Just Be Still With Me 1

[roxymissrose]

You gonna tell me this isn't what you've always wanted? You, me, together alone? Forever?

Dean's voice echoed in Sam's head as he woke; it was a familiar line, a familiar scene. He dreamt it often. It was the first dream he remembered having when he began to dream again, who knew how many years after Dean pulled him over into the vampire un-life. In those early, first years of monster-hood, sleep meant dropping dead in his tracks until something woke him; a vicious itch in his gut, a scratching beneath his skull. Sometimes it was his teeth dropping, tearing through the gums because he wasn't fully awake. Not fun, that.

He closed his eyes again, seeing Dean as he was that first night; naked, covered with blood and pieces of girl, grinning at him. A wet, white, shark's smile splitting his face from ear to ear. Sam breathed in, slowly, deliberately inflating his lungs...in his mind, Dean's face slid from fanatically happy to a blank white mask, before finally fading away.

Sam shook his head. Dreams were so useless-they were almost all like this, these memories of Before. Faded, twisted. Unreal. He wondered sometimes, did Dean dream as well? He'd never said so in all the years they'd been together in this way. Sam had never asked him. After all, Dean was still Dean, only with all the soft parts ripped away. Which narrowed his focus pretty much exclusively to food and sex, along with the occasional bloody prank-the simple things. Sam couldn't see him responding well to a conversation about feelings and dreams.

"Especially not this version," he told the room. He sat up, plucked impatiently at the tacky sheets holding him down on the mattress. Freeing himself from the sheets released more of the wet-iron scent, which led him to idly lick at a crackly spot on his wrist-a thick dot of dried blood. Drying blood everywhere; the air was filled with the scent. Somehow, oddly, that thick, heavy stink just didn't do it for him anymore. It didn't excite him the way it used to. He sighed, and rolled off the mattress, hitting the floor which squished slightly as his knees dug into the mostly rotten, mud slicked floorboards. He pushed long, tangled hanks of hair out of his eyes, and looked around the small room they'd played in the night before. The girl they'd picked up was in pieces around the room, her head set on a cracked dresser leaning against the wall, propped up in such a way that it would have been the first thing he saw after he woke, if he hadn't fallen out of bed instead.

He stepped backwards, falling back onto the mattress behind him. Stared at her milky eyes, what was left of what had been dark, short hair. He'd talked to her. He'd stood in the shadows outside of the bar he'd tracked her to, and actually spoke to her, like people. They'd talked about college, finals, and acing finals, and celebrating freedom.

He'd dredged up some deep, age-rotted memories and she'd laughed when he talked about...Sam scratched at his mouth, his forehead, flakes of blood showering the dingy, mold-speckled sheets. Right, talked about falling asleep in a friend's bathtub, drunk with victory and, and, Bacardi Breeze. Told her he'd thought he was going to die that night and she'd laughed. Sam nodded. Hadn't lied about that, it'd happened to him that first year at Stanford. But it had been a good enough memory that the girl let herself be coaxed out to the car, and inside it. Then Dean had reared up, laughing, from the back seat and that was it.

Before terror glazed her eyes, she'd given him a look accusing him of terrible betrayal. That look...it'd unlocked memories he'd tried to keep trapped, memories he much preferred stayed in the dark.

"Shit, shit, shit…" Rolling up off the floor, he crossed to the dresser and closed the eyelids, hiding that milky glare. "Stop staring at me."

The look frozen on her face was a lot like the look she'd worn then. That had been days ago, the passage of time spelled out in the smell of him, worse than the scattered body parts. Washing himself in the scummy creek behind the falling down hunter's cabin only cut the stink and made him look clean for so long. He remembered, distantly, how important it had seemed at first to look human...now it only mattered when they were hungry.

Sam looked around the door frame, saw Dean in the front room, sitting with his back to him. He was stripping skin off an arm he must have dragged out of the room to play with, basically fidgeting. He got bored easily. Though it had taken several years before he'd gotten bored with Sam. Things weren't the same anymore. Dean was pulling away. What else could it be but boredom? Sam ground his fist into his breastbone, trying to ease the odd, tight feeling behind it.

After a few seconds, Dean reacted to Sam's presence, looking up when Sam came into the room. He stood, casually tossing aside the arm, then started ripping stiff, blood-soaked fabric off his body as he walked across the room, digging around in a plastic bag in the corner that served as their luggage. Probably searching for something less ripe.

With a small growl of triumph, Dean shrugged on the clean-ish pants and shirt he'd found, ran his fingers through hair that looked pretty clean-he must have washed his face while Sam was down for the count. "Going out."

"You eating again?" It took a lot less to sustain them these days then it had in the beginning-though they still killed for fun. Well, Dean did. Sam wasn't too sure about the fun part of eating lately.

Dean's gaze skated over Sam's face, not an iota of interest, no sign of the little fires that would light whenever his brother saw him, smelled him.

"Didn't say that." Dean pulled on a thick, dark jacket he didn't need to wear, and left, leaving the door gaping wide as he headed towards the car they'd stolen the night before, some crappy SUV mommy car complete with a car seat still in the back. In the beginning, they argued, him and Dean, over going back to Bobby's and grabbing the Impala, but Dean, Dean fucking Dean.

He'd rip a co-ed to bloody rags, but god forbid he show his face to Saint Bobby. They hadn't seen the fucking car in years; Dean just didn't care. And now, a decade on, out of the blue-it pricked at Sam.

Sam whirled away from the doorway, and punched through the flaking plaster of the wall. The fucking car was the least of it. They hadn't fucked in what felt like years, definitely months...time got a little wobbly when it lost all urgency. Months and months of hunting, sharing their food, but anytime Sam reached out to touch Dean, he jerked away like Sam was poison. Fuck. And here he was, just following his maker around like a crippled puppy, no self-respect at all. Letting Dean shove him into a corner like he was just an afterthought.

Sam blinked. Well, he was, wasn't he? Dean hunted him down because it was fun for him, then turned him because why not. And now, he was the Easter chick nobody fucking wanted after the holidays, when shitting and having to eat and making noise became a reality no one wanted to deal with.

Sam stalked into the back room they slept in, grimaced at the body parts beginning to decay; a state they could pick up even before it registered on human senses. He just couldn't get a handle on what was happening to him. He kept getting flashes of this girl, like she was something real. He'd talked to her. He'd laughed. With her, this collection of parts strewn across the molding dump.
.

Laughed.

Sam shook his head. What in the hell was wrong with him? Since when did it matter what his Burger Royale had to say? And why should he care if his maker lost interest in him, as long as he still kept him fed and safe? He looked at the blood-spattered head again. Dean and his shit sense of humor.



Dean was gone for three days. When he came back, he was dragging along a scruffy, street-dirty boy in a too-big puffy coat. Sunlight broke through gaps in the roof and the walls, making the shadowed parts of the cabin even darker. Sam waited in the shadows, watched Dean pull the snack up the rickety porch, hips twitching in that mesmerizing way they had...made even better because Dean wasn't even aware of it, the sexy gait given him by those fucking bowlegs-Sam blinked when Dean shouted, "Sammy, come meet my new friend, Candy. Candy 'cause he's sweet like that." Dean turned back to the boy, aiming a sleazy leer that the kid just ate up. No class, no brains.

Dean turned back to Sam, winking like they were in on the game together.

Meanwhile, the boy giggled, hanging from Dean's grip, pawing weakly at the fingers wrapped around his thin wrist and making a show out of 'trying' to break free. Obviously high, still thinking this shit was a game. Until Sam came out of the shadows. The boy took one look at Sam in full light and recoiled, really trying to break Dean's grip now.

The kid freaking out meant he had some vestige of self-preservation fluttering around in his empty skull. Sam knew what he looked like-he hadn't cleaned himself since the girl. Dirt ground deep into every faint line, his hair and his clothes clinging to him-glued together with blood and mud and rainwater.

He stepped closer and the movement pulled at the stiff, filthy clothes hanging off of him like rags on a scarecrow.

The porch boards creaked, and the boy cursed, high and wild. Everything the night hid, the sunlight exposed. Sam's hands came up to sweep hair back out of his eyes so he could get a better look at the kid. He felt something crawling under his skin, settling behind his ribs. Something prodded at him. That weird, twisted feeling behind his breastbone grew…the kid.

He was obviously meant to be a slap in Sam's face. Gone on a hunt without him, playing a game Dean didn't want Sam to be part of. Sam wrinkled his nose as he realized what it was he felt. Jealousy. It hurt. It felt stupid, and it hurt.

Dean's eyes locked on Sam's and he grinned, the tips of his fangs grazed his bottom lip just enough to let a pinprick drop of blood well up. Sam bristled, rearing back at the scent of his maker-brother. What game was Dean playing? Why after all these years, why wait until Sam confused himself by talking to his food? Maybe this was some kind of stupid lesson, a punishment. Maybe it was payback for being how he'd been with the girl...or for that thing that happened, the one they'd pretended was no big deal?

Was Sam meant to watch as Dean played alone with his food?

Well, fuck that. Dean was an ass, and the passage of years hadn't changed that at all. Dean was the same jerkoff who'd hunted Sam, then changed him because Dean just couldn't imagine fucking around for eternity or whatever alone, except here was eternity staring them in the eyes and fucking Dean was just now realizing what a god damn mistake Sam had been.

Sam's eyes burned, and his useless breath was a ball caught in his throat, and fuck, that was the last straw for him, the last bit of humiliation. He was not having some kind of weird fucking breakdown in front of his brother.

"Have fun," he muttered and walked out the door. He could hear the kid say, "What was that? What the fuck is happening? Let me go, no really, let go-"

Sam ran, fast as he could. He couldn't do it, he was not going to listen to Dean take the kid apart while he stood there like an unwelcome guest. He'd do it slow too, just to show Sam what he was missing, and how much he didn't need him. Dean would do slow so it'd hurt, keep the kid from dying too fast and ruining the blood. After all these years, Dean knew what he could do to keep a person from bleeding out too fast or dying of shock. Dean was better, more merciless than an Inquisitor-he'd been born too late, missed his calling. Sam grinned, his teeth flashing through his gums before the weird melancholy settled over him again.
From behind him came a high-pitched shriek, and it just made the darkness in his head grow thicker.

Something was wrong with him. Something was hounding him, biting at his brain. Sam quickly crossed the rocky strip of yard, past the rotting carcass of an ancient pickup, until he was standing on the edges of an ice-covered pond. He broke the ice and stripped off the stiff, stinking, rags he wore and threw them into the water, watched them sink slowly under.

Sam walked out on the pond until he sank into the ice-cold water, feeling his temperature drop in a distant, vague sort of way. The frigid cold felt...like all his pores were filled with lidocaine. Past his ankles, past his knees, thigh high, his dick floating in the wavelets he made as he walked...he snorted, a faint memory bobbling to the dull surface of his mind…"Do women know about shrinkage…?"

Apparently vampire bodies didn't. The water was up to his shoulders now, the ends of his hair lifted and swirled by the water. He struck out, sidestrokes shot him through the water to where it was marginally clearer, then dived towards the bottom, scrubbing at his hair, his skin as he sank.

He opened his eyes to the dark, green, gloom of the water, relaxing muscle, letting the quiet fill him, reaching for that soothing feeling he always felt on the pond bottom, letting the alienness of it remind him of how little humanity he contained. Telling himself how much he relished not having to pretend being human. Walking over the bottom, stepping over the bones and trash they'd dropped there, he thought about the night Dean had been snatched from him by what remained of Luther's nest; tracked down and destroyed by a ragged band of dumb-ass vamps.

Even years later it had the power to set him off; thinking about it destroyed the tranquility he'd been searching for. He was swamped by rage and a phantom feeling tingling in his hands-he could still feel Dean being ripped from him, see him sink under a pile of vamps like it happened yesterday.

What they'd done to Dean had been the perfect revenge for those vamps-their payback for decimating the nest. Sam closed his eyes against the vision of Dean's face: porcelain white, freckles like blood spray on his skin. He remembered Dean's eyes, clouded and staring at nothing. His mouth hanging loose. His blood...everywhere. The nest leader forcing its blood into Dean's nearly lifeless mouth….

Sam shot to the surface again, then stroked slowly back to shore, pushing useless thoughts down where they belonged, where hopefully they'd stay. He leaped out at the edge and shook the water off like a dog. He was done, as clean as he could get without soap.

Dean and his snack were gone when Sam made his way back to the cabin. Feeling like he was on automatic pilot, he stalked inside the cabin. Not really thinking about anything at all, he searched out the plastic bags they kept spare clothes in, protected by the part of the roof that still stood. He hunted through them for the clothes that fit him best: a few pairs of jeans, a pair of khakis that only had blood stains on the cuffs...he grabbed a couple of flannels and some tees in surprisingly good shape.

He grabbed an empty plastic bag to stuff them in and froze.

"Oh." It hit him just what this frantic movement was all about. He was leaving. He was leaving his nest, his maker. Sam stood bent over the bag for a long time, the tees clutched in his hand, before snarling and jamming them into the empty bag. He remembered to grab socks, and in an afterthought, boxers. He took their mouthwash and combs and a sliver of soap he'd found. Sam snorted. Dean probably wouldn't even miss this stuff-unless Sam forced him to at least sometime make himself look like food, Dean would sink under his own filth. So fucking let him sink.

Sam stopped. His cheeks felt odd, there was something on...oh, for fuck's sake. His damn chest shaking, he dragged an arm across his face, scrubbing back and forth, disgusted that he was crying. There was something so fucking wrong with them. They weren't made right-Dean wasn't made right. He cursed God, the world, and his brother as he yanked the bag tight.

He walked out of the tumbledown shack they'd spent the last month in without looking back, and trotted down the road. His hair tinkled and clinked as bits of it froze in the cold air. He had no destination, he just needed...space.



Two days later, Sam was deep into the hills, not a scent of any breathing thing anywhere, just the smell of ice, wet soil, rotted leaves...hunger began scratching at his insides, his mouth dropping open from time to time to help him scent. Maybe there were campers out in the woods. It could happen.

He'd kind of thought, in a small, overly-optimistic corner of his mind, that Dean would follow him, try to bring him back, but so far, nothing. Sam stopped, threw his whole self into listening, but only caught the sound of snow melting, ice breaking...the tiny crunch, crunch sound of bits of it hitting snow, the scuttling noise of leaves blowing along, and his own occasional grunt, as his breath started and restarted. The body was a stubborn thing, and didn't like being animated without doing all the muscle memory things.

He was higher in the hills now, the hunger gnawing at his insides gone from a quiet scratching to a howling try at digesting his own self. A vague sense of surprise moved sluggishly through his mind. It hadn't been that long, had it? Just a few days. He should be able to go a couple of weeks without food.

How long had it been? Where was Dean?

Sam looked down at himself, again that sluggish wave of semi-surprise washed over him. His pants were ragged at the hem, his boots looked like he'd taken a wood rasp to them and sanded the hell out of them. His hands shook hard as he raised them up to pull hair out of his face...how long had he been walking?

His next step landed him on his face, slush splashing into the air. He sat up and wiped it out of his eyes. He sat there, turning his entire concentration into hearing, smelling.

There. Excitement plodded through him, turned the screw of his starvation a little tighter. Something was moving, past the black tree trunks wavering in his eyesight, there was something breathing out there, something he recognized, a scent that poked and prodded at him, he knew it, it was-

"Ungh." A mouse, A fucking, barely big-as-his-hand, scrap of life was moving about and fuck, he wanted it, needed it-his teeth dropped, a scant bit of saliva barely dampened his tongue. Needed it.

Instinct kept him from crashing up over the rise, flinging himself into the underbrush hiding the feet of the trees. Slow, slow, slow, he crept closer-step, stop, listen to the small sound of the mouse stopping as well, inching forward when it moved.

He almost purred when he realized the mouse was taking tiny, tiny, steps directly towards him. If it was smelling anything, it was smelling a dead thing. Sam smiled, dimples popping out to bracket a shark's mouth.

Dinnertime, he heard, so clear, so totally Dean's voice, he nearly looked behind himself. Instead, he froze, as a little black speck became a brown and white ball vibrant with heat and breath and blood. It hopped closer, closer, closer-

Sam leaped out of the leaf-fall he's pressed himself into, already flinging himself in the direction he calculated the mouse would head, his hands coming down around the little bit of burning life. Soft fur, brittle little bones demolished by Sam's grip, Sam's teeth ripping into it-mouth sucking hard as he bit. In an instant, nothing was left but a shriveled scrap.

Sam breathed harshly, licking violently at the traces of blood left in the corners of his mouth, eyes wide and darting all over the small clearing. His hands clawed at his midsection, further shredding the thin flannel he wore. He ached, it hurt, like knives driving themselves into his flesh and twisting-

And finally, the pain let up a bit, easing off of the torturous, stabbing, ripping feeling of empty as his body realized that there'd been food, meager but hot, filling his throat, sliding into his gullet. There was no richness, no flavor that the screaming emotions a human gave off as blood spurted from them, but this would do.

Sam dropped the shreds of mouse, and something made him scoop up a handful of loose snow and wash it over his mouth, wash the mud from his face.

He kept walking. He wondered, as he trudged along, if there was anything human left of himself. If it was some veneer of humanity that had driven him out this morning. He wondered idly if whatever was human in him was trying to kill itself, and laughed. Oh no, the animal, the monster that he was, would never allow it. It was just too human a thing to want to kill yourself.

"Monsters don't care. If they did, Dean never would have turned me. It wasn't love, it was some kind of monster instinct. Everything wants to procreate, make more of itself, from mushrooms to monsters," he told the air around him.

"I wanted to think it was love of some kind that drove him, but of course, I was still human then. Still food," he explained to a lichen-covered rock. It took him a few seconds to realize that one, he was talking to a rock, and two, rocks did not float, ergo, he was on the ground. He giggled into the snow, snuffled when snow went up into his nostrils. Sam rolled to his back and told the stars, "You know, I can't stop breathing. Odd, isn't it? I walked on the bottom of a pond like I was strolling in a park. Umf," he huffed as he got to his feet again. "Strolled like I was in a park and never once missed taking a breath, but here I am, walking through a winter wonderland, and I can't stop trying to breathe," he laughed, and laughed some more, and suddenly was laughing so hard, his eyes got moist, and he bent at the waist, gasping. "See? It's ridiculous. Fucked up. Tears and spit and come, and why? We're walking corpses, aren't we? I don't know," he told a shrub. "Maybe we're more than that. I don't know who to ask…."

He walked, watching the sun rise, then start its journey downward again. Walked around fallen logs, leaped over ice-crusted little rivulets, staggered through thicker drifts.

"You know," he said, after hours of walking, his voice barely a croak-the inside of his mouth so dry it felt like leather when he shoved his fingers inside, along with a bit of snow that did nothing to make his mouth feel better, "I do think I'm finally, actually tired."

Sam walked on anyway, weaving between the straight black and white trunks of a copse of birch trees. Silence thick as a wool blanket followed him, except for the sound of his steps crunching through ice-rimed snow. He trailed to a stop, watched the sun drop through the trees-orange-pink light painting the trunks, the sun a cold, coppery-orange ball almost touching the ground. He could see the beauty in that, and he was grateful that he could.

Hour-long blinks...between one blink and the next, he closed his eyes and folded to the ground. Felt snowflakes settling on his head, his shoulders, his calves...a fat flake here and there, at first drifting like play. Then heavier, faster, thicker. Orange left the sky; the birch trees went gray, then darker-streaks of darker black against black.

"I think I do want a nap now." Sam rolled over in the snow, wiggled deeper, crooked his arm to cradle his head. "Just a minute. Just a tiny little rest. Maybe...find a town later. A box of food on every corner. Happy meals." He snorted a laugh into the snow. "Not-so-happy meals."

Maybe he blinked, slowly, maybe it took long, long hours between each drop of his lashes. He asked a little fur covered thing with black bead-eyes and a brown and white face, "Do you know what I did with my bag? I stole Dean's mouthwash...oh."

The little eyes shot out of a distorted, bloody, face, tiny teeth rained down on the snow before fading away like smoke. "Ah. Sorry. I think. I didn't mean to leave, Dean, not really. Can you...Dean, I'm tired now, come get me," he mumbled, words leaking out and losing meaning. Stars grew thicker in a black sky.



Snuggled up against snowy hillocks, and the silent birch sentinels, there was a slightly curved hump of something under the snow. A bit of flannel clad elbow poked out of the white, a tuft of dark hair looking black against the night tinted snow. The heel of a worn down, crusty old boot still showing, all of it being swiftly covered by the growing blizzard of flakes.





"Sam," Dean whispered when he came back to the shack, back from shoving his snack beneath the surface of the pond, dragging it into a spot where the ice would hold it down. He turned a lacy silver filigree ring over and over in his hand, liking the way the light hit it. He tossed it up, caught it, tossed it as he walked. Maybe he'd give it to Sam. Didn't Sam have a little box he kept shit in...or no...was that an old Before memory? He forgot sometimes. He forgot a lot...sometimes he forgot Sam. Or maybe not this Sam, no, he forgot the other one, the one that had sparkly eyes, and a laugh that shook his whole body, a smile that lit his face....

That one hadn't been around in a long, long, loo-oong time. That one wasn't important anymore.

The ring hit his palm, took a bad bounce and rolled into a crack between the floorboards. He stood there for a long moment, seeing the glittery trails it left in the air, after-images of the path it took before disappearing. "Well, fuck."

Didn’t seem right, coming back to Sam with empty hands, not even a taste of the boy that had made Sam sprint off like an emo little pussy for some damn reason.

"Huunh, huuunh…" he inhaled, licked his lips. Hunh. Not a whiff of Sam. No Sam?

Dean swung around. He hadn't scented him walking up to the shack, he wasn't under the porch, or in the trees, he hadn't been by the pond. He hadn't followed the car. Well, where the fuck was he?

Dean noticed the clothes bag in the corner was listing a little and definitely less full than when he'd left. He kicked some trash out of his way and dropped down next to the bag, pawing through it. He wasn't sure, but he thought clothes were missing, and yeah, the mouthwash they used sometimes, and the soap...shit. All their cleaning stuff was gone, that little shit. He'd done it on purpose just to piss Dean off. A sign that he'd left, the little motherfucker. Well, fuck that leaving. He was coming back. Sam wasn't leaving Dean in this fucking not-life all alone.

A tiny voice whispered, any one of these bloodbags out here could keep you company. Fuck, Sam wasn't even fun anymore. He was brooding worse than when his bitch-ass left for...for...that place. Books, blonde, college, something. Dean snarled, lashed out and sent one of the few more-or-less solid bits of furniture flying towards the open wall, sending drawers and legs and planks of stained wood all over what must have passed for a front yard once.

His frustration over not remembering faded quickly as it rose. Maybe it was time to move the fuck on, before spring thaw and all the used snacks floated to the surface of the pond or someone got nosy and started sniffing around. Could happen-even if they hunted a few towns over, someone was bound to eventually remember this joint was out here in the ass-back of nowhere and come looking. Besides, Sam wasn't here now so what was the point of hanging around himself? Dean contemplated grabbing what they'd dumped here in the shack before shrugging. What the fuck was the point?

He came out onto the listing pile of timber that passed as a front porch, lifted his head and sniffed the place one more time. There was nothing to smell but the snow howling on the wind, stinging his eyes and building up on his lashes, covering his shoulders. He turned toward where the city lay. Sam was probably out there now, hunting. For sure that's where the food was. No doubt he'd catch up with Sammy-boy again. And when he did, Dean planned to let Sam know just how much he hated when Sam took off on his own.



Dark, dark, dark...something creaked, crunched, a tiny little sound that woke him part-way up. Something pulled at him, a tiny pull, yank-yank-yank "Dea...?"

Something bit into his arm, now so stiff and frozen, little teeth couldn't break through...at first.

The sensation of something trying to eat him was odd enough to wake him, make him try and open his eyes. Slowly fluttering open as a vestigial sense of self-preservation made his head flop to one side; as his muscles tried to remember how to move. His mouth opened, but nothing happened, and after a bit, whatever it was that had scampered off was back, determined to eat him. It moved around to his head, no doubt about to go after an easier grip, his ears, or his nose, so Sam lay still, eased his mouth wider, and waited. A musky scent flooded his nose, thin, slightly greasy hair brushed his chin. Tiny, pinprick teeth grabbed his lower lip, tugged-

He burst up out of the thin crust of ice and slush, biting down on whatever it was he'd caught, biting down hard as he could, weak as he was...ice and mud exploded up all around him when he fell back to the ground, the thing he held dropping into two pieces.

A pink, naked, still-flicking tail lay on his cheek, sliding down to his neck. Blood trickled down his throat, and he lay there, blinking muck out of his eyes, still too tired to really move.

The sun moved through the sky, away from the horizon, past its highest point in the sky and was beginning to slide down again when Sam finally came sufficiently alive to move. He pulled himself out from under the thinning rime of snow tucked around him, chunks of ice, branches, and thin, crispy skeletons of leaves shedding off his body as he lurched to his knees, staggered to his feet...the blood pooled in his throat slid downwards; Sam could feel it moving, lighting little fires as it went. He imagined his insides-one little light flickering on in the darkness, linking to other lights flickering on as well, connecting, building a matrix, an approximation of life. He lunged forward, one stiff leg moving, the other stiff leg staggering to keep up.

A bizarre thought rose, one of those memories from Before this, flitting like a goldfish through a murky tank. 'Walking is a string of controlled falls; each step we take is really a tiny fall-our footfalls a series of corrections-" Something he'd read eons ago, out of a science magazine or something. He started to laugh, lost his balance, and stumbled to fall into the muck, flat on his face again.

He was levering himself upwards when a sound made him shiver, his head jerked up. He held still, muddy water dripping from the ends of his hair, the tip of his nose. He ignored all of it. He listened. Again, a crashing noise, a controlled crashing noise. Not human, too heavy...he shivered, his gut folding in on itself and shrieking for food now that it was awake. That blurt of blood he'd had earlier was nothing. It wet his mouth, woke him, but that was all. This was something heavy, this was FOOD. Nothing human, but he didn't care right now. He knew whatever it was was hot and alive, and would sustain him-he'd eaten enough rats and feral cats and dogs to know animal blood would.

He pulled himself out of the mud and weeds, a wide grin cracking the mud on his face. Time to hunt.

He ran towards the sound, sprinting over bushes and rocks, leaping past slick spills of melting snow that tried to drag him down. Ahead of him he heard the thing dashing away-no need to be subtle as he'd been with the mouse, this was something that subtlety was wasted on. This took speed, and strength. Even at his weakest, he was at least as strong as anything in these woods.

Sam zig-zagged through the brush, zeroing in on the racket-whatever it was took long leaps, then rapidly scattered steps, crashed into things and kept going-heavy, just as he'd thought.

Sam burst out of the underbrush, swung past a small stand of saplings and there it was, leaping over a fallen tree, tail flicking white as it did.

It darted in a straight line away from Sam, and Sam bore down on it. At the last minute it twisted, ran straight at Sam, who threw himself down, grabbed a thin, sharp-hooved foot as it passed over him, then swung with all his strength.

Sam screamed in victory as the thing flew through the air, crashing into the bifurcated trunk of a young tree. Branches broke and the deer wheezed as it impaled itself on the point of one; stuck between the split trunks, head jerking and eyes rolling as Sam came close, silent as Sam ripped open its throat and held his hands out to catch the river of blood gushing free.

Moaning, he held his hands to tunnel the blood directly into his mouth, stopping to break the legs of the thing as it jerked and flailed annoyingly. It sagged when the blood flow slowed, its eyes darting crazily back and forth but its head hanging lax. Sam stepped back to swallow what was left in his mouth, wipe the blood from his eyes and nose. He stuck his fingers in the gash and ripped the wound wider, drank until the deer's heart had no blood to pump.

He staggered back, throat working to keep all the blood in. It was nasty, yeah, but it was alive, hot, and filling. Those lights inside him were nearly exploding, they were tripping so hard. He shook with the intensity of his every cell grabbing what life it could, soaking him in it, coming completely online at long, long last. He raised his hands, about to scream in a wash of feral, animalistic joy-survival, mastering death, or whatever passed for it in a vampire. "I win-"

Sam heard a footstep and whirled around, but whatever it was, was faster than him. Another quick crunch of a boot breaking through snow and his head exploded-stars wheeled and blew and showered him in broken pieces. "Newbie," he heard, tone disgusted and amused, before his world went lights out.



A light drizzle wet the street, headlights reflecting from water and oil floating on the surface. The water soaking Dean's hair dripped steadily down the back of his neck, sliding into his collar, but he ignored that. He stood in the shadows and watched meager foot traffic-a couple of hookers hustling, shivering in the damp cold and trying to make money on a crummy night. Dean could feel their frustration, see it in the twist and turn of their bodies. He was pulled towards them; blood, the rabbit-beat of their hearts, and high emotions making them irresistible targets.

Dean whistled quietly to himself as he looked from one side of the wet street to the other, trying to choose. He liked this part of hunting-like having an open tab in a swanky bar knowing you weren't ever going to pay. He grinned, teeth rippling out.. Damn, it felt good to be on the hunt.

He took a few steps towards them but veered off. It was too open to come at them here, he'd do better to look for a darker section of the streets-no need to advertise a vamp hunting out here, no need to rush. Candy-boy was still on his tongue and he wouldn't truly be hungry for a while.

Traffic was light at this time of night. The snacks were hiding themselves pretty well and he was beginning to suspect it had to do more with nerves than the weather. He'd over-fished this town, all right. He'd put the fear of god, death, whatever, into the night people.

Oh well, he thought, guess it truly was time to pack it in, blow this pop stand. Not like anything was holding him back from bugging out. He strolled along, casually looking into alleys, huffing air as he went deeper into the warren of dark alleys. Not a hint of anything fresh. After a while, he had to admit he wasn't really hunting so much as he was...okay, he was moping.

There. He said it. Sam would have a field day with that.

No. He wouldn't. Sam didn't give two shits about him, not anymore. The only thing that kept him close was instinct. That feeling that you had to stick with your maker come hell or high water-except Dean had killed his, whichever one of those fuckers it'd been. Killed the whole nest, and felt just fine about it. And Sam? Well, Sam stuck as long as he did out of habit or something. Or maybe just being smart, that's what he was. Food, sex, and an enforcer at his beck and call, what else did he need?

A lot of time had passed, though, and Sam was probably bored. Maybe after all these years, the thrill of sex just wore off for him. Dean had tried, a few times, to interest him, but Sam just turned away, or threw something between them. Some bloodbag, some fight, some claim that he, Dean, had crossed some invisible line Sam couldn't...which was bullshit.

He knew it was bullshit-all it was, was Sam wanting to get the fuck away from him. Well, it looked like Sam finally made his move. He was free.

"For now." When Dean found him...he was going to find him. And when he did, he'd make Sam wish he'd stayed.

On To Part Two