Freely Flows the Wine, by itsuki9
Title: Freely Flows the Wine
Author: itsuki9
Rating/Warning: NC-17 or Adult. Wincest.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Word count: ~4750
Three shots of tequila and a beer later, the noise in Smoky's Bar finally mellowed to a hollowed out buzz in Dean's ears, and life no longer sucked complete ass. Hell, he could be a rock star: he was smoother than the alcohol that burned his throat and stung his eyes, the ladies loved him and they grew better looking every minute.
"Where's your friend?" One of them asked.
"It's probably past his bedtime." His glass landed on the counter with a sharper sounding crack than he intended. "How should I know?"
But he knew (the same way he knew and ignored that he was laying the groundwork for the mother of all hangovers) that Sam was waiting for him back at the motel, with his stony silence and the contradictory warmth of his touch-strong, expressive hands that grabbed Dean's hair to tilt his head back for a kiss, hands that left bruises on the skin at Dean's hips. It should be expected that Dean would rather chew on crushed glass than talk about this, but they'd have to talk soon, or the lack of trust and communication was going to get one or both of them killed.
The evening dripped away like condensation beneath his fingertips, and when he next looked up from his drink, most of the crowd had moved elsewhere, leaving the bar area looking a little old and seedy. There was only one drunk chick still willing to put up with his miserable brooding.
"I hate drinking alone," she said, and he couldn't agree more.
* * *
"Can we focus here for ten seconds?" Both of Sam's hands were occupied so he couldn't quite snap his fingers at Dean, but his irritability needed no gestures to make itself known.
"Hey, I'm focused," he said, and redirected the beam of his flashlight on the security panel they've been trying to bypass. "Shut up and do your thing."
Sam shook his head and hunched down to rifle through his pack of tools, reappearing a moment later holding gadgets right out of a geek's wet dream. Dean watched, fluent in that particular body language: he could read the disapproval from the lines of Sam's shoulders, the subtle tension in Sam's jaw as if he had to clamp down on the harsh words he would otherwise use to provoke Dean. Shuttered eyes, a slight wrinkling of his nose if Dean so much as leaned over his shoulder.
Dean took a step back when he realized that Sam could probably smell last night's alcohol and smoke oozing out of his skin. Passive-aggressive asshole, Dean thought, hating the disappointment written in the tightness around Sam's eyes. At the very least, he'd stumbled back to their room, alone, to sleep in his own bed. He could've stayed out all night instead of coming back to face the heavy silence, but he didn't-and that spoke volumes about where his warped focus lies.
Staying at the bar after Sam left had been the right decision, though. Alcohol + a complete stranger with boobs = good times. The drunker he'd gotten, the more unintentionally funny and mismatched the conversations. Sweet potato pie, he'd tossed out at one point, loose-boned and nearly relaxed. "No, never tried it before," she'd admitted, and took another shot.
"You've got to be kidding me."
He'd then mentioned a few more childhood favorites off the top of his head-there'd rarely been time, in the past year, to sit down and taste, to chew what he shoved in his mouth. Always felt like there were too many eyes on their backs-a waitress who looked at Sam for longer than the routine ogling, or a cashier going out of his way to avoid making eye contact with them. Bag the junk, hit the road, that was life on the run.
He felt something in the air change as he tried to recall the many hazy turns of a drunken conversation. A breeze surged up from the paved cobblestones by Sam's abandoned tools, carrying with it the comforting smell of loaves of bread baking in an old oven. It reminded him of home.
Dean's mouth fell open, and he dropped his flashlight.
"Well... shit." He exhaled in a rush as he looked around. Sam was nowhere to be found. The huge hall he'd ended up in was something out of history books, worlds and centuries away from the yuppie pad they'd been trying to break into. Hard to tell what time it was when there were slender columns that ran all the way around but no windows.
He would've noticed that his knees were unreliable if he weren't already sitting down in a chair. Freaky, even by his standards.
His drinking buddy from Smoky's Bar sat across the marbled table from him, her elbows fixed on the black surface, pointed chin resting on her steepled hands. Beneath the loose curls of unbound hair, her eyes shone like a wild animal's, dark gaze fixed attentively on him. On the table were some of the foods he'd been fantasizing about when he had loads of time to kill on the road.
"Old fashioned pancakes and fried corn on the cob in the same meal?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Knew you were too good to be true."
Her smile was pale and forced. "You could have anything you wanted."
He discreetly eyed the spareness of the hall. Apart from the offer of food and the tremendous scale of the architecture, this place was a serious downgrade.
"Not that I'm gonna fall for the same trick twice, but where're the disco balls and tacky lights?"
He didn't care for Barry White, but if he was going to be seduced, there needed to be some sort of music. And while she wasn't ugly by any means, the two lingerie models last time were way hotter. He might have said the last part out loud, for she reached across the table a moment later and slapped him.
* * *
"Dean-" Someone would not stop slapping his face. "Dean!"
He opened his eyes to find the car backing up over a stretch of gravel. Sam was driving one-handed, and the radio chose to buzz to life right then, liquefying his brain with the last chorus of a love song before Sam fumbled to turn it off. It just don't get much worse than this, stealing cursed objects from a home where multiple murders had taken place.
"What?" He was awake, he knew he was awake; he'd only let Sam drive out of the kindness of his heart.
Hangovers weren't supposed to creep up on him like this. His tongue felt like a wet sock in his mouth.
Sam quickly withdrew his hand, placing it properly on the wheel as if he were a first-time driver, seeming to take away with him all the remnant warmth in the car. The absence stung. They didn't take the highway but parked in the shadows of an electronic recycling dump, killed the engine, and waited. The sound of police sirens came close, then continued on. Dean shivered.
Later on, Sam seemed both pissed and worried, stealing quick glances at Dean while attempting to keep his eyes on the road as they merged into traffic. "I asked, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he said. "The stuff?"
"Safe in the trunk. You saw the crucifix."
Dean nodded.
It took them forty-five minutes longer than his estimate to get to the next town. He offered to drive, but Sam hogged the wheel the whole distance. The occasional traffic light they passed cast shadows under Sam's eyes. Several times, Dean saw him open his mouth to say something, and each time, those lips ended up pressed tightly together. It was easy to fall back on the tense silence they'd grown used to, a miserable truce.
They checked into their room, split their bags and took to their usual sides. "You hungry?" Sam asked.
Strangely enough, he wasn't.
He took a hot shower, flopped down on his bed with his hair still wet, and yawned with exaggeration. From under his lashes, he could see the shape of Sam moving quietly around the room, turning on the TV, turning down the volume. For once, Dean got the peace he wanted ... and it didn't feel good at all. He felt the weight of the unsaid words on his chest as he drifted into sleep.
* * *
The venue was different this time.
"Hey ... I've been here before."
The grass outside had grown taller-a healthy, oily green. A few wild reeds almost reached the bottom of the open windows. The sun was setting, casting an otherworldly veil of bronze on the patio. The solitary swing in the yard creaked as the girl leapt off it, taking slow steps towards where he stood looking out a window.
John and Mary Winchester's house, before it burned to the ground, had the same swing, the same white paint on the windows and the similarly riotous grass. The kitchen smelled perpetually of apples and cinnamon, as if there would always be some freshly baked confection cooling on the metal racks, waiting for Dean to come in from an afternoon of playing in the sun. His memory of the rooms and furniture was fuzzy, blurred and faded like photographs of his mother's smile. But this place could've been the bare bones replica, capturing the salient details imprinted on young minds.
"Get out of my head." If he had a single thing that could be used as a weapon, she would be dust by now.
She stopped a few feet away and stared oddly at him as if he were spouting gibberish. When she finally spoke, her voice was wispier than he remembered, barely carrying over the wind: "I won't bring you harm."
"Yeah?" He lunged, grabbed a piece of china from a stack on the counter and aimed it at her annoyingly composed expression, but the gold-rimmed plate landed on grass nowhere near her and didn't even break. He swept his mom's treasured collection to the kitchen floor, where the plates and bowls shattered with a satisfying cacophony, then picked out the sharpest edge and leapt through the window. His feet sank immediately in the soft earth. "Dammit, I swear to god if you don't get out-"
Before he'd finished his threat, he was back in the small motel room, tripping on a towel and his strewn sheets, falling on his ass. He stopped shouting and took deep breaths to calm his racing heartbeat. Somewhere above him, the air conditioner cycled on. It was some unholy hour of the morning and he was in boxers and a t-shirt, the same one he fell asleep wearing.
"Easy," Sam whispered from where he was crouched behind him, a strong hand on Dean's shoulder, kneading the tense, corded muscles there. He turned around. The fear had cleared the fog of sleep from Sam's eyes.
Beyond him, the TV sported a large crack on its screen, and the coffee pot was unfortunately crushed beyond saving. He thought there might be glass shards in the soles of his feet.
"Come back to bed," Sam was saying. His voice was hoarse but unbearably tender. "Just, come back from wherever you've gone and we'll talk about this, all right?"
"Sam." It's not what you think, he wanted to say. Dean reached out frantically and grabbed the front of Sam's tee just as Sam started to plead with him. "Shut up for a minute and listen. I-I think I landed myself in some deep shit."
It was a miracle that Sam didn't interrupt his tale. A chick he met in a bar who was either haunting him, or trying to give him clogged arteries in his dreams? How about the food that matched his memories and fantasies down to the last detail: the steam rising from the checkered tablecloth, the chocolate milk stains on the kitchen chair's cushions? It sounded ridiculous-a drunken nightmare-when he tried to piece things together out loud, but Sam took him seriously.
"Well. Did you eat anything?" Sam asked.
"No, you think I'm stupid?"
Sam let out a sigh, muttering something about pomegranate seeds. He went into the bathroom, came back with a metal box and a clean towel that he draped across his thighs. He lifted Dean's bloody feet up to rest on it and rooted through the first aid kit. While Dean was too busy glaring at the top of his head, insulted by the comparison to some mythological abductee, Sam mistook that silence as his cue to continue: "Okay, I was pretty sure you saw the Matrix-"
"Jesus!" Dean snapped, "I'm not an idiot, okay?"
Sam's brows furrowed. "In that case, you'd know we're not dealing with the Trickster. I think a Reaper has taken a liking to you."
"Ya think?"
More time would've been nice-time to bounce stratagems around, to rag on Sam if his ideas were lame, and maybe explain to him that Dean was no good at any of this, and yeah, sorry about freaking out. Whatever had happened between them hadn't been something trivial. Even a few more words would've gotten the point across-but the room was already darkening and curling at the edges like a burning photograph, and soon the chilly mist descended, raising the hair on his neck.
The intervals of his waking life were tapering off. If his hunch was right, he'd soon be walking this earth like a shadow near midday, waning and insubstantial.
"Your brother was only partially correct." The Reaper's voice came from behind him. She appeared on his left side, trailing her fingers down his shoulder to his elbow as she trod soundlessly to take the seat across the table. There were candles between them, casting their glow on the several colorful dishes of hearty cooking. Mood lighting, he realized.
A noise of pure frustration escaped him as he slammed his knuckles into the edge of the cool marble. The table didn't budge, the flames barely flickered; in this hall, even his blood seemed to run slow and cold. What a fucking mess. A moment ago, he'd been pressing his feet against the muscles of Sam's thighs-should've told his dignity to take a hike and climbed into the warmth of Sam bed-and the next thing he knew, he was having a candlelit dinner on those long snobby tables, with a Reaper whose dark, dead eyes never blinked.
"The pomegranate seed is but a symbol for the seed of man. The Maiden whom your kind has come to know as Proserpina stayed in these realms not entirely because of something so simple as a single ingested fruit, but because she lost her innocence when they fornicated in his cold bed-"
Holy crap I can't believe I'm hearing this, Dean thought, fidgeting and rubbing his hand through his hair as he listened with horrified amazement.
"-where she had stained, sweated and moaned into his sheets." Her explanation finished, she looked straight at him.
"That-that's just T-M-I. You know, I liked you a lot better when you didn't yak as much."
She took long drinks of some dark-colored liquid from her chalice. Her cup always stayed filled. "I liked you better when I was completely drunk. Eat up," she said.
Caught off guard, he didn't have a witty comeback to her comeback. Dean Winchester apparently rubbed off on the undead. If Sam were here, he'd be laughing his ass off.
His stomach grumbled loudly.
Christ, he was starving, but he resolutely pushed away from the table and the platter of carved roast she offered him, and looked for a way out of this place, however impossible that might be. In his peripheral vision, he saw her slowly savoring a bite of mashed potatoes from her silver cutlery, as if it were the most exotic thing she had ever tasted. Try this one, she called after him but was ignored.
Beyond the marbled columns ran a labyrinth of twisting, interconnected passageways. The wider hallways stretched on for miles, a glossy black surface underfoot. Every hundred steps or so, he'd pass by a door with intricately carved wooden panels. They refused to open in any direction but he could hear human voices behind some of them, murmuring and indistinct. He shouted and kicked, but no one heard him. The torches burned steadily along the walls, unperturbed by the wind of his movements.
Fatigue settling in, Dean started leaned his weight on the sides of the hallway as he walked, feeling the smoothness of the wall in the pads of his fingers, alternating it with the sensation of rubbing his palm against the grain of the sickly fragrant wood.
He fell asleep more than once, sinking to the ground with a door at his back, listening to the conversation inside like some sick auditory voyeur. He dozed to the background noise of a grandmother humming traditional tunes, dotted by the hiss of steam on an ironing board; to the sound of a baseball game sportscast; then, to the laughter of children as they counted down from ten.
He heard a voice that sounded like Sam's, but when he sat up with wide eyes, he was still leaning on a carved door in the same unchanging hallway. He shook himself and kept going.
When his knees buckled and he could no longer see straight, the ground and the flames merging in his watery vision, he mumbled, "Get me the hell out" under his breath and fell to his knees. It didn't hurt one bit.
She was waiting for him across the frozen candles, and the banquet was spread before him once more.
* * *
"It was just a drink."
His voice was a croak into the darkness, but a few seconds later he heard Sam's relieved laughter in his ear, soft and desperate-sounding.
"You're back-oh, God," Sam said, shifting beside him, adjusting the covers and wrapping Dean more tightly against the furnace of his chest.
"I'd forgotten … I let her buy me a beer. A fucking beer that tasted like piss." He blinked-still not seeing any distinct shapes. Had night fallen so soon? How much time had passed? He tried to give Sam's arm a reassuring squeeze, but his hands felt like jelly.
"It's okay," Sam told him. Dean could feel warm lips caressing behind his ear. "We'll get you out of this."
"What about the case?"
There was no case, Sam answered in the vaguest way possible. As soon as Dean had started slipping in and out of consciousness, the case was abandoned. The Pope himself could be waiting outside the motel and Sam wouldn't budge from his side-Dean knew how selective, how surprising that intense focus could be. Right now, Sam couldn't care less about the cursed artifacts waiting in the trunk of the car.
Eventually, a straight answer: a day and a half was how long Dean had been out. A chunk of his life spent sightseeing in the eternal halls, gone in the blink of an eye.
"Hey." Despite his efforts, Dean felt himself slipping away. "Think I'll get to see you again?"
And Sam was crushing him with his weight, his face buried in Dean's neck, arms wrapped tightly around him. "Course you will."
* * *
For someone who moved slowly-after all, Reapers had plenty of time to kill, ha ha-Dean thought she covered a remarkable amount of ground with just a few strides.
"Why don't you let me go, huh? I'll stop trashing your Martha Stewart collection, you stop trying to stuff me like a turkey, everyone goes home happy."
Her stare could still turn a man's blood to ice, but for once, there was something like puzzlement or pity in her frown. Almost, but not quite, a genuine, human emotion.
She dismissed him and continued down the halls. "You should eat something solid, or you won't be able to stay much longer."
It's not as if he wanted to stay in this sterile hell. Like a stuntman unprepared for the leap between buildings, he was stuck between her world and his own. Far ahead, she opened a door, and Dean caught his first glimpse of the vibrant mesh of someone's life inside, countless conversations and epiphanies about life swirling in the colors. The beauty of it was akin to pain. Her voice flowed out, a glacial stream, guiding with clinical kindness. There was a flux of bright light before the door closed.
Not a strand of her hair moved out of place as she turned and waited for him to catch up. She was retiring to her sleeping quarters.
"I get it now," he said. He refused to get closer; he was not going to follow her every footstep. "That you're lonely, that your job sucks-"
Sure, being a minion of the underworld had to be a shitty job, residing in a state of endlessness, smooth marble and unmoving flames-looking upon these human lives but unable to touch, to feel the heat, to connect. There were others like her, but her kind always worked alone.
It could've been this way for millennia before he came along.
"-Trust me, I get it. But I don't belong in this pit."
"And you think I do?" She was too close, staring icily into his face, too fast for him to take a startled step back. Her bony fingers wrapped around his neck, lifting him above the ground, slowly and unrelentingly crushing his windpipe.
Way to go, genius.
He was still fighting it, thrashing and kicking and slipping his fingertips under her grip, when he heard Sam repeating his name, the sound a benediction. Dean-a surge of relief so strong, spilling over onto his dry lips; "Dean," a trail of wandering kisses on his closed eyes, on his damp cheeks. And just like that, he was back in bed, the morning light coming in through the windows as white as gauze. There was now an IV attached to his arm, and Sam was running a damp washcloth all over his skin, wiping down his bare chest, the inside of his elbows, down his flanks.
"How long?"
"A little more than three days. Can you eat?"
"Later." He won't be able to keep the food down. "I got some things to tell you."
"Later," Sam deflected, just as easily. There were different nuances to Sam's smile, like there were meaningful variations of snow or clouds for anyone who'd spent enough years studying and obsessing over them-and this particular expression was the heavyweight champ, the sucker punch that blind-sided him, a sadness and an openness that said one word: Don't.
The white ceiling of the motel room flickered, twisting and morphing like billowing summer curtains from an afterimage-flashes of a sunlit kitchen, redolent of lemon and herbs. "No. It's important."
"Dean, it can wait. Just-stay with me, okay?"
He concentrated on Sam's somber, determined face, the indomitable grace of his lips. Come here, he beckoned with a finger, and they needed no words for Sam understood him completely, that generous mouth meeting Dean's with a soft sigh, the tip of his tongue tracing out the contours of his worry.
Big hands cupped his jaw, rustling the few days' growth of scratchy stubble. His skin felt frail like paper, incapable of containing the unease that burned bright inside him. There were candles in the distance, flames low and steady, turning the walls smoke-black. "Stay with me," Sam repeated, and the darkness dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. Sam nipped a painfully slow path down the center of his chest, marking with his teeth, following with his fingers. When he finally took Dean into his mouth, the touch was, by contrast, so light-sucking him off so gently-that all Dean could do was pant up at the ceiling.
He didn't know what the hell he'd been afraid of, loving Sam or being loved by him. It was good, it was all good. He couldn't last. The strength of those arms around his thighs anchored him as he shook through his orgasm, Sam's mouth milking the last drops of his come before letting his dick slip from between those gleaming lips with a small smile.
"Come here."
His voice sounded fucked up, ragged, but Sam heard it and obliged, kissing his way back up Dean's body, his erection digging hard into Dean's hipbone. Christ, Sam wanted him-no pretenses, Sam wanted him. Sam held him in a tight hug, still whispering, "Hang on" and "Please, stay."
"Okay," Dean reached out and reassured him. He could do this. "No problem."
There was velvet under his palms instead of hot skin, and he was seated once more in the dreaded hall. It took Dean a few moments to get his breathing under control as the realization sank in. That had been his last resurfacing, he was sure of it. He sucked in the stale air in fitful gulps, secretly wiping his eyes with the back of his hand before standing up straight and smashing every single dish and bowl on the table. The wine, the sauces, the bread and soups spilled all over the marble, running down the lustrous surfaces; he stamped on the slosh and kicked over the heavy chairs.
The Reaper was nowhere to be found. Probably waiting for him to come to her, that bitch.
He pounded down the chilly passageways, counting the arches as he passed under them, took a turn each time one hallway split off into another. The doors flew by, the torches burned ever so steadily. He spotted her, more than a hundred doors down-there was more than the usual gloom about her, a grave presence that ate the light.
As he got close, he could make out the dark shape behind her, the size and the outline of it familiar enough to slow his steps. Dean felt the fight leave him, his rage drained and replaced by despair when he recognized the shadow: Sam had somehow ended up here, in the underworld.
That was the last thing he wanted.
She, however, only grew more furious as Dean simmered down. She came to him, her hands pummeling him on the chest, each hit connecting solidly as she threw a fit that was strangely disconcerting to witness-grittier and more real than he'd ever seen her. His influence, perhaps. "The seed of man," she said, shaking and incensed. Sam wasn't here to plead his case, then, but to claim what was rightfully his.
Dean couldn't help it: he winked at her. The accusation tightly wound within her voice exploded as she struck him down.
He fell and fell, deeper and accelerating, until the distorted surroundings slammed to a stop and left him gasping on the floor-not seamless marble but the cheap white tiles of the motel's bathroom. He'd somehow torn the IV from his arm, and it bled sluggishly as he crawled the last bit of distance to the toilet bowl to heave nothing but bile.
Still shaking and in pain, he thought with a mixture of horror and hilarity: A blowjob saved my life.
Sam had shot out of bed after him and, upon ascertaining that Dean was going to be okay, backed up against the bathroom door and sank slowly to the floor. With his knees drawn up to his chest, arms clasped loosely around them, he looked as sick and wobbly as Dean felt.
"I'm okay."
He flushed, hauled himself into the shower and ran the water, letting it hit his face, run down his hair, and sluice away the cold sweat. By the door, Sam was hunched over his stomach, slowly getting to his feet. Leaving. Giving Dean space. Whatever he needed.
"You're a nutcase and I still think you pull game plans out of your ass," Dean admitted, water running in his eyes. He opened his mouth, filled it under the spray, gargled and spit down the drain, then collapsed back against the tub. He felt like he'd returned after a months-long journey, and the words kept welling up. "I missed you."
Sam paused in the doorway but was too worn out to speak, turning slightly to give Dean a thumbs up, welcoming him back to the world of the living. It was followed by a shaky smile, freedom and bravery fluttering in that smallest of movements. The light caught Sam's eyes at an angle, the intense green in them an oasis after his long trek through barren sands, and it was the most incandescent sight Dean had ever seen.
End.
Author: itsuki9
Rating/Warning: NC-17 or Adult. Wincest.
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Word count: ~4750
Three shots of tequila and a beer later, the noise in Smoky's Bar finally mellowed to a hollowed out buzz in Dean's ears, and life no longer sucked complete ass. Hell, he could be a rock star: he was smoother than the alcohol that burned his throat and stung his eyes, the ladies loved him and they grew better looking every minute.
"Where's your friend?" One of them asked.
"It's probably past his bedtime." His glass landed on the counter with a sharper sounding crack than he intended. "How should I know?"
But he knew (the same way he knew and ignored that he was laying the groundwork for the mother of all hangovers) that Sam was waiting for him back at the motel, with his stony silence and the contradictory warmth of his touch-strong, expressive hands that grabbed Dean's hair to tilt his head back for a kiss, hands that left bruises on the skin at Dean's hips. It should be expected that Dean would rather chew on crushed glass than talk about this, but they'd have to talk soon, or the lack of trust and communication was going to get one or both of them killed.
The evening dripped away like condensation beneath his fingertips, and when he next looked up from his drink, most of the crowd had moved elsewhere, leaving the bar area looking a little old and seedy. There was only one drunk chick still willing to put up with his miserable brooding.
"I hate drinking alone," she said, and he couldn't agree more.
* * *
"Can we focus here for ten seconds?" Both of Sam's hands were occupied so he couldn't quite snap his fingers at Dean, but his irritability needed no gestures to make itself known.
"Hey, I'm focused," he said, and redirected the beam of his flashlight on the security panel they've been trying to bypass. "Shut up and do your thing."
Sam shook his head and hunched down to rifle through his pack of tools, reappearing a moment later holding gadgets right out of a geek's wet dream. Dean watched, fluent in that particular body language: he could read the disapproval from the lines of Sam's shoulders, the subtle tension in Sam's jaw as if he had to clamp down on the harsh words he would otherwise use to provoke Dean. Shuttered eyes, a slight wrinkling of his nose if Dean so much as leaned over his shoulder.
Dean took a step back when he realized that Sam could probably smell last night's alcohol and smoke oozing out of his skin. Passive-aggressive asshole, Dean thought, hating the disappointment written in the tightness around Sam's eyes. At the very least, he'd stumbled back to their room, alone, to sleep in his own bed. He could've stayed out all night instead of coming back to face the heavy silence, but he didn't-and that spoke volumes about where his warped focus lies.
Staying at the bar after Sam left had been the right decision, though. Alcohol + a complete stranger with boobs = good times. The drunker he'd gotten, the more unintentionally funny and mismatched the conversations. Sweet potato pie, he'd tossed out at one point, loose-boned and nearly relaxed. "No, never tried it before," she'd admitted, and took another shot.
"You've got to be kidding me."
He'd then mentioned a few more childhood favorites off the top of his head-there'd rarely been time, in the past year, to sit down and taste, to chew what he shoved in his mouth. Always felt like there were too many eyes on their backs-a waitress who looked at Sam for longer than the routine ogling, or a cashier going out of his way to avoid making eye contact with them. Bag the junk, hit the road, that was life on the run.
He felt something in the air change as he tried to recall the many hazy turns of a drunken conversation. A breeze surged up from the paved cobblestones by Sam's abandoned tools, carrying with it the comforting smell of loaves of bread baking in an old oven. It reminded him of home.
Dean's mouth fell open, and he dropped his flashlight.
"Well... shit." He exhaled in a rush as he looked around. Sam was nowhere to be found. The huge hall he'd ended up in was something out of history books, worlds and centuries away from the yuppie pad they'd been trying to break into. Hard to tell what time it was when there were slender columns that ran all the way around but no windows.
He would've noticed that his knees were unreliable if he weren't already sitting down in a chair. Freaky, even by his standards.
His drinking buddy from Smoky's Bar sat across the marbled table from him, her elbows fixed on the black surface, pointed chin resting on her steepled hands. Beneath the loose curls of unbound hair, her eyes shone like a wild animal's, dark gaze fixed attentively on him. On the table were some of the foods he'd been fantasizing about when he had loads of time to kill on the road.
"Old fashioned pancakes and fried corn on the cob in the same meal?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Knew you were too good to be true."
Her smile was pale and forced. "You could have anything you wanted."
He discreetly eyed the spareness of the hall. Apart from the offer of food and the tremendous scale of the architecture, this place was a serious downgrade.
"Not that I'm gonna fall for the same trick twice, but where're the disco balls and tacky lights?"
He didn't care for Barry White, but if he was going to be seduced, there needed to be some sort of music. And while she wasn't ugly by any means, the two lingerie models last time were way hotter. He might have said the last part out loud, for she reached across the table a moment later and slapped him.
* * *
"Dean-" Someone would not stop slapping his face. "Dean!"
He opened his eyes to find the car backing up over a stretch of gravel. Sam was driving one-handed, and the radio chose to buzz to life right then, liquefying his brain with the last chorus of a love song before Sam fumbled to turn it off. It just don't get much worse than this, stealing cursed objects from a home where multiple murders had taken place.
"What?" He was awake, he knew he was awake; he'd only let Sam drive out of the kindness of his heart.
Hangovers weren't supposed to creep up on him like this. His tongue felt like a wet sock in his mouth.
Sam quickly withdrew his hand, placing it properly on the wheel as if he were a first-time driver, seeming to take away with him all the remnant warmth in the car. The absence stung. They didn't take the highway but parked in the shadows of an electronic recycling dump, killed the engine, and waited. The sound of police sirens came close, then continued on. Dean shivered.
Later on, Sam seemed both pissed and worried, stealing quick glances at Dean while attempting to keep his eyes on the road as they merged into traffic. "I asked, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he said. "The stuff?"
"Safe in the trunk. You saw the crucifix."
Dean nodded.
It took them forty-five minutes longer than his estimate to get to the next town. He offered to drive, but Sam hogged the wheel the whole distance. The occasional traffic light they passed cast shadows under Sam's eyes. Several times, Dean saw him open his mouth to say something, and each time, those lips ended up pressed tightly together. It was easy to fall back on the tense silence they'd grown used to, a miserable truce.
They checked into their room, split their bags and took to their usual sides. "You hungry?" Sam asked.
Strangely enough, he wasn't.
He took a hot shower, flopped down on his bed with his hair still wet, and yawned with exaggeration. From under his lashes, he could see the shape of Sam moving quietly around the room, turning on the TV, turning down the volume. For once, Dean got the peace he wanted ... and it didn't feel good at all. He felt the weight of the unsaid words on his chest as he drifted into sleep.
* * *
The venue was different this time.
"Hey ... I've been here before."
The grass outside had grown taller-a healthy, oily green. A few wild reeds almost reached the bottom of the open windows. The sun was setting, casting an otherworldly veil of bronze on the patio. The solitary swing in the yard creaked as the girl leapt off it, taking slow steps towards where he stood looking out a window.
John and Mary Winchester's house, before it burned to the ground, had the same swing, the same white paint on the windows and the similarly riotous grass. The kitchen smelled perpetually of apples and cinnamon, as if there would always be some freshly baked confection cooling on the metal racks, waiting for Dean to come in from an afternoon of playing in the sun. His memory of the rooms and furniture was fuzzy, blurred and faded like photographs of his mother's smile. But this place could've been the bare bones replica, capturing the salient details imprinted on young minds.
"Get out of my head." If he had a single thing that could be used as a weapon, she would be dust by now.
She stopped a few feet away and stared oddly at him as if he were spouting gibberish. When she finally spoke, her voice was wispier than he remembered, barely carrying over the wind: "I won't bring you harm."
"Yeah?" He lunged, grabbed a piece of china from a stack on the counter and aimed it at her annoyingly composed expression, but the gold-rimmed plate landed on grass nowhere near her and didn't even break. He swept his mom's treasured collection to the kitchen floor, where the plates and bowls shattered with a satisfying cacophony, then picked out the sharpest edge and leapt through the window. His feet sank immediately in the soft earth. "Dammit, I swear to god if you don't get out-"
Before he'd finished his threat, he was back in the small motel room, tripping on a towel and his strewn sheets, falling on his ass. He stopped shouting and took deep breaths to calm his racing heartbeat. Somewhere above him, the air conditioner cycled on. It was some unholy hour of the morning and he was in boxers and a t-shirt, the same one he fell asleep wearing.
"Easy," Sam whispered from where he was crouched behind him, a strong hand on Dean's shoulder, kneading the tense, corded muscles there. He turned around. The fear had cleared the fog of sleep from Sam's eyes.
Beyond him, the TV sported a large crack on its screen, and the coffee pot was unfortunately crushed beyond saving. He thought there might be glass shards in the soles of his feet.
"Come back to bed," Sam was saying. His voice was hoarse but unbearably tender. "Just, come back from wherever you've gone and we'll talk about this, all right?"
"Sam." It's not what you think, he wanted to say. Dean reached out frantically and grabbed the front of Sam's tee just as Sam started to plead with him. "Shut up for a minute and listen. I-I think I landed myself in some deep shit."
It was a miracle that Sam didn't interrupt his tale. A chick he met in a bar who was either haunting him, or trying to give him clogged arteries in his dreams? How about the food that matched his memories and fantasies down to the last detail: the steam rising from the checkered tablecloth, the chocolate milk stains on the kitchen chair's cushions? It sounded ridiculous-a drunken nightmare-when he tried to piece things together out loud, but Sam took him seriously.
"Well. Did you eat anything?" Sam asked.
"No, you think I'm stupid?"
Sam let out a sigh, muttering something about pomegranate seeds. He went into the bathroom, came back with a metal box and a clean towel that he draped across his thighs. He lifted Dean's bloody feet up to rest on it and rooted through the first aid kit. While Dean was too busy glaring at the top of his head, insulted by the comparison to some mythological abductee, Sam mistook that silence as his cue to continue: "Okay, I was pretty sure you saw the Matrix-"
"Jesus!" Dean snapped, "I'm not an idiot, okay?"
Sam's brows furrowed. "In that case, you'd know we're not dealing with the Trickster. I think a Reaper has taken a liking to you."
"Ya think?"
More time would've been nice-time to bounce stratagems around, to rag on Sam if his ideas were lame, and maybe explain to him that Dean was no good at any of this, and yeah, sorry about freaking out. Whatever had happened between them hadn't been something trivial. Even a few more words would've gotten the point across-but the room was already darkening and curling at the edges like a burning photograph, and soon the chilly mist descended, raising the hair on his neck.
The intervals of his waking life were tapering off. If his hunch was right, he'd soon be walking this earth like a shadow near midday, waning and insubstantial.
"Your brother was only partially correct." The Reaper's voice came from behind him. She appeared on his left side, trailing her fingers down his shoulder to his elbow as she trod soundlessly to take the seat across the table. There were candles between them, casting their glow on the several colorful dishes of hearty cooking. Mood lighting, he realized.
A noise of pure frustration escaped him as he slammed his knuckles into the edge of the cool marble. The table didn't budge, the flames barely flickered; in this hall, even his blood seemed to run slow and cold. What a fucking mess. A moment ago, he'd been pressing his feet against the muscles of Sam's thighs-should've told his dignity to take a hike and climbed into the warmth of Sam bed-and the next thing he knew, he was having a candlelit dinner on those long snobby tables, with a Reaper whose dark, dead eyes never blinked.
"The pomegranate seed is but a symbol for the seed of man. The Maiden whom your kind has come to know as Proserpina stayed in these realms not entirely because of something so simple as a single ingested fruit, but because she lost her innocence when they fornicated in his cold bed-"
Holy crap I can't believe I'm hearing this, Dean thought, fidgeting and rubbing his hand through his hair as he listened with horrified amazement.
"-where she had stained, sweated and moaned into his sheets." Her explanation finished, she looked straight at him.
"That-that's just T-M-I. You know, I liked you a lot better when you didn't yak as much."
She took long drinks of some dark-colored liquid from her chalice. Her cup always stayed filled. "I liked you better when I was completely drunk. Eat up," she said.
Caught off guard, he didn't have a witty comeback to her comeback. Dean Winchester apparently rubbed off on the undead. If Sam were here, he'd be laughing his ass off.
His stomach grumbled loudly.
Christ, he was starving, but he resolutely pushed away from the table and the platter of carved roast she offered him, and looked for a way out of this place, however impossible that might be. In his peripheral vision, he saw her slowly savoring a bite of mashed potatoes from her silver cutlery, as if it were the most exotic thing she had ever tasted. Try this one, she called after him but was ignored.
Beyond the marbled columns ran a labyrinth of twisting, interconnected passageways. The wider hallways stretched on for miles, a glossy black surface underfoot. Every hundred steps or so, he'd pass by a door with intricately carved wooden panels. They refused to open in any direction but he could hear human voices behind some of them, murmuring and indistinct. He shouted and kicked, but no one heard him. The torches burned steadily along the walls, unperturbed by the wind of his movements.
Fatigue settling in, Dean started leaned his weight on the sides of the hallway as he walked, feeling the smoothness of the wall in the pads of his fingers, alternating it with the sensation of rubbing his palm against the grain of the sickly fragrant wood.
He fell asleep more than once, sinking to the ground with a door at his back, listening to the conversation inside like some sick auditory voyeur. He dozed to the background noise of a grandmother humming traditional tunes, dotted by the hiss of steam on an ironing board; to the sound of a baseball game sportscast; then, to the laughter of children as they counted down from ten.
He heard a voice that sounded like Sam's, but when he sat up with wide eyes, he was still leaning on a carved door in the same unchanging hallway. He shook himself and kept going.
When his knees buckled and he could no longer see straight, the ground and the flames merging in his watery vision, he mumbled, "Get me the hell out" under his breath and fell to his knees. It didn't hurt one bit.
She was waiting for him across the frozen candles, and the banquet was spread before him once more.
* * *
"It was just a drink."
His voice was a croak into the darkness, but a few seconds later he heard Sam's relieved laughter in his ear, soft and desperate-sounding.
"You're back-oh, God," Sam said, shifting beside him, adjusting the covers and wrapping Dean more tightly against the furnace of his chest.
"I'd forgotten … I let her buy me a beer. A fucking beer that tasted like piss." He blinked-still not seeing any distinct shapes. Had night fallen so soon? How much time had passed? He tried to give Sam's arm a reassuring squeeze, but his hands felt like jelly.
"It's okay," Sam told him. Dean could feel warm lips caressing behind his ear. "We'll get you out of this."
"What about the case?"
There was no case, Sam answered in the vaguest way possible. As soon as Dean had started slipping in and out of consciousness, the case was abandoned. The Pope himself could be waiting outside the motel and Sam wouldn't budge from his side-Dean knew how selective, how surprising that intense focus could be. Right now, Sam couldn't care less about the cursed artifacts waiting in the trunk of the car.
Eventually, a straight answer: a day and a half was how long Dean had been out. A chunk of his life spent sightseeing in the eternal halls, gone in the blink of an eye.
"Hey." Despite his efforts, Dean felt himself slipping away. "Think I'll get to see you again?"
And Sam was crushing him with his weight, his face buried in Dean's neck, arms wrapped tightly around him. "Course you will."
* * *
For someone who moved slowly-after all, Reapers had plenty of time to kill, ha ha-Dean thought she covered a remarkable amount of ground with just a few strides.
"Why don't you let me go, huh? I'll stop trashing your Martha Stewart collection, you stop trying to stuff me like a turkey, everyone goes home happy."
Her stare could still turn a man's blood to ice, but for once, there was something like puzzlement or pity in her frown. Almost, but not quite, a genuine, human emotion.
She dismissed him and continued down the halls. "You should eat something solid, or you won't be able to stay much longer."
It's not as if he wanted to stay in this sterile hell. Like a stuntman unprepared for the leap between buildings, he was stuck between her world and his own. Far ahead, she opened a door, and Dean caught his first glimpse of the vibrant mesh of someone's life inside, countless conversations and epiphanies about life swirling in the colors. The beauty of it was akin to pain. Her voice flowed out, a glacial stream, guiding with clinical kindness. There was a flux of bright light before the door closed.
Not a strand of her hair moved out of place as she turned and waited for him to catch up. She was retiring to her sleeping quarters.
"I get it now," he said. He refused to get closer; he was not going to follow her every footstep. "That you're lonely, that your job sucks-"
Sure, being a minion of the underworld had to be a shitty job, residing in a state of endlessness, smooth marble and unmoving flames-looking upon these human lives but unable to touch, to feel the heat, to connect. There were others like her, but her kind always worked alone.
It could've been this way for millennia before he came along.
"-Trust me, I get it. But I don't belong in this pit."
"And you think I do?" She was too close, staring icily into his face, too fast for him to take a startled step back. Her bony fingers wrapped around his neck, lifting him above the ground, slowly and unrelentingly crushing his windpipe.
Way to go, genius.
He was still fighting it, thrashing and kicking and slipping his fingertips under her grip, when he heard Sam repeating his name, the sound a benediction. Dean-a surge of relief so strong, spilling over onto his dry lips; "Dean," a trail of wandering kisses on his closed eyes, on his damp cheeks. And just like that, he was back in bed, the morning light coming in through the windows as white as gauze. There was now an IV attached to his arm, and Sam was running a damp washcloth all over his skin, wiping down his bare chest, the inside of his elbows, down his flanks.
"How long?"
"A little more than three days. Can you eat?"
"Later." He won't be able to keep the food down. "I got some things to tell you."
"Later," Sam deflected, just as easily. There were different nuances to Sam's smile, like there were meaningful variations of snow or clouds for anyone who'd spent enough years studying and obsessing over them-and this particular expression was the heavyweight champ, the sucker punch that blind-sided him, a sadness and an openness that said one word: Don't.
The white ceiling of the motel room flickered, twisting and morphing like billowing summer curtains from an afterimage-flashes of a sunlit kitchen, redolent of lemon and herbs. "No. It's important."
"Dean, it can wait. Just-stay with me, okay?"
He concentrated on Sam's somber, determined face, the indomitable grace of his lips. Come here, he beckoned with a finger, and they needed no words for Sam understood him completely, that generous mouth meeting Dean's with a soft sigh, the tip of his tongue tracing out the contours of his worry.
Big hands cupped his jaw, rustling the few days' growth of scratchy stubble. His skin felt frail like paper, incapable of containing the unease that burned bright inside him. There were candles in the distance, flames low and steady, turning the walls smoke-black. "Stay with me," Sam repeated, and the darkness dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. Sam nipped a painfully slow path down the center of his chest, marking with his teeth, following with his fingers. When he finally took Dean into his mouth, the touch was, by contrast, so light-sucking him off so gently-that all Dean could do was pant up at the ceiling.
He didn't know what the hell he'd been afraid of, loving Sam or being loved by him. It was good, it was all good. He couldn't last. The strength of those arms around his thighs anchored him as he shook through his orgasm, Sam's mouth milking the last drops of his come before letting his dick slip from between those gleaming lips with a small smile.
"Come here."
His voice sounded fucked up, ragged, but Sam heard it and obliged, kissing his way back up Dean's body, his erection digging hard into Dean's hipbone. Christ, Sam wanted him-no pretenses, Sam wanted him. Sam held him in a tight hug, still whispering, "Hang on" and "Please, stay."
"Okay," Dean reached out and reassured him. He could do this. "No problem."
There was velvet under his palms instead of hot skin, and he was seated once more in the dreaded hall. It took Dean a few moments to get his breathing under control as the realization sank in. That had been his last resurfacing, he was sure of it. He sucked in the stale air in fitful gulps, secretly wiping his eyes with the back of his hand before standing up straight and smashing every single dish and bowl on the table. The wine, the sauces, the bread and soups spilled all over the marble, running down the lustrous surfaces; he stamped on the slosh and kicked over the heavy chairs.
The Reaper was nowhere to be found. Probably waiting for him to come to her, that bitch.
He pounded down the chilly passageways, counting the arches as he passed under them, took a turn each time one hallway split off into another. The doors flew by, the torches burned ever so steadily. He spotted her, more than a hundred doors down-there was more than the usual gloom about her, a grave presence that ate the light.
As he got close, he could make out the dark shape behind her, the size and the outline of it familiar enough to slow his steps. Dean felt the fight leave him, his rage drained and replaced by despair when he recognized the shadow: Sam had somehow ended up here, in the underworld.
That was the last thing he wanted.
She, however, only grew more furious as Dean simmered down. She came to him, her hands pummeling him on the chest, each hit connecting solidly as she threw a fit that was strangely disconcerting to witness-grittier and more real than he'd ever seen her. His influence, perhaps. "The seed of man," she said, shaking and incensed. Sam wasn't here to plead his case, then, but to claim what was rightfully his.
Dean couldn't help it: he winked at her. The accusation tightly wound within her voice exploded as she struck him down.
He fell and fell, deeper and accelerating, until the distorted surroundings slammed to a stop and left him gasping on the floor-not seamless marble but the cheap white tiles of the motel's bathroom. He'd somehow torn the IV from his arm, and it bled sluggishly as he crawled the last bit of distance to the toilet bowl to heave nothing but bile.
Still shaking and in pain, he thought with a mixture of horror and hilarity: A blowjob saved my life.
Sam had shot out of bed after him and, upon ascertaining that Dean was going to be okay, backed up against the bathroom door and sank slowly to the floor. With his knees drawn up to his chest, arms clasped loosely around them, he looked as sick and wobbly as Dean felt.
"I'm okay."
He flushed, hauled himself into the shower and ran the water, letting it hit his face, run down his hair, and sluice away the cold sweat. By the door, Sam was hunched over his stomach, slowly getting to his feet. Leaving. Giving Dean space. Whatever he needed.
"You're a nutcase and I still think you pull game plans out of your ass," Dean admitted, water running in his eyes. He opened his mouth, filled it under the spray, gargled and spit down the drain, then collapsed back against the tub. He felt like he'd returned after a months-long journey, and the words kept welling up. "I missed you."
Sam paused in the doorway but was too worn out to speak, turning slightly to give Dean a thumbs up, welcoming him back to the world of the living. It was followed by a shaky smile, freedom and bravery fluttering in that smallest of movements. The light caught Sam's eyes at an angle, the intense green in them an oasis after his long trek through barren sands, and it was the most incandescent sight Dean had ever seen.
End.