The Sticking Point, 3/?
Title: The Sticking Point, 3/?
Author: sowell
Genre: Angst, action, slash
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Dean, secondary Dean/Cas, and Meg/Cas if you squint
Rating: NC-17, eventually
Word count: This part 3,418
Warnings: Language, Wincest, see spoiler warnings
Spoilers: Assumes knowledge of all aired episodes. Very general S8 spoilers:
[here there be spoilers]
Dean gets himself out of Purgatory and Sam has gotten out of the hunting game
Disclaimer: Sooooo not mine
Summary: Dean comes back from Purgatory, but there are consequences attached to his return. Sam and Dean try to reconnect to keep each other safe.
A/N: 1) Unbeta’d - all mistakes are my own. 2) Watson, AR is a real place, but I’ve never been there and thus all details are one hundred percent made up. 3) Beware some nonsensical appropriation of biblical mythology. 4) Comments and concrit are always welcome.
Chapter 1 // Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Thursday
Despite Dean’s assertions, they took the morning bus to the garage where Sam had stored the Impala. Dean caught his breath a little when the sun hit her. She sounded gorgeous, purring her way up to him as the attendant drove her out. Sam must have been paying a fortune to house her. She was shiny and waxed, rims gleaming like new. Dean would have preferred to see Sam driving her instead of storing her, but Sam had started his explanation with the phrase “carbon emissions” and Dean had tuned the rest out.
Dean slid into the driver’s seat and felt like he was home for the first time.
“Where to?” Sam asked, tone light despite the shadows under his eyes. Dean couldn’t stop smiling, running his hands over the steering wheel.
“Who cares?” he said.
They drove two hundred miles without stopping, as fast as the engine would push them, and Sam didn’t bug him about it even once. They stopped somewhere in the middle of the desert, pulling over so Dean could shrug his way out of the car and tip his head up at the painfully bright sky. His pale skin was burning, he knew. He wanted it. If he couldn’t find the stone, he’d be going back to constant night, so he might as well get his cancer rays now.
He stripped down to his t-shirt, and Sam stretched out on the hood of the car, watching him indulgently. Dean couldn’t remember the last time Sam had smiled like that, no tension in his face, dimples showing, hands shoved into his pockets in an easy slouch. Dean hollered something joyfully indeterminate at the sky, and Sam laughed.
They drove back at a more sedate pace, stopping at the storage unit where Sam had stashed Dean’s stuff. They loaded up the trunk in content, sun-drenched silence, and Dean had to stop himself from smiling every time he felt the casual brush of Sam’s bare arm against his.
They were back on the road, headed for Sam’s apartment, when Dean felt the smallest sliver of sensation through the base of his neck, a silver flash of pain that disappeared as quickly as it came. His hands jerked a bit, and the Impala skidded over the center line and back again.
Sam was looking at him, eyebrows raised as if to say “What the fuck?”
“Twitchy,” Dean said in response. “Too much caffeine.”
“Uh-huh,” Sam said.
“And you know that that means,” Dean continued, doing his best to re-direct Sam’s attention.
“Let me guess,” Sam said drolly. “Time to eat?”
“Damn straight.”
Denver didn’t have much in the way of diners, but Dean was damned if he was going to eat at an Applebee’s or some other shitty chain, so they drove around until they found an acceptable substitute. The South Main Grill had cracked plastic booths and tabletops underlaid with local newspaper spreads going back to the 1920s. The music was too country for Dean’s taste, but all the waitresses wore bright cowboy boots and ponytails, so everything evened out.
“Hey,” Dean said, reading one of the old headlines through the cloudy plastic covering. “’Local woman levitates over playground - police suspect hoax.’ What do you think - demon or ghost?”
“I think it was some reporter making shit up,” Sam said absently, scanning his menu. “Depression-era newspapers weren’t exactly accountable for - Dean?”
But Dean barely heard him through the blinding pain in his head. Fire hammered into his skull, and he gasped, curling into himself.
Teeth splitting through gums, the wet sink of claws into flesh, blood soured by night and magic…
He could vaguely hear commotion around him. His shoulder slammed into something hard, wrenching the wrong way, but Dean could only press tight fists against his temples, like he could press out the pain if he tried hard enough.
The thing facing her is just an animal, more a natural disaster than a sentient being. Not one of mother’s best. It snarls, and she takes a step back. It’s stronger, but she’s smarter. She leads it in a slow dance, backing herself into a tree. Everything tastes like shit in Purgatory, but her family’s hungry and this thing has enough blood to last for a week.
It follows her, hackles raised like some gigantic dog. She feels her teeth prick free, not in hunger but in self-defense. Almost there.
It steps on the trap she neatly avoided, and then the silver net is propelling up from the ground. Up goes the beast with it, howling in pain and fury as the silver sears its skin.
“Got you,” she says. “You stupid shit.”
The beast severs one chain link with its teeth, searing its mouth with blood and charred hair, and the whole trap falls apart, crashing to the ground. It takes less than a second before it’s on her, dragging the chain with it, covering them both. The first rip at her neck is excruciating, and she screams. Claws sink into her sides, ripping ferociously. They dig in deep, touch organs, split them open.
It starts eating while she’s still alive, the thing is stupid, it doesn’t know to kill her first, doesn’t know how to make her dead it’s going to start from her insides and all she can do is scream and twist and….
“Dean!” Sam pressed down on his shoulders, pinning him to the floorboards, and Dean opened his eyes and saw chipping plaster, a white spinning ceiling fan, and Sam. Sam’s eyes were panicked, his hands tight on Dean’s shoulders.
“Sammy,” he rasped, just to feel the word in his mouth. His head ached, and shudders still raced through him.
“God, don’t move. They called 911.”
“No,” Dean said. “No, I’m fine.” He rolled to a sitting position, ignoring Sam’s protests.
“Dean, you had a seizure,” Sam was saying. “It’s okay, I have insurance, you need to get checked out, something’s wrong.”
“I said I’m fine,” Dean said, harsher than he’d intended, and that’s when he realized he’d attracted a circle of attention. All the employees and half the customers stood around him and Sam, looking down with various degrees of concern and fascination.
Fucking humiliating.
“I don’t need a doctor,” Dean said, enunciating very clearly so that there was no way Sam could misunderstand. “We should go. Now.”
Sam drove them back to his apartment so fast that Dean’s head swam dizzily. The pain left a faintly nauseous pit in his stomach.
“When we get back, you’re going to tell me what’s going on,” Sam said, quietly furious. His eyes were on the road, but Dean could see the pinched expression on his face, clear in the deepening sunlight. “I want the whole truth this time.”
*****“It’s not a big deal, so don’t get your panties all bunched,” was how Dean started. The insult barely registered in Sam’s brain.
“You screamed,” Sam said. “You have no idea. I thought…” Dean had seized up in a way Sam hadn’t seen since hellhounds clawed him open. He’d collapsed to the floor, and then he’d stopped moving, and Sam couldn’t stop thinking what is it, what got to him, how could he just up and die again now....
“First of all,” Dean cut him off, “I don’t scream. I yell. In a manly way. Second of all,” he spread his arms wide. “I’m fine, Sam. I’m not dead, I’m not demon chow. I’m fine.”
“What’s going on?” Sam asked again, and Dean sighed.
“It’s this deal I made,” he admitted. “I might have left out a couple details.”
“Oh, I think you left out more than that.”
All the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck rose to attention. He knew that voice. He whirled.
“Did you miss me, boys?” Meg asked, one dark eyebrow arched.
Sam reached a hand for his sheathed knife, but Dean was already moving, gun drawn, backing her toward the door.
“That’s not very nice,” she said. “Not after I saved your asses from Dick.”
“Yeah, you’re a real saint,” Dean said. “I thanked you every night from Purgatory.”
Meg’s eyes were wide and solid black, arms out to her sides in a gesture of surrender. “I just got this body patched up,” she said lightly. “I’d prefer not to get another hole through it.”
“Dean,” Sam said. “Crowley took her back into the pit. He probably sent her here.”
“I know that, Sam,” Dean growled. To Meg he said, “Why are you here?”
“Dean,” said another voice, and Sam looked. Castiel stepped through the door, eyes steady and sure. “I brought her. She’s here because of me.”
If Sam was surprised, Dean looked stunned.
“Cas,” he breathed. “How…I thought you were…”
The three of them eyed each other in a strange, hostile triangle. Dean looked like he was two second from putting a bullet through Meg, and then maybe turning the gun on Cas, and even if it wouldn’t hurt either of them much, gunfire wasn’t something Sam wanted to explain to his neighbors.
“Okay,” Sam said. “Okay. Ceasefire.” He stepped in the middle of them, hands up in surrender. “Let’s all just put our weapons away, okay? If we’re gonna do this, let’s at least not do it in my apartment.”
“Sam, move,” Dean said, and Sam glared at him.
“You’re gonna shoot an angel and a demon for…what?” he asked. “To piss them off?”
“I’m all for making the demon bitch bleed,” Dean said. “And I’m not convinced that’s Cas.”
“I’m me, Dean,” Castiel said. As if to prove it, he reappeared between Dean and Sam, two inches from Dean’s nose, and lifted the gun out of Dean’s hand. Dean stumbled back a startled step, then launched an instinctive punch at Castiel’s nose. Castiel took it without blinking, and Dean shook out his hand, wincing.
“Yeah, okay,” he said unsteadily. “So it’s him.”
“Believe it or not,” Meg said, “We’re here to help you.”
*****“I get visions,” Dean said. “No, not like yours,” he added sourly when Sam sharply turned his head. “It’s not the future. It’s stuff that’s happening right now. Only…not here, now.”
“Purgatory,” Sam supplied, and Dean nodded, gaze lowered to his rough hands. His eyelashes were long and tipped gold from their few short hours in the sun. Sam made his eyes look somewhere else.
“My head starts hurting,” Dean said. “And then I get dizzy and…” he made a motion with his hands. “Boom. Monster-vision.”
“Is it getting worse?” Castiel asked intently.
“Better, actually,” Dean said, shrugging. “The first week, I could barely pick my head up. Now, it mainly happens when I sleep.”
That’s what Dean had been doing for a week, Sam realized. Getting his visions under control. Sam didn’t know if he was angrier about the lies, or about Dean’s stupid, self-sacrificing impulses. If he hadn’t gotten his head straight, he wouldn’t have shown at all - Sam was sure of it.
Castiel didn’t ask anything else, and his expression didn’t change. The insanity had gone from his eyes, and Sam wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It left him a lot more useful and a lot scarier. He looked as concerned as Castiel ever looked, which was to say: not very. There was something in the set of his shoulders that looked like tension, though.
“This is all really fascinating,” Meg drawled. “Can we get to the part where none of you can find the stone and Dean goes back to monster land?”
“Why is she here again?” Dean asked Castiel, and Castiel sighed.
“Tell him,” Meg said. “Tell him who got you out of Purgatory, angelface.”
“Why would you do that?” Sam asked sharply.
“Why would Crowley do that,” Meg corrected. “Now that he knows how to open the doors, do you really think he’s letting it lie? Every eclipse is like a revolving door for demon spies.”
“So Crowley sent you…to get Castiel out of Purgatory…to help us find the stone?” Dean looked at Sam, eyes narrowed. “Any of that sound right to you?”
“Nope,” Sam said stonily.
“Look,” Meg said. “Crowley sent me to bring the stone back to him. It has some serious power attached to it. It’s how Eve kept control of the Leviathans down there, kept them from killing everyone. Crowley wants it. He thinks if he gets it, he can get control of Purgatory, too.”
“Demonic merger,” Dean said. “Great. So why are we trusting you?”
“Because,” Meg bit out. “I’ve been trapped in the pit for over a hundred years, now. Do you remember what that’s like?”
Sam remembered. His brain went a sharp, bloody red at the thought. He didn’t see Lucifer any more, but he still woke up with the feeling of hot knives fading from his skin.
“Hey,” Dean said forcefully, glaring at Meg. “No Hell talk. Got it?”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. Wouldn’t want to send Sammy off the deep end again.”
“She’s convinced me that her intentions are pure,” Castiel said. “Or at least, pure for a demon. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I trust that she wants to keep the stone from Crowley as much as we do.”
“I managed to convince him that he’d turned me,” Meg said. “I’m going to help you, and all I ask in return is that, when you have the stone, you make him suffer.”
*****Sam wanted to start sifting through Meg’s information right away, but Dean’s eyes were heavy by the time Castiel and Meg finished filling them in. If Dean’s visions were anything like Sam’s had once been, they were unpleasant and exhausting. Meg wanted to stay and watch Sam’s flat screen, but Sam kicked them both out, angel and demon, to fend for themselves for the night.
Dean was on his side on the couch when Sam finished brushing his teeth, eyes smudged with exhaustion and hand hanging off the side. Sam lowered himself to the floor, watching him.
“Will it happen again tonight?” he asked quietly.
“Probably,” Dean said in a blurry voice.
It wasn’t the time, but Sam couldn’t stop himself. “How could you not tell me?” he accused. “Me, of all people? You think I wouldn’t understand visions? Seeing fucked up things you have no control over?”
“Didn’t want to worry you,” Dean said, and he must be really tired if he was admitting shit like that.
“I wish you’d told me,” Sam said, feeling angry and confused.
Dean closed his eyes. “I don’t mean to keep leaving you alone,” he said, slow and rough. “I don’t know if have a chance of finding this thing, and I didn’t want to saddle you with my crazy, too.”
Sam leaned in and kissed him, hand against his sandpaper jaw, tongue tracing his bottom lip. He was still half-furious, but he’d seen Dean pass out today, unconscious on the floor, and he needed to feel that Dean was alive. Dean turned into the kiss, one hand cupping the back of Sam’s head. Sam shuddered as his body reacted to the taste and smell of Dean.
Sam deepened the kiss, tilting his head so that Dean’s mouth opened under his. Dean felt so fucking familiar, and he’d been gone so fucking long. Sam groaned a little, wondering if he could just crawl inside Dean’s mouth and live there, shut the rest of this shit out.
He broke away, panting, and rolled his forehead against the cool leather of the couch.
“I thought you had a girlfriend,” Dean said into his left ear.
It doesn’t fucking matter, Sam wanted to scream. When had it ever mattered what the hell else was going on when Dean was in trouble. When Dean needed something.
Dean didn’t need anything tonight, Sam realized. He was exhausted, breathing just barely picked up from their kiss. It was Sam who wanted more.
“Yeah,” Sam said into the couch, and then pushed himself away.
Dean was asleep when he came back into the living room, arms full of blankets. He stretched out on the floor, feet sticking out three inches past the foot of the sofa. He folded his pillow in half, trying to spare his skull from the hard floor. Dean’s hand still dangled over the side of the couch, and Sam fell asleep, looking up at it.
*****Dean’s first vision that night wasn’t a vision at all, but a memory. The Nephilim held out the fruit, and Dean wouldn’t have eaten it for a million bucks back home. Maggots writhed in and out of the soft, brown skin. Wilted leaves hung from the stem.
“You know this isn’t right,” Castiel said to him, and Dean tuned him out.
“One bite, and you can leave” the Nephilim said. Even in the shadow of his hood, Dean could see his mouth curve. “What have you got to lose?”
“What happened the last time you made a demon deal?” Castiel asked, and Dean remembered Sam slowly sinking in his arms, bleeding and limp. It was a demon deal that Dean knew he’d make again, even with everything that had followed.
“I’m no demon,” the Nephilim said, “and I’m no trickster. The terms are simple: bring me the stone, and you stay with your brother. Fail, and you come back here. Nothing lost.”
“He wants you to fail,” Castiel said urgently. “Can’t you see that?”
The Nephilim was impossibly tall, imposing in his brown cloak. Dean couldn’t see his face, and he was just fine with that.
“Why me?” Dean asked. “There are a million creepy crawlies here. Why are you letting me go?”
“They belong here,” the Nephilim said. “I can’t let them through. It’s the rules. But you…”
He held out two pieces of the rotting fruit, one to Castiel and one to Dean. Castiel didn’t even spare his a glance. Dean took his, staring.
“One month,” the Nephilim said. “Half of you here, half of you there. And you know the consequences if you fail to return?”
Dean was thinking of Sam, hopeless and stumbling, fucking demons, whoring himself out for revenge. Consequences either way.
Castiel put a hand on his arm, stilled the movement of Dean’s hand toward his mouth.
“Cas, I have to,” Dean said.
And Cas turned to face him, twisted up a fist in Dean’s collar and put his face very close.
“You have no concept of the consequences,” he said. “You don’t know what you’ll bring down.”
“It’s Sam,” Dean said.
“Don’t do this,” Cas said. “You can’t - ”
Dean put the fruit to his mouth and bit.
He jerked awake from his dream as the hellish landscape dissolved under him. Sam’s apartment spun around him, tilting as Dean tried to get his sense of gravity back. He sat up quickly, pressing fingers against his temples. When he opened his eyes again, everything had settled.
Sam was asleep on the floor beneath him, which shouldn’t have surprised him, but did. He stepped over his lightly snoring form and headed for the sink, splashing water on his face.
He had left Castiel in Purgatory, with his warning and his fear. He’d been so blind in his need to get back to Sam; he hadn’t even dreamed that Sam might be doing fine, that he might be normal and safe and maybe in love.
It should have made him feel better. No matter what happened, Sam would be fine. Even if they didn’t find the damn stone, Sam would survive.
Dean climbed over the back of the couch and slid under the blankets. Sam stirred at the soft sounds but didn’t wake up. Dean was pretty sure it was the first time Sam had slept since he’d been back.
He’d made it worse, he realized. Sam had buried him, metaphorically speaking. He didn’t need to be dragged back into the life, but Dean hadn’t left him any choice. Because now that he was home, he wanted to stay. Damn, he wanted to stay. He wanted the Impala and greasy food, Metallica and machetes and Sam, looking at him from under too-long bangs, watching him for the next move. He wanted his fucking brother, and he’d forgotten how much until Sam had looked at him from the passenger seat, all lazy smile and sharp, bright eyes.
I’m your weakness, he’d told Sam a long time ago. And you’re mine.
He went back to sleep and saw two shifters tear each other apart, tangled in sinew and blood.
Chapter 4
Author: sowell
Genre: Angst, action, slash
Characters/Pairing: Sam/Dean, secondary Dean/Cas, and Meg/Cas if you squint
Rating: NC-17, eventually
Word count: This part 3,418
Warnings: Language, Wincest, see spoiler warnings
Spoilers: Assumes knowledge of all aired episodes. Very general S8 spoilers:
[here there be spoilers]
Dean gets himself out of Purgatory and Sam has gotten out of the hunting game
Disclaimer: Sooooo not mine
Summary: Dean comes back from Purgatory, but there are consequences attached to his return. Sam and Dean try to reconnect to keep each other safe.
A/N: 1) Unbeta’d - all mistakes are my own. 2) Watson, AR is a real place, but I’ve never been there and thus all details are one hundred percent made up. 3) Beware some nonsensical appropriation of biblical mythology. 4) Comments and concrit are always welcome.
Chapter 1 // Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Thursday
Despite Dean’s assertions, they took the morning bus to the garage where Sam had stored the Impala. Dean caught his breath a little when the sun hit her. She sounded gorgeous, purring her way up to him as the attendant drove her out. Sam must have been paying a fortune to house her. She was shiny and waxed, rims gleaming like new. Dean would have preferred to see Sam driving her instead of storing her, but Sam had started his explanation with the phrase “carbon emissions” and Dean had tuned the rest out.
Dean slid into the driver’s seat and felt like he was home for the first time.
“Where to?” Sam asked, tone light despite the shadows under his eyes. Dean couldn’t stop smiling, running his hands over the steering wheel.
“Who cares?” he said.
They drove two hundred miles without stopping, as fast as the engine would push them, and Sam didn’t bug him about it even once. They stopped somewhere in the middle of the desert, pulling over so Dean could shrug his way out of the car and tip his head up at the painfully bright sky. His pale skin was burning, he knew. He wanted it. If he couldn’t find the stone, he’d be going back to constant night, so he might as well get his cancer rays now.
He stripped down to his t-shirt, and Sam stretched out on the hood of the car, watching him indulgently. Dean couldn’t remember the last time Sam had smiled like that, no tension in his face, dimples showing, hands shoved into his pockets in an easy slouch. Dean hollered something joyfully indeterminate at the sky, and Sam laughed.
They drove back at a more sedate pace, stopping at the storage unit where Sam had stashed Dean’s stuff. They loaded up the trunk in content, sun-drenched silence, and Dean had to stop himself from smiling every time he felt the casual brush of Sam’s bare arm against his.
They were back on the road, headed for Sam’s apartment, when Dean felt the smallest sliver of sensation through the base of his neck, a silver flash of pain that disappeared as quickly as it came. His hands jerked a bit, and the Impala skidded over the center line and back again.
Sam was looking at him, eyebrows raised as if to say “What the fuck?”
“Twitchy,” Dean said in response. “Too much caffeine.”
“Uh-huh,” Sam said.
“And you know that that means,” Dean continued, doing his best to re-direct Sam’s attention.
“Let me guess,” Sam said drolly. “Time to eat?”
“Damn straight.”
Denver didn’t have much in the way of diners, but Dean was damned if he was going to eat at an Applebee’s or some other shitty chain, so they drove around until they found an acceptable substitute. The South Main Grill had cracked plastic booths and tabletops underlaid with local newspaper spreads going back to the 1920s. The music was too country for Dean’s taste, but all the waitresses wore bright cowboy boots and ponytails, so everything evened out.
“Hey,” Dean said, reading one of the old headlines through the cloudy plastic covering. “’Local woman levitates over playground - police suspect hoax.’ What do you think - demon or ghost?”
“I think it was some reporter making shit up,” Sam said absently, scanning his menu. “Depression-era newspapers weren’t exactly accountable for - Dean?”
But Dean barely heard him through the blinding pain in his head. Fire hammered into his skull, and he gasped, curling into himself.
Teeth splitting through gums, the wet sink of claws into flesh, blood soured by night and magic…
He could vaguely hear commotion around him. His shoulder slammed into something hard, wrenching the wrong way, but Dean could only press tight fists against his temples, like he could press out the pain if he tried hard enough.
The thing facing her is just an animal, more a natural disaster than a sentient being. Not one of mother’s best. It snarls, and she takes a step back. It’s stronger, but she’s smarter. She leads it in a slow dance, backing herself into a tree. Everything tastes like shit in Purgatory, but her family’s hungry and this thing has enough blood to last for a week.
It follows her, hackles raised like some gigantic dog. She feels her teeth prick free, not in hunger but in self-defense. Almost there.
It steps on the trap she neatly avoided, and then the silver net is propelling up from the ground. Up goes the beast with it, howling in pain and fury as the silver sears its skin.
“Got you,” she says. “You stupid shit.”
The beast severs one chain link with its teeth, searing its mouth with blood and charred hair, and the whole trap falls apart, crashing to the ground. It takes less than a second before it’s on her, dragging the chain with it, covering them both. The first rip at her neck is excruciating, and she screams. Claws sink into her sides, ripping ferociously. They dig in deep, touch organs, split them open.
It starts eating while she’s still alive, the thing is stupid, it doesn’t know to kill her first, doesn’t know how to make her dead it’s going to start from her insides and all she can do is scream and twist and….
“Dean!” Sam pressed down on his shoulders, pinning him to the floorboards, and Dean opened his eyes and saw chipping plaster, a white spinning ceiling fan, and Sam. Sam’s eyes were panicked, his hands tight on Dean’s shoulders.
“Sammy,” he rasped, just to feel the word in his mouth. His head ached, and shudders still raced through him.
“God, don’t move. They called 911.”
“No,” Dean said. “No, I’m fine.” He rolled to a sitting position, ignoring Sam’s protests.
“Dean, you had a seizure,” Sam was saying. “It’s okay, I have insurance, you need to get checked out, something’s wrong.”
“I said I’m fine,” Dean said, harsher than he’d intended, and that’s when he realized he’d attracted a circle of attention. All the employees and half the customers stood around him and Sam, looking down with various degrees of concern and fascination.
Fucking humiliating.
“I don’t need a doctor,” Dean said, enunciating very clearly so that there was no way Sam could misunderstand. “We should go. Now.”
Sam drove them back to his apartment so fast that Dean’s head swam dizzily. The pain left a faintly nauseous pit in his stomach.
“When we get back, you’re going to tell me what’s going on,” Sam said, quietly furious. His eyes were on the road, but Dean could see the pinched expression on his face, clear in the deepening sunlight. “I want the whole truth this time.”
*****“It’s not a big deal, so don’t get your panties all bunched,” was how Dean started. The insult barely registered in Sam’s brain.
“You screamed,” Sam said. “You have no idea. I thought…” Dean had seized up in a way Sam hadn’t seen since hellhounds clawed him open. He’d collapsed to the floor, and then he’d stopped moving, and Sam couldn’t stop thinking what is it, what got to him, how could he just up and die again now....
“First of all,” Dean cut him off, “I don’t scream. I yell. In a manly way. Second of all,” he spread his arms wide. “I’m fine, Sam. I’m not dead, I’m not demon chow. I’m fine.”
“What’s going on?” Sam asked again, and Dean sighed.
“It’s this deal I made,” he admitted. “I might have left out a couple details.”
“Oh, I think you left out more than that.”
All the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck rose to attention. He knew that voice. He whirled.
“Did you miss me, boys?” Meg asked, one dark eyebrow arched.
Sam reached a hand for his sheathed knife, but Dean was already moving, gun drawn, backing her toward the door.
“That’s not very nice,” she said. “Not after I saved your asses from Dick.”
“Yeah, you’re a real saint,” Dean said. “I thanked you every night from Purgatory.”
Meg’s eyes were wide and solid black, arms out to her sides in a gesture of surrender. “I just got this body patched up,” she said lightly. “I’d prefer not to get another hole through it.”
“Dean,” Sam said. “Crowley took her back into the pit. He probably sent her here.”
“I know that, Sam,” Dean growled. To Meg he said, “Why are you here?”
“Dean,” said another voice, and Sam looked. Castiel stepped through the door, eyes steady and sure. “I brought her. She’s here because of me.”
If Sam was surprised, Dean looked stunned.
“Cas,” he breathed. “How…I thought you were…”
The three of them eyed each other in a strange, hostile triangle. Dean looked like he was two second from putting a bullet through Meg, and then maybe turning the gun on Cas, and even if it wouldn’t hurt either of them much, gunfire wasn’t something Sam wanted to explain to his neighbors.
“Okay,” Sam said. “Okay. Ceasefire.” He stepped in the middle of them, hands up in surrender. “Let’s all just put our weapons away, okay? If we’re gonna do this, let’s at least not do it in my apartment.”
“Sam, move,” Dean said, and Sam glared at him.
“You’re gonna shoot an angel and a demon for…what?” he asked. “To piss them off?”
“I’m all for making the demon bitch bleed,” Dean said. “And I’m not convinced that’s Cas.”
“I’m me, Dean,” Castiel said. As if to prove it, he reappeared between Dean and Sam, two inches from Dean’s nose, and lifted the gun out of Dean’s hand. Dean stumbled back a startled step, then launched an instinctive punch at Castiel’s nose. Castiel took it without blinking, and Dean shook out his hand, wincing.
“Yeah, okay,” he said unsteadily. “So it’s him.”
“Believe it or not,” Meg said, “We’re here to help you.”
*****“I get visions,” Dean said. “No, not like yours,” he added sourly when Sam sharply turned his head. “It’s not the future. It’s stuff that’s happening right now. Only…not here, now.”
“Purgatory,” Sam supplied, and Dean nodded, gaze lowered to his rough hands. His eyelashes were long and tipped gold from their few short hours in the sun. Sam made his eyes look somewhere else.
“My head starts hurting,” Dean said. “And then I get dizzy and…” he made a motion with his hands. “Boom. Monster-vision.”
“Is it getting worse?” Castiel asked intently.
“Better, actually,” Dean said, shrugging. “The first week, I could barely pick my head up. Now, it mainly happens when I sleep.”
That’s what Dean had been doing for a week, Sam realized. Getting his visions under control. Sam didn’t know if he was angrier about the lies, or about Dean’s stupid, self-sacrificing impulses. If he hadn’t gotten his head straight, he wouldn’t have shown at all - Sam was sure of it.
Castiel didn’t ask anything else, and his expression didn’t change. The insanity had gone from his eyes, and Sam wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. It left him a lot more useful and a lot scarier. He looked as concerned as Castiel ever looked, which was to say: not very. There was something in the set of his shoulders that looked like tension, though.
“This is all really fascinating,” Meg drawled. “Can we get to the part where none of you can find the stone and Dean goes back to monster land?”
“Why is she here again?” Dean asked Castiel, and Castiel sighed.
“Tell him,” Meg said. “Tell him who got you out of Purgatory, angelface.”
“Why would you do that?” Sam asked sharply.
“Why would Crowley do that,” Meg corrected. “Now that he knows how to open the doors, do you really think he’s letting it lie? Every eclipse is like a revolving door for demon spies.”
“So Crowley sent you…to get Castiel out of Purgatory…to help us find the stone?” Dean looked at Sam, eyes narrowed. “Any of that sound right to you?”
“Nope,” Sam said stonily.
“Look,” Meg said. “Crowley sent me to bring the stone back to him. It has some serious power attached to it. It’s how Eve kept control of the Leviathans down there, kept them from killing everyone. Crowley wants it. He thinks if he gets it, he can get control of Purgatory, too.”
“Demonic merger,” Dean said. “Great. So why are we trusting you?”
“Because,” Meg bit out. “I’ve been trapped in the pit for over a hundred years, now. Do you remember what that’s like?”
Sam remembered. His brain went a sharp, bloody red at the thought. He didn’t see Lucifer any more, but he still woke up with the feeling of hot knives fading from his skin.
“Hey,” Dean said forcefully, glaring at Meg. “No Hell talk. Got it?”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. Wouldn’t want to send Sammy off the deep end again.”
“She’s convinced me that her intentions are pure,” Castiel said. “Or at least, pure for a demon. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I trust that she wants to keep the stone from Crowley as much as we do.”
“I managed to convince him that he’d turned me,” Meg said. “I’m going to help you, and all I ask in return is that, when you have the stone, you make him suffer.”
*****Sam wanted to start sifting through Meg’s information right away, but Dean’s eyes were heavy by the time Castiel and Meg finished filling them in. If Dean’s visions were anything like Sam’s had once been, they were unpleasant and exhausting. Meg wanted to stay and watch Sam’s flat screen, but Sam kicked them both out, angel and demon, to fend for themselves for the night.
Dean was on his side on the couch when Sam finished brushing his teeth, eyes smudged with exhaustion and hand hanging off the side. Sam lowered himself to the floor, watching him.
“Will it happen again tonight?” he asked quietly.
“Probably,” Dean said in a blurry voice.
It wasn’t the time, but Sam couldn’t stop himself. “How could you not tell me?” he accused. “Me, of all people? You think I wouldn’t understand visions? Seeing fucked up things you have no control over?”
“Didn’t want to worry you,” Dean said, and he must be really tired if he was admitting shit like that.
“I wish you’d told me,” Sam said, feeling angry and confused.
Dean closed his eyes. “I don’t mean to keep leaving you alone,” he said, slow and rough. “I don’t know if have a chance of finding this thing, and I didn’t want to saddle you with my crazy, too.”
Sam leaned in and kissed him, hand against his sandpaper jaw, tongue tracing his bottom lip. He was still half-furious, but he’d seen Dean pass out today, unconscious on the floor, and he needed to feel that Dean was alive. Dean turned into the kiss, one hand cupping the back of Sam’s head. Sam shuddered as his body reacted to the taste and smell of Dean.
Sam deepened the kiss, tilting his head so that Dean’s mouth opened under his. Dean felt so fucking familiar, and he’d been gone so fucking long. Sam groaned a little, wondering if he could just crawl inside Dean’s mouth and live there, shut the rest of this shit out.
He broke away, panting, and rolled his forehead against the cool leather of the couch.
“I thought you had a girlfriend,” Dean said into his left ear.
It doesn’t fucking matter, Sam wanted to scream. When had it ever mattered what the hell else was going on when Dean was in trouble. When Dean needed something.
Dean didn’t need anything tonight, Sam realized. He was exhausted, breathing just barely picked up from their kiss. It was Sam who wanted more.
“Yeah,” Sam said into the couch, and then pushed himself away.
Dean was asleep when he came back into the living room, arms full of blankets. He stretched out on the floor, feet sticking out three inches past the foot of the sofa. He folded his pillow in half, trying to spare his skull from the hard floor. Dean’s hand still dangled over the side of the couch, and Sam fell asleep, looking up at it.
*****Dean’s first vision that night wasn’t a vision at all, but a memory. The Nephilim held out the fruit, and Dean wouldn’t have eaten it for a million bucks back home. Maggots writhed in and out of the soft, brown skin. Wilted leaves hung from the stem.
“You know this isn’t right,” Castiel said to him, and Dean tuned him out.
“One bite, and you can leave” the Nephilim said. Even in the shadow of his hood, Dean could see his mouth curve. “What have you got to lose?”
“What happened the last time you made a demon deal?” Castiel asked, and Dean remembered Sam slowly sinking in his arms, bleeding and limp. It was a demon deal that Dean knew he’d make again, even with everything that had followed.
“I’m no demon,” the Nephilim said, “and I’m no trickster. The terms are simple: bring me the stone, and you stay with your brother. Fail, and you come back here. Nothing lost.”
“He wants you to fail,” Castiel said urgently. “Can’t you see that?”
The Nephilim was impossibly tall, imposing in his brown cloak. Dean couldn’t see his face, and he was just fine with that.
“Why me?” Dean asked. “There are a million creepy crawlies here. Why are you letting me go?”
“They belong here,” the Nephilim said. “I can’t let them through. It’s the rules. But you…”
He held out two pieces of the rotting fruit, one to Castiel and one to Dean. Castiel didn’t even spare his a glance. Dean took his, staring.
“One month,” the Nephilim said. “Half of you here, half of you there. And you know the consequences if you fail to return?”
Dean was thinking of Sam, hopeless and stumbling, fucking demons, whoring himself out for revenge. Consequences either way.
Castiel put a hand on his arm, stilled the movement of Dean’s hand toward his mouth.
“Cas, I have to,” Dean said.
And Cas turned to face him, twisted up a fist in Dean’s collar and put his face very close.
“You have no concept of the consequences,” he said. “You don’t know what you’ll bring down.”
“It’s Sam,” Dean said.
“Don’t do this,” Cas said. “You can’t - ”
Dean put the fruit to his mouth and bit.
He jerked awake from his dream as the hellish landscape dissolved under him. Sam’s apartment spun around him, tilting as Dean tried to get his sense of gravity back. He sat up quickly, pressing fingers against his temples. When he opened his eyes again, everything had settled.
Sam was asleep on the floor beneath him, which shouldn’t have surprised him, but did. He stepped over his lightly snoring form and headed for the sink, splashing water on his face.
He had left Castiel in Purgatory, with his warning and his fear. He’d been so blind in his need to get back to Sam; he hadn’t even dreamed that Sam might be doing fine, that he might be normal and safe and maybe in love.
It should have made him feel better. No matter what happened, Sam would be fine. Even if they didn’t find the damn stone, Sam would survive.
Dean climbed over the back of the couch and slid under the blankets. Sam stirred at the soft sounds but didn’t wake up. Dean was pretty sure it was the first time Sam had slept since he’d been back.
He’d made it worse, he realized. Sam had buried him, metaphorically speaking. He didn’t need to be dragged back into the life, but Dean hadn’t left him any choice. Because now that he was home, he wanted to stay. Damn, he wanted to stay. He wanted the Impala and greasy food, Metallica and machetes and Sam, looking at him from under too-long bangs, watching him for the next move. He wanted his fucking brother, and he’d forgotten how much until Sam had looked at him from the passenger seat, all lazy smile and sharp, bright eyes.
I’m your weakness, he’d told Sam a long time ago. And you’re mine.
He went back to sleep and saw two shifters tear each other apart, tangled in sinew and blood.
Chapter 4