The incestuous courtship of the antichrist's bride 4/5
part three
Butterick Pattern 4998 is a flattering princess-line, long-sleeved robe with front fastening and optional cowl. Perfect in white for sacrificial virgins, or try it in black for death magick rites!
Possible material includes silk, cotton and polyester. Making time: 2+ hours. Suitable for beginners.
"Oh I'm glad you chose a front-fastening style," says Lamia, leaning over Raum's shoulder to watch as he cuts out the fluttering sheets of the pattern. For a demon living in a serial rapist, Raum's a pretty nifty dressmaker. "They always look like fucking surgical gowns with back fastening."
"Especially in white," Raum agrees. "Plus, with a front fastening, it'll be easier for Sam to get it open once he's got Dean on the altar and is ready to ritually defile him."
There's a thud as Dean drops the barrel of the shotgun he's cleaning. His gaze flickers between Sam and the demons. "This is for me?" he says. Sam looks at his mouth, shocked and soft, and is reminded that he still hasn't had chance to kiss Dean yet. "I'm getting a white dress after all?"
"It's a robe, not a dress," Raum says with strained patience. "And it's white to signify your place as the Antichrist's bride, pure for him until Sam claims you as his own by taking you upon Lucifer's altar. Think of it as your wedding night."
"Yeah," says Dean. He nods slowly. "I'll do that. Yeah, in fact, I think I'm gonna go do that right now, but in a different room from you guys."
On his way out, he manages to bounce his shoulder off the doorframe and not even notice.
After the door's closed, Sam snarls, "Look what you did!" at Raum. "He already said he doesn't wanna wear white!"
"But he has to wear white! The ceremony-"
"Screw the ceremony!" Sam says, getting to his feet, which is enough to make Raum and Lamia shrink away. "He doesn't wanna wear white! And if he decides he wants his robe to be moonlight blue with fucking sequins on it, that's what you're gonna make him!"
With Raum and Lamia suitably cowed, Sam storms out after Dean. In their motel room, there's a trail of Dean's clothes across the floor, leading to the bathroom but Sam can't hear the shower yet. He knocks lightly on the door.
"Hey, it's okay, you don't have to wear white if you don't want to. I told 'em you could wear moonlight blue with sequins if you wanted to." He laughs weakly. "You don't, do you, Dean? Dean?"
When there's only silence, he tentatively inches the door open. Dean is sitting on the cracked lid of the toilet, threadbare white towel wrapped around his middle, and the skin on his bare arms turning to gooseflesh.
"Dean?" Sam says, moving into the room. "What's up?"
Dean lifts a blank gaze to him. He looks at Sam for a long moment, as if he's not even aware that Sam is looking back at him. "You know, I can remember, a few months after we left Lawrence, went on the road, you started crying and didn't stop. Drove Dad crazy. And the only thing that'd shut you up is when I let you suck on my little finger. Worked like a charm." He looks down at his little finger, and Sam really hopes he knows that’s not going to work anymore, and that Sam's not the one who keeps crying lately anyway.
Finally, he looks back up at Sam. "I can't do this. You're my baby brother. I don't wanna get turned on by you, don't wanna find it hot when you're bitchslapping demons. I don't wanna feel like this, Sam."
Sam slides down the wall to sit on the cold, tiled floor near him. "I know," he says. "It's hard, and it's weird, but it's us, and I need you-"
Dean shakes his head, bowing forward to hide his face in his hands. His spine makes a curiously graceful curve, pale and shining in the sunlight that filters through the smeared glass of the tiny window. "You need the guy I used to be. We should never have done this, Sam." Dean's shoulders draw in tight. "Jesus, I wake up hard and sticky in my shorts, just thinking about your cock in my ass, Sam. And that's despite the serious suckage of both times we've tried having sex."
"It'll be better next time," Sam promises desperately.
"I don't want it to be better! I wanna go back to thinking the idea of you fucking me is stupid and gross, and not the fucking hottest thing I can imagine!"
Sam blinks. "Is it?" he asks in a small voice.
Making a choked noise, Dean gets up and stumbles out of the bathroom. Sam sits there a moment, dazed, before he goes after him. Dean is tugging his jeans back on and Sam falters on what he was about to say, because he seems to be developing a fetish for Dean's bare back, and the back of his neck, and his hipbones, and all the rest of him.
"Dean, you don't get it-" I want to fuck you, I wanna press your body down into the mattress under mine, and make you think you're falling apart every time I touch you, and I want to make you realize that I want you even more than you need me. The words remain unhelpfully unspoken, because he might be looking at the guy he wants to pound through the bed, but he's also looking at his big brother who used to put him in a headlock and scrub his knuckles over Sam's scalp until Sam would agree to do his share of the chores.
Dean is looking at him, waiting hopelessly for Sam to say something.
"I… " Sam wets his lips and tries again. "I love you."
"He loves us!" The Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes cries. "All hail the Lord of Hell!"
"We love you too!" Krys shouts ecstatically.
Sam is standing in the middle of an arcane circle, naked, surrounded by his gleeful minions. A small, pitiful whimper escapes his throat.
:::
So Dean isn't answering his phone. Sam guesses Dean most likely can't hear it from where he's sobbing in the shower. If Dean could fit the Impala in the shower, he'd probably never come out. Ignoring the minion who's brought him coffee and his bathrobe and flip flops - not because Sam is generally rude but because being forcibly separated from Dean when he's in the middle of something important makes him want to take out half the eastern seaboard - he calls Ruby instead.
"Where are you?" she says.
"Nashville," he says. "Where's Dean?"
"I'm on my way," she says, and hangs up.
"Screw that," Sam says to nobody in particular, despite the cultist's little spasm of joy at being addressed by the Master of Death. He drains his coffee, puts on his bathrobe and flip-flops, and leaves the church. It'd be harder to steal a car in town, because people have a tendency to pay a guy a little more attention than usual when he's wearing nothing but a bathrobe and flip flops, and Sam feels justified in jacking one of his minion's cars.
"They'd probably buy you a new one if you asked," Ruby says from behind him. "They're kiss-asses like that." She looks him up and down. "Nice bathrobe."
"Where's Dean?"
She tosses her dark hair back behind her shoulders. Then she takes a step towards him and holds out her hand. The platinum ring Sam had put on Dean's finger glints in her palm. "He says he's sorry but you need to find someone else."
"Where is he?" Sam demands.
"Gone."
Sam returns to his task of breaking into his minion's car. "I have to find him."
"Sam," Ruby says. "He doesn't want-"
"I don't care! I don't care what he wants. He can't keep running away like this. I'll find him and talk to him and-"
"Did you want the keys, my Lord?" a man in a black robe says, excitedly jingling a set of car keys towards Sam. "Let me unlock it for you. You'll probably need to push the seat right back for your legs. And the transmission's a little sticky but it should be okay so long as you watch for it."
He's trying to usher Sam into the car Sam was in the process of stealing when someone else shouts across the parking lot, "Take my car, Master! I bought it new six weeks ago! Look, there are still covers on the seats in the back!"
"Uh no, thanks," Sam says. "This one's fine." He flashes an awkward smile at the first guy, and says, "Thanks. Um, I'll bring it back, sometime."
"No," the guy says. "It's yours."
He waves proudly as Sam starts the engine, waits for Ruby to climb in alongside, and leaves the parking lot. He's visible in the rear view mirror for an uncomfortably long amount of time and Sam squashes down the guilty feeling in his belly. He has a Beloved Consort to retrieve and no time for guilt.
"Why are you going after him?" Ruby says. She's watching Sam's bathrobe slide open over his knees for the sixteenth time since Sam got in the car.
"He's confused," Sam says.
She shakes her head. "He seemed pretty sure he didn't want what you were offering, Sam." As Sam tucks his bathrobe closed again, because a draft in certain places is more distracting when you're driving than you'd think, she takes out Dean's ring and rolls it between her fingertips.
"No," Sam says. "This is just what he does. He gets scared and he runs and he just needs someone to bring him back and make him feel better."
"When does he get to say 'enough, already'?"
Confused, Sam looks over at her, but his gaze catches on Dean's ring as she plays with it. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She doesn't look back at him as she answers, addresses the dark highway ahead of them instead. "I'm just saying, he almost fell apart a couple of months ago with all the pressure the angels were putting him under. And there was Hell before that, and there's been hunting since he was a kid. What if he really means he's had enough? Doesn't he have the right to make that decision? Maybe it's time for you to let him go."
Sam doesn't answer. He pretends to be concentrating on the car's transmission, which the guy was not kidding about when he said it was sticky. He wishes he'd taken the other car, or maybe held out for better offers.
His bathrobe slips open again.
:::
There have obviously been preparations made for Sam's return: four tubs of B&J ice cream are waiting for him in his motel room, plus a box of tissues and a stack of porn movies. Sam is touched by his army's concern, even if the ice cream has melted to slop in its tubs. Angels and demons linger at his doorway, watching him in sympathetic silence.
"It's okay," Sam says when he realizes they all intend to just go on standing there all night until he reassures them he's not suicidally broken-hearted. "Dean just needs some time away. I'm just gonna give him some space. But I think maybe we should put the whole Beloved Consort plan on the back-burner for now."
"If we'd known he was planning on leaving, we'd never have allowed it," Lamia says. "He crept out."
"Is there anything we can do?" Anna says. "Would you like me to paint your toenails? Or we could spend the evening discussing how men are thoughtless, insensitive bastards?"
"No," says Sam. "I'm good, thanks. Think I'll just turn in for the night, get some sleep."
Without a word, Uriel crosses to Sam and wraps his arms around him. It's not hostile exactly but Sam's not sure he knows what's happening. He stands there and lets it happen, until it starts to drag on a little long.
"Uh," he says. "Are we hugging?"
"Silently," Uriel says.
Sam silently accepts the hug.
When he's finally released, he looks to the rest of them and says, "Really, guys. I'm fine. Go on, we'll meet up first thing in the morning to come up with a new plan. We're still all yay! for the apocalypse."
They're turning to go when Abaddon says, "You know, there's nothing that says the Beloved Consort has to be willingly upon the altar. We could get him back for you, Sam, and it would take hardly any of us to hold him down for you. I've seen you look at him, you want to fuck him. If you want, we can get him back for you."
Taking a deep breath and thinking of puppies and rainbows and sparkle, Sam hangs onto his temper. Sam tells himself that Abaddon is making a gesture that he believes is on the same level as helping him load furniture if he were moving. He reminds himself that Abaddon just can't help being the sadistic and amoral way he is; it's not his fault.
"Please don't do anything like that," Sam says. "Ever."
After they're gone, Sam stands at the window and considers the space in the parking lot where the Impala used to sit. And after he stops doing that and gets into bed, he lies there and thinks about the big, empty silence Dean's left behind.
:::
While the others are preoccupied with reassessing the paths Sam still has to walk in order to get his name on the door in Hell, Sam calls Castiel over.
"You know where he is, right?" Sam says. "I mean, you can find him."
Castiel stares off into the middle distance and Sam isn't sure if that's just Castiel's typical abstract and intense gaze or whether he's actually being avoidant. He restrains himself from snapping his fingers in Castiel's face.
"I'm not gonna ask you to bring him back," Sam says, irritated when that gets Castiel looking at him again. "But you can find him, can't you?"
"Yes," Castiel says.
Sam nods. "I want you to follow him. Just… keep him safe. No watching him sleep though, that's creepy. And no invading his dreams. And no making him cry."
Castiel inclines his head. "I shall watch him at all times."
"Not while he's in the shower though," Sam adds. "Basically, I want you to stalk him, while respecting his privacy." He frowns fretfully. "Should I send someone else instead?"
"I am aware that Dean is in an emotionally vulnerable place in his life and I shall not use that to take advantage of him," Castiel says.
Sam stares at him. "I should send someone else, shouldn't I?"
Castiel has already gone.
While Sam is still staring at the space Castiel was previously occupying, Asmodeus looks up from his discussion with the demons and angels, and says, "Hypothetically speaking, does the prospect of growing eighteen-foot long, carnivorous tentacles work for you, boss?"
Sam goes on staring dully at the empty space, before he says, "It doesn't exactly fill me with joy." He sighs, wipes a hand over his face, and adds, "I'm gonna go shower, guys. Please don't put tentacles on me while I'm gone."
:::
It's not like Sam is unaware of why he's chosen to hide in the shower. The shower is Dean's territory. Sam stands under the spluttering spray of water, stares at the pale yellow tiles, and thinks about the number of times Dean has stood right where he is now.
The water pressure isn't great but at least it's got a good temperature. Sam combs his fingers through his wet hair, sweeping water out of his face and sending it coursing down his throat and back and shoulders instead. Then he closes his eyes, tilts his face into the spray, lets the water catch on his nose and lips like a caress. His skin thrums under the hot drumming.
His hand creeps over his belly towards his dick.
He doesn't know where Dean is right now - been days since he left and no word from him - but there's a good chance he's in the shower of whichever crappy motel he's found. He's probably standing under the water right now, shorter and smaller than Sam, slim and compactly muscled. Wet all over. Glistening.
Sam jacks his cock, twisting his wrist in a slow, wringing motion that gets him huge and hard. Eyes still closed, he opens his mouth and gulps down water.
He can almost imagine Dean in the shower with him now, hot and naked and wet, and skin rubbing on skin. He grunts and gives his cock a sharp little tug as the full impact of the thought hits him.
Dean, all slippery and slutty, would be braced against the wall while Sam fucks his big dick into Dean's pretty little hole, moaning and swearing as Sam gets right up deep inside his ass. Sam's come, thick and sloppy down Dean's shaking thighs from where he fucked him earlier, would vanish in a swirl of water down the drain, so Sam could fill him up with it all over again. Sam's hands would be on Dean's hips, proprietary, manhandling him backwards onto his cock. When Sam licks at the back of Dean's neck, he'd smell himself on Dean's skin, even as the water sluices over them both.
And Dean would spread his legs and he'd beg for Sam to do it, and afterwards, they'd wrap up in towels on the bed and bicker over what to watch on television and whose turn it was to call for take-out and Dean would try to bribe Sam with a blowjob and Sam wouldn't let him.
Sam plants one hand against the wall, steadying himself as he comes, spunk hitting the wall as he groans out Dean's name. His belly does weak somersaults and his heart beats hard in his chest. For a moment, the water is almost too much over his tingling, hypersensitive skin, then the sensation settles into the pleasant, loose-limbed comedown.
"I'm just a little bit disappointed in you right now, Samuel."
Sam skids, almost cracks his skull on the tiles, and bangs his knee painfully into the side of the shower. Zachariah is standing just the other side of the shower door, watching.
"Jesus Christ! You almost gave me a fucking heart attack!" Sam shouts.
Then the fact that there is an angel in the body of a middle-aged man staring at him, while he's naked in the shower having just jerked off, penetrates, and Sam finds he very much wants his towel. To get his towel, he has to get out of the shower and get past Zachariah, naked. It's all very uncomfortable.
"Would you turn around, please?" Sam says. "And what the hell are you doing in my bathroom anyway?"
"I hoped we could talk," Zachariah says.
He turns around while Sam skitters out of the shower and snatches up his towel. Sam feels mildly better for having his towel around his middle, though his softening cock is still kind of prominent, and he's still not thrilled about having a goddamn angel, one that doesn't belong to him, in his bathroom.
He wipes his wet hair out of his face and tries to look like a professional Antichrist in his towel.
"What do you want to talk about?"
Zachariah gives him a sad look. "I was hoping the fact you'd driven your brother away would have been the kick up the butt you needed to realize that what you're doing is wrong." He glances back at the shower and shakes his head. "Apparently not."
He strolls back into the bedroom and beckons for Sam to follow, which he does but at a cautious distance.
"Did you know, Sam, that you've made Dean cry? Your own brother, because of what you've tried to force on him."
"The pizza delivery guy made Dean cry by putting anchovies on top," Sam snaps back. "What's your point?"
"I know we haven't always seen eye to eye," says Zachariah, "and that you think I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but I think you need to ask yourself whether what you're doing now is what you really want to be doing, or whether it comes from your control issues. Look at what you've done already."
Zachariah sighs and straightens the cover on the bed that used to be Dean's. "It's not like Dean doesn't have enough issues already, is it? After things were so bad between you lately, I thought you might try to take better care of him. Like he used to take care of you when you were a kid. You know, Sam, when he was just a kid himself, he used to think of himself as your mom. Did you know that?"
It's noticeable how he doesn't approach Sam. He keeps to Dean's side of the room: Dean's bed, Dean's bedside table. Sam suspects Zachariah would like him to think it's meaningless, just a coincidence.
"He was more of a parent to you than John wanted to be or Mary could be. He was your friend when you weren't at school long enough to make any. He's stitched you up and put food on the table for you, killed for you. Gone to Hell for you." Zachariah punctuates this with a significant look at Sam. "He's put himself second in his own life for you. And you've let yourself get so lost that you'd ask this of him. Don't you see, Sam? If even Dean can't take it, you've finally gone too far."
Sam has been listening to Zachariah, he has. But he's also been trying to place the music that has crept in under Zachariah's words. It's so faint, so subtle, that Sam could almost believe that it's not even there, that it's caught in his own head. It's only when he recognizes what it is that he gets it.
It's the Hollies, specifically He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.
"Dude!" he says. "Did you really put a subliminal soundtrack to your guilt trip? That's… wow."
Zachariah drops the concerned act and the music stops immediately. "I've tried being reasonable, Sam. We're not going to allow you to go any further-"
"Really?" Sam says. "What are you gonna do? Blast me with Britney? Maybe some Pussycat Dolls?" He takes a deliberate step into Zachariah's personal space. "I'll go as far as I need to, and you won't stop me. Because you can't. And don't you fucking dare try guilt tripping me about Dean. I would give anything to have him here now." Sam scowls as Zachariah raises an eyebrow at this. "Get your mind out of the gutter, I don't mean for the sex. But he's made his decision and, y'know, like the song says, if you love somebody set them free. Now, get the hell out of my face and stay outta my goddamn bathroom."
Defiantly, he drops his towel and waits for Zachariah to disappear.
Apparently, even senior angels aren't equal to the sight of Sam's cock.
:::
The bar is exactly as it was when Sam came here with Ruby, even down to the smell and the bluesy song on the jukebox and the rag the bartender is dragging round the glass.
"If you're coming back, I'm guessing you're the real deal," the bartender says. "Where's that pretty girl you were with last time?"
"Left her behind," Sam says. He watches, slightly horrified, as the bartender wipes at the sweat on his upper lip with his rag, then goes back to the glass with it. It takes him a moment to remember what he was going to say. "Okay if I go through and see… uh… him?"
The bartender shrugs and jerks his head in the direction of the backroom. "Knock yourself out." As Sam passes him, he calls out, "Hey, if she's not your girlfriend, you think I could have her number?"
"I'll ask?" Sam offers back doubtfully.
He doesn't understand the voices that follow him this time either but it worries him less. If they want to talk to him, they'll try a language he knows. He lets them have their conversation around him and continues through to the backroom. He sits on the cot as before and waits.
He waits. Nothing comes.
"Hello?" he calls out. "Uh, hi, Lucifer? It's me, Sam. The Antichrist? Remember?"
Still nothing comes.
"I really wanted to talk to you," Sam tries again. "I know you said you'd see me in Hell but, well, things kind of suck lately and I thought, y'know, thought it might help if I talked about it." Still silence. "Hello?"
He doesn't forget that 'The Paths of the Black Messiah' told him to stay away from the window and the mirror, the warning is very clear in his mind, but Sam is the goddamn Antichrist and he's pretty sure he can tackle a window and a mirror, even both at once if necessary. So he gets up and raps his knuckles on the mirror.
"Hey, c'mon, this is your fault too, y'know. You were totally unclear when you asked about my Beloved Consort and you know it. If you'd explained it properly, none of this would'a happened, so don't try bailing on me now, man."
He gives the window a go too, saying, "Dude, would you get out here already!"
It abruptly goes dark. "Finally," Sam says.
"Why have you disturbed me, Sam?" It's not a very welcoming tone of voice. "Do you think I have nothing better to do with my time than come when you call, Sam?"
"I think being Hell probably leaves you a lot of free time," Sam says. "I mean, seriously, what does that require you to do specifically? Check it's hot enough? Make sure you're still a generally inhospitable landscape? Can't exactly eat up your time, can it?"
Silence.
"No," says Lucifer. "No, it doesn't actually." Another pause, and then, "Very well. I suppose I do have time to talk to you, Sam."
"Awesome," says Sam, and makes himself comfortable on the cot.
:::
Three and a half hours later, Sam has finished telling Lucifer about the racist truck and is midway through recounting the time he got kidnapped by hillbillies.
"And then Dean managed to get taken out by the littlest Bender, and that's exactly what I mean about Dean," Sam wails. The five bottles of beer the bartender has brought through for him haven't done much for his coherency. "He's such a badass and yet he's so fragile, like, like, like a really badass flower. You know what I mean?"
"Like a Venus Flytrap?" Lucifer suggests.
"Yeah, like that, except much prettier." Sam rubs his forehead against the moist side of his beer bottle. "I mean, Ruby's right, if he wants to leave, I should let him. He's always been there for me, pretty much, 'cept when he locked me in Bobby's safe room, and if he doesn't wanna be down with our big gay incestuous romance, then I shouldn't make him. It's a fucking nasty thing to make someone feel if they don't want to, isn't it?"
He tries to scrape his fingers through his hair and ends up slopping beer over the cot. He pats at the wetness guiltily and hopes it's too dark for Lucifer to see.
"It just sucks, is all," he says. "Dean is… perfect for me. Perfect for being a Beloved Consort too. I mean, he's smart and he's loyal and he knows his way around a torture chamber, and he's hot and funny and… he doesn't want me. And I don't know how to stop wanting him. Just want him to come back to me."
Silence, then, "Were you kidnapped by hillbillies before or after you conned your way into a small girl's house while her parents were away by pretending to be teddy bear doctors?"
Sam frowns heavily. "I think you're missing the point. And it was before."
"The point is," says Lucifer, sounding as firm as Ruby and as serene as Anna at once, "if Dean has always been there for you, then whether he takes his place as your Beloved Consort or not is irrelevant. He'll come back to you."
"You think?" Sam says.
"I know."
Overwhelmed with gratitude, and more than a little drunk, Sam's lower lip wobbles and he manfully resists tears.
"He'll come back," he mumbles to himself into his bottle.
:::
Obviously, Sam tells his army that he spent the night communing with Lucifer. He doesn't mention that he passed out drunk and that he's pretty sure he remembers Lucifer warning him in a wearily patient voice to roll over before he choked on his own vomit. He definitely doesn't mention the emo tears of manpain.
Of course, considering Sam's red-rimmed eyes and distinctly beery body odor, he doesn't really have to mention it.
"Okay, team," he says, coming in to the motel room they've co-opted as the campaign office. "Where are we with making me King of Hell?"
"We have two more paths for you," Ruby says.
"Both non-fatal and only very slightly destructive on an epic scale," says Anna. She beams at him proudly. "We can tick the box for The Path of the Sky on Fire by having a little comet shower, which will not only be completely harmless, but also ever so pretty!"
This prompts the angels to give a small burst of applause. Sam nods and tries to look suitably impressed.
"Awesome work, guys. How about the other path?"
The angels stop clapping. Sam guesses this path is less aesthetically pleasing.
"Have you ever noticed," says Raum, "that there are some cities, particularly in the Midwest, that would perhaps be improved by, oh I don't know, being completely demolished?" He sets 'The Paths of the Black Messiah' open on the tabletop in front of Sam. The paperback has been cracked open so many times that the binding is weakening and pages are loose. "The Path of the City of Dust. The text specifies a city," says Raum, "but it doesn't say it has to be inhabited."
"So pick a city you don't much like," says Ruby, "we'll empty out the people, and you can knock it down."
Sam scratches the back of his head. He notes they already have a map of the U.S. spread out, with a couple of tentative marks drawn on it. Someone's circled Lawrence and then tried to scribble it out. He nods again, a little more slowly this time.
"Okay. Well, still better than hungry tentacles and mass-rape, I guess." He manages to summon up a smile to convey just how grateful he is to them all. "Thanks for this, guys. Really. Great work. Almost there." He looks at the map and hopes to see somewhere on it that he remembers driving through and thinking sucked. "I'm gonna go get outta these," he says, plucking at his biking leathers. "And then I'm gonna think of somewhere to flatten, 'kay? You guys take the afternoon off. You deserve it."
He wanders back to his motel room, eyes fixed on the map and barely aware of the demons spilling out behind him like excited school kids let out of class early.
The leather he's wearing is scorching hot in the unnatural heat and the sunlight glares out from the very bottom of the churned up, black clouds that fill the sky. It has a definite air of being Apocalypse Soonish, brooding and strangely calm.
He sidesteps the motel manager, who's sweeping the path again, and they exchange polite smiles. Then, on an impulse, Sam turns back, says, "Anywhere in the US you think we'd be better off without?"
The manager stops, props himself up on his broom, and gives it some serious thought. Finally, he says, "Had me a hot dog in Wilmington once, gave me the most goddamn painful wind you can imagine."
Sam nods and marks this down mentally as a point against Wilmington. It's less fun trying to pick a city to take off the map without Dean around to offer insightful and obnoxious advice.
Sam shuffles into his room, shuts the door behind himself, then glances up at Castiel.
"How is he then?"
"He is…" Castiel frowns slightly. "He is sad but well."
Sam feels pretty much the same so isn't surprised. "What's he been doing?"
"Last week he got into a fight with some hunters who wanted to kill you. He beat them up until they agreed to serve you. And then he went back to his motel room and cried for a little bit."
Sam sits down on the end of his bed with a sudden crumpling exhaustion. He tries to straighten the map out over his knees. Dean would have ideas about what city was really not doing anyone any good in its present incarnation and needed to be removed.
Sam sighs and looks over at Castiel, who is still waiting. "Do you think he'd come back if he knew he could help me pick a city to knock over?"
"I don't know," says Castiel.
"Dean'd enjoy picking a city to destroy," Sam says mournfully. "He doesn't really like any cities, y'know. He prefers roads."
"Should I go back to Dean now?" Castiel says.
"I think he kinda liked San Diego. We went there a couple of times, on hunts. Think it was restless spirits both times. But Dean seemed to like it. Yeah." Sam removes San Diego from the very long list of cities that need to be considered. "I mean, there's always Tampa, where there was that waitress with the freaky rash, but I don't know if I can destroy a city just 'cause of a single one of Dean's hook-ups that went wrong."
"I should get back to Dean," Castiel says.
"I could destroy Palo Alto, couldn't I?" Sam says. "That'd be really symbolic, it'd send him a message, wouldn't it? Like, this thing I left you for means nothing to me now. Oh, though maybe he'd think I was being passive aggressive. Plus, I can't really take out Stanford, I've already fucked with the Internet. What do you think, do you think it'd look passive aggressive if I destroyed Palo Alto?"
"Dean," Castiel pleads.
"Hmm," says Sam. He straightens the map again. "I wish he'd come back. I don't care if we don't fuck. Sure, I want to, but not so much that I'd go without just having him around instead. Things were so fucked up when he got out of Hell. We barely talked. I don't wanna go back to that. He's what this is all about. And now, now I don't have him. I have all these weird feelings for him and I have an apocalypse to run, and I don't have Dean. And I don't know how long I'm supposed to last without him being around. It sucks."
He's not sure at which point exactly during his monologue Castiel left.
:::
By trying to ask the Internet's opinion on whether there were any cities the US could do without, Sam accidentally starts a flame war between an amateur historian and a college student. In the middle of it, someone accuses Sam of being a troll, and Sam loses his patience and comments back to say, no, he's the goddamn Antichrist and he wants to know which city to reduce to dust, which promptly gets him banned by the moderator.
Sam spends the next half an hour deleting the sarcastic macros that arrive in his inbox and bitterly contemplating turning the Internet off again to spite them.
Luckily, though not for the people living there, a horde of demons hits Bellevue, Washington, the very same day.
"The devastation is unimaginable," says the disheveled and traumatized newscaster on television the next morning. In the background, the sky over the broken city is oily orange and black. The fragmented skyline gives only the vague shape of husks of scorched buildings, too lost in smoke to be clear. "The loss of human life is immense and all surviving inhabitants of the city have fled -" Asmodeus and Lamia whoop and high-five each other - "and the stories they're telling about what happened here are terrible, so bad that I can hardly bear to believe they're true. The extent of the horror visited upon Bellevue is such that even the buildings are now structurally unsound and liable to collapse at any minute."
"Guess we're going to Bellevue," says Sam.
Outside, in the parking lot, Jo and six other hunters are waiting for him.
Jo is pale, her face streaked with ash, and she seems smaller than Sam remembered, but she's clearly the one the other hunters are looking to take their cue from.
"Hey, Jo," Sam says, when she doesn't immediately try to kill him.
"Hey, Sam," she says. "You're not human anymore, are you?"
Sam scratches his nose and shrugs. "That's kind of a personal question," he says. "It's complicated. I'm human, it's just… I'm not only human. Does that make sense?"
"Not a lick." There's another cautious silence between them. Then she jerks her head at the men stood behind her. "We bumped into Dean last night. He said you could make sure nothing like Bellevue ever happened again. That true?"
"Pretty much. I'm the only one who stands a chance of keeping it from happening again."
"I was in Bellevue when they came," Jo says. "I was there. I saw what they did. I heard the people screaming as they were roasted alive, saw flesh melt and fuse with the sidewalk. Walked through blood up to my ankles. Saw the rooms just filled with body parts, some of 'em still twitching." She presses her lips together tightly for a second. "People need to remember Bellevue. They need to be able to look at what's left of the city and remember that that's why we've gotta fight." She nods resolutely and focuses on Sam again. "Which is why we're with you. We're yours. So, c'mon, where you headed?"
"Um," says Sam. "We're just going to wipe Bellevue off the map. Wanna come?"
:::
Jo's transportation is a beat-up, rusted truck, which the other hunters pile into the back of. Sam gets shotgun, either because he's a guest or because he's the Antichrist. It's nice to be around humans again, even if the sensation takes a little getting used to.
They drive, and it's hot and sticky, but not uncomfortable. Sam winds his window down and enjoys the breeze on his face and being a passenger again, even though it makes it even more difficult than usual to forget Dean's absence.
"You said you saw Dean," he says a couple of hours in.
"Yeah, he was helping get survivors out of the city. Been hearing about him for a while though. He's been recruiting hunters to help you, y'know. You've got a pretty big following, just, you know what hunters are like, prefer their own little crusades to playing with others." She gives him a sidelong look. "He said that's what you asked him to do, that's why he wasn't with you. Knew straight off he was lying."
Sam makes a noncommittal noise and turns his face to the window again. There's a stink in the air and he guesses that means they're getting close.
"You know why my mom was so against me wanting to be with Dean?" Jo says.
"I thought our dad getting your dad killed might'a had something to do with it."
"Well, she wasn't real keen on that," Jo agrees easily. "Mostly though, it was 'cause she said I deserved to be the most important person in the world to the man I loved, and I never would be to Dean."
Rather than respond to the heart of what she's just said, Sam says, "So, you found that guy yet?"
She pulls a face at him. "You kidding me? I've got things to kill and a truck to take me to 'em. What do I need a man for?"
:::
There's something very like jealousy on most of the demons faces' when they look at what's left of Bellevue. Sam is reminded of a kid who has just found that the next-door neighbors' kids were at Disneyland while they were stuck doing their homework.
One by one, they appear from the shadows on the blackened ground and stare enviously at the ruins of Bellevue looming up in front of them, twisted and noxious. Between them, the angels flitter into view. Thankfully, they're just a little more sensitive to the emotions of the hunters.
Watching, Jo tilts her head towards Sam and says, "Guess it's good having an army that doesn't use much gas getting around, huh?"
"Oh we're really environmentally friendly," Sam says. He glances back at Ruby. "So, dust, right? The whole thing?"
"Dust," Ruby says.
Sam looks back at the city, breathes in the bloody ash and broken glass and screams.
"Dust," he says, and the city crumbles.
Like old paint, it flakes away. Sunlight, even as sharp and brittle as the kind that lurks behind the ever-present shroud of storm clouds, has the purifying weight of a blessing as it penetrates through the sinking ruins. Bellevue makes the slightest whisper while it falls. The burned black and bloody red disappears beneath the soft snowfall of dust.
Finally, there's only a vast emptiness on the horizon and sunshine on a sea of dust.
"We did check everyone had gone, didn't we?" Anna says into the hush.
Sam's eyes go a little wide.
They stand there until the newscaster and his team spots them. They're kind of highly visible since Sam took out the city.
:::
Kenny is one of the hunters who turned up with Jo. He's a sour, grim-faced old guy, with a surprisingly pleasant singing voice.
"…Near, far, wherever you are…"
Sam adds My Heart Will Go On to the list of songs that he never would have expected to be on the soundtrack to the apocalypse. At least, he has to admit, it's an improvement on Ruby and Anna's duet on I Touch Myself, though nothing can top Uriel's rendition of Tiny Dancer. Even for an angel, Uriel has an impressive musical range.
Somehow, karaoke seems a totally appropriate way to celebrate Sam nearing the end of his probationary period as Antichrist. And Sam's not ready to go back to an empty room just yet.
"So tell us about the time Sam got himself possessed and almost raped you," Abaddon says to Jo.
Sam cuffs him upside the head and gives Jo an awkward, apologetic look. "Sorry," he says to her. "Abaddon, do me a favor, go sit over the side of the room. Leave the bartender alone, don't fuck with the karaoke machine. Just… sit on your hands in the corner and don't speak."
Jo watches Abaddon leave, and then looks back at Sam. "I keep being surprised that they don't just rip your lungs out. Guess you being, y'know, what you are, keeps 'em on a pretty tight leash, huh?"
"That, and they know I'm gonna be sending some of them out after the demons who hit Bellevue. They're all on their best behavior so I'll pick them. I'm working a reward system here."
"And what about the angels?" she says, gesturing with her beer bottle to where Uriel is being persuaded up on stage again to accompany Asmodeus and Raum. "You can kick their asses too?"
Sam wrinkles his nose. "Well, yeah. I can. But it's not fear that's got them following me. They're used to taking orders. Cas has got some of them 'self-actualizing' but mostly, they get as far as doubting that what their superiors are telling them to do actually has God's approval and then don't know where to go with that. They follow me because they think what I'm doing will save more of God's creation than following their superiors will."
Jo smiles. "Sam Winchester, more holy than angels."
"Yeah, something like that," Sam says, ducking his head.
His gaze is abruptly tugged back in the direction of the stage. Asmodeus and Raum have got Uriel up there, and Sam recognizes the opening chords of AC DC's You Shook Me All Night Long. His heart gives a mournful little throb and he misses Dean even more fiercely.
He empties his glass and stands up, shrugging on his jacket. "I'm gonna head back to the motel," he says.
"Oh c'mon," Jo says. "They're not that bad."
:::
When Sam gets back to the Morning Star motel, the Impala is in its old space in the parking lot. Sam stands and stares at it, and wonders if maybe he could hallucinate Dean too.
"Hi," says Dean.
Yes, apparently Sam can hallucinate Dean too.
Sam can apparently hallucinate all kinds of awesome stuff.
Dean steps in and slides his hands over Sam's face, cradling his jaw, his fingers tucked into the dark hair at the back of Sam's neck. He pulls Sam down and kisses him. He licks Sam's mouth open, tender and sweet, and Sam tilts his head down obligingly. Sam's arms hang uselessly at his side and his spine begins to crick but Dean is kissing him, thumbs rubbing mindless-making circles over Sam's skin as his mouth nudges and moves against Sam's, and Sam can't even think huh, so this is what Dean's mouth feels like, because it's just that damn good.
Dean's hands stay on his face even as he breaks the kiss and it's just as well because Sam is pretty sure they're the only things keeping him upright.
"I can do this," Dean says breathlessly. "If you still want, y'know, still want me. I can do this."
"Oh, I want," Sam says. "I really do want."
And if Dean's kiss was all gentleness and adoration, Sam's kiss is fierce arousal. He grips Dean's face, hauls him in close and keeps him there, and attacks Dean's pretty little mouth with his tongue and teeth. Dean moans and makes these surprised, hitched noises, which make Sam tug harder on his lower lip, lick frantically over the corner of Dean's mouth, fuck his tongue into Dean until Dean is clutching hold of his shoulders with shaking hands.
Dean's mouth is fantastic and Sam loves it, but Dean also has a face and a throat and a fascinating little curve of bone just at the hinge of his jaw, and Sam wants to get to them all.
"Want it to be you and me, always," Dean says. "God, Sammy, don't wanna ever leave you again."
Sam sucks hard on Dean's throat, and Dean's hands fly to the back of his head, like instinct tells him to pull Sam off and his libido is telling him to hold Sam there. Sam likes Dean hanging onto him like that. He has his Dean and his Dean is all his, and his Dean has a collarbone for him to kiss too.
"Jesus Christ," Dean whispers. "Sammy… Sammy, sky's on fire."
Sam doesn't need to look up. The sky isn't actually on fire. It's just full of shooting stars, which light up the storm clouds like there are fireworks going off behind them. Seems like having an armful of Beloved Consort brings out the romantic in the Antichrist.
"How much of the universe are you throwing around up there?" Dean says.
Sam cocks his head and pretends to think. "A lot," he says.
Dean stares at him. He's flushed, mouth swollen and slippery. "Goddamn," he says. "Why is that so hot?"
He tugs Sam down for another kiss.
:::
Sam wants to fuck Dean in the backseat of the Impala. It's a fantasy he's been entertaining for a while. After all, if he's going to soil his childhood memories, he wants to start with the important ones.
"Hell, no," says Dean. "I'm not losing my cherry on the backseat. I look like a cheerleader giving it up at prom to you?"
"You've kinda already lost 'your cherry'," Sam points out. "Remember?"
Dean shakes his head and points a stern finger at Sam. "I didn't enjoy it so it totally didn't count."
"How about on the hood?" Sam says. Dean raises an eyebrow. "C'mon, it'll be hot. I'll bend you over and give it to you real good, right out here in the open, where anyone could see you taking it up the ass for me."
Dean colors brilliantly but still shakes his head. "Dude, no. What is wrong with you? Didn't I teach you better than this?" He glances around, and adds, "Anyway, only the motel manager around and I think we've scarred the poor guy enough already, don't you?"
"I think we'd better hurry up and find a bed then for your vanilla little ass before I put you down on all fours in the damn parking lot."
"Wow, who's an alpha-male then, stud?" Dean says. His mocking tone doesn't entirely hide the quiver in his voice.
They make it as far as the doorway to the motel room and the bed is in sight and Sam is working his belt buckle open, and Dean stops where he is. The head of his cock pressing sticky and wet to the seam of his jeans, Sam stares back at him.
"Man, you ask for candles and rose petals and I'm just gonna tip you face first on the bed and go to town," he says. "Come on, already."
"Gimme my wedding ring back," Dean says.
Impatiently, Sam fumbles the ring out of his pocket. He has Dean's hand in his and the ring just at the tip of Dean's finger, ready to slide on, when he really looks at it. He looks at Dean's hand and at the wedding ring Sam is trying to put on there for a second time. He thinks about the number of times he took the ring out and looked at it while Dean was gone.
He looks up at Dean. "We should wait," he says.
Dean frowns. "For what?"
"'Til we're married," Sam says firmly. He takes the ring off Dean's finger and puts it back in his pocket. "We shouldn't have sex until we're married."
Dean's jaw drops. He looks ready to do Sam some serious harm. "Are you fucking kidding me? Do I need to have words with the angels about this? Dude, nobody expects you to wait 'til you're married to fuck your brother. When you're fucking your brother, you get a free pass on the other relationship stuff. Incest is awesome like that."
"No," Sam says. "I want you to know this isn't just about the sex. And this isn't just about me becoming the Antichrist. This is about us. I want you to know how much I love you."
"You can show me that by sticking your cock in me! I did not spend fucking weeks angsting and going through all the trauma of coming to the emotional realization that if you're big enough and ugly enough to do the antichrist shit then you’re capable of deciding you wanna do this, for you to go all Silver Ring Thing on me!"
Sam shakes his head and shrugs, unshakeable and unwilling to even argue the point. Dean gapes at him some more.
"Sexual frustration can be fatal, y'know. Proven medical fact. You don't fuck me, I might die."
"Oh god, I hope that's the first time you've ever tried that line on someone."
Dean grits his jaw and rolls his shoulders. "But what about practicing?" he says, in a tightly controlled tone.
"You know what, I'm pretty sure I can do an awesome job of fucking you first time around." Dean still looks murderous, and Sam's dick, with the interest it has in the matter and still pressed against the seam of his jeans, is able to suggest a reasonable compromise. He shoots Dean a sly look and says, "Doesn't mean we can't fool around a little."
With that settled, Sam swings Dean off his feet and tosses him onto the bed. Dean sits up from where he's been slung and gives Sam a reproachful look. "Dude, careful. You'll break the furniture," and he's using his big brother voice so it shouldn't be hot, except it totally is.
Sam finishes unbuckling his belt as he approaches the bed, kicks off his jeans as he crawls onto the end of it, climbing on top of Dean. Dean cradles his face and Sam opens his mouth to devour him but instead gets Dean's nose and lips bumping gently over his jaw. Confused, Sam drags Dean's face back up to his, sucks hard on his full lower lip before catching it between his teeth and tugging. In his opinion, Dean's mouth invites rough treatment and abuse, but Dean yelps and jerks away.
"Stop biting me," he mutters, and he brushes the tip of his nose over Sam's throat.
"Stop nuzzling me," Sam says.
He jerks Dean's head back to bare his throat and sets about marking up the skin. He forces his knee between Dean's thighs, using his hands to yank them apart and up against him when Dean doesn't comply quickly enough.
"Hey! Careful! Seriously, have you been burying the bodies of chicks you've snapped in half along the highway? 'Cause humans aren't like Mr Stretch, y'know. We don't bend like that."
"Strip," Sam growls. "You'll bend easier naked."
Dean stares up at him, all big green eyes, and makes a noise in the back of his throat. "Yeah, okay," he says.
Not because Sam thinks Dean isn't going to do it or can't manage it but simply because he suspects Dean won't do it fast enough for his liking, Sam helps. He flips Dean facedown, hanging half over the edge of the bed, efficiently removes him from his clothes. At first Sam doesn't pay much attention to whether Dean is assisting or not - because the cheeks of Dean's bare ass are perfect little rounds that need to be bitten - but when Sam is bending Dean's arms backwards in order to get him out of his shirt, there's something of a struggle.
"What are you doing?" Sam demands.
"Just try'na…" Dean says. He fumbles under the bed then comes up with a three-quarters full bottle of Jack. Still tipped over the bed, he opens it and takes a greedy mouthful.
"Knife under your pillow and a bottle under your bed," Sam says. "You're such a fucking redneck." He hauls Dean up and on top of him. There's unexpected electricity to the smooth, heated rub of Dean's skin on his.
"That's pretty funny coming from the guy who asked his brother to marry him," says Dean, and drinks some more as he wriggles onto his knees, straddling Sam's thighs, their cocks just touching.
Sam smoothes his hands over Dean's shoulders, down the dip of his back, finally coming to grip Dean's ass. He watches Dean's face as he uses his hold on him to press him closer and grind their dicks together. It's hard to believe when he's got Dean all pretty and dazed with arousal on top of him that he ever had trouble getting it up for this. He drives them together again, their precome smeared together.
As Dean rides him with slow, thoughtful rolls of his hips, Sam pushes Dean's t-shirt high up his flat belly so he can get a good view. There's something fascinating about the shine of sweat on the arch of Dean's neck as he tips his head back to take another shot of Jack, and Sam can't stop watching. If Sam were setting the tone, things'd be moving a little faster, be a little more take-take-take from Sam. But he'll admit to finding himself enjoying staring up at Dean while Dean fucks against him with those strangely sharp and shallow jerks of his body.
"We should'a been doing this years ago," Sam says. "If I knew it could be like this, I'd'a been fucking you as soon as I knew what my dick was for."
Dean takes another sloppy drink of whiskey and his mouth's wet with it, swollen from sucking on the bottle, when he looks back at Sam. "You know what I can't figure out?" he murmurs, gentle, almost distracted. "Where'd my baby brother get himself such a big dick? Gonna fuck me with that big dick of yours, kiddo?"
"Mmm," Sam agrees. "Gonna put it in you, make you take it. Gonna make you my wife, Dean."
The 'wife' remark just kind of slips out and Sam honestly expects a punch in the mouth for it. Instead, Dean whimpers and promptly comes all over Sam's belly and chest. Apparently, Dean is less offended by the idea of being Sam's wife as he is turned on by it, and everyone who ever said Dean is too butch to be real was right.
Sam rolls them over, dragging Dean's leg over his so the sleek, hot muscle of Dean's inner thigh is pressed to Sam's hipbone. The bottle of Jack slips from Dean's slack hand and spills, ignored, all over the pillow and sheets. His achingly hard cock slips through the sticky wetness of Dean's come, nudges his balls and then pushes in snug behind them, catching - just for a second- on the rim of Dean's asshole. Dean flexes away instinctively but Sam grips the cheek of his ass to yank him back in close, holding him steady as he grinds up against him.
Sam crushes his mouth to Dean's when he comes, not kissing him, just breathing with him. Their bodies are hot and slippery and messy against each other and Sam's come is slick between their pressed-together skin. They kiss yet again, more tender than anything either of them would manage to put in words, then Sam crawls off of Dean. They both flop onto their backs, panting. The satisfying pulse of his orgasm is still going strong in Sam's body.
"I don't think incest is all that wrong," Sam comments after a moment. "In fact, I don't think anyone should be allowed to say it's wrong until they've tried it."
"Sorry, kiddo," Dean says, "but anything that feels that good is definitely 'send you straight to hell' material. Which is lucky for us, 'cause that's what we're aiming for."
part five
Butterick Pattern 4998 is a flattering princess-line, long-sleeved robe with front fastening and optional cowl. Perfect in white for sacrificial virgins, or try it in black for death magick rites!
Possible material includes silk, cotton and polyester. Making time: 2+ hours. Suitable for beginners.
"Oh I'm glad you chose a front-fastening style," says Lamia, leaning over Raum's shoulder to watch as he cuts out the fluttering sheets of the pattern. For a demon living in a serial rapist, Raum's a pretty nifty dressmaker. "They always look like fucking surgical gowns with back fastening."
"Especially in white," Raum agrees. "Plus, with a front fastening, it'll be easier for Sam to get it open once he's got Dean on the altar and is ready to ritually defile him."
There's a thud as Dean drops the barrel of the shotgun he's cleaning. His gaze flickers between Sam and the demons. "This is for me?" he says. Sam looks at his mouth, shocked and soft, and is reminded that he still hasn't had chance to kiss Dean yet. "I'm getting a white dress after all?"
"It's a robe, not a dress," Raum says with strained patience. "And it's white to signify your place as the Antichrist's bride, pure for him until Sam claims you as his own by taking you upon Lucifer's altar. Think of it as your wedding night."
"Yeah," says Dean. He nods slowly. "I'll do that. Yeah, in fact, I think I'm gonna go do that right now, but in a different room from you guys."
On his way out, he manages to bounce his shoulder off the doorframe and not even notice.
After the door's closed, Sam snarls, "Look what you did!" at Raum. "He already said he doesn't wanna wear white!"
"But he has to wear white! The ceremony-"
"Screw the ceremony!" Sam says, getting to his feet, which is enough to make Raum and Lamia shrink away. "He doesn't wanna wear white! And if he decides he wants his robe to be moonlight blue with fucking sequins on it, that's what you're gonna make him!"
With Raum and Lamia suitably cowed, Sam storms out after Dean. In their motel room, there's a trail of Dean's clothes across the floor, leading to the bathroom but Sam can't hear the shower yet. He knocks lightly on the door.
"Hey, it's okay, you don't have to wear white if you don't want to. I told 'em you could wear moonlight blue with sequins if you wanted to." He laughs weakly. "You don't, do you, Dean? Dean?"
When there's only silence, he tentatively inches the door open. Dean is sitting on the cracked lid of the toilet, threadbare white towel wrapped around his middle, and the skin on his bare arms turning to gooseflesh.
"Dean?" Sam says, moving into the room. "What's up?"
Dean lifts a blank gaze to him. He looks at Sam for a long moment, as if he's not even aware that Sam is looking back at him. "You know, I can remember, a few months after we left Lawrence, went on the road, you started crying and didn't stop. Drove Dad crazy. And the only thing that'd shut you up is when I let you suck on my little finger. Worked like a charm." He looks down at his little finger, and Sam really hopes he knows that’s not going to work anymore, and that Sam's not the one who keeps crying lately anyway.
Finally, he looks back up at Sam. "I can't do this. You're my baby brother. I don't wanna get turned on by you, don't wanna find it hot when you're bitchslapping demons. I don't wanna feel like this, Sam."
Sam slides down the wall to sit on the cold, tiled floor near him. "I know," he says. "It's hard, and it's weird, but it's us, and I need you-"
Dean shakes his head, bowing forward to hide his face in his hands. His spine makes a curiously graceful curve, pale and shining in the sunlight that filters through the smeared glass of the tiny window. "You need the guy I used to be. We should never have done this, Sam." Dean's shoulders draw in tight. "Jesus, I wake up hard and sticky in my shorts, just thinking about your cock in my ass, Sam. And that's despite the serious suckage of both times we've tried having sex."
"It'll be better next time," Sam promises desperately.
"I don't want it to be better! I wanna go back to thinking the idea of you fucking me is stupid and gross, and not the fucking hottest thing I can imagine!"
Sam blinks. "Is it?" he asks in a small voice.
Making a choked noise, Dean gets up and stumbles out of the bathroom. Sam sits there a moment, dazed, before he goes after him. Dean is tugging his jeans back on and Sam falters on what he was about to say, because he seems to be developing a fetish for Dean's bare back, and the back of his neck, and his hipbones, and all the rest of him.
"Dean, you don't get it-" I want to fuck you, I wanna press your body down into the mattress under mine, and make you think you're falling apart every time I touch you, and I want to make you realize that I want you even more than you need me. The words remain unhelpfully unspoken, because he might be looking at the guy he wants to pound through the bed, but he's also looking at his big brother who used to put him in a headlock and scrub his knuckles over Sam's scalp until Sam would agree to do his share of the chores.
Dean is looking at him, waiting hopelessly for Sam to say something.
"I… " Sam wets his lips and tries again. "I love you."
"He loves us!" The Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes cries. "All hail the Lord of Hell!"
"We love you too!" Krys shouts ecstatically.
Sam is standing in the middle of an arcane circle, naked, surrounded by his gleeful minions. A small, pitiful whimper escapes his throat.
:::
So Dean isn't answering his phone. Sam guesses Dean most likely can't hear it from where he's sobbing in the shower. If Dean could fit the Impala in the shower, he'd probably never come out. Ignoring the minion who's brought him coffee and his bathrobe and flip flops - not because Sam is generally rude but because being forcibly separated from Dean when he's in the middle of something important makes him want to take out half the eastern seaboard - he calls Ruby instead.
"Where are you?" she says.
"Nashville," he says. "Where's Dean?"
"I'm on my way," she says, and hangs up.
"Screw that," Sam says to nobody in particular, despite the cultist's little spasm of joy at being addressed by the Master of Death. He drains his coffee, puts on his bathrobe and flip-flops, and leaves the church. It'd be harder to steal a car in town, because people have a tendency to pay a guy a little more attention than usual when he's wearing nothing but a bathrobe and flip flops, and Sam feels justified in jacking one of his minion's cars.
"They'd probably buy you a new one if you asked," Ruby says from behind him. "They're kiss-asses like that." She looks him up and down. "Nice bathrobe."
"Where's Dean?"
She tosses her dark hair back behind her shoulders. Then she takes a step towards him and holds out her hand. The platinum ring Sam had put on Dean's finger glints in her palm. "He says he's sorry but you need to find someone else."
"Where is he?" Sam demands.
"Gone."
Sam returns to his task of breaking into his minion's car. "I have to find him."
"Sam," Ruby says. "He doesn't want-"
"I don't care! I don't care what he wants. He can't keep running away like this. I'll find him and talk to him and-"
"Did you want the keys, my Lord?" a man in a black robe says, excitedly jingling a set of car keys towards Sam. "Let me unlock it for you. You'll probably need to push the seat right back for your legs. And the transmission's a little sticky but it should be okay so long as you watch for it."
He's trying to usher Sam into the car Sam was in the process of stealing when someone else shouts across the parking lot, "Take my car, Master! I bought it new six weeks ago! Look, there are still covers on the seats in the back!"
"Uh no, thanks," Sam says. "This one's fine." He flashes an awkward smile at the first guy, and says, "Thanks. Um, I'll bring it back, sometime."
"No," the guy says. "It's yours."
He waves proudly as Sam starts the engine, waits for Ruby to climb in alongside, and leaves the parking lot. He's visible in the rear view mirror for an uncomfortably long amount of time and Sam squashes down the guilty feeling in his belly. He has a Beloved Consort to retrieve and no time for guilt.
"Why are you going after him?" Ruby says. She's watching Sam's bathrobe slide open over his knees for the sixteenth time since Sam got in the car.
"He's confused," Sam says.
She shakes her head. "He seemed pretty sure he didn't want what you were offering, Sam." As Sam tucks his bathrobe closed again, because a draft in certain places is more distracting when you're driving than you'd think, she takes out Dean's ring and rolls it between her fingertips.
"No," Sam says. "This is just what he does. He gets scared and he runs and he just needs someone to bring him back and make him feel better."
"When does he get to say 'enough, already'?"
Confused, Sam looks over at her, but his gaze catches on Dean's ring as she plays with it. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She doesn't look back at him as she answers, addresses the dark highway ahead of them instead. "I'm just saying, he almost fell apart a couple of months ago with all the pressure the angels were putting him under. And there was Hell before that, and there's been hunting since he was a kid. What if he really means he's had enough? Doesn't he have the right to make that decision? Maybe it's time for you to let him go."
Sam doesn't answer. He pretends to be concentrating on the car's transmission, which the guy was not kidding about when he said it was sticky. He wishes he'd taken the other car, or maybe held out for better offers.
His bathrobe slips open again.
:::
There have obviously been preparations made for Sam's return: four tubs of B&J ice cream are waiting for him in his motel room, plus a box of tissues and a stack of porn movies. Sam is touched by his army's concern, even if the ice cream has melted to slop in its tubs. Angels and demons linger at his doorway, watching him in sympathetic silence.
"It's okay," Sam says when he realizes they all intend to just go on standing there all night until he reassures them he's not suicidally broken-hearted. "Dean just needs some time away. I'm just gonna give him some space. But I think maybe we should put the whole Beloved Consort plan on the back-burner for now."
"If we'd known he was planning on leaving, we'd never have allowed it," Lamia says. "He crept out."
"Is there anything we can do?" Anna says. "Would you like me to paint your toenails? Or we could spend the evening discussing how men are thoughtless, insensitive bastards?"
"No," says Sam. "I'm good, thanks. Think I'll just turn in for the night, get some sleep."
Without a word, Uriel crosses to Sam and wraps his arms around him. It's not hostile exactly but Sam's not sure he knows what's happening. He stands there and lets it happen, until it starts to drag on a little long.
"Uh," he says. "Are we hugging?"
"Silently," Uriel says.
Sam silently accepts the hug.
When he's finally released, he looks to the rest of them and says, "Really, guys. I'm fine. Go on, we'll meet up first thing in the morning to come up with a new plan. We're still all yay! for the apocalypse."
They're turning to go when Abaddon says, "You know, there's nothing that says the Beloved Consort has to be willingly upon the altar. We could get him back for you, Sam, and it would take hardly any of us to hold him down for you. I've seen you look at him, you want to fuck him. If you want, we can get him back for you."
Taking a deep breath and thinking of puppies and rainbows and sparkle, Sam hangs onto his temper. Sam tells himself that Abaddon is making a gesture that he believes is on the same level as helping him load furniture if he were moving. He reminds himself that Abaddon just can't help being the sadistic and amoral way he is; it's not his fault.
"Please don't do anything like that," Sam says. "Ever."
After they're gone, Sam stands at the window and considers the space in the parking lot where the Impala used to sit. And after he stops doing that and gets into bed, he lies there and thinks about the big, empty silence Dean's left behind.
:::
While the others are preoccupied with reassessing the paths Sam still has to walk in order to get his name on the door in Hell, Sam calls Castiel over.
"You know where he is, right?" Sam says. "I mean, you can find him."
Castiel stares off into the middle distance and Sam isn't sure if that's just Castiel's typical abstract and intense gaze or whether he's actually being avoidant. He restrains himself from snapping his fingers in Castiel's face.
"I'm not gonna ask you to bring him back," Sam says, irritated when that gets Castiel looking at him again. "But you can find him, can't you?"
"Yes," Castiel says.
Sam nods. "I want you to follow him. Just… keep him safe. No watching him sleep though, that's creepy. And no invading his dreams. And no making him cry."
Castiel inclines his head. "I shall watch him at all times."
"Not while he's in the shower though," Sam adds. "Basically, I want you to stalk him, while respecting his privacy." He frowns fretfully. "Should I send someone else instead?"
"I am aware that Dean is in an emotionally vulnerable place in his life and I shall not use that to take advantage of him," Castiel says.
Sam stares at him. "I should send someone else, shouldn't I?"
Castiel has already gone.
While Sam is still staring at the space Castiel was previously occupying, Asmodeus looks up from his discussion with the demons and angels, and says, "Hypothetically speaking, does the prospect of growing eighteen-foot long, carnivorous tentacles work for you, boss?"
Sam goes on staring dully at the empty space, before he says, "It doesn't exactly fill me with joy." He sighs, wipes a hand over his face, and adds, "I'm gonna go shower, guys. Please don't put tentacles on me while I'm gone."
:::
It's not like Sam is unaware of why he's chosen to hide in the shower. The shower is Dean's territory. Sam stands under the spluttering spray of water, stares at the pale yellow tiles, and thinks about the number of times Dean has stood right where he is now.
The water pressure isn't great but at least it's got a good temperature. Sam combs his fingers through his wet hair, sweeping water out of his face and sending it coursing down his throat and back and shoulders instead. Then he closes his eyes, tilts his face into the spray, lets the water catch on his nose and lips like a caress. His skin thrums under the hot drumming.
His hand creeps over his belly towards his dick.
He doesn't know where Dean is right now - been days since he left and no word from him - but there's a good chance he's in the shower of whichever crappy motel he's found. He's probably standing under the water right now, shorter and smaller than Sam, slim and compactly muscled. Wet all over. Glistening.
Sam jacks his cock, twisting his wrist in a slow, wringing motion that gets him huge and hard. Eyes still closed, he opens his mouth and gulps down water.
He can almost imagine Dean in the shower with him now, hot and naked and wet, and skin rubbing on skin. He grunts and gives his cock a sharp little tug as the full impact of the thought hits him.
Dean, all slippery and slutty, would be braced against the wall while Sam fucks his big dick into Dean's pretty little hole, moaning and swearing as Sam gets right up deep inside his ass. Sam's come, thick and sloppy down Dean's shaking thighs from where he fucked him earlier, would vanish in a swirl of water down the drain, so Sam could fill him up with it all over again. Sam's hands would be on Dean's hips, proprietary, manhandling him backwards onto his cock. When Sam licks at the back of Dean's neck, he'd smell himself on Dean's skin, even as the water sluices over them both.
And Dean would spread his legs and he'd beg for Sam to do it, and afterwards, they'd wrap up in towels on the bed and bicker over what to watch on television and whose turn it was to call for take-out and Dean would try to bribe Sam with a blowjob and Sam wouldn't let him.
Sam plants one hand against the wall, steadying himself as he comes, spunk hitting the wall as he groans out Dean's name. His belly does weak somersaults and his heart beats hard in his chest. For a moment, the water is almost too much over his tingling, hypersensitive skin, then the sensation settles into the pleasant, loose-limbed comedown.
"I'm just a little bit disappointed in you right now, Samuel."
Sam skids, almost cracks his skull on the tiles, and bangs his knee painfully into the side of the shower. Zachariah is standing just the other side of the shower door, watching.
"Jesus Christ! You almost gave me a fucking heart attack!" Sam shouts.
Then the fact that there is an angel in the body of a middle-aged man staring at him, while he's naked in the shower having just jerked off, penetrates, and Sam finds he very much wants his towel. To get his towel, he has to get out of the shower and get past Zachariah, naked. It's all very uncomfortable.
"Would you turn around, please?" Sam says. "And what the hell are you doing in my bathroom anyway?"
"I hoped we could talk," Zachariah says.
He turns around while Sam skitters out of the shower and snatches up his towel. Sam feels mildly better for having his towel around his middle, though his softening cock is still kind of prominent, and he's still not thrilled about having a goddamn angel, one that doesn't belong to him, in his bathroom.
He wipes his wet hair out of his face and tries to look like a professional Antichrist in his towel.
"What do you want to talk about?"
Zachariah gives him a sad look. "I was hoping the fact you'd driven your brother away would have been the kick up the butt you needed to realize that what you're doing is wrong." He glances back at the shower and shakes his head. "Apparently not."
He strolls back into the bedroom and beckons for Sam to follow, which he does but at a cautious distance.
"Did you know, Sam, that you've made Dean cry? Your own brother, because of what you've tried to force on him."
"The pizza delivery guy made Dean cry by putting anchovies on top," Sam snaps back. "What's your point?"
"I know we haven't always seen eye to eye," says Zachariah, "and that you think I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but I think you need to ask yourself whether what you're doing now is what you really want to be doing, or whether it comes from your control issues. Look at what you've done already."
Zachariah sighs and straightens the cover on the bed that used to be Dean's. "It's not like Dean doesn't have enough issues already, is it? After things were so bad between you lately, I thought you might try to take better care of him. Like he used to take care of you when you were a kid. You know, Sam, when he was just a kid himself, he used to think of himself as your mom. Did you know that?"
It's noticeable how he doesn't approach Sam. He keeps to Dean's side of the room: Dean's bed, Dean's bedside table. Sam suspects Zachariah would like him to think it's meaningless, just a coincidence.
"He was more of a parent to you than John wanted to be or Mary could be. He was your friend when you weren't at school long enough to make any. He's stitched you up and put food on the table for you, killed for you. Gone to Hell for you." Zachariah punctuates this with a significant look at Sam. "He's put himself second in his own life for you. And you've let yourself get so lost that you'd ask this of him. Don't you see, Sam? If even Dean can't take it, you've finally gone too far."
Sam has been listening to Zachariah, he has. But he's also been trying to place the music that has crept in under Zachariah's words. It's so faint, so subtle, that Sam could almost believe that it's not even there, that it's caught in his own head. It's only when he recognizes what it is that he gets it.
It's the Hollies, specifically He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.
"Dude!" he says. "Did you really put a subliminal soundtrack to your guilt trip? That's… wow."
Zachariah drops the concerned act and the music stops immediately. "I've tried being reasonable, Sam. We're not going to allow you to go any further-"
"Really?" Sam says. "What are you gonna do? Blast me with Britney? Maybe some Pussycat Dolls?" He takes a deliberate step into Zachariah's personal space. "I'll go as far as I need to, and you won't stop me. Because you can't. And don't you fucking dare try guilt tripping me about Dean. I would give anything to have him here now." Sam scowls as Zachariah raises an eyebrow at this. "Get your mind out of the gutter, I don't mean for the sex. But he's made his decision and, y'know, like the song says, if you love somebody set them free. Now, get the hell out of my face and stay outta my goddamn bathroom."
Defiantly, he drops his towel and waits for Zachariah to disappear.
Apparently, even senior angels aren't equal to the sight of Sam's cock.
:::
The bar is exactly as it was when Sam came here with Ruby, even down to the smell and the bluesy song on the jukebox and the rag the bartender is dragging round the glass.
"If you're coming back, I'm guessing you're the real deal," the bartender says. "Where's that pretty girl you were with last time?"
"Left her behind," Sam says. He watches, slightly horrified, as the bartender wipes at the sweat on his upper lip with his rag, then goes back to the glass with it. It takes him a moment to remember what he was going to say. "Okay if I go through and see… uh… him?"
The bartender shrugs and jerks his head in the direction of the backroom. "Knock yourself out." As Sam passes him, he calls out, "Hey, if she's not your girlfriend, you think I could have her number?"
"I'll ask?" Sam offers back doubtfully.
He doesn't understand the voices that follow him this time either but it worries him less. If they want to talk to him, they'll try a language he knows. He lets them have their conversation around him and continues through to the backroom. He sits on the cot as before and waits.
He waits. Nothing comes.
"Hello?" he calls out. "Uh, hi, Lucifer? It's me, Sam. The Antichrist? Remember?"
Still nothing comes.
"I really wanted to talk to you," Sam tries again. "I know you said you'd see me in Hell but, well, things kind of suck lately and I thought, y'know, thought it might help if I talked about it." Still silence. "Hello?"
He doesn't forget that 'The Paths of the Black Messiah' told him to stay away from the window and the mirror, the warning is very clear in his mind, but Sam is the goddamn Antichrist and he's pretty sure he can tackle a window and a mirror, even both at once if necessary. So he gets up and raps his knuckles on the mirror.
"Hey, c'mon, this is your fault too, y'know. You were totally unclear when you asked about my Beloved Consort and you know it. If you'd explained it properly, none of this would'a happened, so don't try bailing on me now, man."
He gives the window a go too, saying, "Dude, would you get out here already!"
It abruptly goes dark. "Finally," Sam says.
"Why have you disturbed me, Sam?" It's not a very welcoming tone of voice. "Do you think I have nothing better to do with my time than come when you call, Sam?"
"I think being Hell probably leaves you a lot of free time," Sam says. "I mean, seriously, what does that require you to do specifically? Check it's hot enough? Make sure you're still a generally inhospitable landscape? Can't exactly eat up your time, can it?"
Silence.
"No," says Lucifer. "No, it doesn't actually." Another pause, and then, "Very well. I suppose I do have time to talk to you, Sam."
"Awesome," says Sam, and makes himself comfortable on the cot.
:::
Three and a half hours later, Sam has finished telling Lucifer about the racist truck and is midway through recounting the time he got kidnapped by hillbillies.
"And then Dean managed to get taken out by the littlest Bender, and that's exactly what I mean about Dean," Sam wails. The five bottles of beer the bartender has brought through for him haven't done much for his coherency. "He's such a badass and yet he's so fragile, like, like, like a really badass flower. You know what I mean?"
"Like a Venus Flytrap?" Lucifer suggests.
"Yeah, like that, except much prettier." Sam rubs his forehead against the moist side of his beer bottle. "I mean, Ruby's right, if he wants to leave, I should let him. He's always been there for me, pretty much, 'cept when he locked me in Bobby's safe room, and if he doesn't wanna be down with our big gay incestuous romance, then I shouldn't make him. It's a fucking nasty thing to make someone feel if they don't want to, isn't it?"
He tries to scrape his fingers through his hair and ends up slopping beer over the cot. He pats at the wetness guiltily and hopes it's too dark for Lucifer to see.
"It just sucks, is all," he says. "Dean is… perfect for me. Perfect for being a Beloved Consort too. I mean, he's smart and he's loyal and he knows his way around a torture chamber, and he's hot and funny and… he doesn't want me. And I don't know how to stop wanting him. Just want him to come back to me."
Silence, then, "Were you kidnapped by hillbillies before or after you conned your way into a small girl's house while her parents were away by pretending to be teddy bear doctors?"
Sam frowns heavily. "I think you're missing the point. And it was before."
"The point is," says Lucifer, sounding as firm as Ruby and as serene as Anna at once, "if Dean has always been there for you, then whether he takes his place as your Beloved Consort or not is irrelevant. He'll come back to you."
"You think?" Sam says.
"I know."
Overwhelmed with gratitude, and more than a little drunk, Sam's lower lip wobbles and he manfully resists tears.
"He'll come back," he mumbles to himself into his bottle.
:::
Obviously, Sam tells his army that he spent the night communing with Lucifer. He doesn't mention that he passed out drunk and that he's pretty sure he remembers Lucifer warning him in a wearily patient voice to roll over before he choked on his own vomit. He definitely doesn't mention the emo tears of manpain.
Of course, considering Sam's red-rimmed eyes and distinctly beery body odor, he doesn't really have to mention it.
"Okay, team," he says, coming in to the motel room they've co-opted as the campaign office. "Where are we with making me King of Hell?"
"We have two more paths for you," Ruby says.
"Both non-fatal and only very slightly destructive on an epic scale," says Anna. She beams at him proudly. "We can tick the box for The Path of the Sky on Fire by having a little comet shower, which will not only be completely harmless, but also ever so pretty!"
This prompts the angels to give a small burst of applause. Sam nods and tries to look suitably impressed.
"Awesome work, guys. How about the other path?"
The angels stop clapping. Sam guesses this path is less aesthetically pleasing.
"Have you ever noticed," says Raum, "that there are some cities, particularly in the Midwest, that would perhaps be improved by, oh I don't know, being completely demolished?" He sets 'The Paths of the Black Messiah' open on the tabletop in front of Sam. The paperback has been cracked open so many times that the binding is weakening and pages are loose. "The Path of the City of Dust. The text specifies a city," says Raum, "but it doesn't say it has to be inhabited."
"So pick a city you don't much like," says Ruby, "we'll empty out the people, and you can knock it down."
Sam scratches the back of his head. He notes they already have a map of the U.S. spread out, with a couple of tentative marks drawn on it. Someone's circled Lawrence and then tried to scribble it out. He nods again, a little more slowly this time.
"Okay. Well, still better than hungry tentacles and mass-rape, I guess." He manages to summon up a smile to convey just how grateful he is to them all. "Thanks for this, guys. Really. Great work. Almost there." He looks at the map and hopes to see somewhere on it that he remembers driving through and thinking sucked. "I'm gonna go get outta these," he says, plucking at his biking leathers. "And then I'm gonna think of somewhere to flatten, 'kay? You guys take the afternoon off. You deserve it."
He wanders back to his motel room, eyes fixed on the map and barely aware of the demons spilling out behind him like excited school kids let out of class early.
The leather he's wearing is scorching hot in the unnatural heat and the sunlight glares out from the very bottom of the churned up, black clouds that fill the sky. It has a definite air of being Apocalypse Soonish, brooding and strangely calm.
He sidesteps the motel manager, who's sweeping the path again, and they exchange polite smiles. Then, on an impulse, Sam turns back, says, "Anywhere in the US you think we'd be better off without?"
The manager stops, props himself up on his broom, and gives it some serious thought. Finally, he says, "Had me a hot dog in Wilmington once, gave me the most goddamn painful wind you can imagine."
Sam nods and marks this down mentally as a point against Wilmington. It's less fun trying to pick a city to take off the map without Dean around to offer insightful and obnoxious advice.
Sam shuffles into his room, shuts the door behind himself, then glances up at Castiel.
"How is he then?"
"He is…" Castiel frowns slightly. "He is sad but well."
Sam feels pretty much the same so isn't surprised. "What's he been doing?"
"Last week he got into a fight with some hunters who wanted to kill you. He beat them up until they agreed to serve you. And then he went back to his motel room and cried for a little bit."
Sam sits down on the end of his bed with a sudden crumpling exhaustion. He tries to straighten the map out over his knees. Dean would have ideas about what city was really not doing anyone any good in its present incarnation and needed to be removed.
Sam sighs and looks over at Castiel, who is still waiting. "Do you think he'd come back if he knew he could help me pick a city to knock over?"
"I don't know," says Castiel.
"Dean'd enjoy picking a city to destroy," Sam says mournfully. "He doesn't really like any cities, y'know. He prefers roads."
"Should I go back to Dean now?" Castiel says.
"I think he kinda liked San Diego. We went there a couple of times, on hunts. Think it was restless spirits both times. But Dean seemed to like it. Yeah." Sam removes San Diego from the very long list of cities that need to be considered. "I mean, there's always Tampa, where there was that waitress with the freaky rash, but I don't know if I can destroy a city just 'cause of a single one of Dean's hook-ups that went wrong."
"I should get back to Dean," Castiel says.
"I could destroy Palo Alto, couldn't I?" Sam says. "That'd be really symbolic, it'd send him a message, wouldn't it? Like, this thing I left you for means nothing to me now. Oh, though maybe he'd think I was being passive aggressive. Plus, I can't really take out Stanford, I've already fucked with the Internet. What do you think, do you think it'd look passive aggressive if I destroyed Palo Alto?"
"Dean," Castiel pleads.
"Hmm," says Sam. He straightens the map again. "I wish he'd come back. I don't care if we don't fuck. Sure, I want to, but not so much that I'd go without just having him around instead. Things were so fucked up when he got out of Hell. We barely talked. I don't wanna go back to that. He's what this is all about. And now, now I don't have him. I have all these weird feelings for him and I have an apocalypse to run, and I don't have Dean. And I don't know how long I'm supposed to last without him being around. It sucks."
He's not sure at which point exactly during his monologue Castiel left.
:::
By trying to ask the Internet's opinion on whether there were any cities the US could do without, Sam accidentally starts a flame war between an amateur historian and a college student. In the middle of it, someone accuses Sam of being a troll, and Sam loses his patience and comments back to say, no, he's the goddamn Antichrist and he wants to know which city to reduce to dust, which promptly gets him banned by the moderator.
Sam spends the next half an hour deleting the sarcastic macros that arrive in his inbox and bitterly contemplating turning the Internet off again to spite them.
Luckily, though not for the people living there, a horde of demons hits Bellevue, Washington, the very same day.
"The devastation is unimaginable," says the disheveled and traumatized newscaster on television the next morning. In the background, the sky over the broken city is oily orange and black. The fragmented skyline gives only the vague shape of husks of scorched buildings, too lost in smoke to be clear. "The loss of human life is immense and all surviving inhabitants of the city have fled -" Asmodeus and Lamia whoop and high-five each other - "and the stories they're telling about what happened here are terrible, so bad that I can hardly bear to believe they're true. The extent of the horror visited upon Bellevue is such that even the buildings are now structurally unsound and liable to collapse at any minute."
"Guess we're going to Bellevue," says Sam.
Outside, in the parking lot, Jo and six other hunters are waiting for him.
Jo is pale, her face streaked with ash, and she seems smaller than Sam remembered, but she's clearly the one the other hunters are looking to take their cue from.
"Hey, Jo," Sam says, when she doesn't immediately try to kill him.
"Hey, Sam," she says. "You're not human anymore, are you?"
Sam scratches his nose and shrugs. "That's kind of a personal question," he says. "It's complicated. I'm human, it's just… I'm not only human. Does that make sense?"
"Not a lick." There's another cautious silence between them. Then she jerks her head at the men stood behind her. "We bumped into Dean last night. He said you could make sure nothing like Bellevue ever happened again. That true?"
"Pretty much. I'm the only one who stands a chance of keeping it from happening again."
"I was in Bellevue when they came," Jo says. "I was there. I saw what they did. I heard the people screaming as they were roasted alive, saw flesh melt and fuse with the sidewalk. Walked through blood up to my ankles. Saw the rooms just filled with body parts, some of 'em still twitching." She presses her lips together tightly for a second. "People need to remember Bellevue. They need to be able to look at what's left of the city and remember that that's why we've gotta fight." She nods resolutely and focuses on Sam again. "Which is why we're with you. We're yours. So, c'mon, where you headed?"
"Um," says Sam. "We're just going to wipe Bellevue off the map. Wanna come?"
:::
Jo's transportation is a beat-up, rusted truck, which the other hunters pile into the back of. Sam gets shotgun, either because he's a guest or because he's the Antichrist. It's nice to be around humans again, even if the sensation takes a little getting used to.
They drive, and it's hot and sticky, but not uncomfortable. Sam winds his window down and enjoys the breeze on his face and being a passenger again, even though it makes it even more difficult than usual to forget Dean's absence.
"You said you saw Dean," he says a couple of hours in.
"Yeah, he was helping get survivors out of the city. Been hearing about him for a while though. He's been recruiting hunters to help you, y'know. You've got a pretty big following, just, you know what hunters are like, prefer their own little crusades to playing with others." She gives him a sidelong look. "He said that's what you asked him to do, that's why he wasn't with you. Knew straight off he was lying."
Sam makes a noncommittal noise and turns his face to the window again. There's a stink in the air and he guesses that means they're getting close.
"You know why my mom was so against me wanting to be with Dean?" Jo says.
"I thought our dad getting your dad killed might'a had something to do with it."
"Well, she wasn't real keen on that," Jo agrees easily. "Mostly though, it was 'cause she said I deserved to be the most important person in the world to the man I loved, and I never would be to Dean."
Rather than respond to the heart of what she's just said, Sam says, "So, you found that guy yet?"
She pulls a face at him. "You kidding me? I've got things to kill and a truck to take me to 'em. What do I need a man for?"
:::
There's something very like jealousy on most of the demons faces' when they look at what's left of Bellevue. Sam is reminded of a kid who has just found that the next-door neighbors' kids were at Disneyland while they were stuck doing their homework.
One by one, they appear from the shadows on the blackened ground and stare enviously at the ruins of Bellevue looming up in front of them, twisted and noxious. Between them, the angels flitter into view. Thankfully, they're just a little more sensitive to the emotions of the hunters.
Watching, Jo tilts her head towards Sam and says, "Guess it's good having an army that doesn't use much gas getting around, huh?"
"Oh we're really environmentally friendly," Sam says. He glances back at Ruby. "So, dust, right? The whole thing?"
"Dust," Ruby says.
Sam looks back at the city, breathes in the bloody ash and broken glass and screams.
"Dust," he says, and the city crumbles.
Like old paint, it flakes away. Sunlight, even as sharp and brittle as the kind that lurks behind the ever-present shroud of storm clouds, has the purifying weight of a blessing as it penetrates through the sinking ruins. Bellevue makes the slightest whisper while it falls. The burned black and bloody red disappears beneath the soft snowfall of dust.
Finally, there's only a vast emptiness on the horizon and sunshine on a sea of dust.
"We did check everyone had gone, didn't we?" Anna says into the hush.
Sam's eyes go a little wide.
They stand there until the newscaster and his team spots them. They're kind of highly visible since Sam took out the city.
:::
Kenny is one of the hunters who turned up with Jo. He's a sour, grim-faced old guy, with a surprisingly pleasant singing voice.
"…Near, far, wherever you are…"
Sam adds My Heart Will Go On to the list of songs that he never would have expected to be on the soundtrack to the apocalypse. At least, he has to admit, it's an improvement on Ruby and Anna's duet on I Touch Myself, though nothing can top Uriel's rendition of Tiny Dancer. Even for an angel, Uriel has an impressive musical range.
Somehow, karaoke seems a totally appropriate way to celebrate Sam nearing the end of his probationary period as Antichrist. And Sam's not ready to go back to an empty room just yet.
"So tell us about the time Sam got himself possessed and almost raped you," Abaddon says to Jo.
Sam cuffs him upside the head and gives Jo an awkward, apologetic look. "Sorry," he says to her. "Abaddon, do me a favor, go sit over the side of the room. Leave the bartender alone, don't fuck with the karaoke machine. Just… sit on your hands in the corner and don't speak."
Jo watches Abaddon leave, and then looks back at Sam. "I keep being surprised that they don't just rip your lungs out. Guess you being, y'know, what you are, keeps 'em on a pretty tight leash, huh?"
"That, and they know I'm gonna be sending some of them out after the demons who hit Bellevue. They're all on their best behavior so I'll pick them. I'm working a reward system here."
"And what about the angels?" she says, gesturing with her beer bottle to where Uriel is being persuaded up on stage again to accompany Asmodeus and Raum. "You can kick their asses too?"
Sam wrinkles his nose. "Well, yeah. I can. But it's not fear that's got them following me. They're used to taking orders. Cas has got some of them 'self-actualizing' but mostly, they get as far as doubting that what their superiors are telling them to do actually has God's approval and then don't know where to go with that. They follow me because they think what I'm doing will save more of God's creation than following their superiors will."
Jo smiles. "Sam Winchester, more holy than angels."
"Yeah, something like that," Sam says, ducking his head.
His gaze is abruptly tugged back in the direction of the stage. Asmodeus and Raum have got Uriel up there, and Sam recognizes the opening chords of AC DC's You Shook Me All Night Long. His heart gives a mournful little throb and he misses Dean even more fiercely.
He empties his glass and stands up, shrugging on his jacket. "I'm gonna head back to the motel," he says.
"Oh c'mon," Jo says. "They're not that bad."
:::
When Sam gets back to the Morning Star motel, the Impala is in its old space in the parking lot. Sam stands and stares at it, and wonders if maybe he could hallucinate Dean too.
"Hi," says Dean.
Yes, apparently Sam can hallucinate Dean too.
Sam can apparently hallucinate all kinds of awesome stuff.
Dean steps in and slides his hands over Sam's face, cradling his jaw, his fingers tucked into the dark hair at the back of Sam's neck. He pulls Sam down and kisses him. He licks Sam's mouth open, tender and sweet, and Sam tilts his head down obligingly. Sam's arms hang uselessly at his side and his spine begins to crick but Dean is kissing him, thumbs rubbing mindless-making circles over Sam's skin as his mouth nudges and moves against Sam's, and Sam can't even think huh, so this is what Dean's mouth feels like, because it's just that damn good.
Dean's hands stay on his face even as he breaks the kiss and it's just as well because Sam is pretty sure they're the only things keeping him upright.
"I can do this," Dean says breathlessly. "If you still want, y'know, still want me. I can do this."
"Oh, I want," Sam says. "I really do want."
And if Dean's kiss was all gentleness and adoration, Sam's kiss is fierce arousal. He grips Dean's face, hauls him in close and keeps him there, and attacks Dean's pretty little mouth with his tongue and teeth. Dean moans and makes these surprised, hitched noises, which make Sam tug harder on his lower lip, lick frantically over the corner of Dean's mouth, fuck his tongue into Dean until Dean is clutching hold of his shoulders with shaking hands.
Dean's mouth is fantastic and Sam loves it, but Dean also has a face and a throat and a fascinating little curve of bone just at the hinge of his jaw, and Sam wants to get to them all.
"Want it to be you and me, always," Dean says. "God, Sammy, don't wanna ever leave you again."
Sam sucks hard on Dean's throat, and Dean's hands fly to the back of his head, like instinct tells him to pull Sam off and his libido is telling him to hold Sam there. Sam likes Dean hanging onto him like that. He has his Dean and his Dean is all his, and his Dean has a collarbone for him to kiss too.
"Jesus Christ," Dean whispers. "Sammy… Sammy, sky's on fire."
Sam doesn't need to look up. The sky isn't actually on fire. It's just full of shooting stars, which light up the storm clouds like there are fireworks going off behind them. Seems like having an armful of Beloved Consort brings out the romantic in the Antichrist.
"How much of the universe are you throwing around up there?" Dean says.
Sam cocks his head and pretends to think. "A lot," he says.
Dean stares at him. He's flushed, mouth swollen and slippery. "Goddamn," he says. "Why is that so hot?"
He tugs Sam down for another kiss.
:::
Sam wants to fuck Dean in the backseat of the Impala. It's a fantasy he's been entertaining for a while. After all, if he's going to soil his childhood memories, he wants to start with the important ones.
"Hell, no," says Dean. "I'm not losing my cherry on the backseat. I look like a cheerleader giving it up at prom to you?"
"You've kinda already lost 'your cherry'," Sam points out. "Remember?"
Dean shakes his head and points a stern finger at Sam. "I didn't enjoy it so it totally didn't count."
"How about on the hood?" Sam says. Dean raises an eyebrow. "C'mon, it'll be hot. I'll bend you over and give it to you real good, right out here in the open, where anyone could see you taking it up the ass for me."
Dean colors brilliantly but still shakes his head. "Dude, no. What is wrong with you? Didn't I teach you better than this?" He glances around, and adds, "Anyway, only the motel manager around and I think we've scarred the poor guy enough already, don't you?"
"I think we'd better hurry up and find a bed then for your vanilla little ass before I put you down on all fours in the damn parking lot."
"Wow, who's an alpha-male then, stud?" Dean says. His mocking tone doesn't entirely hide the quiver in his voice.
They make it as far as the doorway to the motel room and the bed is in sight and Sam is working his belt buckle open, and Dean stops where he is. The head of his cock pressing sticky and wet to the seam of his jeans, Sam stares back at him.
"Man, you ask for candles and rose petals and I'm just gonna tip you face first on the bed and go to town," he says. "Come on, already."
"Gimme my wedding ring back," Dean says.
Impatiently, Sam fumbles the ring out of his pocket. He has Dean's hand in his and the ring just at the tip of Dean's finger, ready to slide on, when he really looks at it. He looks at Dean's hand and at the wedding ring Sam is trying to put on there for a second time. He thinks about the number of times he took the ring out and looked at it while Dean was gone.
He looks up at Dean. "We should wait," he says.
Dean frowns. "For what?"
"'Til we're married," Sam says firmly. He takes the ring off Dean's finger and puts it back in his pocket. "We shouldn't have sex until we're married."
Dean's jaw drops. He looks ready to do Sam some serious harm. "Are you fucking kidding me? Do I need to have words with the angels about this? Dude, nobody expects you to wait 'til you're married to fuck your brother. When you're fucking your brother, you get a free pass on the other relationship stuff. Incest is awesome like that."
"No," Sam says. "I want you to know this isn't just about the sex. And this isn't just about me becoming the Antichrist. This is about us. I want you to know how much I love you."
"You can show me that by sticking your cock in me! I did not spend fucking weeks angsting and going through all the trauma of coming to the emotional realization that if you're big enough and ugly enough to do the antichrist shit then you’re capable of deciding you wanna do this, for you to go all Silver Ring Thing on me!"
Sam shakes his head and shrugs, unshakeable and unwilling to even argue the point. Dean gapes at him some more.
"Sexual frustration can be fatal, y'know. Proven medical fact. You don't fuck me, I might die."
"Oh god, I hope that's the first time you've ever tried that line on someone."
Dean grits his jaw and rolls his shoulders. "But what about practicing?" he says, in a tightly controlled tone.
"You know what, I'm pretty sure I can do an awesome job of fucking you first time around." Dean still looks murderous, and Sam's dick, with the interest it has in the matter and still pressed against the seam of his jeans, is able to suggest a reasonable compromise. He shoots Dean a sly look and says, "Doesn't mean we can't fool around a little."
With that settled, Sam swings Dean off his feet and tosses him onto the bed. Dean sits up from where he's been slung and gives Sam a reproachful look. "Dude, careful. You'll break the furniture," and he's using his big brother voice so it shouldn't be hot, except it totally is.
Sam finishes unbuckling his belt as he approaches the bed, kicks off his jeans as he crawls onto the end of it, climbing on top of Dean. Dean cradles his face and Sam opens his mouth to devour him but instead gets Dean's nose and lips bumping gently over his jaw. Confused, Sam drags Dean's face back up to his, sucks hard on his full lower lip before catching it between his teeth and tugging. In his opinion, Dean's mouth invites rough treatment and abuse, but Dean yelps and jerks away.
"Stop biting me," he mutters, and he brushes the tip of his nose over Sam's throat.
"Stop nuzzling me," Sam says.
He jerks Dean's head back to bare his throat and sets about marking up the skin. He forces his knee between Dean's thighs, using his hands to yank them apart and up against him when Dean doesn't comply quickly enough.
"Hey! Careful! Seriously, have you been burying the bodies of chicks you've snapped in half along the highway? 'Cause humans aren't like Mr Stretch, y'know. We don't bend like that."
"Strip," Sam growls. "You'll bend easier naked."
Dean stares up at him, all big green eyes, and makes a noise in the back of his throat. "Yeah, okay," he says.
Not because Sam thinks Dean isn't going to do it or can't manage it but simply because he suspects Dean won't do it fast enough for his liking, Sam helps. He flips Dean facedown, hanging half over the edge of the bed, efficiently removes him from his clothes. At first Sam doesn't pay much attention to whether Dean is assisting or not - because the cheeks of Dean's bare ass are perfect little rounds that need to be bitten - but when Sam is bending Dean's arms backwards in order to get him out of his shirt, there's something of a struggle.
"What are you doing?" Sam demands.
"Just try'na…" Dean says. He fumbles under the bed then comes up with a three-quarters full bottle of Jack. Still tipped over the bed, he opens it and takes a greedy mouthful.
"Knife under your pillow and a bottle under your bed," Sam says. "You're such a fucking redneck." He hauls Dean up and on top of him. There's unexpected electricity to the smooth, heated rub of Dean's skin on his.
"That's pretty funny coming from the guy who asked his brother to marry him," says Dean, and drinks some more as he wriggles onto his knees, straddling Sam's thighs, their cocks just touching.
Sam smoothes his hands over Dean's shoulders, down the dip of his back, finally coming to grip Dean's ass. He watches Dean's face as he uses his hold on him to press him closer and grind their dicks together. It's hard to believe when he's got Dean all pretty and dazed with arousal on top of him that he ever had trouble getting it up for this. He drives them together again, their precome smeared together.
As Dean rides him with slow, thoughtful rolls of his hips, Sam pushes Dean's t-shirt high up his flat belly so he can get a good view. There's something fascinating about the shine of sweat on the arch of Dean's neck as he tips his head back to take another shot of Jack, and Sam can't stop watching. If Sam were setting the tone, things'd be moving a little faster, be a little more take-take-take from Sam. But he'll admit to finding himself enjoying staring up at Dean while Dean fucks against him with those strangely sharp and shallow jerks of his body.
"We should'a been doing this years ago," Sam says. "If I knew it could be like this, I'd'a been fucking you as soon as I knew what my dick was for."
Dean takes another sloppy drink of whiskey and his mouth's wet with it, swollen from sucking on the bottle, when he looks back at Sam. "You know what I can't figure out?" he murmurs, gentle, almost distracted. "Where'd my baby brother get himself such a big dick? Gonna fuck me with that big dick of yours, kiddo?"
"Mmm," Sam agrees. "Gonna put it in you, make you take it. Gonna make you my wife, Dean."
The 'wife' remark just kind of slips out and Sam honestly expects a punch in the mouth for it. Instead, Dean whimpers and promptly comes all over Sam's belly and chest. Apparently, Dean is less offended by the idea of being Sam's wife as he is turned on by it, and everyone who ever said Dean is too butch to be real was right.
Sam rolls them over, dragging Dean's leg over his so the sleek, hot muscle of Dean's inner thigh is pressed to Sam's hipbone. The bottle of Jack slips from Dean's slack hand and spills, ignored, all over the pillow and sheets. His achingly hard cock slips through the sticky wetness of Dean's come, nudges his balls and then pushes in snug behind them, catching - just for a second- on the rim of Dean's asshole. Dean flexes away instinctively but Sam grips the cheek of his ass to yank him back in close, holding him steady as he grinds up against him.
Sam crushes his mouth to Dean's when he comes, not kissing him, just breathing with him. Their bodies are hot and slippery and messy against each other and Sam's come is slick between their pressed-together skin. They kiss yet again, more tender than anything either of them would manage to put in words, then Sam crawls off of Dean. They both flop onto their backs, panting. The satisfying pulse of his orgasm is still going strong in Sam's body.
"I don't think incest is all that wrong," Sam comments after a moment. "In fact, I don't think anyone should be allowed to say it's wrong until they've tried it."
"Sorry, kiddo," Dean says, "but anything that feels that good is definitely 'send you straight to hell' material. Which is lucky for us, 'cause that's what we're aiming for."
part five