The incestuous courtship of the antichrist's bride 2/5
part one
This particular crossroads demon they're going to see still hasn't picked a side yet, or so he says. The way the demon plays it, the angels have as good a shot at winning his allegiance as Sam does; the implication clearly being that Sam should mind how he treats him.
Sam would call bullshit but the 'wild card' posturing is a small price to pay for the demon’s otherwise hassle-free cooperation. Basically, if it makes him feel better about it, Sam's not going to rain on his parade. He's the Antichrist, not the damn Thought Police.
The only problem is that Sam knows exactly which direction his taunting is going to take this time. You provide people with such high quality material like gay incest on an altar, you can't be surprised when they use it. But he can't have a crossroads demon break the news to Dean. Call him paranoid, but he doesn't think 'tactful and sensitive' are going to be the key words for his approach. Plus, it'll get Dean overwrought, and Dean being overwrought at a crossroads never leads to good things.
Half a mile from the crossroads, the sun a wavering orange blot low in the lavender sky, Sam takes a deep breath and says, "Pull over a minute, Dean. We need to talk."
Confused, Dean obliges. He stops the car on the edge of a field of wildflowers. The silence after the engine dies is thick and cloying.
"I kind of made a very small mistake when I went to see Lucifer," Sam says. It seems a safer way into the conversation than something like, so, gay incest, is that something you're very anti, or would you say it's more of a general dislike?
Dean smacks the steering wheel. "I knew it! I knew something was up with you with you being all… weird face! You drank demon blood, didn't you? Jesus, Sam! You know how crazy that stuff makes you!"
"I didn't drink demon blood, Dean! How many times do I have to tell you? I don't need that stuff anymore! It'd have about as much effect on me as a glass of iced tea!"
"Yeah, demonic iced tea, brewed in Hell, I bet!"
Sam purses his lips and doesn't waste the energy bothering to respond to that. Time ticks by and Sam calms again, remembers that this isn’t going to go away just because Dean's an obnoxious asshole. "You know how sometimes, when people invite you over, and they ask if you're bringing anyone, they're just asking how much chili they should make? And sometimes, they're asking if you're bringing a date? And sometimes you think they're asking one thing, when it's actually the other?"
Dean stares at him, lips parted in incredulous confusion. "Not really, no."
"Okay, look. What would you say if I told you there was a path I could walk, one of the Black Messiah's paths, that meant I could avoid most of the really evil ones. I'd still have to walk a couple of other paths, but they'd be ones we could make mostly harmless. We wouldn't have to do the really bad ones. No enclosing of the sun in darkness, no turning the world's harvest to bonedust, no calling of the winds of pestilence, no dipping newborn babies in boiling oil."
"I'd say… awesome. And I'd also say, what is with dipping babies in hot oil? Seriously, why would you do that? And what's it supposed to prove? That you can take a baby in a fight? Big whoop." He snorts derisively. "Now, dipping something that could put up a fight, like, maybe, a vampire or two, that would be impressive."
"It exists, Dean. That path, it exists. And all it requires is some personal sacrifice from you and me."
Dean's quiet for a moment. There's still a flaking streak of gray mud along his cheekbone. "What kind of sacrifice are we talking? We gotta give up sex or something?"
Immediately, Sam is totally fascinated by the speckle of bug corpse on the windshield, which is helpfully in the other direction to Dean. "Not exactly," he says.
"Not pie?" Dean sounds so horrified by the prospect that Sam wishes he could have started with that, and then consoled Dean that actually, it was nothing so terrible as giving up pie, it was just a little gay incest on an altar.
"No. You can still have as much pie as you like. We… uh… we have to have sex."
Dean's frown says he still hasn't got there yet. "But we have sex. Lots of sex. Even you, you have sex. Maybe not lately but-"
"With each other. Sex, with each other." Eyes screwed shut, Sam blurts it all out. "There's a path called the Path of the Beloved Consort, and I kind of told Lucifer that you were my Beloved Consort, only it was all his fault for not making it very clear what he was asking. Except now we have to have sex. On an altar."
There is only silence. It goes on so long that Sam feels he ought to opens his eyes and check that Dean hasn't had a heart attack and died. Dean is alive but his expression is unreadable.
"Maggie Gyllenhaal," he says. "The angels are Batman, the demons are the Joker, you're Harvey Dent, and I'm whoever Maggie Gyllenhaal played in that movie." As if he's coming back to himself, he turns a little in his seat to look at Sam. "Okay, so, after you told Lucifer that I was your beloved boyfriend or whatever, did you then go 'ha, ha, just kidding, obviously he's not because we're goddamn brothers'?"
"I tried! I tried explaining it to him but he wouldn't listen!"
"Then you make him listen! God, Sam, you're gonna be calling the shots, not him. You're gonna go straight back there and tell him that this ain't happening! You hear me?"
Sam shakes his head and goes quiet. It's not fair. It's not his fault. He didn't exactly plan for this. Dean goes on staring at him and Sam doesn't look back at him.
"Are you sulking?" Dean demands. "Are you seriously sulking because I'm not gonna let you stick your cock in me? I said I'd be with you in this, Sam, not that I was gonna bend over and be your bitch."
"You know what, Dean? You may not be the very last person on earth I'd wanna fuck, but don't think you're in my top million either. But if this is a way for us to avoid innocent people getting hurt-"
"Ride my dick or millions will die? Really, Sam? You're pulling that shit on me?" Dean turns back round in his seat, slams the steering wheel again. His mouth is set in something ugly and dangerous. "Way to be classy, dude."
"It is what it is," Sam says, low and dark.
And right then, like a phantom hand reaching in through his skull and seizing the crown of Sam's spine, something yanks him elsewhere.
Naked, he's standing in a circle of kneeling, black-cowled figures, voices raised in unholy supplication to the Prince of Darkness. At the sight of him, their songs turn wild with triumph and adoration. Candlelight flickers off Sam's skin, turns his eyes colors they shouldn't be. He turns around slowly, muscles rippling, and he surveys the circle and the blood-streaked floor.
"Guys, seriously?" he says. "Great to see you again, but can we go a week without you summoning me? Now is not such a good time."
:::
The Brotherhood of the Stolen Eyes was the first church to spring up in Sam's name. It's since been followed by the Cult of the Shadow King and the Order of Lost Souls, the latter being a splinter group of the Brotherhood, created to accommodate the worshipping needs of those who already had World of Warcraft on Tuesday evenings.
When Sam isn’t concentrating, it's pretty easy for them to summon him. Ruby insists that, with practice and time, he'll be able to ignore them completely, but right now, there's nothing his acolytes enjoy better than getting together for a ritual and yanking Sam, generally butt-naked and wrathful, into their circle.
This time, when they realize Sam is even less thrilled than usual to be making an appearance, they provide him with a fluffy yellow bathrobe - which makes a valiant effort to reach his knees - and some flip flops to wear. He scrounges the use of a cellphone from one of his faithful, and texts his location to Dean while they make him some coffee. Sam would have thought they'd have worked out by now that he's more effectively appeased by caffeine than blood sacrifices. He's made his feelings on the subject of human sacrifice pretty clear, but that doesn't mean he's not still confronted by the occasional dead chicken or slaughtered rabbit.
"You look beat," Krys says as she sets a cup down in front of Sam. She's pushed the sleeves of her black robe up her arms, revealing a couple of plastic, rainbow-colored bangles and a tattoo of some Chinese characters on her wrist. "You want me to make you a club sandwich to go with that? It's no trouble, and you look like you could use something to eat."
"No, thanks. I'm fine."
She twirls an ash-blonde curl around her fingertip. "How soon 'til your brother gets here?"
"Not long enough."
She makes a knowing 'ah' sound and nods. "Family trouble, huh? Is he having doubts about you being the Prince of Lies? Mom was just the same when Lacey wanted to go to L.A, but I said to her, you can't stand in the way of Lacey's dreams, mom! She has to be who she is. She has to be able to fly." Krys makes a vaguely bird-like gesture with her hands that Sam watches with detached interest. Krys's hands drop, bangles clattering. "And you know, Lacey could have been real big in Hollywood, if she hadn't got pregnant and had to marry Billy. She does weekends in Billy's dad's sports store. He almost played baseball at state, you know?"
There's a pause where Krys looks at Sam and waits for his response.
"Yeah," says Sam. "It's a little like that. But, y'know, it's kinda more complicated too."
She smacks his hand playfully. "Well of course it is, honey! You're the Lord of Shadows!" Propping her face up on her hand, she studies him with a dreamy expression. "I just want you to know, whatever your brother might think, I think you're wonderful. You must hear this a lot but I really am your most faithful. And you've got such an awesome following here, such a great bunch of people. I mean, when I think about how it was back when I was a Scientologist, no comparison! I mean, you're way hotter than Tom Cruise. Totally less intimidating too. And way taller."
Sam stares at her, mildly disconcerted but flattered all the same. "Thank you. That's… I appreciate that."
It's a very long three hours until Dean arrives to pick him up.
It's a bad sign that the ridiculous yellow bathrobe doesn't elicit mockery or even a quirk of the lips. Dean just tosses Sam his duffle and heads back out to the car to wait for Sam to get his clothes on.
To celebrate another successful summoning, the members of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes have gathered at the door to wave Sam off. Dean is watching them with an expression of great dislike. Considering his faithful seem to like him a hell of a lot more than Dean does right now, Sam kind of wishes he could hang around with them a little longer, be worshipped some more. Instead, he hands the bathrobe and flip flops back, and gets into the car beside Dean.
The yellow lights of Sam's church twinkle and die in the night as they drive.
Dean adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, fumes, then adjusts his grip again. "I just do not understand why you'd do this. You been secretly warm for my form all these years, huh, Sam? Being the Antichrist isn't freaky enough for you anymore? I mean, I know you said you weren't chasing normality anymore but you gotta swing completely the other way?" Beneath the taunting there's an undercurrent of genuine confusion.
Sam shrugs listlessly and stays slumped down in his seat. "I didn't want this. It seemed like a straightforward question Lucifer was asking and I answered it."
"Straightforward like whose ass are you gonna fuck to get the gates of Hell open?"
"More like who's your favorite person in the world." His head hurts and he tries to knuckle away the aching inside. It takes him a moment to realize Dean's gaze is still on him. He shakes his head and looks away from him. "Look, can we not talk about this now?"
Dean looks away abruptly and nods, his face still set in hard lines. They drive the rest of the way to the crossroads in silence.
Since Sam began his bid for control, he's been collecting the contracts for sold souls. Although he hasn't been able to stamp out the trade entirely - there are always people who think there's something more important to them than their own soul - he's been able to improve upon the situation. When time comes due on a soul, Sam does not send in the hellhounds, he sends the reapers. So maybe he can't make any promises about what the afterlife's like, whether it's a better place or not, but he can at least guarantee it's not Hell they're going to.
As they pull in to park at the crossroads, the demon is already waiting for them and the billowing black silk he's wearing ripples in the breeze like it belongs on the cover of a trashy romance novel. He turns to face the car and he smiles, eyes glinting red in the moonlight.
"Maybe you should wait in the car," Sam says. He's in no mood to break up the inevitable fight between Dean and the crossroads demon.
But Dean is already reaching to open his car door. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing there's more to this Beloved Consort gig than getting my ass fucked, right?"
Sam blinks but Dean is gone, striding towards the crossroads demon. Sam takes a moment to try to figure out what exactly that comment means, thinks it sounds a lot like Dean's just agreed, and then follows him. The demon greets them with a slow round of applause.
"Nice work, Sam," he says. "Knew you'd come up for a use for your brother at some point. He was kind of redundant up until you promoted him to 'hole you're gonna stick your dick in'." He comes closer, surveying Dean with the eye of a potential buyer. He lifts his gaze to Dean's and smirks. "I bet you're going to look real good with your baby brother's come leaking out of you. Can't wait to see how baby brother's gonna give it to you."
"Yeah," says Dean. "I'm just a hole for Sammy to fuck. And I'm still more important in the overall scheme of things than you are." He shakes his head in wonderment, lips quirked crookedly. "How's that even work? Must make you that fuzzy lint you get in pants pockets after you've washed 'em."
"At some point you might want to weigh up the fun you get from pissing off Dean against your prospects for survival," Sam says. "Now, you got any contracts for me?" He twitches his fingers, both in invitation and threat.
The demon sketches a gallant bow to Dean. "Excuse me while I handle business with your boyfriend. You just stand there and look pretty, okay, baby?"
Sam is impressed by Dean's restraint.
:::
It's weird how, even though it's just a motel bed, as uncomfortable and with sheets as scratchy as that implies, it feels like Sam's bed. As they pull in outside the Morning Star motel, Sam thinks longingly of having a shower and crawling into his bed for as much sleep as his angelic and demonic troops will allow him to have.
As he's turning around in his seat to reach over into the back for his bag, Dean says, "It's gonna be in front of everyone, isn't it? I mean, we have to do it in front of them, don't we?"
Sam determinedly finishes collecting his bag. He shrugs, mutters, "'Fraid so," and then moves to get out of the car. Dean touches his arm, not quite catching hold of him but definitely asking for his attention, and Sam has to stop. He sighs and looks over at Dean. Dean's skin is luminously pale in the moonshine and yellow light from the motel. He's calm enough that Sam thinks maybe they can have this conversation without anyone trying to commit hara-kiri.
"Once I'm ready, we go to Lucifer's cathedral," Sam says. "There's a ritual preparation for both of us. I've researched it, don't worry, it's some chanting, skin-painting, burning smelly stuff, the usual. Then, with the powers of heaven and hell as our audience, we have sex on the altar. The gates to Hell open, you crown me as Antichrist and you sit at my left hand." Sam flashes an unhappy smile at him. "We live happily ever after."
"Just the one time?" Dean says.
Sam nods. "Yeah," he says softly. "We do it once and that's it."
"Nu-uh," says Dean. He shakes his head. "We gotta do it more than once. We gotta do it plenty. We gotta start practicing." Sam doesn't answer because he's not entirely sure yet that this isn't Dean trying to be funny with a massively unfunny joke. But Dean's jaw is set, and Sam knows the stubborn 'I'm your big brother and I'm right so don't mess with me, and did you eat your greens and brush your teeth already?' look in his eyes. "I'm not having anyone say the Boy King's a crappy lay. We gotta make sure you give a totally hardcore performance."
"Uh… no way, man." Sam smiles, because it's just that funny. "It's bad enough having to-"
"Sammy, would you listen to me?" Dean's tone is urgent, eyes wide and liquid-green. "You picked me. Okay? You picked me. And I'm gonna take care of this for you. Now, we don't have to worry about me, because I'm…" He grins dreamily, eyes going half-hooded for just a moment. "I'm a lover, not a soldier. But we need to make sure your technique's good. Which means a couple of trial runs."
Sam climbs out of the car and he doesn't mean to slam the car door, but the Impala shakes all the same. He strides across the dusty ground towards his room, towards his bed. When Dean catches up at his elbow, Sam doesn't even grace him with a look.
"My technique's just fine, thanks, douchewad," he snaps. "Not had any complaints so far."
Dean gives a short little laugh. "That's because most of the witnesses to your technique are dead, Sammy! And, y'know, statistics like that, I'd really like to get a look at your moves before I offer my ass up. 'Sides, you think I wanna lose my ass-cherry in some skeevy gates-to-Hell-opening ritual? Screw that! I deserve dinner and candlelight at least, don't I?"
"No. We're not doing this. I don't wanna have sex with you. I'm prepared to do it once for the good of humanity, but I'm not gonna… practice fucking you!"
"Hey, you're the one that got us into this! Least you can do is let me make sure it goes as smooth as it can. You want the first time you try dicking me to be in front of an audience?"
Unwillingly, his stomach flutteringly sickly, Sam stops where he is. He stares at the ground and he thinks about what Dean has said. It's a hundred million times worse that he has to fuck his brother, but Sam's not completely convinced he'd want to try gay sex with some non-related guy for the first time in front of his demons and angels. In fact, straight sex with an entirely human audience would be new territory to him, period.
The desert air moves warm and dry over his skin as he thinks.
He turns, slowly, to face Dean. Behind him, one of the motel room doors creaks open.
"C'mon," Dean says. "Would you please just sex me up already, stud?"
Glancing over his shoulder awkwardly, Sam is just in time to see Uriel and Castiel trying to shove past each other to be the first back into their motel room. He thinks it's possible the angels are nearly as traumatized by this whole situation as he is.
He looks back at Dean, pats him on the chest.
"Get a room!" someone shouts distantly. At least, Sam thinks, the demons are not fazed by it.
"Okay, you're right." Sam says finally. "But not tonight. I have a headache."
:::
It was supposed to be kind of under the radar. They were just going to give it a go and see what happened. But somehow Castiel caught wind of their plans and has since made it his mission to make everyone else at the motel aware that Dean and Sam currently require privacy in preparation for certain paths and that they are therefore not to be disturbed. Sam suspects he's currently standing guard outside the door. He'd resent it except it means Ruby didn't get to deliver the three boxes of extra-large condoms she'd procured in person.
Sam has showered, had a light breakfast and tried to relax by idly surfing the web. He doesn't want to know about the sudden proliferation of gay-porn sites bookmarked on his laptop. Maybe it's one of the angels thinking they're being helpful, one of the demons thinking they're being funny, or Dean just being Dean.
Dean has showered, had a much heavier breakfast, and then returned to the bathroom. Sam supposes he is grateful that Dean is prioritizing cleanliness, even if he suspects it's more to do with hiding out. If he's honest, he's not exactly raring to go himself.
Minutes tick by. It's silent in the rooms either side of them. Not even the demons would be stupid enough to test Sam's mercy this morning. They all know he's itching for an excuse to lose his temper. Outside, the motel manager is sweeping the paved walkway, his broom a steady, scratching swish, swish, swish. He does it every morning; Sam thinks it helps him maintain the delusion that nothing out of the ordinary is going on at his motel. When they finally move on, Sam will make sure they leave a really big pile of cash for the poor guy.
The bathroom door opens. In nothing but his shorts, Dean takes a cautious step into the room. Sam holds very tightly to the sides of his laptop and tries not to shrink back against the wall.
"Okay," says Dean, loud and forceful. "Let's do this thing!" 'This thing', Sam supposes, being Dean's ass.
As soon as he feels strong enough to stop clutching his laptop like a security blanket, Sam sets it carefully to the side. He stands up but it puts him too close to Dean, who is mostly naked, so he sits down on the bed again.
"So, how do you wanna do this?" He takes a deep breath, gestures vaguely at the laptop and adds, "I've done some research and it seems like it'll be easier if you're, um, on all fours and I… uh… y'know… from behind."
"Okay!" Dean says, still maniacally enthusiastic and unaffected.
Dean climbs onto his own bed, arranges himself on his hands and knees, and then dips his belly to the bed in order to offer his ass up to Sam. Sam gives it a moment for Dean to realize, then, when it looks like that's not going to happen, he says, cringing slightly, "You, um, need to take your shorts off too, Dean."
"Right," says Dean, and promptly doesn't move. Sam gets to his feet and, as if concerned that Sam intends to take matters into his own hands - which Sam really really doesn't - Dean yanks his shorts down and wriggles out of them.
Sam is confronted with Dean's bare ass. It's not the first time in his life he's seen it, not by a long shot, but the last time he was witness to Dean in a position like this, Dean had a girl under him. Deciding that might possibly be a helpful image, Sam closes his eyes and tries to fix the picture in his head. Just think about the girl under Dean, not Dean.
He picks up the small bottle of lube and approaches Dean's ass.
"So, um, first," he says, "I need to, uh, lube you up. 'Cause, uh, otherwise you'll be too-"
Dean huffs into the pillow. "Oh you'd really better not be intending on giving me a running commentary on fucking my ass. 'Cause I'm working really hard on pretending to be somewhere else and you're messing with my calm."
Sam shuts up. Despite Dean's skin having been scrubbed rosy pink Sam would prefer not to touch him at all more than possible. All that's required is to stretch Dean's asshole enough that Sam's dick, which will hopefully take an interest in proceedings at some point, will fit in it.
Tentatively, he puts his fingertips on one of Dean's asscheeks and his thumb on the other, and spreads Dean's ass open to reveal the tiny, dusky pink hole. It's really very small, and Sam doesn't want to brag about how well endowed he is, and all the gay porn websites assure him he'll be amazed by how stretchy the muscle is, but he is now genuinely concerned about fitting himself inside of Dean. There will be blood and pain and possibly 'never getting back out again' drama, and maybe this is why it's a suitable act for getting the gates to Hell open.
Then he pulls himself together, reminds himself that he has never once heard of anyone getting their cock stuck permanently in someone else's ass, and opens the bottle of lube. It immediately splooges everywhere, cool and slippery over Sam's fingers, down the back of Dean's thighs and all over the bed sheet. Dean jolts at the cold splatter of it on his skin and Sam hisses, "Sorry, sorry!" under his breath. Dean grunts and settles back into position.
Splodge of lube on fingertip, grimace firmly in place on face, Sam inserts his finger into Dean's ass. It's slow and weird, and he can hear Dean panting just a little. He keeps pushing, until he has managed to lodge his finger knuckle deep in Dean. He wonders when he will start feeling horny about this.
"Is that it?" Dean says. "Huh. I was kind of expecting… more."
"That's a finger, Dean. That's one single finger." Obviously, the next step is 'two fingers'. And then 'scissoring'; Sam has read plenty of instructional websites and they are very clear: one finger, two finger, scissoring. After much more reading, he is also fairly sure now that 'scissoring' refers to the motion he makes with his fingers, and is not an instruction to insert a pair up Dean's ass.
When two fingers require a little squirming and wriggling, Sam decides more lube is called for. He removes the first finger, tries not to think about where it's been, and liberally douses it and a second one with lube. An unpleasant squelch fills the room as Sam manages to plunge both fingers in.
Dean makes a noise that is unreassuringly like he's dry heaving.
There is lube glistening around the edge of Dean's hole and the skin is stretched and sore-looking already, but the sooner they get it over and done with, the sooner Sam can start convincing himself that this never ever happened.
Forgetting that Dean is probably working hard on constructing an imaginary playground in his head where he is not being finger-fucked by his little brother, Sam says, "This part may seem weird, well, I guess all of this is weird, but by doing this, it should be relatively comfortable for you to… y'know."
"I'm having gay sex with my kid brother and he can't even say the words," Dean tells his pillow mournfully. "Is it too late for me to go back to Hell instead?"
As freaked out as he is by doing this, Sam can't help thinking that it is kind of fascinating the way Dean's hole, tight and flushed as it is, clings to his fingers. Obviously, he's not damaged enough in the head to think that this is an acceptable observation to make out loud. But, yeah, it's interesting, in an anatomically interesting kind of way.
He isn't sure exactly when Dean's ass is 'ready' for him; it's not like a little green light is suddenly going to go on in it to let him know, at least he sincerely hopes not because that could mentally scar him for life. So for a few minutes, he works his fingers in Dean, pausing every now and then to add more lube, (until Dean's ass is really squelching with it and it's running down the smooth skin behind his balls and dripping on the bed), and has only the heavier little punch of Dean's breaths to keep him company.
Eventually though, he has no choice but to come to the conclusion that, short of sticking his whole damn fist up there, Dean's ass is good.
Sam pulls his fingers free and he isn't sure what to do with the slick mess of lube on them, so he furtively wipes it off on Dean's bed sheet. Dean's asshole still looks painfully small, despite being a little puffy-looking and tender now. Two fingers did that to it, Sam thinks, god only knows what his cock'll do to it.
"Can we move this along a bit?" says Dean. "I'm all about the foreplay but this is… just move it along, yeah?"
Nodding, Sam stops worrying about the devastation his dick is about to wreak all over - and in - Dean's poor little asshole. He tugs his flies down and pushes his jeans down to his knees, then reaches for the condoms.
He can do this.
:::
"Look," Dean says comfortingly, "it's not a big deal. It happens to plenty of guys. Never to me, obviously, but… it doesn't mean anything."
It's half an hour later and they're sitting side by side on the end of Dean's bed. Dean is still naked and lubed up, and Sam's dick is still completely apathetic about it. To be fair, he did manage to get half-hard at one point but then Dean ruined it by asking what the hold-up was, thus reminding Sam that it was not Angelina Jolie he was about to fuck.
"I tell you what," Dean says, "I bet Ruby could hunt down some little blue pills to help with your problem, okay?"
"My problem is I don't wanna fuck you," Sam says. "And pills aren't gonna turn you into someone else, someone I do want to fuck." He scowls down at his crotch miserably. He doesn't really blame it; his whole body is united in thinking that fucking Dean is not one of his best plans ever.
"I don't think I'm the problem," Dean says. "C'mon, have you seen me? I'm hot."
"You're also my brother. And apparently I have some lingering adherence to societal and moral taboos because I don't wanna fuck you. I just don't find you at all sexually attractive. Not even a little bit."
Standing up so quickly Sam is nearly bounced off the bed, Dean snatches up his shorts and drags them on.
"Then maybe you should'a picked a Beloved Consort you can get it up for. You ever think of that?"
He slams out of the motel room, slams back in to collect his leather jacket and his car keys, and slams out again. Sam sits in the reverberating silence and stares at the stain on the ceiling that he mistook for an abnormally large spider the first night. Eventually, he does the fly on his jeans back up.
When the door opens again, he has a brief, hopeful moment of thinking it's going to be Dean, and then a longer, less hopeful moment of thinking it's going to be Castiel. It's Ruby.
"I didn't think you were that bad in bed," she says.
She sits down next to him and as Sam is too late to warn her about the massive spillage of lube, he doesn't say anything at all about it.
"You know where he is?" he says.
She snorts. "He's only wearing his shorts and jacket, Sam, how far do you think he's gonna have got?" She sighs and tilts her head forwards, plays idly with a strand of her dark hair. "He's sitting in his car, in the parking lot, playing his music real loud." She angles a look at him. "So what went wrong? Dean have a little sexuality crisis?"
Now that she says it, Sam's surprised that particular issue didn't come up. "Uh, well, it's complicated," he says. "It just… didn't work out. There was… and I… We just… Like I said, it's complicated."
There is no way Sam currently feels able to confide in Ruby that he was having problems achieving an erection. No doubt she would only feel compelled to screw him over with the information as soon as she could anyway, and it's not like he doesn't have enough going wrong in his life currently.
She shrugs. "It's okay. Whatever it is, it'll work itself out. Dean'll realize how important this is and he'll stop trying to kid people that he's not secretly a subby little bottom in need of a good hard fuck." Sam frowns but Ruby is too busy affectionately combing her fingers through his hair to notice. "It's okay, Sam."
The chorus of ACDC's It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll) is just about loud enough for Sam to make out the lyrics.
:::
At lunchtime, during the sixth repeat of T.N.T., Sam gathers Dean's jeans, socks and boots together in his arms, and heads out to the car. Castiel and Anna are both by the Impala, though not inside it, and Sam feels a spike of irritation at seeing them there. The demons are watching from where they're loitering outside the manager's office.
Anxiety all over her face, Anna turns to Sam as he approaches. "He doesn't seem to want to talk about it," she says. "Is there anything we can do?"
"I'll take care of it," Sam says. "Just give us some space."
After they're gone, Sam tries to climb into the car beside Dean, but can't because the doors are locked. So, because it's Dean's fault for being ridiculous, Sam begins to attempt forcing Dean's jeans through the gap in the slightly lowered window. Seeing Sam being not so careful as he works the zip through the glass, Dean hurriedly unlocks the door and lets him in.
They sit together, silent in the raucous pounding of ACDC.
Sam turns to look at Dean's profile. Dean is pretty hot. It'd almost be a shame that he was Sam's brother, because the guy-thing really isn't Sam's issue here, except he makes a pretty damn fantastic brother.
"Can we try again?" Sam says.
Dean continues staring out of the windshield. "Yeah, I think we should," he says eventually. He shifts in his seat and pulls a face. "Dude, how much lube did you put up my ass?"
:::
In theory, the Path of the Raising of the Savage Dead should release a horde of shambling, groaning zombies that sweeps across the globe, devouring everything in their path, as hostile and incoherent as if they're perpetually searching for that first cup of coffee in the morning.
In practice, Sam plans to raise the Savage Dead, let them stretch their legs a bit, (assuming decomposition has left them any legs to stretch) and then have his assorted demons, angels and Dean make them all a little deader than they were before.
Dean has been looking forward to this path like a normal person might look forward to the Super Bowl. Apparently, there's just something about zombies that appeals to the sadistic, happy-go-lucky killing-machine kid in Dean.
Roughly two hundred corpses in varying stages of decomposition call the Green Dale Cemetery in Massachusetts home. Monuments and statues and headstones sprawl out silver and white in the night: a low city, enclosed in black wrought iron. Several of Sam's angels are already standing guard on the railings, as silent and watchful as the marble versions standing at the heads of tombs.
Sam sits on the damp, mossy ground, and lets out a long, hot breath that curls like a ribbon through the cool night air. He can feel the Dead waiting for him to address them. Their rapt attention beneath the apparent serenity of the graves feels maliciously deceptive. Not that it seems to bother Dean and the others.
"I see your-" Gaviel leans in to inspect the bone Raum has put forward -"human fibula, and raise you two discarded beer bottles."
Despite the demons, and Dean, cheating in a breathtakingly brazen manner, and despite not seeming to be entirely aware of the rules, Gaviel has somehow contrived to win the last two hands.
When it comes to his turn, Dean flicks through his cards, rearranges their order thoughtfully. His poker face, Sam has always thought, makes him look like he's trying to tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue: intent but also obscene in some vague way.
"Okay," he says, "I'm gonna wager…" He surveys his winnings so far, which resemble nothing so much as a small heap of trash. He wrinkles his nose and then smirks in an ominous fashion. "I'm gonna wager my immortal soul."
The demons give a collective groan and throw their cards down in disgust.
"What?" Dean demands, all wide-eyed innocence.
"Yeah, we're not falling for that one again," says Lamia. "Because, we try and collect? And your brother kicks us back down into the Big Heat, and you know it."
"You're just sore 'cause I got the hand with five aces," Dean says.
"Oh, bite me, bitch," she throws back.
"How many aces are usually in a deck?" Gaviel queries, studying the text on the box the cards came out of.
"You'd be surprised," Raum says. "Why, I once played in a game with twenty-eight." He smiles at the memory. "That was played for a soul as well." His smile grows teeth. "Should'a seen the look on that guy's face, as I pulled ace after ace."
Distracted by the conversation, Sam is abruptly dragged back to the Dead when a sudden spike of power slams into his gut. As his breath is driven out of his lungs, all eyes are instantly on him. He waves away their concern, eyes falling shut and his jaw unhitched. It's cold and slippery as it twists up his spine, but Sam welcomes it, grasps it and learns its shape and strength. His breathing levels out, becomes deep and even again, while the power settles into his bones.
Dean's voice breaks through to him, "You gonna bring on the Deadites now, dude?" and Sam's gaze snaps to him.
Where Dean sat to play cards puts him right at Sam's feet. His fingers are curled around his shotgun. And it's probably because Sam is out of his head on ancient and world-ending power - and the first time it touched him, he felt the compulsion to eat his bodyweight in Reese's peanut butter cups - but when he looks at Dean, he feels a shivering, hot throb of mindless desire.
It's not Sam seeing Dean; it's the Antichrist seeing his consort, and wanting him.
Dean is beautiful and strong and easily subdued. There's not a single being walking the earth who could stop Sam if he decided to fuck Dean into twitching flesh right this second. He could press Dean down onto the graves, rape him over and over again atop maggots and moldering bones, and nobody could stop him.
"Dead people now?" Dean says again hopefully.
"Oh gross," Sam says. He retches as if it might clear the icky incestuous-and-rapey taste in his mouth. He makes a mental note that maybe Dean should be kept at a distance when he channels the Antichrist thing in future. It's one side effect of claiming Dean as his Beloved Consort that he won't be mentioning to Dean.
He nods and tries to regain his composure. "Yeah, lots of target practice coming up."
The damp ground sinking slightly beneath his feet, Sam begins to walk across the graves. He touches the headstones he can reach, fingers skimming over the cold wet stone. The demons and angels stand ready, tense. Dean's shotgun is resting against his thigh; Sam knows the pose too well and knows it covers for the over-excited jittering of Dean's hands.
He makes his way slowly through the graveyard and there is only stillness when he reaches the far end. And then he rolls his head back, eyes fixed on the sliced white moon, and he feels the Dead twitching in their coffins, wasted muscles clinging to bones, limbs at broken angles snapping into movement.
"They're coming," he says, and it's only a whisper but Dean raises his shotgun, and Sam has to look away because of all the rape-rape-rape thoughts.
The demons' meatsuits don't look human, they take on a beastlike quality, while the angels' vessels appear alien and other. Dean's the only human present.
Fragile. Fuckable.
Sam shakes his head to clear it. It's a new, surprising and unsettling aspect of being the Antichrist but Sam has struggled with worse. Really, once you get past wanting to lay the world to waste and then kick back on your throne to entertain yourself with finger puppets fashioned out of human internal organs, incestuous sexual violence is easy.
He concentrates on the distant, muffled scrabbling, as the Dead wriggle from their coffins like particularly ugly bugs. The first withered hand breaks the surface, flailing and limp-wristed like a drunk teenager trying to hail a cab. Angels and demons, Sam and Dean, they watch in silence as its fingers wave above the ground. The soil shuffles free and an arm follows, shoulders, then a surge of dirt, and a head-
- which explodes into rotting flesh and dust.
"Boom! Headshot!" Dean shouts, lowering his shotgun. "Listen up, freaks, this is my boomstick!"
If nothing else, Sam feels less guilty for being all 'it's rape o'clock!' when he sees how much Dean is enjoying himself. It's a shame all of the Black Messiah's paths aren't this much fun.
Two more graves have broken open. There's a rustling deep below the ground and it's only getting louder. Dean gets the next corpse to break surface too, but another five are coming. And then, at once, the graveyard splits open. The earth falls away with a creaking shudder, headstones and marble angels crack and totter. Within moments, the graveyard resembles a very poorly choreographed scene from a Romero movie, one of the remakes that lacked both shock-value and style. The ground disgorges everything from skeletons to rotting cadavers that have to drag themselves along to bodies so fresh you'd think they were not so much dead as just a little under the weather.
As the undead spill out, the demons and angels fall on them. Distinct above the noise of rending flesh and snapping bones, Dean follows each burst from his shotgun with a triumphant proclamation of 'Boom! Headshot!'
A corpse of a boy who could be no more than nineteen shuffles towards Sam, his unhitched jaw and heavy-lidded, wet eyes giving him a docile, sleepy expression. One of his feet is pointing in the wrong direction, which hampers his progress considerably, as he has to drag it along. A wet, gurgling noise rolls from his throat.
He reaches a hand towards Sam and gibbers something a little more querulously, that Sam suspects probably translates into something like 'mmmm, I can haz brains?' Sam knows he should do something but he can't seem to drum up the sense of urgency that's required. The zombie is close enough now that Sam can see the broken teeth and the patch on his face where the skin has flaked away to reveal snapped muscle. His breath smells like something died in his mouth, which, considering he's a zombie, is a strong possibility.
Sam wonders if he's going to be the next thing to die in the zombie's mouth.
The zombie's head explodes into pieces. Salt stings Sam's face.
"Boom! Headshot!" Dean shouts. "No dawdling, kiddo!"
Sam comes back to himself and realizes there are still a lot of zombies to be dealt with, despite the angels purifying them back to peace, the demons throwing them into gravestones until they break, and Dean treating them like a game at the fairground. He throws himself into the fight, and finds a certain satisfaction in taking the zombies apart with his bare hands, the unnatural strength of the Antichrist still thrumming in his blood and allowing him to dismember them as easily as ripping the wings of flies, but with fewer ethical implications. Later, when he lets the power sink away, his muscles will probably be in knots, but right now it feels good.
"I don't understand what it is about little girls that makes them so unsettling," Castiel says beside him, burning the unnatural taint from the corpse of a small, thrashing girl. Sam thinks the fact that one of her pretty blue eyes is currently bouncing around on her exposed cheekbone is probably at least part of the answer to that one.
"Sugar and spice," Lamia says. She efficiently plucks the spinal cord from a cadaver and brandishes it as a whip, before it disintegrates in the air. She flashes Castiel a smile and singsongs, "Thank heaven, for little girls."
It occurs to Sam then that he can't hear Dean's shotgun or victory yells. He scans the cemetery, searching the crowds of struggling angels and demons and zombies - oh my! - for his brother. Just as he is starting to panic, he sees him over the far side, using the butt of his shotgun as a club to drive the zombies back.
"Hey," Sam calls out. "You okay?"
Dean looks over to Sam and grins. "Terrific," he shouts back, and promptly disappears beneath a seething horde of zombies. Sam can't get there fast enough. Uriel, though, is closer, sees the blind horror on Sam's face before he sees what happened to Dean. He hauls Dean out easily, while Ruby takes care of the zombies, and sets him on his feet. Blood spurts merrily from Dean's neck. Dean wobbles and falls down again. Finally reaching him, Sam drops to his knees on the ground beside him.
"Ah crap, Sammy," Dean says faintly. "I lost my boomstick."
Blood is still gushing from his throat and Sam really doesn't like how pale his skin is already.
"I'm getting you out of here," Sam says, scooping Dean into his arms. He's not surprised at how light Dean is until he realizes he's not all Antichrist-Hulk anymore. This is just him, picking up his big brother and wondering when his big brother got so damn tiny.
"Where's my boomstick?" Dean protests, flopping weakly against Sam's chest.
"Someone find him his damn boomstick, uh, shotgun," Sam says.
He glances back over his shoulder at the cemetery as they leave, takes in the churned up graves and severed body parts, and thinks about getting one of the angels to write an apologetic note to the groundskeeper before they go.
:::
If Dean were to die, Sam doesn't know where his soul would go. If he went to Hell, that would be bad enough. Sam would seriously have to pick up the pace on becoming Antichrist and getting the gates to Hell open, and it's not like his schedule is full of time to kick back with a Bud and watch the game right now as it is. But if he were to go somewhere other than Hell, it would be worse.
Dean's soul could go wherever the reapers take other souls, and they're still remarkably close-mouthed about where exactly that is, but Sam's getting the idea it's the same place to which God's diverted all his attention. If even angels are having trouble locating it on the map, Sam doesn't think much of his chances of getting Dean back from there.
So Dean cannot die. Whereas Sam can raise hordes of zombies - who don't disappoint when it comes to being Savage - there's still that part of him that feels like a helpless kid again when he's faced with Dean bleeding out.
Propping Dean into a sitting position, Sam puts pressure on the wound until the bleeding slows enough for him to swipe it with antiseptic and get stitches in. Dean is pretty out of it while Sam treats him. Dean is staring at his toes of his boots because that's the way his neck has sagged.
There's always been an intimacy in dressing each other's wounds, a temporary ignoring of standard personal space bubbles and the rules about acceptable touching. Sam tries to avoid looking into his face, embarrassed by thoughts Dean doesn't know he had and is currently too spaced to care about. Sam feels his skin burn all the same.
There is the unpleasant truth, however, that the Antichrist in Sam is apparently more with the program that Sam himself is. Maybe the Antichrist is appallingly and disgustingly primitive about it, but at least he wants to fuck Dean. Sam can't even get hard for the idea.
Tentatively, while Dean is still shielded by his dazed state and therefore cannot be traumatized by it, Sam looks Dean over and tries to feel that same tug of arousal that he'd felt as the Antichrist.
His skin so pale, Dean's freckles stand out more than usual. His lips are set together glumly, in something that's not quite a pout but isn't an entirely different species either. The curve of his shoulder, the narrowness of his hips: Sam tries to find something to want.
For lack of any better idea, Sam supposes he might as well try kissing Dean. Now is as good a time as any because even if Dean is aware of being kissed, he’ll probably just think he's hallucinating.
Sam swipes his tongue over his dry lips and puts his hand on Dean's face. His skin is soft beneath the rasp of stubble. Sam tries to tilt Dean's face up to him but his neck rolls back alarmingly, so Sam isn't so much resting a hand gently on Dean's cheek as he is gripping Dean's face in position. He leans in closer, trying not to breathe too hard or too loud, because Dean waking up to find Sam panting in his face would be kind of hard to explain. Instead, he finds himself sharing breath with Dean.
He moves in closer, and decides that the shape of Dean's mouth is ridiculous.
Their lips are almost touching when Sam realizes that Dean is watching him. His eyes are vivid green and muzzy, half-lowered eyelashes a dark, smoky smudge over his cheekbones. It should feel wrong to be about to kiss Dean when Dean is looking at him, but there's only a strange, light sensation at the pit of Sam's stomach - maybe it's desire, maybe it's because of the taboo he's breaking, but it definitely has nothing to do with the Antichrist.
Still holding Dean's gaze, Sam changes his angle just a fraction to find the best angle to press his mouth to Dean's.
Dean's lips part on the slightest drawing in of breath.
"Here's his boomstick," Asmodeus says, dropping Dean's shotgun by Sam's side. "Heh, why do you suppose all the most quotable lines from Evil Dead were in the second movie?" He eyes Sam where he's sprung apart from Dean. "Were you gonna kiss him?"
"No!" Sam says immediately.
"Looked like you were gonna kiss him." He raises an eyebrow. "You were gonna molest your brother while he's too weak from blood loss to fight you off." He flashes Sam a wink. "I knew there was a reason I was following you, aside from all the death threats you made if I didn’t."
He leaves and Sam sits there, wide-eyed and feeling just a little grubby. He looks back at Dean just in time to catch a clumsy fist to the jaw.
"Not that weak," Dean says in a slurred voice. "Jus' saying."
:::
The plan is that Dean will stay at the Morning Star motel to recuperate, while Sam, Ruby and Anna will go to Lenore to try to win the vampires' cooperation for the upcoming battles.
Neither Sam nor Dean has said anything about the kiss that never was. Sometimes though, Sam catches himself watching Dean's mouth and just wondering. He wonders about how Dean's mouth would have felt under his, whether Dean would have leaned into it, whether Sam could have slipped him some tongue and how that might have felt.
On the sixth day of wondering this, he figures this means he learned all he needed to from the experiment. He resigns himself to the fact that he doesn't always find Dean categorically sexually unattractive. In fact, at times, he can find Dean pretty damn appealing; it's possible it requires zombies and Dean suffering blood loss and Sam in the coming-down period of using his Antichrist powers, but if that's what it takes to be able to buttsex Dean on an altar, Sam can arrange it.
Lenore is pleased to see him and congratulates him for staying off the blood as long as he has. She tells him that if he ever feels weak or tempted, he should definitely give her a call, because she knows what he's going through and that what he needs to do is surrender his addiction to a higher power. She also assures him that when the war gets really serious, he can definitely count on the support of her tribe of pacifist, vegetarian vampires. It feels a bit as though he's just recruited some painfully earnest hippies.
"I like her," Anna says afterwards. "She seemed nice."
Ruby curls her lip but doesn't say anything. Anna sees the look on Ruby's face but continues contentedly slurping away on her strawberry milkshake.
Because he wasn't ready to head back to the Morning Star yet, and because he's grateful to the two of them for not spending the entire time bickering - there's a reason he never ever wants to be left in a room with only Uriel and Raum again - Sam's stopped them off in a small town for some down-time.
It's the deadest part of the afternoon, the hour or so before school lets out. The diner they're in is all but deserted; there's a solitary waitress at the counter, snapping gum and flipping through the pages of a magazine. Sam hunches over in his chair and stares out of the window.
Two women with strollers have stopped outside in the sunshine to talk, and across the street an old man is sitting on the bench, hands propped up on his walking stick, watching them. Sam wishes that at least one of them were a demon looking for trouble so he could go smite them. It would distract him nicely for at least five minutes from worrying about this thing with Dean.
"You can't hide out here forever, y'know, Sam," Ruby says. "Eventually, you have to go back, man up, and fuck your brother."
The waitress pauses in turning the page of her magazine. Sam closes his eyes and hopes really hard to be elsewhere when he opens them again.
"I like this milkshake too," Anna says brightly, because apparently not even angels are immune from trying to fill awkward silences. Then, in a lower voice, she says to Ruby, "Sam's not hiding. He's taking time to adjust to a difficult situation."
"What's so difficult?" Ruby demands. "He's done plenty of morally questionable things before to get what he wants. This is just sex! Sex with a human! A live human! It doesn't get much easier than that!"
"I think, judging from Dean's retreat to the Impala when he was still only half-dressed," says Anna, "that Sam's first attempt to have sex with him wasn't a huge success."
Ruby shrugs sulkily and sinks down in her seat. "Then maybe Sam's not the problem. Maybe Dean is. 'Cause, take it from me, Sam totally gets a gold star when it comes to fucking."
Anna's expression goes cold. "And you're implying Dean doesn't? I can assure you that-"
"Please don't go any further with that," Sam says, finally having to re-enter the conversation. He kind of regrets it when both of them instantly focus on him instead of each other. He eyes the table and clenches his hands fretfully into fists. "Look, when we tried to, y'know… I found it difficult to…" He gestures and when Anna's and Ruby's eyes go wide, he knows they've got it.
"Really?" Ruby says. "That was a problem for you?"
"But Dean's so pretty," Anna says, equally startled and confused.
They're both still staring at him. Sam flushes and nods and hunches over a little more. "I know, but it's just… he's my brother and I've never really… but I think I've got it figured out."
"So you're gonna give it another go?" Anna says. "I think it's great you haven't given up, Sam." Her unstintingly reassuring manner would be obnoxious if Sam didn't know that she was actually just that nice.
"If you want, I can brew something up for you. Help get the little guy woken up and paying attention," Ruby says, in a tone that is shockingly only about sixty-percent mockery.
"No, thank you but… like I said, I think I've got it figured out now. I thought maybe I'd pick up some pie on the way home. Take him out to a bar, relax a little, y'know? Then when we get back to the room, stick on the greatest hits of Bad Company and…" Sam trails off and realizes he has just finished explaining his plan for seducing his big brother. He has come up with a carefully calculated plan for getting in his big brother's pants and he has just told it to his own ex-girlfriend and his big brother's ex-girlfriend.
Anna pats his hand and says, "That sounds like a really good idea, Sam. And if I can help at all, let me know. You know, I remember that when I had sex with your brother, that he really seemed to like it when I put my fingers-"
"Shut up," Sam says. "For the love of god, shut up."
There must be a word epic enough to describe the suckitude of his life, but Sam doesn't know what it is.
part three
This particular crossroads demon they're going to see still hasn't picked a side yet, or so he says. The way the demon plays it, the angels have as good a shot at winning his allegiance as Sam does; the implication clearly being that Sam should mind how he treats him.
Sam would call bullshit but the 'wild card' posturing is a small price to pay for the demon’s otherwise hassle-free cooperation. Basically, if it makes him feel better about it, Sam's not going to rain on his parade. He's the Antichrist, not the damn Thought Police.
The only problem is that Sam knows exactly which direction his taunting is going to take this time. You provide people with such high quality material like gay incest on an altar, you can't be surprised when they use it. But he can't have a crossroads demon break the news to Dean. Call him paranoid, but he doesn't think 'tactful and sensitive' are going to be the key words for his approach. Plus, it'll get Dean overwrought, and Dean being overwrought at a crossroads never leads to good things.
Half a mile from the crossroads, the sun a wavering orange blot low in the lavender sky, Sam takes a deep breath and says, "Pull over a minute, Dean. We need to talk."
Confused, Dean obliges. He stops the car on the edge of a field of wildflowers. The silence after the engine dies is thick and cloying.
"I kind of made a very small mistake when I went to see Lucifer," Sam says. It seems a safer way into the conversation than something like, so, gay incest, is that something you're very anti, or would you say it's more of a general dislike?
Dean smacks the steering wheel. "I knew it! I knew something was up with you with you being all… weird face! You drank demon blood, didn't you? Jesus, Sam! You know how crazy that stuff makes you!"
"I didn't drink demon blood, Dean! How many times do I have to tell you? I don't need that stuff anymore! It'd have about as much effect on me as a glass of iced tea!"
"Yeah, demonic iced tea, brewed in Hell, I bet!"
Sam purses his lips and doesn't waste the energy bothering to respond to that. Time ticks by and Sam calms again, remembers that this isn’t going to go away just because Dean's an obnoxious asshole. "You know how sometimes, when people invite you over, and they ask if you're bringing anyone, they're just asking how much chili they should make? And sometimes, they're asking if you're bringing a date? And sometimes you think they're asking one thing, when it's actually the other?"
Dean stares at him, lips parted in incredulous confusion. "Not really, no."
"Okay, look. What would you say if I told you there was a path I could walk, one of the Black Messiah's paths, that meant I could avoid most of the really evil ones. I'd still have to walk a couple of other paths, but they'd be ones we could make mostly harmless. We wouldn't have to do the really bad ones. No enclosing of the sun in darkness, no turning the world's harvest to bonedust, no calling of the winds of pestilence, no dipping newborn babies in boiling oil."
"I'd say… awesome. And I'd also say, what is with dipping babies in hot oil? Seriously, why would you do that? And what's it supposed to prove? That you can take a baby in a fight? Big whoop." He snorts derisively. "Now, dipping something that could put up a fight, like, maybe, a vampire or two, that would be impressive."
"It exists, Dean. That path, it exists. And all it requires is some personal sacrifice from you and me."
Dean's quiet for a moment. There's still a flaking streak of gray mud along his cheekbone. "What kind of sacrifice are we talking? We gotta give up sex or something?"
Immediately, Sam is totally fascinated by the speckle of bug corpse on the windshield, which is helpfully in the other direction to Dean. "Not exactly," he says.
"Not pie?" Dean sounds so horrified by the prospect that Sam wishes he could have started with that, and then consoled Dean that actually, it was nothing so terrible as giving up pie, it was just a little gay incest on an altar.
"No. You can still have as much pie as you like. We… uh… we have to have sex."
Dean's frown says he still hasn't got there yet. "But we have sex. Lots of sex. Even you, you have sex. Maybe not lately but-"
"With each other. Sex, with each other." Eyes screwed shut, Sam blurts it all out. "There's a path called the Path of the Beloved Consort, and I kind of told Lucifer that you were my Beloved Consort, only it was all his fault for not making it very clear what he was asking. Except now we have to have sex. On an altar."
There is only silence. It goes on so long that Sam feels he ought to opens his eyes and check that Dean hasn't had a heart attack and died. Dean is alive but his expression is unreadable.
"Maggie Gyllenhaal," he says. "The angels are Batman, the demons are the Joker, you're Harvey Dent, and I'm whoever Maggie Gyllenhaal played in that movie." As if he's coming back to himself, he turns a little in his seat to look at Sam. "Okay, so, after you told Lucifer that I was your beloved boyfriend or whatever, did you then go 'ha, ha, just kidding, obviously he's not because we're goddamn brothers'?"
"I tried! I tried explaining it to him but he wouldn't listen!"
"Then you make him listen! God, Sam, you're gonna be calling the shots, not him. You're gonna go straight back there and tell him that this ain't happening! You hear me?"
Sam shakes his head and goes quiet. It's not fair. It's not his fault. He didn't exactly plan for this. Dean goes on staring at him and Sam doesn't look back at him.
"Are you sulking?" Dean demands. "Are you seriously sulking because I'm not gonna let you stick your cock in me? I said I'd be with you in this, Sam, not that I was gonna bend over and be your bitch."
"You know what, Dean? You may not be the very last person on earth I'd wanna fuck, but don't think you're in my top million either. But if this is a way for us to avoid innocent people getting hurt-"
"Ride my dick or millions will die? Really, Sam? You're pulling that shit on me?" Dean turns back round in his seat, slams the steering wheel again. His mouth is set in something ugly and dangerous. "Way to be classy, dude."
"It is what it is," Sam says, low and dark.
And right then, like a phantom hand reaching in through his skull and seizing the crown of Sam's spine, something yanks him elsewhere.
Naked, he's standing in a circle of kneeling, black-cowled figures, voices raised in unholy supplication to the Prince of Darkness. At the sight of him, their songs turn wild with triumph and adoration. Candlelight flickers off Sam's skin, turns his eyes colors they shouldn't be. He turns around slowly, muscles rippling, and he surveys the circle and the blood-streaked floor.
"Guys, seriously?" he says. "Great to see you again, but can we go a week without you summoning me? Now is not such a good time."
:::
The Brotherhood of the Stolen Eyes was the first church to spring up in Sam's name. It's since been followed by the Cult of the Shadow King and the Order of Lost Souls, the latter being a splinter group of the Brotherhood, created to accommodate the worshipping needs of those who already had World of Warcraft on Tuesday evenings.
When Sam isn’t concentrating, it's pretty easy for them to summon him. Ruby insists that, with practice and time, he'll be able to ignore them completely, but right now, there's nothing his acolytes enjoy better than getting together for a ritual and yanking Sam, generally butt-naked and wrathful, into their circle.
This time, when they realize Sam is even less thrilled than usual to be making an appearance, they provide him with a fluffy yellow bathrobe - which makes a valiant effort to reach his knees - and some flip flops to wear. He scrounges the use of a cellphone from one of his faithful, and texts his location to Dean while they make him some coffee. Sam would have thought they'd have worked out by now that he's more effectively appeased by caffeine than blood sacrifices. He's made his feelings on the subject of human sacrifice pretty clear, but that doesn't mean he's not still confronted by the occasional dead chicken or slaughtered rabbit.
"You look beat," Krys says as she sets a cup down in front of Sam. She's pushed the sleeves of her black robe up her arms, revealing a couple of plastic, rainbow-colored bangles and a tattoo of some Chinese characters on her wrist. "You want me to make you a club sandwich to go with that? It's no trouble, and you look like you could use something to eat."
"No, thanks. I'm fine."
She twirls an ash-blonde curl around her fingertip. "How soon 'til your brother gets here?"
"Not long enough."
She makes a knowing 'ah' sound and nods. "Family trouble, huh? Is he having doubts about you being the Prince of Lies? Mom was just the same when Lacey wanted to go to L.A, but I said to her, you can't stand in the way of Lacey's dreams, mom! She has to be who she is. She has to be able to fly." Krys makes a vaguely bird-like gesture with her hands that Sam watches with detached interest. Krys's hands drop, bangles clattering. "And you know, Lacey could have been real big in Hollywood, if she hadn't got pregnant and had to marry Billy. She does weekends in Billy's dad's sports store. He almost played baseball at state, you know?"
There's a pause where Krys looks at Sam and waits for his response.
"Yeah," says Sam. "It's a little like that. But, y'know, it's kinda more complicated too."
She smacks his hand playfully. "Well of course it is, honey! You're the Lord of Shadows!" Propping her face up on her hand, she studies him with a dreamy expression. "I just want you to know, whatever your brother might think, I think you're wonderful. You must hear this a lot but I really am your most faithful. And you've got such an awesome following here, such a great bunch of people. I mean, when I think about how it was back when I was a Scientologist, no comparison! I mean, you're way hotter than Tom Cruise. Totally less intimidating too. And way taller."
Sam stares at her, mildly disconcerted but flattered all the same. "Thank you. That's… I appreciate that."
It's a very long three hours until Dean arrives to pick him up.
It's a bad sign that the ridiculous yellow bathrobe doesn't elicit mockery or even a quirk of the lips. Dean just tosses Sam his duffle and heads back out to the car to wait for Sam to get his clothes on.
To celebrate another successful summoning, the members of the Brotherhood of Stolen Eyes have gathered at the door to wave Sam off. Dean is watching them with an expression of great dislike. Considering his faithful seem to like him a hell of a lot more than Dean does right now, Sam kind of wishes he could hang around with them a little longer, be worshipped some more. Instead, he hands the bathrobe and flip flops back, and gets into the car beside Dean.
The yellow lights of Sam's church twinkle and die in the night as they drive.
Dean adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, fumes, then adjusts his grip again. "I just do not understand why you'd do this. You been secretly warm for my form all these years, huh, Sam? Being the Antichrist isn't freaky enough for you anymore? I mean, I know you said you weren't chasing normality anymore but you gotta swing completely the other way?" Beneath the taunting there's an undercurrent of genuine confusion.
Sam shrugs listlessly and stays slumped down in his seat. "I didn't want this. It seemed like a straightforward question Lucifer was asking and I answered it."
"Straightforward like whose ass are you gonna fuck to get the gates of Hell open?"
"More like who's your favorite person in the world." His head hurts and he tries to knuckle away the aching inside. It takes him a moment to realize Dean's gaze is still on him. He shakes his head and looks away from him. "Look, can we not talk about this now?"
Dean looks away abruptly and nods, his face still set in hard lines. They drive the rest of the way to the crossroads in silence.
Since Sam began his bid for control, he's been collecting the contracts for sold souls. Although he hasn't been able to stamp out the trade entirely - there are always people who think there's something more important to them than their own soul - he's been able to improve upon the situation. When time comes due on a soul, Sam does not send in the hellhounds, he sends the reapers. So maybe he can't make any promises about what the afterlife's like, whether it's a better place or not, but he can at least guarantee it's not Hell they're going to.
As they pull in to park at the crossroads, the demon is already waiting for them and the billowing black silk he's wearing ripples in the breeze like it belongs on the cover of a trashy romance novel. He turns to face the car and he smiles, eyes glinting red in the moonlight.
"Maybe you should wait in the car," Sam says. He's in no mood to break up the inevitable fight between Dean and the crossroads demon.
But Dean is already reaching to open his car door. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing there's more to this Beloved Consort gig than getting my ass fucked, right?"
Sam blinks but Dean is gone, striding towards the crossroads demon. Sam takes a moment to try to figure out what exactly that comment means, thinks it sounds a lot like Dean's just agreed, and then follows him. The demon greets them with a slow round of applause.
"Nice work, Sam," he says. "Knew you'd come up for a use for your brother at some point. He was kind of redundant up until you promoted him to 'hole you're gonna stick your dick in'." He comes closer, surveying Dean with the eye of a potential buyer. He lifts his gaze to Dean's and smirks. "I bet you're going to look real good with your baby brother's come leaking out of you. Can't wait to see how baby brother's gonna give it to you."
"Yeah," says Dean. "I'm just a hole for Sammy to fuck. And I'm still more important in the overall scheme of things than you are." He shakes his head in wonderment, lips quirked crookedly. "How's that even work? Must make you that fuzzy lint you get in pants pockets after you've washed 'em."
"At some point you might want to weigh up the fun you get from pissing off Dean against your prospects for survival," Sam says. "Now, you got any contracts for me?" He twitches his fingers, both in invitation and threat.
The demon sketches a gallant bow to Dean. "Excuse me while I handle business with your boyfriend. You just stand there and look pretty, okay, baby?"
Sam is impressed by Dean's restraint.
:::
It's weird how, even though it's just a motel bed, as uncomfortable and with sheets as scratchy as that implies, it feels like Sam's bed. As they pull in outside the Morning Star motel, Sam thinks longingly of having a shower and crawling into his bed for as much sleep as his angelic and demonic troops will allow him to have.
As he's turning around in his seat to reach over into the back for his bag, Dean says, "It's gonna be in front of everyone, isn't it? I mean, we have to do it in front of them, don't we?"
Sam determinedly finishes collecting his bag. He shrugs, mutters, "'Fraid so," and then moves to get out of the car. Dean touches his arm, not quite catching hold of him but definitely asking for his attention, and Sam has to stop. He sighs and looks over at Dean. Dean's skin is luminously pale in the moonshine and yellow light from the motel. He's calm enough that Sam thinks maybe they can have this conversation without anyone trying to commit hara-kiri.
"Once I'm ready, we go to Lucifer's cathedral," Sam says. "There's a ritual preparation for both of us. I've researched it, don't worry, it's some chanting, skin-painting, burning smelly stuff, the usual. Then, with the powers of heaven and hell as our audience, we have sex on the altar. The gates to Hell open, you crown me as Antichrist and you sit at my left hand." Sam flashes an unhappy smile at him. "We live happily ever after."
"Just the one time?" Dean says.
Sam nods. "Yeah," he says softly. "We do it once and that's it."
"Nu-uh," says Dean. He shakes his head. "We gotta do it more than once. We gotta do it plenty. We gotta start practicing." Sam doesn't answer because he's not entirely sure yet that this isn't Dean trying to be funny with a massively unfunny joke. But Dean's jaw is set, and Sam knows the stubborn 'I'm your big brother and I'm right so don't mess with me, and did you eat your greens and brush your teeth already?' look in his eyes. "I'm not having anyone say the Boy King's a crappy lay. We gotta make sure you give a totally hardcore performance."
"Uh… no way, man." Sam smiles, because it's just that funny. "It's bad enough having to-"
"Sammy, would you listen to me?" Dean's tone is urgent, eyes wide and liquid-green. "You picked me. Okay? You picked me. And I'm gonna take care of this for you. Now, we don't have to worry about me, because I'm…" He grins dreamily, eyes going half-hooded for just a moment. "I'm a lover, not a soldier. But we need to make sure your technique's good. Which means a couple of trial runs."
Sam climbs out of the car and he doesn't mean to slam the car door, but the Impala shakes all the same. He strides across the dusty ground towards his room, towards his bed. When Dean catches up at his elbow, Sam doesn't even grace him with a look.
"My technique's just fine, thanks, douchewad," he snaps. "Not had any complaints so far."
Dean gives a short little laugh. "That's because most of the witnesses to your technique are dead, Sammy! And, y'know, statistics like that, I'd really like to get a look at your moves before I offer my ass up. 'Sides, you think I wanna lose my ass-cherry in some skeevy gates-to-Hell-opening ritual? Screw that! I deserve dinner and candlelight at least, don't I?"
"No. We're not doing this. I don't wanna have sex with you. I'm prepared to do it once for the good of humanity, but I'm not gonna… practice fucking you!"
"Hey, you're the one that got us into this! Least you can do is let me make sure it goes as smooth as it can. You want the first time you try dicking me to be in front of an audience?"
Unwillingly, his stomach flutteringly sickly, Sam stops where he is. He stares at the ground and he thinks about what Dean has said. It's a hundred million times worse that he has to fuck his brother, but Sam's not completely convinced he'd want to try gay sex with some non-related guy for the first time in front of his demons and angels. In fact, straight sex with an entirely human audience would be new territory to him, period.
The desert air moves warm and dry over his skin as he thinks.
He turns, slowly, to face Dean. Behind him, one of the motel room doors creaks open.
"C'mon," Dean says. "Would you please just sex me up already, stud?"
Glancing over his shoulder awkwardly, Sam is just in time to see Uriel and Castiel trying to shove past each other to be the first back into their motel room. He thinks it's possible the angels are nearly as traumatized by this whole situation as he is.
He looks back at Dean, pats him on the chest.
"Get a room!" someone shouts distantly. At least, Sam thinks, the demons are not fazed by it.
"Okay, you're right." Sam says finally. "But not tonight. I have a headache."
:::
It was supposed to be kind of under the radar. They were just going to give it a go and see what happened. But somehow Castiel caught wind of their plans and has since made it his mission to make everyone else at the motel aware that Dean and Sam currently require privacy in preparation for certain paths and that they are therefore not to be disturbed. Sam suspects he's currently standing guard outside the door. He'd resent it except it means Ruby didn't get to deliver the three boxes of extra-large condoms she'd procured in person.
Sam has showered, had a light breakfast and tried to relax by idly surfing the web. He doesn't want to know about the sudden proliferation of gay-porn sites bookmarked on his laptop. Maybe it's one of the angels thinking they're being helpful, one of the demons thinking they're being funny, or Dean just being Dean.
Dean has showered, had a much heavier breakfast, and then returned to the bathroom. Sam supposes he is grateful that Dean is prioritizing cleanliness, even if he suspects it's more to do with hiding out. If he's honest, he's not exactly raring to go himself.
Minutes tick by. It's silent in the rooms either side of them. Not even the demons would be stupid enough to test Sam's mercy this morning. They all know he's itching for an excuse to lose his temper. Outside, the motel manager is sweeping the paved walkway, his broom a steady, scratching swish, swish, swish. He does it every morning; Sam thinks it helps him maintain the delusion that nothing out of the ordinary is going on at his motel. When they finally move on, Sam will make sure they leave a really big pile of cash for the poor guy.
The bathroom door opens. In nothing but his shorts, Dean takes a cautious step into the room. Sam holds very tightly to the sides of his laptop and tries not to shrink back against the wall.
"Okay," says Dean, loud and forceful. "Let's do this thing!" 'This thing', Sam supposes, being Dean's ass.
As soon as he feels strong enough to stop clutching his laptop like a security blanket, Sam sets it carefully to the side. He stands up but it puts him too close to Dean, who is mostly naked, so he sits down on the bed again.
"So, how do you wanna do this?" He takes a deep breath, gestures vaguely at the laptop and adds, "I've done some research and it seems like it'll be easier if you're, um, on all fours and I… uh… y'know… from behind."
"Okay!" Dean says, still maniacally enthusiastic and unaffected.
Dean climbs onto his own bed, arranges himself on his hands and knees, and then dips his belly to the bed in order to offer his ass up to Sam. Sam gives it a moment for Dean to realize, then, when it looks like that's not going to happen, he says, cringing slightly, "You, um, need to take your shorts off too, Dean."
"Right," says Dean, and promptly doesn't move. Sam gets to his feet and, as if concerned that Sam intends to take matters into his own hands - which Sam really really doesn't - Dean yanks his shorts down and wriggles out of them.
Sam is confronted with Dean's bare ass. It's not the first time in his life he's seen it, not by a long shot, but the last time he was witness to Dean in a position like this, Dean had a girl under him. Deciding that might possibly be a helpful image, Sam closes his eyes and tries to fix the picture in his head. Just think about the girl under Dean, not Dean.
He picks up the small bottle of lube and approaches Dean's ass.
"So, um, first," he says, "I need to, uh, lube you up. 'Cause, uh, otherwise you'll be too-"
Dean huffs into the pillow. "Oh you'd really better not be intending on giving me a running commentary on fucking my ass. 'Cause I'm working really hard on pretending to be somewhere else and you're messing with my calm."
Sam shuts up. Despite Dean's skin having been scrubbed rosy pink Sam would prefer not to touch him at all more than possible. All that's required is to stretch Dean's asshole enough that Sam's dick, which will hopefully take an interest in proceedings at some point, will fit in it.
Tentatively, he puts his fingertips on one of Dean's asscheeks and his thumb on the other, and spreads Dean's ass open to reveal the tiny, dusky pink hole. It's really very small, and Sam doesn't want to brag about how well endowed he is, and all the gay porn websites assure him he'll be amazed by how stretchy the muscle is, but he is now genuinely concerned about fitting himself inside of Dean. There will be blood and pain and possibly 'never getting back out again' drama, and maybe this is why it's a suitable act for getting the gates to Hell open.
Then he pulls himself together, reminds himself that he has never once heard of anyone getting their cock stuck permanently in someone else's ass, and opens the bottle of lube. It immediately splooges everywhere, cool and slippery over Sam's fingers, down the back of Dean's thighs and all over the bed sheet. Dean jolts at the cold splatter of it on his skin and Sam hisses, "Sorry, sorry!" under his breath. Dean grunts and settles back into position.
Splodge of lube on fingertip, grimace firmly in place on face, Sam inserts his finger into Dean's ass. It's slow and weird, and he can hear Dean panting just a little. He keeps pushing, until he has managed to lodge his finger knuckle deep in Dean. He wonders when he will start feeling horny about this.
"Is that it?" Dean says. "Huh. I was kind of expecting… more."
"That's a finger, Dean. That's one single finger." Obviously, the next step is 'two fingers'. And then 'scissoring'; Sam has read plenty of instructional websites and they are very clear: one finger, two finger, scissoring. After much more reading, he is also fairly sure now that 'scissoring' refers to the motion he makes with his fingers, and is not an instruction to insert a pair up Dean's ass.
When two fingers require a little squirming and wriggling, Sam decides more lube is called for. He removes the first finger, tries not to think about where it's been, and liberally douses it and a second one with lube. An unpleasant squelch fills the room as Sam manages to plunge both fingers in.
Dean makes a noise that is unreassuringly like he's dry heaving.
There is lube glistening around the edge of Dean's hole and the skin is stretched and sore-looking already, but the sooner they get it over and done with, the sooner Sam can start convincing himself that this never ever happened.
Forgetting that Dean is probably working hard on constructing an imaginary playground in his head where he is not being finger-fucked by his little brother, Sam says, "This part may seem weird, well, I guess all of this is weird, but by doing this, it should be relatively comfortable for you to… y'know."
"I'm having gay sex with my kid brother and he can't even say the words," Dean tells his pillow mournfully. "Is it too late for me to go back to Hell instead?"
As freaked out as he is by doing this, Sam can't help thinking that it is kind of fascinating the way Dean's hole, tight and flushed as it is, clings to his fingers. Obviously, he's not damaged enough in the head to think that this is an acceptable observation to make out loud. But, yeah, it's interesting, in an anatomically interesting kind of way.
He isn't sure exactly when Dean's ass is 'ready' for him; it's not like a little green light is suddenly going to go on in it to let him know, at least he sincerely hopes not because that could mentally scar him for life. So for a few minutes, he works his fingers in Dean, pausing every now and then to add more lube, (until Dean's ass is really squelching with it and it's running down the smooth skin behind his balls and dripping on the bed), and has only the heavier little punch of Dean's breaths to keep him company.
Eventually though, he has no choice but to come to the conclusion that, short of sticking his whole damn fist up there, Dean's ass is good.
Sam pulls his fingers free and he isn't sure what to do with the slick mess of lube on them, so he furtively wipes it off on Dean's bed sheet. Dean's asshole still looks painfully small, despite being a little puffy-looking and tender now. Two fingers did that to it, Sam thinks, god only knows what his cock'll do to it.
"Can we move this along a bit?" says Dean. "I'm all about the foreplay but this is… just move it along, yeah?"
Nodding, Sam stops worrying about the devastation his dick is about to wreak all over - and in - Dean's poor little asshole. He tugs his flies down and pushes his jeans down to his knees, then reaches for the condoms.
He can do this.
:::
"Look," Dean says comfortingly, "it's not a big deal. It happens to plenty of guys. Never to me, obviously, but… it doesn't mean anything."
It's half an hour later and they're sitting side by side on the end of Dean's bed. Dean is still naked and lubed up, and Sam's dick is still completely apathetic about it. To be fair, he did manage to get half-hard at one point but then Dean ruined it by asking what the hold-up was, thus reminding Sam that it was not Angelina Jolie he was about to fuck.
"I tell you what," Dean says, "I bet Ruby could hunt down some little blue pills to help with your problem, okay?"
"My problem is I don't wanna fuck you," Sam says. "And pills aren't gonna turn you into someone else, someone I do want to fuck." He scowls down at his crotch miserably. He doesn't really blame it; his whole body is united in thinking that fucking Dean is not one of his best plans ever.
"I don't think I'm the problem," Dean says. "C'mon, have you seen me? I'm hot."
"You're also my brother. And apparently I have some lingering adherence to societal and moral taboos because I don't wanna fuck you. I just don't find you at all sexually attractive. Not even a little bit."
Standing up so quickly Sam is nearly bounced off the bed, Dean snatches up his shorts and drags them on.
"Then maybe you should'a picked a Beloved Consort you can get it up for. You ever think of that?"
He slams out of the motel room, slams back in to collect his leather jacket and his car keys, and slams out again. Sam sits in the reverberating silence and stares at the stain on the ceiling that he mistook for an abnormally large spider the first night. Eventually, he does the fly on his jeans back up.
When the door opens again, he has a brief, hopeful moment of thinking it's going to be Dean, and then a longer, less hopeful moment of thinking it's going to be Castiel. It's Ruby.
"I didn't think you were that bad in bed," she says.
She sits down next to him and as Sam is too late to warn her about the massive spillage of lube, he doesn't say anything at all about it.
"You know where he is?" he says.
She snorts. "He's only wearing his shorts and jacket, Sam, how far do you think he's gonna have got?" She sighs and tilts her head forwards, plays idly with a strand of her dark hair. "He's sitting in his car, in the parking lot, playing his music real loud." She angles a look at him. "So what went wrong? Dean have a little sexuality crisis?"
Now that she says it, Sam's surprised that particular issue didn't come up. "Uh, well, it's complicated," he says. "It just… didn't work out. There was… and I… We just… Like I said, it's complicated."
There is no way Sam currently feels able to confide in Ruby that he was having problems achieving an erection. No doubt she would only feel compelled to screw him over with the information as soon as she could anyway, and it's not like he doesn't have enough going wrong in his life currently.
She shrugs. "It's okay. Whatever it is, it'll work itself out. Dean'll realize how important this is and he'll stop trying to kid people that he's not secretly a subby little bottom in need of a good hard fuck." Sam frowns but Ruby is too busy affectionately combing her fingers through his hair to notice. "It's okay, Sam."
The chorus of ACDC's It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll) is just about loud enough for Sam to make out the lyrics.
:::
At lunchtime, during the sixth repeat of T.N.T., Sam gathers Dean's jeans, socks and boots together in his arms, and heads out to the car. Castiel and Anna are both by the Impala, though not inside it, and Sam feels a spike of irritation at seeing them there. The demons are watching from where they're loitering outside the manager's office.
Anxiety all over her face, Anna turns to Sam as he approaches. "He doesn't seem to want to talk about it," she says. "Is there anything we can do?"
"I'll take care of it," Sam says. "Just give us some space."
After they're gone, Sam tries to climb into the car beside Dean, but can't because the doors are locked. So, because it's Dean's fault for being ridiculous, Sam begins to attempt forcing Dean's jeans through the gap in the slightly lowered window. Seeing Sam being not so careful as he works the zip through the glass, Dean hurriedly unlocks the door and lets him in.
They sit together, silent in the raucous pounding of ACDC.
Sam turns to look at Dean's profile. Dean is pretty hot. It'd almost be a shame that he was Sam's brother, because the guy-thing really isn't Sam's issue here, except he makes a pretty damn fantastic brother.
"Can we try again?" Sam says.
Dean continues staring out of the windshield. "Yeah, I think we should," he says eventually. He shifts in his seat and pulls a face. "Dude, how much lube did you put up my ass?"
:::
In theory, the Path of the Raising of the Savage Dead should release a horde of shambling, groaning zombies that sweeps across the globe, devouring everything in their path, as hostile and incoherent as if they're perpetually searching for that first cup of coffee in the morning.
In practice, Sam plans to raise the Savage Dead, let them stretch their legs a bit, (assuming decomposition has left them any legs to stretch) and then have his assorted demons, angels and Dean make them all a little deader than they were before.
Dean has been looking forward to this path like a normal person might look forward to the Super Bowl. Apparently, there's just something about zombies that appeals to the sadistic, happy-go-lucky killing-machine kid in Dean.
Roughly two hundred corpses in varying stages of decomposition call the Green Dale Cemetery in Massachusetts home. Monuments and statues and headstones sprawl out silver and white in the night: a low city, enclosed in black wrought iron. Several of Sam's angels are already standing guard on the railings, as silent and watchful as the marble versions standing at the heads of tombs.
Sam sits on the damp, mossy ground, and lets out a long, hot breath that curls like a ribbon through the cool night air. He can feel the Dead waiting for him to address them. Their rapt attention beneath the apparent serenity of the graves feels maliciously deceptive. Not that it seems to bother Dean and the others.
"I see your-" Gaviel leans in to inspect the bone Raum has put forward -"human fibula, and raise you two discarded beer bottles."
Despite the demons, and Dean, cheating in a breathtakingly brazen manner, and despite not seeming to be entirely aware of the rules, Gaviel has somehow contrived to win the last two hands.
When it comes to his turn, Dean flicks through his cards, rearranges their order thoughtfully. His poker face, Sam has always thought, makes him look like he's trying to tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue: intent but also obscene in some vague way.
"Okay," he says, "I'm gonna wager…" He surveys his winnings so far, which resemble nothing so much as a small heap of trash. He wrinkles his nose and then smirks in an ominous fashion. "I'm gonna wager my immortal soul."
The demons give a collective groan and throw their cards down in disgust.
"What?" Dean demands, all wide-eyed innocence.
"Yeah, we're not falling for that one again," says Lamia. "Because, we try and collect? And your brother kicks us back down into the Big Heat, and you know it."
"You're just sore 'cause I got the hand with five aces," Dean says.
"Oh, bite me, bitch," she throws back.
"How many aces are usually in a deck?" Gaviel queries, studying the text on the box the cards came out of.
"You'd be surprised," Raum says. "Why, I once played in a game with twenty-eight." He smiles at the memory. "That was played for a soul as well." His smile grows teeth. "Should'a seen the look on that guy's face, as I pulled ace after ace."
Distracted by the conversation, Sam is abruptly dragged back to the Dead when a sudden spike of power slams into his gut. As his breath is driven out of his lungs, all eyes are instantly on him. He waves away their concern, eyes falling shut and his jaw unhitched. It's cold and slippery as it twists up his spine, but Sam welcomes it, grasps it and learns its shape and strength. His breathing levels out, becomes deep and even again, while the power settles into his bones.
Dean's voice breaks through to him, "You gonna bring on the Deadites now, dude?" and Sam's gaze snaps to him.
Where Dean sat to play cards puts him right at Sam's feet. His fingers are curled around his shotgun. And it's probably because Sam is out of his head on ancient and world-ending power - and the first time it touched him, he felt the compulsion to eat his bodyweight in Reese's peanut butter cups - but when he looks at Dean, he feels a shivering, hot throb of mindless desire.
It's not Sam seeing Dean; it's the Antichrist seeing his consort, and wanting him.
Dean is beautiful and strong and easily subdued. There's not a single being walking the earth who could stop Sam if he decided to fuck Dean into twitching flesh right this second. He could press Dean down onto the graves, rape him over and over again atop maggots and moldering bones, and nobody could stop him.
"Dead people now?" Dean says again hopefully.
"Oh gross," Sam says. He retches as if it might clear the icky incestuous-and-rapey taste in his mouth. He makes a mental note that maybe Dean should be kept at a distance when he channels the Antichrist thing in future. It's one side effect of claiming Dean as his Beloved Consort that he won't be mentioning to Dean.
He nods and tries to regain his composure. "Yeah, lots of target practice coming up."
The damp ground sinking slightly beneath his feet, Sam begins to walk across the graves. He touches the headstones he can reach, fingers skimming over the cold wet stone. The demons and angels stand ready, tense. Dean's shotgun is resting against his thigh; Sam knows the pose too well and knows it covers for the over-excited jittering of Dean's hands.
He makes his way slowly through the graveyard and there is only stillness when he reaches the far end. And then he rolls his head back, eyes fixed on the sliced white moon, and he feels the Dead twitching in their coffins, wasted muscles clinging to bones, limbs at broken angles snapping into movement.
"They're coming," he says, and it's only a whisper but Dean raises his shotgun, and Sam has to look away because of all the rape-rape-rape thoughts.
The demons' meatsuits don't look human, they take on a beastlike quality, while the angels' vessels appear alien and other. Dean's the only human present.
Fragile. Fuckable.
Sam shakes his head to clear it. It's a new, surprising and unsettling aspect of being the Antichrist but Sam has struggled with worse. Really, once you get past wanting to lay the world to waste and then kick back on your throne to entertain yourself with finger puppets fashioned out of human internal organs, incestuous sexual violence is easy.
He concentrates on the distant, muffled scrabbling, as the Dead wriggle from their coffins like particularly ugly bugs. The first withered hand breaks the surface, flailing and limp-wristed like a drunk teenager trying to hail a cab. Angels and demons, Sam and Dean, they watch in silence as its fingers wave above the ground. The soil shuffles free and an arm follows, shoulders, then a surge of dirt, and a head-
- which explodes into rotting flesh and dust.
"Boom! Headshot!" Dean shouts, lowering his shotgun. "Listen up, freaks, this is my boomstick!"
If nothing else, Sam feels less guilty for being all 'it's rape o'clock!' when he sees how much Dean is enjoying himself. It's a shame all of the Black Messiah's paths aren't this much fun.
Two more graves have broken open. There's a rustling deep below the ground and it's only getting louder. Dean gets the next corpse to break surface too, but another five are coming. And then, at once, the graveyard splits open. The earth falls away with a creaking shudder, headstones and marble angels crack and totter. Within moments, the graveyard resembles a very poorly choreographed scene from a Romero movie, one of the remakes that lacked both shock-value and style. The ground disgorges everything from skeletons to rotting cadavers that have to drag themselves along to bodies so fresh you'd think they were not so much dead as just a little under the weather.
As the undead spill out, the demons and angels fall on them. Distinct above the noise of rending flesh and snapping bones, Dean follows each burst from his shotgun with a triumphant proclamation of 'Boom! Headshot!'
A corpse of a boy who could be no more than nineteen shuffles towards Sam, his unhitched jaw and heavy-lidded, wet eyes giving him a docile, sleepy expression. One of his feet is pointing in the wrong direction, which hampers his progress considerably, as he has to drag it along. A wet, gurgling noise rolls from his throat.
He reaches a hand towards Sam and gibbers something a little more querulously, that Sam suspects probably translates into something like 'mmmm, I can haz brains?' Sam knows he should do something but he can't seem to drum up the sense of urgency that's required. The zombie is close enough now that Sam can see the broken teeth and the patch on his face where the skin has flaked away to reveal snapped muscle. His breath smells like something died in his mouth, which, considering he's a zombie, is a strong possibility.
Sam wonders if he's going to be the next thing to die in the zombie's mouth.
The zombie's head explodes into pieces. Salt stings Sam's face.
"Boom! Headshot!" Dean shouts. "No dawdling, kiddo!"
Sam comes back to himself and realizes there are still a lot of zombies to be dealt with, despite the angels purifying them back to peace, the demons throwing them into gravestones until they break, and Dean treating them like a game at the fairground. He throws himself into the fight, and finds a certain satisfaction in taking the zombies apart with his bare hands, the unnatural strength of the Antichrist still thrumming in his blood and allowing him to dismember them as easily as ripping the wings of flies, but with fewer ethical implications. Later, when he lets the power sink away, his muscles will probably be in knots, but right now it feels good.
"I don't understand what it is about little girls that makes them so unsettling," Castiel says beside him, burning the unnatural taint from the corpse of a small, thrashing girl. Sam thinks the fact that one of her pretty blue eyes is currently bouncing around on her exposed cheekbone is probably at least part of the answer to that one.
"Sugar and spice," Lamia says. She efficiently plucks the spinal cord from a cadaver and brandishes it as a whip, before it disintegrates in the air. She flashes Castiel a smile and singsongs, "Thank heaven, for little girls."
It occurs to Sam then that he can't hear Dean's shotgun or victory yells. He scans the cemetery, searching the crowds of struggling angels and demons and zombies - oh my! - for his brother. Just as he is starting to panic, he sees him over the far side, using the butt of his shotgun as a club to drive the zombies back.
"Hey," Sam calls out. "You okay?"
Dean looks over to Sam and grins. "Terrific," he shouts back, and promptly disappears beneath a seething horde of zombies. Sam can't get there fast enough. Uriel, though, is closer, sees the blind horror on Sam's face before he sees what happened to Dean. He hauls Dean out easily, while Ruby takes care of the zombies, and sets him on his feet. Blood spurts merrily from Dean's neck. Dean wobbles and falls down again. Finally reaching him, Sam drops to his knees on the ground beside him.
"Ah crap, Sammy," Dean says faintly. "I lost my boomstick."
Blood is still gushing from his throat and Sam really doesn't like how pale his skin is already.
"I'm getting you out of here," Sam says, scooping Dean into his arms. He's not surprised at how light Dean is until he realizes he's not all Antichrist-Hulk anymore. This is just him, picking up his big brother and wondering when his big brother got so damn tiny.
"Where's my boomstick?" Dean protests, flopping weakly against Sam's chest.
"Someone find him his damn boomstick, uh, shotgun," Sam says.
He glances back over his shoulder at the cemetery as they leave, takes in the churned up graves and severed body parts, and thinks about getting one of the angels to write an apologetic note to the groundskeeper before they go.
:::
If Dean were to die, Sam doesn't know where his soul would go. If he went to Hell, that would be bad enough. Sam would seriously have to pick up the pace on becoming Antichrist and getting the gates to Hell open, and it's not like his schedule is full of time to kick back with a Bud and watch the game right now as it is. But if he were to go somewhere other than Hell, it would be worse.
Dean's soul could go wherever the reapers take other souls, and they're still remarkably close-mouthed about where exactly that is, but Sam's getting the idea it's the same place to which God's diverted all his attention. If even angels are having trouble locating it on the map, Sam doesn't think much of his chances of getting Dean back from there.
So Dean cannot die. Whereas Sam can raise hordes of zombies - who don't disappoint when it comes to being Savage - there's still that part of him that feels like a helpless kid again when he's faced with Dean bleeding out.
Propping Dean into a sitting position, Sam puts pressure on the wound until the bleeding slows enough for him to swipe it with antiseptic and get stitches in. Dean is pretty out of it while Sam treats him. Dean is staring at his toes of his boots because that's the way his neck has sagged.
There's always been an intimacy in dressing each other's wounds, a temporary ignoring of standard personal space bubbles and the rules about acceptable touching. Sam tries to avoid looking into his face, embarrassed by thoughts Dean doesn't know he had and is currently too spaced to care about. Sam feels his skin burn all the same.
There is the unpleasant truth, however, that the Antichrist in Sam is apparently more with the program that Sam himself is. Maybe the Antichrist is appallingly and disgustingly primitive about it, but at least he wants to fuck Dean. Sam can't even get hard for the idea.
Tentatively, while Dean is still shielded by his dazed state and therefore cannot be traumatized by it, Sam looks Dean over and tries to feel that same tug of arousal that he'd felt as the Antichrist.
His skin so pale, Dean's freckles stand out more than usual. His lips are set together glumly, in something that's not quite a pout but isn't an entirely different species either. The curve of his shoulder, the narrowness of his hips: Sam tries to find something to want.
For lack of any better idea, Sam supposes he might as well try kissing Dean. Now is as good a time as any because even if Dean is aware of being kissed, he’ll probably just think he's hallucinating.
Sam swipes his tongue over his dry lips and puts his hand on Dean's face. His skin is soft beneath the rasp of stubble. Sam tries to tilt Dean's face up to him but his neck rolls back alarmingly, so Sam isn't so much resting a hand gently on Dean's cheek as he is gripping Dean's face in position. He leans in closer, trying not to breathe too hard or too loud, because Dean waking up to find Sam panting in his face would be kind of hard to explain. Instead, he finds himself sharing breath with Dean.
He moves in closer, and decides that the shape of Dean's mouth is ridiculous.
Their lips are almost touching when Sam realizes that Dean is watching him. His eyes are vivid green and muzzy, half-lowered eyelashes a dark, smoky smudge over his cheekbones. It should feel wrong to be about to kiss Dean when Dean is looking at him, but there's only a strange, light sensation at the pit of Sam's stomach - maybe it's desire, maybe it's because of the taboo he's breaking, but it definitely has nothing to do with the Antichrist.
Still holding Dean's gaze, Sam changes his angle just a fraction to find the best angle to press his mouth to Dean's.
Dean's lips part on the slightest drawing in of breath.
"Here's his boomstick," Asmodeus says, dropping Dean's shotgun by Sam's side. "Heh, why do you suppose all the most quotable lines from Evil Dead were in the second movie?" He eyes Sam where he's sprung apart from Dean. "Were you gonna kiss him?"
"No!" Sam says immediately.
"Looked like you were gonna kiss him." He raises an eyebrow. "You were gonna molest your brother while he's too weak from blood loss to fight you off." He flashes Sam a wink. "I knew there was a reason I was following you, aside from all the death threats you made if I didn’t."
He leaves and Sam sits there, wide-eyed and feeling just a little grubby. He looks back at Dean just in time to catch a clumsy fist to the jaw.
"Not that weak," Dean says in a slurred voice. "Jus' saying."
:::
The plan is that Dean will stay at the Morning Star motel to recuperate, while Sam, Ruby and Anna will go to Lenore to try to win the vampires' cooperation for the upcoming battles.
Neither Sam nor Dean has said anything about the kiss that never was. Sometimes though, Sam catches himself watching Dean's mouth and just wondering. He wonders about how Dean's mouth would have felt under his, whether Dean would have leaned into it, whether Sam could have slipped him some tongue and how that might have felt.
On the sixth day of wondering this, he figures this means he learned all he needed to from the experiment. He resigns himself to the fact that he doesn't always find Dean categorically sexually unattractive. In fact, at times, he can find Dean pretty damn appealing; it's possible it requires zombies and Dean suffering blood loss and Sam in the coming-down period of using his Antichrist powers, but if that's what it takes to be able to buttsex Dean on an altar, Sam can arrange it.
Lenore is pleased to see him and congratulates him for staying off the blood as long as he has. She tells him that if he ever feels weak or tempted, he should definitely give her a call, because she knows what he's going through and that what he needs to do is surrender his addiction to a higher power. She also assures him that when the war gets really serious, he can definitely count on the support of her tribe of pacifist, vegetarian vampires. It feels a bit as though he's just recruited some painfully earnest hippies.
"I like her," Anna says afterwards. "She seemed nice."
Ruby curls her lip but doesn't say anything. Anna sees the look on Ruby's face but continues contentedly slurping away on her strawberry milkshake.
Because he wasn't ready to head back to the Morning Star yet, and because he's grateful to the two of them for not spending the entire time bickering - there's a reason he never ever wants to be left in a room with only Uriel and Raum again - Sam's stopped them off in a small town for some down-time.
It's the deadest part of the afternoon, the hour or so before school lets out. The diner they're in is all but deserted; there's a solitary waitress at the counter, snapping gum and flipping through the pages of a magazine. Sam hunches over in his chair and stares out of the window.
Two women with strollers have stopped outside in the sunshine to talk, and across the street an old man is sitting on the bench, hands propped up on his walking stick, watching them. Sam wishes that at least one of them were a demon looking for trouble so he could go smite them. It would distract him nicely for at least five minutes from worrying about this thing with Dean.
"You can't hide out here forever, y'know, Sam," Ruby says. "Eventually, you have to go back, man up, and fuck your brother."
The waitress pauses in turning the page of her magazine. Sam closes his eyes and hopes really hard to be elsewhere when he opens them again.
"I like this milkshake too," Anna says brightly, because apparently not even angels are immune from trying to fill awkward silences. Then, in a lower voice, she says to Ruby, "Sam's not hiding. He's taking time to adjust to a difficult situation."
"What's so difficult?" Ruby demands. "He's done plenty of morally questionable things before to get what he wants. This is just sex! Sex with a human! A live human! It doesn't get much easier than that!"
"I think, judging from Dean's retreat to the Impala when he was still only half-dressed," says Anna, "that Sam's first attempt to have sex with him wasn't a huge success."
Ruby shrugs sulkily and sinks down in her seat. "Then maybe Sam's not the problem. Maybe Dean is. 'Cause, take it from me, Sam totally gets a gold star when it comes to fucking."
Anna's expression goes cold. "And you're implying Dean doesn't? I can assure you that-"
"Please don't go any further with that," Sam says, finally having to re-enter the conversation. He kind of regrets it when both of them instantly focus on him instead of each other. He eyes the table and clenches his hands fretfully into fists. "Look, when we tried to, y'know… I found it difficult to…" He gestures and when Anna's and Ruby's eyes go wide, he knows they've got it.
"Really?" Ruby says. "That was a problem for you?"
"But Dean's so pretty," Anna says, equally startled and confused.
They're both still staring at him. Sam flushes and nods and hunches over a little more. "I know, but it's just… he's my brother and I've never really… but I think I've got it figured out."
"So you're gonna give it another go?" Anna says. "I think it's great you haven't given up, Sam." Her unstintingly reassuring manner would be obnoxious if Sam didn't know that she was actually just that nice.
"If you want, I can brew something up for you. Help get the little guy woken up and paying attention," Ruby says, in a tone that is shockingly only about sixty-percent mockery.
"No, thank you but… like I said, I think I've got it figured out now. I thought maybe I'd pick up some pie on the way home. Take him out to a bar, relax a little, y'know? Then when we get back to the room, stick on the greatest hits of Bad Company and…" Sam trails off and realizes he has just finished explaining his plan for seducing his big brother. He has come up with a carefully calculated plan for getting in his big brother's pants and he has just told it to his own ex-girlfriend and his big brother's ex-girlfriend.
Anna pats his hand and says, "That sounds like a really good idea, Sam. And if I can help at all, let me know. You know, I remember that when I had sex with your brother, that he really seemed to like it when I put my fingers-"
"Shut up," Sam says. "For the love of god, shut up."
There must be a word epic enough to describe the suckitude of his life, but Sam doesn't know what it is.
part three