “Where did you go?”

There’s a pause. “Out. You were asleep. Come on, Sam. I do this all the time.”

He doesn’t answer, and Dean drops his voice. “You want me to come back there?”

“No. It’s okay.”

“I - I won’t be much longer, Sammy, alright?”

Sam hangs up. His heart is beating too fast, like he’s angry.

Dean gets back about an hour later. He squeezes Sam’s shoulder as he goes past, and then lies down on the other bed.

Sam sits up and follows him in, pulls the covers over them. It’s dark, but he still can’t look at him. Dean lets Sam wrap around him clumsily. He holds on to him carefully, gentle.

“What do you want me to do, Sammy?” he says quietly.

For a second Sam thinks he's being cruel, making him say things again, but Dean doesn’t push it, just lets Sam just grab his hand and guide it. Rationally Sam knows that he isn’t remotely in the mood, but he needs the cover.

“Okay,” Dean says. “Shh. I’ve got you.” He stays calm as Sam clings to him, desperate, gasping and sweating, and he feels about twelve years old again.

Afterwards Dean is soothing, all relaxed and smiling, like it’s no big deal. Everything urgent or needy about it is gone in his brother. He holds Sam, still and calm and warm.

“Are you still having nightmares?” he asks. He pushes his hair back softly.

“I just can’t sleep.” He wants to say why, but he doesn’t know how to explain it. Everything in his mind seems to be closed off. Dean’s face is close, and he keeps his eyes down. “It hurts... my chest. I can’t breathe.”

Dean wraps his arm around him tighter, pulls him closer next to him on the pillow. His other hand moves from his hair, down over his back, rubbing gently.

It’s dark, silent, and the movement gradually slows.

"You're all I have left,” Sam whispers. “Please don't die. Please don't die."

Dean is either asleep, or he pretends not to hear.

SPN Fic: Don't You Miss Her, Part II

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:59:21 GMT

As soon as they’re inside a room Sam stops him, grabbing the collar of Dean’s jacket as gently as he can. “Let me have a look at your shoulder.”

“I’m fine.” Dean pulls free, and sits down on one of the beds with only slightly more care than usual.

“You’re not fine. You got shot.”

“Yeah, you know, I do remember that, Sam. Getting shot by your possessed brother kind of imprints itself in a guy’s memory.” He pulls himself away slightly as Sam sits down next to him. He’s still looking at Sam weird, although he can tell he’s trying to hide it.

“Dean, I didn’t - ”

“Yeah, it’s lucky you can’t aim. Look, you should rest. I’ll be fine.”

The advice actually has an effect, because Sam is exhausted. He takes off his jacket and lies down on top of the covers on the other bed.

It doesn’t work, though. He’s more tired than he can remember being, but he can’t get anywhere close to sleeping. Across the room Dean has turned on the TV, but Sam can still feel him watching him, even when he turns away to face the wall. It’s like his brother thinks something unimaginably horrible will happen if he takes his eyes off of Sam for more than five minutes.

Finally, he turns onto his back. “Dean, I’m okay now. Stop looking at me.”

“I’m not looking at you.”

“You are.”

“Are not.”

Sam rolls his eyes. He glances over and says “You should at least have a shower. You smell like crap.”

Dean sighs, but he sniffs at his shirt. “Fine.” He stands up.

As soon as the water starts in the bathroom, Sam grabs his jacket and leaves the room as quietly as he can.

It’s close to dawn when he comes back to the motel. He doesn’t feel much better, but at least some of the adrenaline might have worked its way out of his system by now.

The lights are on inside the room. Dean is sitting up on the bed, reading a magazine. “Hi, Sam.”

Sam takes off his jacket.

He throws down the magazine. “It was real nice of you to disappear again right after you fucking got possessed. Thanks for that.”

“I went for a walk.”

“Right. Oh, and thanks for not answering your phone, either. You’re real mature.”

Sam doesn’t answer, ignores the low tight feeling in his stomach. He shouldn’t be scared, he tells himself, but it doesn’t work.

Dean stands up, and hits the light switch violently, so the whole room goes half-dark in the early light. Sam makes an effort not to flinch.

“Can I ask you something, Sam?” Sam doesn’t respond, and he goes on. “Did you ever think about someone beside yourself for ten minutes in your whole life?”

“Go to hell, Dean.”

Dean is suddenly right in front of him. “I am going to beat the crap out of you.”

“No you’re not. You’ve only got one arm.”

Dean hits him, but it’s not hard, more of a warning. Stands watching as Sam brings his hand up to his face. Sam takes a deep breath.

“Dad’s not here, okay?”’ He tries to keep the tone as calm as he can. “You don’t have to check up on me all the time - ”

“This has nothing to do with dad. It’s about you not getting us killed, Sam!”

Of course he doesn’t believe that, but he doesn’t say anything. “I’m fine now. I got back alright, didn’t I?”

Dean breathes in deep, but says: “Okay. Fine.” He stops and sits down on the bed, and for a second Sam thinks it’s over.

“It got bad sometimes,” he says. “After you left. I just...” He trails off.

Sam lets go of his jaw and looks at his hand. Nothing seems to be bleeding. “You know it wasn’t your fault.”

He nods. “Sammy, I told dad. He knew.”

It takes a second for Sam to make the connection. “What?!”

“I told him. About, you know - ”

“Why – why are we talking about this, Dean?”

“You brought it up before.”

“Weeks ago.”

“Well, we can talk about it now! So, like, if you want to hug, or whatever Dr Laura told you was healthy..."

Sam stops. "You listen to Dr Laura?"

"The tape player in the car was broken, okay? Don't change the subject."

"I don't want to talk about it." His mind is racing, trying to remember. Of course it was normal that his father hadn’t said anything about it to him, but he had known...

"Stop being difficult, Sam. I know you're just going to fucking bring it up again next time you're drunk. So say it now."

Sam spends a second trying to figure out what Dean could possibly be thinking, but gives up. You don’t want to understand him too well on this, he tells himself.

He takes a breath and closes his eyes. Just thinking of what to say is making him feel anxious enough to leave again. He opens his eyes, looks past Dean onto the bed. “We shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have.”

“Wasn’t just me, Sam.”

Sam crosses his arms over his chest. "You're older. You were in charge."

He laughs. "Yeah, that might work if you'd actually done what I said once in your entire life."

"I didn't tell Dad. Like you said."

Dean laughs again, but there’s no humor. "So you think it’s my fault.”

Sam doesn’t answer.

"Okay, whatever, Sam. You wanna blame me, fine. If it makes you feel better. Maybe it’ll stop you complaining for five minutes.”

Sam gives up. “Why the hell did you tell dad?”

“Because he asked me to.”

“He figured it out?”

“It’s dad, Sam.”

“How – how did he react?”

“Oh, we had a big cry about it together. How do you think he reacted?”

“He was mad?”

Dean breathes out. “Yeah, he was mad.”

Sam sighs and sits down as well, opposite him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It had nothing to do with you.” Dean’s voice changes, sounding more closed off.

“But – ”

“No. You were right.” He takes a breath. “It was my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was your fault -”

“Well it was.” He looks away, and for one awful moment Sam thinks that he’s going to apologize or break down, that they will have to talk about this directly. But it passes. “We should... get some rest, or something.”

Sam nods. A part of him wants to ask more, find out what dad had said. He wants some outside perspective, to possibly bring the whole thing within the bounds of sanity. But more than that he wants the subject to be over. He doesn’t want to be part of whatever fucked up way Dean or dad had with dealing with it.

“Sam, I...” Dean says, and stops. He shakes his head, and grabs the remote off the nightstand. He leans back against the headboard and starts flipping channels.

“Nigella Lawson is hot,” he says after a while.

“Yeah,” says Sam.

**

At Bobby’s house, Sam has a shower after Dean tells him he smells like a cemetery. “Okay, bad joke,” he says when Bobby glares at him. Sam had been avoiding the shower because all that alone time would give him a chance to think, but once he does it he finds that he’s getting good enough at avoiding it even when he’s by himself.

When he goes to the guest room afterwards to get his clothes Dean is sitting on the bed, Sam’s bag open beside him and one of Sam’s books open on his lap. His brother never really grasped the whole ‘separate rooms’ concept, even in a house this big.

“What are you doing in here?”

“I call the guest room, dude.”

“It’s my turn.”

“I’m dying.”

“Okay. Fine. Can I at least get dressed?”

He ignores the question, and throws aside the book. “Come here.”

Sam frowns, uncomfortable suddenly. He sits down next to him on the edge of the bed uneasily, keeping his grip tight on the towel covering him. Dean takes his bare arm and pushes it forward, so that Sam’s back is facing him.

“What are you doing?”

He doesn’t answer. Sam looks over his shoulder; Dean is looking at the skin on his exposed back. He examines it for what seems like a long time, like he is checking for ticks. Sam jerks away slightly as he runs his fingers over the scar there.

Sam swallows and glances towards the door. Uncomfortable doesn’t quite cover it anymore. Luckily he’s already well rehearsed in not thinking today. "Dean. What are you doing?" he repeats. His voice comes out weak and quiet.

“I don’t trust that crossroads bitch one bit, alright? Stand up."

Sam does so, unsteady. Keeps gripping the towel at his waist. Dean gets to his feet behind him, and he looks towards the door again. What if Bobby comes in and thinks they’re... what if he’s right? The battle to keep his brain turned off is being rapidly lost.

“Dean, this is – ”

"Sh. Turn around." He pushes gently, turning Sam around to face him. He keeps a hold on Sam’s arm as he examines his front as well, hand cold against his damp skin.

Sam keeps still, avoids his face. If he says anything about this it will make it worse. He is blushing, and Dean must be able to tell. “What, you think she gave me eczema or something?” he mumbles as casually as he can. “I'm fine, Dean.”

Dean looks up at him, and Sam can’t meet his eyes long enough to read his expression. But he lets go.

“Okay. Get dressed,” he adds as he leaves the room, as if Sam would have just stood there naked without his instructions.

He gathers up his stuff, gets dressed, and sets himself up on Bobby’s sofa downstairs. He is about to turn off the light to go to sleep when Dean reappears. He sits down on one of the armchairs.

“There is a guest room, you know. You were there, before?” Sam tries to make the tone as light as possible, but it comes out a bit forced.

“Yeah, but I want to stay here.”

Sam sighs and goes to grab his pillow.

“You can stay, dude.”

So it is more of this. Sam feels himself going slightly red. Dean’s just worried about him, he tells himself. “We - we can both stay in the guest room if you want. I don’t mind.”

He laughs. “Holy crap Sam, the idea of sharing a bed with you kind of makes me want to puke.”

“What? Why?!”

“I don’t know, it’s so...” He trails off and shudders, but then smiles. “This one time, this old lady at the hotel was like, do you mind sharing with your brother, and I said yeah, I mind.”

Sam frowns. “Where was this?”

“Rochester.”

He remembers. “You told me there were no rooms. We ended up sleeping in the car.”

“Yeah, I guess we did.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m going to die soon, Sam. I thought I should get it out there. You know, confess.”

Sam turns off the lamp, and lies down on the sofa rather than attempting to strangle him. It’s easier just not to try to think about it.

An hour later he wakes up from a nightmare and looks across the room. Dean is still awake, watching him.

It’s late by the time they arrive at the hotel after leaving Bobby’s, because Dean had spent a long time talking to the girl behind the counter in the local convenience store while buying gas. When Sam got tired of being polite and asked him point-blank if they could leave, Dean had grinned at him and said “What’s the matter, Sammy? You on some sort of time limit?”

Sam had glared at them both, and gone out to wait in the car for twenty minutes.

“You could have just come here by yourself,” Dean says as he opens his bag. “I would’ve called when I was done.”

Sam shrugs, looks away. “Didn’t want to leave you there.”

He looks up. “Aw, that’s sweet. Sit up.”

Sam does so. He pulls his legs up out of the way as Dean comes to sit down on the bed.

Dean leans back against the wall. “Come here.”

Sam isn’t really surprised by now, but it doesn’t make it any less bizarre. He wonders if this is some strange method of talking to him about something. Then Dean puts an arm around him, and pulls him close.

There’s a flash of panic, and Sam almost shoves him away. This isn’t like before. They’re alone, really alone, and he can’t deny it now. Something new is overwhelming him as Dean holds him, like a mist in his mind, his brain going fuzzy, body not working. He’s seen people go frozen with fear before, but it doesn’t feel like that, just a soft numbness. Some remnant of anger in his throat, but it goes nowhere.

Dean shifts his hand up to the back of his neck, massaging gently. It’s good. No one has touched him like that for a long time. Sam lets his head fall back slightly. It’s been so long since Dean touched him at all, other than hugging him a few times like he’s trying to kill him.

His face is pressed against Sam’s neck, free hand on his leg through the jeans. Sam leans in to the new contact.

It shouldn’t feel this good. Dean’s barely even touching him. The fuzzy feeling has turned into a weird glow, although everything else is still there under it. He can’t think, can’t breathe, but he doesn’t move because he’s afraid he’ll stop.

“You okay?” The hand on his leg moves up slightly.

He nods. God, it’s so good. Something sick in his throat, but it’s like being drugged.

Dean makes a faint approving noise, and bites his ear.

He’s seducing me, Sam thinks, the first coherent thought he can remember since it started. He swallows. He tries to focus his mind on exactly what Dean had been saying last night. He wonders if this is what it’s like to gradually go insane.

Dean pulls back slightly, like he’s thought of something, and draws in a breath. Rests his head against Sam’s shoulder, moves the other hand down to his knee. “We could...” he says, and stops.

Sam keeps silent. He can’t breathe.

“That girl in the store...”

Sam almost chokes, and the weird numbness that’s holding him is broken.

“No,” he stutters out.

Dean looks surprised. “Okay,” he says nonchalantly. He lets go, pulling his arm away. The air around Sam feels empty suddenly.

If he had been able to speak he would have tried to explain, told him how much more fucked up it would be to bring someone else into this, someone normal. But he can’t. He stares at the bed in front of him.

Dean stands up. “I’m going back out.”

Sam wants to say “Okay,” but it doesn’t work.

It’s almost dawn by the time Dean gets back, but Sam is still awake. He doesn’t bother pretending to be asleep.

There’s a window across the room, and Dean yanks the curtains closed over it, cutting off what little light there was from outside. He pulls back the covers. Sam feels the weight immediately, one knee dipping the mattress right beside him. Dean grabs for him, and Sam wraps his arms back around him before he even thinks about it.

That suffocating feeling from before is gone. Sam must have known this would happen the whole time Dean was gone, expected it. Dean grabs his face in one hand, the hold rough, almost painful. The kissing is new, shocking, but he lets it happen, slides one hand into Dean’s hair to pull him closer.

Dean shifts back slightly, cold hands sliding over the side of his hips, and Sam is suddenly aware of the extent of it, that’s he’s not dressed and Dean is. He pulls back and turns away, says his name pleadingly.

Dean curls his fingers hard into his waist. “If you want me to stop say it,” he says against his mouth. “Come on. If this is my fault. Stop me.”

This part is new, too. Sam takes a breath and shakes his head very slightly, but Dean is close enough to feel it. Dean moves back enough to start pulling down the little clothing he’s wearing.

Sam tries to relax, as much as he can, so that his knees don’t draw up to block him. His face is burning, and he’s glad for the dark. Dean isn’t even touching him yet, and he is already reacting like fucking clockwork.

“Sh,” Dean says as he gets his boxers down. He lies back down next to him on the sheets, pulls Sam onto his side.

Sam takes a breath, and the new sweat suddenly feels cool on his skin. He is overwhelmed suddenly with how much he doesn’t want Dean here right now. He wants something else, something too painful to think about, something that isn’t his brother. The thought makes him ache, but it also relieves him, makes him more confident.

He starts undoing Dean’s jeans, half expecting Dean to stop him, but he doesn’t, just kind of breathes out. Sam grabs him around the back of the neck and pulls him in closer. He feels Dean wince.

“Are you - ” The question comes out against the side of Dean’s neck.

Dean shakes his head. “Shut up. Bite down,” he says. Sam bites at his neck as Dean grabs him. “That’s good. Harder.” Sam complies until he’s almost breaking the skin. “That’s it.”

It’s hot now, too close. Sam keeps his eyes closed although it’s too dark to see. He tries to hold on to the thought from before. He wants something else. He doesn’t want this. This is just -

Dean starts talking against the skin underneath Sam’s ear as his hand moves, voice quiet, so Sam can’t make out most of the words. “You can't leave me. You can't. You have to stay here, okay. You have to stay with me.”

Sam closes his eyes against it, against Dean’s presence. He can’t control this, can’t control how good it feels, how every emotion in his body seems focused behind it. It's like being possessed again.

“You can't let anybody hurt you. You can't let anybody else...” Dean yanks him in closer as he says it, hard, unexpected, and Sam’s teeth go into his jaw hard enough to draw blood.

Dean shudders and says “Fuck,” and grips him so tight that Sam can’t pull away.

Dean is all twitchy afterwards, just like he used to be. He lies against him, runs his hand back and forth over Sam’s stomach, his side. Sam can’t think; his mind won’t stay on track. He keeps hold of Dean's wrist.

“Let go, Sammy,” he says eventually. He pries off the hand and rests it back down on the sheets, sitting up. He turns on the lamp beside the bed. “I'm thirsty. You want a drink?”

He shakes his head.

“Stay here,” he says before he leaves the room. Sam curls up on his side, away from the light.

**

Part III

SPN Fic: Don't You Miss Her

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:53:26 GMT

Title: Don’t You Miss Her
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Summary: “The truth is, they don’t need you. Not like you need them…”
Spoilers: Up until the end of Season Three.
Warnings: Angst, underage, the usual.
Author's Notes: Cut up for formatting. Sorry for the spamming, flist.

Dean is talking about Dad again. Sam leans in towards him a little bit, his head down as the words flow over him. He is drunk, but it feels good, fuzzy. The evening air out here is cool on his skin. When Dean stops, his own words seem to come out of nowhere, and he talks and talks. He feels a bit bad shifting the subject, but not that much.

Eventually he trails off, eyes on the grassy ground in front of him. Next to him, Dean seems only slightly uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry, Sam. She seemed like... she was hot.” He stops. “I mean, I didn’t know Jess but... I know she would have been good for you.”

Sam closes his eyes. Without vision the world seems to waver slightly.

“I never told her, you know,” he says finally. He pauses, then looks up long enough to catch Dean’s newly terrified expression. “I never told anyone.”

Dean closes his eyes, and takes a breath. “Okay, Sammy. I think you've had enough.”

“Wait. Dean – ”

“We're leaving.” He stands up and grabs Sam’s arm, pulls him up roughly before letting go. Sam makes it to his feet without stumbling, and Dean is already heading back towards the car, halfway across the lot.

It’s no use arguing. He trails Dean miserably, still not sure exactly why he’d brought it up, but too gone by now to care. Maybe the alcohol has turned him into some mild sadist.

Dean starts the car, and pulls out of the deserted lot without speaking. “Dean – ”

“Shut up, Sam. We’re not talking about this anymore.” It’s getting dark, and he switches the headlights on. The road is deserted.

“But – ”

Dean turns to him. “I swear, Sam, if you say one more word I will fucking leave you by the side of the road.”

“Fine.” He flinches. They’re going really fast. “Where are we going?”

“What did I say?”

He bites his lip, but says nothing. Dean turns the wheel violently, and Sam’s stomach lurches. He thinks about apologizing, although he’s not remotely sorry, just to get Dean to calm down a bit. It probably wouldn’t do any good, though, so he just closes his eyes and leans against the window.

He can tell that Dean is calming down as the car’s speed gradually slows, the engine quieter, shadows moving over his eyelids less rapidly.

“Shouldn’t have let you drink so much,” Dean mumbles under his breath. Sam tenses a bit at that, but he pretends to be asleep.

He does drift off after a while, the alcohol making everything in his brain hazy. When he wakes up, it’s pitch black outside and they’re off the main road.

He sits up, wincing. “Where are we?”

“There’s a cabin around here. I thought we could stop for the night.”

Sam looks around at the little he can see. Dark woods with high conifers, pretty much exactly like where they’d been driving when he’d fallen asleep hours ago. The sky is thick with clouds. “I don’t know this place.”

“You should. You’ve been here before.” He grabs two flashlights from the glovebox, hands one to Sam, and opens the car door.

Sam follows him, turns on his flashlight and looks around. The tiny wooden cabin in front of him looks dubious, to say the least. It’s colder now, although not cold enough to hurt. The air is clear and he is starting to remember.

Dean points his flashlight at his face, sees Sam’s disgusted look. “Dad used to keep supplies here. He might have left some stuff. I thought it was worth checking out.”

“Can’t we just get a hotel?”

Dean acts like he doesn’t hear.

Sam sighs. He grabs his rucksack and sleeping bag from the trunk and pushes past Dean to the cabin. The battered front door opens with a push, and he drops his stuff on the wooden floor with a thud. He looks around. Inside is even worse. “There’s only one bed,” he yells out.

“I’ll sleep on the chair,” Dean calls back from outside.

There is in fact an armchair in here, and it actually looks more hygienic than the bed next to it. But Sam is so tired he spreads out his sleeping bag and lies down, ignoring the weird damp smell and the cold.

He looks up at the dark ceiling. From this angle, the place is getting more and more familiar.

There are occasional banging noises from outside as Dean moves stuff around, and he can see the light of the moving flashlight through the filthy windows. Apparently whatever dad left here is stashed out there somewhere.

Finally Dean comes in. He shoves the door closed behind him and shines his flashlight in Sam’s direction. “Found some ammo out back. We can check it out better tomorrow. Looks pretty good.” He settles down into the armchair, and starts kicking off his boots. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Last time, it had been the middle of summer and full of bugs.

Dean laughs like he’s reminiscing. He switches off the flashlight, and Sam hears him lean back in the chair. “You guys had a big fight, remember? When we had to stay here for a while.”

“Yeah. I do now.”

“When we were leaving, you said - ”

“That I’d rather kill myself than ever come back here. I know.”

Dean laughs again. “Well, the guy’s dead, Sam. You don’t have to worry about going back on your word.”

Sam doesn’t answer. He clenches his fists and closes his eyes, even though without the light the cabin’s already black. Beside him Dean turns in the chair, trying to get comfortable. He shouldn’t be bothered by this, not now.

“Are you okay, dude?”

“I’m fine.” Sam turns away from him, towards the wall. His nose is all stuffed up.

Behind him, Dean sighs. “You really suck when you’re drunk, Sammy.” He pauses, and takes a breath like he’s going to say something. Then he leans in toward him, and puts his hand on his shoulder.

Sam stiffens reflexively. Dean pats the shoulder, awkward.

Sam takes a deep breath, tries to relax the muscles in his shoulders and back. He remembers something like it when he was very small, Dean sitting with him like this after he’d had a dream. Then dad had told him that Sam was too big and Dean had stopped doing it like you’d switch off a light.

That makes him remember what he’d said before, and he cringes slightly. Maybe Dean is -

“You okay now?” Dean says, and that breaks off the thought.

Sam shrugs off his hand. “I told you, I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Dean sits back in the chair. “Whatever, dude. Go to sleep.”

From what he can tell, dad’s arm is broken. When Sam gets to the kitchen Dean already has the first aid kit open on the kitchen table, and is taking out items as his father names them. Dad’s holding the arm close to his chest, and they both ignore him.

Sam stands back, near the counter, until he sends Dean off to fetch something from the car. Only then does he appear to notice Sam’s presence for the first time.

“Go do your homework, Sammy,” he says without looking up.

Sam doesn’t move, just folds his arms across his chest.

His dad sighs and says “Come here.”

Sam steps forward, uncertain. His dad reaches out and puts his good arm around Sam’s shoulders. He pulls him in and hugs him.

The action is so utterly strange that it makes Sam more scared, instead of less. He leaves the room when dad lets go, but when he’s in his bedroom he can’t concentrate on anything.

He waits for a while, trying to listen to what’s happening outside, but everything is frustratingly quiet. After a few minutes the few noises he can hear die down to nothing. A door opens and closes, and then everything is silent.

There’s an old book that he’d left in the back seat of the car before dad had taken it for the trip. Fetching it gives Sam an excuse to leave his bedroom as well as something to read. He pushes open the door slightly, enough to see that the door to the other bedroom, where dad sleeps, is closed.

In the living room down the hall, Dean is on the sofa, an old horror movie playing on the tiny television. It looks like he’s dozed off. Sam thinks about waking him and asking what had happened, but he knows from experience that Dean won’t say anything if dad has told him not to. It wouldn’t be right to say that Dean always picked dad’s side, because that would imply that he recognized Sam as having a side in the first place. Whenever the issue comes up Dean just looks at him with a mildly puzzled expression, like Sam had decided to argue against gravity.

He creeps past the sofa to the front door, which he closes silently behind him, and crosses the yard to the car. Then he stops, squinting. In the light coming from the house, he can see an odd silhouetted shape in the back seat.

He should already know what it is, from the size and shape of it, but maybe there is some part of his brain that wants to block the realization. Sam opens the door, and pulls back the blanket that’s covering the dark shape. Underneath, there’s a woman with half her head missing.

He gets back to his bedroom somehow, and locks the door, sitting down on the floor next to the bed. He must have made some noise getting there, because Dean is outside the door almost straight away.

He knocks. “Sammy, open up,” he whispers loudly.

Sam ignores him. He presses himself back against the bed, until the wooden base starts to cut into his shoulders.

It doesn’t take long for Dean to pick the lock, and Sam makes no effort to stop him. Once he’s inside, Dean doesn’t speak, just stands looking at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. He shoves the lockpick back in his pocket.

Sam’s voice comes out very quiet. “What happened to her?”

“It was an accident.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“No, I didn’t.”

He clenches his teeth. “Why is she here?”

His voice has been getting louder. Dean glances over his shoulder, then goes back to close the bedroom door carefully behind them.

“Dad couldn’t just leave the body where it was, okay? It wasn’t safe.”

Sam looks at the ground, feels he flushing. He knows this already. His brain knows it, but everything else is telling him that hiding bodies in cars is not what good people do. “How can you know that, Dean?” he says quietly.

Dean laughs. “What, you think dad just goes around killing people?”

“I don’t know, does he?”

He’d been aiming to get Dean mad, but instead he just rolls his eyes. “You’re upset, Sam. Just -”

“Has he done this before? Brought bodies back?”

“Yeah.” He pauses, examines Sam’s face. “They’re usually in the trunk.”

Sam takes a breath and stands up, steadies himself against the bed.

“Sammy, I’m sorry. Sam - where are you going?”

“I wanna speak to dad.”

“No way.” Dean steps forward, blocking the path to the door. “He’s asleep. You - ”

“Get the hell out of my way, Dean.”

Dean doesn’t move. He’s tense like he is expecting a fight, and Sam knows what’s coming, can see the images in his mind already: Dean will bring him down within seconds, relatively painless but still humiliating.

He tries to force down the rage that builds up at the thought. He looks past his brother, his vision starting to blur. Dean shifts, watching him warily.

“Just stay here and go to bed, Sammy,” he says. His voice is softer, starting to verge on pleading.

There is something hard in Sam’s throat, and his body feels heavy. But he turns away.

He can feel the relief radiating off Dean, but ignores it. He sits down on the bed without looking at him.

Dean shuts off the light on the way out, and Sam lies down on his side in the dark, pulling the soft covers over him. He can still feel the cold on his skin from outside, which he decides to blame for the shivering. He thinks about sneaking out to talk to dad, but Dean is probably watching for that. Thinking about that too much makes his head hurt from clenching his jaw. The anger crowds out the memory of the woman, at least, but it makes it impossible to sleep, and the more he thinks about it the worse it gets.

I’m different than him, he tells himself. I’m not like that. Dean might be stronger than me, but at least I'm not a freak. I’m not too pathetic to think for myself. I’m not like either of them.

He is barely asleep much later when Dean comes back in. He crawls into the bed, and Sam shifts over to make room for him. Dean smells like sweat and antiseptic, but even that is so much better than lying there alone. Dean grabs at him, pulls Sam closer.

The whole thing lasts under ten minutes. Eyes closed and Dean has his head turned away and face pressed into Sam’s hair so that he doesn’t have to look at him either. Hands grabbing and desperate and his breath harsh. This close Sam can smell the dirt on him, the faint smoke.

It’s different than most times. He can’t stop thinking about the woman in the car, the others he hadn’t known about.

Sam can’t relax after, lies tense. There is a sick feeling in his stomach that isn’t usual. His head is throbbing again.

After a few minutes Dean pulls the blankets up slightly to cover them better. “Don’t tell him,” he says softly.

Sam frowns and goes to speak. “About the body.” Dean says. “Don’t tell him you found the body.”

Sam leans back into the pillow, doesn’t answer.

“I - I was meant to move it quicker. I fell asleep.”

He still doesn’t answer, and Dean turns his head towards him. “Please, Sam.”

His voice is really pleading now, but Sam stays silent. He is fascinated by the way he can apparently make his brother suffer so much just by not saying anything. It’s good, even if feeling this way disturbs him.

Dean sits up slightly. “Sam – ”

Sam sighs and gives in. “Okay. I won’t.”

Dean nods. He reaches over and squeezes his arm, halfway between reassuring and painful, and then sits up. Sam hopes that he’ll stay in the other bed, but after a few seconds he hears the door close behind him.

He lies on his back, looking up to the ceiling. Thinking over that moment of power.

**

Part II

SPN Fic: The Outsider

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:34:05 GMT

Title: The Outsider
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Dean, Henriksen
Spoilers: To 3.12 'Jus in Bello'.
Warnings: Language and adult themes.
Summary: Short fic. Henriksen's impressions of the Winchesters.
Author's Notes: Apparently there’s no canon spelling for some characters' names, so I just guessed.
Disclaimer: Step one: post on LJ. Step two: ??? ~~Step three: profit.~~

Dean Winchester is busy chatting up his lawyer when Henriksen gets a first look at his little brother through the one-way mirror of the interrogation room.

Sam is sitting slumped awkwardly over the table, a look of vague resignation on his face. Dean had been calm, all smiles: this one looks utterly defeated. And guilty as well, almost ashamed. Which is interesting.

Henriksen would have liked to watch him for a while, but the lawyer will be in at any minute and he’ll lose his chance. He nods to Reidy next to him, who opens the door.

Sam looks up, startled out of his thought, and almost immediately a fake smile stretches over his face. He doesn't put too much effort into it, though, and he definitely can’t pull it off like his brother.

Interesting, Henriksen thinks again. Dean is clearly a sociopath, if a brainwashed one, but he is definitely not getting that feeling off this kid. Which means that the only way to explain his actions is that Sam Winchester is just buckets of crazy, like his father had been.

That would at least account for how the guy managed to pull off normal for so long. Might even be some weird genetic thing that doesn't set in until adulthood. Not that growing up in that family would have helped. God only knows what kind of weird shit had gone on in his childhood.

It’s kind of pitiful, really. Henriksen’s a long way from feeling sorry for him – not after following his trail for so long, seeing what he's done – but he can’t work up the same kind of hate that he has for Dean.

He pulls back the plastic chair and sits down opposite him at the table. Sam looks at him, then quickly at the door, at Reidy who’s hovering near it, back at him.

“Let me guess,” he says tiredly, although he’s still half-smiling. “You're going to ask me to testify against my brother.”

“Oh, Sam.” Henriksen smiles back at him cheerfully. “We're a long way past that.”

Sam swallows, and the last of the smile fades. He looks away.

“Dean is long gone. We could put him away ten times over without your help.” He pauses. Sam looks at the floor. “And it's not looking much better for you, Sam, I'm afraid.”

Sam doesn't react to this. Henriksen had planned to say something else, maybe rub it in some more, but he is caught out by how different from his brother Sam's reaction is. It’s hard to keep up feeling vindicated around this one.

The kid becomes increasingly uncomfortable under his gaze. His face goes red, and he turns away slightly, looks across the room.

“What are you looking at,” he says finally.

“Just wondering about a few things, Sam.” Henriksen stops again. Outside, the corridor is still quiet, no lawyer coming. “Like what you were going to use all those old weapons for.”

Sam clenches his jaw, and doesn't answer.

“Okay then, maybe you can tell me this. Why the graves, Sam? Can you answer me that? Because even for a couple of psychos that's really making no sense to me. What made you pick 'em out?” He glances over at Reidy, who shrugs slightly. “We couldn't find a pattern to the bodies. Male, female, fresh, old...”

Sam looks back at the floor, and doesn't answer. Henriksen thinks again how defeated he looks.

“You wouldn't believe me,” he says finally, voice flat.

“Why wouldn't I believe you, Sam?”

Sam finally looks up at him, and attempts to smile again. “Are you going to charge me for this session?”

Henriksen nods, whatever sympathy he’d had rapidly ebbing. He opens his mouth to answer, but before he can speak the door opens.

He stands up. “We were just leaving,” he says to the lawyer. “Nice chatting with you, Sam.”

Sam doesn’t answer. He looks back at the floor.

***

In the office they’ve taken over, he has a look back over some of the files he has on Sam. He’d barely looked over them before – his brother was the murderer, Sam was the dumb accomplice – but now he’s curious.

The academic records, which Henriksen had first assumed were faked, all seem to check out. The school files are silent on any mental problems. The only thing that stands out is Sam's girlfriend.

There is no hard evidence connecting Sam with her death, which he'd assumed just meant that no one had looked hard enough. When he looks back over the testimonies about the fire, though, something about it doesn’t add up.

In the days before she died, Sam’s girlfriend had apparently told several people that his brother Dean had come to visit. So, the guy goes with her for years and then suddenly flips when his brother shows up?

It’s pretty obvious, in hindsight, that Dean had killed her. Probably started the fire afterwards to cover up what he’d done. There was no real evidence at the time, maybe, but it makes perfect sense with what they know now, with all the women Dean had killed in St Louis.

No wonder Sam had gone crazy.

The realization makes him hate Dean Winchester even more, something he didn’t realize was possible. It's clear from everything that Sam has done since then that the guy is fucked for life. Institutionalization is the best he can hope for. What Dean had done was basically psychological mutilation.

Where the hell did someone get off on doing that? To his own brother?

He manages to get Dean alone one more time, after the lawyer leaves, before the two of them are transferred to the county jail. Figures he owes the poor girl's family to try to get something out of him. More than that, even, he just wants to know why.

Dean doesn't ask why he’s being questioned again, doesn't ask for his lawyer. Unsurprisingly, he seems happy for the attention.

Henriksen sends the guard out, closes the door to the room, and sits down opposite him.

Dean grins at him. “Couldn’t bear to be apart from me, eh?”

He smiles back calmly. “Why'd you kill your brother's girlfriend, Dean?”

Dean’s face goes blank, and then angry. Which is, Henriksen knows, anger at being found out, not at the concept itself. He doesn't say a word.

Henriksen goes on. “You jealous, or what? No girls in the club? What was it?”

There's still no answer. The anger is gone already, or hidden; he smiles.

“And why the fire? See, I looked back over my files, Dean, and it looks like Mom actually died the same way.” He stops, leans forward slightly. He looks into Dean’s eyes, and Dean doesn’t break the contact. “Course, everyone thought it was an accident back then, too.”

Dean's smile doesn't waver, although Henriksen can see the repressed tension in his jaw, his shoulders.

“Is it like an inherited thing, Dean? Or you just carrying on a family tradition?”

There’s a crash as Dean stands up suddenly, jerking back the chair. Henriksen watches him, calm.

“Don’t say that about my dad,” Dean says softly.

Henriksen still doesn't move, looks up at him without flinching.

The door opens, breaking the moment. It’s the guard. Dean sits down again, his face still cold, blank with rage.

“Everything okay?”

“It's fine.” Henriksen nods. Clearly he’s not going to get anything out of Dean today. “We’re done here.” He stands up, looks down at him. “You make me sick, Dean.”

Dean twitches slightly, but doesn’t move. He doesn't resist as the guard takes him back to the cell.

Inside, behind the bars, Sam is sitting on one of the bunks, staring at the floor, hair blocking his face. By the time he’s back at the cell Dean already looks relaxed again, smiling as he sits down on the bed next to his brother.

Sam ignores him. He looks up only slightly as Dean leans in, and says something close to his ear.

The sight makes Henriksen’s flesh crawl. Even in his line of work there are things he doesn't want to think about.

Maybe he can't feel sorry for the kid. But the least he can do is recommend the two of them be separated.

***

It’s almost a year later, in Colorado, when he next gets a chance to speak to Dean.

The two of them are sitting on a bed again. Sam is slumped back wearily against the wall of the cell they're chained up in. Dean looks up at him brightly, the old familiar smirk on his face.

God, he has been waiting for this for a long time.

“Take a good look at Sam.” Henriksen says down at Dean, and smiles slightly. “You're never going to see each other again.”

SPN Fic: The Grand Canyon

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:15:28 GMT

Title: The Grand Canyon
Rating: PG
Characters: Sam, Dean
Spoilers: For all aired.
Warnings: None.
Author's Notes/Summary: A small add-on to episode 3:13 'Ghostfacers'.
Disclaimer: Step one: post on LJ. Step two: ??? ~~Step three: profit.~~

“This whole thing is kind of sad, you know,” Sam is saying to him as Dean pulls the car out onto the highway. “I mean, Morton House? That’s really where you want to go?”

Dean smiles at him. “C’mon, it’ll be fun. Just like when we were kids.”

“That wasn’t fun, Dean.”

“Course it was.”

“No, it was always freezing, and I had to sleep in the car while you and dad did everything. Oh, and last time? You kept shining a flashlight in my eyes and waking me up. All night long.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry about that.” Dean grins at the memory. Sam had probably done something to deserve it. “Well, when me and dad were there four years back, there was this group of older kids hanging around, and one of the girls was – ” He stops as he sees Sam pulling out a handful of sheets from the bag by his feet. “Hey, what is that, research?”

Sam nods, looking down at the pages. “Yeah, I went to the library this morning when you were hungover. Missing persons reports, mostly.” He turns a page.

Dean frowns at him. “We already know what’s wrong with the place, Sam. We don’t need to research it.”

“Yeah, but I thought it might help if we could recognize who’s there.”

He finally looks up when Dean stares at him blankly. “You know, if we find the bodies.”

“Oh. Hey, wait. No no no. We’re not going to solve anything there.”

Sam looks confused. “I thought that’s kind of what we did.”

“Not tonight. Too dangerous. I only got two months left, Sam.”

“I know you only have two months left. Which is why it’s a stupid idea to go back there in the first place. But why do you want to go there if you don’t want to solve it?”

“So we can stay outside all night and make sure no one goes in. And then leave in the morning. Just like we always do.”

“But it’s – ”

“Look, dad went back there four times, alright? And not once did he go into that place after midnight. So obviously the guy did his research and found out that whatever’s in there is one seriously bad mother.”

“So you’re saying dad chickened out?”

Dean glares over at him. “No, I’m saying that maybe he didn’t think it was worth risking his life over a bunch of dumb kids trying to get themselves killed. And we’re not going to either.”

“But there’s two of us!”

“I said no, Sammy.”

Sam looks at him angrily, but doesn’t answer. He shoves the papers back into the pocket of his bag, then folds his arms and stares out of the window, looking like he wants to kick something.

Dean lets him sulk for about five minutes, until the scenery outside gets too boring. “Look, you’re the one that wants me to stay out of danger,” he says finally. “What makes you all gung-ho kill the monsters all of a sudden?”

“Because it’s pointless to go all the way there for no reason, that’s why. We could be doing something else.”

“Well, we’re doing this.”

No answer. Sam keeps looking out the window, as if the view’s that interesting.

“Come on Sammy,” He smiles at him encouragingly. “It’ll be good. We’ll hang out, like we used to. We can go to that café in the morning that dad always took us to. They had good pancakes.”

Sam turns to him finally. “So what Dean, four years from now you’re going to let some kid wander into the house and get killed because we didn’t sort this out when we had the chance?”

“No, because in four years you’re going to go back there and make sure he doesn’t.”

At the words Sam goes pale, and turns back to the window. He bites his lip.

Dean isn’t sure what to say. After a few seconds, Sam takes a deep breath. “So,” he says. “You’re happy to risk people’s lives because you like the idea of me keeping up some stupid family tradition. By myself.”

Dean thinks about it for a second, and then grins at him again. “Only dumb people’s lives, Sammy.”

Sam looks uneasy still. But he sighs and says “Okay, Dean. Whatever.”

“Good.” Dean says. He smiles over at him again, and then turns the music up loud.

SPN Fic: One Still Living

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:03:46 GMT

Title: One Still Living
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Sam, Dean, others
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Language, slight adult themes
Author's Notes: Wow, I’m on fire with the gen this week, aren’t I?
Summary: Pre-series. Sam at school.
Disclaimer: Step one: post on LJ. Step two: ??? ~~Step three: profit.~~

It’s last period when the gym teacher brings him to Akeley’s office. She’d found out that the note he brought in was forged; compared it against some of the student’s handwriting she found God knows where and decided to head straight to the principal who of course has nothing better to do.

She leaves the kid outside the door and hands the note to him solemnly, her eyes wide as if she can’t believe in the possibility that anyone would want to avoid gym.

Akeley tells her he’ll deal with it, and then takes a look at the dreaded note as she heads back to her class.

The name’s familiar, so he pulls out the kid’s file: he’s a straight-A student.

Well, he wouldn’t be the first one of those to dislike gym. He’s only been here for a month, too, so who knows, maybe he’s being bullied. The only surprising thing is that he had been stupid enough to get caught. Akeley calls through for Hannah to send him into the office, and then gestures for him to sit down.

It’s a tall, awkward kid, messy hair covering half of his face. He glares at Akeley with a mixture of boredom and poorly-feigned condescension as he sits down in the chair across the desk from him. After a second he seems to remember to sit up slightly, but then winces, resuming his habitual slump.

You’d think it would be too late for theatrics.

“So. Sam.” Akeley says. “Let’s talk about this. What’s the real reason you wanted to avoid gym? Someone causing you trouble?”

“No sir.” The words don’t quite match the sour expression, but they don’t clash enough to be sarcastic, either. He decides to ignore the attitude for now.

“Then what is it?”

Sam nods down at the note, still sitting on top of his open file on the wooden desk. “I injured my shoulder.”

“Come on, Sam.” Akeley taps the piece of paper with his index finger. “It’s obvious that this is a forgery. Let’s get to the real reason, or you’re wasting my time.”

He shrugs lopsidedly, and looks past him, out the window.

“You can stop pretending your shoulder’s broken, Sam.”

“Cut.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Sir.”

“No, Sam, I want to know.” Akeley leans back in his chair. “If the shoulder’s cut, you should have no problem showing me and proving yourself right.”

Sam glares at him disparagingly. “I don’t think that would be appropriate, sir.”

Akeley nods. “You may be right. We can send you to the nurse instead. Or you can just go back to gym.”

Sam scowls. But he leans forward, and pulls back the collar on his too-big shirt, sliding it down over his right shoulder.

There’s some gauze taped over the area of skin, but past the edge of it Akeley can see the end of a deep gash, held together with stitches.

He actually gasps. The sight of it silences him for a few seconds: he’d been expecting a graze, if anything. God, no wonder the kid was wincing.

“I’m – I’m sending you to the nurse,” he says finally.

Sam pulls his shirt back up quickly, suddenly looking uncomfortable. “You don’t have to do that, sir. I’ll just go back to gym.”

“No,” Akeley says. “You can go to the nurse and she can give you a note. You –”

“I’d rather not go to the nurse, sir,” Sam says, his voice firm.

Akeley pauses. The kid looks at him intently. For a little while they just stay like that, a stalemate.

Finally, he nods. “I can’t let you out of here until I know you’re okay, Sam. So, you either show me the whole cut here, or you go to the nurse.”

Sam glares at him some more. Akeley didn’t think the kid could convey a more intense dislike, but he manages it now.

“I’ll get Hannah in here to supervise if it makes you feel better,” he adds.

Sam scowls again, but then turns in the chair, and lifts up his shirt. Holds it up over his shoulder with his left hand, and pulls the gauze off with his right. And Akeley sees why he had been so reluctant.

There are two deep gashes down his shoulder and along the length of his back, a third, shallower one beside them that’s not much more than a scratch. From where Akeley is, the two deep cuts look like they’ve been stitched up by a layman.

But even that’s not the worst part. It’s the scars. There’s several of them of varying ages across Sam’s back, his ribs.

Akeley stands up, moves around the table, barely thinking about what he’s doing. Sam doesn’t move. He is looking at the ground.

For a moment he can’t speak. Finally he manages: “How… how’d you say you got these?”

“I was at the junkyard with my brother and I tripped and cut it on some metal,” Sam says without looking up. The story comes out in a monotone. He’s barely even trying.

“You don’t seem like the kind of kid who’d be hanging around a junkyard, Sam.”

“My brother likes collecting stuff,” he says, in the same monotone.

From where he is now Akeley can get a better look: if anything, the cuts look like scratches from an animal. But that doesn’t make sense, not unless the kid had been hanging around in the wrong part of a zoo. Akeley’s mind is swarming with unpleasant thoughts about what, exactly, could have caused this.

All he can think about is the fact that there is someone out there that would do this sort of thing to a kid.

Funny, he wouldn’t have picked it looking at him, but then you never can tell.

“You get a tetanus shot?” he asks finally.

“Yes. And antibiotics.”

Akeley sighs. He goes back over to his chair and Sam drops his shirt and carefully faces the front again, glaring at him. “Can I go now?”

“I can’t let you go, Sam.”

His face flashes nervous before he goes back to glaring.

“I’m legally obliged to report this.”

“I told you. I tripped over –”

“Cut the crap, Sam.”

That shuts him up for a second. He swallows, and takes a deep breath. “I’d rather you didn’t do that, sir.”

“It’s out of my hands, Sam.”

“Not necessarily.”

Akeley frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he goes on, “Maybe we could work something out.”

He leans back slightly, confused. “What do you mean by that?”

Sam reaches into the pocket of his jeans with his good arm, pulls out a wad of dirty notes. He puts them down heavily on the table.

“I can get more,” he says. His tone is confident, but he doesn’t quite meet Akeley’s eyes as he talks. “A lot more.”

Akeley takes a deep breath.

“Sam,” he says. The kid looks up. “All that this does is raise the question of is who it is you’ve got at home teaching you to bribe authority figures.”

Sam glares, and snatches back the money, shoves it back in his pocket. Under the anger, though, his face is starting to grow scared.

Akeley signs and shakes his head. Nothing else to be done. He reaches for the phone on his desk.

“I’d rather you didn’t call anyone, sir.” Sam says quietly.

Akeley ignores him, and goes to lift the receiver.

In an instant Sam clamps his hand on top of Akeley’s, pinning it down.

Akeley takes another deep breath, decides to remain calm. “Let go of the phone, Sam,” he says firmly.

“I can’t let you call anyone,” Sam says.

He nods carefully, not breaking eye contact. “Are you threatening me, Sam?”

Sam sets his jaw. “I don’t want to.”

Akeley nods again. Still not breaking eye contact, he pulls the handset firmly out of Sam’s grasp. Sam doesn’t move. Akeley lifts the receiver.

Instantly there’s a loud crash: stunned, he looks up to see that Sam has pulled the cord out at the wall.

“Mr. Akeley?” Hannah calls from the next room.

Akeley looks at Sam, his hand still clutching the dead receiver. Sam is holding the phone cord, his expression surprised, like he can’t believe what he’s just done. Apart from that, though, he still looks determined.

“No problem, Hannah,” Akeley calls back calmly. “Just an accident.”

He turns his attention back to Sam.

“Okay. We’ll forget that that happened, Sam. I’m going to call some people on my mobile, and you can –”

“No.” The voice is firmer now, perfectly calm and flat.

Akeley forces a small smile, although concern – no, actual fear – is rising in his chest; fear that he had completely misjudged this kid up until now. “You’re not in a position to make threats, Sam.”

“I think you’ll find that I am.”

He manages to keep up the smile. “What do you mean by that?”

Sam puts the phone cord down on the desk. He leans forward, his voice dropping, low and serious. “I don’t want to threaten you, sir. But we both know that I have the advantage physically here. And we both know that I could say things about you that would ruin your career. Even if they weren’t true.”

“What do you –”

“You asked me to take my shirt off in your office.” He pauses for effect. “I’ll say I was uncomfortable with that and raise it with a few people. I can say other things as well. You know this.”

He stops again for a second, to let the idea sink in.

“But I don’t want to do that. And I don’t want this –” Sam stabs his finger on the file open on the desk – “to get messed up. I don’t want that. It’s important to me. So I don’t want you to make me do that. Don’t make me do that. Please.”

Akeley waits for a second, looking him in the eye. He can’t speak. Sam doesn’t waver.

Finally, he sighs. “Okay, Sam. Maybe we can make a deal.”

The guardian turns up within half an hour. Akeley had sent Sam to wait outside the office, in the seat opposite the door, where Akeley can see him. When he arrives the guardian gives Sam what appears to be a pointed look, and then walks right past Hannah and into Akeley’s office.

He decides to ignore that. “Dean Winchester?”

Dean nods and sits down cheerfully, smiling at him. “So, is there a problem? Because let me tell you, Sammy –” he raises his voice so that it can be heard in the next room – “he can get a bit crazy with the ladies sometimes. Isn’t that right Sammy?”

Outside, his brother pretends not to hear. Dean sits back in the chair and grins. It’s mostly an act, Akeley can tell. He’s almost as scared as his brother.

He decides to get right into it. “Your brother has some bad cuts on his back.”

“Oh, those? Yeah, we were in a junkyard and he tripped and cut it on some metal.”

Akeley nods. “I see. What were you doing in a junkyard?”

“Me and Sammy like collecting stuff.” The smile doesn’t waver.

He nods again. “To tell the truth, Mr. Winchester, it’s the other scars on Sam’s back that I’m worried about.”

Dean shrugs slightly. “He’s clumsy.”

“I see. The two of you live with your father, right?”

“Yeah. He’s away.”

He sighs. He’s going to have to spell this out. “Dean,” Akeley says slowly. “I guess my concern is that someone might be hurting Sam.”

Dean’s expression turns to one of careful confusion.

“Deliberately,” Akeley goes on.

“Who, Sammy?”

“Yes.”

Dean leans forward, smiles conspiratorially. “Have you seen the size of the guy?”

He sighs again. “What I’m trying to say here, Dean, is that in some situations, a child might be too intimidated to fight back. No matter how big they are. Sometimes they won’t even fight back verbally. Sometimes they will even defend their attacker to others. Do you understand what I’m saying, Dean?”

Dean nods, like he’s taking it in. Then he leans forward again.

“Look. Akeley.” He smiles. “Sammy seems to like this place for some reason. And judging by how he looked out there, he doesn’t even mind you that much. So, I’m being civil right now. But if you imply one more time that my dad or me are deliberately hurting Sam, I won’t be able to hold back any longer from kicking your ass. I swear to God.”

Akeley nods carefully. He holds his gaze, and Dean doesn’t flinch. For the first time since he came into Akeley’s office, he looks completely honest.

When he doesn’t respond, Dean stands up. He smiles again. “Nice talking to you. I’ll take him home now.”

Akeley finds that he can’t answer.

Sam stands up as his brother comes out of the room. Dean puts a hand on his good shoulder, and shepherds him out. Akeley watches the two of them go.

After a few seconds, Hannah knocks slightly and then comes in, looking puzzled.

“What was the problem with those two?”

Akeley frowns, watching the hallway they’d disappeared down for a few seconds.

“The kid hurt his back,” he says finally. “Tripped over some stuff in the junkyard.”

SPN Fic: He Passes By Me, Part II

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:19:53 GMT

Sam had not expected that. And usually, it would be good that they're leaving, like a James Bond type thing, the bad guys not there to watch them die. But now? From the look they'd given them before they left, it’s more like they’re too scared to stay.

There is sea on one side of them, and on the other the steep hill, which the group is now ascending. The strip of shore between the two probably won’t last much longer at this hour.

So they're bait for something. Or possibly some sort of nature sacrifice, which would just mean drowning rather than getting eaten. Logically, the latter is more probable, but logically isn’t the best way to look at things in a place like this, not after the way those people were acting.

That means there’s something coming for them, and Sam doesn't know what.

And he should be planning something, should already have planned something, but somehow he just can't work up the effort. He is hurt, and tired, and the willpower just isn’t there.

Nothing happens. Time passes, the waves lap closer, the cold water starting to soak through his jeans and jacket. Sam closes his eyes.

“You shouldn’t cry, Sammy,” Dean says eventually from behind him, over the sound of the waves.

Sam opens his eyes again. He hadn’t noticed he was crying. “Dean, some monster’s going to come and kill us.”

Dean laughs. “That’s stupid.”

Sam bites his lip, and goes back to crying.

He is scared, getting more and more scared as the numbness lifts, because he knows he's in this by himself now; Dean isn’t really here. And that might be bearable, even, if Sam had some idea what he was dealing with. But he doesn't. For all he knows this is unconnected to the job, to the disappearances, or anything they’ve dealt with before.

As annoying as research can be, he'd always liked it more than the actual hunting, because at least it gave you boundaries, some kind of rules for whatever you were dealing with. Now he has no idea what they are up against, and he is utterly alone.

The sea moves closer. It’s darker now, somehow, and overcast, the blackness so deep that Sam can’t tell anymore where the sea meets the sky. It takes a while longer for the fear to fully overtake the self-pity, for him to gather any shreds of resolve he has left after tonight, but gradually it does happen. The water’s up around both of them now, and the sound of the waves is driving him insane.

Okay. Insane. That's good, that's something, since Dean is clearly insane right now.

Sam tries to think about what he’s read about insanity, and brainwashing. What would they have done to Dean to make him act like this, to make him -

He doesn't dwell on that; he should focus on how to make it better. Sam squeezes his eyes closed and tries to think.

Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind.

The thought comes to him out of nowhere. Sam doesn’t even remember where he’d read it.

But it seems right, and relevant somehow; he knows it intuitively, like he had researched how to deal with this somewhere a long time ago and then forgotten.

Fear is the way to get to Dean. It’s worth a try. But Dean is not afraid of anything.

Except dad, maybe.

Sam speaks up, over the sound of the waves. He tries his best to stop his voice shaking. “Dad’s going to kill you for this, you know.”

He feels Dean laugh against his back. “No he isn’t.”

“He is,” Sam says. “You drove me here. This is your fault. He’s going to be so mad at you, I swear he is.”

No answer. That could be a good sign.

“I’m going to call him,” Sam goes on.

“You can’t, Sammy.”

“He’ll be mad. Seriously, Dean, he’s going to kill you.”

Sam hears him take a deep breath.

“Fine,” he says finally.

Sam breathes in too, and for the first time since they'd got here he allows himself a small amount of hope.

“My phone’s in your pocket,” he says. “Try to turn to the left.”

Dean does it. Sam exhales.

He twists around as much as he can, trying to get to his brother's jacket pocket. Even with Dean’s help it’s a stretch just to get his fingers near the top; his arm feels like it’s about to break.

Dean laughs as he tries to grab the phone. “That tickles.”

Sam’s fingers slide across the plastic, then brush something next to it.

“What’s that?”

“Pocketknife.”

Holy crap, Sam thinks.

“I - I thought you gave them your weapons.”

Dean laughs. “That little thing? That’s hardly a weapon, Sam.”

Silently, Sam thanks God for the fact that his brother is a moron.

With some awkwardness he fishes out the knife, pulls it open, and quickly starts hacking at the rope tying his ankles. Thankfully it’s not too difficult, even with the cuffs: it's just like Dean to keep his pocketknife ultra-sharp.

“Hm,” Dean says after a minute of cutting. “Did you hear that?”

“It’s me cutting the ropes.”

“No. That.”

He stops. He hears nothing except water and the wind.

Sam starts sawing again; he gets his ankles free and starts on the ropes tying him to Dean.

Then it’s there again, louder, and the noise is low, like it’s under the ground.

Sam has never heard anything like it. It’s coming from somewhere deep, like they’re next to some sort of underwater cliff. And it sounds like something big.

The tension cuts out as he gets through the ropes, and Sam pulls free and scrambles over, splashing through the shallow water. He starts on Dean’s legs. Dean glances towards the ocean, looking uneasy. It seems even darker now, and Sam can barely see his face.

“I don’t like this,” he says.

Sam shakes his head and grabs him as the rope gives out. “Let’s go. Let’s go.”

Dean stands up. Sam grabs his arm to pull his brother towards land, and then something grabs his leg.

He is yanked back violently, pain shooting up his calf as whatever it is wraps hard around his leg. Sam screams, his mouth full of wet sand, and then Dean is there half on top of him, stabbing at whatever it is with the knife Sam had dropped.

It wraps tighter, and with one pull it drags both of them half into deeper water. Sam screams again, kicking, trying to get a grip on the sand under him. It's no good: a wave crashes over him and everything goes dark and blurred and muted.

He feels Dean's weight on his leg again; another stab and for a second the leg is free. Sam pulls himself up, grabbing at Dean as he scrambles to his feet. He runs. Dean is next to him and he doesn’t look back. He’s too scared.

Halfway up the hill towards the car Sam trips, and his shoulder hits the ground hard. He is pulling himself up when the idea occurs to him. The car is up there, but they might be there as well.

"Dean. Wait."

"What is it?" He grabs at Dean’s arm and pulls him down roughly, off the path.

“Wait here.”

Dean doesn’t respond. He's looking dazed now. Sam pulls himself up over the next layer of rocks to get a look.

Sure enough, there’s a man there, standing in front of the car across the lot. In the dim light Sam can see that he’s holding a rifle.

Sam shrinks back down, behind the rock.

Great, he thinks.

The man isn't looking in his direction, but it’s pure luck that he hadn’t heard them already over the wind.

He moves back towards Dean. When he’s there he risks a quick look at the ocean. What he can see of it looks quiet, but there’s no way he is heading back in that direction.

He's noticed now that he's shaking, although he doesn't know if it's shock or from the cold. “We need to get further away from the water,” he whispers to Dean.

“I don’t feel well, Sammy,” he says quietly.

“I know, but we have to get away.”

Dean is looking vaguely towards the sea. He’s still holding the knife, Sam notices. He eases it out of his hands, and cuts through the ropes on Dean’s wrists. Dean doesn’t seem to notice. One of his hands is cut, the blood dripping down his arm.

“Give me the phone.”

Dean pulls it out of his pocket, and then his own phone. They’re both soaked. Sam tries both of them anyway, just in case. They’re dead.

Great, he thinks again.

He’s so tense he can hardly think. He knows he should try to get them away from here now, find a way around this guy and any of the other people standing watch, and get back to town while it’s dark. That’s what dad would tell him to do.

But the thought frightens him, and it’s not even so much the people ready to shoot them on sight. It’s Dean. He doesn’t want Dean anywhere around those people, and he doesn’t want to think about why.

“Come on,” he says, and Dean stands up. Sam leads him over to the best place he can find on the hill: a small space between some high rocks about halfway down the slope, where they are reasonably out of sight. They’re hidden from view from the path, if from nothing else, and it’s well above the high water mark. If whatever that thing was could come out of the water, it would have done so by now, Sam tells himself.

He's not very good at making himself believe that, though. Sam is shivering. He sits back, leaning against the cold stone behind him. As the shock starts to die down he's becoming aware of the fact that they are both soaked in freezing water. One of his wrists is swelling up, and he holds on to it.

Next to him, Dean is staring into space, his expression confused.

“That thing was trying to hurt you, Sam,” he says.

Sam closes his eyes. All he can think about is what it would have been like, being dragged down, under the water. “I’m okay.”

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s okay.”

Dean nods. He pauses for a second, and then wraps his arms around him.

The action is so un-Dean like that Sam freezes. He doesn't move, just lets Dean hug him, resting stiffly against his brother's shoulder. He understands what Dean is trying to say, but he can’t relax, can’t stop his mind from racing.

Sam stays still, and time just moves on like that. Just the awful sound of the ocean, and Dean next to him. Eventually he manages a kind of half-sleep, which comes more out of exhaustion than any kind of calm.

It's close to dawn when he wakes up. Sam sits up quickly, and Dean pulls away from him, looking sick, and hits his head on a rock.

“Sammy, where the hell are we…”

It is painfully light, even with the rocks blocking off most of the sky.

Sam winces. So stupid of him, not getting away when it was dark, just because he’d been scared. Now they'll come looking for them and -

“Sammy?”

Sam sits up as he recognizes the voice.

No way, he thinks.

“Dad?”

Sam pulls himself up, scrambles out from their hiding place and up the path towards the top of the hill.

His dad is there, grabbing him and hugging him painfully.

“Sam. You’re freezing.”

Sam doesn’t answer; he doesn’t know what to say. He wants to cry. His dad lets go and pulls off his jacket and wraps it around him. Sam looks past him as he's doing so, and sees that the man by the car is gone.

No, not gone, on the ground. The gunshot must have been what had woken him up.

John pulls out a pistol from his jacket, shoves it into Sam's cuffed hands. “Where’s your brother?”

“He’s down there, dad, he’s…”

“Okay.”

He's probably expecting Sam to follow him, but he hangs back. That nice pure feeling of relief is fading; anger and unease starting to creep back in.

John finds him, and Sam hears the two of them speaking faintly. When they come back into view, Dean looks even worse than when he’d woken up, and his dad has his arm around him.

“Get in the car, Sam.”

Sam obeys, and gets in to the passenger seat, stepping over the dead body on the way. He doesn’t look down at it. His father puts Dean in the back seat and then climbs in the front.

“Give me your hands,” he says to Sam. Sam holds them out, and he pulls a key from the pocket of his jeans and unlocks the handcuffs. Sam pulls back, rubbing his wrists. John says nothing about the fact that he had cuffed him in the first place.

He leans back against the seat as his father starts the engine. In the back, Dean smells like he’s just thrown up.

“How may were there, Sam? Apart from that guy?”

“There were three more of them, but – ”

“Alright.” He cuts him off. “I’m taking you both back to the hotel.”

Sam nods, confused. He expects him to say more after that, to ask questions about what had happened, or at least tell Sam off about it. That would at least give Sam an excuse to yell back at him.

But he is quiet the whole drive back. When they get to the hotel it’s no better, and it's starting to make him upset. It’s not even like he is ignoring Sam; that at least would be normal. It’s more like he doesn’t notice Sam is there, like he’s deep in thought.

“Okay,” he says when they’re in the room, as Dean sits down on one of the beds. “Dean. Get into the shower.”

Dean doesn’t move. He stares down at the floor, looking uncomfortable.

John had been packing various weapons into his bag; now he looks up. “Dean,” he says.

Dean still doesn’t move. His expression is terrified.

John pauses for a second, then goes on, his voice quieter. “You don’t want to go in the water?”

Dean nods. He looks like he’s on the verge of tears.

Sam doesn't feel much better: he doesn't like seeing this. The idea of Dean crying is creepy, it’s like Dean hugging him, or Dean –

But his dad doesn’t comment on it.

“You go then, Sam,” he says. He doesn’t look at him as he speaks.

Sam frowns, but he’s cold and dirty enough to not argue.

In the shower, he washes off the salt water, and the blood from the cuts on his leg. The calf is covered with deep scratches, although he has no idea exactly what had caused those. Sam cleans them up and dresses them as best he can, since he would prefer it if no one else did it at that moment.

When he comes out of the bathroom, his father is gone. Dean is still sitting on the bed, wrapped in a blanket and holding a flask that dad must have given him. One of his hands is bandaged.

Sam takes a deep breath.

There’s no reason to be nervous, he tells himself, not now. He dumps his dirty clothes in the pile and starts looking for something clean.

“Sammy.” His voice is weak still, but it sounds better than before.

“What.”

“Dad wouldn’t want me to tell you this.” He pauses, and Sam turns to look at him. “But he’s impressed by how you managed to get free in the car. How’d you do it?”

He’s so surprised to hear Dean forming coherent sentences again that it takes Sam a second to figure out what he’s actually referring to. Sam had been way too concerned with other things to think about it up until now, but now that he considers it, he realizes that they must both assume that Sam had found his way to the beach without Dean.

Which would have involved both cutting through the cable tie and the existence of a spare key for the Impala that dad didn’t know about. And a possible bizarre, misguided solo rescue attempt.

“Fine,” Dean says when he doesn’t answer. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Now John’s attitude is starting to make a bit more sense to him. Sam sits down on the other bed.

“He’s real mad, isn’t he.”

Dean doesn’t answer.

“He won’t look at me, Dean.”

Dean looks uncomfortable. “He has to leave us alone here to go find those people. And he doesn’t trust you, and he knows that I can’t take care of you right now.”

Sam feels his fists clench. Even if he had gone to pick up Dean, and Dean hadn’t driven him there, this still isn't Sam’s fault. He considers telling Dean what had really happened; that would make dad act differently.

But if he tells Dean, then Dean will tell dad, and dad won’t understand, not really, because he wasn’t there and didn’t see Dean, and so he’d just get all angry at Dean and then everyone would be miserable, especially Sam.

So he doesn’t say anything.

Dad is gone all day. Dean is obviously exhausted and still sick, but he won’t go to sleep. Possibly he assumes Sam will run off on some sort of vigilante mission as soon as he closes his eyes. Sam can’t sleep either. He lies on his bed for most of the day, as Dean watches TV. He can’t concentrate enough to read, and he’s too tense to even try to rest.

When dad gets back in the evening he announces that they’re going back to Newport that night. Dean asks him about the job, and he says it doesn’t matter now; he’ll come back and finish later. Sam is so glad to get out of the town that he complies with no questions at all.

On the way back they stop in a diner, and when Dean leaves the table to go to the bathroom Sam finally has a chance to talk about it.

“What happened to him, dad?” He is too nervous, and the question comes out overly casual, like he’s asking about the weather.

John still won't make eye contact, but he answers. “It was the book he was reading at the library.”

“What do you mean? The history books?”

“It wasn’t a history book, Sammy. There are some books out there, you get your hands on them and they mess with your mind, make you do crazy things. You ever heard of that?”

Sam had, a long time ago.

“So maybe he picked it up by accident, maybe someone gave it to him," he goes on. "I’m going to find out. But not with you boys there.”

Sam swallows. He doesn’t want to think too much about that, about who could have put the book there. He changes the subject. “I thought those books made you go insane, though. Insane insane.” He pauses. “Like, forever.”

“I assume they were talking it up. Either that, or it’s just Dean.”

Sam glances over to his brother. Dean has emerged from the bathroom, and is now deeply engrossed in conversation with the girl behind the counter.

“What was he acting like?” His dad interrupts the thought.

Sam had had enough time to think over it in the car, and decide how much he was going to tell him. “He was just… you know, all dazed,” he says.

It’s pretty much the truth, really. Sam changes the subject again. “Do you think that maybe he was like, inoculated against it? Like, he saw so much already he could take whatever it was that he read, it didn’t hurt him all that much?”

His father doesn’t answer.

They drive back to Newport. Once they’re there dad finally talks Dean into having a shower. Dean makes him stand outside the door the whole time, but after that he seems okay. Neither one of them mentions it again.

Sam’s the one that doesn’t get better. Sunday morning, dad leaves again to finish off the hunt. The night before, Sam still can’t sleep. It’s not even nightmares; Sam is used to those. Now, he can't even sleep long enough for a nightmare to even start.

One of the cuts on his shin has swollen a little and gone red, and his wrists are still bruised, but the pain shouldn’t be enough to keep him awake. He just can’t relax. He lies, for hours, watching Dean sleeping across the room.

It doesn’t make sense. Sure, there was that thing with Dean, but then afterwards Dean had tried to stick up for him. It wasn’t his fault really. And he’d helped Sam afterwards as well, saved his life probably.

But there’s something wrong now, something that Sam can’t quite grasp. It’s deep, like the ground had shifted under him.

Monday morning, he starts getting ready for school when Dean is still in bed.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” Dean asks as he's getting dressed.

“It’s nothing.”

Dean sits up a little. “Let me take a look at it.”

“It’s nothing, Dean. I’ll get the nurse to look at it today.”

Dean sits up more, pushing aside the sheets. “Oh, no way. You know you don’t go to the nurse at school, Sammy.”

“I’m almost eighteen, Dean. What’s she going to do?’

Dean ignores him. “It looks infected.”

“I think there’s just some dirt in there or something. It’s – ”

“Give me a look.”

Sam sighs, but gives in, sitting down on the bed. Dean kneels down on the carpet, and grabs his leg. “There’s something in there. Lie down on the bed, I’ll get the stuff.”

There’s no use arguing at this point. He lies down as Dean gets the first aid kit from the bathroom and then sits down at the end of the bed, dragging Sam’s legs over his lap.

“Okay, hold still.”

“Holy fuck, Dean!” He’s digging in with the tweezers. His brother isn’t the most gentle surgeon around.

Dean grips his leg tighter to stop him squirming. “It wouldn’t be so bad if you hadn’t let the skin heal over it, you little brat.”

Sam winces at a particularly bad moment of pain. “I hate you.”

Dean looks up at him right as he says it, at exactly the wrong time. Their eyes meet, and he can tell that Dean knows how much he had meant it.

For a second Dean looks down, flustered. Then he recovers, and resumes what he's doing. A few seconds later he holds up the tweezers. “Here it is. A bit of rock or something. Wanna keep it?”

Sam looks away in disgust, and Dean throws it at him before shoving Sam’s legs off of him and standing up.

Sam sits up, picks up the small shard off the sheet.

“It’s a tooth, Dean.”

Dean’s expression only changes for a second, and he pales slightly. He recovers quickly, and grins. “Good thing you didn’t go to the nurse, then, huh Sammy.”

Sam doesn’t answer. He’s still uncomfortable and vaguely sickened. He keeps remembering that horrible moment of weightlessness, when that thing had tried to drag him under.

Dad had taken another car in an effort towards anonymity, so Dean gives him a lift to school. He's quieter than usual on the way there, and Sam can tell when his brother is pretending not to care about something.

He thinks about apologizing, but that would involve acknowledging what had happened.

“Sammy,” Dean says when they arrive, as Sam is about to get out. “Hey. I… I don’t remember what happened back there. On Friday, I mean.”

Sam shrugs, uncomfortable. He rubs at his wrist.

Dean goes on. He still looks a little sick, Sam notices; his face is still paler than usual. “I mean, if it was bad… you can talk to me about it, you know.” He emphasizes the ‘me’ slightly, as if Sam would possibly have anyone else to talk about it with.

“I’m fine,” Sam says.

“Okay, then,” Dean says uncertainly. “Well. Take care.”

Sam nods, unfolds himself from the car. “I’ll get home by myself,” he says, and closes the door.

Dean turns up at Emma’s house two days later, in the evening when they’re watching TV. He has already started talking to her mother before Sam can get there and intervene.

“…I’m his brother,” Sam hears him saying. “SAMMY!” he hollers past her. Sam cringes.

He smiles as pleasantly as he can at Emma’s mother, and tells her that they need a minute. Then he follows Dean out the front door.

Outside it’s already dark, and getting cold. Sam stops in the driveway. Dean is heading straight back over to the car, like he expects Sam to just follow him.

“So, you found a new family then, Sammy? Who is it, some kid from school?”

Sam folds his arms, uncomfortable. “Yeah. A girl. I’m staying here and studying for a few days.”

For a second Dean looks relieved. “Well, at least it’s a girl.”

“Shut up, Dean.”

Dean leans over the roof of the car. “So. You didn’t feel like telling me before you went off staying with your girlfriend?”

“You wouldn’t have let me go.”

He nods. “Okay. And what was I meant to do if dad got back and you weren’t there, huh, Sammy? How do you think he would have taken that?”

Sam can’t help sneering at the idea. “He wouldn’t have cared.”

Dean nods again. “That’s crap, Sam.”

“Oh yeah? We almost die, and he takes off for a week the next day. Yeah, he cares a whole bunch.”

“He has things to –”

“He handcuffed me to a car, Dean! He can go to hell.”

“Sammy – ”

“Don’t call me that.”

Dean pauses for a second, takes a deep breath. “Get in the car, Sam.”

“No.”

Dean stops, like he hadn’t considered this happening. “Get in the car.”

Sam smiles through his anger. “Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

Dean doesn’t answer, doesn’t react.

When Sam was fifteen and hurt, when he had just gotten back from the hospital after lying to the doctor about the twenty stitches in his leg, he had gone in to their bedroom and told Dean that this was it, Sam was leaving; as soon as he was healed up enough to walk properly he was gone. Dean had been reading something on the bed, and he’d tossed the magazine aside and started on about his usual reasons for why Sam had to stay. About Sam getting put in a home, and his grades, all the arguments that had worked on him up until then.

In retrospect, Sam knows, Dean had been right, Sam had been overconfident. At the time, though, he hadn’t accepted any of it and he had argued past everything: he was old enough defend himself now, he could get through school on his own, he could even get his own money.

Finally Dean had run out of arguments. He was still calm, though, even though Sam had gotten more and more worked up. He had just nodded, and said “I’ll track you down.”

The tone was matter-of-fact, not threatening at all, but it had shut Sam up, and ended the argument. Sam wasn’t old enough at that point to call him on it, ask Dean exactly what he would do after he tracked Sam down. Back then Dean was still bigger than him, and everything else was just implied.

Or so Sam had thought. But now, thinking back, he wonders if maybe this was all that Dean had been threatening. Not violence or anything, just that Dean would do what he’d said he would, he'd track him down, and then Sam would have no choice but to go with him because of his supposed conscience and loyalty. And maybe Sam had known that when he left this time.

Now, Sam takes a deep breath. “I’m not going with you, Dean. I’ll come back when I’m ready.”

And those words are all it takes to change something in Dean’s expression, and Sam knows that he'd been right about the threat. He has won.

Dean’s shoulders slump just a little, but mostly he just seems confused, like he had been back in the hotel room, when Sam told him he hated him. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do.

“Okay. Okay then.” He smiles awkwardly, more like a grimace. “Okay Sammy. Fine.”

He gets in the car, and starts the engine practically before the door is closed.

Sam kind of wants to stop him, to apologize. But it’s too late; Dean is already pulling out of the drive. He watches him leave, watches the car disappear down the quiet street.

Then he turns, and heads back into the warmth of the house.

SPN Fic: He Passes By Me, Part I

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:04:57 GMT

Title: He Passes By Me
Rating: R
Characters: Sam, Dean, John
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Violence, angst, language.
Author's Notes: Pre-series. Weird things start happening during a hunt in New England.
Disclaimer: Step one: post on LJ. Step two: ??? ~~Step three: profit.~~

The old library is empty at this time of night, and the librarian spends a lot of time helping Sam find the books he needs. She helps him bring them all into one of the private study rooms at the back of the library, where Sam opens the first ancient book from top of the stack and starts reading. After a while, she brings him a drink from the coffee machine in her office.

The pile of books is bigger than he’d thought, or at least reading them takes longer; Sam is only halfway through them when the lady comes back to the room and tells him that she's closing up. Dad had told him to argue for more time if he needed it, or ask to bring the books home: Sam is almost eighteen now, but the whole 'maternal pity' thing still works for him most of the time. But tonight he doesn’t have the energy, not after she has been so nice to him.

He messages Dean, and turns down her offer of a lift home. The librarian shows him out, locks the front entrance behind him. Sam attempts to smile reassuringly back at her worried look through the glass.

It’s long since dark, and outside the night is cold and windy. The library’s not far from the town center, but the streets are oddly deserted, even though it’s Friday night. Sam hunches his shoulders and looks down at the pavement, and doesn’t notice his brother until Dean punches him on the shoulder.

Sam looks up at him, then around at the empty street. “Where’s the car?”

“I walked here. Dad said we should stay here until we were done researching.” He holds up a crumpled paper bag. “I brought you dinner.”

“The library’s closed, Dean.”

“So?”

“So, I’m tired. I want to go back to the hotel.”

Dean grins. “You can walk, then.”

Sam glares at him. “The librarian’s still in there.”

“Then we wait.”

He turns away before Sam can answer. Sam had been looking forward to getting home in the warm and forgetting about cult murders for a few hours, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. He follows Dean, away from the main entrance and across the parking lot beside the low building, into the shadows cast by some old, dying trees.

After a few minutes, the librarian appears from the back of the building, holding her bag. Sam watches her get into the lone car in the lot.

Next to him, Dean grins. “You and her having some alone time, Sammy?”

Sam doesn’t answer. The librarian starts her car, and drives away.

“Come on.” Dean grabs at his arm, then heads for the nearest window.

Sam follows, reluctant. “Can’t we just come back tomorrow?”

“Why, you worried about your girlfriend?”

Again, he doesn’t answer. Actually there is a girl, sort of, back where they’re staying in Newport, one who for obvious reasons Dean doesn’t know about. One who still pays attention to Sam even though she knows he lives in a hotel, and who he’d had to lie to about where he was going this weekend. She didn’t need to know about looking into random disappearances in some stupid town no one had ever heard of.

But the librarian, she had been nice to him. Sam doesn’t want the possibility of her finding out that he had broken into the old books collection after she had trusted him, and made him coffee. The thought makes him feel sick.

Dean gets the window open quickly – small town libraries around here aren’t big on security, it seems – and Sam follows him in. He leads Dean through the stacks to the glass cabinet that contains all the old and valuable books. The ones Sam had been reading are still sitting in a pile; she hadn’t resorted them.

Dean starts to pick the lock, but it the glass screen slides open straight away under his hands. She’d forgotten to relock it.

Great. Just his luck. So now if anyone figures out they’ve been here, the librarian will get the blame. She’ll probably lose her job. Sam grabs the books he hadn’t looked through yet, takes them into the same room he’d been in before, and dumps them back on the old wooden table.

At least the room doesn’t have windows, so they can turn the light on. Dean sits down opposite him at the table. “Okay, eat your food. Then we’ll start reading.”

Sam opens the bag Dean had brought him and unpacks his burger and fries, as Dean opens one of the books.

“Oh man,” he says. “Genealogies. I was hoping the whole way here that there would be lots of genealogies, you know. I love genealogies.”

Sam doesn’t respond.

“So what names are we looking for?” He grabs some of Sam’s fries.

“Be careful. Don’t get stuff on the book.”

Dean shrugs. “They didn’t want people to eat near the old books, they should have made photocopies.”

Sam glares at him and doesn’t answer.

“I’m joking, Sam. Christ, what’s up your ass tonight?”

I’m tired and it’s late and I want to go home and that lady was really nice to me, Sam thinks. He shrugs.

Dean stops for a second, like he’s thinking. “You really tired, huh?”

Sam nods.

“Alright. You wanna lie down, I’ll research for a while.”

He looks at his brother cautiously. “Really?”

“Sure. It’s late.”

He nods again. When he's finished his burger, he lies down on the carpet next to the table, folds his jacket up and puts it under his head. In front of him, Dean opens a book.

He’d only really meant to rest his eyes. But he wakes up an hour later, his head hurting from the makeshift pillow and the room still bright around him. Dean isn’t there.

Sam sits up, leaning against the wall behind him. His head is still fuzzy from the sleep and he doesn’t get up straight away, just sits and waits for Dean to come back from the bathroom or wherever he had gone. He doesn’t.

Sam pulls himself up, wincing slightly, and goes out into the main area of the library, which is dark and silent. He calls out ‘Dean’ softly, and then louder, as loud as he dares when he’s inside a building illegally.

No answer.

Sam is getting annoyed now. He checks the bathrooms, goes back into the room to get his phone from his jacket, calls Dean’s cell. No answer.

Inside the room, a book is still open on the table, as if Dean had stared reading and then just gotten up and left.

Sam leaves it there, turns off the light, and crawls back out of the library window. The street is dark and still as ever. He calls out a few more times, louder out here.

Still no answer. The street is still eerily quiet, like not a car had gone by the whole time they were inside the library. Sam really doesn’t like this town.

He tries to think it through. Dean wouldn’t just wander off, not this far. On the other hand, what could have possibly happened to him that Sam wouldn't have heard from a few feet away? He considers it for a few minutes, trying to delay the confusion turning into real fear. It doesn’t work very well.

Finally, he pulls out his cell again. His dad is still downtown, as far as he knows, at the site of the disappearances.

"Dad," he says when he picks up. "Is Dean there with you?"

"No, he’s not. Where are you?”

"At the library still. I can’t find him." He looks around again at the empty street.

A pause. "I'll be there in a minute, Sammy. Stay inside."

Sam closes the phone, heads back across the parking lot and waits by the window. He tries Dean again, without success. His dad arrives within ten minutes.

“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself at night,” he says as he slams the car door behind him.

“It’s just a library, dad.”

John ignores him, and Sam follows him in through the window. He points him towards the room at the back.

“When did he leave?" He turns on the light.

Sam hangs back at the door. "I don’t know."

"You don’t know?"

"I was asleep."

His father looks at him weird for a second, and then nods. Sam stands uncomfortably as John looks over the stack of books, and then at the book that Dean was reading. He examines this one for a little while, reading, and he says “Alright. Come on.”

“Do you know where he is?”

No answer.

“Where are we going?”

Still no answer. Sam follows him back outside and to the car, climbing in the passenger side. He’s getting angry now, on top of the fear. He is acting like this is somehow Sam’s fault.

"Where are we going?" he asks again as John starts the car.

"I’m taking you back to the hotel."

"No way. I’m going to help you look."

"I thought you were tired, Sam."

Sam looks at him angrily. “Don’t try to blame me for this!"

"I’m not blaming you."

"You are –"

"Sam." He cuts him off. "We’re going back to the hotel."

The tone makes Sam want to punch something. He squirms in the seat angrily.

"You take me back there," he says, as firmly as he can, "I’ll just go out and look for him by myself. You can’t stop me."

John doesn’t answer this. He just nods, looking at the road. "You need to go to the bathroom?"

"What?! No." Great, now his dad is treating him like he's eight.

He nods again and pulls up, turns into a parking lot next to what looks like a warehouse. Sam looks around. Like most of the town, the place is empty, and dark.

"What’s this place?"

He opens the door. "Wait here, Sammy."

Sam sighs, leaning impatiently against the passenger door as his dad opens the trunk. He glances out the window. There are barely any streetlights outside. Is anyone even alive in this stupid town? And where the hell could Dean have gone around here?

He sits up only slightly when his dad gets back in the driver's side, still deep in thought. When he grabs Sam’s wrist, Sam barely has time to look at him, confused, before the handcuffs are on.

"Dad!" He pulls back. "Hey! wait! What are you doing?"

It’s already too late. His dad yanks Sam’s wrists forward, pushes a cable tie around the cuff chain and fastens him to the wheel. The whole thing is over in seconds.

"Dad!" Sam yells angrily. "This isn't fair! Let me go!"

"I’m sorry, Sam." He is checking Sam's pockets, pins him when Sam tries to kick him. He pulls out the knife he keeps there and then slides out of the seat, standing up next to the car. "If I tied you up at the hotel, someone might hear."

"Dad!" Sam yells up at him. He hears his voice break slightly. "Dad, please…"

"Sorry, Sammy," he says again. "I’ll try not to be long."

He closes the door. Sam starts to scream. "DAD!!! LET ME GO!!!"

"There’s no one around, son," he says through the glass, and leaves.

Sam attempts to pull free by force, which accomplishes nothing but a lot of pain in his wrists. He tries anyway, trying to break the cable tie, which shows no signs of giving in. He tries biting at it, which doesn’t work. He kicks his legs against the inside of the door, and screams in rage. He’s so angry he almost begins to cry.

After a while, he calms down, or just runs out of energy. Sam leans as far back as he can against the seat, blinking tears out of his eyes.

Outside the car, everything is silent except for the faint sound of the wind. The whole world could have collapsed into the void for all he can tell.

Okay, Sam thinks. He can get out of this. He might not have anything to pick the lock with, but he’s got his phone, right? Dad hadn’t taken that.

With some awkward maneuvering, Sam manages to retrieve the cell from his jacket pocket. He flips it open, looks at the screen.

Calling the cops is usually a big no, of course. But this is an emergency. Dean is missing, and it’s obviously serious, judging by his dad's actions.

Maybe Sam can somehow get the cops to come and cut him loose, and then try to talk them out of anything else. He’s got fake ID, and there’s a chance they won’t ask too many questions about the car. Dad and Dean will kill him, but he can worry about that later, right?

Sam puts his finger on the ‘nine’ button, and the phone rings.

Sam jumps and almost drops it, which would have been disastrous, since he can't reach the floor. He manages to get a grip on it, and sees that the caller ID says ‘Dean.’

Grinning with relief, he maneuvers the phone to his ear. “Dean?!”

“Sammy?”

“Where the hell are you?”

Dean laughs. “I’m in a bar, dude.” His voice is slurred.

“What the hell, Dean? Me and dad have been looking for you!”

A pause. “Okay. Where are you?”

“I’m tied up in the fucking car, Dean! Dean, dad’s really worried about you. He – ”

“I’ll come get you, Sammy. Where are you exactly?”

“In a parking lot off Aylesbury Street, near the river. But Dean, you should – ”

“I’ll call him. Wait there for me.” He hangs up.

Sam closes his phone, confused.

He waits, leaning forward against the wheel to take the pressure off his sore wrists. He’d been expecting a car to pull up, or something, but apparently Dean had walked here, because Sam doesn’t hear him approach. He starts when Dean pulls open the driver’s door.

He should feel ridiculous, tied to the wheel like this, but he’s too confused.

“Shove over.”

Sam moves across as far as he can to give Dean room to sit down, and Dean pulls out his knife from his jacket and quickly cuts through the cable tie.

“Thanks.” Sam says uncertainly. He moves back further towards the passenger door.

Dean nods.

Something’s wrong, Sam thinks.

Well obviously something’s wrong, but this is something else, something worse than Dean just wandering off. He watches as Dean puts the knife away in his jacket, retrieves his keys and starts the engine.

“I called dad,” Dean says vaguely as they pull out of the lot. “He said take you back to the hotel.”

“Where did he go? Did he steal a car again?”

Dean shrugs.

Sam frowns. “Dean, are - are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Sammy.”

“Where – where did you go? From the library, I mean.”

He shrugs again. He turns a corner, following the river, in the exact opposite direction of the hotel. Sam waits for an explanation - even an excuse would be okay at this point - but Dean just keeps driving.

Sam shifts uncomfortably. The cuffs feel heavy on his wrists.

He should have called dad again, he thinks.

Dean doesn’t speak as he drives, doesn’t look at him. Sam wishes he could stir up more of a reaction in himself, wishes that he didn’t feel so resigned.

Outside, the night goes by, the sparse town getting sparser. “We’re not going to the hotel, are we,” he says finally.

“No, we’re not.”

“You didn’t call dad.”

Dean shrugs.

Sam bites his lip. Dean keeps his eyes on the dark road.

Sam’s phone is still next to him, on the seat. He draws his knees up slightly to block Dean's view, and then inconspicuously as he can, flips it open beside him.

“Where are we going?” he asks, to distract him. He starts to dial.

Dean ignores the question, holds out his hand. “Give me the phone.”

“No.”

He glances over. “Give me the phone, Sam.”

Sam gives him the phone.

Dean reads the number on the screen, smiles, closes the phone, and puts in his pocket.

They drive for a long time. Dean is following the river towards the coast. Eventually he pulls off the road, into a gravel lot. Sam can hear the ocean faintly over the wind, and as Dean stops the car, he can see in the dim moonlight that they're on top of a low hill that leads down to the shore.

Dean gets out of the car. He goes around to the passenger side, opens the door, and when he leans over to grab him Sam kicks him in the stomach.

Dean recovers quickly, blocking Sam’s next blow. He grabs Sam, yanking him roughly up out of the seat, and throws him hard down on the ground beside the car.

The impact knocks the wind out of him, and for a couple of seconds nothing in his brain fits together. Sam lies, choking, looks up in the dark, as Dean stands over him.

He crouches down beside him then, and pulls Sam up into a sitting position, brushes gravel off his back.

“Come on,” he says, and hauls him up, gently enough, as if Sam had just fallen.

Sam still can’t breathe right. His mind isn’t working. Dean puts an arm around him to keep him upright, and starts leading him across the lot, towards the sea.

“We just have to see some people, Sammy,” he says next to Sam’s ear.

It’s cold, the wind stronger here than it was in town. In front of them the sea is black, faint lines of foam the only thing visible. Beside it, on the shore, he can just make out a group of people. They're standing together on the sand, watching them come near.

There’s a rough path leading down to the shore, and Dean starts to lead him down it, between groups of black rocks.

“Dean.” His voice is still weak, breaking. “Who are they.”

No answer.

“What are they going to do?”

Dean looks at him, face slightly confused in the weak light, like he hadn’t considered that question before and can't imagine why Sam is asking it. He shrugs slightly and doesn’t answer.

Sam’s breath is coming back, and he pulls away, weakly. “Dean. Dean, are you insane? They’re going to hurt us!”

Dean looks puzzled still, his grip hard on Sam’s arm, around his shoulder. “Why would they do that?”

The people coming up to meet them now. Three men, and a woman, and they have guns, and when he sees that, and Dean's look, somehow it just doesn’t seem worth it to fight anymore.

They pull him away from Dean, and Dean lets them do it. They lead him down towards the beach. Dean is with them.

The people don’t even look at Sam, or talk to him. He doesn't bother asking them questions. The biggest one pushes down hard on his shoulder, until Sam gets the idea and sits down in the sand. The woman sits down in front of him and begins tying his legs up with rope.

Sam doesn’t resist. He’s learned well by now when it is worth trying to reason with someone, or appealing to their conscience, or trying to bargain. And none of those things seem to apply now.

“Why are you upset?” Dean asks him from where he’s standing next to him. “What’s wrong?”

Sam doesn’t answer.

“Sit down there,” the woman says to Dean, and he sits down in the sand next to Sam. He turns to her, like he's suddenly mildly interested. “What’s going on, anyway?”

Sam knows he should be paying attention to this, trying to find out what's going to happen, what exactly has happened to Dean. But he can’t dredge up the interest. He stares down at the damp sand.

“You just have to sit down and wait here,” the woman says to Dean.

“Wait for who?” Dean asks, his tone still casual. They ignore him.

Sam has started to figure it out. “I think we’re bait, Dean,” he says wearily.

“What?”

No one answers. One of them is tying Dean’s wrists now.

“I don’t want to be bait!” Dean pushes the guy away, and stands up. The man yells something at him.

It’s in another language, one that Sam’s never heard before, and Dean shouldn’t understand it. But he goes quiet instantly, as if he had just lost an argument.

“Sit down,” the man says, and Dean sits down.

Sam bites his lip, and looks back down at the sand.

They tie Dean's wrists, and then tie him to Sam, back to back, a few feet from where the waves are reaching. Sam doesn’t resist. He just feels tired.

“You have any weapons on you?” one of the men asks Dean.

“Knife. Inside my jacket.”

Even after everything he has seen already, Sam still winces.

The man takes the knife. The people stand over them for a few seconds, and then as a group, turn away.

Part II

SPN Crossover Fic: Broken Man

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:17:16 GMT

Title: Broken Man
Rating: R
Pairing: It’s a surprise!
Spoilers: None.
Author's Notes: Pre-series. I’m not posting this anywhere because it’s crap.
Warnings: Slight incesty themes. Regardless of possible timeline issues, let’s assume everyone in this story is over eighteen.
Disclaimer: Step one: post on LJ. Step two: ??? ~~Step three: profit.~~

It’s not like Dean was out looking for trouble. Or looking for anything, really. He hasn’t had a night off for ages, yeah, but he’s tired and this side of town is a hole. And then there’s the mood he’s in.

Dad had said that he needed a rest. That was no good reason to blow Dean off for the night, though; Dean had needed a rest a week ago. Dean’s pissed off at him for that, and for all the weird secrecy he’s had going on this hunt, and all he is really aiming for now is a few drinks alone before heading back to the trailer. Maybe falling asleep alone on the sofa in a drunken stupor, if he’s lucky enough.

The bar is nearly empty. Dean looks at his beer bottle and ignores the crappy music, and doesn’t notice the girl come in until she’s next to him and says “What a dump.”

He only has to raise his eyes a little to see that the few others in the bar have noticed her. It’s hard not to. She swings her leg over the bar stool and rests her weight on it, leaning over the bar.

Dean raises his eyebrows slightly. She is hot. Way too hot to fit in to how his night is going. “You’re not from around here.”

“Is it the ten fingers that gives it away?”

Dean looks at her, confused, his mind fuzzy from the beer and the surprise. She hits him on the arm, which makes him flinch a little. “A little joke, buddy. You’re not from around here, either.”

“No, I guess I’m not.” He frowns. “So can I buy you a beer?”

“Nice one,” she says, and Dean nods at the bartender, who is staring at the girl like he’s about to drop his glass.

“I’m Dean,” he says.

She grins. “Dean,” she repeats, as if she’s trying out the name. The bartender puts a bottle in front of her, and she takes a drink of it. She’s wearing dark lipstick.

Dean would be quite turned on already by now, if this clearly wasn’t way too good to be true. “What are you doing in this dump?” It comes out less like a pickup line and more like interrogation.

“Looking for someone, actually.”

He’d known it was too good to be true. “Who?”

“It you that owns that car outside?”

Dean grins, despite himself, and doesn’t say actually, it’s my dad’s although that's the truth.

Maybe it is just his lucky day. He’s pretty sure God owes him at least one of those at this point. Fuck it, he may as well jump right in. “Wanna come back to my place?”

She smiles back and says. “Thought you’d never ask.”

Dean stands up, holds out his hand to help her off the stool. He lets his suspicions fade away into the background. He’s too tired to hold on to them right now.

Outside the street is empty, the bare asphalt of the parking lot shiny in the wet. Dean kisses her as soon as they’re in the car, barely pulling the door closed before sliding his hand up her leg. She grins against his mouth and grabs on to his hand, moving it up and pushing it against the front of her jeans. He fumbles with her belt for a few seconds to get his hand down the front, crawling closer awkwardly in the cramped front seat, kissing her neck.

She smells like – well, he can’t really identify it, it’s smoke and fresh sweat and something else, not bad, but not like a girl: it’s like she had been in that bar for too long.

“Fuck it,” Dean mumbles against her throat. “Here.” He doesn’t care they’re in an open car park, hell even if they get arrested, it’ll serve dad right if he has to pick him up from a jail cell somewhere –

She shakes her head, and Dean wrenches himself off her and sits up, because any argument will just mean more time between now and sex. He starts the car.

It’s not far, and his brain isn’t working well, so they’re almost there by the time he starts wondering what she will think when she sees that he lives in a trailer. But she doesn’t look surprised when they pull in to the park. Dean is so relieved at that, he doesn’t notice until he’s pulled up.

The light inside the trailer is on.

Fuck, he thinks.

The other car is there, too, next to the front door.

Dean shakes his head, and starts to turn the keys in the ignition. “Hey, uh, maybe we should find a motel.” But she is already opening the car door.

He sighs and gets out as well, slamming the door hard after him.

He barely gets there ahead of her, through the mud and up the stairs where he opens the crappy screen door.

Sure enough, his father is there, sitting at the table in the tiny kitchen area.

Dean had expected that as soon as he saw the light on. What he hadn’t expected was the way his dad stands up sharply as they come in, like Dean bringing a girl home when he is meant to be alone is some huge breach of conduct.

“Hi, dad,” Dean says.

His father is looking past him, at the girl. Dean glances at her. “Uh, this is, uh - ”

“Faith,” John says.

“John,” the girl says, and grins.

Dean freezes, and looks between them in a way that would probably be funny if the joke wasn’t entirely on him.

So, it was too good to be true. She had known who Dean was from the beginning. He feels – well, he feels almost hurt, which is ridiculous of course, he’s just met the girl, it’s stupid –

“Hunt was a bust,” John says, and although he is saying it to Dean, he still doesn’t take his eyes off the girl. “Think I know why now.”

Faith grins. She steps forward, pushing past Dean, and punches John lightly on the arm. “Just helping you out, Johnny-boy.”

He doesn’t react, and she looks only slightly disconcerted at the fact. “You did a lot of damage helping me out.”

Dean can’t stand this any more. “What’s going on, dad?” He’d meant to sound angry, but his voice comes out all weak and confused.

“You should go to bed, Dean,” John says, still without looking at him. He and Faith are eyeing each other off, and Dean feels so out of place it’s not funny.

“But – ”

“Dean,” he says again, warning in his voice. Dean folds.

Bed is just that, a bed at the other end of the trailer, with a red curtain that you can pull across it for privacy. Dean goes through the living room area and sits down on the edge of the bed, leaving the two of them glaring at each other. He’s more confused now than anything else. Why is she here? And more importantly, why is his dad letting her act like this?

This is wrong. The alcohol and the hormones are still all through his brain, and he can’t accept this situation, can’t dredge up any of the right feelings. He is coming down fast, but it’s not fast enough.

He starts to take off his boots, and across the trailer Faith sits down at the small table, picks up the open beer there and takes a swig. After a second, his dad sits back down as well. He glances over at Dean, and Dean quickly lies back on the bed and pulls the curtain closed, turning the small area all red-colored dark.

Inside he pulls off his jacket, takes his pistol out from the waistband of his jeans where it’s digging in to his back.

His dad knows what he’s doing, he tells himself. But it’s weird. The girl’s not even armed. Dean definitely would have figured it out before if she was carrying any hidden weapons; their short time in the car had been more effective than a body search in that regard.

“Why Dean?” John asks her. Dean can still make out the words clearly, despite the distance and the slightly lowered voices.

“He’s a good looking boy,” she says, and Dean can hear that she’s smiling. “Takes after his father.”

John sighs. “What do you want, Faith.” His voice is tired and flat.

“That’s a bit rude, Johnny. I just came to tell you your services are no longer needed in this town. So you can take a break. Relax a bit.”

“Okay. Message received,” John says, and in the dark across the room, Dean frowns at how accommodating he’s being. His dad doesn’t just back out of hunts like that. “We’re not moving on just yet, though.”

“No problem, babe. Stick around. But leave the hunting around here to me. You need a break.”

There’s a moment of silence. “Okay. You done?”

“Not yet.”

He sighs again. Dean hears another grin in her voice. “Can I say goodnight to your son?”

“Dean’s asleep.”

Faith laughs. “I guess he is. I must say, I like seeing you in authority, John.”

No answer. Then a chair squeaks on the linoleum: she’s moving. Dean still has his hand on the gun: he turns slightly towards the curtain, sees the vague form move in the light coming through the fabric.

“What are you doing.” His dad just sounds tired still, and even more fed up.

“Wanna see if I can complete the Winchester trifecta in one night, Johnny.”

“Trifecta means three, Faith. And speaking of that, if I see you anywhere near my other son, I’ll–”

“What?” Her voice is lower now, all breathy.

There’s a pause, another noise like a chair moving, and Dean can’t resist. He sits up a little, silent, so that he’s up close against the wall at the head of the bed, and then moves the separating curtain back just slightly, looking through the tiny opening.

Faith has pushed the table back from where his father is sitting, and is now sliding one leg over his lap. His dad is impassive. Apparently he’s only angry at the implication about Sam. He doesn’t resist at all.

Dean bites his lip, even more confused now. Is this girl dangerous or something? Why hadn’t his dad signaled for help? He grips the gun tighter through the thin layer of sweat that’s built up on the skin of his hand.

Across the room Faith takes hold of his father’s hands, gently, moving them up over her waist, and Dean looks away, embarrassed.

It takes him about two seconds to look back, though, and he sees Faith move his hands up over her front, smiling still, all playful, in a way that makes Dean’s stomach tighten. John still doesn’t resist.

“You’ll what, John?” she asks again. “Is he not as easy as Dean?”

Dean catches his breath. He is hurt and jealous and god it’s not fair for him to see this, not after he'd been cut off before like that. He can’t look away.

John doesn’t answer her question, looking past her, and she leans forward. “Tell me what you’ll do.”

“You should go, Faith.”

Faith takes a deep breath, and then sighs, apparently making a decision. She stands up, picks up the beer, and Dean drops the curtain back quickly as she turns around.

He breathes in deep, and he’s half relieved, half – no, fuck that thought. He wants this over, wants them both to leave so he can feel sorry for himself and jerk off.

From the other side of the curtain, Faith speaks up. “Guess I’ll go find the other Winchester now, then, sir.”

There is a crash that makes Dean jump, and the sound of the beer bottle breaking on the floor. He grabs the curtain and pushes it open enough to see that John has grabbed her, pressing her back against the edge of the table.

Dean moves to take the safety off the gun, but Faith doesn’t look scared or angry at all, the same grin on her face. She wraps an arm around John’s neck, pulls him closer, pressing against him.

“Yeah John,” she says softly. “That’s the spirit.”

Dean draws in a breath, and then bites down on his lip so hard it hurts.

His father steps back, and for the millisecond Dean thinks he’s going to say no, that it is over.

But then he’s grabbed her and Dean bites down harder as his father quickly gets open her belt – no fumbling there this time – and turns her around, pushing her over the table.

Dean shuts his eyes, and holds his breath as he tries to control the wave of lust that rushes through him. He can’t help it; the hormones are still there in his blood, and the wrongness of it just makes it stronger.

When he opens his eyes his father is undoing his own jeans, and Dean shouldn’t be watching, he knows it, but he can’t drag his eyes away from the sight. In his lap, the sweat is making the gun slippery in his hand, the metal heating up under his skin.

He holds in his breath, and watches.

John slides in easily, she’s probably still slick from Dean’s hand, and that thought makes Dean go from almost-hard to suddenly desperate. The air around him is close, and he can still smell her on his clothes, on his hands. It’s sick as fuck, he knows, but he can’t help it. He’s never felt anything like this, and he can’t think through the thick spell of lust.

Dean lets go of the gun, and pushes his hand down the front of his jeans, not moving, just keeping it there as he watches them, keeping his eyes on her, focusing on her face. His dad has one arm wrapped around her, across her breasts, and Faith is holding on to it, head leaning forward. She is quiet, which wasn’t what Dean would have expected.

The lack of movement is torture, and he bites down harder on his lip, trying to keep as still and silent as he can.

Her hair is blocking most of the view, but Dean can see enough of her face to see that the sarcastic expression is gone; like everything she had said to his dad before had just been an act, like this actually means something, and she hadn’t lost that look no matter what Dean was doing to her, and that hurts. He wants to be the one having that effect on her.

His father pulls out, turns her over, brushing hair out of her face as she wraps her arms around him. Dean lets his hand move now, silent and terrified but blocking out everything else, imagining it’s him instead, what it’s like to be inside her, making her look like that.

It doesn’t take much, a particular movement or a moan on her part, and then it’s over, Dean's body seizing up silently, trapped in the dark room.

Shuddering with horror, he barely hears them finish.

Dean lies, hot and sticky, staring up at the dark. Across the trailer, there’s clothing sounds.

And the attitude is back again already, he can hear it in her voice. “Well. Great to do this again, Johnny, but I gotta go.”

“I’ll give you a lift back into town,” his father says.

“What, and protect me from the weirdos around here? I’ve got it covered, thanks.”

Dean waits for him to argue, but he doesn’t.

“Great times,” Faith says, and then her voice drops, like she’s speaking close. “Say good night to Dean for me.”

Silence. She laughs, almost nastily, and then the door slams.

The chair scrapes on the linoleum slightly as his father sits back down.

Dean lies still. He hardly dares to move.

He is afraid now, and that’s okay, because fear is easier to deal with than self-disgust. There is only one bed in this place, and if his father comes over here now he will know. He’ll be able to smell it and he’ll know.

And of course it’s stupid to even worry about that, because his dad couldn’t possibly believe that Dean hadn’t heard what had just happened. But they will both pretend that he hadn’t anyway, Dean knows this, just like they pretend that Sam never existed, and that his dad never gets drunk, and a thousand other little things.

But if Dean gets up now to clean himself up, his dad will see him, and they’ll have to acknowledge each other, and he’s not sure even they can keep up the pretense that far.

Silent as he can, Dean wipes his sticky hand on the sheets beside him, slides the gun safely under the pillow next to the wall. When he’s sure his dad hadn’t heard, or that he had at least pretended not to hear, he eases himself over so that he’s next to the wall as well, as far away as possible from the curtain. He turns over to face the wall, and closes his eyes.

When John comes to bed an hour later, Dean isn’t any closer to sleep. He lies still as his father pulls the sheets across him, his weight shifting the old mattress under where he’s lying. He can still smell her on him.

After a few minutes of silence, he reaches over and squeezes Dean on the arm. Dean doesn’t move.

“She’s bad news, son,” his father says.

Dean nods, just enough for his father to be able to see the movement in the darkness, and John lets go.

Dean keeps his eyes closed, and stays still. Next to him he feels his father turn on to his back, and they both pretend to sleep.

SPN Fic: Alone So Far, Pt. II

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:28:05 GMT

In retrospect, motel rooms actually aren’t that bad, Sam thinks. Sure, they might be dull and noisy and cramped. And a lot of the times the rooms they stay in are dirty, and strange people are always coming to the door and trying to sell you things. And you can’t ever tell people you live in a hotel because then they will think you’re weird or worse, they’ll get interested in you. But hotel rooms usually have electricity and hot water.

This house is big, and was probably quite nice about a hundred years ago, but now the hot water’s been cut off because no one lives here. It’s cold, and when Sam wants to actually wash himself he has to boil water in a kettle and pour it into the bath.

It’s probably only for a night or two, dad had said when Sam complained. That was four days ago. Dad doesn’t even bother making up lies and stories like Dean does. He’d just acted like it didn’t matter that there’s no hot water.

By the time the last kettle’s heated on the portable stove, the rest of the water in the bath is already lukewarm. It’s barely at body temperature when Sam gets in.

He grits his teeth, and frowns down into the water as he lies back. Not that a bath will really get him clean, anyway, he’s probably lying in a bunch of dirt for all he can see. The room’s dim; there’s just the flashlight on the sink which does practically nothing.

This sucks. When dad gets back he’s going to –

The bathroom door slams open. Sam sits up sharply and pulls his knees up to his chest, splashing water over the rim of the bath.

“Jesus Dean, have you heard of privacy?!”

Dean smiles at him. “Sorry dude, I gotta go. The other toilet’s broken.”

Sam glares back, and then averts his eyes when Dean starts undoing his pants.

“How’s the bath?” he says over his shoulder.

“It’s stupid.”

“Well, no one’s forcing you to have one, remember.”

“I have to go to school tomorrow, Dean. I don’t want to smell as bad as you.”

Dean shrugs and zips up his jeans, flushing the toilet. He grins at Sam in the mirror as he washes his hands. Sam pulls his knees up a little more as Dean turns around, looking down at him.

“Come on Sammy,” he says. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Sam drops his gaze down at the water, and feels the blush spread from his face and neck, down his front.

Dean comes closer, and messes Sam’s hair as he goes past. Sam doesn’t look up, frozen. He wants to disappear.

Dean pulls the door almost-closed after him. The room’s quiet again.

Sam’s mind is racing. Guilt and horror and the shiver of pleasure the memory brings up, so strong it makes him want to die. The shame is like something living. The place they were in before this, where it was too cold to go outside and a few nights Dean had obviously been getting them both drunk but Sam had drunk anyway, and then the next day they both acted like they didn’t remember anything.

You’re meant to keep these things separate, keep them dark and close and covered up, not bring them out when it’s light and you can see each other. And Dean doesn’t get that, just like he doesn’t get that you’re meant to knock on doors, and leave people alone in bathrooms, and not interrogate them about their girlfriends when they’re fourteen.

Dean doesn’t understand that, not at all, and the thought makes Sam feel alone.

He stays there, still, for a long time.

Finally the water gets too cold to put off action any longer, and Sam pulls himself out of the bath. He puts on his clothes, switches off the flashlight, and creeps down the hallway, across the dusty bare floorboards, into what passes for the bedroom.

The candles Dean had lit earlier are out. In the light from the bare window Sam can make out his brother’s form on the mattress in the corner, sprawled out under his sleeping bag. Dean is still.

Sam could take his own sleeping bag now, and go into the other room. The floor would be less comfortable than the mattress, of course, but it would mean he wouldn’t have to think about this any more.

But just the thought fills him with a kind of dull emptiness, as well as something else, something that’s almost fear.

He stands for a little while, thinking it over, and the more he does the angrier he gets. He hates Dean. Hates him for opening the door on him and never leaving him alone when he wants to be, and he hates dad for leaving them here with no hot water, and he hates Dean for saying that, and most of all he hates himself, because he still wants to stay here, and sleep next to him.

As quietly as possible, Sam moves over to the corner and then crawls onto the makeshift bed.

The mattress shifts under his weight and Dean starts awake, his hand jerking up under the pillow for the revolver he keeps there. Sam freezes.

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean says and lies back down, closing his eyes.

Sam pulls his unzipped sleeping bag up around him, squeezing into the space between Dean and the wall.

Next to him, Dean lets go of the hidden gun and squeezes him on the shoulder. “Christ Sammy, you’re freezing.”

Sam shrugs.

“Seriously, dude. When you see ice in the water, it’s time to get out of the bath.”

Sam kicks him. But he doesn’t push Dean away, lets him rub his shoulder. His hand is warm. After a few seconds of thinking, Sam slides back so he is closer.

Dean smirks against the back of his head and says “You girl,” but he unzips his own sleeping bag and covers him with it. He moves forward then, wraps an arm around Sam’s waist, one hand on his stomach, just a little too low to be comfortable. His other hand slides back under the pillow toward the gun. Dean is like a furnace, and the sudden warmth makes him shiver.

“I was having this weird-ass dream,” he says behind Sam’s ear, voice still low from sleep but otherwise completely normal, like they’re just sitting next to each other on the sofa. “You and dad were….”

His voice drones on. He slides his knee in between Sam’s legs, and Sam feels his fingers shift on the gun he’s holding. Dean is relaxed, comfortable against him. Eventually he trails off, falls asleep still coiled around him.

It takes a long time for Sam to follow him.

When Sam get out from school the next day Dean’s waiting to pick him up in the car.

He’s gazing happily out of the window as Sam climbs in. “I tell you Sammy, this place is making me want to go back to school.”

“Just make sure you stay in the car and don’t talk to anyone,” Sam mumbles.

Dean ignores the comment and grins at a passing girl. Sam doesn’t bother to check her reaction; she’ll smile back, they always do with Dean. He pulls a book out of his bag and opens it.

Dean starts the car, and pulls out. “So, you got a girlfriend yet?”

Sam doesn’t look up from his book. “I’ve been here four days, Dean.”

He glances over at him. “I worry about you, you know.”

“Well, why don’t you stop it.” Sam looks up finally as he turns a corner. “Where are we going?”

Dean grins. “Secret.”

He frowns. “This isn’t some stupid training thing with dad, is it?”

Dean doesn’t answer, still grinning.

Sam scowls at him but says nothing. He’s not going to play along with this crap, not today. He hates it here, it’s cold, he barely slept last night, and there’s still no hot water at home.

They head into a part of town that Sam hasn’t seen before, not that that’s saying much. Down a quiet, narrow street, then into a parking lot of a tiny motel. The sign as they pass reception says ‘Rooms By The Hour’.

“What are we – ”

Dean stops the car, grabs the canvas bag that’d been resting beside him on the seat, and holds up a key. “Get out.”

Sam takes his knapsack and opens the passenger door, glancing around apprehensively. To say the area looks seedy would be unfair to all the seedy places he’s stayed at. Luckily there’s no one around.

He follows Dean into one of the rooms, looks around nervously at the décor and the double bed. He can’t allow the idea to actually surface, not even after last night, and it manifests as a vague unease, growing heavy in his stomach.

Dean passes the bed and opens the door to the bathroom, grins and tosses the bag to him. Sam barely catches it.

“There you go. Shower.”

Sam looks down, opens the bag. Dean had collected his toiletries from the bathroom at home: soap, shampoo, towels.

“Get in, dude,” he goes on. “I’ll wait out here.”

Sam looks up. Dean is smiling hopefully.

Sam feels terrible.

“No, Dean. You go first.”

“Why?” His face turns to concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. But – I mean, you need it more. I mean, not that you – ” He stumbles, and Dean smiles.

“Okay. Bitch.”

He grabs the bag back off Sam and goes into the bathroom, closes the door half-way. The water starts.

Sam doesn’t trust the bed, so he sits down on the only chair. There’s tacky art on the walls, and porno adverts all over the TV, which looks like it is operated by a coin.

He opens his bag and tries to read his book, but he can’t concentrate. He still feels edgy and nervous and scared, even more than he should in a place like this, and he doesn’t know why.

After a while he hears movement in the next room, although the water’s still on. “It’s all yours, Sammy,” Dean calls.

Inside the tiny bathroom, Dean is sitting on the closed toilet, pulling on his boots.

Sam stops. Maybe this is why he was nervous.

He could wait, or ask Dean to leave, but it would be weird at this point, after Dean's done this for him.

He undresses without looking up, so he can’t tell if Dean is looking, if he’s deliberately doing this because of last night or if he still just doesn’t get it. Sam’s heart is beating too strong, his mind racing, and he can feel himself blushing.

He gets into the shower quickly and pulls the curtain closed. As soon as the water hits him he feels better. He’d been so nervous he’d forgotten how much he missed the feel of real hot water. Sam takes a deep breath, feels his heartbeat slow. He hadn’t realized how stiff his muscles were; he’s been cold so long it’s like it’s seeped inside him.

Sam stays in the shower for a long time, and at some point he hears Dean go back into the bedroom and turn on the TV.

He gets dressed in the bathroom afterwards. Dean stands up as he comes back into the room, shutting the television off quickly. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” he says. Dean turns to go. “Hey, Dean.”

Dean stops, and Sam struggles with the word. “Thanks.”

He shrugs. “No problem. Just don’t tell dad. He’ll ask about where I got the money.”

Sam nods, and Dean turns to go again. Sam grabs his arm, and as he turns around Sam hugs him.

He hadn’t planned on doing it, it just seems right. Dean starts slightly, but relaxes, pats him on the back. “Hey, I told you it’s okay.”

Sam shakes his head. Dean’s skin is still all warm and soft from the shower. When Sam doesn’t let go, he laughs uneasily. “I think this place has been getting to you, Sammy.”

Sam still doesn’t let go, and Dean moves back slightly, tense, shifting back. And Sam can feel why; it’s not really a surprise, after what Dean was watching on TV.

Dean swallows, and Sam feels him shake his head slightly. He thinks he might pull away, but Dean doesn’t move. He exhales as Sam shifts slightly, his fingers closing absently around Sam’s wrist. He feels Dean breath again as he guides Sam's hand, presses it against him.

He undoes Dean’s jeans, and Dean inhales sharply when he touches him. Sam pulls back enough to see; he’s staring over Sam’s shoulder, eyes unfocused as Sam shifts his grip. “Fuck.”

Sam can’t think, his mind is full of static. He is still pressed awkwardly against Dean, free hand grabbing at somewhere on Dean’s back. He can feel Dean breathing, moaning under his breath. Sam keeps going, eyes closed, the racing in his mind blurring as he focuses only on that, on Dean’s own hand still guiding him, moving faster with his heartbeat.

Dean grabs down on his wrist tighter. “Look at me,” he says.

Sam opens his eyes and looks and sees his brother’s face, flushed, close.

“You let me see you,” Dean says, voice low, broken. “In the bathroom. That was good.”

Sam can’t meet his gaze, looks at the ground, and Dean squeezes his wrist. “No, Sammy, look at me. Let me see.”

He looks up into Dean's eyes again, flinching, and this is worse than before, worse than being naked.

As soon as he does it Dean grabs him harder, hand clamping down on his wrist so that Sam’s forced closer against him. Sam feels him shudder.

He holds on to Sam tight for a few seconds, too tight, so it feels like the bones in his shoulders will break. Then he pulls away. He doesn’t look at him now, avoids his face.

“I’ll pack up,” he says.

Sam stands awkwardly, his mind still fuzzy. Dean comes back out of the bathroom a minute later with a wad of toilet paper that he uses to wipe Sam’s hand. He throws it in the bin. He’s already normal again; he’s stopped avoiding Sam’s gaze.

He grabs the canvas bag. “Let’s go.”

Sam picks up his knapsack and follows him outside, but stops near the car.

“What is it?”

Sam doesn’t even know what it is. His wet hair stings in the cold. The air is freezing after the hot water on his skin. “Dad will find out,” he says eventually.

“About this place? No way, I made sure – ”

He shakes his head and Dean stiffens only slightly as he catches on. “He’ll know,” Sam goes on, although the words don’t really describe what he's afraid of; he doesn’t know exactly what he’s afraid of. “They’ll know.”

He bites his lip as Dean looks at him carefully. He wants Dean to know what he means, to read his mind, even though he can barely read it himself.

Dean does seem to get it to some extent, because he doesn’t attempt to answer him, just reaches forward and squeezes his arm. “Come on, Sammy. it’ll be fine. Let’s go home.”

He leads him over to the passenger side. Glances over at Sam after he gets in.

“It’ll be fine, Sam,” he says again before he starts the engine. “Alright?”

Sam nods, and pulls his jacket around him tighter.

The sun’s going down as the two of them walk back through the desert towards the car, and Sam looks like an extra from a horror movie. The dumb kid had been standing right in the direction of the splatter when John shot the thing. He could have hit Sam instead, and now they’ve got the blood to worry about that is a big neon welcome sign for evil.

John had brought some water along, and he’s already washed Sam’s face and hands, but it’s still dripping off his clothes, leaving a trail. The boy stinks like hell, literally.

He’s following half a step behind his father, and John can tell he’s guilty because he’s even angrier than usual. When they’re almost at the road he trips over something, cursing loudly, and John turns to wait for him, impatient.

Sam pulls himself up, sand sticking to the blood all down his front, and wipes his hands on his jeans, looking utterly disgusted at the world.

John shakes his head slightly. “You said you would run, Sammy.”

Sam gives his usual angry glare through his wet hair. “I thought you could use my help, sir.”

“You won’t be much help when you’re dead.” John stops to look at him more closely: it’s hard to see well in the fading light. “You are alright, aren't you?”

Sam tries to wipe sand off his clothes, and ends up just spreading it around more. “I’m fine. And I thought you would want to attract more of those things.”

“Not after dark. And I’m not using a seventeen-year-old as bait. No matter how much he deserves it.”

Sam looks like he’s about to reply, but John doesn’t wait, starts walking again. He is relieved to see the car ahead of them on the side of the empty road, glass reflecting dimly in the faint light.

Sam reaches the passenger side and stands next to it, hunched over awkwardly.

“Strip off,” John says. He ignores Sam’s scowling and opens the trunk to get supplies: garbage bag, gasoline, another bottle of water. Sam peels off his shirts and drops them in the bag John holds out, then his shoes and socks and finally jeans. He stops then, looking up warily.

“Everything, son.”

Sam looks at the ground, scowling, then strips off his boxers as well, leaning forward to hide himself as much as possible.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” John says absently, and then Sam collapses.

John drops the bag, and gets down on the ground where Sam’s curled up against the side of the car. His eyes are closed tight, and he seems to be having some sort of fit.

“Sammy. Sam.” He taps his cheek with his hand. No response.

It’s almost dark now, and there’s still the blood to worry about. John picks up the bottle of water and pours it over him, washing off any traces of blood he can see. Sam doesn’t react to this at all.

John stands up and gets a blanket out of the back seat of the car. By the time he’s back and wrapping it around him Sam has opened his eyes.

“Come on, Sammy,” he says to him. “Come up and sit in the car.”

He lets John help him stand up. He’s covered in sand, and one thing John hadn’t thought to bring was a change of clothes big enough for the kid, so there’s not much else he can do in that department except hold the blanket around him.

He maneuvers Sam into the passenger seat and closes the door behind him, then gets in the other side long enough to pour him a cup of coffee from the thermos on the dashboard.

He holds it out, and after a second Sam takes the cup without looking at him. With his other hand he’s still holding the blanket around him tightly.

“Stay here a minute, Sam.”

Outside, John burns the clothes – you don’t want to attract these things near a road, no matter how deserted – and then washes his own hands to be sure, throws away the empty bottle. Inside the car, Sam is still staring into nothing. He looks angry, though, which is a good sign, shows he’s getting back to normal.

John sits down again on the driver’s side. Next to him Sam stays silent, holding the cup.

“Sammy,” he says finally. “You wanna talk about what happened there?”

He doesn’t answer.

John tries more direct approach. “Somebody hurt you, Sam?”

“No,” he says sullenly.

“You sure?”

“I was tired, that’s all. Can we just go home?” he asks sourly. Water is dripping off his hair.

“No, we can’t.”

“I want to go home.”

John doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to say too bad, we’re in the middle of nowhere and you’re naked and we’re not driving back to civilization until you tell me the truth because Sam already knows that. Kid may be stubborn but he’s not in a good position here and he knows it. John’s prepared to wait.

“Was it someone we know, Sam?” he asks finally.

Sam obviously wasn’t expecting that kind of directness, because the anger vanishes and his face twists up like he’s going to cry. He looks straight in front of him. But Sam is back to normal enough now so that John can tell a yes-silence from a no-silence.

“Sam. You tell me who, son.”

He breathes in. “I can’t. I couldn’t help it – I don’t – dad, he didn’t – ”

And he can tell which he as well.

“Dean?”

At the word Sam looks at him sharply. He stops, swallows like he can’t talk.

“Your brother Dean?” Like they know any other Deans.

The words rush out like a flood. “Don’t – don’t be angry with him, dad. It’s not his fault. It was me, dad, I started it, I – ”

“Alright, Sam,” he says firmly, and Sam shuts up.

John leans back against the seat. Okay, he thinks. No use getting worked up over it, trying to figure it all out, not now. It’s just another thing to work through. Just a screw up, a stupid, fucked-up thing that needs to be sorted out.

Mainly, he wishes he were more surprised. Yeah, he is, a little, but the surprise doesn’t reach the level of shock, or even disappointment. In a terrible way, it just seems to fit.

Next to him, Sam is starting to tear up, breathing too fast.

“Okay. Sammy.” The kid looks at him, sniffing. His eyes are red. “It’s over, okay. I don’t care,” he adds when Sam starts on again about Dean’s supposed lack of guilt. “It’s over from now, son. We don’t talk about it. It never happened. Alright? It’s over.”

Sam nods and sniffs again.

“We’re going to go home and get you into a shower. Okay?”

He nods again, and wipes his nose with his hand. For once, he doesn’t answer back.

John watches him for a second longer. Sam is still breathing deeply, looking ahead of him.

It seems like he should say something else. And a part of him wants to, wants to explain things about boundaries and civilization that Dean never really picked up on. A part wants to tell Sam whose fault all this really is. But what good will it do? All the kid needs to know is that it’s over and gone.

John turns away, and starts the car.

Dean is meant to meet up with dad and Sam outside of Phoenix. He gets to the motel room close to dawn and his dad’s still sitting up. Dean can tell just by looking at him that something’s wrong and that he's to blame.

Dean doesn’t question him, just puts his bag down and stands there as his dad says “Let’s go outside.”

He nods, and follows him outside to the car. John doesn’t speak as he gets into the driver’s seat and starts the engine.

As they’re driving, he doesn’t try too hard to work out what he’s done. He’s so used to switching off when he’s scared, it’s hardly an effort anymore. Worrying never does any good. He keeps his mind blank, the fear under control.

As soon as they’re away from civilization, which doesn’t take long, John pulls over by the side of the road.

“Get out,” he says, and Dean does so. He follows him into the sparse layer of trees.

The control is starting to break down now. His mind might be blank, but everything else is bad: his mouth is dry, his heart beating too fast.

Finally his father stops. Dean stops as well and waits, not meeting his eye.

“I know about it, Dean,” he says. “Sam told me.”

And then Dean knows, with a sudden rush of certainty, what’s going to happen. His dad had brought him out here to leave him; he’s going to abandon Dean here like the parents in some kid’s story.

The realization hits him like a punch. It’s hard to breathe. He’s not going to see Sam again, not going to see his father again. He knows it.

Dean can’t look at him as his father goes on. “I’ve had some time to think about it. You’re an idiot, Dean. As far as I know you’re just too stupid to know what you’re doing. Unless I’ve got you all wrong.” He stops, and Dean looks up very slightly. “Unless you did know what you were doing, and you’ve been keeping this from me. In which case I’d like you to tell me about it now.”

Dean shakes his head. He barely understands what his dad is saying.

John nods, and says nothing for a moment. Dean sneaks a quick glance up at father’s face. There’s no anger there, no hatred; that at least would be something Dean could understand. But it’s not like that. His dad is looking at Dean like he doesn’t know him at all. And it makes Dean feel so alone that he wants to die.

He’s shaking. His mind won’t complete thoughts. He stares down at the black ground, waiting for it to end.

“Okay,” his father says finally. “Take off your shirt.”

Dean looks up, hope stirring in his mind. Punishment is something familiar. Punishment means anger, and anger is in the scope of what he’s used to.

He does as he’s told.

And it’s bad, worse than anything before it. Dean keeps quiet as much as he can; he understands why his dad is doing this; he knows it’s not vengeance, not something he wants to do, it’s justice that has to be carried out. Dean wants him to know that he can take it, he’s not hurting him that bad, because he knows it must be hard enough for him already.

When John is done he says: “Pick up your clothes.”

Dean leans down to get his shirt from the sandy ground, and almost falls. John catches him by the arm and rights him.

So much for proving he can take it, he thinks. Dean is dizzy, sick with pain; he hasn’t been breathing right, and just keeping upright is hard.

His father is silent now, but he keeps hold of Dean’s arm as he leads him back to the car. The pain that’d faded out is starting to come back, his skin sticky with blood, nerve endings raw. But all Dean feels now is muted relief and hope: no matter what happens now, his dad is not going to leave him out here.

Back at the motel, John leads him into the room and sits him down on the bed.

“There’s ice packs in the fridge,” he says, and Dean nods. “You can sleep in here tonight. I’ll stay next door with Sam.”

He turns to go, and it’s really over, he’s not going to leave Dean alone. Dean grabs at him, ends up with his arms around his father’s waist, face pressing against his stomach, smearing blood over the front of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He is fully expecting John to push him away, and when he doesn’t Dean wants to cry with gratitude.

There’s silence above him for a moment. “Dean…” he asks softly, voice more gentle now. “Do you even really know what you did wrong?”

Dean pulls back slightly, looks up enough to see him. John is frowning; he looks worried, something of the distance from before still there.

Dean is confused, his mind is still messed up. Of course he knows, he’d upset his dad, he’d known it was wrong and he’d done it anyway, he’d gone against his orders…

John puts his hand on top of his head, stopping the thoughts. He sighs and says “It’s okay, Dean.”

Dean presses his face back against him, so grateful he can’t express it. The pain is nothing now. His father is here. He runs his hand over his hair, once, and Dean shifts his grip slightly, feels the handle of his gun sticking out of the back of his jeans.

It had been a damn good night. There’d been wine and women and song, and Dean comes back to the hotel near dawn still in a blur of happiness.

Sam is sprawled on the sofa, in the dark. The TV’s not even on.

“Hey, Dean,” he says flatly when Dean comes in. He doesn’t look at him.

Dean frowns as he takes off his jacket. There’s a bottle next to Sam on the sofa.

“What’s the crap you’re drinking?” He grabs the bottle, pulls it away from Sam’s grasping hands, and reads the label. “Christ, Sam. You make this yourself?”

“I’m sorry.” Sam says miserably.

Dean sighs. “Well, you sure know how to ruin a guy’s mood.”

Sam gives a weird half-smile in response. As Dean turns away to put the bottle somewhere out of reach, he sees Sam’s shoulders move jerkily, like a sob.

Dean doesn’t ask him what his problem is. He knows exactly what’s wrong: it’s the hell thing, again, it always is. And it’s no use talking about it, since talking’s not going to change anything. So Dean pretends he hadn’t seen, and starts getting ready for bed.

When he’s done Sam still hasn’t moved. “Okay, Sammy. You’re not going to sleep there. Can you stand up?”

Sam doesn’t respond, so Dean helps him, lifting him under the arms and dragging him up off the sofa. “Come on. Over to bed.”

Sam leans most of his weight on him. Wow, pain. It’s like dragging a pile of bricks. Halfway there, Sam collapses down onto Dean’s bed.

“Okay, you wanna swap for the night? No problem.”

“No…” Sam’s still got a hold of his arms, clinging to him like the world’s largest five-year-old. Which is actually the best way to describe drunk Sam in general, now Dean thinks about it.

“Come on Sam. We can’t both sleep here.”

“Why not,” he mumbles.

“Because I say. Come on.”

Instead Sam yanks him closer. Much closer.

“Whoa, Sam.” He laughs uneasily, and tries to get his balance in a way that doesn’t require further touching. “Personal space.”

Sam begins to cry.

Really this time, so Dean can’t pretend not to notice. And then, when Dean's still dealing with that fact, still trying to figure out how to best get away, Sam presses his face into Dean’s neck, and kisses it.

Dean freezes.

He hasn’t thought about it for years. Not really. He owed it to Sam not to think about it.

Now, all kinds of sick memories rise in his throat, and he’s almost relieved that the only sensation they bring up is a mix of guilt and mild disgust.

Sam moves his mouth, up over his jaw, too close in the dark. His breath smells like alcohol and faintly of toothpaste, and it’s so like Sam to brush his teeth before he decides to start drinking, and that thought makes Dean shrink away.

Sam makes a miserable sound, gripping his arms tighter.

“Come on, Sammy.” Dean smiles nervously, uselessly, in the dark. “You know it’s not right.”

Sam shakes his head. Again with the nuzzling.

Dean should run, should push him away, but he can’t move, like he’s frozen with fear. All he can see is the memory of the way his dad had looked at him. Then it’s later and his dad says you hurt him.

The guilt is like a wound. He hadn’t understood it back then, not really, but he does now.

“I can’t, Sammy,” he hears himself say. “Please.”

Sam shakes his head, clutching at his shoulders like one of them is drowning.

“I – I hurt you,” and Dean hears his voice drop. “I fucked you up.”

“I don’t care.” Sam’s voice is muffled against his skin.

Well, I’m going to hell anyway…

No way, Dean thinks. He doesn’t get to think like that. This isn’t some noble sacrifice for his brother, this is Dean being weak again. This is him giving in to the part of his mind that despite all logic, is still afraid that if he doesn’t do this, there’s a chance that Sam will go away…

Dean takes a deep breath. He nods very slightly, and the self-hatred is like a wave that’s about to drown him. “What… what do you want me to do?”

Sam pulls on his shoulder, and Dean complies, letting Sam pull him down opposite him on the bed. Sam lets go of him, and Dean breathes in again as Sam starts to undo his jeans.

He is apparently undaunted by Dean’s obvious lack of interest down there. Dean bites his lip, trying to clear his mind and pretend he’s somewhere else. Then he can get this over with, at least.

He’s usually quite good at that. But Sam is too close, now; Dean can’t do it, doesn’t have the willpower to overcome the guilt. He feels sick, and he keeps thinking about his dad.

Time drags on. Sam keeps trying; it’s doing absolutely nothing. Whatever had possessed him years ago when he was younger and stupider has apparently gone. Dean is thinking whether an early trip to hell would really be worse than this when Sam’s hand slides up, closing on the gun under Dean’s pillow.

For a second he thinks his wish might be coming true. Instead, Sam takes Dean’s hand where he’d unconsciously moved it up under the pillow, and puts it around the gun.

Dean pulls away slightly, confused, enough to get a view of his brother’s face, even if he can’t look Sam in the eye. It’s hard to do when he’s this close. Dean pulls the gun down slightly, out from under the pillow, and Sam’s eyes flick over and he looks at it, then back at Dean, and that’s when Dean finally feels something.

Just a spark really, but a strong spark, and Sam’s look says I know and Dean can’t hide it.

Sam shifts closer, and his face is all wet and gross from crying but it’s so close, and the gun’s between them and it touches the side of Sam’s face and oh god.

Dean has never thought of anything like this, it’s so beyond the boundaries of wrong it’s incredible. There’s a growing rush of pleasure that has nothing to do with anything physical; it’s the control, Sam trusts him, the loaded gun in his hand and oh god, you’re a sick fucker, Dean.

And it’s not good, this new knowledge, it’s forming pathways in his brain that he won’t be able to erase. Dean loses to it, and he moans, involuntary.

Sam kisses him on the mouth, and Dean drags the barrel down the side of his brother’s face.

Sam’s hand is still on him, but it’s barely important now. He tilts his head back slightly, and Dean shifts the barrel, presses it against Sam's mouth. Sam kind of whimpers, and Dean hears the metal click on his teeth and Christ, this is more intense than anything. He can barely breath, can barely see.

Sam opens his mouth, the gun slides past his teeth. He moans, his eyes meet Dean’s, and Dean comes in his brother’s hand.

When it’s over, when everything has faded away into stickiness and guilt, Dean pulls away and lies on his back, looking up at the blackness. Sam is still next to him, eyes closed, one arm heavy across his waist, face near his neck. All quiet; he can hardly tell he's crying except for the sniffing.

Dean lies awake for a long time after Sam drifts off, feeling sick and uncomfortable, gun resting awkwardly at his side. The only possible positive thing in this, he thinks, is that he doesn’t feel good at all. But that’s not much comfort. He can’t stop the guilt, can’t stop thinking of his father.

For the first time, he feels like he really does deserve hell.

SPN Fic: Alone So Far, Pt. I

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:25:23 GMT

Title: Alone So Far
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Spoilers: For all aired.
Warnings: Incest, violence, angst, some underage, some consent issues, major disregard of gun safety rules.
Author's Notes: Unfortunate actions and their consequences. Mostly pre-series. MAJOR angst here. This is angst central, people.
Disclaimer: Step one: post on LJ. Step two: ??? ~~Step three: profit.~~

The first good memory Dean has from after the fire is of his father sitting next to him, cleaning the guns that were spread out over the bed.

Or maybe he was just organizing them, or putting them away; all Dean really remembers is that the guns were there, on the hotel bed between them. He was too young to really understand much else. The room in his memory was warm, and it smelled like metal and cigarette smoke. He remembers Sam asleep and heavy across his lap, and when Dean put his face against the baby’s hair and breathed in it kind of reminded him of his mother. They were all together, and he remembers that for the first time since the fire, he almost felt safe.

There’s another good memory of when Dean was a bit older and his dad took him shooting. He’d smiled at Dean when he hit the targets, Dean remembers that perfectly. His hands were strong as he fixed Dean’s grip, the skin on his fingers rough.

Dean learned quickly, and did it right. Dad could trust him with a weapon, even though he was small. Later, he would leave Dean alone with Sam and a revolver that Dean kept hidden under the pillow. Whenever Dean woke up from a dream, whenever he heard something outside or felt scared or confused or uneasy, he would slide his hand up under the pillow and hold on to the gun, and he would feel better.

Sam was always there, next to him or across from him, and the grip on the metal was like his Dad, like security, and it made Dean feel warm and safe inside. That’s what guns are to him, still, that’s what Sam and his dad are: safety.

So when he gets older, he does pick up a bit of a thing for them. He likes guns, sure, he needs them for the job and they get it done well. But sometimes – and no way would Dean admit this to anyone, ever – sometimes he thinks he likes guns.

He keeps the idea to himself, of course, like he does all the embarrassing dreams he’s ever had, or the weird feeling he gets when he sees his car all clean. Other people don’t talk about anything like that, and Sam gets weird whenever Dean hints at it even slightly, so Dean figures it’s just something strange about him. Nothing huge to worry about. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of other, normal things that he likes.

Not long after Sam leaves Dean is lying awake one night, his hand under the pillow. Dad is out researching, and Dean can’t sleep in the heat. It’s fall already, but the room he's in is apparently made of metal, and the air is thick and humid and refuses to circulate out the open windows. Stripping off his t-shirt and blankets hadn’t helped, and he’s pretty much given up on sleep altogether by the time he hears the car pulling up outside.

The sound doesn’t cheer him up as much as it usually would. His dad has gotten a lot harder to be around since Sam left, to say the least. At first Dean figured he was just angry at him, like he thought that Sam leaving was Dean’s fault. And that’s not too far from the truth, so Dean had accepted it.

But he’s come to realize it’s more than that. There’s a new emptiness there, a silence at the other end of all his dad’s aggression. Dad and Sam had come to prop each other up with their fighting, and now without him everything is out of balance.

There’s nothing Dean can do to fix it; he doesn’t have it in him to answer back or fight, not that that would help much anyway. He’s just trying to ride it out, keep things as peaceful as possible. It’s easier to spend his energy on that, anyway, than it is to think about all the things Sam had said to him before he left.

Dean gets up, turns on the light, and is opening the refrigerator when the door opens.

John sits down at the table in the kitchen area, dropping his bag on the floor. Dean gets two beers, and presses the cold bottles against his forehead for a second before giving one to him.

His dad nods. “Thanks, Dean.”

Usually Dean would ask how it had gone, but he’s too on edge around his dad these days; it takes a second or two even to judge whether he’s amenable to Dean’s further presence. When he doesn’t look visibly annoyed, Dean sits down tentatively on the other chair.

His father doesn’t get angry, but he doesn’t speak, either. For a few minutes they drink in silence.

“They’re still there,” he says after a while. Dean follows his gaze and looks down at his ribcage, to the scars on the bare skin.

He doesn’t answer, not sure what to say. Those scars are one of those things that they pretend aren’t there. Like all of Dean’s scars, but especially these ones.

Usually the breach of etiquette, the memory it brings up, would make him feel sick. At the moment, though, he is desperate for any direct attention that isn’t anger, and even this is better than nothing.

So he nods, although he can’t meet his father’s eye. He looks at the table, concentrates on now. The silence hangs in the warm air. Flashes of old memories are coming to him, despite his efforts. He closes his eyes, tries to clear his head.

“You hurt him, you know,” John says eventually. It’s not an accusation; just a statement, like he’s reminiscing.

“I know,” Dean says softly.

He wants to say more, to apologize, explain, something, but he keeps silent, because now he is hoping that his dad will say something else about Sam. Anything, instead of them both pretending he was never born. Doesn’t matter if it’s something bad about Dean. These days, Sam is turning as invisible as those scars.

John doesn’t say more, though. He stops looking at them and takes a drink, and the subject is lost.

Dean goes back to pretending the scars aren’t there. They’re almost faded anyway.

Sam is almost eighteen when Dean and dad get home hurt one night. Dean is good enough to walk and he won’t let Sam near, sends him out to the car to find bandages and supplies instead.

The antibiotics are out of date, Sam says when he’s brought everything in. They were the only ones he could find, and they’ve probably been in there since he was a baby.

Dean looks at the pills for a long time, and then stands up and says he’ll go back out and find more. Says Sam should stay in the cabin with dad.

By this point dad’s asleep, probably out on morphine. After Dean leaves he doesn’t wake up, just sleeps on and on.

Sam doesn’t know if it’s the morphine still, or if he’s passed out, or even how bad he’s hurt beneath the bandages; Dean hadn’t told him anything. He sits by the bed and gets more and more worried, and Dean doesn’t come back. After a while Sam tries to call him, but he doesn’t answer his phone.

Eventually, feeling guilty at disturbing him, he shakes his father’s shoulder. No response.

Sam doesn’t try again. He stands up and starts pacing the small room, scared and angry, praying for the car that still doesn’t come.

Dean will be okay, he’s sure of that, even through the anger. He will get back and he will know what to do. Dean will make everything okay.

When he finally hears the car Sam rushes to the door and unlocks it, and as he yanks it open Dean is already there, looking tired and pale and sick but there. Sam grabs him and hugs him tightly.

Dean stiffens, and Sam actually feels him recoil slightly in disgust.

He pulls back, and sees Dean’s eyes flick over to where dad is lying, then back to Sam. It’s half a second and then it’s over; Dean’s normal, brushing past him, like nothing had happened. “How is he?”

Sam had had a flood of words ready. Now, though, he just shrugs.

If Dean is waiting for a real answer, he doesn’t show it. He sits down on the edge of the bed, and Sam hangs back, glaring at them. It’s stupid to act this way at a time like this, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to get over what happened.

Somehow his dad has installed his brother with some sort of Pavlovian reaction against him, something physical, so that even at a time like this, when Dean is exhausted and injured and dad is unconscious and hurt, it’s the first thing he thinks of when Sam touches him.

Or maybe it’s not that. Maybe Dean had just come to his senses, and the disgust is something natural that he had grown into. Maybe Sam’s the weird one.

Sometimes when he and Sam have to share these days, Dean will wait until he thinks Dad’s asleep and then go into his bed instead. And Sam has nightmares, terrible ones still, and he’ll wake up grabbing at things and Dean will pretend to be asleep, and Sam will have to lie awake, confused and scared and angry and alone, and knowing that it’s his fault that Dean’s pretending, that he won’t even talk to him.

Sam grits his teeth, but he doesn’t say anything about it now, because you don’t talk about that.

“I’m going to bed,” he says after a while, and turns away.

Dean is still looking down at his father. He barely nods.

Sam had been such a quiet baby.

Of course Dean didn’t know that at first, since he didn’t know any other babies to compare him to. But others said it a lot. First his mom; she said Sammy was quiet, a good baby. And then after she died other people they met said it, sometimes as a compliment, sometimes in a weird sad way, like it meant something was wrong.

And it was true that Sam didn’t cry much at all, hardly made a sound. Mostly he just looked at you. Sometimes he did cry, and sometimes Dean and dad couldn’t figure out what he wanted, and usually after a while dad would just go quiet and Dean would get angry at Sam, but he couldn’t yell at him because he was a baby. That was bad, but it didn’t happen very often.

When he got older Sam was annoying and asked too many questions and sometimes he wouldn’t shut up, but he was still quiet compared to most kids. He was like dad, he could sit still for hours and not say anything, and sometimes it made Dean nervous.

By the time he was eleven or twelve he had started getting all sullen and silent more of the time, like he wanted to be alone. Sometimes when they were in a motel and they only had one room he would actually go off into the corner and read a book, facing the wall, like a kid getting punished at school. He never explained it when Dean asked him why he did it, just gave him a look like it was something Dean wasn’t smart enough to understand.

And then there was the bathroom. By the time he was twelve Sam would go in there to get dressed, even when he was just changing his shirt or whatever. Later, whenever he fought with Dean or dad, which was more and more often, he’d storm into the nearest bathroom afterwards and lock the door. Whenever Dean broke in, he found Sam in there reading. Reading. Who the hell reads in the bathroom?

Fine, it’s not like Dean cares, but it’s weird.

“He’s just growing up,” his dad said whenever Dean brought up how weird he was. “Don’t worry about it, it won’t last.” But Dean had managed to grow up without ever turning completely insane.

By the time Sam was fourteen, though, it had changed from mostly silence and sometimes fighting to the other way round. And that’s when it gets really bad.

Neither Sam nor dad, Dean had discovered, apparently ever heard of the concept of backing down out of a fight. The slightest thing would set either of them off, and then neither one would shut up. And for dad that’s okay; that’s just the way he is, Dean knows that.

But Sam, Sam’s grown up around dad; you’d think he would have freakin’ learnt how to deal with the guy. Instead, it’s like Sam actually enjoys setting him off. Only then he gets all angry and throws things and cries, like it wasn’t him who had started it in the first place. And Dean’s the one that has to deal with it all on both sides afterwards.

Silence and weirdness was one thing, but this Dean doesn’t get at all. He doesn’t understand all this constant anger from nowhere. Or all the contempt that Sam suddenly has for him. He understands Sam less and less, and it makes him uncomfortable to think about it.

Sam and dad have their worst fight so far one night when Dean’s eighteen. He actually leaves the house just so he can get away from the sound of Sam yelling in rage about one thing or another. He doesn’t know what it’s about; he stopped paying attention to whatever dumb reasons the kid had months ago. Dad’s going out hunting tonight, maybe that’s it, or maybe Sam’s just mad at the world for being born, who knows.

Dean considers going for a drive, but there’s a chance dad might need him, so he just sits outside on the front porch for a while.

It’s late, and it looks like it’s going to rain. After twenty minutes or so the yelling stops, so he gets up and goes back inside. The house has turned silent.

His dad is sitting at the kitchen table. “Go do something useful for once, Dean,” he says when Dean tries to speak to him.

So this fight was really bad. Usually dad is fine afterwards; it’s Dean who is always upset. Obviously Sam has caused even more trouble than usual. He wonders what the stupid kid said this time.

Sam’s in the bedroom, under the covers on his bed, facing the wall.

Dean goes to the foot of the bed and kicks it. “Alright, Sam. Go out there and apologize to him.”

“Fuck you, Dean,” comes the muffled voice.

Dean is getting angry. “Sam. Go out and apologize to dad.”

Sam doesn’t move, and Dean goes around the side of the bed and grabs his brother by the arm. Sam yanks it away, and shifts closer to the wall, pulling the covers tighter over his head.

“What are you, five?” Dean is so angry he wants to punch him. Why can’t he just do as he says for once? Why does he have to be such a brat?

He grabs Sam’s arm again, and Sam kicks him. That does it.

“Okay, Sammy.” He grabs him again. “You wanna behave like an eight year old, I’ll treat you like one.” He gets a good grip on Sam’s arm and yanks him out roughly from under the blankets.

“Dean!” Sam tries to pull away as Dean drags him over the side of the bed. Dean keeps his grip with one arm, and starts pulling down Sam’s sweatpants. “Dean, wait – !”

“What, you think cos Dad doesn’t spank you anymore that I won’t either?” He gets the pants down around his knees despite Sam’s frantic struggling. Sam yells and pulls away as Dean hits him, and the blow lands on his thigh.

Sam falls sideways onto the floor as Dean lets go. He’s sobbing loudly.

Dean stands up. “You’re such a fucking girl, Sam.”

Sam doesn’t answer; he’s pulling at his clothes, dragging the blankets back over him as he gets back onto the bed, still crying.

Dean bites his lip, guilty despite himself.

He hadn’t expected Sam to get this upset. He’d figured he was just being a brat and wanted to avoid getting hit, but apparently this is something else, something to do with Sam always getting changed in the bathroom. Dean hovers there for a moment, torn over whether to say something.

No way, he thinks. Sam’s being stupid, and it’s not Dean’s fault that he’s so weird. And it doesn’t make sense, anyway, him getting upset, because it’s not like Dean hasn’t seen him naked before. In fact he’s probably seen Sam naked more than anyone else in the world, which is a depressing thought.

Sam keeps crying quietly, ignoring Dean’s presence, and after a few more guilty seconds Dean turns around and goes back out into the kitchen to help dad get ready.

Almost an hour later, after dad has left, he comes back in to the room to find that Sam is still crying.

Dean is more amazed at this than anything else. He didn’t know that it was physically possible to cry for that long. Surely it’d just tire you out after a while, right? Why does Sam have to be so weird about everything?

He turns off the light by the door and starts getting ready for bed, pulling off his boots and jeans. In the dark, the muffled sobbing seems louder.

He sighs. He is angry at Sam, yeah, but he doesn’t want to hear this. Dean bypasses his own bed under the window, and sits down on the edge of Sam’s instead.

“Sammy,” he says softly, but of course the kid ignores him.

Dean doesn’t know what to do. Sam isn’t really giving him anything to work with here, but he can’t just leave him like this.

He reaches forward and puts his hand on the shoulder of the lump on the bed, and squeezes it. Sam doesn’t pull away.

Well, that’s uplifting. Dean lies down gently on the edge of the narrow bed. Sam always used to come and do this, when he'd had a nightmare, and if the opposite worked for comforting him maybe this’ll do some good.

As soon as Dean is lying down, Sam turns around and grabs him, pushing his face against Dean’s shoulder.

It’s so sudden that Dean almost falls off the bed. He manages not to, and stays still, letting out the breath he’d drawn in. Somewhat uneasily, he wraps an arm around his brother.

Sam’s face is all messy and wet from crying, and Dean remembers something like this from when Sam was a kid. Not for years, though. Lately Sam freaks out whenever there is less than three feet between them.

Sam keeps crying for a while, sobbing like someone’s died, and Dean lies there a little stiffly, and pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. Eventually Sam quiets down and just sniffs a lot, and thank god, he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to talk, because to be honest, the not-talking-about-everything aspect of Sam’s new privacy is something that Dean really doesn’t mind.

When Sam backs off a little and settles down on his back, Dean can relax a bit. He closes his eyes, and waits for Sam to go to sleep so he can escape back to his own bed.

It starts to rain later, with a vengeance, and there’s a crash of thunder that wakes Dean up and seems to be directly over the house.

He lifts his head slightly and looks out the window, which is further away than he remembered it from last night. Next to him, Sam is warm and still.

Oh yeah. He’d felt sorry for Sam even though Sam was being a brat, and now he has fallen asleep in the wrong bed.

Dean tries to move: Sam is pinning his arm, which has gone to sleep. Dean winces, annoyed, and his brother stirs.

After a few seconds Dean hears his voice over the rain. “You awake?”

“Of course I’m fucking awake, Sam.”

Sam lifts his head to look out the window, and sniffs, wiping his nose. “You think dad’s okay?”

“Course he is. Go back to sleep.”

Sam glares at him through the dark. He moves, freeing Dean’s arm, and then turns away from him, towards the wall. In the faint light from the window, Dean sees a weird shiver go through him.

Dean sighs. Okay, he shouldn’t be mad at him any more. Sam’s a moron, yes, but he looks so pathetic all hunched up like that. He pats Sam's shoulder again, and Sam kind of leans back into him.

So at least one mystery has been solved, Dean thinks: when he’s upset, at least, Sam dislikes Dean slightly less than he dislikes sleeping alone.

And now that Dean knows that he isn’t going to want to talk or open up or bitch about dad, it’s not that bad. Kind of nice actually, Sam not running away or being a brat for once.

And having Sam next to him again, not talking and with no sign of obvious hatred, gives him the same dull warm feeling in his stomach that Dean remembers from when he was a kid. Like when he was back in that room, or he’s holding a gun; like when he hits a target or does something right and his dad smiles at him. Everything feels more right, peaceful. When he’s this close he can almost pretend that Sam is still young enough to be almost normal, like he still has a real brother.

But on the other hand, he’s still resentful enough to push it a bit.

He wraps his arms around Sam and pulls him in closer, to see if Sam freaks out. Sam draws in a breath, but doesn’t pull away.

Okay, he thinks: will accept hugs.

Dean smiles a little, and shifts his hands, down over Sam’s arms, then down the side of his hip. Then over his legs, remembering the way he freaked out before. But Sam still doesn’t move away, even when Dean rubs his hand over the place he’d hit him. He is still.

It’s weird, cruel maybe, but he can’t help it.

“So you’re not being a brat now,” he says near Sam’s ear.

Sam doesn’t answer. He stays perfectly still. He’s barely breathing.

Dean smiles again, but decides to leave it there. He moves his arm up to wrap it back around Sam’s waist, but as he does he brushes against something hard and Sam jerks away like he’s been burnt.

Dean laughs.

He can’t help it; it’s the first reaction that comes up, although in retrospect horror would probably have been more appropriate. Sam kind of shudders and then pulls away, pressing his face into the pillow.

He feels bad. Sam being embarrassed is funny, maybe, but Sam crying again isn’t. “Sam. Hey. Sam, I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’m sorry I laughed. You don’t have to be embarrassed.” Silence. “It’s okay. Come on, Sam.”

He doesn’t answer, and Dean takes his waist, eases him back onto his side. Despite the crying, Sam’s still compliant.

Later Dean doesn’t try to kid himself that it is somehow for Sam’s sake, that there’s no resentment there still. In fact he doesn’t think about it much at all.

Dean moves his hand very gently, on the outside of Sam’s clothes. Sam moans, a sound of utter misery, and presses back against him.

“It’s okay,” Dean says again. Of course that's not true, Dean’s not stupid, but the fact just doesn’t seem to take hold in his mind now; it’s one of those things that doesn’t seem to matter that much.

He bypasses layers of clothing, and inside Sam’s skin is warm and hard. As Dean’s hand closes around him his hips jerk forward, and he gasps loud enough for Dean to hear it clear over the rain.

Dean stays still after that, and lets Sam do the work, moving against his hand. Sam’s breath speeds up gradually, and his whole body flushes with heat, damp under Dean’s grasp. One hand twists back awkwardly to grab at Dean’s waist, clinging on to his shirt.

“Dean,” he says, sounding confused and scared but utterly raw and honest, and that’s when the first real rush of pleasure goes through Dean, turning from that faint warm feeling to something else, something strong and desperate.

He’s not remotely turned on by this, not by touching him; it’s the idea of Sam letting him do it, being open to him instead of hiding away like usual.

But it would be wrong, even more wrong than what they are doing already, so Dean pushes the feeling down and tries to keep still, moving his hips only slightly even though just the feel of Sam turns him on, the rhythmic sound over the rain.

After a while Sam starts groaning again, and Dean can’t help it.

“Say it again,” he whispers against his ear. Sam’s hair is damp with sweat under his mouth. “Say my name again.”

A moment’s pause, and then: “Dean,” Sam says, voice muffled.

Oh god, yes.

One more uneven movement, and then Sam is twisting around, moaning like he’s in pain. He presses his face into the pillow again, and then goes still.

Dean lets go.

He withdraws his sticky hand and wipes it awkwardly on the bedclothes – it’s Sam’s bed, after all – before pulling Sam’s pants back up. He pulls away from him, and turns onto his back, breathing in, then out.

He’d missed his opportunity, if there was one. It would be wrong to try and get himself off now.

Dean sits up, and tries to concentrate on something unsexy, something that isn’t girls or guns or his car. It’s actually not difficult; the whole feeling he got had been too weird, anyway, and probably a one-off.

Behind him, Sam sits up as Dean turns back around, looking utterly terrified in the dim light. “Dean,” he says anxiously. “Dean, God, we – ”

“Shut up, Sammy. Lie down.” Dean pushes his shoulders back into the pillow, pulls the blanket up over him.

Sam is on the verge of tears. “No. Dean, dad will find out. He’ll know. Dean - ”

He keeps a hand on Sam’s shoulder as he lies down next to him. “He won’t. Sh. I told you, it’s okay.” Why does Sam have to pick now to start worrying about what dad thinks?

Sam draws in a sobbing breath. “I’m sorry. Dean, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s not your fault. Don’t make such a big deal about it.”

“But –”

“Just shut up and go to sleep, Sam,” he says firmly, and Sam finally does as he’s told.

The first part, anyway; he’s silent, but Dean can feel him crying.

Okay, Dean’s not okay with it, not by a long way. He’s not guilty, exactly: guilt was for when you screwed up, not when you screwed up something deliberately and enjoyed it. This feeling is deeper, something physical, like dirt under his skin. He’s meant to watch out for his brother, not go along with Sam's weirdness.

And what makes it worse is that he should feel awful because Sam is crying, but it’s still good. It hasn’t happened in so long, and it’s nice to be able to comfort him. It overpowers the feeling of guilt, which fades down to almost nothing, a dull glow in the back of his mind.

Part Two Here

So being a Catholic geek...

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:13:57 GMT

I was thinking about religion in Supernatural. This is one of those things that you do when you have no life.

On the one hand, in Supernatural universe, demons respond to Catholic exorcisms and Catholic sacramentals, and have biblical names. Also God is real and kills people with poles.

On the other hand:

- Apparently holy water is created by dipping a blessed rosary in normal water and praying. Which makes me wonder what Catholics used for baptism for the 1200 years before rosaries were invented.

- Also, apparently anyone can create holy water, not just a priest. So Martin Luther would be very happy in Supernatural-verse. If he even approves of holy water. I'd have to ask a Lutheran geek about that one.*

- Apparently deals made with devils are actually binding. This is contrary to catholic teaching. However, since we are told that 'demons lie', it might actually be that satanic contracts are NOT binding and all Dean actually has to do to escape Hell is to drop to his knees and pray. This would be in line with catholic theology, but also a really sucky ending to Season Three.

*Alternatively, the various holy-water-making scenes in Season Three could be explained if sometime after the end of Season Two, Sam snuck off and got himself ordained as a Catholic priest. Considering that he is pretty much condemned to a life of celibacy anyway, this is actually far from unlikely.

OK I DID IT

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 09:31:02 GMT

I finally managed to successfully post that old SPN gen fic on ff.net (because it doesn't belong here.) Here is the link.

A warning though, it's the first piece of fanfiction I ever wrote, and therefore is not only old but also not very... good. And contains spelling mistakes, which I didn't notice until I posted it. Oh well.

Also, speaking of Supernatural, it is still the GREATEST THING EVER. Oh, John. You might be an obsessed bastard, but we still love you.

SPN Fic: Drive To Get Away

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:40:37 GMT

Title: Drive To Get Away
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Incest, some violence, major angst. May also contain slight elements of blasphemy, unless you're a Calvinist.
Author's Notes: More pre-series angst from our beloved Sam.
Disclaimer: Don't own, no profit.

Dean has been inside a lot of churches before, but never one this small or this dark. Dad is next to him in the aisle and is talking to two men, one older, one younger, but both of them funny looking with long beards. He can’t concentrate on the words for long. His mind drifts off, and he scuffs his feet against the carpet.

“It won’t take long,” dad had said when he had led Dean inside the building, guiding him away from the deeper bits of snow. “After this we won’t have to steal holy water any more. We can make our own.”

Dean hadn’t really understood, but his dad always knows what he is talking about, so he hadn’t asked questions.

Now his feet are cold. The place smells like wood polish and smoke. He stays next to dad’s leg. Dad is holding Sammy, and the baby keeps grabbing handfuls of his jacket; dad ignores him and keeps talking to the men. Sammy eventually moves on to grabbing at his hair, and dad disengages his hands gently without breaking off his speech. Finally, when they have been talking for ages, dad hands the squirming bundle to Dean and they can wait in the front room if he wants.

“I think he needs changing as well. The bag’s out there.”

Dean nods. One of the men looks at him funny then, but Dean is accustomed enough to that, and he leaves without looking at either of them.

He opens one of the heavy wooden doors with his shoulder, and sees the duffel bag with diapers and food in it. It’s a funny little room out here; just a bunch of doors and a cabinet and some weird dark pictures on the wall. He sits down so that the cabinet hides him from most of the room, and starts to change Sammy.

When he finishes he doesn’t know where to put the old diaper. After some deliberation, he leaves Sammy on the floor and opens the outside door into the snow long enough to hide it behind a bush. Someone might find it and he’ll get into trouble, but it’s better than interrupting Dad for now. Then he goes back in, and picks up his brother again.

“See what a problem you are?” he asks him.

“Da,” says Sammy.

“Dean, it’s Dean. Say Dean, Sammy.”

“Dee,” he says.

“You’re stupid,” says Dean.

The door leading into the church opens suddenly, and Dean quickly pulls the baby tighter against his chest.

It’s the younger man dad had been talking to, the one with the shorter beard. Dean leans against the wall, thinking that the man will head right outside, and slightly nervous about the diaper. But instead he sees Dean next to the cabinet and, despite all of Dean’s efforts to make the two of them invisible, he stops.

Dean shrinks back.

“It’s Dean, right?” said the man.

Dean doesn’t answer. He looks down, keeping his eyes on his brother, who stares back at him attentively, eyes wide. He’ll just ignore him, and his dad will be here in a second, he is always here. Dean is never alone with anyone but Sammy, that’s the way it is now.

But the door doesn’t open again. Instead the man crouches down so he’s almost at Dean’s level, and goes on. “Do you always take care of your little brother, Dean?”

Dean still doesn’t answer and doesn’t look up. He pulls Sammy closer and shifts back against the wall as far as he can, so that the plaster digs in cold against the back of his neck. His throat and chest are starting to feel tight, like he is going to cry, but he doesn’t let himself move. He holds his breath.

The man’s voice goes on, kind, softer. “If there’s anything wrong with you and your dad, Dean, it’s okay. You can tell me about it. No one else is here.”

Dean keeps still. He’s not stupid. He knows, if it’s only vaguely, what he is being asked. He knows that dad and him don’t have to be so secretive just because of monsters. And now if he moves or speaks, then maybe the man will think Dean is agreeing with him. He might try to take him or Sammy away, and Dad will think that that’s what Dean had wanted.

He presses himself further into the corner, until he can feel the cold through his jacket. Despite his efforts, his eyes have begun to spill over.

“Dean?” the man asks again.

Dean closes his eyes. Please go away, he says silently. I want my dad. I just want my dad.

Silence. He can only hear his own hitched breathing. Even Sammy has gone still in his arms, one fist clenched into the front of his shirt.

Then the man sighs, and stands up. When Dean finally dares to raise his eyes, he has found a pen somewhere, and is writing down something on a slip of paper.

“Here,” he says and holds it out to Dean. “If you want to talk to someone, just give this to an adult and have them call this number. They’ll know what to do after that. Your dad, he won’t know about it. Okay?”

He keeps holding it out. Dean shifts Sammy’s weight and grabs the paper without raising his eyes further. It’s a long line of numbers he can’t read, written in blue pen. He nods, eyes on his brother again.

The man looks at him for a few seconds longer. Dean doesn’t look back, eyes still on Sammy. Finally the man turns, sighing, and goes back into the church.

Dean wants to relax now, but he can hardly breathe. What if his dad doesn’t come back? What if they are asking his dad the same things right now, what if they tell him Dean wants to go away, what if dad says –

The door opens again. The next second his dad is there, scooping Sammy up out of his arms. “Let’s go, Dean.”

His voice is friendly and unworried. He doesn’t know. Dean grabs on to the hem of his jacket and holds tight as he follows them outside into the snow. As dad opens the car door, when they’re out of sight, Dean hugs him, pressing his face into the denim of his dad’s jeans.

“It’s alright, Dean.” He pulls him off gently with his free hand. “It’s done now.”

“Dean,” says Sammy.

“That’s good, Sam,” he says. “Dean, you didn’t tell me he could say that.”

Dean doesn’t answer. In the car, he shreds the piece of paper into tiny pieces and hides them in his pocket. The next time they stop, he drops the pieces on the ground when his dad isn’t looking, steps on them until they’re hidden under the slushy snow.

**

When Dean shoves the keys into Sam’s hands the blood has made them slippery, and he fumbles, dropping them onto the car floor. He ducks to pick them up as his brother wrenches open the back door, and on the way back up bangs his cheek on the steering wheel, right on top of the bruise already there. By the time he’s upright Dad and Dean have piled into the back seat, and it’s dark and there’s such a mess of limbs and blood in the back that at first Sam can’t see which one of them is injured.

Dean says hospital and Sam shoves the bloodied keys into the ignition and starts the car.

He reverses wildly out of the church driveway, shifts gears and steps too hard, so that the car lurches violently. He’s driven before, on long straight highways, with dad next to him, the only sane way for a fourteen year old to be driving. Not like this.

“What happened?” His voice comes out high and panicky. No one answers him, and Sam looks over his shoulder hurriedly, sees his dad pale and eyes half-closed in the dim light. Dean is blocking his limited view, leaning over him, holding something against his dad’s stomach, and they are both a slippery mess of blood.

“Sam,” Dean turns to him angrily. “You wanna go any slower?”

“I’m trying!”

“Well just fucking do it!”

“Boys,” John says weakly. Dean turns back to his father. Sam grips the wheel tighter, relieved just to hear him speak, and accelerates.

“We’ll be there in just a minute, dad,” Dean says and in the rearview mirror Sam sees him brush his hand over his forehead. His hand leaves a bloody streak.

It’s quite a distance but the drive seems to be over in seconds, like the adrenaline has cut off all of Sam’s thinking and compressed the time. When they’re almost at the hospital dad starts talking again, in a low voice. Dean’s leaning in close to him, and Sam can’t hear. When he starts to brake to turn into Emergency, Dean says, “Pull over here, Sam.”

“What?!”

“Do it.” Dad and Dean yell at the same time. Sam brakes the car, sudden, confused, and Dean reaches over John and opens the door.

“What are you –”

Dean is helping him up off the seat, and as soon as he’s gained his balance Dean slams the door behind him, leaving John on the pavement. “Drive,” he says to Sam.

“What?! We can’t leave him –”

“I said drive.”

The tone of Dean’s voice is such that the words go straight from Sam’s ear to his foot without his mind interfering: he drives. The hospital disappears behind them, and he’s so confused and anxious he can barely think, there’s barely room to remember to breathe.

“Pull over here,” Dean says after a minute or so.

He pulls over, and when Dean doesn’t speak, shuts off the engine.

The sudden silence is almost unreal. The street is quiet, empty. Dean is breathing deeply, and Sam’s hands are on the wheel so tight it hurts.

Finally Dean gets out, and then just stands outside the driver’s side for a minute more, before he yanks Sam’s door open.

He’s covered in blood. Sam wants to ask him something, but he can’t speak.

“Move over, Sammy,” he says. His voice is softer now, tired, the commanding tone gone altogether.

Sam looks up at him for a second, but obeys again, still largely on autopilot. He lets go of the wheel, and shifts over to shotgun.

Dean sits down in Sam’s place, then after a few seconds starts the car. For the first time he starts to notice the world around them, how late it is, no cars on the streets. They drive slower now, and the whole thing’s almost unreal, like moving through a ghost town. Dean heads away from the hospital.

“It’s a stab wound,” he says flatly after a while. “The hospital will call the police if the injury looks suspicious, dad said. He didn’t want us there. He didn’t want the cops questioning us.”

Sam feels his jaw clench. Dad has done things like that before, separated them for that reason, but never with anything this serious. Sam doesn’t know if it has ever even been this serious. “We can handle the police,” he says.

“It’s not worth the risk. Especially with that face of yours.” Sam frowns and rubs his bruised cheek. That was a stupid accident: Sam is clumsy these days, as Dean constantly reminds him. “Dad said to lie low, he’ll come back to the motel when they’ve fixed him up. He’s got a credit card. He’ll be fine.”

Sam shakes his head, turns to him. “We could go back. Say we’re going in for something else. I’ll pretend I –”

“He said no.”

His voice is so flat he doesn’t try to argue.

Sam turns to face the road again, biting his lip. He’s so overcome suddenly he wants to cry. Dad is hurt, he can’t drive fast enough, he’s got the bruised face. It’s his fault.

Dean is driving as seriously as possible, eyes never leaving the road. Sam curls up against the door and blinks tears out of his eyes. It’s a long drive to the motel.

Dean glances over at him once or twice. Sam ignores him. He’s afraid he’ll cry in front of Dean, or yell at him, so he stays quiet.

Eventually Dean takes a breath, and then he’s normal again. He says: “We’ll get dinner, alright. There’s that twenty four hour place. You can choose, anything you want.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“A drink, then,” He smiles, hopeful, although since he’s covered in blood the effect is faintly ridiculous. “I can get you beer. Great fake ID, dude.”

“I just want to go home,” Sam says.

Dean glances at him again, but says nothing.

After a while Dean stops at a gas station. He’s in the restroom there for a long time, and when he comes out he’s washed the blood off his face and hands. He shoves his bloodied jacket in the back seat before he goes in to buy food. When he comes back, Sam pretends to be asleep.

Dean has John’s cell phone and wallet, and he puts them down on the bedside table when they arrive back at the room. He takes off his bloody clothes in the bathroom, puts them in the sink and starts running water on them. Finally he gets in the shower, and leaves Sam alone.

He lies down on his bed, curls up next to the wall. He doesn’t cry, his mind is still too confused. He hadn’t asked Dean for details, because he can barely even acknowledge what he is afraid of. The fear is there, though, crowding in whenever his thoughts stop racing, so strong it hurts even to consider it.

If dad isn’t fine, like Dean said, and if Dean made him drive away, then just the thought makes him so angry at Dean…

“Sam,” says Dean when he comes out the shower.

Sam ignores him. Dean throws a wet towel at him. “Sam.”

“What.”

“Don’t worry, alright. It wasn’t deep. Everything will be okay.”

Sam pulls the covers over his head and ignores him. Dean is acting like he personally trusts dad not to die, and Sam doesn’t get that at all, doesn’t get how his brother can be so stupid sometimes.

He has his own bed, and dad’s is free as well but halfway through the night he wakes up to Dean sitting down near the end of his bed, leaning against the wall. His legs are over Sam’s, and when the weight gets uncomfortable Sam pulls his legs from under him and moves them on top of Dean’s, kicking him in the process.

Dean doesn’t kick him back, and Sam turns over and goes back to sleep.

He wakes up later when Dean jumps awake, sitting up violently, his hand clamping down hard on Sam’s knee. His breathing is loud in the silent room, skin clammy against Sam’s bare legs. Breath uneven to the point of panic.

Sam keeps his eyes closed, and pretends not to notice.

Next morning is Friday, so he wakes up early. Dean stays asleep when he gets up, slumped against the wall down the bottom of the bed, and Sam is already undoing the locks on the door by the time he wakes up.

“Sam, wait.” He sits up, rubbing at his face. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to school. It’s Friday.”

“No way. Dad said to lie low. We stay here.”

Sam tries to work out the logic of that, comes up with nothing. “What’s going to happen to me at school, Dean?”

“Doesn’t matter. We do what dad says.” Dean leans over and picks up his cell phone from the floor. “I’ll call in sick for you.”

“I have a test today.”

“So?”

“So it’s advanced math and if I miss it they’ll drop me down.”

“What the hell do you need advanced math for anyway, Sammy? Look, Dad knows what he’s doing, alright? You can’t go to school.”

Sam sets his jaw. He’d listened to Dean yesterday, left dad, and look where that’s got them so far. There’s not one valid reason for to stay home; calling in sick will just bring them more attention. And most importantly, there’s no way he is sitting around here all day with nothing to do but worry. Dean had been wrong yesterday, and he’s wrong now.

He takes a deep breath. “No,” he says.

“What?”

“I said no. I’m going.”

Dean stands up, and steps forward to move between him and the door. “Sam, you’re not leaving.”

“Or what?”

His brother’s face goes from its former mild surprise to almost frightened. That makes him more confident. He stands up straighter to meet Dean’s height, and keeps eye contact.

A few seconds, and then Dean nods once and drops his voice, low and serious. “I can beat you down easily, you know that, Sammy.”

“Do it, then,” Sam says. “Or get out of my way.”

Dean doesn’t move. Sam picks up his bag and shoves past him, bumping his shoulder.

The air outside is cold and shocking. Dean grabs at his arm. “Sammy, hey, come on. What’s wrong with you?”

Sam ignores him and shakes him off. He doesn’t look back at him as he walks off.

He cries on the way to school, finally. He wants to go back to the hospital himself, but he won’t be able to talk himself in, not in this state. He’s so scared that he is surprised he can still function. The fear is still there, hidden: death, instability, a big void in his future.

But then he is adapted to being this scared; it’s just gone up a level.

At the end of the day he doesn’t want to go home, and leave his source of distraction. In the room there will be nothing to think about but dad. While he’s out, he can pretend that maybe dad is already at home.

He goes to the library. Last town they were in, dad had had one of his periods of apparent guilt, and had got enough documents together for a library card so that Sam didn’t have to smuggle books out. He’d gone with Sam the first time and drove him home afterwards when Sam had picked out all the books he wanted. It had been the closest thing to a bonding exercise they’d had in a long time, and Sam had been almost embarrassed about how happy it made him.

This time, though, he doesn’t have a card and can’t be bothered with book-smuggling or forgery, so he puts his book back on the shelf when the library is closing, and walks home.

The room is warm, lights on, curtains closed. Dean is on the sofa watching TV.

“It’s dark, Sam.” He doesn’t look at him. He sounds tired.

“I was at the library.”

“Oh, okay, then. Well, I was going to go back to the church and finish off that murdering ghost while we had some daylight. But you know, it’s okay. I’ll just ask her to nicely to hold off stabbing me tonight, my brother had to go to the library.”

Sam drops his bag next to the bed. “I thought you said we had to lie low.”

“This is necessary, Sam. Someone’s gotta finish the job off.”

“Did dad say you could?”

“He didn’t say I couldn’t.”

“You’re such a hypocrite.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He shoves a box at him with his foot. “I got pizza.”

Sam is too hungry by now to keep up the fight at this level, so he sits down on the sofa next to Dean, albeit as far away as he can.

“You didn’t hear from dad?” he asks warily.

Dean looks at him finally. “I called the hospital. They said he’s stable.”

Sam looks back guardedly, unsure on whether to accept this, and Dean laughs. “Dude, don’t look so worried. Look. Sam. I got a way better look at the wound than you. It wasn’t that bad. He’ll be fine. You know dad.”

Sam nods, and the fear that had been growing inside him collapses down to almost nothing. He relaxes back against the sofa, closing his eyes in relief.

He wakes up during the night to Dean leaning against the wall again. Now, that’s a bit weird, because it’s not like they haven’t been alone before and he usually sleeps fine. Weird that Dean would be here at all, actually, since it’s been at least 48 hours for him without female contact and usually by now he’d be sneaking out while Sam is asleep. He hasn’t even complained about it.

But it’s better than Dean treating him like he is mildly contagious, like he usually does. Sam slides his legs over his again, and Dean puts his hand near his ankle.

He wakes up again later, out of a nightmare he can’t remember. The room is too warm now, he is damp with sweat under the covers. Dean is sitting up, awake.

“You were dreaming?”

Sam closes his eyes and nods, although it’s too dark for Dean to see him. He feels claustrophobic, and pushes the blanket back off his shoulders.

Dean readjusts the blanket, and his skin is cold when he brushes against him. He squeezes Sam’s knee again. Then after a minute or two he starts talking.

“Sam, when you were five, I was helping dad make bullets and I burnt my hand. Some teacher at school saw it and got suspicious. I told her a good story, but she ended up questioning you as well, and you weren’t good at lying at that age, you told them everything you knew. Which wasn’t much, luckily.” Sam hears him laugh. “So she took us in and made us stay in the teacher’s lounge after school while she and the principal called all these government people.”

He goes on when Sam stays quiet.

“I snuck you out of the room, but the outer doors to the school were all locked, we couldn’t get out. So I just took you into a cupboard and hid there, and the people figured we’d escaped and eventually stopped looking. When they had left, I found a phone and called dad.”

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t remember that.”

“It wasn’t fun. I was so scared that you’d make a noise. And you needed to go to the bathroom, and then you started crying…”

He frowns. Yeah, he does remember that, just faintly. Not much, just dark, Dean’s arms around him, saying something he barely understands. And being scared, not of anything exactly, just confusion and fear, and Dean refusing to explain.

“I was begging you not to cry and promising you all this stuff, and finally I just threatened to hit you and that worked.” He laughs. “You were a good five-year-old.”

“Was dad mad?”

“Are you kidding?”

Sam laughs, despite himself. “But it’s okay now,” he says. “The school’s not going to -”

“It’s not okay.” He squeezes his knee. “Not until you’re too old for them to bother us. And even then there’s still the cops to worry about.”

“I’m not five now, Dean,” he says. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore.”

Dean pats him on the leg. “Go to sleep.”

Sam sighs: he might as well have been talking to a brick wall. He shifts to get comfortable, closes his eyes.

Dean’s grip relaxes slightly, but he doesn’t let go of him. Sam can still feel his hand against his skin when he falls asleep.

When he wakes up the next morning, Dean is gone. He reappears late morning with a large can of gasoline, which he shoves into his duffel bag next to the usual array of weapons.

Sam puts down the book he’d been reading. “How big a fire are you going to start?”

“I don’t know what exactly dad was going for.” Dean shrugs. “So I’m just going to torch the whole area around it.” He grins. “I bet I’ll get arrested for arson. What do you think dad would say to that?”

“Don’t you have a plan that doesn’t involve possibly burning down a church?”

He shrugs again.

“Look, at least let me see if I can find something.” Sam stands up. The desk is covered with the usual mountains of dad’s research. This hunt, Sam had been too busy at school to help him at all, not that dad is ever that amenable to assistance. Sam opens the folder on top of the stack of paper, and starts examining the highlighted map of the church.

Reluctantly, Dean sits down on dad’s bed, throwing a longing glance towards the can of gasoline.

The notes are cryptic, as usual. There are spots and X’s on the map where presumably people had been attacked, but no ‘BURN HERE’ sign or anything. His dad isn’t exactly the most accessible guy around.

“I thought ghosts couldn’t attack people on holy ground, anyway,” he says as he sits down at the desk.

“No, you’re thinking of the guys in the movie Highlander. ”

“Dean. Dad said it.”

“Well, maybe she’s some sort of super-ghost. Or she’s drawn to the area. But she was there, dude. She just appeared and bam.”

Sam frowns and turns more pages. “This would all be a lot easier if dad just told us stuff.”

An uncomfortable pause from Dean. “I don’t like us going through his notes, Sammy.” Sam doesn’t answer. “Since when have you been all gung-ho research, anyway? You usually whine about this stuff.”

“Since you started burning down buildings. And I don’t always whine. Just when dad makes me read stupid stuff about combat tactics.”

“That stuff’s important, Sam.”

Sam ignores him. He’s not exactly telling the truth, anyway. He wants a distraction, and even more than that, he wants to stop getting shoved around. If Dean and Dad don’t want him to help, that’s a good enough reason to help.

Behind him, Dean hangs around, at first reading stuff that Sam has discarded, then sharpening his knife, and then finally falling asleep. Sam goes through the high stack of paper, maps and facsimile collections of church bulletins and newspapers with attacks highlighted – dad must have gone through a hundred years worth – and scrawled notes in the paragraph gaps and margins, all over the other documents and the maps. Some of them are intelligible:

NO BODIES BURIED IN CHURCH

makes sense, but what about

DESTROY ALTAR?

and

VICTIM CONNECTION?

Sam looks through, confused, and finally sees in the top corner of the map, the small writing underlined twice:

Fr. Z??

Underneath there is a cell phone number.

There are no other related notes or references, but whoever the person is, he might be the simplest way of cutting through his father’s scrawled chaos. He picks up his dad’s cell phone from beside the his still-sleeping brother, and dials the number.

A low voice picks up on the second ring. “John,” he says flatly. He doesn’t sound happy to hear from him.

“Uh…” Sam stutters. “No sir, actually this is his son, Sam Winchester.”

“Sam!” The voice changes from irritation, to delight, and then to concern almost instantaneously. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby, son,” he says sympathetically, as if he is offering Sam condolences for having been born.

“Uh, yes, hi. Uh, my father – he spoke to you?”

“He sure did.”

“Well, he got hurt, and well, me and my brother were trying to go on with the job –”

“No, you don’t want to do that, son.”

“We’re just researching,” Sam says, as firmly as he can. He’s a lot better at that with strangers. He doesn’t have time now for yet another random person agreeing with his father.

There is a short silence, and then the man changes the subject. “Listen, how are you and Dean?”

Sam glances over at his brother, who is still asleep on Sam’s bed, clutching his knife beside him loosely, his face pale and exhausted.

“We’re fine,” he says quickly. “So, what did you tell my dad?”

**

“The priest said that it was probably a reliquary dad was going for,” he says to Dean when he wakes up.

Dean stands up, yawning. “Oh, one of those. Hate those things. What the fuck is a reliquary, Sam?”

“It’s a container that holds part of the body of a saint. Catholics put them inside altars in churches.”

“Well, that’s not creepy.”

“It’s to maintain a connection with the past, he said. Any, dad figured that it was what was keeping the ghost there.”

Dean shrugs. “Makes sense.”

Sam pauses for a second as Dean checks his bag. “He said he met you when you were four or five.”

Dean frowns. “I don’t remember. So, piece of a dead saint, eh. You mean they accidentally sanctified a murderous angry spirit?”

“Canonized.”

“Whatever.”

“He said it was more likely whoever they got the relics from thought one dead body was as good as another. Or a body got mixed up, or someone faked the thing. It could just be a coincidence that a violent death was involved.”

“Oh, good. For a second there I thought we’d have to take on the whole church.” He grins. “Okay, so the body’s in the altar. I’ll go down there now.”

Sam stands up quickly. “I’ll go with you.”

Dean looks up, but doesn’t answer.

“Dad wouldn’t want you to go alone,” he goes on.

“Sam…” He sighs. “What if he gets back and there’s no one here? He said to -”

“He can call your cell phone.”

He shakes his head. “You’re not old enough, Sammy.”

“Come on, Dean. I’ve been lookout before. Dad let me go.”

Dean bites his lip. “Fine,” he says finally. He picks up his duffel bag, shakes his head again. “What did you do with my little brother?”

Sam catches a look at Dean’s face as they leave the room and although he is trying to hide it, he thinks that Dean looks almost proud.

Dean must have cleaned out the back seat of the car while he was at school on Friday, because there is no trace of blood. Sam keeps his own bag in the front with him anyway. Dean is quiet during the drive, but he seems to be in a good mood. As they pull up at the church, he turns to him and grins. “You’re growing up so fast, Sam.”

“Shut up.”

Dean grabs his duffel from the back seat and slams the door. “Next you’ll be painting your nails, staying out with boys all night…”

“Shut up, Dean.”

Dean laughs and hits him on the shoulder.

This isn’t so bad, actually, even if a large part of Sam’s enjoyment is coming from the fact that he knows dad probably wouldn’t want him to be there.

They cross the police line tape across the deserted front entrance, and Dean pushes open the doors with their locks still broken from last time. Inside is not as gloomy as Sam would have expected for a haunted church; the walls are white and the window glass is stained an orange and pink patchwork, so that the interior looks warm and bright even in the dull afternoon light. There are neat rows of wooden pews, brightly colored pictures, and a high altar against the back wall. Sam gestures to this, and Dean pulls out an iron bar from his bag and heads down the aisle towards it.

“How does dad know this priest guy, anyway?” Sam asks, keeping close behind him. He finds himself whispering, even though there’s no one around.

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

Sam bites his lip. “When I talked to him, he said something about dad being a priest, and that his friend ordained him.”

Dean snorts. “That’s ridiculous. Dad’s not a priest.”

“But you said you didn’t remember.”

He stops and turns to him. “Dad’s not a priest because he doesn’t believe in God, Sammy.”

“You don’t have to believe in God to be a priest. It works anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read it.”

Dean shrugs. “Well, it’s not true.”

Sam understands the subject as closed. He follows his brother up the steps towards the altar.

When he’s in front of it, Dean scoops down and picks up a hammer. “Yahtzee. Dad dropped this when – when we left.” He points to the front of the altar, which is made of old, carved marble and covered with a red cloth.

“He would’ve been trying to bust it open,” says Sam. “The priest said the reliquary might be cemented inside, so you’d have to break it.”

“Either that or dad just really, really hates altars.”

Sam scowls at him. He smiles, examining the altar before moving towards the wall next to it, where he drops his bag and the hammer. “Was our holy man helpful enough to say what this relic thing looks like?”

“He said it’ll probably just be a piece of bone or something, inside the container.”

“Oh. Well, that’s disappointing. I was gunning for a severed head.” Dean pulls out the salt container from his bag and starts pouring it on the ground, cutting off a corner between the altar and the back wall.

“What are you doing?”

He looks up and grins at him again. “You, little brother, are lookout. I don’t want that bitch coming from behind again, so you’re useful. But you’re not going to do anything else. You’re not going to step outside the salt line. I don’t care what happens,” he goes on when Sam opens his mouth. “You’re not getting a fucking scratch on you before dad comes back, alright?”

“Dean -”

“Don’t complain. I was lookout at your age.” He puts the salt back in his bag, and picks up the hammer.

Sam looks at him angrily, but steps inside the salt circle. Lookout is better than nothing, but this is barely more responsibility than waiting in the car. He should have known Dean had folded too easily before.

Dean kneels down in front of the altar and folds back the cloth that covers it. “Okay, I see an opening in there.” He starts fiddling with it. “Dad was right. We’ll have to break it open.”

The first blow of the hammer is horribly loud, and Sam hears the marble crack. He cringes slightly. “You know, that thing must be worth –”

“Don’t care. You’re the one who wanted to come along.” Dean pulls back and hits it again, then drops the hammer and reaches in to retrieve a piece of broken stone.

“Okay, I see it. You’re a clever boy, Sam.”

He pulls the broken reliquary out of the altar cavity and drops it onto the ground. He leans back and reaches into his bag.

As he does so, an old woman appears behind him. Sam freezes: he’s seen ghosts before, but this is terrifying; half of her face is cut up, and she’s covered in blood.

She looks directly at Sam, smiles, and raises the knife in her hand. The spell breaks, and Sam yells: “Dean, she’s there!”

Dean turns. He ducks out of the way as she stabs at him, falling onto his side. The blow misses him, but she’s between Dean and his bag with the salt in it. Dean scrambles back, fumbles for the iron bar he’d dropped earlier.

The woman raises her knife again. Sam ducks to pick up a handful of salt from the floor, lunges forward, and throws it at her. The ghost disappears into nothing.

He’s doesn’t think: he grabs the salt from the duffel bag, dumps it on the reliquary as Dean rights himself next to him. As Dean pours gasoline onto it, Sam finds the lighter inside the bag.

The ghost appears again, down the end of the altar. Sam flicks open the lighter confidently. Nothing happens.

“Goddammit!” Dean screams and tries to grab it off him. Sam wrenches it away and tries again. It lights, and he touches the flame to the pile of broken marble and bone.

The lady stops, surprised. She starts to burn, but Sam doesn’t see it happen because Dean has already grabbed him and yanked him away.

“It’s done, Dean!” he yells. “Let me go, she’s gone!”

Dean ignores him and stands up, dragging Sam with him by the arm. He’s breathing deeply, but he doesn’t move. Next to them, the fire surges and then starts to fade, leaving blackened patches on the thick red carpet where it’s burned out.

The church is quiet. Sam’s hands and arms are covered in salt and marble dust; he wipes his hands on his jeans.

“Let’s go, Sam.” Dean says. His voice is oddly flat.

“Are you alright?”

“Let’s go.”

Sam follows him out of the church, feeling confused. Yeah, it’d been scary, but they’d done it, they’d beaten the thing that got dad. He just feels exhilarated now, relieved, and he doesn’t understand what’s wrong with Dean. After all, it had all worked out, and Dean is usually pumped after a hunt. He’d thought he’d at least be happy that it’s over.

The drive home is silent and strained. Sam is still hyped, and it’s hard to keep himself from speaking or moving. Dean is gripping the steering wheel like he’s trying to strangle it.

“Get in,” he says when they reach the room.

Sam goes in ahead of him. “I don’t know why you’re mad,” he says. “I’m not hurt.”

Dean flicks the lights on with considerable violence, and slams the door after them. He locks it, then turns back to him. “You didn’t do what I told you.”

“I thought she was going to hurt you,” he says, defensive.

“I could have taken her. How fucking bad at this do you think I am?”

“She got dad.”

Dean just stares at him for a second, like he is too angry to speak. “What the hell is wrong with you these days, Sammy?” he asks quietly. “What the hell are you doing?”

Sam is too surprised to answer; he hadn’t expected this much anger, even after the drive home. He shrinks back slightly from his brother, but Dean goes on. “Answer me, Sam. First you go to school when I tell you not to, and then the research, and now this. Well? What do you want me to do, Sam? Do you want me to hit you again? Or lock you in the fucking bathroom?”

Sam’s getting angry now. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Dean!” He’s not going to let Dean scare him. Dean’s bigger than him, Dean will win if Sam challenges him, but Sam can still put up a good fight. “You can’t control me anymore.”

He shakes his head. “For god’s sake, Sam.” He grabs him by the shoulder and drags him towards the bathroom. “Get in the fucking shower. Get in.” He shoves him through the door and then into the stall, so violently Sam’s shoulder hits the other wall. Before Sam can stand up straight again he turns on the water, although Sam’s still fully clothed.

“Fuck, Dean -” Sam pushes forward angrily, and Dean shoves him back under the still-cold water. When Sam pushes back as hard as he can, he grabs him and starts to shake him.

“Why the fuck are you doing this to me, Sammy?” he yells. “Dad might be dead, you wanna go off and get killed as well?”

Sam stops, forgetting the water and his anger. “You – you said Dad was okay.”

“His guts were falling out in my hands, Sam! Of course he’s not fucking okay!”

Sam stands, stunned. He doesn’t know what to say. Fighting your brother doesn’t seem so relevant when you’ve just found out that your father might be dead.

Dean stands looking back at him for a second, then turns and leaves the room, slamming the door. Sam is left alone under the running water.

When he pulls himself together enough to step out of the bathroom, Dean is gone. Sam goes to check if he’s taken the car, and finds that Dean has somehow deadlocked the front door from the outside, trapping him inside.

He hasn’t taken the lockpicking kit, let alone all the other sharp objects Sam could use on the lock, so he figures that Dean was trying to make a point more than really attempting to keep him indoors.

And that’s normal: Dean will get angry, Dean will pick fights, Dean will even hit him when he’s mad enough, but his brother has always been bad at discipline. When they were younger he would resort to locking Sam the bathroom rather than hitting him or arguing. Just put Sam in there until he calmed down and would do what he was told again.

He finds, though, that in his current state he doesn’t have the energy to open the door, or to call Dean and yell at him, or do anything, really.

Dad could be dead. And if he is dead, Sam won’t be able to forgive Dean either, not after the way Dean had handled it. He’d kept Sam away from him, lied to him, followed dad’s orders way past the point of sanity. For all they knew his body could be sitting unclaimed somewhere, all because Dean and his stupid, unmerited faith in a person that might not even be alive.

Anger at his brother is the only thing that can make a dent in his fear, and even that doesn’t work very well. He can feel the anxiety surging back stronger, a million times stronger than it had been on Thursday night. He wants to call the hospital, but what if they tell him he’s dead? He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want the chance of the fear being confirmed.

He spends the rest of the evening lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling. There’s nothing to research now, and he isn’t good at reading for distraction unless there is a focus to it. Homework just seems pointless. There is nothing to think about except Dean, and death, and anger. And the anger doesn’t last, overpowered by the fear, and as much as he hates himself for feeling that way, he wants Dean to come back. He just wants his big brother again.

When he does come back, though, in the early hours of the morning, pride wins out and Sam forces himself to stay lying down on his bed. He lied to me. Dean doesn’t turn the light on; he locks the door again, stands over him.

“Did you eat?”

Sam closes his eyes wearily. “I don’t need you to take care of me, Dean,” he says, almost out of habit.

He nods. “Did you eat?”

“No.”

Dean sighs, rubs at his face with his hand. “Why not?”

“Is dad dead?” he asks.

Dean closes his eyes for a second, then sits down on the bed next to his. He reaches forward and grabs something from underneath it. “Here, Sam. You need some of this.” He proffers the bottle.

Sam eyes it. “That’s dad’s.”

“He won’t mind.”

Dean is expecting him to say no, Sam knows. It’s probably the only reason he’s offering it. He sits up, looks his brother in the eye, and takes the bottle.

“You okay?” Dean asks when he’s swallowed some.

Sam nods. The taste is as awful as he remembers, but the warm feeling is good, and that’s what matters at that moment.

“You sure you okay with it? I could go back out, get you a wine cooler or something.”

“Fuck you, Dean.”

He shrugs and stands up. He takes off his jacket, puts his gun down on the bedside table, and gets a beer for himself from the fridge before sitting back down opposite him. Sam watches him, hunched over slightly.

“So,” he says as Sam defiantly takes another drink. “Are you going to say sorry?”

“Why, are you?”

He laughs joylessly. “You’re a selfish little bitch sometimes Sammy, you know that.”

“And you’re a liar.”

Dean shakes his head. He reaches forward and grabs the bottle off him, replaces it with the opened beer. Sam is secretly relieved, even if Dean then proceeds to scull half the bottle.

“What’ll we do if he’s dead,” Sam asks when he is done.

Dean winces; he doesn’t know if it’s the alcohol or the subject. “He’s fine, Sammy.”

The answer is automatic. He doesn’t even look at him.

Sam puts his head down, and draws a deep breath. It’s too much. He can’t deal with this by himself; he just wants someone to respect him enough not to lie to him, for once in his life.

“God damn it,” he says, and begins to cry. Dean reaches for him, but Sam pushes him away.

“Sammy. Don’t cry. Sammy, it’ll be okay. Please.”

Sam looks up, still angry, but when he catches sight of Dean’s face, he realizes something: Dean isn’t lying. His brother is sincere. He believes what he is saying; he has to, even if it means simultaneously believing that his father is fine and knowing that he is probably not.

And it’s more than that; Dean has grown up around ritual, absorbed it so much through research and hunting, that he seems to think that if he believes something enough, if he says it out loud, it might make it true.

And as soon as Sam knows this he wishes he could unknow it, because it puts a new difference there between him and Dean, one that Sam can’t erase.

He draws a breath, and stops crying. He feels empty.

“It’s okay,” Dean says again. “We’ll be fine, I know it.” His voice is afraid, and Sam wishes that he didn’t know that Dean was afraid. It’s not meant to happen, not Dean, not this kind of fear. Dean is meant to understand him, Dean isn’t meant to be afraid, and dad isn’t meant to die.

He breaths in shakily again, and nods. Dean leans over, grasps his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says quietly, because at least he can understand Dean, understand why he lied.

“For what?”

He looks at the ground, and feels his face flush with anger despite himself. “For not doing what you said.”

Dean nods.

“I thought you were going to die,” he says. His hand on his shoulder is suddenly painful.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says again.

Dean nods again and lets go.

“Besides the fact that you didn’t follow orders, it was a good kill, Sam. You handled it well.” He raises his bottle. “Cheers,” he says grimly.

“Cheers,” Sam repeats softly, and they drink.

He thinks I’m like him, Sam thinks. He thinks I just want to hunt. Like that’s what it was about. Once again he’s aware of the new difference, the feeling of Dean being very far away even though he’s right in front of him. It frightens him; he’s never felt so alone.

Dean’s twisting the lid back on the bottle, and he stands up. “Go to sleep now, Sam,” he says firmly.

He can’t. As Dean is going to pass him, Sam grabs the sleeve of his shirt.

Dean takes a deep breath.

Sam can’t say anything, not about how scared he is, about how isolated and wrong he feels. He doesn’t look at his brother, just hangs on to his shirt.

Dean sits down next to him. “You do what I say, Sammy.”

He shakes his head. New tears begin to spill out.

Silence next to him, and then Dean sighs. He wraps an arm around him and pulls Sam close, tight, and Sam thinks Dean has given, in and grabs his shirt. Dean’s hands are on his back, mouth next to his ear.

“Sam,” he says. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”

Sam nods, pushing his head into Dean’s shoulder, and then Dean exhales, breath hot and damp against Sam’s neck. He moves his hands, stroking along Sam’s arms and his waist.

Sam closes his eyes, his whole body flooded with relief and warmth and love. His mouth is still warm from the alcohol, and the breath on his neck seems to go all the way down his spine, down to where Dean’s hand is resting on his lower back.

He pulls back slightly, instinctively, despite his confusion and the fuzziness in his head. Dean’s breath is against his face now, and he kisses Sam right next to his mouth. And then he shifts his hand, and there’s no question about it now.

Sam swallows. His mind is blank, has gotten settled into blank from not thinking about Dad all night, but there’s still enough thought there for him to feel ashamed, to hate himself for his inexperience and the fact that he hasn’t got the willpower to pull away, because despite the shame and the sickness nothing, nothing has ever felt like this.

Dean’s voice next to his ear, over the gasps he is trying to control. “Can you breathe okay?”

He nods, keeps his eyes closed. He swallows again. Dean’s own breath is steady, in and out, warm against his skin. Sam is the one that’s surrounded, Dean’s hands and the smell of his clothes and his even heartbeat loud in his ears.

He is shaking, any semblance of control that he has built up over the last few days is fading to nothing, and he knows already that this is deliberate. Dean is so calm, Dean is doing this on purpose, and Sam knows it and is too weak to stop him.

It ends with San shuddering against him, crying again now, and Dean’s calm grip on him is hard and steady and painful.

He holds Sam for a few moments afterwards and then lets go, not too quickly like he’s upset, but not to slow either. He stands up, sliding out of Sam’s clinging grip, and a second later Sam hears water running in the bathroom as he washes his hands.

When he comes out Sam is still sitting up; it’s too late to pretend to be asleep. He shrinks back in sudden shame, hugging himself, the sweat turning cold on his skin even in the warm room. He doesn’t know where to look.

“Here.” Dean holds out a handful of tissues. Sam forces himself to unfold his arms and take them, and he uses them to wipe his face. He waits until Dean turns away and starts pulling off his shoes, and then wipes his stomach as well. His hands are still shaking. He doesn’t know what to do with the used tissue, and so stuffs it down the gap between the bed and the table.

“Go to sleep now,” Dean says without turning around.

This time Sam obeys him, lying down. A different feeling is building up in him now, different from the fear, worse maybe, black and overpowering. He closes his eyes and tries not to think.

He doesn’t know whether Dean will sit at the end of his bed again, doesn’t know if he wants him to or not. When he wakes up later and Dean is sitting on the sofa, staring at the near-silent TV, Sam doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or relieved. He turns over away from him, towards the wall, and doesn’t let him know he’s awake.

**

Dad comes back on Thursday evening, when Dean is out buying food.

Sam is watching TV on the sofa when there’s a knock at the door. Dean has a key, and there’s no reason for anyone else to be here, but he has trained his mind so well to stay away from the issue that when he sees his father he is amazed.

“Dad,” he says softly, and for a second he doesn’t believe it, just stands stunned as John grips his shoulder. Sam grabs his dad’s arm, tight, so tight it hurts his hand.

Whatever initial moment of emotion passes with that surprise, and then Sam is saying “What are you doing, dad? Why didn’t you call us to come get you? You shouldn’t be walking…”

“I’m fine, Sammy,” he says firmly. But he lets Sam lead him towards the bed and help him sit down, lets him help him take off his jacket.

“Lie down. You shouldn’t be –”

“No, Sam. I have to get back to the chapel.”

“It’s fine, dad. Dean finished it already. He burnt the relics.”

He looks surprised, but shakes his head. “Still should go and check it’s finished.”

“Dad, no. It’s fine.”

John stops, looks at him like he is going to argue, but then nods. “Okay. Where’s your brother?”

Sam stands up, and starts gently pushing him down. “He’ll be back soon. Lie down.”

“Were you boys okay? Dean look after you alright?”

Sam nods. There’s a odd moment of silence, Sam’s hand on his shoulder awkwardly. He opens his mouth to say something, but before he can speak there is a noise from the doorway.

“Dad.” And Dean is there instantly, brushing past Sam and wrapping his arms around his father, no shock or hesitation there.

John winces. “How you doing, Dean.”

Dean shakes his head and hugs him tighter, like he can’t speak. The emotion makes Sam uncomfortable, like he is watching something private. He turns away, and goes into the bathroom to get the first aid kit.

It’s not until close to midnight that Dean finally leaves John’s side long enough to have a shower. Dad appears to fall asleep, and after he has undressed, Sam sits down on the bed next to him. When his father doesn’t move, Sam lies down.

“Sammy? What’s wrong?”

Sam winces. He’d apparently overestimated the effects of the painkillers his dad had taken. He shakes his head. “Can I sleep in here tonight?”

John sighs. “Sam, you’re too big.”

He doesn’t answer. John sighs again and painfully shifts himself over to give Sam more room. Sam pulls the covers over him.

“Are you alright, son?” he asks quietly.

Sam nods.

“No problems with Dean?”

“No sir.”

His father sighs again, and pats him on the arm before turning over, slowly, away from him.

Sam looks at his back for a second. Then he turns face down into the edge of the pillow, grabbing on to it tight, and closes his eyes.

OK I GIVE IN

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:46:13 GMT

I had a few more questions about allowing comments, so I'll just explain it here. I haven't done it so far because:

- I'm way too shy and hypersensitive to respond to them adequately, and

- I don't think it's fair on my part to expect concrit/feedback when everything here is unbeta-ed and when I basically use LJ as an excuse to let loose with my run-on sentences and gratuitous angst and questionable grammar :) I mean, it'd be like asking someone to edit my college essays without even running them through a spellcheck first. Or is it just my little sister that does that?