The incestuous courtship of the antichrist's bride 5/5
part four
To be fair, neither Sam nor Dean have much practice sharing a bed. It's been almost five years since Jess died and Dean has never been the kind of guy to hang around long enough after sex to figure out how to share a bed. Therefore it's not surprising that shortly after they both wake up and don't have the orgasmic afterglow to keep them feeling benevolent, things rapidly descend into elbowing, blanket-tugging and kicking.
Dean finally has enough and retreats to his own bed, and Sam is okay with this until he realizes Dean has a clean, fresh bed and he has the one that's damp and sticky with sweat and come and accidental alcohol spillage. He follows Dean to the other bed and winds his body around him to keep him still and in a comfortable position for Sam.
They lie there in the dark, golden-brown dawn. In the room next door it sounds like the demons are watching a horror movie; Sam hopes to God it's just a movie they're watching. He guesses it's maybe another hour or so before the angels start singing.
He brushes his lips against the nape of Dean's neck, just above where the column of his spine seems to begin. "Hey," he says. "When we get married, don't divorce me afterwards."
"Who'd be crazy enough to try divorcing the King of Hell anyway?" Dean says, even as he grips the hand Sam's got resting on his belly a little tighter. The pad of his thumb flickers over Sam's pulse briefly, before he says, "But you suffocating me would be one reason for me to go all Tammy Wynette on your ass. C'mon, man, lemme go."
"Stop squirming," Sam says. "I'm tryn'a sleep here."
"I'm pissing in the bathroom or I'm pissing on you, but I'm pissing in the next five seconds. Your choice."
Sam lets him free instantly, grimacing in disgust. "Oh, dude, gross!"
Dean chuckles and stumbles to the bathroom. Sam stretches out over the warm sheets, his body aching in a good way. He listens to the shower start up and smiles because he's really pretty sure it's a 'life is good' shower, and not an 'emo, hiding out 'til things get better' shower. And Sam is responsible for it. Sam is awesome.
As going back to sleep no longer seems an option, Sam gets up, pulls on shorts and a t-shirt, and checks in the mirror to make sure that he might not just as well be wearing a t-shirt saying: I banged my brother last night… ask me how. His hair is doing something crazy, and there's a faintly deranged look in his eyes, which is something Sam would like to hang on to because it's very appropriate for the Antichrist. Other than that, he looks decent enough not to scandalize the angels or provoke commentary from the demons.
Outside the motel room door, right outside the door, he finds Castiel. Sam blinks at him.
"What are you-?" His eyes widen. "Cas, have you been here all night?"
"I wanted to make sure nobody interrupted the reunion between Dean and you." His gaze drifts over Sam's shoulder, looking back into the room. "You're both happy again now then? Can I get either of you anything? Coffee? Breakfast?"
"No, thanks," says Sam. "Listen, I'm gonna go tell the others that we're back on with Operation Beloved Consort." He pauses, is blissfully happy enough to feel a moment of sympathy. "You stick with Dean. Let me know if Zachariah turns up in my bathroom again or something."
As he passes, Sam raps on the angels' door, saying, "Guys, can I see you in with the demons? I've got news." They're already in with the demons, waiting for him, by the time Sam gets there. He was expecting it. What he was not expecting was Bobby to be there too.
Bobby's perched awkwardly on the end of the bed with Raum, who is showing him some of his most ancient books. Bobby appears more interested in keeping a wary eye on Raum, but his eyes do flicker down to the page more than once as Sam watches.
"Um…" Sam says.
"Dean's back!" Anna says. Her hands are excited little fists, wavering in front of her mouth as though she might need them to stifle a squeal of joy at any minute. "We saw the car and then we saw Castiel standing guard at the door and we all knew Dean'd come back and you were making love and isn't it too wonderful for words? And now you can get married and be together forever! Oh, I'm so happy I could explode!"
"We fetched Bobby so you could get married before Dean loses his nerve again," Ruby says, thankfully less excited than Anna.
"Hey, Bobby," Sam says. He wishes he'd given his appearance a more thorough scrutiny. The angels and demons don't care that Dean is Sam's brother; the demons think it's twisted and approve, and the angels are really only interested in whether the ritual sex on an altar is taking place within wedlock or not. Neither the angels nor the demons watched Sam and Dean grow up. Bobby did. And he sounded mostly fine about it on the phone but it's a whole other thing to be faced with Sam The Morning After.
"Sam," Bobby says. "Where's your fiancé?" He sounds the word out deliberately.
"He's in the shower. Again." Conscious of their audience, Sam says to Bobby, "You wanna talk outside, maybe?"
Bobby nods slowly and follows Sam out into the morning sunshine. It's only half past nine and already the sun is baking down. They settle on the bench and Sam waits for Bobby to say something.
"This weather's 'cause of you, y'know," Bobby says. "Surest sign you're almost there." He pats Sam on the knee. "Good for you, son. I know 'antichrist' ain't a pretty word but you're just about the best hope we've got left."
Flushing, Sam ducks his head. "I know it isn't anything like what Dad would'a wanted." He thinks he can still smell Dean on him and flushes a little hotter. "Not at all what he would'a wanted, but I really think we've got a chance with this."
"I think you're right, especially with your brother on board. Together, you boys make one hell of a man."
"You'd better not be giving my little brother any grief, old man," Dean says, coming up behind them. He's grinning and the tone is playful, but there's a question in his eyes when he looks at Sam. Sam gives an almost imperceptible nod and Dean relaxes and claps Bobby on the shoulder. "What brings you round here then?"
Bobby squints up at him, shielding his eyes from the sun. "Well I'm here for the wedding, boy, aren't I? Here to give you away, 'cause it's not like anyone's gonna pay so much as a dime for your sorry ass, now is it?"
Dean laughs and sits down next to Sam on the bench. He's still fresh from the shower and when he moves, Sam catches a hint of the cheap, vanilla soap he's been using. It makes Sam more conscious of how underdressed - and stinky - he must be.
"You leave me any hot water at all?" he asks.
"Nope," Dean says without shame.
Sam sighs and stands up. "Figures," he says. "Lucky for you, being the Antichrist and possessing unholy powers means I don't have to rely on plumbing."
"Hey," Dean calls after him, "you need me to come scrub your back?"
After taking a moment to check that Bobby isn't having an apoplectic fit at having their relationship so brazenly broadcast and then considering whether he could accept without that giving Bobby a seizure, Sam flips Dean off and says, "No, Dean, I don't need you to come use up whatever hot water I manage to summon up."
The question of whether Sam is actually capable of antichristing up some hot water, because, let's face it, hot water is of less use than, say, boiling oil in the Apocalypse, is never answered. Because there's an angel in Sam's bathroom, again. An angel and two demons, to be exact.
Ruby and Lamia converge on Sam instantly, while Uriel paces in the background, talking on a cellphone about whether cupcake cakes really are the fun and modern choice for weddings. Uriel doesn't seem convinced.
Sam clutches his towel a little tighter around his middle. "We're having a meeting in my bathroom now, right?"
"We're arranging your wedding for tomorrow," Lamia says. "We're hearing rumors that something big's being planned. They’re coming and they’re gonna try to get to you or Dean before you can walk the last path."
"So we marry you and Dean off, you fuck him on the altar and Hell is yours," says Ruby. "Hope tomorrow is good for you. We tried pushing for today but 'the official wedding planner of the Apocalypse' -" she pauses to roll her eyes in Uriel's direction, " - said that we're not allowed to rush things."
Uriel breaks off talking on the phone long enough to give Sam a stern look and says, "This is going to be a proper wedding and you will take it seriously." Then he goes back to arguing the relative merits of cupcake cakes.
Sam nods and continues to the shower. "Okay. Wedding and ritual sex tomorrow. But shower now." He drops his towel, steps in and turns the water on. Uriel frowns at the noise the water makes and is abruptly no longer there. Lamia and Ruby exchange looks, apparently bemused by Sam's easy compliance, and then go to leave.
They're almost out of the door when Sam calls out over the sound of the water, "Before anyone gets any bad ideas, there will be no bachelor party."
:::
Sam and Dean's bachelor party is not as traumatizing or pathetic as Sam was expecting. He actually enjoys it and he's kind of touched that Ruby knows him well enough to come up with something he wouldn't hate.
The Tartarus Theater in Hanover, Massachusetts is an old style place with embellished gold walls and heavy red curtains across the screen. From midday to midnight, it’s showing low budget horror movies. The angels and demons fill most of the seats, and Sam and Dean settle in the back row, each with enormous buckets of fluffy, unsalted popcorn.
They watch The Swarm - (dir. Irwin Allen, 1978) - and Dean tells the story of that time in Oasis Plains, where a curse-bee repeatedly assaulted his ass. Dean tells that story a lot. He also tells the story of how, when Sam was fourteen, he developed a huge crush on Nessa Mankiewicz, who was the twenty-three year old, six-foot-one, supermodelesque nursing student they lived next door to at the time, while they watch Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman - (dir. Nathan Juran, 1958).
It’s probably just as well there are no civilians trying to enjoy the movies, because Dean, plus a gleeful audience of demons and angels, can get pretty rowdy.
In the middle of Deathbed - (dir. Danny Draven, 2002), Sam finishes his popcorn, and he turns to steal some from Dean’s bucket, but instead he gets distracted by the way the red and white light from the movie flickers over Dean’s face, how it hides the shadows under his eyes and the scar on his forehead and emphasizes the sharpness of his cheekbones and the curving fullness of his lower lip.
Dean seems engrossed by the movie - haunted beds are something neither of them has come across in their careers - but after a second he feels Sam’s gaze on him and looks back at him. His eyes are huge in the darkness. He opens his mouth to say something but he changes his mind. Instead, he leans in and kisses Sam. It’s a good, old-fashioned ‘making out in the back of a theater’ kiss: slow and long and just a little bit dirty. Sam’s fingers fit underneath Dean’s chin, skim over the line of his jaw. He touches the rush of Dean’s pulse in his throat while Dean fucks his tongue languorously into Sam’s mouth.
Dean’s popcorn falls to the ground and spills under the seat in front. Deathbed ends; Troll 2 - (dir. Claudio Fragasso, 1990) begins.
:::
That night, they watch each other from their separate beds. Sam lays his cheek to the pillow and watches Dean watching him.
Sam’s last thought before he falls asleep is that he’s surprisingly okay with the way his life has worked out.
:::
Sam is still reeling from the information that, due to the extremely short notice Uriel was given to find somewhere, his wedding will take place in the Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes, when he sees the minister is an Elvis impersonator.
"I thought I was supposed to be taking this seriously," he hisses at Uriel, while Elvis checks to make sure that the fringe on his shiny white jumpsuit is hanging straight.
"He's a compromise," Uriel says. "My brothers and sisters and I felt it was important that you were married by someone of faith. We didn’t care which faith in particular but the demons refused to grant this request. And then he turned up. He's an ordained priest, working in a wedding chapel in Vegas, but the demons think he's hilarious and they're happy to let him take the ceremony."
"I'm so glad we never went for a photographer," Sam says, summoning up a smile in response to Elvis's friendly wink.
Between them, Krys and Uriel have filled the Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes with yellow roses. Alongside Jo and her hunters, a surprising number of Sam's minions have filled out the pews. At first, someone made an attempt to arrange them according to whether they were groom's family or bride's, but it was gently pointed out that even really devoted cultists don't count as family, and that the groom's family was the bride's family, and furthermore, it was the sole remaining members of that family that were getting married.
There is a general air of excitement in the congregation as Sam waits for Dean's arrival. Sam watches them uncomfortably and fidgets in his suit. Not only had Ruby insisted that Sam wear a suit, she said his Insurance Investigator/ FBI Agent one was shabby and not good enough.
"Dean's let them dress him up suitably," she said. "It isn't gonna kill you to do the same."
So Sam is in a suit that tugs and pulls and is too damn tight, and every time Sam complains about it to Ruby, she rolls her eyes and says Sam clearly has no experience of wearing clothes that actually fit. Sam is about to complain about it again anyway when the organ music begins and Sam turns to see Dean and Bobby in the doorway.
As far as giving Dean away goes, Bobby's duties seem to have morphed into restraining Dean from physically attacking anyone who snickers at the long white robe the demons have dressed him in. From the murderous expression on Dean's face, he is not impressed by the fine tailoring Raum has put into the robe, which is a shame, because he looks really fucking beautiful in it.
Sam is bewildered that he failed to notice for the first twenty-six years of his life that Dean is really, stupidly beautiful. It's a realization on a par with suddenly registering that Dean has two heads or even no head at all; it's obvious and right there and somehow Sam never saw it.
"We had to go without front or back fastening," Raum says in an undertone, admiring his handiwork. "It was too fussy a look, all those ribbons. But he would insist on wearing his jeans underneath, which totally ruins the lines. I'll make sure he's naked underneath when it's time for you to ravish him on Lucifer's altar."
Sam's suit really is too tight.
The organist tries to match his pace to Dean's, but Dean is apparently in a hurry to get up the aisle and get things over and done with, either spurred on by the promise of sex or because he knows he can't take the robe off until then. The music becomes a frantic, tuneless jangle of notes and cuts off sharply when Dean reaches Sam.
"Wow," says Sam. "I do like your pretty dress."
"Don't say another fucking word," Dean growls. "They said it was vital. Goddamn demons." His gaze roams over Sam appreciatively. "Huh. Do we get to keep the suit? 'Cause I'd really like to tear it off you with my teeth."
"Boys," Bobby says. "Can we hurry this up? I wanna start forgetting this ever happened as soon as I can."
"I think that's my cue," Elvis says, in his deep, smooth voice. He opens a small order of service book and looks out over the congregation, slick black hair shining in the sunlight. "Friends, we are gathered here today in the sight of God, and Lucifer," - Anna shoots Raum a disappointed look - "to witness the joyous union of Sam Winchester to… uh… Dean Winchester." He glances between the two of them. "That's not a typo, is it? You're his brother?" This is directed at Dean, who gives him a surly 'so what?' look. "Okay, well, the joyous union between a man and his brother. They come together before their friends on this day to celebrate the bonds of love and commitment-"
The Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes goes up in a rush of flame. Cultists scream and Sam turns -
- and Elvis shoves a knife deep into his back.
Sam grunts at the impact, the jarring sensation of metal against his spine. He blinks, breathless, only distantly registering Dean's hands on him.
"Go back to Hell, Antichrist!" Elvis is shrieking, even as Ruby and Asmodeus drag him down.
Something invisible is tearing through the pews, blood and body parts flying through the air, while fire melts the walls of the church to molten lava. His angels and demons are only just beginning to pull themselves into a coherent defense, while already one of Jo's hunters is down, his mangled body encircled by Jo and the others. Sam watches it with a strange clarity of vision. He sees it all happening and barely thinks about the knife's blade rubbing his bones.
"Oh god, not again, please not again, please don't, Sammy…"
Sam looks to Dean, who is almost translucently pale, eyes burning bright green with unshed tears and the reflection of the firelight.
"Dean," Sam says. "Dean. Can you… can you get it out?" Sam twists awkwardly this way then that as he strains to reach the handle of the knife sticking out of his back. Frustrated, he frowns and lets his hands drop. "Oh well, I guess we can leave it for now."
"You… you're okay," Dean says. "Fuck. You're okay. There's a knife in your back, you know that right? Like, right in. And you're okay with that?"
"Yeah," Sam agrees. "We'll worry about the knife later."
An alarming number of Sam's cultists are in several pieces already. There are not only the invisible somethings ripping them apart - Sam suspects they're hellhounds - but there are more and more hostile demons appearing. If the demons continue to materialize at their current rate soon there will not be enough room in the church for everything that wants to dismember the cultists. Sam's army is fighting, despite being hopelessly outnumbered and not far from defeat.
Dean hooks up his blood and brain splattered robe, and pulls out a shotgun. He fires a couple of shots to drive a hellhound away from a nearby cowering minion. "Can you deal with this?" he says to Sam.
"Working on it," Sam says. Despite everything he's capable of, he hasn't come fully into his powers yet. He has to concentrate on not letting the church burn down, on not letting the fire burn period, on the demons, on the hellhounds, on protecting Dean, on supporting his struggling army of angels and demons and hunters, and on not letting the knife in his back kill him. Multitasking like this is not going to be accomplished with the usual nonchalant effortlessness.
"Hey, you still alive?" Dean barks at Elvis.
"Die, foul whore!" Elvis screams. Not that Sam can spare a moment to check, but the way he says it makes it seem likely that at least half his face is missing, no doubt thanks to Ruby and Asmodeus.
"Look, buddy," Dean says. "I put a dress on today so I could get married. I'm not gonna let humiliation like that be for nothing. You're gonna fucking well marry us or I will follow you down into Hell and demonstrate exactly why I was the nastiest sonofabitch in the Pit's star pupil. Capiche?"
Elvis is quiet for a moment, and then, calm and only slightly uneven, he says, "Friends, we are gathered-"
The head of the guy whose car Sam stole lands at Sam's feet, staring up at him in surprise. There's a roar of flame and the ceiling is covered in fire. The building creaks ominously.
Something stretches inside Sam's body, something new and that is not yet sure how far it can stretch.
"Skip it!" Dean snarls. "Get to the good part or I will take you by your pompadour and personally feed you to the hellhounds!"
"Okay, okay!" Elvis screeches. "Do you, Dean Winchester, take your brother, Sam the Antichrist Winchester, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"I do!" Dean says, yanking a flask of holy water out from under his robe and splashing it liberally in the direction of the six demons that have Castiel surrounded.
"And do you, Sam the Antichrist Winchester, take your brother, Dean Winchester, to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
"Say 'I do', Sam!" Dean shouts. Something knocks him off his feet and shreds the bottom of his robe as it drags him across the floor. He fumbles under his robe again, comes up with Ruby's knife this time, and slashes at the invisible creature.
"I do!" Sam shouts as he and Bobby chase after Dean.
"Do you - ahh!" Ruby pushes Elvis down behind the altar as the line of demons converge on them. She flings herself into the fight, Asmodeus right behind her. Elvis cowers on all fours, peering around to where Sam is hauling Dean free from the hellhound while Bobby douses it with holy water. "Do you have the rings?"
Sam's grip on Dean affords him the perfect opportunity to push his ring down on Dean's finger. Delivering a vicious kick to the hellhound, Dean struggles free from it and, breathless and on his knees, he yanks off the silver ring he's worn virtually as Sam can remember, and thrusts it onto Sam's finger. It doesn't really fit but Sam jams it down nonetheless.
"They've exchanged rings!" Bobby reports back to Elvis. "Come on, idjit, marry them already!"
Still huddled behind the altar, Elvis just misses Ruby landing on top of him as she's bodily thrown by two of the demons. "Then by the power vested in me by the state of Nevada, I pronounce you Antichrist and wife! You may kiss the bride! Oh Jesuschrist, we're all gonna die!"
Dean is in the middle of retrieving ammo from under his robe in order to reload his shotgun when Sam seizes him and crushes his mouth down on his. They only stop kissing when the hem of Dean's robe catches on fire and even then it takes a couple of moments for them to register it.
:::
"Three quarters of your guests are dead, the church has suffered severe fire damage and probably needs to be rebuilt, Elvis Presley, who was cruelly misled by demons into attacking you, requires facial reconstructive surgery, hellhounds ate your wedding cake, and Bobby has declined to stay for the evening," Castiel reports back. "Also, my trench coat needs to be taken to a Laundromat again."
"Yeah, okay. Well, could have been worse," Sam says. "Anything else?"
"Your wedding gifts were damaged, I'm sorry."
Dean looks up from binding the hellhound bite on his calf with strips of fabric from his blackened robe. "We have wedding gifts?"
"As I said, they were damaged. All that remains is a waffle maker and six autographed copies of the Bible."
Dean glances over at Sam. He raises an eyebrow. "I could go for waffles. How about you?"
Sam nods. He turns Dean's ring around on his finger. "Waffles sound good." He nods again, more decisively. "We should definitely try out the waffle maker."
"Definitely need to eat something. Can't go around consummating your marriage and becoming King of Hell on an empty stomach," Dean says. He keeps his eyes on treating his wound but Sam sees the flush in his cheeks. "'Sides, Raum needs time to make a new robe for the ritual. This one ain't fit to wash the 'pala." He fingers the one remaining sleeve thoughtfully. "Wonder if he'd make it big enough for me to get two shotguns under it?"
:::
While Raum runs up a new robe for the ceremony, Sam, Dean and the others sit in the parking lot of the Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes and eat a celebratory meal of pizza and cheeseburgers. Evening comes on. The headlights of passing cars roll over them. At one point, a police patrol car takes a slow drive by. Sam gives the cop a friendly wave and the guy doesn't stop.
"So, Mr and Mr Antichrist," Jo says, as she bumps her shoulder into Dean's. "What are your honeymoon plans?"
"We're going way down south," Dean says. His gaze stays on Jo as he tips his head back and feeds a whole slice of pizza into this mouth. He says something else to her, that's kind of lost in mastication.
Growing up in her mom's roadhouse seems to have inured Jo to disgusting eating habits, or maybe she's hunted things that are just a little more repellent than Dean's table manners. Instead of pulling a face, she simply looks to Sam for clarification.
"We're gonna be tied up with Hell and the Apocalypse for a while," Sam says. He thinks about it. The idea of a vacation with Dean is more appealing than he expected. "Maybe after that though." He looks to Dean for his thoughts on the matter. Dean says something else through his mouthful of pizza and Sam nods, looks back at Jo. "Yeah, afterwards, we'll definitely go somewhere. Just me, Dean, the beach, and as many angels and demons as we can't shake off."
Jo stretches out on the tarmac and gazes over to where Ruby is trying to help Anna put a wedding bouquet of daisies together without actually appearing to help.
"Guess you got plenty to keep you occupied before you can think of getting away from it all," she says. "Like the wedding night, for one. Kind of a big deal."
Dean's ring doesn't look as wrong on Sam's finger as Sam thought it would. Sure, it's too tight, but Sam's working on that. If he can turn a city to dust and survive a knife to the back, he can coax metal into stretching. His hand is only a few inches away from Dean's, and his eyes shift from the ring Dean gave him to the ring he gave Dean.
When he looks up, Dean is looking straight back at him.
"Nah," says Sam. "I'd say we've done the really important bit."
Dean grins at him. Then he stands up, wiping his hands off on his jeans. "Yeah," he says. He tips his head towards something behind Sam. "But not according to Jack Kerouac."
Sam twists around and sees Raum waiting, the robe draped carefully over his arm. The angels and demons have fallen silent at his return.
"Guess we've got a date with Lucifer's altar," Dean says. He starts to walk slowly towards Raum, and as he goes, he calls back over his shoulder at Sam, "Better not stand me up."
:::
In 1906, when the earthquake hit San Francisco, a small church in San Rafael tumbled down a crack in the ground and slid down down down, to where it now nestles, broken and lost, in the shadows that boom with the sound of the sea.
Several of the angels and demons went ahead to prepare and they've lit enough candles in the ruins of the church for a papal funeral. The light is ghostly and seems afraid to stretch too far, only tremulously touching the vaulted ceilings and crumbling black walls. The level of the floor is crooked at such a subtle angle as to be almost invisible to detection but impossible to ignore.
Lucifer's altar is at the far end, situated in the middle of a thick cluster of candles beneath a shattered stained glass window in which only serpentine coils and feathers remain. The altar itself is a smooth-hewn slab of cold rock. Sam is left alone with it after Dean is led away to be prepared. He doesn't kneel but he stands before it, and the womb-like rush of the sea's echo fades away.
Up until now, the Antichrist has been a choice Sam made. As and when he needed, he traded Sam Winchester in for the Antichrist. The time is fast approaching when Sam and the Antichrist won't so much stand side by side as they will stand on the very same spot. He can feel the quickening in his pulse, over his skin, electric in his heart and light behind his eyes.
He can hear movement in the church behind him as his faithful gather for the ceremony. The only human who will be present is Dean, mainly because he and his ass are very necessary parts of the ceremony; Jo and her hunters wait for them on the surface.
Someone is burning frankincense, and it's rich and thick and sweet. Sam closes his eyes, breathes in the fragrance, and slowly removes his clothes. Maybe that's the last little box ticked on the Are you the antichrist? Find out on page 666 with our ten quick questions! quiz: Sam doesn't feel self-conscious to be naked in front of a church full of angels and demons.
The floor of the church is cold and slick beneath his bare feet.
He waits.
Dean appears in the doorway. From the awkward way he's standing and the little-boy-lost look on his face, he still feels pretty ridiculous in the white robe he's been dressed in again. The way he looks though is pretty damn beautiful to Sam's eyes. It's about the way he shines, his natural physical beauty, and it's about the guy who single-handedly tried to be everything for his younger brother, who loves Sam in a way Sam doesn't even love himself.
His brow tightens slightly at the sight of Sam naked, and he glances around at the others, as if Sam still has chance to cover up before anyone notices. He makes to go to Sam but Sam is already striding towards him.
"You wore your pretty dress again," Sam says when he reaches him. "You look real nice."
"You look… uh… "Dean's gaze drops helplessly to Sam's cock, which is already half-hard and thick between his legs. "Jesus, Sam, I can't get over your dick. That's, like…"
"Really big?" Sam offers, not bothering to hide his smugness.
"You have epic dick," Dean says. He looks faintly horrified by the pronouncement. "Okay, deep breaths, let's do this."
He takes a step but Sam stops him, and before Dean can properly formulate a protest, Sam has swept his legs out from under him and is carrying him, bridal style. The robe is made of some flimsy, expensive material, and it's thin enough that, through it, Sam can feel the lines of Dean's body in his arms.
"Put me down," Dean hisses. "Right now, Sam. I mean it."
Sam ignores him and continues carrying him through the candlelight to the brighter blaze around the altar.
"My feet still work, y'know," Dean says. "I don't need to be fucking carried. Christ, this is embarrassing. Can you please just kill me? Oh god, is Anna here? Are you seriously letting my kind of ex-girlfriend watch this?"
Dean hides his face and doesn't seem to realize that he's only got Sam's shoulder to hide it in. His eyelashes tickle Sam's skin, a strange contrast to the soft warmth of his lips. Eventually, Dean grudgingly slides his arm up around Sam's neck.
"You could at least break a sweat, you freak," Dean says.
Sam places Dean on the altar and for a second - vulnerable and unsure on the stone, the white robe barely paler than the translucent fineness of his skin - Dean looks more angelic than the angels. He seems unsure of how to arrange himself, looking up at Sam for direction.
"Arms up," Sam says, and when Dean complies, he slowly slides the robe up over Dean's head and off. He throws the robe aside and the fabric flutters like wings then falls with a sigh.
He crawls up onto the altar and Dean lies down as Sam moves over him, sinuous and looming, covering Dean's body with his own. He props himself up on his forearm, easing Dean's thighs apart, spreading them to settle between them, so their bodies touch in one unbroken line.
Their eyes lock and Dean is terrified - and Sam realizes he is too. He blindly finds Dean's hand with his own, and as their fingers entwine, their rings click against one another: a tiny noise even in the hush of the church. Sam's gaze snaps to their joined hands, just as Dean's flicks in that direction too, and then they look back at each other.
"Come here, Sammy," Dean says, and he coaxes Sam's mouth down on his, hand stroking the back of Sam's neck and his lips parting instantly for Sam's.
As they kiss, long and languorous and open-mouthed, Sam slides his hand over the smooth line of Dean's thigh and the muscles give a nervous twitch beneath the skin. Dean moves easily once he catches on how Sam wants him, hips surging upwards, their cocks brushing hard and slippery-hot. Sam hooks Dean's legs over his shoulders, and it's a really good look on Dean, to be spread open like that, flat on his back with his ass canted up to Sam.
With one hand, Dean stretches out to grip the edge of the altar, with the other he reaches for Sam. Again, Sam catches his hand, toys with the ring he put on Dean's finger, presses their palms together. Then he moves in over Dean and his dick is already thick and bobbing against his belly, wet with precome, because it's Dean and even if this was never anything he dreamed of years ago, this is all he can ever see himself wanting from now on.
Dean's hole looks as impossibly small as ever, but it's slick with lube and Sam's dick gives another jump at the thought of Dean stuffing his fingers inside himself for Sam, before he put on his pretty white dress and came out here to get fucked in front of them all. He rubs his thumb over the tiny hole, tugging and teasing and thinking about how he's going to fill it all up, too full, until Dean's shivering, hips shifting fretfully.
"Your asshole is about to make me King of Hell," Sam says thoughtfully. "I may have epic dick, but you have apocalyptic ass."
"Yeah, say it a little louder," Dean says, voice too raw to be properly irritable. "I think there was someone at the back who didn't hear you."
"They're gonna hear you screaming when I put my epic dick in you," Sam says, dipping a finger into Dean's asshole just to feel it clench around him.
Dean snorts and slaps ineffectually at the back of Sam's head, squirming as Sam fingerfucks him shallowly. "Oh, just do it, you dirty fucker. Go on, big boy, shove it in me real good." Sam's cock is vindicated: Dean's trashy porn-falsetto really is as hot as Sam's cock thought it was.
Sam crawls in close, his face hovering over the crook of Dean's neck, as he reaches down between their bodies to guide his dick to Dean's asshole. He nudges clumsily against it, paints it with precome, and then he's pushing in and in. Dean flings an arm over Sam's back and his fingers dig into the curve of Sam's shoulder. Beneath him, Sam can feel Dean panting, and when he tilts his head to look at him, Dean is staring upwards, mouth a small, pained 'o'.
Panicked, he's closed up tight around Sam's cock, so tight it almost hurts, and Sam goes still, rigid.
"Dean? Dean, please, you gotta let me in… c'mon, man, wanna be inside you, like you said I could…"
Finally, eyelashes fluttering as he comes back to himself, Dean moves ever so slightly and his fingers loosen off Sam's shoulder. His eyes are wet with tears and Sam hates himself for thinking it only makes Dean more beautiful.
"Gently, Sammy," Dean whispers, too low for the watching demons and angels to hear. "Gotta go gently on me."
He's still clenched up but Sam works his hips slowly and forces his cock a little deeper. Dean's eyes slam shut, his hands making fists on the altar. His ass is hot and clinging, and it feels good how it drags along Sam's dick as he carefully but deliberately presses himself inside. Dean's barely hard now and Sam works his hand over him, kissing the sweat damp sweep of Dean's neck and shoulder.
"Wanna fuck you, want it so bad," Sam mumbles.
Letting Dean's legs fall bonelessly either side of his middle until he's got Dean straddling him, Sam slips his arm under Dean's back, smoothly hauls him up onto his thighs, cradling him as he manhandles him down onto his cock, sinking into him until Sam's balls are nestled against the curve of his ass. Sam holds him just like that on the altar, kisses Dean's cheek and jaw, whispers how beautiful he is, how much Sam loves him into his skin.
Sam feels too big for Dean. Sweat dribbles down his spine at the sheer exertion of not fucking into Dean over and over. His dick is held firm in Dean's body, so tight it feels like he couldn't get out even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't. It feels very much as if he's fucking a new space inside Dean, just for himself. He wants to see where he's pressed into Dean, wants to see his poor little hole stretched pink and abused around Sam's big cock.
Instead, he just holds Dean in his lap.
Finally, in the silence, Dean blinks back tears, swallows hard as he looks up at Sam, and says, "That all you got?"
And Sam hurts for loving him so much right then. And it strikes him how pointless it is for Dean to be his Beloved Consort when he's his Dean.
Dean grunts and clutches at him desperately as Sam rocks his dick out and then sharply back in. His mouth latches onto Dean's throat, biting and sucking until the skin is tender and slippery. His hands span Dean's hips, stupidly big on him, and he grips him roughly as he lifts him up only to drop him back down. Dean's still too tight for him to sink back down immediately and Sam bounces him on his cock again before he can get balls-deep once more.
"Fuck!" Dean says, the curse punched out of him, as Sam pulls out and then shoves him full of dick again before he can even get used to being empty. "Oh fuck, Sam… Sammy, oh god, just like that… goddamn, you're fucking evil, do it again…"
Sam pushes right into him, rolling his hips to screw in deep, and Dean whines and his thighs clench tight either side of Sam, sleek and powerful and trembling. He scratches at the altar uselessly, arching back away from Sam, like he's trying to get free of Sam's cock slammed up inside him, because it must still hurt, but always curling back in for more.
Fingertips digging into the cheeks of Dean's ass, Sam spreads him wide open, rutting into him because he's sure there's some way he could get deeper inside Dean, could fill him up a little better, fuck him properly brainless, and Sam's fingers somehow end up sliding down the crease of Dean's ass, finding the hot, tender stretch of skin where Sam's buried, hard and slick, inside him. And Sam can't help dragging a blunt fingernail over the skin, not hard, but enough to shake a high, startled noise from Dean. He tries a shallow, stuttery jab of his hips and he feels Dean's hole twitch and strain around him, feels himself inside Dean's drum-tight body.
He bites at the corner of Dean's slack lips, then pushes in close to whisper, hot and hoarse, against Dean's cheek. "Call me Sammy again. I want you to call me Sammy when I fuck you. You're my pretty little wife, Dean… and I like it when my cock's in you and you call me Sammy."
A full-body shiver goes down Dean's spine and he moans, nuzzles his face into Sam's shoulder. "Oh god," he mumbles, half incoherent. "This is some really fucked up incest. I mean, yeah, incest, but wow, we are so dysfunctional. And you're so fucking weird. And, Jesus, I'm your wife." He sounds nothing so much like drunk. And his mouth tastes of nothing but Sam when Sam pushes his tongue into it.
"Call me Sammy," Sam says again, when he's left Dean's mouth swollen and sore, shining with spit.
"Sammy," Dean says, the name tugged from him like a reflex. He looks pained but the head of his cock is brushing damply against Sam's belly and his thighs are holding Sam trapped between his legs. "Oh god, Sammy, fuck me, c'mon, baby brother, c'mon and fuck me..."
Sam makes a sound that later he will probably deny was a growl - but there are several angels and demons who can tell you that it definitely was a growl - and works Dean up and down furiously on his dick. Sam knows what he wants and he has the strength to take it, to use Dean how he wants, and Dean doesn't even have to move as he gets savagely fucked. Sam bounces him on his cock, shocking small, breathy grunts from Dean with each deep stab.
There's something of a struggle as Dean tries to get his hand on his own cock and, too intensely focused on screwing Dean to within an inch of his life, Sam mistakes it for an attempt to push him away, and he makes that noise again - which there are witnesses to affirm that, yes, that was a growl - and slams him down onto his back on the altar, pins him down with his significantly heavier body weight, and goes on fucking into him, his dick never once leaving Dean's ass through the maneuver.
"Dude," Dean says, mournful and surprised. "Sammy, please, c'mon, please Sammy, please let me…"
And Sam gets it then, wraps his fingers around Dean's cock and fists him furiously, too caught up to be capable of trying to hit a rhythm between his hand on Dean's dick and his own dick in Dean's ass. Dean cries out, short and sharp, and Sam's fingers get filthy-hot with Dean's precome. His ass flutters around Sam and he mouths at Sam's shoulder and arm, the breath choked out of him as Sam moves on top of him.
"Sammy, oh god, you… Jesus, Sammy." Sam is about to point out that he's actually the anti-Jesus, when Dean comes in long, messy spurts all over his hand.
Once he's done riding out his orgasm, writhing and tight and fucking beautiful, Dean looks at Sam, says, "Sammy," again, and promptly passes out, going weak and pliant, almost doll-like under Sam. His legs fall loose around Sam's hips, shamelessly spread wide for him. His fingers are feeble curls against Sam's shoulders, as Sam doesn't let up fucking him for a second.
Because he can and because he wants to and mostly because he's forced to by Dean being unconscious, Sam scoops Dean up against his chest and rocks his hips to make Dean's ass jiggle on his dick. It must look more than a little pathetic for the Antichrist to have fucked out his own brother and still be trying to bang him after he's fainted. Sam doesn't care. Dean is a hot, boneless weight in his lap, and his mouth is delicately soft against Sam's shoulder.
Sam presses in hard, and his cock pulses in Dean's ass, fills him up, sloppy and filthy and hot, with his come, and he only has to ease free a little to feel trickles of his come dribbling out of Dean's ass and onto Sam's thighs.
He shuffles backwards, his cock slowly dragging free from Dean's messy, swollen hole, and he tenderly lays Dean down on the altar. Dean doesn't even stir, just lies there, naked and used, as Sam left him. Full of the best kind of ache, Sam climbs down off the altar.
He turns to face the absolutely silent angels and demons. Dean's come on his belly and his own slick on his softening cock and thighs - the stickiness of his skin beautifully highlighted by the candlelight - and Dean comatose on the altar, abruptly goes from amazingly hot to kind of mortifying.
Sam glances around nervously.
"Ta-dah!" he says finally, spreading his hands wide and trying a hopeful, please-like-me smile.
As one, the demons drop to their knees before him, and the angels begin to sing for him, high and unearthly. Sam really wishes he'd left Dean conscious enough to see it.
:::
"When did it start raining?" Dean says. He's hunched in the passenger seat of the Impala, cramming pie down his throat like he thinks it's liable to make an escape attempt any minute.
Sam wipes the drizzle off his face and brushes his wet hair back.
"Some time while we were in the church, according to Jo."
"Ah," says Dean. "Probably why I didn't notice." He chases after a crumb at the corner of his mouth with his tongue. "Man, this is good pie."
Sam gives him a fond look that Dean is too preoccupied with pie to notice.
The rain tracks down the windshield shine red and yellow as they catch the lights from the nearby highway. The colors shift as the raindrops roll down the glass. The night air feels fresh, washed clean. They missed the storm, the furious torrential downpour that hit earlier. Now the rain's slowed to a moderate drizzle.
Dean finishes his pie with an orgasmic moan and then sets about licking his fingers. Sam doesn't realize he's watching until Dean looks up and catches his eye. They have never been so good together as they are now.
"You ready?" Sam says.
"Mmm," Dean says. He cocks his head at Sam and grins. "My god, you are attractive. It's like staring into the sun."
"Enough of your blah blah blah," Sam says, and starts the engine.
:::
At five minutes past seven on Sunday morning, Sam is crowned King of Hell and takes his throne. At the gates to Hell, Dean takes hold of Sam's wrist, saying, "You'd better follow me, 'cause I know the way," and leads him into darkness, and then into fire and blood and horror.
There are scenes of unimaginable grotesquery, mockeries of human anatomy that gibber and screech, whole landscapes painted with arterial spray.
"Hey, look," says Dean. "Over there, that's where Alistair used to make an afternoon of disemboweling me."
Horrified, Sam stares at Dean rather than at the landmark in his career as a professional torture victim that Dean is trying to point out. "Jesus, Dean. Are you gonna be okay down here?"
Dean gives him a look. "We finally have a home together, Sam. I'm not gonna insist we live someplace else just 'cause there's a stain on the rug."
"A stain?" Sam echoes incredulously, but Dean tugs him onwards.
Sam is still complaining that, if there's a 'stain' on the rug then it's a little less innocuous than where Dean drank too much and threw up or where he dropped the ketchup bottle, when Dean leads him out onto a carved stone dais high, high above more demons than Sam has ever nightmared of.
At the sight of Sam, the demons go wild; they're enthusiastic to the point that even the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes might find it excessive and embarrassing. From the proud, happy look on Dean's face as he glances back at him, Sam thinks Dean approves. He pulls Sam forwards, out of the shadows and into the firelight so they can see him properly.
"Dude, wave," Dean hisses at him out of the corner of his mouth.
Sam waves and the demons fall into paroxysms of deafening joy. He glances at Dean uncertainly but Dean seems unfazed. He moves to the edge of the balcony and raises his hands for quiet, which he gets, sort of; the demons seem to find it hard to be quiet when Sam is standing there.
"This is your Boy King," he shouts to the demons. "This is your messiah. This is your reason for fucking existing!"
The demons scream and cheer.
"We're gonna save the goddamn world!" Dean shouts.
The demons drop sharply into confused silence.
"Because he's the Antichrist and he can bitchslap you out of existence without even thinking about it if you don't like it!"
The demons cheer again.
Dean turns back around to Sam. He gestures to the big, ugly throne, which looks like it might once have been about six people. "That's yours," he says. "Go on."
Sam sits tentatively, wondering if he could exchange the throne for something more comfortable and possibly from IKEA. But the throne is distinctly his. His hands curl over the smooth, polished ends of the armrests as he settles. He looks up at Dean, lit up and shining in the hellfire. Their eyes catch.
And then, a strange jolt in time, and Dean is holding a crown fashioned from gold and bone in his hands. It's spindly and elegant, macabre and exquisite. He moves before Sam, raises the crown up - and Sam is unable to take his eyes off him as he does it - and then he sets it carefully on Sam's head.
The instant it touches Sam, it happens. He is aware of all Hell, of Lucifer breathing from its very foundations, of every single demon and how easily he could make them bend before him, of the angel song that penetrates even here. He is aware of Lucifer saying his name, welcoming him.
Everything flies away from him, every detail clear to him and insignificant. He knows what God's face looked like when Lucifer defied Him, he knows how far the universe stretches, he knows how to take a handful of dust and breathe life into it. And he knows the thrum of the Impala as it speeds along the highway and the taste of soda warmed by the sun.
Sam has Hell, he has Lucifer, he has angels, he has a world to save.
"Hail to the king, baby," Dean says and climbs into his lap.
And he has Dean.
:::
'The Paths of the Black Messiah' is a text that defies analysis. It is the product of a mind in turmoil. Critics such as Halpin Chalmers and Richard H. Johnson have attempted to uncover a unifying theme within the work, with Chalmers arguing that it is an allegory for Hitler's rise to power, and Johnson taking the psychoanalytic view that it seeks to map out the workings of a fractured id. However, both these readings are deeply problematic.
Perhaps the most suitable interpretation was that recently put forward by Anna Milton in the New Tongues literary journal, in which she suggested that the paths the Boy King walked should be regarded as secondary to the underlying romance between him and his Beloved Consort. (Anna Milton, 'He who sits at the left hand', New Tongues, New Words, pp 16-20.)
While others have dismissed this interpretation as sentimental and naïve, Milton has the final words of 'The Paths of the Black Messiah' to reinforce her claim: "And the Boy King and the one who sits at his left hand lived happily ever after."
~end
Acknowledgements and Author's Note: None of the texts/journals mentioned actually exist - as far as I know. The excerpt relating to Hell's Roadhouse is adapted from the Holders' series of creepypasta. Dean is quoting Evil Dead in the scene with the zombies.
Huge love and thanks to giandujakiss, aynslee and designerheart for the beta. All remaining mistakes are my own. Also deserving of love and thanks are liv_512 and lazy_daze, and my entire flist for putting up with my seemingly endless indecision over what to write.
Hearts also to wanttobeatree and vamptastica for the awesome artwork - which I was very lucky to receive - to wendy and the Big Bang team for all their hard work.
As ever, thanks to you for reading. ♥
To be fair, neither Sam nor Dean have much practice sharing a bed. It's been almost five years since Jess died and Dean has never been the kind of guy to hang around long enough after sex to figure out how to share a bed. Therefore it's not surprising that shortly after they both wake up and don't have the orgasmic afterglow to keep them feeling benevolent, things rapidly descend into elbowing, blanket-tugging and kicking.
Dean finally has enough and retreats to his own bed, and Sam is okay with this until he realizes Dean has a clean, fresh bed and he has the one that's damp and sticky with sweat and come and accidental alcohol spillage. He follows Dean to the other bed and winds his body around him to keep him still and in a comfortable position for Sam.
They lie there in the dark, golden-brown dawn. In the room next door it sounds like the demons are watching a horror movie; Sam hopes to God it's just a movie they're watching. He guesses it's maybe another hour or so before the angels start singing.
He brushes his lips against the nape of Dean's neck, just above where the column of his spine seems to begin. "Hey," he says. "When we get married, don't divorce me afterwards."
"Who'd be crazy enough to try divorcing the King of Hell anyway?" Dean says, even as he grips the hand Sam's got resting on his belly a little tighter. The pad of his thumb flickers over Sam's pulse briefly, before he says, "But you suffocating me would be one reason for me to go all Tammy Wynette on your ass. C'mon, man, lemme go."
"Stop squirming," Sam says. "I'm tryn'a sleep here."
"I'm pissing in the bathroom or I'm pissing on you, but I'm pissing in the next five seconds. Your choice."
Sam lets him free instantly, grimacing in disgust. "Oh, dude, gross!"
Dean chuckles and stumbles to the bathroom. Sam stretches out over the warm sheets, his body aching in a good way. He listens to the shower start up and smiles because he's really pretty sure it's a 'life is good' shower, and not an 'emo, hiding out 'til things get better' shower. And Sam is responsible for it. Sam is awesome.
As going back to sleep no longer seems an option, Sam gets up, pulls on shorts and a t-shirt, and checks in the mirror to make sure that he might not just as well be wearing a t-shirt saying: I banged my brother last night… ask me how. His hair is doing something crazy, and there's a faintly deranged look in his eyes, which is something Sam would like to hang on to because it's very appropriate for the Antichrist. Other than that, he looks decent enough not to scandalize the angels or provoke commentary from the demons.
Outside the motel room door, right outside the door, he finds Castiel. Sam blinks at him.
"What are you-?" His eyes widen. "Cas, have you been here all night?"
"I wanted to make sure nobody interrupted the reunion between Dean and you." His gaze drifts over Sam's shoulder, looking back into the room. "You're both happy again now then? Can I get either of you anything? Coffee? Breakfast?"
"No, thanks," says Sam. "Listen, I'm gonna go tell the others that we're back on with Operation Beloved Consort." He pauses, is blissfully happy enough to feel a moment of sympathy. "You stick with Dean. Let me know if Zachariah turns up in my bathroom again or something."
As he passes, Sam raps on the angels' door, saying, "Guys, can I see you in with the demons? I've got news." They're already in with the demons, waiting for him, by the time Sam gets there. He was expecting it. What he was not expecting was Bobby to be there too.
Bobby's perched awkwardly on the end of the bed with Raum, who is showing him some of his most ancient books. Bobby appears more interested in keeping a wary eye on Raum, but his eyes do flicker down to the page more than once as Sam watches.
"Um…" Sam says.
"Dean's back!" Anna says. Her hands are excited little fists, wavering in front of her mouth as though she might need them to stifle a squeal of joy at any minute. "We saw the car and then we saw Castiel standing guard at the door and we all knew Dean'd come back and you were making love and isn't it too wonderful for words? And now you can get married and be together forever! Oh, I'm so happy I could explode!"
"We fetched Bobby so you could get married before Dean loses his nerve again," Ruby says, thankfully less excited than Anna.
"Hey, Bobby," Sam says. He wishes he'd given his appearance a more thorough scrutiny. The angels and demons don't care that Dean is Sam's brother; the demons think it's twisted and approve, and the angels are really only interested in whether the ritual sex on an altar is taking place within wedlock or not. Neither the angels nor the demons watched Sam and Dean grow up. Bobby did. And he sounded mostly fine about it on the phone but it's a whole other thing to be faced with Sam The Morning After.
"Sam," Bobby says. "Where's your fiancé?" He sounds the word out deliberately.
"He's in the shower. Again." Conscious of their audience, Sam says to Bobby, "You wanna talk outside, maybe?"
Bobby nods slowly and follows Sam out into the morning sunshine. It's only half past nine and already the sun is baking down. They settle on the bench and Sam waits for Bobby to say something.
"This weather's 'cause of you, y'know," Bobby says. "Surest sign you're almost there." He pats Sam on the knee. "Good for you, son. I know 'antichrist' ain't a pretty word but you're just about the best hope we've got left."
Flushing, Sam ducks his head. "I know it isn't anything like what Dad would'a wanted." He thinks he can still smell Dean on him and flushes a little hotter. "Not at all what he would'a wanted, but I really think we've got a chance with this."
"I think you're right, especially with your brother on board. Together, you boys make one hell of a man."
"You'd better not be giving my little brother any grief, old man," Dean says, coming up behind them. He's grinning and the tone is playful, but there's a question in his eyes when he looks at Sam. Sam gives an almost imperceptible nod and Dean relaxes and claps Bobby on the shoulder. "What brings you round here then?"
Bobby squints up at him, shielding his eyes from the sun. "Well I'm here for the wedding, boy, aren't I? Here to give you away, 'cause it's not like anyone's gonna pay so much as a dime for your sorry ass, now is it?"
Dean laughs and sits down next to Sam on the bench. He's still fresh from the shower and when he moves, Sam catches a hint of the cheap, vanilla soap he's been using. It makes Sam more conscious of how underdressed - and stinky - he must be.
"You leave me any hot water at all?" he asks.
"Nope," Dean says without shame.
Sam sighs and stands up. "Figures," he says. "Lucky for you, being the Antichrist and possessing unholy powers means I don't have to rely on plumbing."
"Hey," Dean calls after him, "you need me to come scrub your back?"
After taking a moment to check that Bobby isn't having an apoplectic fit at having their relationship so brazenly broadcast and then considering whether he could accept without that giving Bobby a seizure, Sam flips Dean off and says, "No, Dean, I don't need you to come use up whatever hot water I manage to summon up."
The question of whether Sam is actually capable of antichristing up some hot water, because, let's face it, hot water is of less use than, say, boiling oil in the Apocalypse, is never answered. Because there's an angel in Sam's bathroom, again. An angel and two demons, to be exact.
Ruby and Lamia converge on Sam instantly, while Uriel paces in the background, talking on a cellphone about whether cupcake cakes really are the fun and modern choice for weddings. Uriel doesn't seem convinced.
Sam clutches his towel a little tighter around his middle. "We're having a meeting in my bathroom now, right?"
"We're arranging your wedding for tomorrow," Lamia says. "We're hearing rumors that something big's being planned. They’re coming and they’re gonna try to get to you or Dean before you can walk the last path."
"So we marry you and Dean off, you fuck him on the altar and Hell is yours," says Ruby. "Hope tomorrow is good for you. We tried pushing for today but 'the official wedding planner of the Apocalypse' -" she pauses to roll her eyes in Uriel's direction, " - said that we're not allowed to rush things."
Uriel breaks off talking on the phone long enough to give Sam a stern look and says, "This is going to be a proper wedding and you will take it seriously." Then he goes back to arguing the relative merits of cupcake cakes.
Sam nods and continues to the shower. "Okay. Wedding and ritual sex tomorrow. But shower now." He drops his towel, steps in and turns the water on. Uriel frowns at the noise the water makes and is abruptly no longer there. Lamia and Ruby exchange looks, apparently bemused by Sam's easy compliance, and then go to leave.
They're almost out of the door when Sam calls out over the sound of the water, "Before anyone gets any bad ideas, there will be no bachelor party."
:::
Sam and Dean's bachelor party is not as traumatizing or pathetic as Sam was expecting. He actually enjoys it and he's kind of touched that Ruby knows him well enough to come up with something he wouldn't hate.
The Tartarus Theater in Hanover, Massachusetts is an old style place with embellished gold walls and heavy red curtains across the screen. From midday to midnight, it’s showing low budget horror movies. The angels and demons fill most of the seats, and Sam and Dean settle in the back row, each with enormous buckets of fluffy, unsalted popcorn.
They watch The Swarm - (dir. Irwin Allen, 1978) - and Dean tells the story of that time in Oasis Plains, where a curse-bee repeatedly assaulted his ass. Dean tells that story a lot. He also tells the story of how, when Sam was fourteen, he developed a huge crush on Nessa Mankiewicz, who was the twenty-three year old, six-foot-one, supermodelesque nursing student they lived next door to at the time, while they watch Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman - (dir. Nathan Juran, 1958).
It’s probably just as well there are no civilians trying to enjoy the movies, because Dean, plus a gleeful audience of demons and angels, can get pretty rowdy.
In the middle of Deathbed - (dir. Danny Draven, 2002), Sam finishes his popcorn, and he turns to steal some from Dean’s bucket, but instead he gets distracted by the way the red and white light from the movie flickers over Dean’s face, how it hides the shadows under his eyes and the scar on his forehead and emphasizes the sharpness of his cheekbones and the curving fullness of his lower lip.
Dean seems engrossed by the movie - haunted beds are something neither of them has come across in their careers - but after a second he feels Sam’s gaze on him and looks back at him. His eyes are huge in the darkness. He opens his mouth to say something but he changes his mind. Instead, he leans in and kisses Sam. It’s a good, old-fashioned ‘making out in the back of a theater’ kiss: slow and long and just a little bit dirty. Sam’s fingers fit underneath Dean’s chin, skim over the line of his jaw. He touches the rush of Dean’s pulse in his throat while Dean fucks his tongue languorously into Sam’s mouth.
Dean’s popcorn falls to the ground and spills under the seat in front. Deathbed ends; Troll 2 - (dir. Claudio Fragasso, 1990) begins.
:::
That night, they watch each other from their separate beds. Sam lays his cheek to the pillow and watches Dean watching him.
Sam’s last thought before he falls asleep is that he’s surprisingly okay with the way his life has worked out.
:::
Sam is still reeling from the information that, due to the extremely short notice Uriel was given to find somewhere, his wedding will take place in the Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes, when he sees the minister is an Elvis impersonator.
"I thought I was supposed to be taking this seriously," he hisses at Uriel, while Elvis checks to make sure that the fringe on his shiny white jumpsuit is hanging straight.
"He's a compromise," Uriel says. "My brothers and sisters and I felt it was important that you were married by someone of faith. We didn’t care which faith in particular but the demons refused to grant this request. And then he turned up. He's an ordained priest, working in a wedding chapel in Vegas, but the demons think he's hilarious and they're happy to let him take the ceremony."
"I'm so glad we never went for a photographer," Sam says, summoning up a smile in response to Elvis's friendly wink.
Between them, Krys and Uriel have filled the Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes with yellow roses. Alongside Jo and her hunters, a surprising number of Sam's minions have filled out the pews. At first, someone made an attempt to arrange them according to whether they were groom's family or bride's, but it was gently pointed out that even really devoted cultists don't count as family, and that the groom's family was the bride's family, and furthermore, it was the sole remaining members of that family that were getting married.
There is a general air of excitement in the congregation as Sam waits for Dean's arrival. Sam watches them uncomfortably and fidgets in his suit. Not only had Ruby insisted that Sam wear a suit, she said his Insurance Investigator/ FBI Agent one was shabby and not good enough.
"Dean's let them dress him up suitably," she said. "It isn't gonna kill you to do the same."
So Sam is in a suit that tugs and pulls and is too damn tight, and every time Sam complains about it to Ruby, she rolls her eyes and says Sam clearly has no experience of wearing clothes that actually fit. Sam is about to complain about it again anyway when the organ music begins and Sam turns to see Dean and Bobby in the doorway.
As far as giving Dean away goes, Bobby's duties seem to have morphed into restraining Dean from physically attacking anyone who snickers at the long white robe the demons have dressed him in. From the murderous expression on Dean's face, he is not impressed by the fine tailoring Raum has put into the robe, which is a shame, because he looks really fucking beautiful in it.
Sam is bewildered that he failed to notice for the first twenty-six years of his life that Dean is really, stupidly beautiful. It's a realization on a par with suddenly registering that Dean has two heads or even no head at all; it's obvious and right there and somehow Sam never saw it.
"We had to go without front or back fastening," Raum says in an undertone, admiring his handiwork. "It was too fussy a look, all those ribbons. But he would insist on wearing his jeans underneath, which totally ruins the lines. I'll make sure he's naked underneath when it's time for you to ravish him on Lucifer's altar."
Sam's suit really is too tight.
The organist tries to match his pace to Dean's, but Dean is apparently in a hurry to get up the aisle and get things over and done with, either spurred on by the promise of sex or because he knows he can't take the robe off until then. The music becomes a frantic, tuneless jangle of notes and cuts off sharply when Dean reaches Sam.
"Wow," says Sam. "I do like your pretty dress."
"Don't say another fucking word," Dean growls. "They said it was vital. Goddamn demons." His gaze roams over Sam appreciatively. "Huh. Do we get to keep the suit? 'Cause I'd really like to tear it off you with my teeth."
"Boys," Bobby says. "Can we hurry this up? I wanna start forgetting this ever happened as soon as I can."
"I think that's my cue," Elvis says, in his deep, smooth voice. He opens a small order of service book and looks out over the congregation, slick black hair shining in the sunlight. "Friends, we are gathered here today in the sight of God, and Lucifer," - Anna shoots Raum a disappointed look - "to witness the joyous union of Sam Winchester to… uh… Dean Winchester." He glances between the two of them. "That's not a typo, is it? You're his brother?" This is directed at Dean, who gives him a surly 'so what?' look. "Okay, well, the joyous union between a man and his brother. They come together before their friends on this day to celebrate the bonds of love and commitment-"
The Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes goes up in a rush of flame. Cultists scream and Sam turns -
- and Elvis shoves a knife deep into his back.
Sam grunts at the impact, the jarring sensation of metal against his spine. He blinks, breathless, only distantly registering Dean's hands on him.
"Go back to Hell, Antichrist!" Elvis is shrieking, even as Ruby and Asmodeus drag him down.
Something invisible is tearing through the pews, blood and body parts flying through the air, while fire melts the walls of the church to molten lava. His angels and demons are only just beginning to pull themselves into a coherent defense, while already one of Jo's hunters is down, his mangled body encircled by Jo and the others. Sam watches it with a strange clarity of vision. He sees it all happening and barely thinks about the knife's blade rubbing his bones.
"Oh god, not again, please not again, please don't, Sammy…"
Sam looks to Dean, who is almost translucently pale, eyes burning bright green with unshed tears and the reflection of the firelight.
"Dean," Sam says. "Dean. Can you… can you get it out?" Sam twists awkwardly this way then that as he strains to reach the handle of the knife sticking out of his back. Frustrated, he frowns and lets his hands drop. "Oh well, I guess we can leave it for now."
"You… you're okay," Dean says. "Fuck. You're okay. There's a knife in your back, you know that right? Like, right in. And you're okay with that?"
"Yeah," Sam agrees. "We'll worry about the knife later."
An alarming number of Sam's cultists are in several pieces already. There are not only the invisible somethings ripping them apart - Sam suspects they're hellhounds - but there are more and more hostile demons appearing. If the demons continue to materialize at their current rate soon there will not be enough room in the church for everything that wants to dismember the cultists. Sam's army is fighting, despite being hopelessly outnumbered and not far from defeat.
Dean hooks up his blood and brain splattered robe, and pulls out a shotgun. He fires a couple of shots to drive a hellhound away from a nearby cowering minion. "Can you deal with this?" he says to Sam.
"Working on it," Sam says. Despite everything he's capable of, he hasn't come fully into his powers yet. He has to concentrate on not letting the church burn down, on not letting the fire burn period, on the demons, on the hellhounds, on protecting Dean, on supporting his struggling army of angels and demons and hunters, and on not letting the knife in his back kill him. Multitasking like this is not going to be accomplished with the usual nonchalant effortlessness.
"Hey, you still alive?" Dean barks at Elvis.
"Die, foul whore!" Elvis screams. Not that Sam can spare a moment to check, but the way he says it makes it seem likely that at least half his face is missing, no doubt thanks to Ruby and Asmodeus.
"Look, buddy," Dean says. "I put a dress on today so I could get married. I'm not gonna let humiliation like that be for nothing. You're gonna fucking well marry us or I will follow you down into Hell and demonstrate exactly why I was the nastiest sonofabitch in the Pit's star pupil. Capiche?"
Elvis is quiet for a moment, and then, calm and only slightly uneven, he says, "Friends, we are gathered-"
The head of the guy whose car Sam stole lands at Sam's feet, staring up at him in surprise. There's a roar of flame and the ceiling is covered in fire. The building creaks ominously.
Something stretches inside Sam's body, something new and that is not yet sure how far it can stretch.
"Skip it!" Dean snarls. "Get to the good part or I will take you by your pompadour and personally feed you to the hellhounds!"
"Okay, okay!" Elvis screeches. "Do you, Dean Winchester, take your brother, Sam the Antichrist Winchester, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"I do!" Dean says, yanking a flask of holy water out from under his robe and splashing it liberally in the direction of the six demons that have Castiel surrounded.
"And do you, Sam the Antichrist Winchester, take your brother, Dean Winchester, to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
"Say 'I do', Sam!" Dean shouts. Something knocks him off his feet and shreds the bottom of his robe as it drags him across the floor. He fumbles under his robe again, comes up with Ruby's knife this time, and slashes at the invisible creature.
"I do!" Sam shouts as he and Bobby chase after Dean.
"Do you - ahh!" Ruby pushes Elvis down behind the altar as the line of demons converge on them. She flings herself into the fight, Asmodeus right behind her. Elvis cowers on all fours, peering around to where Sam is hauling Dean free from the hellhound while Bobby douses it with holy water. "Do you have the rings?"
Sam's grip on Dean affords him the perfect opportunity to push his ring down on Dean's finger. Delivering a vicious kick to the hellhound, Dean struggles free from it and, breathless and on his knees, he yanks off the silver ring he's worn virtually as Sam can remember, and thrusts it onto Sam's finger. It doesn't really fit but Sam jams it down nonetheless.
"They've exchanged rings!" Bobby reports back to Elvis. "Come on, idjit, marry them already!"
Still huddled behind the altar, Elvis just misses Ruby landing on top of him as she's bodily thrown by two of the demons. "Then by the power vested in me by the state of Nevada, I pronounce you Antichrist and wife! You may kiss the bride! Oh Jesuschrist, we're all gonna die!"
Dean is in the middle of retrieving ammo from under his robe in order to reload his shotgun when Sam seizes him and crushes his mouth down on his. They only stop kissing when the hem of Dean's robe catches on fire and even then it takes a couple of moments for them to register it.
:::
"Three quarters of your guests are dead, the church has suffered severe fire damage and probably needs to be rebuilt, Elvis Presley, who was cruelly misled by demons into attacking you, requires facial reconstructive surgery, hellhounds ate your wedding cake, and Bobby has declined to stay for the evening," Castiel reports back. "Also, my trench coat needs to be taken to a Laundromat again."
"Yeah, okay. Well, could have been worse," Sam says. "Anything else?"
"Your wedding gifts were damaged, I'm sorry."
Dean looks up from binding the hellhound bite on his calf with strips of fabric from his blackened robe. "We have wedding gifts?"
"As I said, they were damaged. All that remains is a waffle maker and six autographed copies of the Bible."
Dean glances over at Sam. He raises an eyebrow. "I could go for waffles. How about you?"
Sam nods. He turns Dean's ring around on his finger. "Waffles sound good." He nods again, more decisively. "We should definitely try out the waffle maker."
"Definitely need to eat something. Can't go around consummating your marriage and becoming King of Hell on an empty stomach," Dean says. He keeps his eyes on treating his wound but Sam sees the flush in his cheeks. "'Sides, Raum needs time to make a new robe for the ritual. This one ain't fit to wash the 'pala." He fingers the one remaining sleeve thoughtfully. "Wonder if he'd make it big enough for me to get two shotguns under it?"
:::
While Raum runs up a new robe for the ceremony, Sam, Dean and the others sit in the parking lot of the Church of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes and eat a celebratory meal of pizza and cheeseburgers. Evening comes on. The headlights of passing cars roll over them. At one point, a police patrol car takes a slow drive by. Sam gives the cop a friendly wave and the guy doesn't stop.
"So, Mr and Mr Antichrist," Jo says, as she bumps her shoulder into Dean's. "What are your honeymoon plans?"
"We're going way down south," Dean says. His gaze stays on Jo as he tips his head back and feeds a whole slice of pizza into this mouth. He says something else to her, that's kind of lost in mastication.
Growing up in her mom's roadhouse seems to have inured Jo to disgusting eating habits, or maybe she's hunted things that are just a little more repellent than Dean's table manners. Instead of pulling a face, she simply looks to Sam for clarification.
"We're gonna be tied up with Hell and the Apocalypse for a while," Sam says. He thinks about it. The idea of a vacation with Dean is more appealing than he expected. "Maybe after that though." He looks to Dean for his thoughts on the matter. Dean says something else through his mouthful of pizza and Sam nods, looks back at Jo. "Yeah, afterwards, we'll definitely go somewhere. Just me, Dean, the beach, and as many angels and demons as we can't shake off."
Jo stretches out on the tarmac and gazes over to where Ruby is trying to help Anna put a wedding bouquet of daisies together without actually appearing to help.
"Guess you got plenty to keep you occupied before you can think of getting away from it all," she says. "Like the wedding night, for one. Kind of a big deal."
Dean's ring doesn't look as wrong on Sam's finger as Sam thought it would. Sure, it's too tight, but Sam's working on that. If he can turn a city to dust and survive a knife to the back, he can coax metal into stretching. His hand is only a few inches away from Dean's, and his eyes shift from the ring Dean gave him to the ring he gave Dean.
When he looks up, Dean is looking straight back at him.
"Nah," says Sam. "I'd say we've done the really important bit."
Dean grins at him. Then he stands up, wiping his hands off on his jeans. "Yeah," he says. He tips his head towards something behind Sam. "But not according to Jack Kerouac."
Sam twists around and sees Raum waiting, the robe draped carefully over his arm. The angels and demons have fallen silent at his return.
"Guess we've got a date with Lucifer's altar," Dean says. He starts to walk slowly towards Raum, and as he goes, he calls back over his shoulder at Sam, "Better not stand me up."
:::
In 1906, when the earthquake hit San Francisco, a small church in San Rafael tumbled down a crack in the ground and slid down down down, to where it now nestles, broken and lost, in the shadows that boom with the sound of the sea.
Several of the angels and demons went ahead to prepare and they've lit enough candles in the ruins of the church for a papal funeral. The light is ghostly and seems afraid to stretch too far, only tremulously touching the vaulted ceilings and crumbling black walls. The level of the floor is crooked at such a subtle angle as to be almost invisible to detection but impossible to ignore.
Lucifer's altar is at the far end, situated in the middle of a thick cluster of candles beneath a shattered stained glass window in which only serpentine coils and feathers remain. The altar itself is a smooth-hewn slab of cold rock. Sam is left alone with it after Dean is led away to be prepared. He doesn't kneel but he stands before it, and the womb-like rush of the sea's echo fades away.
Up until now, the Antichrist has been a choice Sam made. As and when he needed, he traded Sam Winchester in for the Antichrist. The time is fast approaching when Sam and the Antichrist won't so much stand side by side as they will stand on the very same spot. He can feel the quickening in his pulse, over his skin, electric in his heart and light behind his eyes.
He can hear movement in the church behind him as his faithful gather for the ceremony. The only human who will be present is Dean, mainly because he and his ass are very necessary parts of the ceremony; Jo and her hunters wait for them on the surface.
Someone is burning frankincense, and it's rich and thick and sweet. Sam closes his eyes, breathes in the fragrance, and slowly removes his clothes. Maybe that's the last little box ticked on the Are you the antichrist? Find out on page 666 with our ten quick questions! quiz: Sam doesn't feel self-conscious to be naked in front of a church full of angels and demons.
The floor of the church is cold and slick beneath his bare feet.
He waits.
Dean appears in the doorway. From the awkward way he's standing and the little-boy-lost look on his face, he still feels pretty ridiculous in the white robe he's been dressed in again. The way he looks though is pretty damn beautiful to Sam's eyes. It's about the way he shines, his natural physical beauty, and it's about the guy who single-handedly tried to be everything for his younger brother, who loves Sam in a way Sam doesn't even love himself.
His brow tightens slightly at the sight of Sam naked, and he glances around at the others, as if Sam still has chance to cover up before anyone notices. He makes to go to Sam but Sam is already striding towards him.
"You wore your pretty dress again," Sam says when he reaches him. "You look real nice."
"You look… uh… "Dean's gaze drops helplessly to Sam's cock, which is already half-hard and thick between his legs. "Jesus, Sam, I can't get over your dick. That's, like…"
"Really big?" Sam offers, not bothering to hide his smugness.
"You have epic dick," Dean says. He looks faintly horrified by the pronouncement. "Okay, deep breaths, let's do this."
He takes a step but Sam stops him, and before Dean can properly formulate a protest, Sam has swept his legs out from under him and is carrying him, bridal style. The robe is made of some flimsy, expensive material, and it's thin enough that, through it, Sam can feel the lines of Dean's body in his arms.
"Put me down," Dean hisses. "Right now, Sam. I mean it."
Sam ignores him and continues carrying him through the candlelight to the brighter blaze around the altar.
"My feet still work, y'know," Dean says. "I don't need to be fucking carried. Christ, this is embarrassing. Can you please just kill me? Oh god, is Anna here? Are you seriously letting my kind of ex-girlfriend watch this?"
Dean hides his face and doesn't seem to realize that he's only got Sam's shoulder to hide it in. His eyelashes tickle Sam's skin, a strange contrast to the soft warmth of his lips. Eventually, Dean grudgingly slides his arm up around Sam's neck.
"You could at least break a sweat, you freak," Dean says.
Sam places Dean on the altar and for a second - vulnerable and unsure on the stone, the white robe barely paler than the translucent fineness of his skin - Dean looks more angelic than the angels. He seems unsure of how to arrange himself, looking up at Sam for direction.
"Arms up," Sam says, and when Dean complies, he slowly slides the robe up over Dean's head and off. He throws the robe aside and the fabric flutters like wings then falls with a sigh.
He crawls up onto the altar and Dean lies down as Sam moves over him, sinuous and looming, covering Dean's body with his own. He props himself up on his forearm, easing Dean's thighs apart, spreading them to settle between them, so their bodies touch in one unbroken line.
Their eyes lock and Dean is terrified - and Sam realizes he is too. He blindly finds Dean's hand with his own, and as their fingers entwine, their rings click against one another: a tiny noise even in the hush of the church. Sam's gaze snaps to their joined hands, just as Dean's flicks in that direction too, and then they look back at each other.
"Come here, Sammy," Dean says, and he coaxes Sam's mouth down on his, hand stroking the back of Sam's neck and his lips parting instantly for Sam's.
As they kiss, long and languorous and open-mouthed, Sam slides his hand over the smooth line of Dean's thigh and the muscles give a nervous twitch beneath the skin. Dean moves easily once he catches on how Sam wants him, hips surging upwards, their cocks brushing hard and slippery-hot. Sam hooks Dean's legs over his shoulders, and it's a really good look on Dean, to be spread open like that, flat on his back with his ass canted up to Sam.
With one hand, Dean stretches out to grip the edge of the altar, with the other he reaches for Sam. Again, Sam catches his hand, toys with the ring he put on Dean's finger, presses their palms together. Then he moves in over Dean and his dick is already thick and bobbing against his belly, wet with precome, because it's Dean and even if this was never anything he dreamed of years ago, this is all he can ever see himself wanting from now on.
Dean's hole looks as impossibly small as ever, but it's slick with lube and Sam's dick gives another jump at the thought of Dean stuffing his fingers inside himself for Sam, before he put on his pretty white dress and came out here to get fucked in front of them all. He rubs his thumb over the tiny hole, tugging and teasing and thinking about how he's going to fill it all up, too full, until Dean's shivering, hips shifting fretfully.
"Your asshole is about to make me King of Hell," Sam says thoughtfully. "I may have epic dick, but you have apocalyptic ass."
"Yeah, say it a little louder," Dean says, voice too raw to be properly irritable. "I think there was someone at the back who didn't hear you."
"They're gonna hear you screaming when I put my epic dick in you," Sam says, dipping a finger into Dean's asshole just to feel it clench around him.
Dean snorts and slaps ineffectually at the back of Sam's head, squirming as Sam fingerfucks him shallowly. "Oh, just do it, you dirty fucker. Go on, big boy, shove it in me real good." Sam's cock is vindicated: Dean's trashy porn-falsetto really is as hot as Sam's cock thought it was.
Sam crawls in close, his face hovering over the crook of Dean's neck, as he reaches down between their bodies to guide his dick to Dean's asshole. He nudges clumsily against it, paints it with precome, and then he's pushing in and in. Dean flings an arm over Sam's back and his fingers dig into the curve of Sam's shoulder. Beneath him, Sam can feel Dean panting, and when he tilts his head to look at him, Dean is staring upwards, mouth a small, pained 'o'.
Panicked, he's closed up tight around Sam's cock, so tight it almost hurts, and Sam goes still, rigid.
"Dean? Dean, please, you gotta let me in… c'mon, man, wanna be inside you, like you said I could…"
Finally, eyelashes fluttering as he comes back to himself, Dean moves ever so slightly and his fingers loosen off Sam's shoulder. His eyes are wet with tears and Sam hates himself for thinking it only makes Dean more beautiful.
"Gently, Sammy," Dean whispers, too low for the watching demons and angels to hear. "Gotta go gently on me."
He's still clenched up but Sam works his hips slowly and forces his cock a little deeper. Dean's eyes slam shut, his hands making fists on the altar. His ass is hot and clinging, and it feels good how it drags along Sam's dick as he carefully but deliberately presses himself inside. Dean's barely hard now and Sam works his hand over him, kissing the sweat damp sweep of Dean's neck and shoulder.
"Wanna fuck you, want it so bad," Sam mumbles.
Letting Dean's legs fall bonelessly either side of his middle until he's got Dean straddling him, Sam slips his arm under Dean's back, smoothly hauls him up onto his thighs, cradling him as he manhandles him down onto his cock, sinking into him until Sam's balls are nestled against the curve of his ass. Sam holds him just like that on the altar, kisses Dean's cheek and jaw, whispers how beautiful he is, how much Sam loves him into his skin.
Sam feels too big for Dean. Sweat dribbles down his spine at the sheer exertion of not fucking into Dean over and over. His dick is held firm in Dean's body, so tight it feels like he couldn't get out even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't. It feels very much as if he's fucking a new space inside Dean, just for himself. He wants to see where he's pressed into Dean, wants to see his poor little hole stretched pink and abused around Sam's big cock.
Instead, he just holds Dean in his lap.
Finally, in the silence, Dean blinks back tears, swallows hard as he looks up at Sam, and says, "That all you got?"
And Sam hurts for loving him so much right then. And it strikes him how pointless it is for Dean to be his Beloved Consort when he's his Dean.
Dean grunts and clutches at him desperately as Sam rocks his dick out and then sharply back in. His mouth latches onto Dean's throat, biting and sucking until the skin is tender and slippery. His hands span Dean's hips, stupidly big on him, and he grips him roughly as he lifts him up only to drop him back down. Dean's still too tight for him to sink back down immediately and Sam bounces him on his cock again before he can get balls-deep once more.
"Fuck!" Dean says, the curse punched out of him, as Sam pulls out and then shoves him full of dick again before he can even get used to being empty. "Oh fuck, Sam… Sammy, oh god, just like that… goddamn, you're fucking evil, do it again…"
Sam pushes right into him, rolling his hips to screw in deep, and Dean whines and his thighs clench tight either side of Sam, sleek and powerful and trembling. He scratches at the altar uselessly, arching back away from Sam, like he's trying to get free of Sam's cock slammed up inside him, because it must still hurt, but always curling back in for more.
Fingertips digging into the cheeks of Dean's ass, Sam spreads him wide open, rutting into him because he's sure there's some way he could get deeper inside Dean, could fill him up a little better, fuck him properly brainless, and Sam's fingers somehow end up sliding down the crease of Dean's ass, finding the hot, tender stretch of skin where Sam's buried, hard and slick, inside him. And Sam can't help dragging a blunt fingernail over the skin, not hard, but enough to shake a high, startled noise from Dean. He tries a shallow, stuttery jab of his hips and he feels Dean's hole twitch and strain around him, feels himself inside Dean's drum-tight body.
He bites at the corner of Dean's slack lips, then pushes in close to whisper, hot and hoarse, against Dean's cheek. "Call me Sammy again. I want you to call me Sammy when I fuck you. You're my pretty little wife, Dean… and I like it when my cock's in you and you call me Sammy."
A full-body shiver goes down Dean's spine and he moans, nuzzles his face into Sam's shoulder. "Oh god," he mumbles, half incoherent. "This is some really fucked up incest. I mean, yeah, incest, but wow, we are so dysfunctional. And you're so fucking weird. And, Jesus, I'm your wife." He sounds nothing so much like drunk. And his mouth tastes of nothing but Sam when Sam pushes his tongue into it.
"Call me Sammy," Sam says again, when he's left Dean's mouth swollen and sore, shining with spit.
"Sammy," Dean says, the name tugged from him like a reflex. He looks pained but the head of his cock is brushing damply against Sam's belly and his thighs are holding Sam trapped between his legs. "Oh god, Sammy, fuck me, c'mon, baby brother, c'mon and fuck me..."
Sam makes a sound that later he will probably deny was a growl - but there are several angels and demons who can tell you that it definitely was a growl - and works Dean up and down furiously on his dick. Sam knows what he wants and he has the strength to take it, to use Dean how he wants, and Dean doesn't even have to move as he gets savagely fucked. Sam bounces him on his cock, shocking small, breathy grunts from Dean with each deep stab.
There's something of a struggle as Dean tries to get his hand on his own cock and, too intensely focused on screwing Dean to within an inch of his life, Sam mistakes it for an attempt to push him away, and he makes that noise again - which there are witnesses to affirm that, yes, that was a growl - and slams him down onto his back on the altar, pins him down with his significantly heavier body weight, and goes on fucking into him, his dick never once leaving Dean's ass through the maneuver.
"Dude," Dean says, mournful and surprised. "Sammy, please, c'mon, please Sammy, please let me…"
And Sam gets it then, wraps his fingers around Dean's cock and fists him furiously, too caught up to be capable of trying to hit a rhythm between his hand on Dean's dick and his own dick in Dean's ass. Dean cries out, short and sharp, and Sam's fingers get filthy-hot with Dean's precome. His ass flutters around Sam and he mouths at Sam's shoulder and arm, the breath choked out of him as Sam moves on top of him.
"Sammy, oh god, you… Jesus, Sammy." Sam is about to point out that he's actually the anti-Jesus, when Dean comes in long, messy spurts all over his hand.
Once he's done riding out his orgasm, writhing and tight and fucking beautiful, Dean looks at Sam, says, "Sammy," again, and promptly passes out, going weak and pliant, almost doll-like under Sam. His legs fall loose around Sam's hips, shamelessly spread wide for him. His fingers are feeble curls against Sam's shoulders, as Sam doesn't let up fucking him for a second.
Because he can and because he wants to and mostly because he's forced to by Dean being unconscious, Sam scoops Dean up against his chest and rocks his hips to make Dean's ass jiggle on his dick. It must look more than a little pathetic for the Antichrist to have fucked out his own brother and still be trying to bang him after he's fainted. Sam doesn't care. Dean is a hot, boneless weight in his lap, and his mouth is delicately soft against Sam's shoulder.
Sam presses in hard, and his cock pulses in Dean's ass, fills him up, sloppy and filthy and hot, with his come, and he only has to ease free a little to feel trickles of his come dribbling out of Dean's ass and onto Sam's thighs.
He shuffles backwards, his cock slowly dragging free from Dean's messy, swollen hole, and he tenderly lays Dean down on the altar. Dean doesn't even stir, just lies there, naked and used, as Sam left him. Full of the best kind of ache, Sam climbs down off the altar.
He turns to face the absolutely silent angels and demons. Dean's come on his belly and his own slick on his softening cock and thighs - the stickiness of his skin beautifully highlighted by the candlelight - and Dean comatose on the altar, abruptly goes from amazingly hot to kind of mortifying.
Sam glances around nervously.
"Ta-dah!" he says finally, spreading his hands wide and trying a hopeful, please-like-me smile.
As one, the demons drop to their knees before him, and the angels begin to sing for him, high and unearthly. Sam really wishes he'd left Dean conscious enough to see it.
:::
"When did it start raining?" Dean says. He's hunched in the passenger seat of the Impala, cramming pie down his throat like he thinks it's liable to make an escape attempt any minute.
Sam wipes the drizzle off his face and brushes his wet hair back.
"Some time while we were in the church, according to Jo."
"Ah," says Dean. "Probably why I didn't notice." He chases after a crumb at the corner of his mouth with his tongue. "Man, this is good pie."
Sam gives him a fond look that Dean is too preoccupied with pie to notice.
The rain tracks down the windshield shine red and yellow as they catch the lights from the nearby highway. The colors shift as the raindrops roll down the glass. The night air feels fresh, washed clean. They missed the storm, the furious torrential downpour that hit earlier. Now the rain's slowed to a moderate drizzle.
Dean finishes his pie with an orgasmic moan and then sets about licking his fingers. Sam doesn't realize he's watching until Dean looks up and catches his eye. They have never been so good together as they are now.
"You ready?" Sam says.
"Mmm," Dean says. He cocks his head at Sam and grins. "My god, you are attractive. It's like staring into the sun."
"Enough of your blah blah blah," Sam says, and starts the engine.
:::
At five minutes past seven on Sunday morning, Sam is crowned King of Hell and takes his throne. At the gates to Hell, Dean takes hold of Sam's wrist, saying, "You'd better follow me, 'cause I know the way," and leads him into darkness, and then into fire and blood and horror.
There are scenes of unimaginable grotesquery, mockeries of human anatomy that gibber and screech, whole landscapes painted with arterial spray.
"Hey, look," says Dean. "Over there, that's where Alistair used to make an afternoon of disemboweling me."
Horrified, Sam stares at Dean rather than at the landmark in his career as a professional torture victim that Dean is trying to point out. "Jesus, Dean. Are you gonna be okay down here?"
Dean gives him a look. "We finally have a home together, Sam. I'm not gonna insist we live someplace else just 'cause there's a stain on the rug."
"A stain?" Sam echoes incredulously, but Dean tugs him onwards.
Sam is still complaining that, if there's a 'stain' on the rug then it's a little less innocuous than where Dean drank too much and threw up or where he dropped the ketchup bottle, when Dean leads him out onto a carved stone dais high, high above more demons than Sam has ever nightmared of.
At the sight of Sam, the demons go wild; they're enthusiastic to the point that even the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes might find it excessive and embarrassing. From the proud, happy look on Dean's face as he glances back at him, Sam thinks Dean approves. He pulls Sam forwards, out of the shadows and into the firelight so they can see him properly.
"Dude, wave," Dean hisses at him out of the corner of his mouth.
Sam waves and the demons fall into paroxysms of deafening joy. He glances at Dean uncertainly but Dean seems unfazed. He moves to the edge of the balcony and raises his hands for quiet, which he gets, sort of; the demons seem to find it hard to be quiet when Sam is standing there.
"This is your Boy King," he shouts to the demons. "This is your messiah. This is your reason for fucking existing!"
The demons scream and cheer.
"We're gonna save the goddamn world!" Dean shouts.
The demons drop sharply into confused silence.
"Because he's the Antichrist and he can bitchslap you out of existence without even thinking about it if you don't like it!"
The demons cheer again.
Dean turns back around to Sam. He gestures to the big, ugly throne, which looks like it might once have been about six people. "That's yours," he says. "Go on."
Sam sits tentatively, wondering if he could exchange the throne for something more comfortable and possibly from IKEA. But the throne is distinctly his. His hands curl over the smooth, polished ends of the armrests as he settles. He looks up at Dean, lit up and shining in the hellfire. Their eyes catch.
And then, a strange jolt in time, and Dean is holding a crown fashioned from gold and bone in his hands. It's spindly and elegant, macabre and exquisite. He moves before Sam, raises the crown up - and Sam is unable to take his eyes off him as he does it - and then he sets it carefully on Sam's head.
The instant it touches Sam, it happens. He is aware of all Hell, of Lucifer breathing from its very foundations, of every single demon and how easily he could make them bend before him, of the angel song that penetrates even here. He is aware of Lucifer saying his name, welcoming him.
Everything flies away from him, every detail clear to him and insignificant. He knows what God's face looked like when Lucifer defied Him, he knows how far the universe stretches, he knows how to take a handful of dust and breathe life into it. And he knows the thrum of the Impala as it speeds along the highway and the taste of soda warmed by the sun.
Sam has Hell, he has Lucifer, he has angels, he has a world to save.
"Hail to the king, baby," Dean says and climbs into his lap.
And he has Dean.
:::
'The Paths of the Black Messiah' is a text that defies analysis. It is the product of a mind in turmoil. Critics such as Halpin Chalmers and Richard H. Johnson have attempted to uncover a unifying theme within the work, with Chalmers arguing that it is an allegory for Hitler's rise to power, and Johnson taking the psychoanalytic view that it seeks to map out the workings of a fractured id. However, both these readings are deeply problematic.
Perhaps the most suitable interpretation was that recently put forward by Anna Milton in the New Tongues literary journal, in which she suggested that the paths the Boy King walked should be regarded as secondary to the underlying romance between him and his Beloved Consort. (Anna Milton, 'He who sits at the left hand', New Tongues, New Words, pp 16-20.)
While others have dismissed this interpretation as sentimental and naïve, Milton has the final words of 'The Paths of the Black Messiah' to reinforce her claim: "And the Boy King and the one who sits at his left hand lived happily ever after."
~end
Acknowledgements and Author's Note: None of the texts/journals mentioned actually exist - as far as I know. The excerpt relating to Hell's Roadhouse is adapted from the Holders' series of creepypasta. Dean is quoting Evil Dead in the scene with the zombies.
Huge love and thanks to giandujakiss, aynslee and designerheart for the beta. All remaining mistakes are my own. Also deserving of love and thanks are liv_512 and lazy_daze, and my entire flist for putting up with my seemingly endless indecision over what to write.
Hearts also to wanttobeatree and vamptastica for the awesome artwork - which I was very lucky to receive - to wendy and the Big Bang team for all their hard work.
As ever, thanks to you for reading. ♥