A Womb of His Own - 6/21
Masterpost
Cas swore he had no idea how Sam had gotten out of the cage and how his soul had gotten left behind. His best guess, and one that Dean found entirely unsatisfying, was that it was an act of God, capital G. It was simultaneously sweet and pathetic that Cas still had that kind of faith.
Samuel was their second hope, but, Cas discovered, he’d come back with his soul intact. And he didn’t seem all that surprised to learn Sam hadn’t. Because they had bigger fish to fry at the moment, Dean let it go - but he wasn’t going to forget that Samuel had been with Sam an entire year. He had watched Sam hunt. He had to have known Sam was eating weirdly and that he didn’t sleep and didn’t care about victims, just did the job to do it. All of the Campbells must have seen that. And over the course of an entire year, none of them thought it was maybe a problem? They were at the top of the list of things Dean needed to take care of once he got his brother straightened out.
Samuel was at least useful in leading them to Crowley, who had made a deal with Samuel: hunt monsters in exchange for Mom coming back from the dead. As Dean tried to explain to Samuel without being so mean as to point directly at Sam, that didn’t always work out so well.
At least they knew who they needed to deal with if they wanted Sam’s soul back. If Crowley had really become the king of hell, then the odds of him being able to spring open Lucifer’s cage were pretty good. So, for the time being, they agreed: they would work for Crowley, but once they had Sam’s soul back, he was going down.
Those first few weeks were difficult as Sam and Dean tried to figure out how to work with each other. Sam tried to imitate his old self, but that soon started pissing Dean off because a. it wasn’t the same thing - Sam wasn’t a good enough performer, and b. it only reminded him that Sam had been faking it before. Eventually Sam gave up and just let loose the dogs of soullessness. The effect was somewhere between Tourette’s and jihadist.
It maybe caused Dean to snap right around the time he was abducted by fairies - yes, fairies - and then chased by a redcap. He’d wailed on the thing before it could kill him, only to get pulled off it by the police and see that it was actually a midget in a suit. A respectable midget, and he’d been yelling about fairies, and the entire town of Elwood, Indiana, thought he was a violent homophobe. He’d gotten arrested for committing a hate crime, which was completely unfair since 1. hate crimes against actual fairies (the supernatural kind) were totally allowed, and 2. half the people watching on the street probably were violent homophobes, and none of them had been arrested.
They let him stew in his cell for over an hour before the sheriff came to visit him.
“I’m just trying to figure out exactly what kind of hate crime this even was.”
“It wasn’t a hate crime,” Dean said for the fifth time that night.
“I mean, if this gentlemen were a full-sized homosexual, would that be okay with you?”
“I don’t hate any size person,” he said, and it was true, and for good measure he tried his best to add, “or any…gay…guy.”
That part of the sentence was a little more complicated. Two girls who wanted to get it on with each other? Hells yeah. And if they wanted to do it in front of a webcam, even better. Two dudes? He wouldn’t hold it against them, but it wasn’t his thing.
Except for the part where he’d been doing it for the past few months. Huh.
Before he could commit himself to the throes of a sexual identity crisis, he decided it didn’t count. He wasn’t having gay sex. He was having sex with his brother. Totally different.
Somewhere, in the recesses of his mind, in the part that was just damn tired of thirty years of denial about everything and everyone, he had the suspicious thought that part of his rage had been about that.
He was still mulling it all over when the redcap showed back up and started pounding on him again. It felt like a cleansing.
“I would really appreciate it if you would stop staring at me.” Dean could tell without turning his head that Sam was watching him; he’d become especially attuned to the soulless stare. He was also a little hurt that Sam had turned down the beer he’d offered.
“The sun is shining in my eyes.”
“You’ve been staring at me the entire time we’ve been back together.”
“This is the first time you said anything about it.”
Dean slid off the hood of the car. The sun really was shining right in their eyes, but he also needed to put a little distance between him and his brother. “I was trying to be nice.”
Sam gave an awkward laugh. “So now that you know I don’t have a soul, you’re done being nice? Is that how this is going to work? You know, it’s not like it’s my fault. It’s not really fair of you to take it out on me.”
It wasn’t fair to take it out on respectable midgets or fairies either, but someone had to bear the brunt.
His beer finished, Dean chucked the bottle into the nearby field, feeling an immense sense of pleasure at littering. Some small reminder to the world that he had been there, that his life mattered. “It’s not my fault you got me to - I wouldn’t have -”
“You wouldn’t have slept with me if you’d have known I didn’t have a soul?” Sam slid off the car and stepped up behind Dean, causing him to jump. “I’m pretty sure you would have.”
“Step back, Sam.”
“Or maybe you wouldn’t have,” Sam conceded. “Maybe me being soulless was the push we needed, you know? Might not be such a bad thing.”
“Might not - might not be a bad thing?” Dean echoed with disbelief. “It might not be a bad thing that your soul is down there with Michael and Lucifer, and god only knows what they are doing to it? It might not be a bad thing that you’re up here, like that -” he gestured vaguely at Sam’s body - “and we’re - it’s a bad thing, Sam! A very bad thing!”
“Jesus, Dean, just because I don’t have any feelings doesn’t mean you should try to hurt me.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you, but you’re obviously not the best judge of what is and isn’t a bad thing, okay? Newsflash: having sex with your brother is always a bad thing!” Dean stormed off a few paces, trying to collect himself. He’d sworn he wasn’t going to let Sam ruffle his feathers anymore, not now that he knew Sam couldn’t help it. It just wasn’t productive. But it was a hard promise to keep.
He rubbed a hand over his face and took a deep breath. When he turned around, Sam was sitting on the hood of the car, his head hanging down. He looked up as Dean approached, and if Dean hadn’t heard it straight from Cas that Sam was soulless, he would have thought Sam was about to cry.
“You okay?”
“Do you care?”
“Of course I care.”
“What do you want from me, Dean?” Sam asked. “You don’t want me to fake it, but you don’t like me when I don’t. I just don’t know how to win here.”
What Dean wanted was for the real Sam to be back. He wanted to erase the past few months, to have never allowed himself to get sucked into such a dangerous and toxic relationship, and to have never ruined everything with Lisa and Ben. He wanted the Campbells not to exist, he wanted not to work for Crowley, and he wanted to be able to look Sam in the eye and know he was as important to Sam as Sam was to him.
“Just be you.”
“I am being me,” Sam insisted with a knowing arch of his eyebrows.
“No. That is not you, okay? I’ve known your entire life, and the real you does not…”
“You can’t even say it.” It sounded like an accusation.
“Sam, we’re not doing that anymore. That’s over.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought - I only did it because…” Realizing how condescending it was to say you’d only slept with someone because you’d thought it would help them, Dean didn’t finish.
Sam understood anyway. “Man, the lengths you will go to,” he said more to himself. He smoothed a hand over Dean’s cheek, which was still bruised from his fight with the redcap. Sam’s touch was surprisingly gentle, and although Dean was not backing down on the promise he’d made to both of them that they weren’t going down that road anymore, he let himself take comfort for a minute. It was the first time Sam had touched him like that, in a way that had nothing to do with hunting, first aid, or getting off.
“Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?”
Dean jerked his head away. “You just banged that hippie chick.”
Sam didn’t bother hiding his smile. “You’re jealous.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are. But you shouldn’t be. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Oh, and this does?” Dean hated - hated - himself for asking that.
“Yeah,” Sam said quietly.
“I thought you - how is that even possible for you? I mean, with no soul?”
Sam shrugged. He squinted a little at the sunlight, which highlighted the slight reds of his hair. He looked golden. Touched. Special.
It was moments like that, when Sam almost seemed tender, that Dean could fool himself into believing he was with his brother. Or that giving this to soulless Sam would help him turn back into the real thing. But Sam wasn’t Sleeping Beauty. He wasn’t just going to wake up after being kissed. His soul was out there, waiting for Dean to save it. And Dean wasn’t going to let him down.
They dicked around for weeks without getting anywhere. They hunted harder than they had in years to turn monsters over to Crowley. After each hunt, they’d retreat to some rundown shack or motel room, where Dean would contemplate how the line between good and bad was getting blurrier and blurrier with each passing day.
“We’ve been going on these freaking Crowley runs, and it's not getting us anywhere.”
“Dean -”
“The only thing that’s really changed is now I need a daily rape shower.”
Sam gave a mirthless laugh, probably guessing - correctly - that his brother was talking as much about working with demons as fucking him. “Okay, you're right. Let's go with Plan B. Oh yeah, we don't have one. So until we do, sorry, dude, stock up on soap-on-a-rope.” To punctuate the thought, Sam positioned himself behind Dean and thrust forward a few times into his ass. He was half-hard.
“Get off me,” Dean demanded through clenched teeth.
Sam actually took a step back, to Dean’s surprise. “Look, if you hate working for Crowley so much, then let’s just quit. He’s probably not gonna give me my soul back anyway, and we both know we’re doing fine without it. I’m a better hunter now.”
“You’re a ruthless hunter,” Dean corrected.
Sam frowned, and, if Dean didn’t know he was a soulless jackass, he would have said it almost looked like Sam’s feelings were hurt. “Whatever, dude, I’m not going to let Crowley hurt you.”
“So now you’re Kevin Costner to my Whitney?” Dean regretted it as soon as he said it, and he could only hope it hadn’t sounded like a come-on.
Sam, of course, was happy to interpret it that way. He put his hands on Dean’s shoulders and leaned forward. “Yeah. Like you always protected me before. Maybe now it’s my turn.” And then he kissed Dean very gently. It didn’t last more than a few seconds, and then he drew back and smiled.
Dean looked at him suspiciously. “You feeling okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Dean shook his head. He was definitely turning into the mayor of Bizarro World if he felt bad that Sam didn’t try anything more than kissing him. “No reason.” He turned to the fireplace mantle to pour himself a drink.
Red-hot animal fucking he could handle. Not that they’d done it in awhile. And not that handling it meant he needed less than four shots of whiskey to look at himself in the mirror. Sweet, puppy-eyed lovemaking, though, that was worse by far. It was too much like Sammy.
As he once again thought how urgent it was to put Sam’s soul back, the fury and the drive rose from the base of his spinal cord like hot lava waiting to escape a volcano. He needed an emergency back-up plan because, if Sam was right, if Crowley really was stringing them along, then there was only about one more week before Dean was going to explode.
Castiel came when Dean prayed to him, but, like the past few times, he looked annoyed that he’d been bothered. He helped them corral a few demons - Meg, for one - and sort through the intel Samuel gave them on where Crowley was keeping all the monsters and hiding out. But when it came time to load up, Cas said, “I’m ambivalent about what we’re attempting.”
“Breaking into Monster Gitmo isn’t exactly a two-for-one in the champagne room.”
“I’m not sure retrieving Sam’s soul is wise.”
“Wait, what?” Dean gasped. “Why?” He couldn’t imagine any reason that leaving Sam’s soul in the cage was the better choice.
“I want him to survive.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Sam's soul has been locked in the cage with Michael and Lucifer for more than a year. And they have nothing to do but take their frustrations out on him. Do you understand?”
He was talking about rape, not just torture. Dean could tell from the way he skirted the matter and from the slight flush to his cheeks. It stung to hear someone else talk about it, but, yeah, Dean had always known in the back of his mind that that was a possibility for Sam’s soul, just as it had been for his own. All the more reason to get it to safety.
But Cas wasn’t quite finished. “If we try to force that mutilated thing down Sam's gullet, we have no idea what will happen. It could be catastrophic.”
“You mean he dies.”
“I mean he doesn't. Paralysis. Insanity. Psychic pain so profound that he's locked inside himself for the rest of his life.”
That was not what Dean expected to hear. It gave him pause. He had been mentally preparing himself for the reality that resouling Sam might mean killing him. Although every fiber of his being ached to suffer in Sam’s place, maybe death would be a relief.
He hadn’t considered that Sam might live and still suffer. He was going to need a drink and a few hours to sort through whether it was worth the risk. Whether Sam would forgive him for a lifetime of agony so that Dean could be spared having to drive around with Roy Batty in the passenger seat.
Then again, if the real Sam could have weighed in, he probably would have wanted to take the risk of resouling if it meant escaping the horrors of the cage. The real Sam had spent his whole life obsessing about being a freak; he wouldn’t have wanted his body to walk around empty, doing more horrible things than Dean knew about. The real Sam would have been willing to accept death as an alternative.
Dean didn’t like that he was thinking of the real Sam in the past tense.
“Well, if he’s not fine, then you’ll fix him,” he told Cas.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Then you’ll figure it out, Cas, come on. I mean, the guy’s a freaking replicant. He needs his soul.”
“No, Dean,” Cas corrected, “you need his soul.”
“Look, we’ll get it back. And if there are complications, then we’ll figure out a way to deal with those, too.”
“Of course,” Cas sighed. Dean took a few steps away, only to hear Cas add, “Or we fail, and Sam suffers horrifically.”
He spun around. “Man, what is with you?”
“I told you, I’m at war.” Cas frowned. “You of all people should understand what that does to someone.” Cas squinted and looked to the left. “I have to go. I’ll meet you at Crowley’s prison.”
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