fic: Lightning Threads Spun Silver Tongues
Fic: Lightning Threads Spun Silver Tongues
Author: eggblue
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: lingerie, underage Wincest, epic Wincest, succubus-style demon non-con
Disclaimer: If I owned SPN, I wouldn’t have to write this
Word Count: ~4,000
Spoilers: Takes place after 5.04
Summary: If there was one thing Dean Winchester could do, it was out-bitch a demon.
Sam had a fever.
Dean could feel it coming on for days, the way Sammy shook in his sleep, sweaty and worn from the heat of his dreams, even as the winter air was coming on.
The first winter of the Apocalypse. That sounded way more ominous than he wanted it to be. Most things did these days. He felt as if the past was replaying itself, like he’d been here before and he would be here again and it wouldn’t ever make any more sense.
Sammy shaking in his sleep in this motel room, like he’d done as a baby after the fire, keeping Dean on a 24-hour a day vigil, as if he hadn’t already broken enough. Like he’d done during puberty, before telling Dean what was going on with him. Like he’d done in the panic room, delirious with withdrawal.
They were determined to be together - the hotels, the diners, the all-day drives - until this thing that was coming to get them (the monsters come to take his brother away, so many monsters) finally arrived. They spoke of ghosts and old hunts; the family they knew; their immediate surroundings of innocence and kitsch. Not the angels, not the demons, not their future waiting for them with endless fire and monsters in ice-cream suits.
This was a time like any other time before, but now they knew who was after the youngest, last Winchester - it would be the great seducer of mankind, the one who would seduce his brother away from him and finally end the world. Lucifer wanted his brother and he wanted him in every way. And maybe it was all really that simple - the world resting on the desires of one lost prince, one tragic figure who just happened to be his baby brother.
Who he happened to be in love with in ways they still couldn’t find, their desire stuck so deep in the fate of this world. So Sam’s fever grew nonetheless, and Dean couldn’t even comfort him at night because he didn’t know what to do.
So he asked his angel.
Castiel was about as helpful as always. “You asked for my thoughts.”
“Well could you stop waxing all poetic about him? It’s freaking me out.”
“He’s so bright in the world, Dean. Even now. Not even Michael -"
“I know, I know who we’re up against here.”
“No, you don’t. If you knew, you might be more afraid.”
Dean rolled his eyes upwards. “Hey, I’m afraid here. I’m desperate. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“He will attack where he can, with what he knows, and he knows everything about you, Dean. Sam as well. He does not lie; cannot, in fact, lie. You cannot trick him, and you cannot escape him.”
“So what do I do?”
“You are in love with your brother.”
“What?”
“Do not be ashamed. Never be ashamed, Dean, or it will be the end of us all.”
Dean was speechless, for the very first time in his life.
“Very simply: Lucifer will want to use your love against you. He will encourage your desires. And he can be very persuasive. Romantic, even. Devastatingly so. He will drown you in your love for your brother until it becomes your… religion.”
“No pun intended,” he whispered.
“Don’t listen to him.”
“What do you mean, don’t listen?”
Castiel sighed. “I’m sorry, Dean, but for the time being, it might be best to take a vow.”
“You want me to get married? We’re a little ways from Massachusetts, Cas.”
“No. I want you to do the opposite - take a vow of celibacy.”
“What?? No! Why?”
“Because, whatever Lucifer will be trying to show to you, that is not what he will be showing to Sam.”
“Excuse me?”
“Lucifer will encourage your desires, Dean, show you and your brother the same kind of desires, of romance. It is not my expertise, so I can’t go into detail…”
“That’s okay.”
“But he will be telling your brother the exact opposite.”
“But you just said that he doesn’t lie. That he can only tells the truth.”
“He does, but there is so often more than one truth.”
He was scared and bare. Raw with the thought of all of this. “What? What is he going to do to Sam?”
“Lucifer will show him, quite plainly, himself. But the kiss that you remember as pure, your brother will instead see twisted, tainted and ugly. The words you once spoke from your heart will sound like manipulation and lies. When Sam looks at you, he will not see you anymore - he will see only a perspective of you, cynical and disbelieving of the you he used to remember, his faith stripped away.”
Dean thought of his brother, jerking his shoulder out of Dean’s hand, in pain and alone. “So, if I touched him, he would…”
“Be repelled, not comforted. Be forced to question all he thought was true. I was serious about the vow of celibacy, Dean. You need to talk to Sam. Convince him to see the right perspective again.”
“But that’s… that’s how we talk!”
“You’ll have to talk, for real, this time.”
“Then we’re really screwed, Cas. What am I supposed to say?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something. I know you can be very persuasive yourself.”
“Well - You’re pretty easily, uh, convinced.”
“Maybe not as easily as I once was. I’m here because I want to be here. Sam does too. You can make him see the light.”
“Don’t say you believe in me again. It’s too much pressure.”
“Alright, I won’t. I’ll just say good luck. Dean, beware of Zachariah. He will use your love against you as well. He will tell you it is evil, it is wrong; say that you must atone by doing your duty. Don’t listen to him either. He does lie.”
“Thanks, Cas. Really.”
Cas smiled. “Don’t mention it.”
*
Something was going to break. Dean could feel it in the nights especially.
Those nights when Sam looked feverish and tortured, desperate for Dean to leave him alone until he drank himself unconscious or collapsed in a heap on the floor, he would not allow Dean near him. The world had shrunk to the size of Sam’s mood and Dean had never, ever, ever learned to navigate it.
“I know what we need.”
“What.”
“Let’s go on a road trip, Sammy. Just the two of us. Like old times.”
“Doesn’t matter where we go. There we are.”
“Come on - it’ll be a change of perspective. You know, something different.”
“Dean, we’ve spent our whole lives traveling around. If it didn’t matter then, why would it matter now?”
“Because we’ve been in this same stinking place for a week! I’m getting restless.”
“Here.” A fistful of wadded up bills flew in Dean’s general direction. “Go out, have a good time, get a life, and leave me alone.”
Those few nights when they refused to listen to their angels, and the old feelings broke through, unshattered. He had to hope that Sam was feeling something in the touch of his hand, speaking their language. Had to know that there was more honesty in one drop of his sweat than in the whole host of demons or the angels they used to be.
Sam climbing into his bed an hour after they turned the lights off, Sam’s eyes looking back at him, and he knew they were Sam’s because they were sad like Sam’s eyes always were. That sadness that grew to comfort him over the years, because he was the only one who had the chance to take it away from him and try to fix it. It was his job. That sadness that also proved to him they were still alive, still human.
What if Sam had needed that sadness too? To prove he was alive and real and human. What if Dean had never tried to fix it? Had never given Sam enough of himself to make him happy enough to hope that things would be different. Sam never would have been. They might not be facing the end of the world.
No. No, he couldn’t think like that. He knew he couldn’t be wrong about this. Not this. Cas had warned him, and he couldn’t let them erase his past like that.
He stroked Sam’s hair and let him kiss him until he fell asleep, unable to think any more about what Sam might be thinking, and whether it will destroy his whole heart or just the world around them.
*
It wasn’t until a dive bar in Milwaukee that it all finally broke in upon them. The jukebox had gotten stuck, playing ‘Closer’ over and over on a loop, louder and louder bass creeping. Some people left, others stayed. Dean finished his drink (double whiskey, neat) as fast as he could when Sam went for the shotgun and blasted a hole through it all.
Sparks flew from the broken plastic lights, and the whole thing flashed and went dead. But the music returned, and Sam’s fever returned, and Dean clamped down on his fear like swallowing bile and steeled himself for the monsters, which were always gonna come.
Then the door blew open and there they were, in great black clouds.
“Dean!”
“Sam!”
They were pulled apart like two ends of a rubber band, snapping away from each other as soon as they touched.
“Sammy!” Dean landed close to the ceiling, his body spread out in a crucifixion pose on the wooden support beams.
“Dean! Help me!”
He watched as Sam landed on the pool table, spread eagle, held down by invisible hands of beings who hovered over him. Sam talked to them, pleaded with them as if he could see. And he was scared.
“Sammy! You can all tell your boss to shove it!”
The demons never listened. Dean watched his brother held on a pool table, spread out and pants open and shirt riding up, hips riding up, whole body arching to get away from the thing that was riding him. Sam’s back twisting and arching, seemingly forever, his long muscles strained to the point of breaking, sweating and writhing like he does in his sleep, saying stop stop stop.
And the voice: Say yes, Sammy. Say yes.
“Sam!” The monsters come to take his brother away, so many monsters.
The monsters come to cut and tear at you until you broke. Dean knew the kind.
“Dean! Dean, don’t look! Don’t look!” Sammy squeezing his eyes shut against the horrors in his head.
“What do you see, Sam?” And the flashes in Dean’s head like a fire, like the fire in Sam’s head, all of the time.
Dean tasted the sharp tang of beer in his mouth, his mouth watering from it. He recognized it.
When he was 15, Sam’s idea of splurging on a celebration had been to steal some Miller Hi-Life from the Kwik Mart down the street.
”The champagne of beers? Really?”
“Dad hates the stuff.” Sam at 15, naked, on a white bed speaking.
“How do you know that?”
“I know lots of stuff. And Dad’s not here.”
“I know that.”
“Dad’s never here. If he never came back, I’d just have you.”
“And wouldn’t that be great? Nah, Sammy, you got a good deal here.”
“I know.” He had straightened a lick of Dean’s hair between two fingers. He was always doing stuff like that, things no one else had ever done for Dean his entire life. Like he’d just been born yesterday, whatever else he’d thought about himself forgotten.
Dean had looked at what was in front of him. Bed, Sammy, beer, Twinkie with a candle stuck in the middle. “Is all this for me?”
“What d’ya think? Special enough for you?” His lips so pink, the way they were always so pink, but glossy. His eyes, dark lined and soft, now heavy-lidded and shadowed by a full swoop of lashes.
Pantyhose, also from down the street. Sam on his back on the sheets, smiling, reaching for Dean, his legs in the air pointed and covered. His legs that went on for miles, just miles and miles. Appreciated by no one in the world but Dean, and it was just one of the many crimes and injustices of his life. One of the ones he could fix.
Sammy, so sweet and gorgeous, Sammy.
The feel of the nylon against his sex, the skin on his balls, his thighs. Sammy, smoothed down, rounded, and tight underneath the silk and the nylon. He could already taste the sweat on the hidden skin beneath, knew what it tasted like, and his brother keeping it hidden from him. So sneaky, so teasing, so pure.
Dean had kissed him on those pink lips, so thin and hungry, and pulled away. He could tease him to moans so easily. “Patience, Sammy.”
Sammy had just rolled his eyes, narrowed them, and cocked his head. “It’s YOUR birthday. And you don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘patience’.”
The demons mocked them.
Patience, Sammy. Birthday boy. Patience, Sammy. Patience, patience.
They buzzed in his head like flies.
The joy Sammy could bring, then. So tight around Dean, the soft brush of his rounded flesh on Dean’s palest skin, almost too much to bear. It is difficult - more difficult than they had thought it would be. They had always thought it would be very very difficult. But not impossible. There was no room for impossible in their lives, about this or anything else. It just couldn’t exist for them.
“Finish, Dean, finish!” But Sammy couldn’t stop moving, his hands grabbing for Dean behind and around him.
Dean thinking of mommy, daddy, teenage virgins, pretty ghosts, pink lips and sweaty hair and the ends of Sammy’s legs he can’t even see without moving his neck, and it’s too much to take, and it’s more than he’s ever wanted and it threatens his early title of undefeated wandering lover to the lower 48.
“Sammy… Sammy, I can’t. I can’t.”
“Keep trying. Don’t stop.” And he whined when Dean did.
He had to brace his chin on Sam’s shoulder, focus on his blood-darkened sex, so big for him, freed from silky pink panties and slippery pantyhose, so alive and moving, never ever still.
“Fuck me, Sam.”
“Wait, Dean, what??”
“You can do it.” And he had kissed Sam on the cheek, just so he knew he was sure. “Just do what I do. I’ll guide you through the steps.”
“I can manage, I just -“
And Sammy had held him there, two, three seconds - long enough to finish himself off, his breath against Dean’s face, neck reaching for forever, glossy wetness coating his tapered fingers, the nylons, the silky pink soaked through dark.
Dean howls a cry of frustration at the ceiling, unable to move, knowing the memory could mean nothing to anyone else but them - but Sammy and Dean.
I’ll guide you, I’ll guide you, the demons mock.
And that nothing else could mean as much.
The bar is empty now, and dark except for flickering neon signs, the demonic jukebox, the white florescence from behind the bar. Sam’s fly is peeled open, his sex hardening and rising above him of its own accord. Sam writhes away from it, his back shiny with sweat, his shirt riding up, revealing the muscles of his torso, tight and fighting invisible hands Dean couldn’t see.
It was like hell. Sammy was in hell. And Dean was there too. He knew just what that felt like - the demon way of including your fondest memories in their mocking methods of violation like bad performance art, the angelic way of destroying your whole history in the blink of an eye by their complete inability to understand the meaning of TMI.
“I don’t know, Dean.” He had smiled. “Your ass might be too big, don’t want to get myself crushed or anything. He had squeezed it for good measure.”
Dean had looked over his shoulder. “Hey, watch the merchandise.”
Sam had smiled again, kissed him then on the small of his back, because he knew how the affection would still Dean, would remind him who he was really dealing with here, how he didn’t have to run right now, because it always did.
“Come on, this was your idea, remember? I’m a fast learner.”
“I know,” Dean sighed. And cursed just about everything in the universe, the way Sam had teased him then, with his fingers, opened him up and made him feel fiercer, stronger for it, the way Sammy did things was so profound to him sometimes, so different from his own way, and yet they seemed to meet back where they started. Sammy’s hands made him shake and Sammy’s eyes broke him down and Sammy’s body knew him like blood and that’s all there was to it.
Dean had braced one foot on the floor and bent forward. “Go easy on me, Sammy.”
“Don’t worry, I’m no monster.”
“Yeah, you’ve just got a monster -"
“Just wait.”
Everything in the universe was cursed all over again to the sound of Sammy’s laughter until all of it stopped under the rhythm of their bodies and their breath, drowned out by the sound of something new and all their own.
Dean remembered when Sammy was the only one he would ever let do that to him, and he wanted to cry at the purity of that, he wanted to cry about that forever, but he would never be allowed to and he never ever could.
“That’s good, that’s good, Sammy.”
“You’re so warm. And brave. And sweet.” He had punctuated with kisses. Sammy wasn’t even thinking about what he was saying, just being honest with him in the moment.
“I told you we’d find a solution. Always have, baby bro.”
There was a moment when Sam was halfway in when Dean didn’t think they would make it, that his brother would have the same problem he did - namely, that they’re brothers - and this dream that’d been haunting them their whole lives would be just a silly dream, and why should he believe in dreams anyway? Even if this was his only one. Really his only one.
And Sam’s too. When he’d asked Sam, for his birthday last May, the only thing Sam had to say was this. He wanted to play at the adult world they knew about, laughed about, would never actually want or be able to have.
Sammy’s hands all over him and his sounds filling the room and so close, so close.
Sammy screaming for help against the invisible demons that surrounded him all of the time now, that would never leave him alone until he said the magic word.
Dean did the only thing he could. He could be brave. He could show them all just what his brother was made of. Because he was Dean. That was his job. That had always been his job. Like an angel, he could witness, and preach, and send a message.
And if there was one thing he could do, it was out-bitch a demon.
“Hey, Sam? Sammy, can you hear me?”
“Dean!”
At the sound of his name, the world itself began to quake and crumble. Something had been severed between Sam and the demon. He had a chance.
“I have to say some things, Sam, and, and I want you to try and listen to me, whether you want to hear it or not. I didn’t want it to be this way, but it is. Come on - you owe me that much.”
The room cracked in half from floor to ceiling. “Help me… I can’t… I can’t…”
“Shhhh, I know. I know, Sammy. I know this guy Lucifer’s been talking to you. Maybe things don’t make sense to you like they used to. I miss talking with you. I want to say I’m sorry.”
The support beams creaked and shook under Dean. He felt as if gravity itself just became twice as heavy.
“I could’ve done better. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time. Truth is, I still don’t. I wanted to make you happy. I wanted to make something good. I mean, I’ve always wanted you to do what you wanted. Even if that was without me. I just, I don’t know, I don’t think it was.”
“They’ll kill you, Dean. They’re gonna… if I don’t give in to him.”
“I know, Sammy. There’s only one way you can be as free as Lucifer says, and listening to him isn’t going to do it. He’s right, what he says about us. But that’s not all of it. That’s not how I see it.”
The pressure was deafening.
“I’m sorry that I’m the only person left for you, Sammy. And… I’m sorry that you’re the only one for me. You always have been. I don’t know how far back the angels would have to send me to change that, or if it was some kind of destiny. I don’t believe in destiny, I really really don’t. But if I did believe in it, I’d have to believe that you were my destiny all along. You were always so sure. I believed everything you said, Sam. I… you were the surest thing in my life, you know that? I didn’t have to question, I just followed you, and I knew. I know you don’t think so, but I always believed the best about you. Even when I turned away, I wasn’t giving up. I wasn’t giving up. I was just wrong.”
A massive energy tore through the room in a gust of wind, and Dean felt himself slip a foot down closer to the ground, pressure like a giant fist holding him down.
“The angels told me you would give in. I still don’t believe them. I don’t know if I believe in me; and I can’t know what you’re thinking, but… I think we’re safest if we believe in us. And everything else? That was just a distraction. You and me? We’ve lived with that kind of destiny our whole lives. We’re like experts, right? So I say we’re powerful enough to make our own destiny.”
The support beam broke and the whole world fell down around him, crushed between the ceiling and the floor. He felt his ribs cracking, blood in his mouth. His only chance, if he still had a voice.
“Remember that time, about five months ago - the sun was coming up, and you were driving that ugly old Cadillac. I gave you the knife because I trusted you to kill demons the right way. You said you wouldn’t let me down. I believed you, Sam. And you haven’t. That morning the sun was coming up, and the sky was clear blue, and I lay back against the car and, and I looked at it, and you…”
It’s too much, too much.
“You helped me make us human again.”
Everything went black around him.
“What do you want to believe, Sammy? What do you prefer to believe about this thing between you and me, huh? About all of this? You always thought the best of people. You really tried, I know. I know that. Just think the best of me this time, ok? Remember I tried.”
Then Dean shut his eyes.
*
He woke up to the ugliest ceiling in the universe. A hotel ceiling. “Home.”
“You should rest.” It was Castiel. Thank God.
“You found me? Where’s Sam?” Dean followed Castiel’s gaze behind him to Sam’s sleeping body, and grunted in pain. “What the hell happened in there?”
“Sam tried to fight them off. I took care of the rest.” Then he leaned down from where he was standing beside the bed, and gently kissed Dean on the forehead.
“Wait, you heard what I said?”
“You were just being honest. It’s not a thing to be ashamed of.”
“What’s this thing with you and shame all of a sudden?”
“I’m tired of it. It’s much too common among angels, and people like you.”
“What do you mean - people like me?”
“People who don’t need it. You both need your rest. Your brother is waking up.”
“Wait, Cas -“
Of course he was already gone.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.” Sam spoke from his bed.
“Can you move at all?”
“Barely. How about you?”
“Nope. Maybe later.”
“Yeah. Hey, Dean?”
He braced himself. “What is it?”
“It’s a good thing you’re around. As a reminder.”
Even raising his eyebrow hurt. “A reminder of what?”
“Of you.”
“Bitch.”
“Jerk.”
*
the end
Feedback is awesome. Sam and Dean are hard.
Author: eggblue
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: lingerie, underage Wincest, epic Wincest, succubus-style demon non-con
Disclaimer: If I owned SPN, I wouldn’t have to write this
Word Count: ~4,000
Spoilers: Takes place after 5.04
Summary: If there was one thing Dean Winchester could do, it was out-bitch a demon.
Sam had a fever.
Dean could feel it coming on for days, the way Sammy shook in his sleep, sweaty and worn from the heat of his dreams, even as the winter air was coming on.
The first winter of the Apocalypse. That sounded way more ominous than he wanted it to be. Most things did these days. He felt as if the past was replaying itself, like he’d been here before and he would be here again and it wouldn’t ever make any more sense.
Sammy shaking in his sleep in this motel room, like he’d done as a baby after the fire, keeping Dean on a 24-hour a day vigil, as if he hadn’t already broken enough. Like he’d done during puberty, before telling Dean what was going on with him. Like he’d done in the panic room, delirious with withdrawal.
They were determined to be together - the hotels, the diners, the all-day drives - until this thing that was coming to get them (the monsters come to take his brother away, so many monsters) finally arrived. They spoke of ghosts and old hunts; the family they knew; their immediate surroundings of innocence and kitsch. Not the angels, not the demons, not their future waiting for them with endless fire and monsters in ice-cream suits.
This was a time like any other time before, but now they knew who was after the youngest, last Winchester - it would be the great seducer of mankind, the one who would seduce his brother away from him and finally end the world. Lucifer wanted his brother and he wanted him in every way. And maybe it was all really that simple - the world resting on the desires of one lost prince, one tragic figure who just happened to be his baby brother.
Who he happened to be in love with in ways they still couldn’t find, their desire stuck so deep in the fate of this world. So Sam’s fever grew nonetheless, and Dean couldn’t even comfort him at night because he didn’t know what to do.
So he asked his angel.
Castiel was about as helpful as always. “You asked for my thoughts.”
“Well could you stop waxing all poetic about him? It’s freaking me out.”
“He’s so bright in the world, Dean. Even now. Not even Michael -"
“I know, I know who we’re up against here.”
“No, you don’t. If you knew, you might be more afraid.”
Dean rolled his eyes upwards. “Hey, I’m afraid here. I’m desperate. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“He will attack where he can, with what he knows, and he knows everything about you, Dean. Sam as well. He does not lie; cannot, in fact, lie. You cannot trick him, and you cannot escape him.”
“So what do I do?”
“You are in love with your brother.”
“What?”
“Do not be ashamed. Never be ashamed, Dean, or it will be the end of us all.”
Dean was speechless, for the very first time in his life.
“Very simply: Lucifer will want to use your love against you. He will encourage your desires. And he can be very persuasive. Romantic, even. Devastatingly so. He will drown you in your love for your brother until it becomes your… religion.”
“No pun intended,” he whispered.
“Don’t listen to him.”
“What do you mean, don’t listen?”
Castiel sighed. “I’m sorry, Dean, but for the time being, it might be best to take a vow.”
“You want me to get married? We’re a little ways from Massachusetts, Cas.”
“No. I want you to do the opposite - take a vow of celibacy.”
“What?? No! Why?”
“Because, whatever Lucifer will be trying to show to you, that is not what he will be showing to Sam.”
“Excuse me?”
“Lucifer will encourage your desires, Dean, show you and your brother the same kind of desires, of romance. It is not my expertise, so I can’t go into detail…”
“That’s okay.”
“But he will be telling your brother the exact opposite.”
“But you just said that he doesn’t lie. That he can only tells the truth.”
“He does, but there is so often more than one truth.”
He was scared and bare. Raw with the thought of all of this. “What? What is he going to do to Sam?”
“Lucifer will show him, quite plainly, himself. But the kiss that you remember as pure, your brother will instead see twisted, tainted and ugly. The words you once spoke from your heart will sound like manipulation and lies. When Sam looks at you, he will not see you anymore - he will see only a perspective of you, cynical and disbelieving of the you he used to remember, his faith stripped away.”
Dean thought of his brother, jerking his shoulder out of Dean’s hand, in pain and alone. “So, if I touched him, he would…”
“Be repelled, not comforted. Be forced to question all he thought was true. I was serious about the vow of celibacy, Dean. You need to talk to Sam. Convince him to see the right perspective again.”
“But that’s… that’s how we talk!”
“You’ll have to talk, for real, this time.”
“Then we’re really screwed, Cas. What am I supposed to say?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something. I know you can be very persuasive yourself.”
“Well - You’re pretty easily, uh, convinced.”
“Maybe not as easily as I once was. I’m here because I want to be here. Sam does too. You can make him see the light.”
“Don’t say you believe in me again. It’s too much pressure.”
“Alright, I won’t. I’ll just say good luck. Dean, beware of Zachariah. He will use your love against you as well. He will tell you it is evil, it is wrong; say that you must atone by doing your duty. Don’t listen to him either. He does lie.”
“Thanks, Cas. Really.”
Cas smiled. “Don’t mention it.”
*
Something was going to break. Dean could feel it in the nights especially.
Those nights when Sam looked feverish and tortured, desperate for Dean to leave him alone until he drank himself unconscious or collapsed in a heap on the floor, he would not allow Dean near him. The world had shrunk to the size of Sam’s mood and Dean had never, ever, ever learned to navigate it.
“I know what we need.”
“What.”
“Let’s go on a road trip, Sammy. Just the two of us. Like old times.”
“Doesn’t matter where we go. There we are.”
“Come on - it’ll be a change of perspective. You know, something different.”
“Dean, we’ve spent our whole lives traveling around. If it didn’t matter then, why would it matter now?”
“Because we’ve been in this same stinking place for a week! I’m getting restless.”
“Here.” A fistful of wadded up bills flew in Dean’s general direction. “Go out, have a good time, get a life, and leave me alone.”
Those few nights when they refused to listen to their angels, and the old feelings broke through, unshattered. He had to hope that Sam was feeling something in the touch of his hand, speaking their language. Had to know that there was more honesty in one drop of his sweat than in the whole host of demons or the angels they used to be.
Sam climbing into his bed an hour after they turned the lights off, Sam’s eyes looking back at him, and he knew they were Sam’s because they were sad like Sam’s eyes always were. That sadness that grew to comfort him over the years, because he was the only one who had the chance to take it away from him and try to fix it. It was his job. That sadness that also proved to him they were still alive, still human.
What if Sam had needed that sadness too? To prove he was alive and real and human. What if Dean had never tried to fix it? Had never given Sam enough of himself to make him happy enough to hope that things would be different. Sam never would have been. They might not be facing the end of the world.
No. No, he couldn’t think like that. He knew he couldn’t be wrong about this. Not this. Cas had warned him, and he couldn’t let them erase his past like that.
He stroked Sam’s hair and let him kiss him until he fell asleep, unable to think any more about what Sam might be thinking, and whether it will destroy his whole heart or just the world around them.
*
It wasn’t until a dive bar in Milwaukee that it all finally broke in upon them. The jukebox had gotten stuck, playing ‘Closer’ over and over on a loop, louder and louder bass creeping. Some people left, others stayed. Dean finished his drink (double whiskey, neat) as fast as he could when Sam went for the shotgun and blasted a hole through it all.
Sparks flew from the broken plastic lights, and the whole thing flashed and went dead. But the music returned, and Sam’s fever returned, and Dean clamped down on his fear like swallowing bile and steeled himself for the monsters, which were always gonna come.
Then the door blew open and there they were, in great black clouds.
“Dean!”
“Sam!”
They were pulled apart like two ends of a rubber band, snapping away from each other as soon as they touched.
“Sammy!” Dean landed close to the ceiling, his body spread out in a crucifixion pose on the wooden support beams.
“Dean! Help me!”
He watched as Sam landed on the pool table, spread eagle, held down by invisible hands of beings who hovered over him. Sam talked to them, pleaded with them as if he could see. And he was scared.
“Sammy! You can all tell your boss to shove it!”
The demons never listened. Dean watched his brother held on a pool table, spread out and pants open and shirt riding up, hips riding up, whole body arching to get away from the thing that was riding him. Sam’s back twisting and arching, seemingly forever, his long muscles strained to the point of breaking, sweating and writhing like he does in his sleep, saying stop stop stop.
And the voice: Say yes, Sammy. Say yes.
“Sam!” The monsters come to take his brother away, so many monsters.
The monsters come to cut and tear at you until you broke. Dean knew the kind.
“Dean! Dean, don’t look! Don’t look!” Sammy squeezing his eyes shut against the horrors in his head.
“What do you see, Sam?” And the flashes in Dean’s head like a fire, like the fire in Sam’s head, all of the time.
Dean tasted the sharp tang of beer in his mouth, his mouth watering from it. He recognized it.
When he was 15, Sam’s idea of splurging on a celebration had been to steal some Miller Hi-Life from the Kwik Mart down the street.
”The champagne of beers? Really?”
“Dad hates the stuff.” Sam at 15, naked, on a white bed speaking.
“How do you know that?”
“I know lots of stuff. And Dad’s not here.”
“I know that.”
“Dad’s never here. If he never came back, I’d just have you.”
“And wouldn’t that be great? Nah, Sammy, you got a good deal here.”
“I know.” He had straightened a lick of Dean’s hair between two fingers. He was always doing stuff like that, things no one else had ever done for Dean his entire life. Like he’d just been born yesterday, whatever else he’d thought about himself forgotten.
Dean had looked at what was in front of him. Bed, Sammy, beer, Twinkie with a candle stuck in the middle. “Is all this for me?”
“What d’ya think? Special enough for you?” His lips so pink, the way they were always so pink, but glossy. His eyes, dark lined and soft, now heavy-lidded and shadowed by a full swoop of lashes.
Pantyhose, also from down the street. Sam on his back on the sheets, smiling, reaching for Dean, his legs in the air pointed and covered. His legs that went on for miles, just miles and miles. Appreciated by no one in the world but Dean, and it was just one of the many crimes and injustices of his life. One of the ones he could fix.
Sammy, so sweet and gorgeous, Sammy.
The feel of the nylon against his sex, the skin on his balls, his thighs. Sammy, smoothed down, rounded, and tight underneath the silk and the nylon. He could already taste the sweat on the hidden skin beneath, knew what it tasted like, and his brother keeping it hidden from him. So sneaky, so teasing, so pure.
Dean had kissed him on those pink lips, so thin and hungry, and pulled away. He could tease him to moans so easily. “Patience, Sammy.”
Sammy had just rolled his eyes, narrowed them, and cocked his head. “It’s YOUR birthday. And you don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘patience’.”
The demons mocked them.
Patience, Sammy. Birthday boy. Patience, Sammy. Patience, patience.
They buzzed in his head like flies.
The joy Sammy could bring, then. So tight around Dean, the soft brush of his rounded flesh on Dean’s palest skin, almost too much to bear. It is difficult - more difficult than they had thought it would be. They had always thought it would be very very difficult. But not impossible. There was no room for impossible in their lives, about this or anything else. It just couldn’t exist for them.
“Finish, Dean, finish!” But Sammy couldn’t stop moving, his hands grabbing for Dean behind and around him.
Dean thinking of mommy, daddy, teenage virgins, pretty ghosts, pink lips and sweaty hair and the ends of Sammy’s legs he can’t even see without moving his neck, and it’s too much to take, and it’s more than he’s ever wanted and it threatens his early title of undefeated wandering lover to the lower 48.
“Sammy… Sammy, I can’t. I can’t.”
“Keep trying. Don’t stop.” And he whined when Dean did.
He had to brace his chin on Sam’s shoulder, focus on his blood-darkened sex, so big for him, freed from silky pink panties and slippery pantyhose, so alive and moving, never ever still.
“Fuck me, Sam.”
“Wait, Dean, what??”
“You can do it.” And he had kissed Sam on the cheek, just so he knew he was sure. “Just do what I do. I’ll guide you through the steps.”
“I can manage, I just -“
And Sammy had held him there, two, three seconds - long enough to finish himself off, his breath against Dean’s face, neck reaching for forever, glossy wetness coating his tapered fingers, the nylons, the silky pink soaked through dark.
Dean howls a cry of frustration at the ceiling, unable to move, knowing the memory could mean nothing to anyone else but them - but Sammy and Dean.
I’ll guide you, I’ll guide you, the demons mock.
And that nothing else could mean as much.
The bar is empty now, and dark except for flickering neon signs, the demonic jukebox, the white florescence from behind the bar. Sam’s fly is peeled open, his sex hardening and rising above him of its own accord. Sam writhes away from it, his back shiny with sweat, his shirt riding up, revealing the muscles of his torso, tight and fighting invisible hands Dean couldn’t see.
It was like hell. Sammy was in hell. And Dean was there too. He knew just what that felt like - the demon way of including your fondest memories in their mocking methods of violation like bad performance art, the angelic way of destroying your whole history in the blink of an eye by their complete inability to understand the meaning of TMI.
“I don’t know, Dean.” He had smiled. “Your ass might be too big, don’t want to get myself crushed or anything. He had squeezed it for good measure.”
Dean had looked over his shoulder. “Hey, watch the merchandise.”
Sam had smiled again, kissed him then on the small of his back, because he knew how the affection would still Dean, would remind him who he was really dealing with here, how he didn’t have to run right now, because it always did.
“Come on, this was your idea, remember? I’m a fast learner.”
“I know,” Dean sighed. And cursed just about everything in the universe, the way Sam had teased him then, with his fingers, opened him up and made him feel fiercer, stronger for it, the way Sammy did things was so profound to him sometimes, so different from his own way, and yet they seemed to meet back where they started. Sammy’s hands made him shake and Sammy’s eyes broke him down and Sammy’s body knew him like blood and that’s all there was to it.
Dean had braced one foot on the floor and bent forward. “Go easy on me, Sammy.”
“Don’t worry, I’m no monster.”
“Yeah, you’ve just got a monster -"
“Just wait.”
Everything in the universe was cursed all over again to the sound of Sammy’s laughter until all of it stopped under the rhythm of their bodies and their breath, drowned out by the sound of something new and all their own.
Dean remembered when Sammy was the only one he would ever let do that to him, and he wanted to cry at the purity of that, he wanted to cry about that forever, but he would never be allowed to and he never ever could.
“That’s good, that’s good, Sammy.”
“You’re so warm. And brave. And sweet.” He had punctuated with kisses. Sammy wasn’t even thinking about what he was saying, just being honest with him in the moment.
“I told you we’d find a solution. Always have, baby bro.”
There was a moment when Sam was halfway in when Dean didn’t think they would make it, that his brother would have the same problem he did - namely, that they’re brothers - and this dream that’d been haunting them their whole lives would be just a silly dream, and why should he believe in dreams anyway? Even if this was his only one. Really his only one.
And Sam’s too. When he’d asked Sam, for his birthday last May, the only thing Sam had to say was this. He wanted to play at the adult world they knew about, laughed about, would never actually want or be able to have.
Sammy’s hands all over him and his sounds filling the room and so close, so close.
Sammy screaming for help against the invisible demons that surrounded him all of the time now, that would never leave him alone until he said the magic word.
Dean did the only thing he could. He could be brave. He could show them all just what his brother was made of. Because he was Dean. That was his job. That had always been his job. Like an angel, he could witness, and preach, and send a message.
And if there was one thing he could do, it was out-bitch a demon.
“Hey, Sam? Sammy, can you hear me?”
“Dean!”
At the sound of his name, the world itself began to quake and crumble. Something had been severed between Sam and the demon. He had a chance.
“I have to say some things, Sam, and, and I want you to try and listen to me, whether you want to hear it or not. I didn’t want it to be this way, but it is. Come on - you owe me that much.”
The room cracked in half from floor to ceiling. “Help me… I can’t… I can’t…”
“Shhhh, I know. I know, Sammy. I know this guy Lucifer’s been talking to you. Maybe things don’t make sense to you like they used to. I miss talking with you. I want to say I’m sorry.”
The support beams creaked and shook under Dean. He felt as if gravity itself just became twice as heavy.
“I could’ve done better. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time. Truth is, I still don’t. I wanted to make you happy. I wanted to make something good. I mean, I’ve always wanted you to do what you wanted. Even if that was without me. I just, I don’t know, I don’t think it was.”
“They’ll kill you, Dean. They’re gonna… if I don’t give in to him.”
“I know, Sammy. There’s only one way you can be as free as Lucifer says, and listening to him isn’t going to do it. He’s right, what he says about us. But that’s not all of it. That’s not how I see it.”
The pressure was deafening.
“I’m sorry that I’m the only person left for you, Sammy. And… I’m sorry that you’re the only one for me. You always have been. I don’t know how far back the angels would have to send me to change that, or if it was some kind of destiny. I don’t believe in destiny, I really really don’t. But if I did believe in it, I’d have to believe that you were my destiny all along. You were always so sure. I believed everything you said, Sam. I… you were the surest thing in my life, you know that? I didn’t have to question, I just followed you, and I knew. I know you don’t think so, but I always believed the best about you. Even when I turned away, I wasn’t giving up. I wasn’t giving up. I was just wrong.”
A massive energy tore through the room in a gust of wind, and Dean felt himself slip a foot down closer to the ground, pressure like a giant fist holding him down.
“The angels told me you would give in. I still don’t believe them. I don’t know if I believe in me; and I can’t know what you’re thinking, but… I think we’re safest if we believe in us. And everything else? That was just a distraction. You and me? We’ve lived with that kind of destiny our whole lives. We’re like experts, right? So I say we’re powerful enough to make our own destiny.”
The support beam broke and the whole world fell down around him, crushed between the ceiling and the floor. He felt his ribs cracking, blood in his mouth. His only chance, if he still had a voice.
“Remember that time, about five months ago - the sun was coming up, and you were driving that ugly old Cadillac. I gave you the knife because I trusted you to kill demons the right way. You said you wouldn’t let me down. I believed you, Sam. And you haven’t. That morning the sun was coming up, and the sky was clear blue, and I lay back against the car and, and I looked at it, and you…”
It’s too much, too much.
“You helped me make us human again.”
Everything went black around him.
“What do you want to believe, Sammy? What do you prefer to believe about this thing between you and me, huh? About all of this? You always thought the best of people. You really tried, I know. I know that. Just think the best of me this time, ok? Remember I tried.”
Then Dean shut his eyes.
*
He woke up to the ugliest ceiling in the universe. A hotel ceiling. “Home.”
“You should rest.” It was Castiel. Thank God.
“You found me? Where’s Sam?” Dean followed Castiel’s gaze behind him to Sam’s sleeping body, and grunted in pain. “What the hell happened in there?”
“Sam tried to fight them off. I took care of the rest.” Then he leaned down from where he was standing beside the bed, and gently kissed Dean on the forehead.
“Wait, you heard what I said?”
“You were just being honest. It’s not a thing to be ashamed of.”
“What’s this thing with you and shame all of a sudden?”
“I’m tired of it. It’s much too common among angels, and people like you.”
“What do you mean - people like me?”
“People who don’t need it. You both need your rest. Your brother is waking up.”
“Wait, Cas -“
Of course he was already gone.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.” Sam spoke from his bed.
“Can you move at all?”
“Barely. How about you?”
“Nope. Maybe later.”
“Yeah. Hey, Dean?”
He braced himself. “What is it?”
“It’s a good thing you’re around. As a reminder.”
Even raising his eyebrow hurt. “A reminder of what?”
“Of you.”
“Bitch.”
“Jerk.”
*
the end
Feedback is awesome. Sam and Dean are hard.