Fic: Fear The Sunless Lands (Sam/Dean) 1/6
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean (background Ruby/Lenore)
Rating: NC-17 -- Word count: 42,000
Warnings: AU, vampire!Dean, angst, blood-drinking, violence, gore, dub-con, rimming
Notes: Written for the 2012 spn_j2_bigbang with art by heard_the_owl. Further notes and thanks at the masterpost
Summary:Hunters live in a world of blood and darkness, so when Dean gets turned into a vampire, not much changes for the Winchester brothers. Well, except for being on the lam from a Hunter’s Guild that wants them dead, sneaking around the world of seedy underground monster bars and sketchy voodoo practitioners in search of a fabled ‘cure’ and the little fact that Dean can’t seem to stop himself from molesting his brother when he feeds (and sometimes when he doesn’t). But as the lines between what they were raised to be and what they are get blurrier, Sam and Dean will have to decide how high a price they are willing to pay for a life in the light and what they’re willing to do for one another.
“I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her.” - Dream about Death in Sandman #8 "The Sound of Her Wings"
Iron-thick air oozes toward the back of his throat like sludge. Meaty thud; Dean, shoved to his knees, shirt stained so red it’s black from the seeping mess of his neck. Blood flow hasn’t stopped yet. Heartbeat hasn’t stopped yet. Fangs for the briefest of flashes as his mouth opens on a last breath before the shine of a blade and a smear of blood.
Sam's feet hit the cold floor next to the bed in the same moment that the rain-sticky air hits his lungs. The paving stones of the Seer dormitory are smoothed down from a century of rough boots and salt scrubs, slick enough to send him skidding as he takes the corner into the hall, rolls with it and keeps going, crawling until he can get to his feet.
The night-guard in front of the dormitory startles as Sam rushes by, but either he catches the mark of Seer etched into Sam's forearms or has enough common sense to recognize that Sam is a man on a mission because he doesn't make a move to stop him as Sam leaps the steps and barrels on, gravel courtyard like a bed of nails on the tender soles of his feet. He hardly notices.
In the distance, the wrought iron fence that marks the edge of the compound is highlighted in shades of undulating red and blue. No sirens, so no way to know whether it’s police or an ambulance, but either way, it doesn’t matter - the cops don’t have any legal standing in hunter business and if Sam’s dream means what he thinks it does, there’s nothing an EMT could do for his brother.
The top of a white van, visible over the spiked line of the front gate, and the big broadcasting dish on top of it is what rankles. Vultures. Ten minutes and it’s going to be a media circus out there. Sometimes Sam thinks their ancestors had the right idea, keeping the rest of humanity in the dark about what hunters do.
Fear-sweat from the vision cools in the pre-dawn air, dries tightly on his skin, oxygen bursting like a combustion engine in his lungs. Run, run, run.
The slap of his feet echoes off of the tile floors of the Guild hall, the high domed ceilings magnifying the harsh sound of his breath and throwing it right back in his face. More guards notice him, are following him this time, but Sam wasn’t raised in the life for nothing. Let them try and stop him.
The milky yellow light up ahead is coming from the Council Room, and he can’t be sure that that’s the right one from the vision but he’s not stupid enough to take the chance. He just hopes he’s got enough lead time.
His brother’s name is exploding from his throat before he even makes the doorway, the scent of blood and sweat and home swallowing him whole before the syllable finishes curling off of his tongue along with the weight of Dean’s arm, Dean’s body, turning them. Sam’s arms come around him automatically, one hand fisted in the leather jacket that has never quite stopped smelling like their father, the other finding the tacky wetness of blood on his big brother’s skin.
A drugged babble of, "Sammy, can't, gotta, Sam," pouring out of Dean’s mouth gets cut off by a sharp, cha-chack. Every muscle in Dean's body twitches at the sound, familiar as breathing; .9mm Glock. His boots shuffle against Sam's naked feet like he’s trying to spin them again, get himself between Sam and the gunfire - of course he would, fucking idiot - but Sam doesn't give an inch. It's like trying to hold back a freight train with his teeth, but he manages.
Physically forcing himself to let go of Dean's jacket, circulation rushing back into his fingertips so fast they prickle, Sam turns around instead, shoulders bracing up against Dean's chest in case he gets any ideas about going all white knight.
“You want him, you’re going through me.” The warning comes out a rasp, nothing but patchwork scraps of air getting into Sam's lungs. It echoes off of the vaulted ceiling like a ping-pong ball, bouncing off of devil's traps and pentagrams, hamsas and nazars, into the terse silence.
Dean's heavy hand snakes up to rest over the thud of Sam’s heart, digging at the fabric separating their skin with nails caked in rusty red and black. The sensation is strange and more than a little unnerving, but that’s for later, all for later, now it’s survival, backed into a corner like dogs. They’ve been called worse. And every last one of the hunters circling warily around them should know better than to challenge John Winchester’s dogs.
“Sam, he’s been bitten,” Caleb says, as if there's any way Sam could possibly be here and not know that. His blood boils with the realization that they weren't even going to send for him, not even afforded the basic courtesy of saying goodbye to the only family he has left. Maybe they're smarter than he gives them credit for. Once he made it in this room, there was only one way this was ever going to end. Two, possibly, but he'd rather not gun down a room full of hunters if he can help it.
“Turned,” Pastor Jim adds, also pointless. Jo circles around behind him, doing a damn fine job of hemming them in. Her hold on the gun doesn’t look as steady as it should, though. If he’s got to push through, going for her is his best bet.
Samuel steps out from behind the Council table with Bobby. Only the two of them - apparently daybreak executions can only garner so much interest from the higher ups.
“There is only one outcome for this,” Samuel mirrors Sam's own thoughts back at him, probably with a very different 'outcome' in mind. At least he spares the pretext of caring - as if there’s more between them than genetic code. “He did your family name proud. Let him die like a hunter, Sam.”
“Sam,” Dean repeats, nothing more and nothing less. The tip of his nose weasels its way underneath the edge of Sam’s hair, inhaling so deep Sam can feel his brother's chest expand against his shoulder blades. He has to tamp down hard on the urge to jerk away from the nerve-jangling wrongness of it. One inch of space between he and Dean, one clean shot, and it’s over. Dean can go the fuck on and bite him if he wants to, Sam’s not going anywhere.
Outside there's a rush of footsteps preceding Ellen, heaving like she’s run the whole way too. Good, that’s something - two Councilmen on Sam’s side versus one opposed. Better odds. Now if he just had a fucking plan.
“Well, nice to see you boys have everything under control as usual,” she drawls, tension in every line as she walks to stand next to Bobby.
Samuel looks ready to spit nails, fists clenched but unwavering. "The law’s clear."
“I’m not letting you lay a hand on my brother,” Sam growls, heart stuttering under Dean’s hand when his brother mimics it with an actual growl. The whole room flinches.
Covering Dean’s fist with his own hand, Sam grips it against his sternum in what he hopes passes for reassurance to his brother’s chemical-soaked brain.
There’s enough lore in some of the old texts to guess that Dean’s got to be out of his head with it by now, riding high on brand new senses and acid-sharp blood. Later maybe he’ll bitch at Sam for putting himself at risk, but as long as his brother makes it to later he can’t bring himself to give a damn.
Sam’s only seen someone in the middle of turning once before. She’d been a teenager, five or six years older than Sam at the time, writhing in the central courtyard, more like a wildcat stuffed into a human body than the school picture that had run in the obituary the next day. He still has nightmares about it sometimes.
But that was a civilian. Hunters don’t get this far in, ever. Truth is, it’s a mark of esteem that Caleb and Jo didn’t do the job out in the field, brought Dean home to die. As if this place, anywhere, could ever be home for them.
“He’s becoming a monster.” Jo bites her lip as soon as the words are out, pale and a little bit shaky. Whatever went down on their hunt, it must have been one hell of a show.
This is why the Guild rules are bullshit. Codependent Sam’s ass, he and Dean are a team, nobody covers each other better than they do. It’s what they were raised to be. If it had been him out there watching Dean’s back, they wouldn’t be in this situation right now. He’ll take codependent any day of the week.
Sam nods, grips his brother’s hand tight enough to the feel the shape of the bones against his palm. “Then he’s my monster.”
Dean loses another low sound, less like a growl this time than a purr. It vibrates straight into Sam's skin, Dean's lips pressed against his spine sending every last instinct Sam's got into panic mode. Caleb and Jo share a look, grips tightening on their weapons, looking for a way to get to Dean before he sinks his fangs in. Throwing out every bit of his animal nature - Dean's got enough of it to cover them both at the moment - Sam pulls his brother even closer against his back.
He really could have gone the rest of his life without knowing what the hot line of Dean's cock feels like pressed against his ass. If they make it out of this, the rumor mill is going to kick into overdrive.
"There's nothing to be done, Sam," Pastor Jim argues gently, and Sam only just catches the words because at exactly that moment he feels the slick heat of Dean's tongue slide over his skin like a live wire. His stomach's churning like he just chugged a gallon of bleach with a chaser of Pop Rocks, but he can't move away, physically can't, even assuming Dean would let him. Everything in him is telling him to run, everything but that one tiny sliver that's the most important part of who he is. The part that knows that without Dean, it doesn't matter what happens to him. If he's going to go down, he'll do it protecting his brother. As long as he has breath.
"Nobody's tried," Sam snaps back, venting some of the jittery adrenaline running rough-shod through his veins.
Samuel opens his mouth to counter but Sam cuts him off at the pass. "Not since the middle ages. We do all kinds of things now that they couldn't back then, why not this? There could be a cure out there now and we don't even know it. We’re never going to know it if we don’t try."
Dean's open mouth molds itself to the machine-gun flutter of Sam's jugular. The pressure Sam's clutching his brother's hand with should be cracking bones but Dean doesn't even seem to notice. Bile is coating the back of Sam's tongue bitter, a deadly brand of certainty bracing him for the razor points of teeth that don't come. Instead it's just Dean's mouth, soft and wet, with a steady, sucking pressure that in another time and place - with another person - might actually feel good.
"He's not Dean anymore! Just look at him, Sam!" Caleb barks, scanning for a bead on Dean's skull as he suckles at Sam's skin like mother's milk. Sam turns his own head slightly into the press of it, rubbing his cheek against the top of Dean's head, fucking up whatever shot Caleb might have thought about firing off. Dean moans over Caleb's curse, mistaking it for encouragement.
"He'll come back. Once he's finished t-" the word is a burr in Sam's throat, "turning, he'll be back."
Bobby and Ellen are scrupulously not looking at one another but Sam can still see it in their eyes; if there's anybody on the planet who could even begin to want to save Dean as much as him, it's those two. The skin under Dean's lips heats as blood blooms close to the surface. He wonders how long Dean's been rolling his hips like that.
"It's not just for me," Sam throws out desperately. Jo will break, given a good enough excuse; she's always had it bad for Dean. Pastor Jim's almost as much of a surrogate father as Bobby and enough of a man of faith to still believe in miracles. Caleb's hung up on the rules; if one of the Council orders him to stand down he will. Samuel can fuck off and die, the old ways don't apply when it comes to executing Sam's brother.
He pushes on, words tumbling out of his mouth like a rockslide; every single last-ditch improv skill he's picked up over the years funneled into this one moment. "If we find a cure, it's for all of us, a way to save every hunter, every victim that's ever been fed vampire blood against their will. You'd never have to put anyone down again for this. We can't not take that chance."
"It can't be done," Samuel spits. That spot on Sam's neck is kind of starting to hurt, but Dean's oblivious - or worse, enjoying it - free hand drifting down to Sam's hip to pull him back into a slow, gut-churning grind.
"We don't know that!" Sam shouts back, too high and tight to come off as anything but desperate.
"He'll kill people!"
"I'll stop him."
A step too close, Dean starts to growl again at Samuel; lips still locked on Sam’s skin, tongue still working, but Sam can feel his attention has shifted, can practically see the heat shimmering out from his eyes like he means to burn the man alive. Just in case, Sam snakes his free arm back to hook around Dean and hold him close. It probably won’t be worth much if Dean decides Samuel’s trachea would make a pretty throw rug, but it’s something.
And Samuel, say whatever else about him - and there is plenty to be said - he’s at least smart enough to ease back one step. "He'll kill you."
The vibration against Sam’s neck tones it down a notch back to ticklish and pleased. "That's my risk to take."
"Not if you're unleashing him on the world, it's not!” Samuel starts pacing but he keeps the distance like there’s an invisible force field arching out around Sam. “He's got too many skills. With that kind of strength and nothing to hold him back-"
"I take full responsibility.” It’s not a plan because if it was, it would be the single worst plan Sam’s ever come up with. But once he’s said it, he’s got no inclination to take it back. “For all of it, anything he does. If he kills someone you can execute us both, two for the price of one."
He feels the spike of adrenaline through the pressure of Dean’s mouth and the roll of his hips more than in his veins. Dean’s chin is pressing against his throat hard enough to screw up his breathing, the edge of teeth a palpable threat that his brother’s still not carrying through with. At this rate Sam’s skin is going to split just from the pressure but Dean seems more interested in getting himself off against Sam ass. It’s a terrible commentary on Sam’s life that he’s counting that as a blessing today.
"Sam," Ellen hisses, at the same time that Bobby warns, "Boy."
He steamrolls right over their objections and his common sense with them, too scared of what’ll catch up to him if he stops to bother with the brakes. "I do. I'll take it. If I can't control him, we’re both dead anyway."
"Don't throw your life away, Winchester," Samuel says solemnly. It isn’t the same thing at all to tenderness, but for a moment it’s not completely impossible to imagine this man remembers he’s their mother’s father.
So Sam goes for honesty, drives right for the bone with it because it’s the only weapon left in his arsenal.
"He's all I've got."
The room is quiet enough to hear every happy, wet noise Dean makes around the mouthful of Sam’s flesh he’s working, the loud grate of denim on the worn boxers Sam fell asleep in. A thousand - hell, a million - times he’s overheard Dean jacking off, could time it down to the minute in his head, but for some reason Dean’s still dragging this one out.
This is really not the time to go developing stamina, jerk
"I call the question.” Bobby says it like the death sentence it, in all probability, is. “The execution of Dean Winchester.”
Ellen’s mouth pulls tight but she shakes her head. "Nay."
Samuel snaps, "Aye," head turning so sharply toward Bobby Sam expects to hear something pop.
Bobby’s eyes are sad, tired so far beyond his years, even by hunter standards. They never once waver from Sam’s.
"Nay."
"We're calling a full Council!" Samuel practically roars, taking a hitched step toward Sam before Ellen gets in his way.
"The matter is decided." She shoves at his chest hard enough to back him up a few inches and the threatening step he takes toward her in retaliation is plenty to get Jo’s gun trained on him instead of Sam. Even Caleb wavers.
"Sam," Bobby grabs one of the syringes of dead-man's blood out of the pouch on Caleb's belt and tosses it over. Sam hesitates for all of a second before popping the cap off and jabbing it into Dean's neck. The edge of a fang grazes Sam's skin as his brother roars furiously for the two or three seconds it takes for him to turn to dead weight against Sam's back.
Dean wakes up feeling like he got gang-banged by a herd of semi-trucks. There's not a single molecule in his body that doesn't ache like it got wailed on with a sledge hammer. Even the sound of his heartbeat is a base drum beating at the inside of his skull.
It might be a minute or a day of lying there, completely still because it hurts ever so slightly less that way, for it to occur to him that he's not breathing.
The second he does, he draws in a gasp that's so full of scents and flavors there can't possibly be any air packed into it. It smells like dirt, but not soil - human dirt, oil and skin all mixed up with road tar and fried food. Old smells, ones that have been here a long time by the way they're muddled together, a blended smear in his nostrils. The sharper scents are plastic and cotton tinged with bleach and beyond that something warm and deep, like newly turned earth heating under the afternoon sun, the hot stone of the hearth in front of a roaring fire, a soft little hollow to curl up in, molded to his body from wear; spicy and vibrant, tangy-sweet and savory. Alive. He can barely swallow all the saliva pooled on his tongue and his cheeks are cramping as they pump out even more of it.
It's right about then that it hits him that the heartbeat he's hearing isn't his own.
"Sam."
His eyes shoot open at the sound of his own voice, rusty as an old gate, to find a blank taupe wall. It's night, which he can't see but he knows, feels it, the same way he's always been able to find north without a compass. He draws in another breath because now that he's going, it feels natural to keep it up, and because he needs to keep drawing that scent into him like it, instead of the oxygen, is what's keeping him alive.
Moving's impossible. Literally impossible. It's like he's been working out non-stop for days, every muscle thrashed, and his body's just given up on the whole thing. At least until he hears that not-his heartbeat speed up and the brush of cloth on skin as someone on the other side of the room moves. Like there’s a leash strung from him to it, something nestled deep inside of Dean’s chest jerks, pulls him in that direction and feeds back the shape of a body, hunkered up, knees and elbows and shoulders, every line of it mapped out in the back of Dean’s head like a 3D picture.
"Sam," is the only word that jumps to mind, body protesting as he turns over. And there he is, Sammy as Dean's never seen him before.
He looks exhausted, bruise-dark circles under his eyes. The whites around hazel are bloodshot and Dean can tell by the color as much as the smell of him that there's too much caffeine in his blood, not nearly enough protein. Then he takes a moment to have a private freak out because he seriously just thought that.
"It's ok," Sam says. Dean can only assume there wasn't supposed to be a question mark clinging to the end of it.
"Ok," he parrots, eyes tracking over the shadow of stubble on Sam's jaw - individual hairs blond-shiny and obvious - getting as far as the purple mark on Sam's neck that draws him like a homing beacon before what his body's been trying to tell him all along comes crashing home like a car hurtling through the living room wall.
The hunt. The vampire nest. The sting of teeth rending his skin and the pain of cool blood seeping inside like ground glass in his veins. Nonsense flashes of the Council are almost lost among the memory of the taste of Sam. Sam tight against his body, rubbing against his cock, heartbeat under his hand. Sam hanging them both with the same noose.
"Sam!" It's broken-bottle sharp this time, the force of anger enough to propel Dean to a sitting position. Dimly he registers that he's in a motel bed, scratchy cotton boxers rubbing his skin all wrong underneath even scratchier sheets. There's not a light on in the place, and he can see like it's high noon. "What did you do? What the fuck did you do!"
Sam's face does this... thing. A weird seizure of micro-expressions and somehow Dean's brain catalogues all of them like he pushed the slow-mo button on reality. It's some freaky-ass shit is what it is. And, you know, informative. Apparently Sammy's not quite as confident about his psychotic plan as he's letting on.
"What I had to," is what Sam finally settles on and if Dean's body was capable of that much motion he'd walk over there and deck him. What the serious fuck?
"Oh, so you had to let me turn? You had to stick you own fucking neck out and tell them they could kill you!"
Bitchface #6 puts in an appearance, mouth tight and eyes challenging - the bane of Dean's fucking existence since Sammy hit puberty. "Yes."
"Sam! I don't, I'm not-" A push of rage backdrafts through Dean's chest, vicious and directionless, curling his fingers up tight in the sheets. "They'll murder you! They'll put you down like a rabid dog!"
Standing feels like somebody split open his joints, poured in hot sand and stitched it all back up with razorwire. It's still a hell of a lot more than he would have thought he could manage and once it's done he immediately regrets it. Because that delicious, live-for-it smell? That would be Sam. His little brother Sam. And being closer to it just makes his body come alive in ways Dean's not even in the same hemisphere as prepared to deal with.
"Only if you kill someone!" Sam points out like it's some kind of fucking revelation and goddamn it, but he's moving closer. Dean digs his fingernails into his palm hard enough to hear the knuckles pop, faint taste of blood insinuating itself over his tastebuds as the throb of his gums makes itself known above the din of the other pains swamping Dean’s system.
"And you think you can stop me?!" He's absolutely sure his voice has never had that reverb before, that shiver in the air even after he's stopped yelling.
Sam steps in even closer, skirting the edge of the bed until he's near enough to touch - to grab. Dean's stuck choosing between compulsively swallowing or letting his drool spatter out on the floor.
"I think that knowing they'll kill me if you do is better than a guarantee that you won't." He's got the Grand fucking Canyon of frowns on, but Dean can see the faith in his eyes like it's got its own special color underneath the flecks of emerald and cobalt. "You'd never let that happen to me."
"Y-you. You!" he stutters out lamely, back unexpectedly up against the wall and doing his best to keep right on going when every instinct is jangling at him to taketaketake. "I'm a killer! I'm a predator, Sam!"
The sound that huffs out of Sam is something like a laugh. The taste of it lingers on Dean's tongue from three feet away. "So what else is new?"
"That!" He's got no intention of jolting forward, baring his fangs at his baby brother, but he is and he does and all he can feel is the way his skin itches like there are fire ants underneath it, wanting to be pressed up against Sam's. Shock-wide eyes dart to the sharp canines Dean can feel pushing out to sheathe his canines."That's fucking new! I'm a blood-sucking evil creature! I eat people!"
The heat of Sam's palms pressed to either side of his face is so devastating Dean's brain actually stops functioning for a long eternity of a second. "We'll work it out," Sam promises, easy as pie. Dean barely processes it over the surging need to taste every last inch of his brother's skin. He feels like he's going to hurl he wants it so bad.
Sam moving away brings relief like lye rubbed into his marrow and all he can do is let himself fall sideways onto the bed again, praying - as if he's not already too far gone for any semblance of heaven to hear - that he won't be strong enough to get back up.
"Here," Sam digs something out of the mini-fridge under the old-school TV and chucks it at the bed. A thick plastic bag emblazoned with the Guild's seal lands with a blurble, the dark fluid inside sloshing around a siren song that makes Dean want to tear his own throat out. "O positive. I wasn't sure if you'd have a preference. Universal seemed like the safest choice."
The safest choice. Like Sam would know what that looked like if it walked up to him and bit him on the neck.
"What's wrong with you?" Dean whispers incredulously.
"Nothing."
"Nothing." There's a stain on the ceiling that kind of looks like an astronaut helmet. It's a hell of a lot easier to talk to right now than Sam. "I'm a vampire, the Guild wants us dead and you're just fine and dandy? You think that's normal?"
He's still not looking, but he knows it when Sam cocks a hip against the dresser, arms crossed over his chest; aware down to the atom of the shape of Sam's body and the space between them. "I'm sorry, what part of our lives has ever been normal? Things are just a little more complicated now."
"Complicated! Sam, I'm-"
"Six days, Dean!" He's not ready for it at all when Sam starts shouting, startled enough that he ends up screwing himself over by looking at the pissed-off, heartbroken thing Sam's got going on. "Six days watching you turn, keeping you drugged on dead-man's blood, listening to you twist and howl and say..." he stops on a choked sound Dean probably wasn't meant to hear. "I saw you stop breathing, Dean. I. Watched. You. Die. You really think there's a single thing you've got to say that I haven't gone over in my head a thousand times already? You really think that I give a fuck? I'll do what it takes. Even if I have to personally kill every last hunter on the planet. I'm not letting them hurt you."
It might be easier to take if Sam didn't cross the room and sit down on the bed right damn next to him but Dean doubts it. That he'd do anything for Sam has never been a question, not even a blip on Dean's radar, but no matter how many times Sam's gone to the mat for him, it never gets easier to swallow and he never knows what to do with it. It's not supposed to be Sam's job to protect him.
"... So what's the plan?"
It shouldn't even be audible over the dull roar of the TV and the entire room between them but it's all Sam can focus on. That infernal crunching, like an accusation. A big 'fuck you' to their established reality. Dean's powers of denial will never cease to amaze.
"Dean."
His brother doesn't respond, a silent shape against the backlit sienna curtains covering the window. They've been able to fudge some on the sunlight problem, thank God - as long as it's not direct light, things are tolerable at least, so they aren’t on complete diurnal lockdown. He suspects it hurts more than Dean's willing to let on, but so far they don’t have any reason to go out during the daytime anyway so there hasn’t been much point in arguing about it. Not that that’s actually stopped them.
They’re both going stir-crazy. Staying in one place has never been a forte for them, brought up on blacktop and the rush of scenery past the windows. The few weeks a year they’ve always been forced to stay with the Guild - just long enough to keep up appearances, not make it look like they get away with flagrantly flouting the rules quite as much as they actually do - have always been a special kind of torture, all capped off now by being stuck in a 13x13 room.
At least this time he’s got Dean instead of being stuffed away in the Seer dorms. It’s supposed to promote his abilities, being surrounded by other people like him, but Sam’s honestly always wondered if it’s not just that what the Seers can do is a little too close to non-human for any of the ‘regular’ hunters to want to sleep near them. He can’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up that way, sequestered away for special training as soon as his first vision hit when he was nine, never able to spar or hunt or just hang around with Dean. It wouldn’t have even been like they were really brothers, just strangers with the same blood. For all the disdain it may have earned them in the community, that’s one part of the way their father raised them that Sam will never regret.
Crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch.
Alright, mostly never regret. Sometimes Dean makes it hard to remember why.
"Dean!"
The yell startles his brother enough that the jumbo M&M bag he's in the process of reaching for gets smushed under his palm instead, candy shells popping inside plastic from the force. This whole 'Dean has really sensitive hearing' thing does have its advantages.
"What?" he gripes, grimacing at his ruined chocolate.
There’s a temper in his voice that Sam can feel echoed in his own. It’s oppressive in air gone stale from too many hours locked up tight, taking up the space between them like a literal elephant plunked down in the middle of the room. A whole herd of elephants for that matter.
Dean has been less than amenable to what he’s calling ‘the soylent green situation’. Sam can't exactly blame him, but pretending it isn't happening won't help matters. Which is really what's making all that goddamn, motherfucking crunching wear on Sam's last nerve.
"You have to eat something," Sam says, hoping it comes off more exasperated than pissy. He really does not need another snarky comment about PMS.
It must not work because he earns himself a glare and a snort. "I was, dickwad."
Dean dejectedly studies a partially crushed M&M between his fingers, sullenly pops it into his mouth.
"You know what I mean."
Another huff - that is really getting old fast - and Dean goes back to pretending to ignore Sam so hard it’s like the room is buzzing with it. His posture is an easy sprawl across the bed, every ounce of tension jammed into his eyes and the tight line of his stubbornly working jaw.
Discovering that he could eat people food - and not just ‘people’ food - has been a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, Dean’s a lot less sulky about it than he could be under the circumstances - Dean will forever deny that he can sulk, swears that’s Sam’s department, but Sam knows his brother too well to fall for that.
The downside is that Dean figuring out that his body can handle regular food means he’s been actively avoiding anything to do with the B-L-double-O-D word and that’s a problem because it also turns out that while he can eat food, it doesn't do much about the forlorn sounds his stomach keeps making. He'd chewed his way through five snack bags of Cheetos from the motel vending machine before Sam ran out of dollar bills and categorically refused to drive to a convenience store to get a jumbo bag. It took six hours to get Dean to admit that maybe cheese-flavored powder is not a blood substitute. At which point his brother suggested Twinkies.
Sam had ultimately been willing to give a meat-lovers pizza a shot, because at least animal products were on the same spectrum as what Dean really needed. His brother chomped his way through an extra-large, failing miserably at hiding the unhappy set of his shoulders when it obviously wasn’t working.
He still won’t touch the blood bag, though and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that that’s a problem.
Sam thinks he’s done a decent job of pretending not to notice the way Dean’s eyes track him, the way occasionally he’ll lick his lips and just as quickly blanch, like he’s suddenly realized what he was contemplating. He can’t fathom what it’s like, what Dean’s feeling, and his brother doesn’t seem inclined to share about any particular draw he might feel to the lingering bruise on Sam’s neck. Then again, Sam doesn’t exactly ask either. Some things are better left unaddressed.
While Dean’s been busy acting like everything is business as usual, Sam’s been splitting his time between backtracking every vague mention of a rumor of a theory about vampire cures - from the Guild archives, from the web, from anywhere he can pick up even a scrap of information - and keeping tabs on Dean’s progression.
They’ve learned that evidently, luckily, Dean doesn’t need to eat - drink, whatever - every day, although otherwise his biological processes are much the same. He still has to shower and shave and pee just like he always has, which is interesting, but Sam can’t get any more specific details because then Dean gets huffy about not being a lab rat and burns Sam’s notes. He’s got them all copied over in a Word doc, but he’s not pointing that out for fear of losing the laptop too.
In terms of physical ability, Dean’s been a lot more reticent about how things are developing but Sam’s had more than enough time to observe him to have worked out at least some of it. He seems to have very acute hearing now, maybe even moreso than Sam’s best guess since he occasionally reacts to things Sam can’t even pick up on when he’s straining for it.
The nightsight Dean might actually have not noticed since he certainly seems to be oblivious to the pitch blackness when he wanders restlessly around the room in the dark hours before dawn while Sam lays in bed and tries to make himself sleep. Dean doesn’t seem to need nearly as much rest as he used to, though he does doze off for an hour or two at a time in the middle of the day, tossing and turning fitfully. Sam’s been wondering if maybe it’s the hunger keeping Dean awake, but again, his brother won’t talk about it.
Smell also seems to be a thing, and this one Dean’s obviously aware of, just as he’s obviously trying to ignore it. Not doing a very good job either with the way he perks up anytime somebody walks past their room, nostrils flared, fingers clenched in the sheets. That one has Sam worried more than any of the others.
There hasn’t been any meaningful documentation on a turn in close to three hundred years, but there are some reports from the time of new vampires having a period of being almost like their human selves before going rabid with the need to feed. He’s hoping some of that is a virtue of the victims not having access to blood - any animal, human or otherwise, will eventually go crazy if denied food long enough - and not some intrinsic part of the process of becoming a vampire, but naturally the Guild promptly executed any turns who went feral, so he hasn’t got solid data to base that on.
The dreams aren’t helping the matter.
He keeps getting these flashes, partially formed little things, not quite like a true vision but with enough visceral quality that he can’t just write it off as the musings of his subconscious either. Dean with his mouth stained red, crimson running over his fangs, down his chin, spattering on peachy-colored tile Sam doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t know what to make of it but it doesn’t feel like a good thing. He hasn’t figured out a way to bring it up with Dean - the last thing Dean needs is to think that Sam’s losing faith in him.
The most interesting tidbit they’ve come across in the going-on-a-week they’ve been stuck here is that, despite appearances, Dean still has a heartbeat. It’s slow, only every couple of minutes, and then so faint that even with Sam’s fingers pressed right over Dean’s pulse, he can only barely feel it. It’s startling. Admittedly Sam’s never done any extensive study on vampires before now, but he’s never heard anything about them having heartbeats and he hasn’t found any record of one ever being observed before.
It births a hope, a whisper of one as fine and delicate as spun sugar. Dean might not actually be dead. It’s not a thought Sam shares with his brother, the same way he knows his brother isn’t sharing that exact same one with him. Hope and the Winchesters have a tumultuous relationship, and they don’t want to give it any reason to prove them wrong.
For the first time since Sam stuck his name on the execution list beside Dean’s, he’s starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t going to kill them both.
Dean can smell it when Sam touches the bag, even that tiny bit of jostling enough to have the scent of blood blooming in the air. The sudden urge to blow chunks is almost enough to cover the surge of want that charges through his body. It doesn’t even make sense, the bag is air tight, but still.
“No means no, Sam.” He tries to keep his voice flat, tamp down that trembling gurgley thing it wants to do as his gums swell and ache, fangs fighting to pop free. He licks at the abraded flesh, his own blood a weak, sickening balm on raw nerves.
“Of course it does,” Sam says, carrying the bag over to the cracked formica counter of the motel room’s kitchenette. He rinses out the paper cup from his coffee this morning - they’ve long since run out of the tiny stack next to the complimentary coffee pot and there’s no way in fuck they’re letting the maid in to get more - and dries it with one of the flimsy paper napkins that came with the pizza however many days ago. Not so much as glancing at Dean, he pulls his pocket knife and makes a small slit at the top of the bag.
The effect is instantaneous. Every muscle in Dean’s body snaps taught like he’s having a fucking seizure, tension like fire licking at his joints and tendons as they bunch all on their own, ready to spring.
“Sam,” comes out less of a warning, less of a fucking word, than he’d planned. Sam turns the bag up to pour a long, thin ribbon of liquid into the cup and sticks into in the microwave. That probably violates a literal fuck-ton of health codes.
Dean doesn’t remember moving but then all of a sudden he’s standing right there beside Sam, watching the muted flower design on the cup turn around in the ocher light of the microwave.
The blue lines of the timer blink DONE and Sam pushes the button to pop the door open. He glances at Dean, waits, doesn’t do any fucking thing like he doesn’t know that hot, rich smell curling on the air is making the tips of Dean’s fingers itch. Finally he reaches in and picks it up, long fingers making the cup look tiny as he sets it down on the counter in front of Dean.
The room is vibrating, he can feel it, dull hum of recirculated air pumping in from the window unit, tinny clang of the television speakers, buzz of electricity in the walls. Beyond he can sense people, other heartbeats, other scents, shampoos and sweat and industrial cleaning solvents. Hard to focus on that with his universe anchored somewhere in the space between his brother’s thrumming, hot, alive body and the reflection of his worried face in the blood-black surface of the cup.
Sam swallows, a heavy, dry, click of smooth muscle on muscle. He needs to take better care of himself, too much damn time staring at the computer, not enough food or water or sleep. He doesn’t have any practical experience at all, but he knows Sam’s blood would be thick, dehydrated, the same way he knows what a rock tastes like even though he’s never put one in his mouth.
“Too hot?” Sam asks. If Dean couldn’t hear the way he can now, he’d totally miss the tremor of Sam’s voice.
He means to say something back, snarky or pissy or just flat out mad but when he opens his mouth the taste of blood and Sam pastes itself to his tastebuds from the dense air and he gets stuck grinding the flavor into the roof of his mouth like he can absorb it through his flesh.
And then Sam - fucking dumbass Sammy with his goddamn death wish - dips the tip of one long finger into the cup. It drags free shiny-slick, scarlet pitting in Sam’s cuticle, crawling into the trench under the white of his nail, one slow drop going heavy on the pad and pulling, growing, threatening to drip.
Dean thinks the snarl that comes out of him has something like ‘douchebag’ hidden in the depths but he doubts Sam caught it, doesn’t even care because he’s too busy sucking every scrap of liquid DNA out of the whorls of Sam’s fingerprint to pay attention to anything else.
It’s not tasty, not really, not in any meaningful way. It’s more like beer, how foul that first sip he snuck when he was eight was, couldn't imagine why anyone would drink that on purpose but now there are few things in the world better than a cold one. Or there used to be. Dean may have to reevaluate his definitions now that he’s licked blood off of Sam’s skin.
Sam’s hand is pressing against Dean’s face, hard maybe - it’s tough to tell now that he’s so much stronger. Trying to pull away, Dean realizes after a second. The noise he makes about it is completely alien to him, nothing like anything he has a name for and it’s that that shocks him into letting Sam yank his hand free.
It hits him to say something thoughtful or at the very least apologetic but anything specific that he might come up with gets snagged on these errant scraps of thought; Sam spread eagle on the floor with messy patterns painted red on his skin for Dean to mouth away and Sam with his head thrown back as the milky light from the lamp catches on the ladder of his bared throat and Sam pressing Dean’s face to his skin letting him have a taste of that perfect scent that buzzes around the inside of his skull like a beehive night and day, fresh from the source. Words don’t matter anyway because it might feel like it drags on forever but it can only be a second before Sam’s back pressing the lip of the cup to Dean’s mouth, heady, warm blood almost enough to drown out the latent stink of shitty coffee.
He doesn’t bother to take it for himself, just open his mouth and lets Sam tip a hot rush of life into him that makes his belly cramp up with hunger. Gulps it down in a hurry that scalds his throat and takes more, more. Little drizzles of it escape the corners of his mouth and ooze, oil-slick over his skin, too ravenous to even care about the picture he makes, making a mess of himself as Sam feeds him like a baby, like a feral animal that followed him home, hands on Sam’s hips, hard-on shoved against his thigh.
That last part doesn’t register until the cup echoes his own desperate breath back in his face with an empty rattle of thick paper on sharp incisors. Once he does, it’s a jolt to the system, but not the kind he would have thought if he’d ever once thought about this. He feels overheated under his skin, right under it, like someone took the empty shell of him and filled it up with boiling water. It makes the world sloshy and surreal, a weird-good mix of drunk off his ass and that sharp clarity that comes after too many nights without sleep and the dopey, perfect thrill of that time in Memphis he spent a whole night tumbling around in bed with two girls and some dude they knew, all of them rolling hard on E.
“Fuck, hang on, I’ll heat up some more,” Sam says. His voice is about twice as steady as it was earlier which is a better indicator that he’s panicking than the flicker of his pulse waving hello at Dean from the soft spot under his jaw.
It moves even faster when Dean leans in to rub a kiss into it, a thundering massage against the tip of his tongue. The only thing that would make it better is if Sam would stop squirming so damn much, wriggling around like a worm on a hook.
Well, not the only thing, but it would be really good, anyway. Luckily, it’s not all that tough to hold Sam still if he wants to now, especially when he uses the cabinet to his advantage and presses Sam back until he has to either sit on it or get mushed into the formica. It makes for a nice angle to rub himself up against the space between Sam’s legs, all warm friction of Sam’s jeans against his, both of them dressed like they’ve got somewhere to go.
He gets the sense that Sam might be talking to him or something; he’s sort of stopped paying attention to anything that isn’t the flirt of Sam’s vein against his tongue and how, if he sucks at it a little, he can taste the richness of his brother through skin. At least until the faint hint of Sam gets swept away under a flood of that bizarrely impersonal but still mouth-watering blood from the bag.
Dean licks his way up the spilled trail of it across Sam’s throat until his lips find the rim of the cup again and Sam’s urging him to swallow with little coos that Dean’s so going to give him shit about later.
It becomes a rhythm, Dean finishing a cup, tracing lip prints onto Sam’s skin with his red mouth while Sam pours up more with sticky, stained fingers and heats it. His hands find their way under Sam’s shirt, searching for all of the little ticklish places that make Sam’s heartbeat skitter and the spicy anxiety pumping through him spike. Spots he used to know better than any road map, back when they were younger and people didn’t stare so much when they touched. People are dickwads; touching Sam is awesome, he’s going to do it more from now on.
He’s starting to get a little queasy, maybe too full. Dad had always taught them not to eat too much after if they’ve had to go without, maybe it’s the same kind of thing with vampires. Still he can’t resist when Sam brings up the cup again and says, “This is all of it.” He gulps it right down with the rest, feels it settle heavy and not quite right in the pit of his stomach.
“You ok?” Sam’s voice is much softer now, his fingers tentatively cupping the back of Dean’s neck. He’s just breathing against Sam’s chest now, relishing his smells and sounds and heat. Sam’s always run so hot. They used to try and send him home any time he went to the nurses office at school because he always registered a fever. Dean’s heard it’s a Seer thing but he’s not sure if that’s true, how Dad could have overlooked it Sam’s whole childhood if it was.
He doesn’t remember to answer for a long while. When he does, it sounds dazed, dreamy. “Yeah. You feel good.”
Sam clears his throat again, scratching at the stubble on his cheek. Never really liked growing facial hair, always used to complain it itched. “Yeah, I got that impression.”
He goes for that same scooting back thing he kept trying to pull earlier, edging his hips away from Dean’s enough that Dean becomes aware again of the full flush of his cock. Still hard, but it’s not the desperate, gotta fuck now kind of hard. More like he wants to lay around and rub up against somebody, lazy and slow, all afternoon. Sort of like he’s been doing for the last half hour or so. With his brother.
“Oh, dude!” Dean jerks back so fast that he ends up taking himself out at the knees when he stumbles against Sam’s bed and topples onto it. It smells like Sam and the too much time he’s spent in it the last few days of nearly constant research. It’s not really helping Dean’s situation at all and seriously, fuck his body for the smell of his fucking brother becoming a turn-on.
“Dean?” Sam’s voice is worried, uncertain, but he doesn’t quite get down from the counter. He’s a mess; hair already a couple of days dirty rucked up like Dean might’ve been running his fingers through it without noticing, color high on his cheeks still nothing to the rusty smears of it over his throat and chin, dribbles down the front of his shirt. There’s a smudge of it at the very corner of his mouth and just like that Dean gets a gut-punch memory of his tongue swiping across it, digging into the little dip for the faintest clear-water taste of Sam’s saliva.
The ocean of liquid in his stomach turns to a whirlpool, swirl slowly creeping up the back of his throat like it’s all going to come right back up again. Thickly he swallows it back, hops the space between their beds and slides across his own until he’s got the whole length of the room and still not nearly enough space between him and the tempting thrum of blood in Sam’s veins.
“I told you. I fucking told you!” comes out of his throat like wet metal grinding together. His fangs nick his lips and his stomach curls in on itself, combination of the taste and the feeling, pain and pleasure centers fucked to hell or maybe just not two different things any more.
“Well maybe if you hadn’t waited so damn long!” Sam shouts back, easing himself down off the counter now. Of course Dean’s eyes zero right in on the fact that he’s hard too, thick shape of his dick heavy in his jeans. And he would be, naturally. Dean was all up in his business rubbing on him like a cat in heat, Sam’d have to react to the friction, doesn’t have any more control over his cock than Dean does.
Burying his face in his hands doesn’t actually make it any easier, but at least he doesn’t have to work so hard to avoid eye contact. “Never again, Sam!”
“It’ll be easier next time,” his brother says, like he just spontaneously went deaf. He used to pull that all the time with Dad and it still makes Dean want to punch him in the face. It’s kind of a refreshing change from the other stuff he suddenly wants to be doing to him.
“Sam!”
“Dean.” The set of his shoulders says Sam’s not budging, stubborn, mulish look plastered all over his face. Trying to argue him down when he’s in this mood’ll work about as well as defusing a nuclear weapon with a toothpick - Dean could have a fucking PhD in Sammy’s moods - so he doesn’t bother for the time being. Just lowers himself down to sit on the floor, back still pressed tight against the wall and tries like hell not to watch it like a porno when Sam wets a paper napkin in the sink and starts wiping the red stains off of his skin.
Chapter Two
Pairing: Sam/Dean (background Ruby/Lenore)
Rating: NC-17 -- Word count: 42,000
Warnings: AU, vampire!Dean, angst, blood-drinking, violence, gore, dub-con, rimming
Notes: Written for the 2012 spn_j2_bigbang with art by heard_the_owl. Further notes and thanks at the masterpost
Summary:Hunters live in a world of blood and darkness, so when Dean gets turned into a vampire, not much changes for the Winchester brothers. Well, except for being on the lam from a Hunter’s Guild that wants them dead, sneaking around the world of seedy underground monster bars and sketchy voodoo practitioners in search of a fabled ‘cure’ and the little fact that Dean can’t seem to stop himself from molesting his brother when he feeds (and sometimes when he doesn’t). But as the lines between what they were raised to be and what they are get blurrier, Sam and Dean will have to decide how high a price they are willing to pay for a life in the light and what they’re willing to do for one another.
“I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her.” - Dream about Death in Sandman #8 "The Sound of Her Wings"
Iron-thick air oozes toward the back of his throat like sludge. Meaty thud; Dean, shoved to his knees, shirt stained so red it’s black from the seeping mess of his neck. Blood flow hasn’t stopped yet. Heartbeat hasn’t stopped yet. Fangs for the briefest of flashes as his mouth opens on a last breath before the shine of a blade and a smear of blood.
Sam's feet hit the cold floor next to the bed in the same moment that the rain-sticky air hits his lungs. The paving stones of the Seer dormitory are smoothed down from a century of rough boots and salt scrubs, slick enough to send him skidding as he takes the corner into the hall, rolls with it and keeps going, crawling until he can get to his feet.
The night-guard in front of the dormitory startles as Sam rushes by, but either he catches the mark of Seer etched into Sam's forearms or has enough common sense to recognize that Sam is a man on a mission because he doesn't make a move to stop him as Sam leaps the steps and barrels on, gravel courtyard like a bed of nails on the tender soles of his feet. He hardly notices.
In the distance, the wrought iron fence that marks the edge of the compound is highlighted in shades of undulating red and blue. No sirens, so no way to know whether it’s police or an ambulance, but either way, it doesn’t matter - the cops don’t have any legal standing in hunter business and if Sam’s dream means what he thinks it does, there’s nothing an EMT could do for his brother.
The top of a white van, visible over the spiked line of the front gate, and the big broadcasting dish on top of it is what rankles. Vultures. Ten minutes and it’s going to be a media circus out there. Sometimes Sam thinks their ancestors had the right idea, keeping the rest of humanity in the dark about what hunters do.
Fear-sweat from the vision cools in the pre-dawn air, dries tightly on his skin, oxygen bursting like a combustion engine in his lungs. Run, run, run.
The slap of his feet echoes off of the tile floors of the Guild hall, the high domed ceilings magnifying the harsh sound of his breath and throwing it right back in his face. More guards notice him, are following him this time, but Sam wasn’t raised in the life for nothing. Let them try and stop him.
The milky yellow light up ahead is coming from the Council Room, and he can’t be sure that that’s the right one from the vision but he’s not stupid enough to take the chance. He just hopes he’s got enough lead time.
His brother’s name is exploding from his throat before he even makes the doorway, the scent of blood and sweat and home swallowing him whole before the syllable finishes curling off of his tongue along with the weight of Dean’s arm, Dean’s body, turning them. Sam’s arms come around him automatically, one hand fisted in the leather jacket that has never quite stopped smelling like their father, the other finding the tacky wetness of blood on his big brother’s skin.
A drugged babble of, "Sammy, can't, gotta, Sam," pouring out of Dean’s mouth gets cut off by a sharp, cha-chack. Every muscle in Dean's body twitches at the sound, familiar as breathing; .9mm Glock. His boots shuffle against Sam's naked feet like he’s trying to spin them again, get himself between Sam and the gunfire - of course he would, fucking idiot - but Sam doesn't give an inch. It's like trying to hold back a freight train with his teeth, but he manages.
Physically forcing himself to let go of Dean's jacket, circulation rushing back into his fingertips so fast they prickle, Sam turns around instead, shoulders bracing up against Dean's chest in case he gets any ideas about going all white knight.
“You want him, you’re going through me.” The warning comes out a rasp, nothing but patchwork scraps of air getting into Sam's lungs. It echoes off of the vaulted ceiling like a ping-pong ball, bouncing off of devil's traps and pentagrams, hamsas and nazars, into the terse silence.
Dean's heavy hand snakes up to rest over the thud of Sam’s heart, digging at the fabric separating their skin with nails caked in rusty red and black. The sensation is strange and more than a little unnerving, but that’s for later, all for later, now it’s survival, backed into a corner like dogs. They’ve been called worse. And every last one of the hunters circling warily around them should know better than to challenge John Winchester’s dogs.
“Sam, he’s been bitten,” Caleb says, as if there's any way Sam could possibly be here and not know that. His blood boils with the realization that they weren't even going to send for him, not even afforded the basic courtesy of saying goodbye to the only family he has left. Maybe they're smarter than he gives them credit for. Once he made it in this room, there was only one way this was ever going to end. Two, possibly, but he'd rather not gun down a room full of hunters if he can help it.
“Turned,” Pastor Jim adds, also pointless. Jo circles around behind him, doing a damn fine job of hemming them in. Her hold on the gun doesn’t look as steady as it should, though. If he’s got to push through, going for her is his best bet.
Samuel steps out from behind the Council table with Bobby. Only the two of them - apparently daybreak executions can only garner so much interest from the higher ups.
“There is only one outcome for this,” Samuel mirrors Sam's own thoughts back at him, probably with a very different 'outcome' in mind. At least he spares the pretext of caring - as if there’s more between them than genetic code. “He did your family name proud. Let him die like a hunter, Sam.”
“Sam,” Dean repeats, nothing more and nothing less. The tip of his nose weasels its way underneath the edge of Sam’s hair, inhaling so deep Sam can feel his brother's chest expand against his shoulder blades. He has to tamp down hard on the urge to jerk away from the nerve-jangling wrongness of it. One inch of space between he and Dean, one clean shot, and it’s over. Dean can go the fuck on and bite him if he wants to, Sam’s not going anywhere.
Outside there's a rush of footsteps preceding Ellen, heaving like she’s run the whole way too. Good, that’s something - two Councilmen on Sam’s side versus one opposed. Better odds. Now if he just had a fucking plan.
“Well, nice to see you boys have everything under control as usual,” she drawls, tension in every line as she walks to stand next to Bobby.
Samuel looks ready to spit nails, fists clenched but unwavering. "The law’s clear."
“I’m not letting you lay a hand on my brother,” Sam growls, heart stuttering under Dean’s hand when his brother mimics it with an actual growl. The whole room flinches.
Covering Dean’s fist with his own hand, Sam grips it against his sternum in what he hopes passes for reassurance to his brother’s chemical-soaked brain.
There’s enough lore in some of the old texts to guess that Dean’s got to be out of his head with it by now, riding high on brand new senses and acid-sharp blood. Later maybe he’ll bitch at Sam for putting himself at risk, but as long as his brother makes it to later he can’t bring himself to give a damn.
Sam’s only seen someone in the middle of turning once before. She’d been a teenager, five or six years older than Sam at the time, writhing in the central courtyard, more like a wildcat stuffed into a human body than the school picture that had run in the obituary the next day. He still has nightmares about it sometimes.
But that was a civilian. Hunters don’t get this far in, ever. Truth is, it’s a mark of esteem that Caleb and Jo didn’t do the job out in the field, brought Dean home to die. As if this place, anywhere, could ever be home for them.
“He’s becoming a monster.” Jo bites her lip as soon as the words are out, pale and a little bit shaky. Whatever went down on their hunt, it must have been one hell of a show.
This is why the Guild rules are bullshit. Codependent Sam’s ass, he and Dean are a team, nobody covers each other better than they do. It’s what they were raised to be. If it had been him out there watching Dean’s back, they wouldn’t be in this situation right now. He’ll take codependent any day of the week.
Sam nods, grips his brother’s hand tight enough to the feel the shape of the bones against his palm. “Then he’s my monster.”
Dean loses another low sound, less like a growl this time than a purr. It vibrates straight into Sam's skin, Dean's lips pressed against his spine sending every last instinct Sam's got into panic mode. Caleb and Jo share a look, grips tightening on their weapons, looking for a way to get to Dean before he sinks his fangs in. Throwing out every bit of his animal nature - Dean's got enough of it to cover them both at the moment - Sam pulls his brother even closer against his back.
He really could have gone the rest of his life without knowing what the hot line of Dean's cock feels like pressed against his ass. If they make it out of this, the rumor mill is going to kick into overdrive.
"There's nothing to be done, Sam," Pastor Jim argues gently, and Sam only just catches the words because at exactly that moment he feels the slick heat of Dean's tongue slide over his skin like a live wire. His stomach's churning like he just chugged a gallon of bleach with a chaser of Pop Rocks, but he can't move away, physically can't, even assuming Dean would let him. Everything in him is telling him to run, everything but that one tiny sliver that's the most important part of who he is. The part that knows that without Dean, it doesn't matter what happens to him. If he's going to go down, he'll do it protecting his brother. As long as he has breath.
"Nobody's tried," Sam snaps back, venting some of the jittery adrenaline running rough-shod through his veins.
Samuel opens his mouth to counter but Sam cuts him off at the pass. "Not since the middle ages. We do all kinds of things now that they couldn't back then, why not this? There could be a cure out there now and we don't even know it. We’re never going to know it if we don’t try."
Dean's open mouth molds itself to the machine-gun flutter of Sam's jugular. The pressure Sam's clutching his brother's hand with should be cracking bones but Dean doesn't even seem to notice. Bile is coating the back of Sam's tongue bitter, a deadly brand of certainty bracing him for the razor points of teeth that don't come. Instead it's just Dean's mouth, soft and wet, with a steady, sucking pressure that in another time and place - with another person - might actually feel good.
"He's not Dean anymore! Just look at him, Sam!" Caleb barks, scanning for a bead on Dean's skull as he suckles at Sam's skin like mother's milk. Sam turns his own head slightly into the press of it, rubbing his cheek against the top of Dean's head, fucking up whatever shot Caleb might have thought about firing off. Dean moans over Caleb's curse, mistaking it for encouragement.
"He'll come back. Once he's finished t-" the word is a burr in Sam's throat, "turning, he'll be back."
Bobby and Ellen are scrupulously not looking at one another but Sam can still see it in their eyes; if there's anybody on the planet who could even begin to want to save Dean as much as him, it's those two. The skin under Dean's lips heats as blood blooms close to the surface. He wonders how long Dean's been rolling his hips like that.
"It's not just for me," Sam throws out desperately. Jo will break, given a good enough excuse; she's always had it bad for Dean. Pastor Jim's almost as much of a surrogate father as Bobby and enough of a man of faith to still believe in miracles. Caleb's hung up on the rules; if one of the Council orders him to stand down he will. Samuel can fuck off and die, the old ways don't apply when it comes to executing Sam's brother.
He pushes on, words tumbling out of his mouth like a rockslide; every single last-ditch improv skill he's picked up over the years funneled into this one moment. "If we find a cure, it's for all of us, a way to save every hunter, every victim that's ever been fed vampire blood against their will. You'd never have to put anyone down again for this. We can't not take that chance."
"It can't be done," Samuel spits. That spot on Sam's neck is kind of starting to hurt, but Dean's oblivious - or worse, enjoying it - free hand drifting down to Sam's hip to pull him back into a slow, gut-churning grind.
"We don't know that!" Sam shouts back, too high and tight to come off as anything but desperate.
"He'll kill people!"
"I'll stop him."
A step too close, Dean starts to growl again at Samuel; lips still locked on Sam’s skin, tongue still working, but Sam can feel his attention has shifted, can practically see the heat shimmering out from his eyes like he means to burn the man alive. Just in case, Sam snakes his free arm back to hook around Dean and hold him close. It probably won’t be worth much if Dean decides Samuel’s trachea would make a pretty throw rug, but it’s something.
And Samuel, say whatever else about him - and there is plenty to be said - he’s at least smart enough to ease back one step. "He'll kill you."
The vibration against Sam’s neck tones it down a notch back to ticklish and pleased. "That's my risk to take."
"Not if you're unleashing him on the world, it's not!” Samuel starts pacing but he keeps the distance like there’s an invisible force field arching out around Sam. “He's got too many skills. With that kind of strength and nothing to hold him back-"
"I take full responsibility.” It’s not a plan because if it was, it would be the single worst plan Sam’s ever come up with. But once he’s said it, he’s got no inclination to take it back. “For all of it, anything he does. If he kills someone you can execute us both, two for the price of one."
He feels the spike of adrenaline through the pressure of Dean’s mouth and the roll of his hips more than in his veins. Dean’s chin is pressing against his throat hard enough to screw up his breathing, the edge of teeth a palpable threat that his brother’s still not carrying through with. At this rate Sam’s skin is going to split just from the pressure but Dean seems more interested in getting himself off against Sam ass. It’s a terrible commentary on Sam’s life that he’s counting that as a blessing today.
"Sam," Ellen hisses, at the same time that Bobby warns, "Boy."
He steamrolls right over their objections and his common sense with them, too scared of what’ll catch up to him if he stops to bother with the brakes. "I do. I'll take it. If I can't control him, we’re both dead anyway."
"Don't throw your life away, Winchester," Samuel says solemnly. It isn’t the same thing at all to tenderness, but for a moment it’s not completely impossible to imagine this man remembers he’s their mother’s father.
So Sam goes for honesty, drives right for the bone with it because it’s the only weapon left in his arsenal.
"He's all I've got."
The room is quiet enough to hear every happy, wet noise Dean makes around the mouthful of Sam’s flesh he’s working, the loud grate of denim on the worn boxers Sam fell asleep in. A thousand - hell, a million - times he’s overheard Dean jacking off, could time it down to the minute in his head, but for some reason Dean’s still dragging this one out.
This is really not the time to go developing stamina, jerk
"I call the question.” Bobby says it like the death sentence it, in all probability, is. “The execution of Dean Winchester.”
Ellen’s mouth pulls tight but she shakes her head. "Nay."
Samuel snaps, "Aye," head turning so sharply toward Bobby Sam expects to hear something pop.
Bobby’s eyes are sad, tired so far beyond his years, even by hunter standards. They never once waver from Sam’s.
"Nay."
"We're calling a full Council!" Samuel practically roars, taking a hitched step toward Sam before Ellen gets in his way.
"The matter is decided." She shoves at his chest hard enough to back him up a few inches and the threatening step he takes toward her in retaliation is plenty to get Jo’s gun trained on him instead of Sam. Even Caleb wavers.
"Sam," Bobby grabs one of the syringes of dead-man's blood out of the pouch on Caleb's belt and tosses it over. Sam hesitates for all of a second before popping the cap off and jabbing it into Dean's neck. The edge of a fang grazes Sam's skin as his brother roars furiously for the two or three seconds it takes for him to turn to dead weight against Sam's back.
Dean wakes up feeling like he got gang-banged by a herd of semi-trucks. There's not a single molecule in his body that doesn't ache like it got wailed on with a sledge hammer. Even the sound of his heartbeat is a base drum beating at the inside of his skull.
It might be a minute or a day of lying there, completely still because it hurts ever so slightly less that way, for it to occur to him that he's not breathing.
The second he does, he draws in a gasp that's so full of scents and flavors there can't possibly be any air packed into it. It smells like dirt, but not soil - human dirt, oil and skin all mixed up with road tar and fried food. Old smells, ones that have been here a long time by the way they're muddled together, a blended smear in his nostrils. The sharper scents are plastic and cotton tinged with bleach and beyond that something warm and deep, like newly turned earth heating under the afternoon sun, the hot stone of the hearth in front of a roaring fire, a soft little hollow to curl up in, molded to his body from wear; spicy and vibrant, tangy-sweet and savory. Alive. He can barely swallow all the saliva pooled on his tongue and his cheeks are cramping as they pump out even more of it.
It's right about then that it hits him that the heartbeat he's hearing isn't his own.
"Sam."
His eyes shoot open at the sound of his own voice, rusty as an old gate, to find a blank taupe wall. It's night, which he can't see but he knows, feels it, the same way he's always been able to find north without a compass. He draws in another breath because now that he's going, it feels natural to keep it up, and because he needs to keep drawing that scent into him like it, instead of the oxygen, is what's keeping him alive.
Moving's impossible. Literally impossible. It's like he's been working out non-stop for days, every muscle thrashed, and his body's just given up on the whole thing. At least until he hears that not-his heartbeat speed up and the brush of cloth on skin as someone on the other side of the room moves. Like there’s a leash strung from him to it, something nestled deep inside of Dean’s chest jerks, pulls him in that direction and feeds back the shape of a body, hunkered up, knees and elbows and shoulders, every line of it mapped out in the back of Dean’s head like a 3D picture.
"Sam," is the only word that jumps to mind, body protesting as he turns over. And there he is, Sammy as Dean's never seen him before.
He looks exhausted, bruise-dark circles under his eyes. The whites around hazel are bloodshot and Dean can tell by the color as much as the smell of him that there's too much caffeine in his blood, not nearly enough protein. Then he takes a moment to have a private freak out because he seriously just thought that.
"It's ok," Sam says. Dean can only assume there wasn't supposed to be a question mark clinging to the end of it.
"Ok," he parrots, eyes tracking over the shadow of stubble on Sam's jaw - individual hairs blond-shiny and obvious - getting as far as the purple mark on Sam's neck that draws him like a homing beacon before what his body's been trying to tell him all along comes crashing home like a car hurtling through the living room wall.
The hunt. The vampire nest. The sting of teeth rending his skin and the pain of cool blood seeping inside like ground glass in his veins. Nonsense flashes of the Council are almost lost among the memory of the taste of Sam. Sam tight against his body, rubbing against his cock, heartbeat under his hand. Sam hanging them both with the same noose.
"Sam!" It's broken-bottle sharp this time, the force of anger enough to propel Dean to a sitting position. Dimly he registers that he's in a motel bed, scratchy cotton boxers rubbing his skin all wrong underneath even scratchier sheets. There's not a light on in the place, and he can see like it's high noon. "What did you do? What the fuck did you do!"
Sam's face does this... thing. A weird seizure of micro-expressions and somehow Dean's brain catalogues all of them like he pushed the slow-mo button on reality. It's some freaky-ass shit is what it is. And, you know, informative. Apparently Sammy's not quite as confident about his psychotic plan as he's letting on.
"What I had to," is what Sam finally settles on and if Dean's body was capable of that much motion he'd walk over there and deck him. What the serious fuck?
"Oh, so you had to let me turn? You had to stick you own fucking neck out and tell them they could kill you!"
Bitchface #6 puts in an appearance, mouth tight and eyes challenging - the bane of Dean's fucking existence since Sammy hit puberty. "Yes."
"Sam! I don't, I'm not-" A push of rage backdrafts through Dean's chest, vicious and directionless, curling his fingers up tight in the sheets. "They'll murder you! They'll put you down like a rabid dog!"
Standing feels like somebody split open his joints, poured in hot sand and stitched it all back up with razorwire. It's still a hell of a lot more than he would have thought he could manage and once it's done he immediately regrets it. Because that delicious, live-for-it smell? That would be Sam. His little brother Sam. And being closer to it just makes his body come alive in ways Dean's not even in the same hemisphere as prepared to deal with.
"Only if you kill someone!" Sam points out like it's some kind of fucking revelation and goddamn it, but he's moving closer. Dean digs his fingernails into his palm hard enough to hear the knuckles pop, faint taste of blood insinuating itself over his tastebuds as the throb of his gums makes itself known above the din of the other pains swamping Dean’s system.
"And you think you can stop me?!" He's absolutely sure his voice has never had that reverb before, that shiver in the air even after he's stopped yelling.
Sam steps in even closer, skirting the edge of the bed until he's near enough to touch - to grab. Dean's stuck choosing between compulsively swallowing or letting his drool spatter out on the floor.
"I think that knowing they'll kill me if you do is better than a guarantee that you won't." He's got the Grand fucking Canyon of frowns on, but Dean can see the faith in his eyes like it's got its own special color underneath the flecks of emerald and cobalt. "You'd never let that happen to me."
"Y-you. You!" he stutters out lamely, back unexpectedly up against the wall and doing his best to keep right on going when every instinct is jangling at him to taketaketake. "I'm a killer! I'm a predator, Sam!"
The sound that huffs out of Sam is something like a laugh. The taste of it lingers on Dean's tongue from three feet away. "So what else is new?"
"That!" He's got no intention of jolting forward, baring his fangs at his baby brother, but he is and he does and all he can feel is the way his skin itches like there are fire ants underneath it, wanting to be pressed up against Sam's. Shock-wide eyes dart to the sharp canines Dean can feel pushing out to sheathe his canines."That's fucking new! I'm a blood-sucking evil creature! I eat people!"
The heat of Sam's palms pressed to either side of his face is so devastating Dean's brain actually stops functioning for a long eternity of a second. "We'll work it out," Sam promises, easy as pie. Dean barely processes it over the surging need to taste every last inch of his brother's skin. He feels like he's going to hurl he wants it so bad.
Sam moving away brings relief like lye rubbed into his marrow and all he can do is let himself fall sideways onto the bed again, praying - as if he's not already too far gone for any semblance of heaven to hear - that he won't be strong enough to get back up.
"Here," Sam digs something out of the mini-fridge under the old-school TV and chucks it at the bed. A thick plastic bag emblazoned with the Guild's seal lands with a blurble, the dark fluid inside sloshing around a siren song that makes Dean want to tear his own throat out. "O positive. I wasn't sure if you'd have a preference. Universal seemed like the safest choice."
The safest choice. Like Sam would know what that looked like if it walked up to him and bit him on the neck.
"What's wrong with you?" Dean whispers incredulously.
"Nothing."
"Nothing." There's a stain on the ceiling that kind of looks like an astronaut helmet. It's a hell of a lot easier to talk to right now than Sam. "I'm a vampire, the Guild wants us dead and you're just fine and dandy? You think that's normal?"
He's still not looking, but he knows it when Sam cocks a hip against the dresser, arms crossed over his chest; aware down to the atom of the shape of Sam's body and the space between them. "I'm sorry, what part of our lives has ever been normal? Things are just a little more complicated now."
"Complicated! Sam, I'm-"
"Six days, Dean!" He's not ready for it at all when Sam starts shouting, startled enough that he ends up screwing himself over by looking at the pissed-off, heartbroken thing Sam's got going on. "Six days watching you turn, keeping you drugged on dead-man's blood, listening to you twist and howl and say..." he stops on a choked sound Dean probably wasn't meant to hear. "I saw you stop breathing, Dean. I. Watched. You. Die. You really think there's a single thing you've got to say that I haven't gone over in my head a thousand times already? You really think that I give a fuck? I'll do what it takes. Even if I have to personally kill every last hunter on the planet. I'm not letting them hurt you."
It might be easier to take if Sam didn't cross the room and sit down on the bed right damn next to him but Dean doubts it. That he'd do anything for Sam has never been a question, not even a blip on Dean's radar, but no matter how many times Sam's gone to the mat for him, it never gets easier to swallow and he never knows what to do with it. It's not supposed to be Sam's job to protect him.
"... So what's the plan?"
It shouldn't even be audible over the dull roar of the TV and the entire room between them but it's all Sam can focus on. That infernal crunching, like an accusation. A big 'fuck you' to their established reality. Dean's powers of denial will never cease to amaze.
"Dean."
His brother doesn't respond, a silent shape against the backlit sienna curtains covering the window. They've been able to fudge some on the sunlight problem, thank God - as long as it's not direct light, things are tolerable at least, so they aren’t on complete diurnal lockdown. He suspects it hurts more than Dean's willing to let on, but so far they don’t have any reason to go out during the daytime anyway so there hasn’t been much point in arguing about it. Not that that’s actually stopped them.
They’re both going stir-crazy. Staying in one place has never been a forte for them, brought up on blacktop and the rush of scenery past the windows. The few weeks a year they’ve always been forced to stay with the Guild - just long enough to keep up appearances, not make it look like they get away with flagrantly flouting the rules quite as much as they actually do - have always been a special kind of torture, all capped off now by being stuck in a 13x13 room.
At least this time he’s got Dean instead of being stuffed away in the Seer dorms. It’s supposed to promote his abilities, being surrounded by other people like him, but Sam’s honestly always wondered if it’s not just that what the Seers can do is a little too close to non-human for any of the ‘regular’ hunters to want to sleep near them. He can’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up that way, sequestered away for special training as soon as his first vision hit when he was nine, never able to spar or hunt or just hang around with Dean. It wouldn’t have even been like they were really brothers, just strangers with the same blood. For all the disdain it may have earned them in the community, that’s one part of the way their father raised them that Sam will never regret.
Crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch.
Alright, mostly never regret. Sometimes Dean makes it hard to remember why.
"Dean!"
The yell startles his brother enough that the jumbo M&M bag he's in the process of reaching for gets smushed under his palm instead, candy shells popping inside plastic from the force. This whole 'Dean has really sensitive hearing' thing does have its advantages.
"What?" he gripes, grimacing at his ruined chocolate.
There’s a temper in his voice that Sam can feel echoed in his own. It’s oppressive in air gone stale from too many hours locked up tight, taking up the space between them like a literal elephant plunked down in the middle of the room. A whole herd of elephants for that matter.
Dean has been less than amenable to what he’s calling ‘the soylent green situation’. Sam can't exactly blame him, but pretending it isn't happening won't help matters. Which is really what's making all that goddamn, motherfucking crunching wear on Sam's last nerve.
"You have to eat something," Sam says, hoping it comes off more exasperated than pissy. He really does not need another snarky comment about PMS.
It must not work because he earns himself a glare and a snort. "I was, dickwad."
Dean dejectedly studies a partially crushed M&M between his fingers, sullenly pops it into his mouth.
"You know what I mean."
Another huff - that is really getting old fast - and Dean goes back to pretending to ignore Sam so hard it’s like the room is buzzing with it. His posture is an easy sprawl across the bed, every ounce of tension jammed into his eyes and the tight line of his stubbornly working jaw.
Discovering that he could eat people food - and not just ‘people’ food - has been a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, Dean’s a lot less sulky about it than he could be under the circumstances - Dean will forever deny that he can sulk, swears that’s Sam’s department, but Sam knows his brother too well to fall for that.
The downside is that Dean figuring out that his body can handle regular food means he’s been actively avoiding anything to do with the B-L-double-O-D word and that’s a problem because it also turns out that while he can eat food, it doesn't do much about the forlorn sounds his stomach keeps making. He'd chewed his way through five snack bags of Cheetos from the motel vending machine before Sam ran out of dollar bills and categorically refused to drive to a convenience store to get a jumbo bag. It took six hours to get Dean to admit that maybe cheese-flavored powder is not a blood substitute. At which point his brother suggested Twinkies.
Sam had ultimately been willing to give a meat-lovers pizza a shot, because at least animal products were on the same spectrum as what Dean really needed. His brother chomped his way through an extra-large, failing miserably at hiding the unhappy set of his shoulders when it obviously wasn’t working.
He still won’t touch the blood bag, though and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that that’s a problem.
Sam thinks he’s done a decent job of pretending not to notice the way Dean’s eyes track him, the way occasionally he’ll lick his lips and just as quickly blanch, like he’s suddenly realized what he was contemplating. He can’t fathom what it’s like, what Dean’s feeling, and his brother doesn’t seem inclined to share about any particular draw he might feel to the lingering bruise on Sam’s neck. Then again, Sam doesn’t exactly ask either. Some things are better left unaddressed.
While Dean’s been busy acting like everything is business as usual, Sam’s been splitting his time between backtracking every vague mention of a rumor of a theory about vampire cures - from the Guild archives, from the web, from anywhere he can pick up even a scrap of information - and keeping tabs on Dean’s progression.
They’ve learned that evidently, luckily, Dean doesn’t need to eat - drink, whatever - every day, although otherwise his biological processes are much the same. He still has to shower and shave and pee just like he always has, which is interesting, but Sam can’t get any more specific details because then Dean gets huffy about not being a lab rat and burns Sam’s notes. He’s got them all copied over in a Word doc, but he’s not pointing that out for fear of losing the laptop too.
In terms of physical ability, Dean’s been a lot more reticent about how things are developing but Sam’s had more than enough time to observe him to have worked out at least some of it. He seems to have very acute hearing now, maybe even moreso than Sam’s best guess since he occasionally reacts to things Sam can’t even pick up on when he’s straining for it.
The nightsight Dean might actually have not noticed since he certainly seems to be oblivious to the pitch blackness when he wanders restlessly around the room in the dark hours before dawn while Sam lays in bed and tries to make himself sleep. Dean doesn’t seem to need nearly as much rest as he used to, though he does doze off for an hour or two at a time in the middle of the day, tossing and turning fitfully. Sam’s been wondering if maybe it’s the hunger keeping Dean awake, but again, his brother won’t talk about it.
Smell also seems to be a thing, and this one Dean’s obviously aware of, just as he’s obviously trying to ignore it. Not doing a very good job either with the way he perks up anytime somebody walks past their room, nostrils flared, fingers clenched in the sheets. That one has Sam worried more than any of the others.
There hasn’t been any meaningful documentation on a turn in close to three hundred years, but there are some reports from the time of new vampires having a period of being almost like their human selves before going rabid with the need to feed. He’s hoping some of that is a virtue of the victims not having access to blood - any animal, human or otherwise, will eventually go crazy if denied food long enough - and not some intrinsic part of the process of becoming a vampire, but naturally the Guild promptly executed any turns who went feral, so he hasn’t got solid data to base that on.
The dreams aren’t helping the matter.
He keeps getting these flashes, partially formed little things, not quite like a true vision but with enough visceral quality that he can’t just write it off as the musings of his subconscious either. Dean with his mouth stained red, crimson running over his fangs, down his chin, spattering on peachy-colored tile Sam doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t know what to make of it but it doesn’t feel like a good thing. He hasn’t figured out a way to bring it up with Dean - the last thing Dean needs is to think that Sam’s losing faith in him.
The most interesting tidbit they’ve come across in the going-on-a-week they’ve been stuck here is that, despite appearances, Dean still has a heartbeat. It’s slow, only every couple of minutes, and then so faint that even with Sam’s fingers pressed right over Dean’s pulse, he can only barely feel it. It’s startling. Admittedly Sam’s never done any extensive study on vampires before now, but he’s never heard anything about them having heartbeats and he hasn’t found any record of one ever being observed before.
It births a hope, a whisper of one as fine and delicate as spun sugar. Dean might not actually be dead. It’s not a thought Sam shares with his brother, the same way he knows his brother isn’t sharing that exact same one with him. Hope and the Winchesters have a tumultuous relationship, and they don’t want to give it any reason to prove them wrong.
For the first time since Sam stuck his name on the execution list beside Dean’s, he’s starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t going to kill them both.
Dean can smell it when Sam touches the bag, even that tiny bit of jostling enough to have the scent of blood blooming in the air. The sudden urge to blow chunks is almost enough to cover the surge of want that charges through his body. It doesn’t even make sense, the bag is air tight, but still.
“No means no, Sam.” He tries to keep his voice flat, tamp down that trembling gurgley thing it wants to do as his gums swell and ache, fangs fighting to pop free. He licks at the abraded flesh, his own blood a weak, sickening balm on raw nerves.
“Of course it does,” Sam says, carrying the bag over to the cracked formica counter of the motel room’s kitchenette. He rinses out the paper cup from his coffee this morning - they’ve long since run out of the tiny stack next to the complimentary coffee pot and there’s no way in fuck they’re letting the maid in to get more - and dries it with one of the flimsy paper napkins that came with the pizza however many days ago. Not so much as glancing at Dean, he pulls his pocket knife and makes a small slit at the top of the bag.
The effect is instantaneous. Every muscle in Dean’s body snaps taught like he’s having a fucking seizure, tension like fire licking at his joints and tendons as they bunch all on their own, ready to spring.
“Sam,” comes out less of a warning, less of a fucking word, than he’d planned. Sam turns the bag up to pour a long, thin ribbon of liquid into the cup and sticks into in the microwave. That probably violates a literal fuck-ton of health codes.
Dean doesn’t remember moving but then all of a sudden he’s standing right there beside Sam, watching the muted flower design on the cup turn around in the ocher light of the microwave.
The blue lines of the timer blink DONE and Sam pushes the button to pop the door open. He glances at Dean, waits, doesn’t do any fucking thing like he doesn’t know that hot, rich smell curling on the air is making the tips of Dean’s fingers itch. Finally he reaches in and picks it up, long fingers making the cup look tiny as he sets it down on the counter in front of Dean.
The room is vibrating, he can feel it, dull hum of recirculated air pumping in from the window unit, tinny clang of the television speakers, buzz of electricity in the walls. Beyond he can sense people, other heartbeats, other scents, shampoos and sweat and industrial cleaning solvents. Hard to focus on that with his universe anchored somewhere in the space between his brother’s thrumming, hot, alive body and the reflection of his worried face in the blood-black surface of the cup.
Sam swallows, a heavy, dry, click of smooth muscle on muscle. He needs to take better care of himself, too much damn time staring at the computer, not enough food or water or sleep. He doesn’t have any practical experience at all, but he knows Sam’s blood would be thick, dehydrated, the same way he knows what a rock tastes like even though he’s never put one in his mouth.
“Too hot?” Sam asks. If Dean couldn’t hear the way he can now, he’d totally miss the tremor of Sam’s voice.
He means to say something back, snarky or pissy or just flat out mad but when he opens his mouth the taste of blood and Sam pastes itself to his tastebuds from the dense air and he gets stuck grinding the flavor into the roof of his mouth like he can absorb it through his flesh.
And then Sam - fucking dumbass Sammy with his goddamn death wish - dips the tip of one long finger into the cup. It drags free shiny-slick, scarlet pitting in Sam’s cuticle, crawling into the trench under the white of his nail, one slow drop going heavy on the pad and pulling, growing, threatening to drip.
Dean thinks the snarl that comes out of him has something like ‘douchebag’ hidden in the depths but he doubts Sam caught it, doesn’t even care because he’s too busy sucking every scrap of liquid DNA out of the whorls of Sam’s fingerprint to pay attention to anything else.
It’s not tasty, not really, not in any meaningful way. It’s more like beer, how foul that first sip he snuck when he was eight was, couldn't imagine why anyone would drink that on purpose but now there are few things in the world better than a cold one. Or there used to be. Dean may have to reevaluate his definitions now that he’s licked blood off of Sam’s skin.
Sam’s hand is pressing against Dean’s face, hard maybe - it’s tough to tell now that he’s so much stronger. Trying to pull away, Dean realizes after a second. The noise he makes about it is completely alien to him, nothing like anything he has a name for and it’s that that shocks him into letting Sam yank his hand free.
It hits him to say something thoughtful or at the very least apologetic but anything specific that he might come up with gets snagged on these errant scraps of thought; Sam spread eagle on the floor with messy patterns painted red on his skin for Dean to mouth away and Sam with his head thrown back as the milky light from the lamp catches on the ladder of his bared throat and Sam pressing Dean’s face to his skin letting him have a taste of that perfect scent that buzzes around the inside of his skull like a beehive night and day, fresh from the source. Words don’t matter anyway because it might feel like it drags on forever but it can only be a second before Sam’s back pressing the lip of the cup to Dean’s mouth, heady, warm blood almost enough to drown out the latent stink of shitty coffee.
He doesn’t bother to take it for himself, just open his mouth and lets Sam tip a hot rush of life into him that makes his belly cramp up with hunger. Gulps it down in a hurry that scalds his throat and takes more, more. Little drizzles of it escape the corners of his mouth and ooze, oil-slick over his skin, too ravenous to even care about the picture he makes, making a mess of himself as Sam feeds him like a baby, like a feral animal that followed him home, hands on Sam’s hips, hard-on shoved against his thigh.
That last part doesn’t register until the cup echoes his own desperate breath back in his face with an empty rattle of thick paper on sharp incisors. Once he does, it’s a jolt to the system, but not the kind he would have thought if he’d ever once thought about this. He feels overheated under his skin, right under it, like someone took the empty shell of him and filled it up with boiling water. It makes the world sloshy and surreal, a weird-good mix of drunk off his ass and that sharp clarity that comes after too many nights without sleep and the dopey, perfect thrill of that time in Memphis he spent a whole night tumbling around in bed with two girls and some dude they knew, all of them rolling hard on E.
“Fuck, hang on, I’ll heat up some more,” Sam says. His voice is about twice as steady as it was earlier which is a better indicator that he’s panicking than the flicker of his pulse waving hello at Dean from the soft spot under his jaw.
It moves even faster when Dean leans in to rub a kiss into it, a thundering massage against the tip of his tongue. The only thing that would make it better is if Sam would stop squirming so damn much, wriggling around like a worm on a hook.
Well, not the only thing, but it would be really good, anyway. Luckily, it’s not all that tough to hold Sam still if he wants to now, especially when he uses the cabinet to his advantage and presses Sam back until he has to either sit on it or get mushed into the formica. It makes for a nice angle to rub himself up against the space between Sam’s legs, all warm friction of Sam’s jeans against his, both of them dressed like they’ve got somewhere to go.
He gets the sense that Sam might be talking to him or something; he’s sort of stopped paying attention to anything that isn’t the flirt of Sam’s vein against his tongue and how, if he sucks at it a little, he can taste the richness of his brother through skin. At least until the faint hint of Sam gets swept away under a flood of that bizarrely impersonal but still mouth-watering blood from the bag.
Dean licks his way up the spilled trail of it across Sam’s throat until his lips find the rim of the cup again and Sam’s urging him to swallow with little coos that Dean’s so going to give him shit about later.
It becomes a rhythm, Dean finishing a cup, tracing lip prints onto Sam’s skin with his red mouth while Sam pours up more with sticky, stained fingers and heats it. His hands find their way under Sam’s shirt, searching for all of the little ticklish places that make Sam’s heartbeat skitter and the spicy anxiety pumping through him spike. Spots he used to know better than any road map, back when they were younger and people didn’t stare so much when they touched. People are dickwads; touching Sam is awesome, he’s going to do it more from now on.
He’s starting to get a little queasy, maybe too full. Dad had always taught them not to eat too much after if they’ve had to go without, maybe it’s the same kind of thing with vampires. Still he can’t resist when Sam brings up the cup again and says, “This is all of it.” He gulps it right down with the rest, feels it settle heavy and not quite right in the pit of his stomach.
“You ok?” Sam’s voice is much softer now, his fingers tentatively cupping the back of Dean’s neck. He’s just breathing against Sam’s chest now, relishing his smells and sounds and heat. Sam’s always run so hot. They used to try and send him home any time he went to the nurses office at school because he always registered a fever. Dean’s heard it’s a Seer thing but he’s not sure if that’s true, how Dad could have overlooked it Sam’s whole childhood if it was.
He doesn’t remember to answer for a long while. When he does, it sounds dazed, dreamy. “Yeah. You feel good.”
Sam clears his throat again, scratching at the stubble on his cheek. Never really liked growing facial hair, always used to complain it itched. “Yeah, I got that impression.”
He goes for that same scooting back thing he kept trying to pull earlier, edging his hips away from Dean’s enough that Dean becomes aware again of the full flush of his cock. Still hard, but it’s not the desperate, gotta fuck now kind of hard. More like he wants to lay around and rub up against somebody, lazy and slow, all afternoon. Sort of like he’s been doing for the last half hour or so. With his brother.
“Oh, dude!” Dean jerks back so fast that he ends up taking himself out at the knees when he stumbles against Sam’s bed and topples onto it. It smells like Sam and the too much time he’s spent in it the last few days of nearly constant research. It’s not really helping Dean’s situation at all and seriously, fuck his body for the smell of his fucking brother becoming a turn-on.
“Dean?” Sam’s voice is worried, uncertain, but he doesn’t quite get down from the counter. He’s a mess; hair already a couple of days dirty rucked up like Dean might’ve been running his fingers through it without noticing, color high on his cheeks still nothing to the rusty smears of it over his throat and chin, dribbles down the front of his shirt. There’s a smudge of it at the very corner of his mouth and just like that Dean gets a gut-punch memory of his tongue swiping across it, digging into the little dip for the faintest clear-water taste of Sam’s saliva.
The ocean of liquid in his stomach turns to a whirlpool, swirl slowly creeping up the back of his throat like it’s all going to come right back up again. Thickly he swallows it back, hops the space between their beds and slides across his own until he’s got the whole length of the room and still not nearly enough space between him and the tempting thrum of blood in Sam’s veins.
“I told you. I fucking told you!” comes out of his throat like wet metal grinding together. His fangs nick his lips and his stomach curls in on itself, combination of the taste and the feeling, pain and pleasure centers fucked to hell or maybe just not two different things any more.
“Well maybe if you hadn’t waited so damn long!” Sam shouts back, easing himself down off the counter now. Of course Dean’s eyes zero right in on the fact that he’s hard too, thick shape of his dick heavy in his jeans. And he would be, naturally. Dean was all up in his business rubbing on him like a cat in heat, Sam’d have to react to the friction, doesn’t have any more control over his cock than Dean does.
Burying his face in his hands doesn’t actually make it any easier, but at least he doesn’t have to work so hard to avoid eye contact. “Never again, Sam!”
“It’ll be easier next time,” his brother says, like he just spontaneously went deaf. He used to pull that all the time with Dad and it still makes Dean want to punch him in the face. It’s kind of a refreshing change from the other stuff he suddenly wants to be doing to him.
“Sam!”
“Dean.” The set of his shoulders says Sam’s not budging, stubborn, mulish look plastered all over his face. Trying to argue him down when he’s in this mood’ll work about as well as defusing a nuclear weapon with a toothpick - Dean could have a fucking PhD in Sammy’s moods - so he doesn’t bother for the time being. Just lowers himself down to sit on the floor, back still pressed tight against the wall and tries like hell not to watch it like a porno when Sam wets a paper napkin in the sink and starts wiping the red stains off of his skin.
Chapter Two