(no subject)
Blindfold
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, tangential Sam/Ruby, R, season four, 3,277 words, sort of AU.
So your eyes can't see.
This church on the edge of town, imposing sharp-edged monolith. If it were day, the right time of day, the church would cast a shadow across the entire street, spill chill grey like the slow seep of wine. It's already dark, though, starless black cast of night broken only occasionally by the insomniac burn of streetlamps, a yellow-tinged haze that makes Dean want to rub his eyes, makes him want to yawn and turn the car around, go back to that cold motel room, even as he knows that it is not an option, that it has never been an option.
The car that picked Sam up from the desolation of the motel parking lot is parked on the opposite side of the street, in front of the church, in front of those stone steps. And Dean knew, even before he saw her get out of the car, that she -- that it -- would be the driver.
There are very few people for whom Sam would ditch Dean. Even if it doesn't count as ditching, technically, because as far as Sam knows, Dean was asleep under the blankets. As far as Sam knows, Dean is still asleep, is dreaming of nothing, if he's lucky, or of hell, if he's not.
So maybe Sam didn't ditch him. Right. He just snuck out under cover of night because whatever he's doing is something he's ashamed of, is something he knows Dean would never let him do.
Sam and Ruby have been in the church for twenty minutes now. Dean was too far away to see how they unlocked the door, if Sam picked the lock or if Ruby did something to it. He wouldn't put it past her. Doing something to the lock, doing something to his brother, thick black smoke twisting in around all of the empty places, insidious slide, worming around the cracks in his brother, the places Dean was meant to protect.
They've been in there too long.
They've been in there too long and none of them should be here at all. Sam should be living his perfect normal life at long last, Dean should be dead, Ruby should be doing whatever the fuck she was doing before she decided to turn Sam into the little soldier who could. Sam shouldn't be in the church, in some huge Gothic church doing God knows what with his new demon sidekick, while Dean waits in the car, trying to work up the courage to go in after him.
They've been in there too long, and Dean would just as soon turn around, would just as soon spend the last weeks before the apocalypse, the last weeks of his life, not caring, getting wasted in the cramped confines of the motel room instead of the car, because he's sick of heroics, sick of destiny, of fate, of doing the right thing only to find out that maybe he's been on the wrong side since the beginning.
He would, if it were a choice, but it's Sam, and Sam is everything (even in hell, Sam was everything, was what Dean saw even after he didn't remember why, was what Dean saw when he screamed and later when he raised the knife), so Dean screws the cap back onto the bottle and gets out of the car.
Ice-crystal crunch beneath his boots. He no longer remembers if that's normal, if that's normal for this kind of place at this time of year, or if maybe that's one more sign of failure, end of days.
He wishes the apocalypse would hurry up already.
Ruby has good taste in cars, he has to give her that. And he wonders why, wonders if she came programmed like that, if she broke out of hell with a taste for deadly smooth lines and the burn of speed, or if she picked that up after she saw what Sam was missing.
The big double-doors at the top of the stairs swing open easily, quietly. He pulls them shut behind himself and it feels like he's nailing his own coffin, shutting himself into his own mausoleum. Cold stone floor and the stained glass windows, bloody crucifixions and angels raising swords against demons, backlit obscenely by the streetlights, surrounded by the shadows of the room.
Two lines of wooden pews in the nave and he's only trying to get to the other side, to take cover behind one of the stone pillars, but when he gets halfway there, he stops. Standing between the pews, he freezes, nearly stumbles, his eyes drawn to the flashlight glow coming from the apse and then to the dead man on the floor before the altar, the ruined mess of his throat, the garish red smear staining the floor, seeping into the cracks between the stone tiles.
And then Dean wrenches his gaze up, up to Sam and Ruby, standing to one side, entwined together. Sam leaning down, leaning in, and Ruby's hair sliding across both of their faces like a veil, Sam's hands caught up in the black spill.
"What did you do," Dean says, no louder than he meant to, but his voice carries, his voice cuts. He should be terrified, he thinks, terrified, or angry, or something. He should not feel numb, should not want only to sit down, to collapse into one of the pews and close his eyes, let the world be damned. And maybe it's the alcohol, deadening, or maybe it's just that he's not surprised. That he knew it would be something like this, even as he didn't want to believe it, any of it.
He didn't want to believe how far Sam has fallen. How broken Sam is, how desperate.
Sam flinches, visible even at this distance, even in the dim, and Ruby steps back. Sam wipes a hand across his mouth, dark smear across his palm, and looks up at Dean, his eyes wide and shocked.
"Told you we were being followed," Ruby says. She shifts the flashlight to her other hand and tilts her head.
"Dean," Sam says. "I didn't do anything."
"Yeah, he just did that to himself, huh," Dean says, coming down the aisle, his boots heavy, and he wants to turn away. He wants to wake up.
He's close enough to make out the blood staining the dead man's shirt, the pallor of his skin, the white collar around his neck.
"It wasn't me," Sam says, pleading and scared, and Dean nods. Because Sam can't lie to save his life, can't lie to Dean, and as soon as Dean stops believing that, all will be lost, there will be no going back. Nothing left to save, and no reason to try.
"Was it her?" Dean asks, jerking his head in Ruby's direction. He should have killed her a long time ago, should never have spoken to her, talked to her like she was a person, like she could help. He should not have left her alive to do this to his brother.
Even if he couldn't have won, couldn't have killed her, he should have died trying. Because this is his fault, really. He's the one who left, who left Sam alone.
"I'm standing right here," Ruby says, annoyed, like she's merely been insulted, as though Dean did not just accuse her of murder.
"No," Sam says. "He was, we were meant to get here in time to stop it." He swallows, looks down. "We were too late," he says, admits. A bitter self-recriminating confession, but the priest is dead, there's nobody left to hear, to absolve, to make this go away, and Dean almost says that aloud, almost laughs at the situation, catches himself at the last moment.
"Yeah, see, that's what happens when you go sneaking around in the middle of the night," he says instead. "Things go wrong. People end up dead."
"Told you he wouldn't understand," Ruby says, rolling her eyes heavenward.
"So make me understand," Dean says. "Tell me what the fuck you're doing. I thought you weren't gonna do this anymore. You said you were done."
"I am," Sam says. "I mean, I was. Dean, man, I . . . I have to finish this."
"What, 'cause leaving a ritual sacrifice unfinished is tacky?"
"I didn't kill him," Sam says. "I told you that."
"Yeah," Dean says. "So the part where you make me understand starts when, exactly?"
"It's for you," Sam says.
Dean stares at him. "Gee, thanks, but a dead priest isn't really on my wish list."
Ruby sighs. "Why do you bother?" she asks Sam.
"Stay the fuck out of this," Dean snaps.
"You two wanna have your little lover's spat, go for it," Ruby says. "I just think maybe now's not the best time and it's sure as hell not the place."
"Ruby," Sam says, chastising or maybe pleading, and Ruby shrugs. Sam looks back at Dean, takes a breath. "If this is what I have to do to keep you from going back, I will," he says. "Even if it's always gonna end like this, I'm gonna keep trying, and I'm sorry if that pisses you off, but I don't really fucking care. You're not gonna, you're not gonna have to go back."
"Sam," Dean begins, and then he shakes his head. "Save it," he says, turning away. If he has to pretend to be angry, he will, if that's what it takes for Sam to see that this is not what he wants at all.
"I'm not gonna watch that again," Sam says quietly and Dean turns back, Dean looks up at him. Sam looks like he's about to cry, his face screwed up in this ridiculous half-hopeful, half-terrified expression. The last time Dean saw it, he and Bobby were standing in the hallway of some motel and it was the first time Dean had laid eyes on his brother in years. And Dean can't stand to see it again right now, can't stand to be the cause, can't stand to have Sam looking at him like that, like Dean has the power to save him or to destroy him, so Dean looks away.
This bruise on Sam's neck, maybe from a fight, a stranglehold, or maybe from his demon girlfriend, and Dean is losing him, losing him because Sam is too fucking hell-bent on saving Dean. Too fucking stubborn to listen to reason and Dean doesn't know how to make it better, doesn't know what will make Sam understand. So he doesn't say anything.
So he leans up. So he leans up, and he pushes his mouth against his brother's, rough and angry and hard, forceful enough that his teeth catch and scrape at Sam's lower lip. A dare, maybe, or the last act of a desperate man; what the hell else does he have left to lose?
He expects Sam to stumble back, to hit him, knock him on his ass, to make it easy for him to leave, but Sam doesn't. Sam only opens his mouth, opens his mouth and kisses Dean back, tasting ever so faintly of blood. Of blood, and salt, and maybe Ruby's lipstick, and his hands are all over Dean as Dean gasps. He's drunker than he thought he was, he has to be, the way he can't make himself move. The way stands there, helpless, the way he presses his face against Sam's shoulder, too tired to fight anymore, to even pretend.
He did not mean for this to happen, not really. He just, he wasn't thinking. And he can't think, not now, not with the way Sam is touching him.
He never in a million years thought that Sam would say yes.
Something solid collides with the back of his knees and he reaches out blindly, catches himself on the pew. Cold air on his stomach when Sam pushes up his shirt, and Dean should tell him to stop, should make him stop, because they've gone far enough, but he doesn't.
He doesn't say anything.
He shuts his eyes so that he doesn't have to see the dead man, doesn't have to see the desperation in Sam's eyes, the way Sam's looking at him as he works a hand into Dean's jeans. Dean whimpers, a choked sound that he cuts off abruptly, and then he bites his lip, his tongue, to keep from making any more noise.
If this is the last thing he can do, if this is the last thing for which he can ask Sam, the last thing that Sam will give him, he will. He will take it. He will take it, if only because he has nothing else to hold.
Sam's hand on his cock, Sam's mouth hot and wet on his neck, and Dean thinks of the bottle in the car, of the snow-dark sky, of how he should not have come in, how he should have waited outside.
The sound building up in his throat, the sound that's been in him all along, is the brutal sound of a soul being ripped asunder, is the sound of something breaking, something vital being torn open.
In the instant that follows, that instant of clarity, Dean thinks that it might have been the sound of surrender.
And Ruby is watching them, still, her arms crossed over her chest as she stands unmoved beside the body. The priest's blood is cooling and Sam is straightening his shoulders, Sam is biting his lip but not blushing, too old or too weary to blush anymore, and Dean thinks that it would have been better if Sam had hit him after all. If Sam had been repulsed, had driven him away. Had done anything other than given in, given this to Dean.
Because there's no way that Dean can leave now, no way that he can storm back out to the car and wait for daylight. Because he loves Sam, just as he always has, loves Sam with all of his heart. He loves Sam more than anything, loves him blindly, stupidly, loves him even as it feels like he's being torn apart all over again.
The things Sam would do for him. The things Sam has done for him.
And even though Dean believes his brother, believes that Sam had nothing to do with the dead man, that Sam was only trying to save him, he thinks it wouldn't matter if Sam had been the one to kill him. Because Dean would care, certainly, maybe he would even be sick, but he wouldn't leave Sam.
He wouldn't leave Sam, and nothing would change. He wouldn't love Sam any less, and there's no way in hell he would be able to turn away.
So he sinks down onto one of the pews, his knees cracking, his jeans still open and his heart still shaking. Feeling sticky and raw and vulnerable, overexposed. Unsettled, as he should be, because he just let his brother get him off, he just came all over his brother's hand with a murdered man on the ground a few feet away and a demon watching them the whole time.
Unsettled, because all of that is true and because it doesn't feel nearly as wrong as it should.
So he watches his brother, watches Sam standing awkwardly halfway between the pew and the altar, halfway between Dean and Ruby, Ruby's quiet dark gaze.
He watches his brother and he hopes that the apocalypse comes swiftly, comes without warning.
He hopes that they're dead long before the world begins to burn.
"We should go," Ruby says bluntly. "There's nothing else we can do here." She moves away from the body, touches Sam's elbow for a second.
"Yeah, okay," Sam says, and he steps forward, takes the keys when Dean holds them out because Dean does not trust himself to drive. Sam's fingertips brush Dean's palm and the look on his face makes Dean's heart catch, makes his stomach knot. The way Sam looks right now is the way he looked four years ago, scared and unsure, like he's no more than Dean's brother (which is everything), like he never, ever would have done that to Dean, would have done any of this. Dean suddenly wants nothing more than to pull him close, to tell him it's gonna be okay, Sammy, it's all gonna be fine, and to have Sam not know any better than to believe him.
And then Ruby clears her throat and Sam swallows and it's gone, it's lost, and Dean gets to his feet.
It's not yet snowing and the streetlights haven't gone out. There's no place to hide as they stand on the sidewalk, no deep black night in which to get lost. There's only the streetlight glow stretching their shadows, twisting their shadows into weird shapes as the taillights of Ruby's car fade red into the distance and Dean looks at Sam, looks at Sam looking back at him.
"She's right," Sam says. "We should go."
"Yeah," Dean says. He imagines the church bursting into flame behind them, the windows blowing out, colored glass falling across the steps, destroying the evidence. He imagines that it could be that easy. That they could stop back at the motel for their bags and then go, or maybe they could just leave, leave everything behind. Maybe they could just drive, drive until daylight, blue skies and sand, drive so far that they end up where they started, four years and two lifetimes ago.
Sam unlocks the car and Dean thinks about reaching for the bottle, drinking himself insensible while Sam drives them back to the motel. He wouldn't be responsible for anything that might happen after that. He wouldn't be responsible for any of it.
It would be easy. He could. He takes a breath.
Sam turns the key in the ignition. The engine sputters for a moment and then it catches, turns over. Sam glances at Dean and for an instant, in the dim, with the shadows slipping like teeth or claws across his face, his eyes are black and Dean's mouth is dry, Dean's mouth is so fucking dry.
But it's a trick of the light, that's all, and then it's gone. Sam's eyes are his own, as they always have been.
"I'm sorry," Sam says again. "I should have told you I was going out, I know."
"I heard you the first time," Dean says. "It's, it's not okay, obviously, but it's as close to okay as we're gonna get." He tries to grin, at least to smirk, and he doesn't make it. He reaches for the bottle.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Sam says, sounding rueful, sounding relieved. Dean swallows. He watches Sam for a moment and then he takes a sip of bourbon and turns to look out the window.
It's funny, the way the headlights cut through the night, making the shadows slip like the spill of blood, and maybe he'll have that taste forever. Maybe he'll taste blood, taste Sam, constant metal beneath the bourbon burn. Maybe it will never go away.
His world tinged with blood for the rest of his life, however long that might be. It would only be what he deserves, a constant reminder of everything he's done.
"It's gonna get better, though," Sam says. "Ruby said it would. She said there's some things I gotta do, but that'll seal it. That'll make it so you won't have to worry about going back." He glances over at Dean again, smiles. "It's gonna be okay."
"Yeah," Dean says. "Sounds good, Sammy."
He takes another swig from the bottle. He closes his eyes.
--
end
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, tangential Sam/Ruby, R, season four, 3,277 words, sort of AU.
So your eyes can't see.
This church on the edge of town, imposing sharp-edged monolith. If it were day, the right time of day, the church would cast a shadow across the entire street, spill chill grey like the slow seep of wine. It's already dark, though, starless black cast of night broken only occasionally by the insomniac burn of streetlamps, a yellow-tinged haze that makes Dean want to rub his eyes, makes him want to yawn and turn the car around, go back to that cold motel room, even as he knows that it is not an option, that it has never been an option.
The car that picked Sam up from the desolation of the motel parking lot is parked on the opposite side of the street, in front of the church, in front of those stone steps. And Dean knew, even before he saw her get out of the car, that she -- that it -- would be the driver.
There are very few people for whom Sam would ditch Dean. Even if it doesn't count as ditching, technically, because as far as Sam knows, Dean was asleep under the blankets. As far as Sam knows, Dean is still asleep, is dreaming of nothing, if he's lucky, or of hell, if he's not.
So maybe Sam didn't ditch him. Right. He just snuck out under cover of night because whatever he's doing is something he's ashamed of, is something he knows Dean would never let him do.
Sam and Ruby have been in the church for twenty minutes now. Dean was too far away to see how they unlocked the door, if Sam picked the lock or if Ruby did something to it. He wouldn't put it past her. Doing something to the lock, doing something to his brother, thick black smoke twisting in around all of the empty places, insidious slide, worming around the cracks in his brother, the places Dean was meant to protect.
They've been in there too long.
They've been in there too long and none of them should be here at all. Sam should be living his perfect normal life at long last, Dean should be dead, Ruby should be doing whatever the fuck she was doing before she decided to turn Sam into the little soldier who could. Sam shouldn't be in the church, in some huge Gothic church doing God knows what with his new demon sidekick, while Dean waits in the car, trying to work up the courage to go in after him.
They've been in there too long, and Dean would just as soon turn around, would just as soon spend the last weeks before the apocalypse, the last weeks of his life, not caring, getting wasted in the cramped confines of the motel room instead of the car, because he's sick of heroics, sick of destiny, of fate, of doing the right thing only to find out that maybe he's been on the wrong side since the beginning.
He would, if it were a choice, but it's Sam, and Sam is everything (even in hell, Sam was everything, was what Dean saw even after he didn't remember why, was what Dean saw when he screamed and later when he raised the knife), so Dean screws the cap back onto the bottle and gets out of the car.
Ice-crystal crunch beneath his boots. He no longer remembers if that's normal, if that's normal for this kind of place at this time of year, or if maybe that's one more sign of failure, end of days.
He wishes the apocalypse would hurry up already.
Ruby has good taste in cars, he has to give her that. And he wonders why, wonders if she came programmed like that, if she broke out of hell with a taste for deadly smooth lines and the burn of speed, or if she picked that up after she saw what Sam was missing.
The big double-doors at the top of the stairs swing open easily, quietly. He pulls them shut behind himself and it feels like he's nailing his own coffin, shutting himself into his own mausoleum. Cold stone floor and the stained glass windows, bloody crucifixions and angels raising swords against demons, backlit obscenely by the streetlights, surrounded by the shadows of the room.
Two lines of wooden pews in the nave and he's only trying to get to the other side, to take cover behind one of the stone pillars, but when he gets halfway there, he stops. Standing between the pews, he freezes, nearly stumbles, his eyes drawn to the flashlight glow coming from the apse and then to the dead man on the floor before the altar, the ruined mess of his throat, the garish red smear staining the floor, seeping into the cracks between the stone tiles.
And then Dean wrenches his gaze up, up to Sam and Ruby, standing to one side, entwined together. Sam leaning down, leaning in, and Ruby's hair sliding across both of their faces like a veil, Sam's hands caught up in the black spill.
"What did you do," Dean says, no louder than he meant to, but his voice carries, his voice cuts. He should be terrified, he thinks, terrified, or angry, or something. He should not feel numb, should not want only to sit down, to collapse into one of the pews and close his eyes, let the world be damned. And maybe it's the alcohol, deadening, or maybe it's just that he's not surprised. That he knew it would be something like this, even as he didn't want to believe it, any of it.
He didn't want to believe how far Sam has fallen. How broken Sam is, how desperate.
Sam flinches, visible even at this distance, even in the dim, and Ruby steps back. Sam wipes a hand across his mouth, dark smear across his palm, and looks up at Dean, his eyes wide and shocked.
"Told you we were being followed," Ruby says. She shifts the flashlight to her other hand and tilts her head.
"Dean," Sam says. "I didn't do anything."
"Yeah, he just did that to himself, huh," Dean says, coming down the aisle, his boots heavy, and he wants to turn away. He wants to wake up.
He's close enough to make out the blood staining the dead man's shirt, the pallor of his skin, the white collar around his neck.
"It wasn't me," Sam says, pleading and scared, and Dean nods. Because Sam can't lie to save his life, can't lie to Dean, and as soon as Dean stops believing that, all will be lost, there will be no going back. Nothing left to save, and no reason to try.
"Was it her?" Dean asks, jerking his head in Ruby's direction. He should have killed her a long time ago, should never have spoken to her, talked to her like she was a person, like she could help. He should not have left her alive to do this to his brother.
Even if he couldn't have won, couldn't have killed her, he should have died trying. Because this is his fault, really. He's the one who left, who left Sam alone.
"I'm standing right here," Ruby says, annoyed, like she's merely been insulted, as though Dean did not just accuse her of murder.
"No," Sam says. "He was, we were meant to get here in time to stop it." He swallows, looks down. "We were too late," he says, admits. A bitter self-recriminating confession, but the priest is dead, there's nobody left to hear, to absolve, to make this go away, and Dean almost says that aloud, almost laughs at the situation, catches himself at the last moment.
"Yeah, see, that's what happens when you go sneaking around in the middle of the night," he says instead. "Things go wrong. People end up dead."
"Told you he wouldn't understand," Ruby says, rolling her eyes heavenward.
"So make me understand," Dean says. "Tell me what the fuck you're doing. I thought you weren't gonna do this anymore. You said you were done."
"I am," Sam says. "I mean, I was. Dean, man, I . . . I have to finish this."
"What, 'cause leaving a ritual sacrifice unfinished is tacky?"
"I didn't kill him," Sam says. "I told you that."
"Yeah," Dean says. "So the part where you make me understand starts when, exactly?"
"It's for you," Sam says.
Dean stares at him. "Gee, thanks, but a dead priest isn't really on my wish list."
Ruby sighs. "Why do you bother?" she asks Sam.
"Stay the fuck out of this," Dean snaps.
"You two wanna have your little lover's spat, go for it," Ruby says. "I just think maybe now's not the best time and it's sure as hell not the place."
"Ruby," Sam says, chastising or maybe pleading, and Ruby shrugs. Sam looks back at Dean, takes a breath. "If this is what I have to do to keep you from going back, I will," he says. "Even if it's always gonna end like this, I'm gonna keep trying, and I'm sorry if that pisses you off, but I don't really fucking care. You're not gonna, you're not gonna have to go back."
"Sam," Dean begins, and then he shakes his head. "Save it," he says, turning away. If he has to pretend to be angry, he will, if that's what it takes for Sam to see that this is not what he wants at all.
"I'm not gonna watch that again," Sam says quietly and Dean turns back, Dean looks up at him. Sam looks like he's about to cry, his face screwed up in this ridiculous half-hopeful, half-terrified expression. The last time Dean saw it, he and Bobby were standing in the hallway of some motel and it was the first time Dean had laid eyes on his brother in years. And Dean can't stand to see it again right now, can't stand to be the cause, can't stand to have Sam looking at him like that, like Dean has the power to save him or to destroy him, so Dean looks away.
This bruise on Sam's neck, maybe from a fight, a stranglehold, or maybe from his demon girlfriend, and Dean is losing him, losing him because Sam is too fucking hell-bent on saving Dean. Too fucking stubborn to listen to reason and Dean doesn't know how to make it better, doesn't know what will make Sam understand. So he doesn't say anything.
So he leans up. So he leans up, and he pushes his mouth against his brother's, rough and angry and hard, forceful enough that his teeth catch and scrape at Sam's lower lip. A dare, maybe, or the last act of a desperate man; what the hell else does he have left to lose?
He expects Sam to stumble back, to hit him, knock him on his ass, to make it easy for him to leave, but Sam doesn't. Sam only opens his mouth, opens his mouth and kisses Dean back, tasting ever so faintly of blood. Of blood, and salt, and maybe Ruby's lipstick, and his hands are all over Dean as Dean gasps. He's drunker than he thought he was, he has to be, the way he can't make himself move. The way stands there, helpless, the way he presses his face against Sam's shoulder, too tired to fight anymore, to even pretend.
He did not mean for this to happen, not really. He just, he wasn't thinking. And he can't think, not now, not with the way Sam is touching him.
He never in a million years thought that Sam would say yes.
Something solid collides with the back of his knees and he reaches out blindly, catches himself on the pew. Cold air on his stomach when Sam pushes up his shirt, and Dean should tell him to stop, should make him stop, because they've gone far enough, but he doesn't.
He doesn't say anything.
He shuts his eyes so that he doesn't have to see the dead man, doesn't have to see the desperation in Sam's eyes, the way Sam's looking at him as he works a hand into Dean's jeans. Dean whimpers, a choked sound that he cuts off abruptly, and then he bites his lip, his tongue, to keep from making any more noise.
If this is the last thing he can do, if this is the last thing for which he can ask Sam, the last thing that Sam will give him, he will. He will take it. He will take it, if only because he has nothing else to hold.
Sam's hand on his cock, Sam's mouth hot and wet on his neck, and Dean thinks of the bottle in the car, of the snow-dark sky, of how he should not have come in, how he should have waited outside.
The sound building up in his throat, the sound that's been in him all along, is the brutal sound of a soul being ripped asunder, is the sound of something breaking, something vital being torn open.
In the instant that follows, that instant of clarity, Dean thinks that it might have been the sound of surrender.
And Ruby is watching them, still, her arms crossed over her chest as she stands unmoved beside the body. The priest's blood is cooling and Sam is straightening his shoulders, Sam is biting his lip but not blushing, too old or too weary to blush anymore, and Dean thinks that it would have been better if Sam had hit him after all. If Sam had been repulsed, had driven him away. Had done anything other than given in, given this to Dean.
Because there's no way that Dean can leave now, no way that he can storm back out to the car and wait for daylight. Because he loves Sam, just as he always has, loves Sam with all of his heart. He loves Sam more than anything, loves him blindly, stupidly, loves him even as it feels like he's being torn apart all over again.
The things Sam would do for him. The things Sam has done for him.
And even though Dean believes his brother, believes that Sam had nothing to do with the dead man, that Sam was only trying to save him, he thinks it wouldn't matter if Sam had been the one to kill him. Because Dean would care, certainly, maybe he would even be sick, but he wouldn't leave Sam.
He wouldn't leave Sam, and nothing would change. He wouldn't love Sam any less, and there's no way in hell he would be able to turn away.
So he sinks down onto one of the pews, his knees cracking, his jeans still open and his heart still shaking. Feeling sticky and raw and vulnerable, overexposed. Unsettled, as he should be, because he just let his brother get him off, he just came all over his brother's hand with a murdered man on the ground a few feet away and a demon watching them the whole time.
Unsettled, because all of that is true and because it doesn't feel nearly as wrong as it should.
So he watches his brother, watches Sam standing awkwardly halfway between the pew and the altar, halfway between Dean and Ruby, Ruby's quiet dark gaze.
He watches his brother and he hopes that the apocalypse comes swiftly, comes without warning.
He hopes that they're dead long before the world begins to burn.
"We should go," Ruby says bluntly. "There's nothing else we can do here." She moves away from the body, touches Sam's elbow for a second.
"Yeah, okay," Sam says, and he steps forward, takes the keys when Dean holds them out because Dean does not trust himself to drive. Sam's fingertips brush Dean's palm and the look on his face makes Dean's heart catch, makes his stomach knot. The way Sam looks right now is the way he looked four years ago, scared and unsure, like he's no more than Dean's brother (which is everything), like he never, ever would have done that to Dean, would have done any of this. Dean suddenly wants nothing more than to pull him close, to tell him it's gonna be okay, Sammy, it's all gonna be fine, and to have Sam not know any better than to believe him.
And then Ruby clears her throat and Sam swallows and it's gone, it's lost, and Dean gets to his feet.
It's not yet snowing and the streetlights haven't gone out. There's no place to hide as they stand on the sidewalk, no deep black night in which to get lost. There's only the streetlight glow stretching their shadows, twisting their shadows into weird shapes as the taillights of Ruby's car fade red into the distance and Dean looks at Sam, looks at Sam looking back at him.
"She's right," Sam says. "We should go."
"Yeah," Dean says. He imagines the church bursting into flame behind them, the windows blowing out, colored glass falling across the steps, destroying the evidence. He imagines that it could be that easy. That they could stop back at the motel for their bags and then go, or maybe they could just leave, leave everything behind. Maybe they could just drive, drive until daylight, blue skies and sand, drive so far that they end up where they started, four years and two lifetimes ago.
Sam unlocks the car and Dean thinks about reaching for the bottle, drinking himself insensible while Sam drives them back to the motel. He wouldn't be responsible for anything that might happen after that. He wouldn't be responsible for any of it.
It would be easy. He could. He takes a breath.
Sam turns the key in the ignition. The engine sputters for a moment and then it catches, turns over. Sam glances at Dean and for an instant, in the dim, with the shadows slipping like teeth or claws across his face, his eyes are black and Dean's mouth is dry, Dean's mouth is so fucking dry.
But it's a trick of the light, that's all, and then it's gone. Sam's eyes are his own, as they always have been.
"I'm sorry," Sam says again. "I should have told you I was going out, I know."
"I heard you the first time," Dean says. "It's, it's not okay, obviously, but it's as close to okay as we're gonna get." He tries to grin, at least to smirk, and he doesn't make it. He reaches for the bottle.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Sam says, sounding rueful, sounding relieved. Dean swallows. He watches Sam for a moment and then he takes a sip of bourbon and turns to look out the window.
It's funny, the way the headlights cut through the night, making the shadows slip like the spill of blood, and maybe he'll have that taste forever. Maybe he'll taste blood, taste Sam, constant metal beneath the bourbon burn. Maybe it will never go away.
His world tinged with blood for the rest of his life, however long that might be. It would only be what he deserves, a constant reminder of everything he's done.
"It's gonna get better, though," Sam says. "Ruby said it would. She said there's some things I gotta do, but that'll seal it. That'll make it so you won't have to worry about going back." He glances over at Dean again, smiles. "It's gonna be okay."
"Yeah," Dean says. "Sounds good, Sammy."
He takes another swig from the bottle. He closes his eyes.
--
end