Fic: Fear The Sunless Lands (Sam/Dean) 3/6

[bewaretheides15]

Chapter Two




Dean’s always been good at this. Sam knows his brother thinks of hunting as his talent - killing, more precisely - but that’s just because he’s worked at it, dedicated himself literally since he could walk to being the best, Guild trained or not. Picking up girls, that’s an ability he’s never even paid enough attention to to notice. Finding a clear place to walk so he doesn't step on them when they fling themselves at his feet, yes; picking them up, no. All of which was before he had the whole vampire mystique working for him. The truth is, Dean's always been a predator; the vampire blood just gave him fangs.

Violently pink lips curve up into a grin at whatever Dean’s saying, roll together on the slick smear of lipstick. She’s pretty, this girl, in that punky-goth kind of way, raven-dyed hair streaked with a couple different colors that don’t occur in nature but are hard to make out in the dim lighting. Dean could probably tell him the exact shade.

It’s in keeping with the red and black photo album of clichés that makes up the bar itself and Sam wonders if that’s oblivious or just clever of whoever runs the joint; a double bluff made up of a drugstore aisle's worth of kohl eyeliner, teens and college geeks and too-old losers sipping dark drinks out of martini glasses and getting themselves hopped up on the idea. Too much of a ‘monster club’ to be one, except for how it is.

The bar is busier than Sam would have guessed under the circumstances, but then cities have always been a magnet for anyone who craves anonymity. Among other vices.

That’d be enough to have Dean in a snit most days - he’s always hated cities even though there’s never been any concrete evidence that creature populations are higher in metropolitan areas - because Dean’s an insufferable toddler anytime he has to do something that’s in the least bit counter-intuitive to what he wants, but that’s not what’s put the edge in his movements tonight.

Dean has to know, he’s not stupid no matter how often he insists on pretending it, and Sam hadn’t exactly been subtle. Looking for information about the doctor in the underground network was a fair enough ruse, because Dean would never seek out a place like this on his own and sure as hell wouldn’t let Sam do it for him. Then again, he’s not entirely sure how much Dean knows about Sam’s particular level of experience in this arena.

He’d spent a few months in his late teens flirting with the underground scene, imagining impassioned rallies about the civil rights of individuals who were less than fully human. Mostly what he’d found was a group of people who spent a lot more time than he was comfortable with fetishizing the Seer tattoos on his arms and big talk with no backbone to do anything about it. Dad had just been starting to get sick back then and was around way more than Sam had ever been used to, let alone comfortable with. In part he thinks that may have been why he got mixed up in it in the first place, but between him and Dean on the lookout, Sam had spent more time dodging suspicious looks than really meeting up with people anyway. In the end he’d given up on the whole idea as a bust, but that time had taught him a lot of things, not the least of which was that there are a lot of people out there who get hot and bothered over a set of fangs.

The girl - Jamie; memorizing their names an old habit Sam’s never been able to break from when he used to keep an ear out for some girl at school suddenly turning up pregnant - laughs too loud at something Dean says, obviously worked up into a rush by the promise of what his brother is. He kind of feels sorry for her in a way, equal parts intrigued. There have always been rumors about what it’s like to be bitten, enough victims escaping with stories of a high like no other to send thrill seekers out into the night looking for something with more edge than a sky dive. If he had to guess, he’d say that’s why most of the people are here - since it’s pretty obvious from the look Dean shot him three steps through the door that it’s Sam who’s in the biological majority here, not Dean - but there’s no real telling and it’s not really the time to start questioning motives. Not if he’s going to finally get Dean talked into doing this.

Watching his brother war with himself on the point is more fascinating than it should be, see-sawing randomly between coming on strong and back-pedaling fast enough Sam’s surprised he doesn’t have whiplash. He’s probably enjoying it a little too much, but like he said, Dean’s always had a talent for this and Sam spent too much of his adolescence gawky and awkward not to revel a little in the payback.

The finger Dean has looped under the band of Sam’s watch, arm crooked awkwardly behind him to where Sam’s perched on a barstool, jerks intermittently. He can’t decide if Dean expects him to try and hold his big brother back or if he’s just making sure Sam hasn’t somehow escaped. Sam’s starting to get uncomfortable how accustomed he’s become to being a constant focus of Dean’s attention.

Any which way, Sam’s not about to step up and make his brother back off when there’s a willing - donor, not victim, he’s not going to kill her - body practically panting after the idea of him biting her and Dean’s vampire tendencies are riding him too hard to make him stop. Sam hopes. He has not come this far and risked this much to let Dean starve to death right in front of him out of sheer stubbornness.

Jamie leans in close to say something right up against Dean’s ear, far too coincidentally baring the curve of her neck - hard to get is clearly not in this girl’s vocabulary - and even through one tiny point of contact, Sam can feel the tension sing through his brother. So close, so close. Sam gives Dean a subtle nudge toward a corner too shadowy to be anything but intentional. Tries and fails to extricate his arm when his brother follows the direction, nearly dragging Sam and the stool both across the room with him.

So far Jamie has been doing a fine enough job of ignoring Sam considering he’s the tallest person in the room by inches and wearing blue plaid, but nobody could be that oblivious and her eyes dart up to Sam curiously. She shoots a look at Dean, then the bruising grip his brother’s got on Sam’s wrist and back up to Sam again, uncertainty melting into realization that puddles into a bright lipped smirk. Her shoulders lean against the wall but her hips never make it that far, bumpering Dean’s as she draws him in with a handhold on the waistband of his jeans. Dean is practically vibrating.

“You could have said,” she confides, dark-eyed, “I don’t mind if your mate joins in.”

It takes Sam a too long moment of puzzling that over - she hadn’t sounded British at all - for it to click in that that wasn’t slang. She meant literally. Mate. Dean’s mate. Meaning Sam.

“Woah, no, we’re not, we’re-” Sam stops himself short of saying brothers because it’s probably best not to go flashing too much information around on the off chance that any of this should find its way to the wrong ears. They’re conspicuous enough without throwing in confirming details for anyone on the lookout. He settles on, “I’m human.”

Confusion flitters back across Jamie’s face before mellowing out again to eagerness. He’s not sure why a girl who goes for vampires being adventurous surprises him, but it’s kind of freaky.

“Oh, ok,” she shrugs, craning around Dean to get a hand smoothing appreciatively down Sam’s side. “Not that I’m opposed to quick and dirty, but this would go easier in a bed if we’re going to be trading off.”

Chances are that Dean misses most of that suggestion, though, because Jamie’s eyes only get as far as Sam’s hips before Dean’s jerking Sam forward, bum shoulder pulling ominously in its socket, until he’s flush to Dean’s back, hand sandwiched between Dean’s sternum and palm.

Even reversed, the position makes the Council flicker in front of Sam’s eyes, desperate fear churn in his stomach.

“Wha-”

“Mine,” Dean says, voice low and threatening and nothing at all like a human’s.

Not quite as fearless - or maybe just not nearly as dumb - as she’s been letting on all this time, Jamie flattens herself against the wall, dark liner around her eyes making the shocked spread of them more obvious.

The calluses on Sam’s hand catch at his brother’s soft shirt as Dean drags both of their hands upward. Sam’s not really strong enough to fight it even if he had a decent angle here so he lets it go and his brain cascades through exit strategies.

Between the music and the darkness of the corner they’ve staked out he doubts anyone would have noticed something’s up even if this was the kind of place where butting into other people’s business was encouraged. The front door is all the way across the bar, but with speed and surprise on their side they could probably make it. There’s an empty doorway fifteen paces to the left that’s a better bet though, assuming it lets out somewhere and not just further into the bowels of the building. They should have brought more than a couple of knives but silver and guns weren’t likely to have made them any friends on the chance that someone here really did know something about the doctor.

A noise startles out of him, more stunned than hurt, at the sudden sting at the very tip of his first finger. It twists into a burn and, almost as fast, back again into a pleasant, ticklish sort of tingle at the wet, cool drag of what Sam realizes too late is his brother’s tongue.

“Mine,” Dean repeats, if anything rougher this time as he moves on to Sam’s middle finger and gives it the same nip-lick treatment. Tasting Sam’s blood.

Jamie looks like she is losing her shit fast, but whatever this girl’s been experimenting with in her free time, she seems to know better than to do something stupid like run or scream. Dean moves on to Sam’s ring finger, shattered-green eyes falling half-lidded as he devotes a little more attention to what he’s doing than the terrified girl he’s got cornered.

Sam’s flying blind here, but not as much as he could be, would have been a couple of months ago before their whole lives went to hell, no handbasket required. Dean’s always been responsive to touch, even when they made a lot less physical contact than they do nowadays, so that’s what Sam puts his bet on for a distraction - try and get the civies out of the immediate danger zone and then get them both the fuck out of here. He slides his free hand around Dean’s hip and pulls like there’s any closer for them to get.

Pressing his lips to Dean’s cheek is nothing but bizarre, cool skin and stubble and the smell of leather because Dean’s given up on aftershave with his sense of smell the way it is. It’s intimate. Creepy and flashbacky at the same time because it’s not exactly a first; for years they did this, morning and night, probably past the ages where that kind of affection could have been considered normal. Those rumors about them didn’t come out of nowhere, after all.

Dean makes a sound that’s got no meaning for Sam beyond making his pulse stutter nervously. Broken pupils cut towards him from under thick lashes. The sharp point of Dean’s fang hovers against the pad of Sam’s little finger, just like the breath in Sam’s lungs. He leans back in and presses another kiss to Dean’s face, down along the jut of his jawbone, takes the risk and darts his tongue against the burn of five o’clock shadow. It gets another noise, rumbly-deep enough that Sam feels it in his own chest where they’re connected, and then Dean nicks him, deeper this time than any of the others before he draws the tip of the finger into his mouth to suckle.

“Dean,” Sam keeps his voice low and even as he watches Jamie slip away in his peripheral vision, “we have to go.”

Dean chuffs a breath around Sam’s finger and pulls another one into his mouth along with it, sliding his lips down onto him and doing... well, something that Sam’s heard too many remarks about his brother’s mouth being ‘made for’. It’s kind of uncomfortable that it turns out they were right.

“Dean.” Sam can hear the urgency rising in his voice along with the faint shufflings behind him, hopefully of people getting the hell out of their way. His brother doesn’t seem to care. “C’mon, we gotta- … Let’s, let’s go somewhere, ok?” The words are hard enough to think up, let alone get out. “We’ll just... we’ll go back to the room and we can, you know, d- do stuff. Just... just you and me. Ok?”

Again Dean makes that noise - and what the hell is that anyway? Like a grump or a purr or what? - but he lets Sam’s fingers pull free of his mouth with a slick pop and turns easily in the circle of Sam’s arms to lick a wide, sloppy stripe over Sam’s lips. Oh god, this is too weird even for them.

“Ok, yeah,” he tries to say without actually getting his brother’s tongue in his mouth. It’s a challenge and Sam’s choosing not to rate his success in percentages. “Let’s go.”

He moves a step back and Dean takes one forward and it’s probably the least efficient possible way to cross a room but they manage, mainly by virtue of basically everyone else in the bar having already escaped. If this was the kind of place that could afford attention Sam would be worried about sirens and maybe even news crews but as it is he’s guessing their biggest issue will be a decidedly chilly welcome by anyone in town who might have been able to feed them information. Wonderful.

But that’s a pain in the ass to deal with later. Right now he just need to get Dean back to the motel room with as little molestation as possible. Somehow Sam’s not feeling particularly hopeful.




It heaves, fluid roll of bitter heat up from the pit of his gut, climbing him like a living thing, the only living thing in him and it’s coming right back again. It’s thick on the back of his throat, lodged painfully in his nose, everything he feels and tastes and smells - blood, another stream of it forcing its way up out of his gullet to Rorschach swirl against the bottom of the toilet bowl.

He’s shaking like a fever, like Sam said way back, an infection. Or something. He said something like that anyway, Dean can’t think straight enough to remember right now. There’s a red smear on the back of his hand from wiping his mouth and it disgusts him almost enough to distract from how bad he wants to taste it.

Dead, it's dead blood, stinking of preservatives and he wants so much anyway his teeth ache.

“Dean,” Sam says, like Dean could possibly not know he’s there. Like there’s anywhere he could be that Dean wouldn’t feel it with the little Sammy string wrapped around his barely-beating heart.

“Go to bed, Sam.” It’s a hopeful, stupid reflex because he knows better than to think Sam could possibly just do what he’s damn-well told for a change.

He’d sobered up - or whatever the hell passes for ‘not strung out on his little brother’s blood’ - about halfway back to the motel. By the time they’d gotten the key in the lock he’d been planning to slit his own wrists before he remembered it wouldn’t do any good and went for the blood bag stuffed in their mini fridge instead in the desperate hope that maybe enough of it would rinse the memory of hot, sweet, perfect Sam out of his tastebuds.

It hadn’t worked. In fact, as soon as the first gulp hit his stomach it tried to come right back up again. He’d made himself keep going anyway and look how well it turned out.

Dean rests his head against the cool porcelain even though his fingertips already feel like they’ve been dipped in ice water, the sensation slowly seeping deeper into his body.

Sam doesn’t bother dignifying the order with an answer, just plunks himself down on the peach tile next to Dean and stares. It’s fucking obnoxious.

Fuck, he smells like heaven slathered in butter, dipped in sugar and deep fried. Tastes even better and Dean’s never going to be able to not know that again. Never going to forget the blistering, abject rage of somebody else’s hand on his personal Sammy.

It had been like with the bokor, when Dean lost it and thought he was going to drain the guy dry. Lizard brain slithering out of hiding to take over except for how Dean’s almost positive that wanting to shove his brother up against a wall and fuck him so full of Dean’s scent no one would ever doubt who he belonged to again was not something his lizard brain used to be even passingly associated with.

And Dean’s a little bit occupied dealing with that major personality crisis so he doesn’t really notice what Sam’s up to until that smell billows out into the air like toxic smoke, choking Dean’s lungs and sending his body into spasms of hunger.

“No.” He tries to say it sharply but it comes out more of a whimper, saliva drooling out into the toilet bowl. He can’t bring himself to look, but he knows, knows, that Sam’s cut himself, deep enough that a couple of free-flowing drops are pattering onto the floor with the rest of Dean’s ill-advised meal.

“Fuck you, no. This is killing you.” Sam takes away the choice of looking by shoving his arm in Dean’s face, a smooth gash of impossible red just above the tender, vein-webbed wrist. “I’m not watching it again, Dean. Once was enough. Now you can take it or I can make you, but this is happening. Right now.”

“Sam, no!” Despite the fact that Dean is absolutely, unquestionably stronger than his brother, his attempt at shoving Sam’s arm away turns into just kind of holding it. At least with his hand in the way that antsy voice at the back of his head shuts up with the whine of you’re wasting it every time a droplet hits the floor. It’s pooling in the crevice between his skin and Sam’s, turning his palm into a shallow cup of pure heat. He can’t even breathe through the smell of it but he’s sucking it in anyway like a drowning man. A thin line of slick warmth teases into the webbing of his fingers, trailing slowly down the back of his hand. Dean feels every millimeter.

His, “I won’t,” sounds more like ‘please’ as he tries to hold back that thing in him that so badly wants the reigns. And then Sam holds the knife he must have used to cut himself and lifts it up to his own throat. Vivid red smears just below his jaw, leftover blood like pornography on his skin.

“I’ll make you if I have to.” It’s a threat and Sam’s never been the type to make them lightly. Dean can see it, narrowed in like a zoom lens, as Sam’s pulse flutters against the blade. One slice and it’ll all come spilling free, the rushing, vibrant power that makes Sam who he is and he’s right, Dean will have to use the fucked up things his own damn spit is designed for to seal the wound or watch Sammy bleed out in front of him. They both know that’s no choice at all.

The wet trail down the back of Dean’s hand has slowed at his wrist, growing heavy and surrendering to the pull of gravity. It spats against the leg of Dean’s pants, too loud over the racket of their tense breaths, soaks in until Dean can feel the damp drag of it against his skin.

He puts Sam’s wounded arm to his mouth and sucks.

It’s not that it tastes like anything else, not sweet or spicy or delicious cheeseburger-y goodness. It tastes like blood, it just so happens that’s a good thing. So good he’s not sure he can crave anything but this ever again; that taste of Sam’s blood, rich and complex on his tongue.

It’s like splashdown in his veins, skipping right over the whole stomach part of the equation and racing out along Dean’s limbs, through his body, lighting him up like the Fourth of July. He’s shivering for a whole new reason now, soft hot skin so delicate against his mouth, so sensitive and perfect with the smell of Sam and the taste of him. He wants more of it, needs it, doesn’t even realize he’s tugging at the front of Sam’s shirt until the fabric shreds like wet tissue under his hand.

In a vague sort of way he’s aware of Sam saying something to him, pushing at him, but it’s all kittenish and weak so Dean just ignores it.

He knows the second he’s had enough like there’s a stop-valve in his throat, licks fast and hard over the cut until he can feel it closing, funny, carbonated-bubbly sensation against the tip of his tongue as it seals. He wonders if he did that then forgets why he cares when there’s all this Sam to deal with.

A little push knocks Sam flat to the floor, slapped look on his face more like Dean shoved him, eyes huge with shock, the smell of a faint bruise blooming where Dean’s hand hit his shoulder. The heat of it is intoxicating against Dean’s lips when he presses his mouth to it. Sam’s made of heat, shimmering with it, delicious soaked fire down to Dean’s bones, setting him ringing like a tuning fork fixed on Sam’s frequency.

He follows Sam’s scent down the line of his arm, over his ribs, licking at the curve of hard bone and the soft places in between. Sam’s hands are on his head, shoulders, pushing or pulling or something. He can’t tell, doesn’t care. Feels like he’s buzzing, skin fizzling with electricity as he mouths at the shape of Sam’s abs, firm nuggets of muscle fluttering and clenching as he drags his teeth against them just hard enough to redden the skin.

Sam’s snake slippery, all slinky, lean strength, struggling out of instinct whenever he gets a chance because if Sammy ever had it in him to go easy that bit of his personality got beaten and left for dead in an alley somewhere a long ass time ago. That’s just fine by Dean, always liked a little fight with his fuck anyway.

In the sleepy parts of his mind it hits him that the word ought to gut him; ‘fuck’ melting like butter over his brain pan while his shoulders force Sam’s thighs wide. Doesn’t though. Just wets his appetite, makes him rub his dick against the floor, tile cold through the grating push of his fly.

Sam smells even better here, slipping low, lower, all that pulsating heat at his core. His cock is soft, all give when Dean presses his face against the denim covering Sam. Anger flashes like sheet lightning through him and sets his fingers tearing clumsily at Sam’s jeans until they give up the ghost and V open for him to a set of threadbare boxers. A growl pressed rough against the nothing swell, long, low vibration and demand, earns twitchy little flinches as the shape of Sammy starts to fill out. Sucking gets an even better response, soft cotton soaking through pink from the blood still lingering on the insides of Dean’s cheeks.

Sam groans miserably and that’s a much better sound for him than the babbly scraps of denial he’s been spilling out. Dean takes it for encouragement and sucks harder, relishing the hot rush just below the surface, fattening Sam’s dick up and turning it firm. The red tip peeks out of the split of Sam’s boxers like a new-born puppy, nosing blind. Dean nuzzles at it encouragingly, swipes his tongue across it and the taste of Sam explodes in his mouth, exactly the same and completely different than the hot tang of his blood.

He’s immediately hooked on it, diving back in with his tongue for more, sucking and prodding at the little mouth of his slit until it spills out more, again and again and again.

Sam’s still trying to talk, he thinks, but it’s getting lost in translation around all of those pretty noises that make Dean’s cock ache. Long fingered hands find his face, failing miserably at pushing him off. Dean nips at the pads of them just for kicks, hour-old nostalgia as he compares the salt on them to what he’s just been tasting. All these layers to Sammy that he’s decades behind on cataloguing.

Sam squirms photoshoot-pretty in shadows and light when Dean gets his mouth back down to business. How anything can feel as good as the swell of Sam’s cockhead cradled between the roof of his mouth and his tongue is beyond Dean but he feels kinda put-out he’s just finding it out now.

He’s not being nearly as careful as he ought to be with the teeth considering the set currently mounted over his canines are specifically designed to tear human flesh, but there’s too damn much of Sam to do any kind of job guarding them. Helps that Dean doesn’t actually give a shit, actively likes the little hits of blood that leak free before the nicks close over again. The way Sammy jerks and whines and spills more precome onto his tongue anyway doesn’t hurt either.

By the time he has cotton and wiry hair tickling at his nose Sam’s more lax than defiant, fingers moving restless against the tile and hips pulsing these teeny little fucks that feel unintentional. His hair’s a messy halo on the carpet where the top quarter of him has tumbled out into the bedroom and what Dean can make out of his eyes are addict bright.

Dean’s never cared all that much about the science side of the job - hunt it, kill it, burn it - and his own brief encounter on the other end of things isn’t much more in his memory than a flash of fangs and cold burrowing into him where it didn’t belong, but he wonders if it’s true about the high, if that’s what Sammy’s getting now; doped up on his spit and sexed up by his mouth. Wonders if the kid will want to do empirical studies. Dean imagines all the ways they’d have to test it out, all the places he could sink his teeth deep into Sammy. Jams himself so far onto Sam’s dick he’d choke if his body still cared much about oxygen.

A moan that Dean’s got no other word for than slutty bursts out of Sam’s throat, body rippling under Dean’s palms as his brother curls in around him. There’s hectic color on Sam’s cheeks, in his wet, red lips as if he’s been keeping himself busy gnawing on them the way Dean wants to. His hand is huge, scorching hot on the back of Dean’s neck, stark counter to the burning weight wedging him open.

That alone would be enough to get Dean right up to the precipice, the feel of Sam all around him, in him, the humid, musky smell of him like sex is coming out of his pores, the look on his face like he’s forgotten anything but Dean exists. But then he pushes, hardly enough to count if Dean wasn’t feeling everything so acutely. Fingers digging into the soft flesh under Dean’s jaw, tips brushing where the shape of Sam’s cock swells his throat as he’s forced all the way down until his lips meet Sam’s body, every last not-inconsiderable inch of his brother crammed into him. He swallows, relishes the sting of his insides catching at the flared head, looks all the way up til his eyes ache just holding Sammy’s gaze. And Sam comes, wailing, shameless, spraying so deep Dean only gets the impression of a taste.

Dean sucks him all the way through it, long after Sam’s gone soft on his tongue and started mewling things that sound like stop but aren’t actually words at all. His eyes are wet when Dean pulls off, hurt or overload or disgust, and Dean wants to feel bad about it but all he does is shuck his clothes down and drape himself over his brother, licking at the salt gathered on Sam’s eyelashes and rutting against the twitchy chub of Sam’s spent dick.

It’s over fast, a few rough fucks of his hips combined with all the Sammy blistering through his veins conspiring to finish him off quick. He gets enough space between them when he does to make sure it splatters Sam’s skin. Spends the next few minutes rubbing it in with his fingers until Sam’s tan looks paler through the veil of it, abs and ribs and perky little nipples all marked up as Dean’s.

Sam doesn’t do anything but stare at the ceiling and breathe.




Big, steel-grey eyes looking up, soft, all pity. “No, I’m sorry,” falling from her lips like a guillotine. “It’s very unlikely.” Another set, coffee-black, assessing, smirk set into a wide pout of a mouth. The slam of a door blotting out the back of Dean’s head, his brother walking away with Sam’s heart trying to leap out of his chest to follow.

“What?” Dean’s voice rushes warm against the shot of ice water flooding Sam’s veins. That familiar fuzzy pain is crawling around in his skull like a platoon of broken glass caterpillars. How anybody with meaningful visions handles it, Sam can’t imagine.

The dark outline of Dean is startlingly close. Must be standing between the beds but Sam can’t make it out in the hazy light creeping in under the makeshift blackout curtains they’d fashioned with blankets from the trunk. No way of telling if Dean’s dressed or not to make a guess at how long he’s been awake, whether he ever went to sleep at all.

Real blood seems to have improved Dean’s condition health-wise but it’s done fuck all for his mental state. In the three days since, Dean hasn’t so much as laid a hand on him, avoids getting within a five foot radius if he can help it, like he thinks he’s going to go off the chain and use Sam as a water bottle any second. Funny enough, Sam’s not worried about it at all now that they’ve been there done that. If Dean could stop himself with a vein open against his lips and Sam’s blood on his tongue then close quarters probably isn’t the biggest threat to Sam’s continued survival.

Mostly Dean’s just been walking around looking like a kicked puppy and it’s screwing up the major freakout Sam is entitled to over... that thing that happened, because he’s too busy trying to jump his brother into gear to bother with his own feelings.

“Nothing.” His voice comes out like lead shavings. “Just a dream.”

Dean snorts. Sam doesn’t need to see his face to know the glare his brother’s wearing.

“You’re a shitty liar, you know that?”

Sam skins a hand back through his hair to dislodge the clumps of it sweat-glued to his temples. “No, I’m really not.”

“You are with me,” Dean counters.

And Sam doesn’t have a good argument to that so he doesn’t try to make one. On the other side of a soupy patch of dark, he can feel Dean just staring at him, waiting on some answer that Sam can’t stand any of his guesses at. So he sticks out his hand instead and lets it dangle into the space between, not quite long enough to reach Dean at this angle, but close.

Instinctively he expects to hear Dean’s knees pop as his brother lowers himself to the ground but it’s smooth and silent, just one more shadow in the mix. His fingers are almost warm as he fits just the tips of them against Sam’s, the same ones that started this whole mess between them. There’s not a mark on them, even though Sam feels like there should be, a permanent brand on Sam’s identity, a tiny slice through the whorls where Dean got his first taste of living human blood.

Beneath the window, the heater flips through another cycle, ticking as it warms up to the task. There’s an oppressiveness on the air that makes it feel like they’re both waiting on something and Sam’s got no clue what it might be.

He spreads his fingers and Dean matches him, lets him slide them down the inside of his brother’s until they find the trench where the palm joins. Dean’s are shorter so they don’t reach all the way, just resting there against the third joint of Sam’s. He can see them in his head, the webbed lines of the knuckles and the short blunt nails, torn cuticles, dirt that never really seems to come free. The scar from a hot shell casing when Dean was fourteen emblazoned on the outside middle of his pinkie.

He knows everything about those fingers, even spent a particularly avid summer trying to memorize the patterns of them after he learned about fingerprints in science class. He’s seen them broken and bloodied, careful with a needle, steady with a knife, felt them testing his forehead for a fever and digging into his ribs to make him laugh, born the bruises of them after rough hunts being shoved suddenly out of the path of danger and rougher fights when it was the shape of flung words that really left wounds.

Has felt them smearing his brother’s come into his skin. And the thing that gets him is that it should bother him more than it does.

Dean’s hands are everything he is and it’s not really home to Sam, but it’s not really anything else either.




“Dean?” On the other end of the line, Bobby sounds genuinely shocked. Dean shifts the phone up to cradle it between his ear and shoulder, retrieving the cloth he was using on a sorely neglected .22. Ok, so yeah, Dean’s technically dead, he’s not so much with the ‘and gone’ part - he can still answer the damn phone.

He keeps his tone even, light, when he answers, “Yeah, Bobby.” Any weird nervous feelings he might have are probably just because it’s been a week since The Incident and he’s starting to get hungry again. He grew out of that ‘please don’t let me be a disappointment’ thing a long time ago.

“Where’s Sam?” Dean knows he’s not imagining the tension in Bobby’s voice and it’s like a punch to the kidneys.

His, “Shower,” comes out with too much bite but he reigns it back in with a deep breath. “You want me to get him?”

Dean is developing a pronounced aptitude for not thinking about the sudden spike of heat that hits him at the thought of walking in on Sam like that. All that wet, slick skin. Yep, not thinking about it, because that’s what a decent person does after essentially raping their younger brother; never, ever think inappropriate thoughts about him again even if it fucking kills them to do it. Even if their brother smells and tastes and sounds like everything worth living for.

Somewhere back in South Dakota Bobby clears his throat. “No, no. I... Look, I just called to give you a heads up. The cat aint out of the bag but there’s a lot of mutts sniffing around it.”

“Somebody on our tail?”

“I don’t know anything for sure, but there’s a lot of rumors flying around and all of a sudden, Gordon’s off the grid.”

“Shit,” Dean breathes, suddenly glad that Sammy’s using up all the hot water so he doesn’t have to try and cover the flare of panic he can feel blooming on his face.

Gordon Walker is an asshole. Hunters aren’t known for being social butterflies but this guy has skeeved dudes that Dean has personally seen comb shifter goo out of their hair without batting an eyelash. He’s bad news, and as an added bonus, has a special hard-on for killing vampires and a very limited grasp of Guild protocols.

“It could be nothing,” Bobby says, “but I thought you should know.”

“Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Bobby. We’ll-” the knobs squeal as Sam turns off the water, still humming quietly to himself. It’s Phish, which Dean had been planning to give him hell about but now they’ve got more important things to deal with. “We’ll keep an eye out.”

“Good.”

Without the noise of the water, Dean can hear Sam’s feet pat on the thin bathroom rug, the shuff of the scratchy towel on his skin, rasping across the thin sprinkling of hair on his legs as he dries himself off, getting louder as he gets up to the nest of it as his groin, the almost imperceptible hitch of his breath. Dean really goddamn hates his super-hearing.

“Dean?”

The pistol clatters loudly to the floor when Dean jumps at the snap in Bobby’s voice. Definitely not his first shot at getting Dean’s attention. “Huh? Yeah! What?”

If he could blush, he probably would be, like a little kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Of course, if he could blush, it’d be Sam’s blood coloring his cheeks and that thought really shouldn’t make his dick take an interest.

“Are you-” Bobby fumbles, “How are you?”

Dean almost laughs, except it’s not funny in the least that he’s standing in the middle of a motel room with cherub wallpaper, half hard from thinking about having a nibble on his baby brother’s neck.

The bathroom doorknob rattles in its fixture as Sam pulls it open and thick, Sammy-scented air pours out into the room. So much for half hard.

Sam stops in the middle of ruffling his hair with a towel, eyes flying from the gun on the floor to their emergency burner-phone in Dean’s hand, worry flickering over to fear before Sam locks it down. Too-old, worn out fabric clings lovingly where he must have slid his boxers on damp; strong thighs and cut hips, the soft hang of his cock and the pretty flare of the head Dean can only just make out because-

Because he’s staring like a pervert. At his brother. Again.

“I been better,” he says into the phone. Hey, at least it’s honest. “Thanks for the warning, Bobby.”

“Watch yourselves.” Goodbye’s too dangerous a word in their line of work. And it’s damn good advice - Dean needs to spend a lot more time watching himself and a lot less eyeing Sam.

“We will,” he promises, disconnecting the call.

Sam opens his mouth for a question that doesn’t get free before Dean can’t take it anymore.

“Would it kill you to put a shirt on? Jesus fucking Christ, Sam!”

He throws the first article of clothing he can reach in his brother’s direction, which happens to be a sock but whatever. Any extra cloth between his eyes and Sam’s body is a good thing.

Pointedly he turns his back on Sam, stuffing everything of theirs he can reach unceremoniously into duffles, taking care only with the weapons. “Get your shit, we got a bloodhound on our trail.”

“How? Who?” Sam’s moving though, denim grating loud against skin, softer t-shirt, another layer over it. Not nearly enough to protect him from Dean’s constant, obsessive awareness, but probably enough to sate Dean’s overactive imagination to PG-13 levels.

“Walker,” Dean says to his bag anyway because really? Why chance looking?

Sam huffs, “Fuck. Any idea where?” and starts getting around faster.

“No. Bobby says he just up and disappeared.” Not that that means anything. Nobody spends much time in the life without learning how to fall of the radar when they need to. And if Gordon’s anywhere near as good as Dean’s heard, him going stealth-mode could be a very dangerous thing for them. It’s time they stopped getting so cozy in their stop-overs.

Sam hisses, “Fuck,” again, grabs the car keys and his wallet off of the TV stand. “I’ll go check out and get the blanket out of the back.”

As he says it, he’s sidling through the little bit of space left between Dean’s body and the stupidly placed dresser by the front door so Dean kind of fuzzes out on the actual words - lost to the prickles of fire blooming on his skin in the wake of contact - until Sam’s already got a hand on the knob.

“It’s late enough,” he argues, part wounded dignity - it’s only a couple of hours to sundown, he can handle it for that long inside the car - part sudden, desperate need to keep Sam in his sights. He’s got to get over this shit.

“No it’s not,” Sam singsongs back just to get on his nerves, and then he’s gone, wedging himself through the smallest possible crack in the door like Dean’s going to burst into flames at the barest hint of sunlight. Dean’s more worried about bursting into flames out of divine retribution. Because when Sam slid out the door? Dean totally checked out his ass. Again.

God, he is so completely fucked.

Chapter Four