Life in Monochrome (Gordon/Dean Sam/Dean UST, 4426 words, r-rated, AU)
Because I watched Bloodlust last night and because someone put three meetings in my diary that I had no need to attend but had to go anyway…
Life in Monochrome
(Gordon/Dean Sam/Dean UST, 4426 words, r-rated, AU)
John dies while Sam's at Stanford and Sam discovers Dean has a new hunting partner.
Sam's just coming out of a class when Dean calls and tells him that John's dead. His voice isn't much more than a rasp but he's keeping it together. Even as Sam tries to take it all in, he knows that Dean's not about to break; he's in a period of action and denial and Sam's shut out of it.
"Vampire took his throat out," says Dean. "Saw it happen. Just couldn't get there fast enough."
"Are you all right? Where are you?"
"M'okay. You don't have to come away from school. We've taken care of… burnt the bones. All done. Gonna head back for the nest. I'll let you know once it's done. Just so you… just so you know."
It's only after the phone's gone dead and Sam's sat down, waiting to see if he's going to cry, that he registers Dean's use of 'we'.
:::
Three days later and Dean calls to say the nest's been dealt with. It's a brief voicemail message and when Sam tries calling back, he gets a cool, automated voice telling him the number he's called is unavailable.
He can't stay at Stanford after that. He tells Jess he's going to stay with relatives and he'll be back in a week or so. But he's got no intention of coming back and he knows it, even as he packs only the bare essentials into a duffel bag and leaves most his clothes hanging in the wardrobe, and the photos of him and Jess goofing around on the beach pinned to the fridge.
He steals a car at random and drives out of Palo Alto, out of California. Every time he tries to call Dean, the same blank voice tells him number unavailable.
:::
It's odd coming back to Pastor Jim, like looking over study notes for an exam that's long since passed. It's something Sam had thought he could forget. Jim's a little more salt'n'pepper in the hair than he used to be, more lined in the face but it suits him well enough and his smile when he sees Sam is as bright as ever.
The shine goes off him a bit when Sam straight away asks about Dean.
"He's still hunting, as far as I know," says Jim.
"As far as you know?"
"I think he's switched to a new phone. He didn't give me the new number. But I hear things and… he's still hunting. He's getting himself quite a reputation."
Sam has a shower before he goes - his clothes have been itching for days and his hair is lank and smelly. He'd forgotten how quickly life on the road dirties you up.
:::
"That's John Winchester's boy," says the guy when Sam shows him the photo. He tilts his head up to properly study Sam through narrowed, distrustful eyes. "What d'you want with him?"
"He's my brother. I'm looking for him."
Either the hunter isn't convinced or doesn't care. He shakes his head, shrugs and goes back to cleaning the gun parts scattered across the roadhouse table.
"Haven't seen him for months. Heard he was in Fitchburg a coupla weeks back."
Sam glances about but none of the other hunters seem inclined to offer any further information. They don't even acknowledge his presence. This is a place for hunters and Sam is just a dead hunter's son. He's tolerated but he's nothing to them. The woman tending bar offers him a washed out smile as he heads to the door.
"If he passes through, I'll tell him you're looking, honey."
:::
It's from Bobby that Sam gets the first real sighting of Dean since he started searching almost two months ago. And it's from Bobby that Sam learns that he should be worrying. It's not anything that Bobby says outright but then that's not how Bobby talks.
"He was here about two weeks after your Dad died. But he hasn't been back since," says Bobby, as he ladles stew into a bowl for Sam. It's a basic stew, a few vegetables and a cut of meat but it's real cooking and it makes Sam's mouth water. "He's got himself a hunting partner. Man by the name of Gordon Walker."
The thought of Dean hunting with anyone other than John is alien and Sam blinks at Bobby for a second or two.
"Yeah? What's he like?"
"Always gets the job done does Gordon."
The way Bobby says the words is mild but they sound a warning in Sam's ears. Bobby doesn't meet his eyes and Sam pushes his still half-full bowl of stew away from himself. He doesn't think he's going to be able to eat until he's found Dean.
"You know where he is?" says Sam.
Bobby shakes his head but writes something down on a sheet of paper and gives it to Sam. It's a name and a number.
"Ken Berkowitz bumped into them on a hunt last week in Richmond. You might get something from him."
:::
Ken's in the hospital it turns out. He's conscious and on the mend but he looks to have taken one hell of a beating. Sam's heart clenches at the sight of his sprawling bruises. He's been away from the job so long he's been remembering the risks only in theory. Dean's out there, probably getting hurt over and over again, and there's some stranger at his side to protect him, and not Sam.
When he vouched for Sam, Bobby hadn't told Ken that Sam was Dean's brother and Sam doesn't feel any need to enlighten him, especially not when he sees the look on Ken's face when he mentions Dean's name.
"Yeah, I've got an idea where he was headed. But I don’t know why you'd be looking for the bastard. He's nothing but trouble."
"I thought he was helping you out on the hunt," says Sam.
"If you consider him and Walker barging in and taking over, then yeah, he was real helpful. Ruthless sonofabitch. You want my advice, kid? You leave him and Gordon Walker well alone."
There's been a sense that Dean's changed in some fundamental way growing in Sam for months now. But he still gets riled. So he smiles thinly and waves a hand at the red and purple splotches of bruises and the jagged lines of stitches.
"Looks like you needed his help."
Ken stares at him then laughs in his face. It's an ugly, hacking sound.
"You think the hunt did this to me? Hell no! Gordon did this to me when I objected to him slaughtering a little girl. And your friend Dean? Stood and watched."
:::
He finds them one sunny morning in a motel just outside of Akron exactly four months after he started looking. He's waved Dean's photo at the desk clerk and he's been given the room number and he's knocked on the door and now he's just waiting to find out whether he's got any family left.
The door isn't opened immediately and when it is, it's not by someone he knows. He sure knows Sam though.
"Sammy!" he crows, teeth flashing pearly white against his skin in a smile. "Well would you look at that? The prodigal returns! Fuck but Dean'll be pleased to see you! He's been going out of his mind!"
Sam stares at him and the guy pulls himself together but the smile doesn't waver.
"C'mon, come on in," he says. He grabs Sam's hand and shakes it enthusiastically before tugging him into the room. "I'm Gordon. Your brother and me have been helping each other out."
The sound of the shower thuds through the motel room and the smell of coffee is thick from the two cups on the sideboard. With a small ache inside, Sam recognises other signs of his brother's presence in the room: his duffel, his jacket slung over the back of the chair, the Impala keys on a hook.
Gordon comes in behind him and throws a knife down on the bed that he must have been holding when he opened the door to Sam.
"Dean's in the shower but man, is he gonna be stoked! He thought you were still at school up until a few weeks ago, when we got news from Ellen Harvelle that you'd been looking for him."
Sam's still looking at the knife, the blade a flat silver shape over the thin, rumpled sheets. Two things occur to Sam at once and they both make him want to be ill. The knife is Dean's, the one he sleeps with under his pillow. And though the room is a twin, only one of the beds is slept in. It's not that the other's been made, it's that it hasn't even been touched.
He looks at Gordon again with sharper scrutiny but he's apparently oblivious. He's too busy making Sam a cup of coffee as hot and black as Dean likes his.
The bathroom door opens and a blast of steam hits Sam. Dean wanders out with a towel about his hips and his hair in soft, damp spikes. He freezes when he sees Sam, lips parted and eyes wide and it should be a moment for just them but Sam's too conscious of Gordon being right there, beaming as he looks between the two of them.
Then Sam's enveloped in a quick hug, dragged against the warm hard lines of Dean's body, and he can't think of anything beyond the bizarre little thought of how much shorter and smaller Dean seems to have become.
"Jesus, Sammy," Dean breathes as he pulls back to study him at arm's length. "You need a goddamn shower."
Sam's lips twitch into an instinctive smile.
"Thanks. Nice of you to say."
"Seriously, you stink," says Dean with a laugh and claps him on the back. "But man is it good to see you! Don't you ever do that to me again! I was thinking you were safe at Stanford then I hear you're traipsing across the freaking country, on your own!"
"You could have called," says Sam.
"Dean lost his phone a few months back," Gordon cuts in and Sam bristles that he's felt he needs to come to Dean's rescue. It hadn't been meant as a rebuke.
"Didn’t have your number. Tried calling Stanford and they told me you'd left. No forwarding address, nothing. I could kick your ass for all the stress you put me through!"
There's a second when Sam thinks Dean is going to hug him again and then suddenly Gordon's in the way. He's only picking up a t-shirt to hand to Dean but his arm cuts right between them.
"Tell you what, Sammy," he says. "You go get checked in while Dean gets dressed and we'll all meet up for breakfast."
When Dean grins and starts to sort out his clothes, Sam figures that Gordon's suggestions are only suggestions in the same way John's were.
:::
Whether he actually expects Sam to like him or not isn't clear, but what is is that Gordon considers Sam part of Dean's past. When Sam and Dean fall too deeply into reminiscing, Gordon's always got some anecdote from when Dean and he were hunting wendigos or when Dean and he had to pretend to be lifeguards. There's a whole new book about Dean: Gordon wrote it and Sam's not in it.
Sam doesn't grow to like Gordon. He doesn't even grow find him not as bad as he thought.
"I first met Dean when he was out on a hunt with your dad," says Gordon over dinner one night. "We hit it off straight away."
He doesn't say how he got on with John but Sam's got a pretty clear idea. Sam tags along on a routine salt and burn and it's little things but he soon realises that Gordon's obsessive need to kill things is going to one day mean the death of Dean. And Dean doesn't even see it.
"I spoke to Ken Berkowitz when I was looking for you," says Sam. It's one of those moments when it's just him and Dean, the kind of moment so rare they're virtually extinct. "He says Gordon tried to kill a little girl. And that he put him in the hospital when Ken tried to stop him."
Dean looks uncomfortable but shrugs, takes another swallow of beer and runs his thumb through the dribble of foam down the side of the bottle.
"It had to be done. She wasn't a little girl anymore. Gordon said-"
"Gordon said? Did Gordon give you an order? Since when are you Gordon's soldier, Dean?"
"You were gone, dude. I didn't think you were ever coming back. What did you expect me to do?"
Sam's willing to bet the thought that he doesn't have to be anyone's soldier never even entered Dean's head.
:::
Gordon's fucking Dean. There's no doubt about it. Sam doesn't know how long it's been going on but he thinks it's a while. He hasn't brought it up with Dean because he doesn't know how to without being told that it's none of his goddamn business. Which it kind of isn't, but also is in the most deep-down way.
He's tried to separate his own dislike of Gordon from his practical concerns over the guy's apparent total lack of sanity or mercy when it comes to hunting. But there's no being reasonable when he thinks about the fact Dean and Gordon are fucking.
After they get back to motel one night, following a cheap dinner at a diner and the rough hunting of a werewolf - where Dean had held the snarling creature down while Gordon had slid shards of silver beneath its nails (just to see if it kills it, he'd said) - and Sam's in the bathroom, washing off the blood and slobber, he hears them.
It's his own name he hears first over the sound of the water and he starts towards the door before he hears the end of the sentence.
"…in the very next room, you freak. We're not doing this when my kid brother could walk in on us at any minute."
"Oh come on, baby. We're sharing a room with him. It's not like-" Gordon's words trail off into a wet, slick sound and when he speaks again, his voice is hoarse and breathless. "Not like we're gonna get much chance unless I take you out to the parking lot and pound you through the backseat of the car. That what you want? Save Sammy's virgin eyes and get fucked in the car where anyone but him could see?"
"Gordon-"
Surrender is imminent. And apparently Gordon can hear it as clearly as Sam can.
"C'mon, Dean. He's having a shower. He'll be in there a while. We've got time. You know you want to."
Dean groans and then there are no more words. There don't have to be because Sam can imagine it all. He waits until his heart settles lower in his throat. Then he licks his parched lips and inches the door open. Gordon's got Dean bent over the bed, holding his hips steady as he penetrates him, nudging his cock into him little by little while Dean bites down on his lip to keep quiet.
Sam draws the door closed again and if he jerks off in the shower, it doesn't mean anything. Hatred may be one step away from passion but there's no way he has any sexual desire for Gordon whatsoever. Sam's self-aware enough to have no doubts on that level.
:::
It's at the end of a hunt - one that would have got Dean killed if Sam hadn't been there to rectify Gordon's suicidally violent plan - and he's helping Gordon reload the Impala trunk while Dean is still in the undergrowth, discarding the ashes.
"You don't have to do this, y'know," says Gordon.
Sam shrugs and pushes Gordon's cleaver into his hands for him to deal with.
"Okay. I'll meet you back at the motel." He leaves off, once you're done fucking my brother.
He starts to turn away but Gordon catches his arm.
"No, I mean, you don't have to come hunting with us. I know how much you hate the life and it's a decent thing you did, coming back to help your brother. But I've got his back and we can drop you back at Stanford soon as you like."
It's Gordon's first overt attempt to get rid of Sam. He's been picking up for a while that Gordon would be happier if it was just he and Dean and he's kind of been waiting for this. It still makes him mad though and he wonders if Gordon's been dropping the same hints to Dean. He wonders if Dean's changed so much that he'd consider agreeing. And that thought makes him cold inside.
"That's thoughtful of you, Gordon. But I'm going to be sticking around. Sorry if that gets in the way of your plans."
"It's dangerous, man. You don't know how broken Dean was after your dad died. I swear, if I hadn't been there to hold him together, he'd've done something really stupid."
Sam arches an eyebrow, tightens his lips.
"What's your point?"
"He couldn't take losing you too. It'd drive him over the edge. You don't wanna be doing this. And Dean'd want you back at Stanford, where you'd be safe."
Sam's got five clear inches on Gordon and he uses every one of them to loom above him, to make it damn well obvious that he's not some stupid kid who can be manipulated and manoeuvred. Dean may have been fucked up enough in the head to have fallen in with Gordon and his crazy crusade but Sam has always seen a lot more clearly than him.
"Wow, that's an impressive talent you have, to know exactly what everyone wants. And what about you, huh? You want me out of the way so you can have my brother on his knees for a post-hunt blowjob whenever it takes your mood? You want me gone so you can fuck him and throw his life around and warp his sense of right and wrong?"
Gordon stares at him and Sam instinctively weighs up which of his weak points to go for first should things get violent.
"You jealous, spoilt little shit. Listen to me, Dean and me, we're the same. Your brother's a born hunter, just like me. It's who we are and we look out for each other. But you? You ran away first chance you got. You gotta angst and fret over every single little detail. You see in so much grey you might as well be blind!"
In the middle of the argument, it's easy enough to miss one word and Sam doesn't pick up on jealous until Dean is back and they have to stop fighting.
:::
The nightmare's so vivid it wakes Sam. His first thought is to reach for Dean but then he remembers Dean's sharing the room next door with Gordon and Sam's on his own. He sits up and scrapes his hand through his sweaty hair while he tries to catch his breath. The sense of evil clings to his skin and he can't stop shivering. He curls into a ball, his fists pressing into his face.
The knock at the door is light but it still startles him. It's Dean and Sam feels a childish throb of relief at seeing him, even though it's obvious Dean hasn't been asleep and Sam has a really good idea what he's been doing from the dark mark of a mouth on his collarbone.
"Hey, you okay?" says Dean. He catches Sam's shoulders so he can look into his face. His expression goes worried from what he sees. "I heard you, crying out in your sleep. Nightmare?"
"Felt real."
He lets Dean settle him back in bed, drinks the glass of water Dean brings him and relaxes under the skim of Dean's knuckles over his cheek. It's dim even with the lamp on and Dean's face is cast in shadows. But his eyes are full of concern.
"It was just a dream. Go back to sleep."
"I don't think it was just a dream, Dean."
Dean curls around him on the bed and Sam feels the warmth of his breath on the back of his neck and can't help but feel safer.
"Of course it was. What else is it gonna be?"
"Sometimes… sometimes I dream things that happen. They come true, Dean."
He feels Dean go tense beside him, but just for a second. Then Dean's lips brush the side of his throat and his arm about him tightens. His voice is soft and sleepy.
"Idiot. They're dreams. Forget 'em. Seriously."
:::
They only talk about the dreams again once. Dean waits until Gordon is getting him a refill at the bar and then he turns to Sam and says, "I think you're crazy. I think they're nothing but dreams. But we keep this between you and me. Don't tell Gordon. He takes some stuff way too seriously."
It's the first time since they came back together that Sam's had a sense of him having a part of Dean to which Gordon doesn't have any access.
Later that night when Gordon's determination to track a chupacabra back to its mate leads to Dean getting his arm almost ripped off, Sam hangs on desperately to there being something of Dean which doesn't belong to Gordon.
He's not meant to be there and he knows it's kind of creepy to spy on them but he worries about whether Gordon does as good a job of stitching Dean back together as he does almost getting him torn apart. Dean's sitting on the ground against the Impala, got his sleeve rolled up and the neck of a bottle of vodka between his lips, while Gordon treats the wound.
"Ah, it's nothing," says Gordon. "Go easy on it and it'll be fine by the end of the week."
"Hurts like a bitch," says Dean. His complexion is ashen beneath the blood smeared over his face, catching perversely on his cheekbones and across his lips.
Gordon cups Dean's cheeks in his hands, unexpectedly gentle, and looks him in the eyes.
"You did good."
Dean starts to smile but Gordon covers his lips with a kiss. It starts gentle and quickly turns hungry. Dean's wounded arm hangs uselessly at his side but he presses up into the kiss, legs spreading when Gordon pushes a knee between his thighs. Gordon's hand settles on the sliver of bare belly exposed where Dean's t-shirt has ridden up and Sam watches to see whether his hand moves up under the t-shirt or lower to Dean's fly.
The question's never answered because it turns out Sam can't actually bring himself to watch.
:::
Rumours of a possessed girl bring the three of them to Donaldsonville. The girl's no more than seventeen, wispy and blonde, paper-thin. Blood drips steadily on the floor as she strains against her binds. There's a new bruise covering half her face from where Dean smacked her when she tried to break free of Gordon's grip on her. The smell of burnt flesh, sour and sharp, is thick in the air from where she's been doused over and over in holy water.
Sam's halfway through the exorcism when the girls stops twisting against her bloodied ropes and shrieks, loud and harsh.
"It doesn't matter what you do! You're all gonna die in the war anyway! You're all gonna die!"
"Wait," says Gordon, laying his hand over the page of Latin from which Sam is reading. He turns to the demon and says, "What war?"
And the demon looks at Sam and screams with laughter.
:::
The girl doesn't make it. Sam's in too much shock at what he's hearing to muster the strength to rein Gordon in when he needs to. She dies, slumps limply in the chair and the blood goes on dripping.
"No."
Sam blinks at the sound of Dean's voice and looks over at him, dazed. But Dean's not looking back at him. His eyes are fixed on Gordon and Sam follows his gaze to him and sees death on Gordon's face and a shotgun in his hands.
"Dean," says Gordon. The gun glints dully as he adjusts his grip on it, twisting his fingers over the metal like it almost hurts him to touch it.
"Demonic rambling. It doesn't mean a frickin' thing. Sam's not one of them. Don't you think I'd know if my own brother was a goddamn psychic?"
As Dean gets angrier, Gordon gets calmer, like he's dealing with a child throwing a tantrum. Sam might just as well not be there.
"Not really. You don't seem to know that your own brother wants to fuck you. I don't think you'd know anything about Sammy if you didn't like what it was telling you." He waits a second, while Dean visibly blanches, and then adds, "And I know about the dreams. The ones that keep waking him up. I've heard him, same as you have. It makes sense."
Their shadows slant across the floor as Dean somehow drifts in front of Sam and Gordon passes him by, like the orbits of uncharted celestial bodies and Sam's a fixed point. Slowly, Gordon raises the shotgun and Sam thinks, as he looks towards Dean, he sees something like sorrow in his eyes, dark and soft.
"I'm sorry, Dean. I really am. I know he's your brother but you know it's gotta be done. If you could think clearly, you'd do it too. You would." Gordon's eyes go to Sam and he still looks regretful. No matter how Sam's come between Dean and Gordon, Sam can honestly believe that's not why Gordon's doing this. "He's gonna be on their side and we can't give them any more soldiers. We just can't. We've gotta do what we've gotta do, you know that."
"Yeah," says Dean, and puts a bullet through Gordon's temple.
Gordon's dead before he hits the ground, before Dean's even lowered his handgun. His eyes are winter-bright and they linger on where Gordon's lying in the mingling pool of his blood and the dead girl's. Then he looks at Sam and there's a hint of defiance in his voice, as if he's expecting Sam to tell him off for saving his life.
"I did what I had to. You or him. No shades of grey."
~end
Life in Monochrome
(Gordon/Dean Sam/Dean UST, 4426 words, r-rated, AU)
John dies while Sam's at Stanford and Sam discovers Dean has a new hunting partner.
Sam's just coming out of a class when Dean calls and tells him that John's dead. His voice isn't much more than a rasp but he's keeping it together. Even as Sam tries to take it all in, he knows that Dean's not about to break; he's in a period of action and denial and Sam's shut out of it.
"Vampire took his throat out," says Dean. "Saw it happen. Just couldn't get there fast enough."
"Are you all right? Where are you?"
"M'okay. You don't have to come away from school. We've taken care of… burnt the bones. All done. Gonna head back for the nest. I'll let you know once it's done. Just so you… just so you know."
It's only after the phone's gone dead and Sam's sat down, waiting to see if he's going to cry, that he registers Dean's use of 'we'.
:::
Three days later and Dean calls to say the nest's been dealt with. It's a brief voicemail message and when Sam tries calling back, he gets a cool, automated voice telling him the number he's called is unavailable.
He can't stay at Stanford after that. He tells Jess he's going to stay with relatives and he'll be back in a week or so. But he's got no intention of coming back and he knows it, even as he packs only the bare essentials into a duffel bag and leaves most his clothes hanging in the wardrobe, and the photos of him and Jess goofing around on the beach pinned to the fridge.
He steals a car at random and drives out of Palo Alto, out of California. Every time he tries to call Dean, the same blank voice tells him number unavailable.
:::
It's odd coming back to Pastor Jim, like looking over study notes for an exam that's long since passed. It's something Sam had thought he could forget. Jim's a little more salt'n'pepper in the hair than he used to be, more lined in the face but it suits him well enough and his smile when he sees Sam is as bright as ever.
The shine goes off him a bit when Sam straight away asks about Dean.
"He's still hunting, as far as I know," says Jim.
"As far as you know?"
"I think he's switched to a new phone. He didn't give me the new number. But I hear things and… he's still hunting. He's getting himself quite a reputation."
Sam has a shower before he goes - his clothes have been itching for days and his hair is lank and smelly. He'd forgotten how quickly life on the road dirties you up.
:::
"That's John Winchester's boy," says the guy when Sam shows him the photo. He tilts his head up to properly study Sam through narrowed, distrustful eyes. "What d'you want with him?"
"He's my brother. I'm looking for him."
Either the hunter isn't convinced or doesn't care. He shakes his head, shrugs and goes back to cleaning the gun parts scattered across the roadhouse table.
"Haven't seen him for months. Heard he was in Fitchburg a coupla weeks back."
Sam glances about but none of the other hunters seem inclined to offer any further information. They don't even acknowledge his presence. This is a place for hunters and Sam is just a dead hunter's son. He's tolerated but he's nothing to them. The woman tending bar offers him a washed out smile as he heads to the door.
"If he passes through, I'll tell him you're looking, honey."
:::
It's from Bobby that Sam gets the first real sighting of Dean since he started searching almost two months ago. And it's from Bobby that Sam learns that he should be worrying. It's not anything that Bobby says outright but then that's not how Bobby talks.
"He was here about two weeks after your Dad died. But he hasn't been back since," says Bobby, as he ladles stew into a bowl for Sam. It's a basic stew, a few vegetables and a cut of meat but it's real cooking and it makes Sam's mouth water. "He's got himself a hunting partner. Man by the name of Gordon Walker."
The thought of Dean hunting with anyone other than John is alien and Sam blinks at Bobby for a second or two.
"Yeah? What's he like?"
"Always gets the job done does Gordon."
The way Bobby says the words is mild but they sound a warning in Sam's ears. Bobby doesn't meet his eyes and Sam pushes his still half-full bowl of stew away from himself. He doesn't think he's going to be able to eat until he's found Dean.
"You know where he is?" says Sam.
Bobby shakes his head but writes something down on a sheet of paper and gives it to Sam. It's a name and a number.
"Ken Berkowitz bumped into them on a hunt last week in Richmond. You might get something from him."
:::
Ken's in the hospital it turns out. He's conscious and on the mend but he looks to have taken one hell of a beating. Sam's heart clenches at the sight of his sprawling bruises. He's been away from the job so long he's been remembering the risks only in theory. Dean's out there, probably getting hurt over and over again, and there's some stranger at his side to protect him, and not Sam.
When he vouched for Sam, Bobby hadn't told Ken that Sam was Dean's brother and Sam doesn't feel any need to enlighten him, especially not when he sees the look on Ken's face when he mentions Dean's name.
"Yeah, I've got an idea where he was headed. But I don’t know why you'd be looking for the bastard. He's nothing but trouble."
"I thought he was helping you out on the hunt," says Sam.
"If you consider him and Walker barging in and taking over, then yeah, he was real helpful. Ruthless sonofabitch. You want my advice, kid? You leave him and Gordon Walker well alone."
There's been a sense that Dean's changed in some fundamental way growing in Sam for months now. But he still gets riled. So he smiles thinly and waves a hand at the red and purple splotches of bruises and the jagged lines of stitches.
"Looks like you needed his help."
Ken stares at him then laughs in his face. It's an ugly, hacking sound.
"You think the hunt did this to me? Hell no! Gordon did this to me when I objected to him slaughtering a little girl. And your friend Dean? Stood and watched."
:::
He finds them one sunny morning in a motel just outside of Akron exactly four months after he started looking. He's waved Dean's photo at the desk clerk and he's been given the room number and he's knocked on the door and now he's just waiting to find out whether he's got any family left.
The door isn't opened immediately and when it is, it's not by someone he knows. He sure knows Sam though.
"Sammy!" he crows, teeth flashing pearly white against his skin in a smile. "Well would you look at that? The prodigal returns! Fuck but Dean'll be pleased to see you! He's been going out of his mind!"
Sam stares at him and the guy pulls himself together but the smile doesn't waver.
"C'mon, come on in," he says. He grabs Sam's hand and shakes it enthusiastically before tugging him into the room. "I'm Gordon. Your brother and me have been helping each other out."
The sound of the shower thuds through the motel room and the smell of coffee is thick from the two cups on the sideboard. With a small ache inside, Sam recognises other signs of his brother's presence in the room: his duffel, his jacket slung over the back of the chair, the Impala keys on a hook.
Gordon comes in behind him and throws a knife down on the bed that he must have been holding when he opened the door to Sam.
"Dean's in the shower but man, is he gonna be stoked! He thought you were still at school up until a few weeks ago, when we got news from Ellen Harvelle that you'd been looking for him."
Sam's still looking at the knife, the blade a flat silver shape over the thin, rumpled sheets. Two things occur to Sam at once and they both make him want to be ill. The knife is Dean's, the one he sleeps with under his pillow. And though the room is a twin, only one of the beds is slept in. It's not that the other's been made, it's that it hasn't even been touched.
He looks at Gordon again with sharper scrutiny but he's apparently oblivious. He's too busy making Sam a cup of coffee as hot and black as Dean likes his.
The bathroom door opens and a blast of steam hits Sam. Dean wanders out with a towel about his hips and his hair in soft, damp spikes. He freezes when he sees Sam, lips parted and eyes wide and it should be a moment for just them but Sam's too conscious of Gordon being right there, beaming as he looks between the two of them.
Then Sam's enveloped in a quick hug, dragged against the warm hard lines of Dean's body, and he can't think of anything beyond the bizarre little thought of how much shorter and smaller Dean seems to have become.
"Jesus, Sammy," Dean breathes as he pulls back to study him at arm's length. "You need a goddamn shower."
Sam's lips twitch into an instinctive smile.
"Thanks. Nice of you to say."
"Seriously, you stink," says Dean with a laugh and claps him on the back. "But man is it good to see you! Don't you ever do that to me again! I was thinking you were safe at Stanford then I hear you're traipsing across the freaking country, on your own!"
"You could have called," says Sam.
"Dean lost his phone a few months back," Gordon cuts in and Sam bristles that he's felt he needs to come to Dean's rescue. It hadn't been meant as a rebuke.
"Didn’t have your number. Tried calling Stanford and they told me you'd left. No forwarding address, nothing. I could kick your ass for all the stress you put me through!"
There's a second when Sam thinks Dean is going to hug him again and then suddenly Gordon's in the way. He's only picking up a t-shirt to hand to Dean but his arm cuts right between them.
"Tell you what, Sammy," he says. "You go get checked in while Dean gets dressed and we'll all meet up for breakfast."
When Dean grins and starts to sort out his clothes, Sam figures that Gordon's suggestions are only suggestions in the same way John's were.
:::
Whether he actually expects Sam to like him or not isn't clear, but what is is that Gordon considers Sam part of Dean's past. When Sam and Dean fall too deeply into reminiscing, Gordon's always got some anecdote from when Dean and he were hunting wendigos or when Dean and he had to pretend to be lifeguards. There's a whole new book about Dean: Gordon wrote it and Sam's not in it.
Sam doesn't grow to like Gordon. He doesn't even grow find him not as bad as he thought.
"I first met Dean when he was out on a hunt with your dad," says Gordon over dinner one night. "We hit it off straight away."
He doesn't say how he got on with John but Sam's got a pretty clear idea. Sam tags along on a routine salt and burn and it's little things but he soon realises that Gordon's obsessive need to kill things is going to one day mean the death of Dean. And Dean doesn't even see it.
"I spoke to Ken Berkowitz when I was looking for you," says Sam. It's one of those moments when it's just him and Dean, the kind of moment so rare they're virtually extinct. "He says Gordon tried to kill a little girl. And that he put him in the hospital when Ken tried to stop him."
Dean looks uncomfortable but shrugs, takes another swallow of beer and runs his thumb through the dribble of foam down the side of the bottle.
"It had to be done. She wasn't a little girl anymore. Gordon said-"
"Gordon said? Did Gordon give you an order? Since when are you Gordon's soldier, Dean?"
"You were gone, dude. I didn't think you were ever coming back. What did you expect me to do?"
Sam's willing to bet the thought that he doesn't have to be anyone's soldier never even entered Dean's head.
:::
Gordon's fucking Dean. There's no doubt about it. Sam doesn't know how long it's been going on but he thinks it's a while. He hasn't brought it up with Dean because he doesn't know how to without being told that it's none of his goddamn business. Which it kind of isn't, but also is in the most deep-down way.
He's tried to separate his own dislike of Gordon from his practical concerns over the guy's apparent total lack of sanity or mercy when it comes to hunting. But there's no being reasonable when he thinks about the fact Dean and Gordon are fucking.
After they get back to motel one night, following a cheap dinner at a diner and the rough hunting of a werewolf - where Dean had held the snarling creature down while Gordon had slid shards of silver beneath its nails (just to see if it kills it, he'd said) - and Sam's in the bathroom, washing off the blood and slobber, he hears them.
It's his own name he hears first over the sound of the water and he starts towards the door before he hears the end of the sentence.
"…in the very next room, you freak. We're not doing this when my kid brother could walk in on us at any minute."
"Oh come on, baby. We're sharing a room with him. It's not like-" Gordon's words trail off into a wet, slick sound and when he speaks again, his voice is hoarse and breathless. "Not like we're gonna get much chance unless I take you out to the parking lot and pound you through the backseat of the car. That what you want? Save Sammy's virgin eyes and get fucked in the car where anyone but him could see?"
"Gordon-"
Surrender is imminent. And apparently Gordon can hear it as clearly as Sam can.
"C'mon, Dean. He's having a shower. He'll be in there a while. We've got time. You know you want to."
Dean groans and then there are no more words. There don't have to be because Sam can imagine it all. He waits until his heart settles lower in his throat. Then he licks his parched lips and inches the door open. Gordon's got Dean bent over the bed, holding his hips steady as he penetrates him, nudging his cock into him little by little while Dean bites down on his lip to keep quiet.
Sam draws the door closed again and if he jerks off in the shower, it doesn't mean anything. Hatred may be one step away from passion but there's no way he has any sexual desire for Gordon whatsoever. Sam's self-aware enough to have no doubts on that level.
:::
It's at the end of a hunt - one that would have got Dean killed if Sam hadn't been there to rectify Gordon's suicidally violent plan - and he's helping Gordon reload the Impala trunk while Dean is still in the undergrowth, discarding the ashes.
"You don't have to do this, y'know," says Gordon.
Sam shrugs and pushes Gordon's cleaver into his hands for him to deal with.
"Okay. I'll meet you back at the motel." He leaves off, once you're done fucking my brother.
He starts to turn away but Gordon catches his arm.
"No, I mean, you don't have to come hunting with us. I know how much you hate the life and it's a decent thing you did, coming back to help your brother. But I've got his back and we can drop you back at Stanford soon as you like."
It's Gordon's first overt attempt to get rid of Sam. He's been picking up for a while that Gordon would be happier if it was just he and Dean and he's kind of been waiting for this. It still makes him mad though and he wonders if Gordon's been dropping the same hints to Dean. He wonders if Dean's changed so much that he'd consider agreeing. And that thought makes him cold inside.
"That's thoughtful of you, Gordon. But I'm going to be sticking around. Sorry if that gets in the way of your plans."
"It's dangerous, man. You don't know how broken Dean was after your dad died. I swear, if I hadn't been there to hold him together, he'd've done something really stupid."
Sam arches an eyebrow, tightens his lips.
"What's your point?"
"He couldn't take losing you too. It'd drive him over the edge. You don't wanna be doing this. And Dean'd want you back at Stanford, where you'd be safe."
Sam's got five clear inches on Gordon and he uses every one of them to loom above him, to make it damn well obvious that he's not some stupid kid who can be manipulated and manoeuvred. Dean may have been fucked up enough in the head to have fallen in with Gordon and his crazy crusade but Sam has always seen a lot more clearly than him.
"Wow, that's an impressive talent you have, to know exactly what everyone wants. And what about you, huh? You want me out of the way so you can have my brother on his knees for a post-hunt blowjob whenever it takes your mood? You want me gone so you can fuck him and throw his life around and warp his sense of right and wrong?"
Gordon stares at him and Sam instinctively weighs up which of his weak points to go for first should things get violent.
"You jealous, spoilt little shit. Listen to me, Dean and me, we're the same. Your brother's a born hunter, just like me. It's who we are and we look out for each other. But you? You ran away first chance you got. You gotta angst and fret over every single little detail. You see in so much grey you might as well be blind!"
In the middle of the argument, it's easy enough to miss one word and Sam doesn't pick up on jealous until Dean is back and they have to stop fighting.
:::
The nightmare's so vivid it wakes Sam. His first thought is to reach for Dean but then he remembers Dean's sharing the room next door with Gordon and Sam's on his own. He sits up and scrapes his hand through his sweaty hair while he tries to catch his breath. The sense of evil clings to his skin and he can't stop shivering. He curls into a ball, his fists pressing into his face.
The knock at the door is light but it still startles him. It's Dean and Sam feels a childish throb of relief at seeing him, even though it's obvious Dean hasn't been asleep and Sam has a really good idea what he's been doing from the dark mark of a mouth on his collarbone.
"Hey, you okay?" says Dean. He catches Sam's shoulders so he can look into his face. His expression goes worried from what he sees. "I heard you, crying out in your sleep. Nightmare?"
"Felt real."
He lets Dean settle him back in bed, drinks the glass of water Dean brings him and relaxes under the skim of Dean's knuckles over his cheek. It's dim even with the lamp on and Dean's face is cast in shadows. But his eyes are full of concern.
"It was just a dream. Go back to sleep."
"I don't think it was just a dream, Dean."
Dean curls around him on the bed and Sam feels the warmth of his breath on the back of his neck and can't help but feel safer.
"Of course it was. What else is it gonna be?"
"Sometimes… sometimes I dream things that happen. They come true, Dean."
He feels Dean go tense beside him, but just for a second. Then Dean's lips brush the side of his throat and his arm about him tightens. His voice is soft and sleepy.
"Idiot. They're dreams. Forget 'em. Seriously."
:::
They only talk about the dreams again once. Dean waits until Gordon is getting him a refill at the bar and then he turns to Sam and says, "I think you're crazy. I think they're nothing but dreams. But we keep this between you and me. Don't tell Gordon. He takes some stuff way too seriously."
It's the first time since they came back together that Sam's had a sense of him having a part of Dean to which Gordon doesn't have any access.
Later that night when Gordon's determination to track a chupacabra back to its mate leads to Dean getting his arm almost ripped off, Sam hangs on desperately to there being something of Dean which doesn't belong to Gordon.
He's not meant to be there and he knows it's kind of creepy to spy on them but he worries about whether Gordon does as good a job of stitching Dean back together as he does almost getting him torn apart. Dean's sitting on the ground against the Impala, got his sleeve rolled up and the neck of a bottle of vodka between his lips, while Gordon treats the wound.
"Ah, it's nothing," says Gordon. "Go easy on it and it'll be fine by the end of the week."
"Hurts like a bitch," says Dean. His complexion is ashen beneath the blood smeared over his face, catching perversely on his cheekbones and across his lips.
Gordon cups Dean's cheeks in his hands, unexpectedly gentle, and looks him in the eyes.
"You did good."
Dean starts to smile but Gordon covers his lips with a kiss. It starts gentle and quickly turns hungry. Dean's wounded arm hangs uselessly at his side but he presses up into the kiss, legs spreading when Gordon pushes a knee between his thighs. Gordon's hand settles on the sliver of bare belly exposed where Dean's t-shirt has ridden up and Sam watches to see whether his hand moves up under the t-shirt or lower to Dean's fly.
The question's never answered because it turns out Sam can't actually bring himself to watch.
:::
Rumours of a possessed girl bring the three of them to Donaldsonville. The girl's no more than seventeen, wispy and blonde, paper-thin. Blood drips steadily on the floor as she strains against her binds. There's a new bruise covering half her face from where Dean smacked her when she tried to break free of Gordon's grip on her. The smell of burnt flesh, sour and sharp, is thick in the air from where she's been doused over and over in holy water.
Sam's halfway through the exorcism when the girls stops twisting against her bloodied ropes and shrieks, loud and harsh.
"It doesn't matter what you do! You're all gonna die in the war anyway! You're all gonna die!"
"Wait," says Gordon, laying his hand over the page of Latin from which Sam is reading. He turns to the demon and says, "What war?"
And the demon looks at Sam and screams with laughter.
:::
The girl doesn't make it. Sam's in too much shock at what he's hearing to muster the strength to rein Gordon in when he needs to. She dies, slumps limply in the chair and the blood goes on dripping.
"No."
Sam blinks at the sound of Dean's voice and looks over at him, dazed. But Dean's not looking back at him. His eyes are fixed on Gordon and Sam follows his gaze to him and sees death on Gordon's face and a shotgun in his hands.
"Dean," says Gordon. The gun glints dully as he adjusts his grip on it, twisting his fingers over the metal like it almost hurts him to touch it.
"Demonic rambling. It doesn't mean a frickin' thing. Sam's not one of them. Don't you think I'd know if my own brother was a goddamn psychic?"
As Dean gets angrier, Gordon gets calmer, like he's dealing with a child throwing a tantrum. Sam might just as well not be there.
"Not really. You don't seem to know that your own brother wants to fuck you. I don't think you'd know anything about Sammy if you didn't like what it was telling you." He waits a second, while Dean visibly blanches, and then adds, "And I know about the dreams. The ones that keep waking him up. I've heard him, same as you have. It makes sense."
Their shadows slant across the floor as Dean somehow drifts in front of Sam and Gordon passes him by, like the orbits of uncharted celestial bodies and Sam's a fixed point. Slowly, Gordon raises the shotgun and Sam thinks, as he looks towards Dean, he sees something like sorrow in his eyes, dark and soft.
"I'm sorry, Dean. I really am. I know he's your brother but you know it's gotta be done. If you could think clearly, you'd do it too. You would." Gordon's eyes go to Sam and he still looks regretful. No matter how Sam's come between Dean and Gordon, Sam can honestly believe that's not why Gordon's doing this. "He's gonna be on their side and we can't give them any more soldiers. We just can't. We've gotta do what we've gotta do, you know that."
"Yeah," says Dean, and puts a bullet through Gordon's temple.
Gordon's dead before he hits the ground, before Dean's even lowered his handgun. His eyes are winter-bright and they linger on where Gordon's lying in the mingling pool of his blood and the dead girl's. Then he looks at Sam and there's a hint of defiance in his voice, as if he's expecting Sam to tell him off for saving his life.
"I did what I had to. You or him. No shades of grey."
~end