(no subject)
Title: Full Tilt Boogie (4/6)
Authors: hansbekhart & essenceofmeanin
Artist: ladyvyola
Rating: NC-17 (Sam/Dean, Michael/Dean, Sam/Michael, Sam/Dean/Michael, Sam/OC)
Summary: There are only two kinds of secrets: the ones you keep, and the ones you shouldn't have at all. When Sam and Dean take Michel on his first hunt (that doesn't involve a shtriga), they end up on the psychedelic dance floor of a long-vanished motel where disco never died and no one is quite who they appear to be. What was supposed to be an easy salt and burn descends rapidly into a morass of temptation and gold lame, bell bottoms and lies. No one gets to choose what secrets stay buried.
Unless they don't mind checking in ... forever.
He hears a wet crack like it's coming from another world, and the whole world explodes in blackness. He reels blindly and falls. He can't even open his eyes. It's all he can do to roll onto his side before he pukes all over himself. He hasn't eaten since the strip club, a couple of pretzels from a bowl and it's just stringy bile that burns his throat so bad that he coughs more of it up. He tries to push himself up onto his hands, and falls back onto his face with a sharp cry.
He lays there, his face ground into purple shag. It takes a long time to make sense of what happened, that sharp disjoint between the steam and Sunday and then this shocking pain. Bones took them, and Sam tried to follow. His momentum, as he came out of - of whatever it was, Bones' teleportation or transport or rearranging the hotel itself around them, carried him into a wall. That sick crack was his skull connecting with the stone walls. He can feel the blood oozing stickily out of his forehead, that tightness that means he's gonna have a hell of a bump. If he’s lucky, it’ll be just a bump and not a concussion. He can't put any pressure on his hands because they're burned. There are already blisters rising on his palms.
He's all alone again.
He's back in the hallway, even. Not even any place at all, just the long, stupid corridor that connects the guest rooms together. He wasn't supposed to go with them, and now he's nowhere. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to breathe deeply; the usual mid-hunt coping methods for head injuries. It's not working. The hotel is utterly silent. No voices, no music ... no drums. And that's worse than anything.
"I'm gonna find them," he says out loud. They have to be watching him still, listening in, even if the drums are gone. "I will. You can't hide them forever."
There's no answer, and he adds, quietly, mostly to himself, "And you're wrong about me. I'm not like that."
"Sure you are, Sammy," a voice drawls, right next to him.
Sam bolts upright and regrets it immediately. He gets a few feet away before his hands give out, but it's far enough to see her properly. She looks solid, more real than the other girls, even the blonde. She's sitting with her back against the wall, knees pulled up to her chest. The collar on her khaki trench coat is pulled up around her face, but she stares at him with uncomfortably wide brown eyes. She's not like the other ones, as different from them as they've been from each other.
"Don't call me that," Sam says tersely. "Which one are you? Tuesday?"
She grins at that, top and bottom teeth showing. "Just call me your gal Friday."
"All right," Sam says. "Friday. Where's my brother?"
"Safe," she says. Her voice is husky and warm. It'd be reassuring if he didn't know what she was. "We wouldn't harm him. We're not here to hurt people, Sam."
"You are, though," he says, "These people don't belong here."
"We make them happy," she says.
"You make them sick. I'm not like that. I've never thought that."
"You're not the first person to tell me that." She pauses. "How long, Sam? How long has it been eating away at you? Did you just look at him differently one day, or was it a slow sort of thing, over time? Lord knows you've had enough of it together. We know what you've been through, Sam. What you've both been through. Bones sees into people's hearts, sees what they keep most secret and safe. This is what he sees in you. No one should have to keep a secret like that, Sam. Not by themselves."
"I'm not in love with my brother," he says, and doubles over, his stomach heaving.
He feels her small, cool hand slide over his neck, rubbing. "Sam," she whispers, "it's okay. Everything's okay."
He pushes her away. "That's why you take people? You take people with secrets?"
She nods. She stays close to him, her coat swinging open as she leans in close. He can smell her. She smells warm and alive, no perfume, no soap - just the heat of a living body up close against his own. "I'm going to kill him," he tells her, choking. "I'm going to tear this place apart."
She smiles. It's gentle, like Sunday's smile as she opened her arms. "There's nothing bad in giving in, Sam. You've been fighting for so long. You deserve this. You deserve him."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he whispers. There's blood in his eyes and he wipes it away with shaking fingers.
She stands and holds a hand out to him. "Come on," she says. "I want to show you something."
He's expecting her to lead him someplace, but the door that she turns to is the closest. She glances over her shoulder at him before she turns the knob, something in her eyes that makes him drop his own.
The room is blue. Blue carpet, blue shelves, a monstrous blue bed in the center, hiding an open shower behind it. He's never seen a bed like it, not in any of the places they've stayed: carpeted walls nearly up to the ceiling, enclosing the circular bed, covered by a velour spread. He stares at the bed critically, examining it, because it's easier than looking at what's inside.
They're curled around each other. The bedspread rising with each deep, contented breath. It's rucked up around their legs, enough that Sam can see the way Dean's feet fit in between Michael's, the crook of Dean's knee. Michael's mouth pressed messy and open against the hollow of Dean's throat. The room's dim enough that Sam can pretend not to see the sweat on their skin, not quite dry yet.
They're beautiful together, and seeing it hurts just as badly as he thought it would.
"This is what you think should happen?" Friday asks, softly. "Because it will. Probably sooner than you think. Your brother jacked Mikey off in the fields behind your friend's house. Didn't even get his pants down all the way. They've been sneaking around on you the whole time you've been on the road."
"That's not true," Sam whispers. "Dean would tell me."
"Maybe," she says. "Maybe not. You think that what happened in the car was really just a dream?”
Sam sinks onto the edge of the bed. There's enough room for all three of them, but he sits awkwardly at the very edge of the mattress, his shoulder pressed against the wall. Just watching them.
"No one knows you better than he does. No one loves you better than he does," she says, softly, and Sam laughs.
"You're not telling me anything I don't know already." Dean's foot is almost close enough to touch, and Sam's fingers twitch. "Friday, do you remember dying?"
Her eyes widen, and she pulls back a little. Then, hesitantly, nods. "We knew Bones was going to set the fire. We got dressed - Tuesday and me - and came down to the dance floor. Monday put "Maggot Brain" on repeat over the PA system, turned on all the lights and the disco ball. We sat and talked while he set the fire in the kitchen and in the rooms, and then he came back to us and locked us all in. There was - there was so much smoke. And I was afraid, but it didn't hurt."
He nods. "It didn't hurt for me, either. It was the easiest thing in the world. You just ... let go. And everything stops, and nothing hurts. You give in." She smiles in recognition, but he keeps going. "But this - giving into this - you have no idea what it would be like. I can't lose him. Not again."
"Sam," she says, surprised, "but that's the whole point. That's why we're here. To make sure you never have to face that, ever. You'd never lose Dean - not if you were here, with us."
"Why me?" he asks, twisting to look up at her. "Why do I get the choice? Why not him?"
"You're special," she says, stroking his hair. She's close enough that he can feel her breasts pressing against his shoulders. "You're different."
"Friday, go away," he says, and she does. She bleeds away, color first, then her body, and Sam's alone. Dean's snoring, muffled where his face is buried in Michael's hair. Dean's always been a snuggler. Never minded hair in his mouth or sweaty, sticky skin. They haven't shared a bed since Sam was 5'6" but he still remembers what it was like. He reaches out and strokes Dean's ankle with the back of his knuckles, his thumb passing slowly where hair gives way to smooth skin. Dean's foot is dirty and deeply calloused. It doesn't really matter.
He wants to think that, next to Dean, Michael looks impossibly young. But he doesn't. He looks older than Sam knows he is, old enough to be exactly where he is. A mouth that was too big when he was a kid - in more ways than one - grew wide and sensual. He's chewing it in his sleep. He's long, coltish where Dean tends towards square, and Sam remembers that rangy body pressed against his own, Michael's cock hard against Sam's belly.
And it's too easy to linger over what Friday told him. Too easy to picture it; maybe Michael pressed against Bobby's back fence, jeans around his knobby knees, Dean's hand in between them. Twisting his wrist as he jerks Michael's cock, maybe passing a thumb over the head of it. Telling Michael everything he wanted to do to him or maybe just - quiet the whole time, panting into the side of Michael's neck. Kissing him. Maybe when Michael came, his fingers dug into the back of Dean's neck, the same place they're curled now.
Sam wipes at his face without really feeling his eyes prickling, shaking his head. "Only making it harder on yourself," he whispers. "Get it over with."
He doesn't bother with the safe words. He probably never needed to. Doesn't even need to close his eyes to see the shadow on them, just a thin layer of misdirection covering up that core of light. He brushes the shadows away easily, memories sticking like jam on his mental fingers. A roadmap of their life together. Hard years on the road, dusty tramping across the Great Plains; Michael just a hitchhiker at first, later so much more. Settled, years later, a small house at the end of a dusty road, home enough that they're missing it even though they've only just arrived at the Red Room. Waking up together every morning, falling asleep curled just like this every night. It's close enough to his own fantasies that Sam actually laughs.
Dean wakes first. His breathing goes quiet and deep. Slow, like the drums, but so different and comforting that Sam could cry. The sound is so familiar that Sam knows exactly when Dean will open his eyes, how he'll look at Michael without really seeing him for a long moment before he's really, really awake. And that's exactly the way it happens, until he pulls back a little and sees Sam. Dean's eyes widen, just for a second. "Sam," he says, very softly.
Sam tries to smile. Tries to make it look like his heart isn't out on a plate. Dean opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again. Pulls away from Michael enough to prop himself up on one elbow, look Sam in the eye. It's been a long time since Sam hasn't known what's on Dean's mind just by looking at him, but it's impossible to read him now.
"Sam," Dean says again.
Michael shifts in Dean's arms, making little muffled sleep noises. He leaves off chewing his own lip to press his mouth against Dean's chest, pushing closer with his whole body. Dean stiffens, and that's when Michael opens his eyes.
He pushes Dean away so quickly that even Sam jumps. Dean falls awkwardly onto his back and Michael's momentum carries him back into Sam, whose hands come up instinctively to catch the boy. Loose limbs and bed-warmed skin against the blistered skin of his palms. Michael jumps, squeaks, "Sam?"
He pulls away and Sam lets him go, still held by Dean's eyes. He nods when Michael twists around, not trusting himself to speak, and then Michael reaches for him. A brief spasm of pain hits him low in the gut, and then he gets what Michael wants; he's reaching for the knot on Sam's forehead, seeing the blood there. Sam holds still while Michael cleans his face with the edge of the blanket, his other hand holding it over his own lap. He's blushing and he doesn't look Sam in the eye, and when he sits back next to Dean, he doesn't say anything. Doesn't look at either of them. Dean hasn't moved, just glanced slowly back and forth between them. The silence is unbearable, but the thought of breaking it is even worse.
"They led me here," he says, finally.
"Why?" Dean asks, and then, "Wait, you talked with them?"
"Because they can," Sam answers. "I know what the pattern is. Why they take people. Because they have secrets."
He's not looking at Dean, so he misses the way that Dean's eyes widen, the way he leans back unconsciously. It wouldn't have helped him anyway, to see his brother's face; whatever Sam might have seen is shuttered away so quickly that it might as well have never been there at all. "Oh," Dean says, colorlessly. "Oh. That's why they don’t want to be woken up."
Sam nods. He wonders where Friday went, whether they're listening in. If Bones is hearing every word they say. "You tried to," Dean says, and Michael flinches. "That's what you didn't want to tell me. Something happened."
"Yeah," Sam says. "Something happened."
He hadn't noticed Michael folding in on himself, his face getting redder and redder, but Dean does. "Mikey," he says, nudging him with his shoulder. "You okay?"
"Fine," Michael says, curling his knees up to his chest. "Just peachy."
Dean glances at Sam, frowning. "Michael, what happened after Sam found you?"
Michael hunches his shoulders. "He found me," Sam offers, and Dean cuts him off with a short shake of his head.
"Mikey," he says, scooting closer. The blanket slides down around his hips. The light glints off his necklace. The amulet is back on its thin cord, the saints’ medals and lion tooth vanished. "What happened?"
For a second, Sam doesn't think Michael will answer. He's twisting his head back and forth against his knees, his hands clenching. "I found Sam," he says, his voice low. "Talked him into waking someone up. So we did. And he. The guy didn't want to go back. So he poured a bottle of vodka over his head and lit himself on fire. Died and then got right back up like nothing happened. This fucking place won't even let you die if you - if you don't - if it doesn’t want to let us go. He got back up and he's probably still walking around like that, all -" He makes a noise in the back of his throat, small and pained. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have woken him up. Even if you rescued him, he’d be dead now and I shouldn't even fucking be here."
Dean had put a hand on the back of Michael's neck, but Michael shrugs him off. "We should've just found you and gone home. I shouldn't be here. I should be with my brother, not fucking up your hunt and putting everybody in danger and killing Chris. I let Asher down, I let Bobby down, I let you guys down. Fuck." He's crying, trying to hide his face from them, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, but when Dean's hand settles back where it was, he lets it stay there.
"Mikey. Dude. We can't go home," Dean says, his mouth twitching towards a comforting smile. "That's what Sammy's saying. We're all stuck here, like it or not. Me and Sam have ended up in a lot of places we had no business being. Doesn't mean no good ever came out of it. You're a hunter now, and we'll end this place together."
"Fuck this place," Michael mutters. The look he gives Dean takes Sam out of equation. He can see, really see the life that the Red Room gave them, stamped all over their faces. And then Michael smiles. "Hey, after all that - this is how I finally get to see you naked. Fucking figures, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," Dean says, and pulls Michael close enough to whisper something too low for Sam to hear - and press his lips to the skin behind Michael's ear. It's a small movement that's mostly hidden in Michael's hair, and that's probably, Sam thinks, why Dean did it. There's so much that Sam has never seen between them and he wonders if it's like this. If they've been this way all along.
"So, what do you think, Sasquatch?"
Sam blinks. They're both looking at him, their shoulders touching. "What?" he asks.
"Let's go find some kryptonite, hunt this fucker down," Dean says. "We need some clothes first."
"I burned my hands," Sam says, offering them up as proof.
Dean hisses through his teeth. "In the steam? Fuck, Sammy - that's no good. Can't hold a weapon like that."
"It's fine," Sam says softly, "I don't think it matters much. I don't think that's the way to beat the hotel."
He has to speak softly. If he doesn't, he's going to start laughing and he won't be able to stop. It came to him all at once, like the answer to a puzzle. He can remember doing hundreds of them as a kid: crosswords, word searches, anything to kill a thousand hours trapped in a hot back seat. Letting his brain relax until the letters rearranged themselves. Dean was always better at it than Sam was, better than their Dad, had always lived on a much more instinctual level than either of them. Sam had to work for answers that simply presented themselves for Dean and now, he can only blame his own nature for not seeing the truth earlier.
It had never been a secret that Michael wanted Dean. If that had been all Michael was hiding, he would've been left sleeping in the Impala at the edge of an empty field. Sam had known all along what was kept most safe in Michael's heart, had picked and nagged at it for as long as the kid had been with them: that bone deep conviction that he wasn't a hunter and never would be. Michael had hung on every one of Dean's words but taken all of Sam's to heart, and seeing it all poured out into Dean's open arms - I shouldn't even be here - only leaves a sour taste in Sam's mouth.
Michael's secrets are as obvious as Dean's are obscure. As obvious, Sam realizes with a dull sort of shock, as his own. Which is pretty fucking funny too.
"You don't think so?" Dean asks, frowning. "Why not?"
Because the Red Room wouldn't even let them die if it didn't want to.
Because Michael broke open and pulled himself back together and he's still here.
Because they have no weapons.
And it's that thought that turns the final tumbler and throws the gates open wide. Dean said it first, said it right in the beginning, when the Red Room was just another hunt and Michael was just some kid tagging along and Sam wasn't in love with his brother. We have no weapons, Sam had said, standing in the lobby and watching Michael rifle through luggage. And Dean said, we have you.
"Sam?" Dean asks, warningly. Sam looks up.
"They're just going to keep taking you two," he says. "Over and over again. The only way I've been able to find you is when they let me. But I think I can change that."
Dean's eyes narrow. He always was better at puzzles. "Whatever you're thinking ... don't, Sam. Don't do it."
Sam looks down at his hands. They ache as if they were on fire. The skin under his palms are filled with blood. Nothing's funny anymore. "I don't have any other choices, Dean. I can't take the one they're giving me. This is all that I can do."
Dean pushes up to his knees, the blanket falling away from his body, but Sam is faster. Dean's slowing down before he's halfway across the ridiculous expanse of bed, his face growing slack and stupid. He rears back, shoulders straight, blinking slowly, and Sam lets himself look. The broad strength of Dean's thighs. The curve of soft skin between hip and belly. The dimple on his shoulder where Sam shot him, so much smaller than the starburst on his back. His brother's cock hanging flaccid between his legs.
Sam lets himself want.
Michael doesn't even move; his eyes widen and he folds sideways, going to sleep as obediently as if Sam had told him to out loud. It's as easy to replace their dreams as it had been to brush them away, and Dean turns. Drops back onto his hands and knees and crawls back to Michael. Folds his body around Michael's. It doesn't hurt any less to see it again.
He watches them, for a long time. It's almost as peaceful as sleeping himself. He's exhausted. Worn down, every part of his body aching and sore. No way to tell how long it's been since he's slept. Since he's eaten. He's so hungry that he feels sick with it. But it feels good to watch.
He has to crawl up on the bed to touch them. It hurts to do it; his hands are stiffening up, that first agony fading to aching shock. He reaches for Dean first. The heat of his brother’s skin makes his palms burn. He traces Dean’s eyelashes with his fingertips, so softly that it barely hurts. He rubs a thumb over Dean’s mouth, careful of the blisters on his fingers, feels the barest touch of teeth. He hesitates, and then pulls back a little, slides the back of his knuckles down Michael’s belly, tracing the soft skin. His hands throb in time with his heartbeat.
“Friday,” he calls. He doesn’t worry about waking Dean and Michael. He buried them deep. He’d put them back at that little house if he could, but all he can do is make sure they dream of it. That they’ll wake happy.
He turns, and she’s there, sitting along the carpeted TV shelf as if she never left. The sleeves of her trench coat cover her hands, folded together against her bare thighs.
He stands and she follows suit, closing the distance between them. “Hi, Sam,” she says. “Seen enough?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I have.”
She holds out her hand for him to take.
She has enough time to flinch when he grabs her, but not nearly enough time to get away. He lifts her by the shoulders and throws her into the shower. She hits the wall as if she was actually a person, crumpling against it. He’s on her before she straightens, pressing her back with his body so that he doesn’t have to use his hands, her face against the tiles.
“Sam,” she gasps. The coat tangles around her body and she struggles inside of it, against him, her ass pressing back against his dick, “Sam, you don’t have to do this.”
He starts the exorcism and she laughs, her voice deeper than before, raspier, and he sucks in a breath. “This what you wanna do to him?” she says, thrusting her hips back against his. “You wanna fuck your brother, Sammy? Make him swallow your cock? You want Dean’s little slut for yourself? Bruise him up and send him back?”
He’s holding her, one hand on her shoulder and the other at her waist, forcing her up against the wall, her toes barely touching the ground as she kicks. There’s a smear of blood that her hair is sticking to but he doesn’t believe it, doesn’t believe in its reality. He keeps chanting, dumbly, his mouth shaping words that he barely even hears, and he keeps going even when the shower goes on. The suit sticks to him, water streaming down the back of his collar. It makes the clothing feel uglier, slicker than it did already. It’s hot enough to burn wherever it touches his skin. He grits his teeth where it sprays his hands.
Her face changes as if it’s melting under the water, her eyes filling with shadows, the ball of her nose broadening, her cheekbones lifting. She bares her teeth at him, both of them shouting, screaming. “You wouldn’ta been happy with a handjob, wouldja, Sammy? You were in that field, you’d have pushed Dean right over that fence and fucked him up the ass. Held him there however you could. No, you woulda grabbed him by the hair. Twisted his head all the way back until he could barely breathe. That’s the way you want him, don’t you?”
“Shut up,” he growls before he can stop himself, the exorcism stopping dead in his throat. He pushes his hand under her chin, forces it up and away from him. It takes barely a thought, a twinge, to sanctify the water that’s falling on them, and she screams loud and long. “Get out of her while you can, Bones.”
Spirits are anticlimactic. Demons howl, they fight with everything they have, but ghosts go with a whimper. Sunday faded away to mist but Friday drops, instantly boneless. Dead weight in his arms. Without the scrabbling of her bare feet against the tile, the room is abruptly, shockingly silent. The drums are gone, but Sam knows better to think that they’ll stay that way. He lets go of her, and she slides sideways for just a moment before crumpling. The body falls with a wet, heavy sound to the shower floor. The water slides into her open eyes.
He shuts the water off without moving, staring down at the body. He’s completely dry as he steps out of the shower. He glances down at himself; double-knit polyester becomes well-tailored linen. He straightens his collar. Tugs his cuffs into place. The suit is still mustard. He’s still playing in Bones’ sandbox, after all.
He can feel Bones coming for him. The anger that Sam felt when Sunday was exorcised is nothing compared to this.
“Come on,” Sam whispers, spreading his arms open wide. The ground rumbles under his feet and he hunches his shoulders, braces his feet. “Come on, motherfucker. Come and get me.”
The room goes blurry and dark, like the shadows are infecting the air, and even the walls shake. And Sam takes it all in, folds himself into ashy darkness.
Chapter 3 ** Chapter 5
Authors: hansbekhart & essenceofmeanin
Artist: ladyvyola
Rating: NC-17 (Sam/Dean, Michael/Dean, Sam/Michael, Sam/Dean/Michael, Sam/OC)
Summary: There are only two kinds of secrets: the ones you keep, and the ones you shouldn't have at all. When Sam and Dean take Michel on his first hunt (that doesn't involve a shtriga), they end up on the psychedelic dance floor of a long-vanished motel where disco never died and no one is quite who they appear to be. What was supposed to be an easy salt and burn descends rapidly into a morass of temptation and gold lame, bell bottoms and lies. No one gets to choose what secrets stay buried.
Unless they don't mind checking in ... forever.
He hears a wet crack like it's coming from another world, and the whole world explodes in blackness. He reels blindly and falls. He can't even open his eyes. It's all he can do to roll onto his side before he pukes all over himself. He hasn't eaten since the strip club, a couple of pretzels from a bowl and it's just stringy bile that burns his throat so bad that he coughs more of it up. He tries to push himself up onto his hands, and falls back onto his face with a sharp cry.
He lays there, his face ground into purple shag. It takes a long time to make sense of what happened, that sharp disjoint between the steam and Sunday and then this shocking pain. Bones took them, and Sam tried to follow. His momentum, as he came out of - of whatever it was, Bones' teleportation or transport or rearranging the hotel itself around them, carried him into a wall. That sick crack was his skull connecting with the stone walls. He can feel the blood oozing stickily out of his forehead, that tightness that means he's gonna have a hell of a bump. If he’s lucky, it’ll be just a bump and not a concussion. He can't put any pressure on his hands because they're burned. There are already blisters rising on his palms.
He's all alone again.
He's back in the hallway, even. Not even any place at all, just the long, stupid corridor that connects the guest rooms together. He wasn't supposed to go with them, and now he's nowhere. He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to breathe deeply; the usual mid-hunt coping methods for head injuries. It's not working. The hotel is utterly silent. No voices, no music ... no drums. And that's worse than anything.
"I'm gonna find them," he says out loud. They have to be watching him still, listening in, even if the drums are gone. "I will. You can't hide them forever."
There's no answer, and he adds, quietly, mostly to himself, "And you're wrong about me. I'm not like that."
"Sure you are, Sammy," a voice drawls, right next to him.
Sam bolts upright and regrets it immediately. He gets a few feet away before his hands give out, but it's far enough to see her properly. She looks solid, more real than the other girls, even the blonde. She's sitting with her back against the wall, knees pulled up to her chest. The collar on her khaki trench coat is pulled up around her face, but she stares at him with uncomfortably wide brown eyes. She's not like the other ones, as different from them as they've been from each other.
"Don't call me that," Sam says tersely. "Which one are you? Tuesday?"
She grins at that, top and bottom teeth showing. "Just call me your gal Friday."
"All right," Sam says. "Friday. Where's my brother?"
"Safe," she says. Her voice is husky and warm. It'd be reassuring if he didn't know what she was. "We wouldn't harm him. We're not here to hurt people, Sam."
"You are, though," he says, "These people don't belong here."
"We make them happy," she says.
"You make them sick. I'm not like that. I've never thought that."
"You're not the first person to tell me that." She pauses. "How long, Sam? How long has it been eating away at you? Did you just look at him differently one day, or was it a slow sort of thing, over time? Lord knows you've had enough of it together. We know what you've been through, Sam. What you've both been through. Bones sees into people's hearts, sees what they keep most secret and safe. This is what he sees in you. No one should have to keep a secret like that, Sam. Not by themselves."
"I'm not in love with my brother," he says, and doubles over, his stomach heaving.
He feels her small, cool hand slide over his neck, rubbing. "Sam," she whispers, "it's okay. Everything's okay."
He pushes her away. "That's why you take people? You take people with secrets?"
She nods. She stays close to him, her coat swinging open as she leans in close. He can smell her. She smells warm and alive, no perfume, no soap - just the heat of a living body up close against his own. "I'm going to kill him," he tells her, choking. "I'm going to tear this place apart."
She smiles. It's gentle, like Sunday's smile as she opened her arms. "There's nothing bad in giving in, Sam. You've been fighting for so long. You deserve this. You deserve him."
"I don't know what you're talking about," he whispers. There's blood in his eyes and he wipes it away with shaking fingers.
She stands and holds a hand out to him. "Come on," she says. "I want to show you something."
He's expecting her to lead him someplace, but the door that she turns to is the closest. She glances over her shoulder at him before she turns the knob, something in her eyes that makes him drop his own.
The room is blue. Blue carpet, blue shelves, a monstrous blue bed in the center, hiding an open shower behind it. He's never seen a bed like it, not in any of the places they've stayed: carpeted walls nearly up to the ceiling, enclosing the circular bed, covered by a velour spread. He stares at the bed critically, examining it, because it's easier than looking at what's inside.
They're curled around each other. The bedspread rising with each deep, contented breath. It's rucked up around their legs, enough that Sam can see the way Dean's feet fit in between Michael's, the crook of Dean's knee. Michael's mouth pressed messy and open against the hollow of Dean's throat. The room's dim enough that Sam can pretend not to see the sweat on their skin, not quite dry yet.
They're beautiful together, and seeing it hurts just as badly as he thought it would.
"This is what you think should happen?" Friday asks, softly. "Because it will. Probably sooner than you think. Your brother jacked Mikey off in the fields behind your friend's house. Didn't even get his pants down all the way. They've been sneaking around on you the whole time you've been on the road."
"That's not true," Sam whispers. "Dean would tell me."
"Maybe," she says. "Maybe not. You think that what happened in the car was really just a dream?”
Sam sinks onto the edge of the bed. There's enough room for all three of them, but he sits awkwardly at the very edge of the mattress, his shoulder pressed against the wall. Just watching them.
"No one knows you better than he does. No one loves you better than he does," she says, softly, and Sam laughs.
"You're not telling me anything I don't know already." Dean's foot is almost close enough to touch, and Sam's fingers twitch. "Friday, do you remember dying?"
Her eyes widen, and she pulls back a little. Then, hesitantly, nods. "We knew Bones was going to set the fire. We got dressed - Tuesday and me - and came down to the dance floor. Monday put "Maggot Brain" on repeat over the PA system, turned on all the lights and the disco ball. We sat and talked while he set the fire in the kitchen and in the rooms, and then he came back to us and locked us all in. There was - there was so much smoke. And I was afraid, but it didn't hurt."
He nods. "It didn't hurt for me, either. It was the easiest thing in the world. You just ... let go. And everything stops, and nothing hurts. You give in." She smiles in recognition, but he keeps going. "But this - giving into this - you have no idea what it would be like. I can't lose him. Not again."
"Sam," she says, surprised, "but that's the whole point. That's why we're here. To make sure you never have to face that, ever. You'd never lose Dean - not if you were here, with us."
"Why me?" he asks, twisting to look up at her. "Why do I get the choice? Why not him?"
"You're special," she says, stroking his hair. She's close enough that he can feel her breasts pressing against his shoulders. "You're different."
"Friday, go away," he says, and she does. She bleeds away, color first, then her body, and Sam's alone. Dean's snoring, muffled where his face is buried in Michael's hair. Dean's always been a snuggler. Never minded hair in his mouth or sweaty, sticky skin. They haven't shared a bed since Sam was 5'6" but he still remembers what it was like. He reaches out and strokes Dean's ankle with the back of his knuckles, his thumb passing slowly where hair gives way to smooth skin. Dean's foot is dirty and deeply calloused. It doesn't really matter.
He wants to think that, next to Dean, Michael looks impossibly young. But he doesn't. He looks older than Sam knows he is, old enough to be exactly where he is. A mouth that was too big when he was a kid - in more ways than one - grew wide and sensual. He's chewing it in his sleep. He's long, coltish where Dean tends towards square, and Sam remembers that rangy body pressed against his own, Michael's cock hard against Sam's belly.
And it's too easy to linger over what Friday told him. Too easy to picture it; maybe Michael pressed against Bobby's back fence, jeans around his knobby knees, Dean's hand in between them. Twisting his wrist as he jerks Michael's cock, maybe passing a thumb over the head of it. Telling Michael everything he wanted to do to him or maybe just - quiet the whole time, panting into the side of Michael's neck. Kissing him. Maybe when Michael came, his fingers dug into the back of Dean's neck, the same place they're curled now.
Sam wipes at his face without really feeling his eyes prickling, shaking his head. "Only making it harder on yourself," he whispers. "Get it over with."
He doesn't bother with the safe words. He probably never needed to. Doesn't even need to close his eyes to see the shadow on them, just a thin layer of misdirection covering up that core of light. He brushes the shadows away easily, memories sticking like jam on his mental fingers. A roadmap of their life together. Hard years on the road, dusty tramping across the Great Plains; Michael just a hitchhiker at first, later so much more. Settled, years later, a small house at the end of a dusty road, home enough that they're missing it even though they've only just arrived at the Red Room. Waking up together every morning, falling asleep curled just like this every night. It's close enough to his own fantasies that Sam actually laughs.
Dean wakes first. His breathing goes quiet and deep. Slow, like the drums, but so different and comforting that Sam could cry. The sound is so familiar that Sam knows exactly when Dean will open his eyes, how he'll look at Michael without really seeing him for a long moment before he's really, really awake. And that's exactly the way it happens, until he pulls back a little and sees Sam. Dean's eyes widen, just for a second. "Sam," he says, very softly.
Sam tries to smile. Tries to make it look like his heart isn't out on a plate. Dean opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again. Pulls away from Michael enough to prop himself up on one elbow, look Sam in the eye. It's been a long time since Sam hasn't known what's on Dean's mind just by looking at him, but it's impossible to read him now.
"Sam," Dean says again.
Michael shifts in Dean's arms, making little muffled sleep noises. He leaves off chewing his own lip to press his mouth against Dean's chest, pushing closer with his whole body. Dean stiffens, and that's when Michael opens his eyes.
He pushes Dean away so quickly that even Sam jumps. Dean falls awkwardly onto his back and Michael's momentum carries him back into Sam, whose hands come up instinctively to catch the boy. Loose limbs and bed-warmed skin against the blistered skin of his palms. Michael jumps, squeaks, "Sam?"
He pulls away and Sam lets him go, still held by Dean's eyes. He nods when Michael twists around, not trusting himself to speak, and then Michael reaches for him. A brief spasm of pain hits him low in the gut, and then he gets what Michael wants; he's reaching for the knot on Sam's forehead, seeing the blood there. Sam holds still while Michael cleans his face with the edge of the blanket, his other hand holding it over his own lap. He's blushing and he doesn't look Sam in the eye, and when he sits back next to Dean, he doesn't say anything. Doesn't look at either of them. Dean hasn't moved, just glanced slowly back and forth between them. The silence is unbearable, but the thought of breaking it is even worse.
"They led me here," he says, finally.
"Why?" Dean asks, and then, "Wait, you talked with them?"
"Because they can," Sam answers. "I know what the pattern is. Why they take people. Because they have secrets."
He's not looking at Dean, so he misses the way that Dean's eyes widen, the way he leans back unconsciously. It wouldn't have helped him anyway, to see his brother's face; whatever Sam might have seen is shuttered away so quickly that it might as well have never been there at all. "Oh," Dean says, colorlessly. "Oh. That's why they don’t want to be woken up."
Sam nods. He wonders where Friday went, whether they're listening in. If Bones is hearing every word they say. "You tried to," Dean says, and Michael flinches. "That's what you didn't want to tell me. Something happened."
"Yeah," Sam says. "Something happened."
He hadn't noticed Michael folding in on himself, his face getting redder and redder, but Dean does. "Mikey," he says, nudging him with his shoulder. "You okay?"
"Fine," Michael says, curling his knees up to his chest. "Just peachy."
Dean glances at Sam, frowning. "Michael, what happened after Sam found you?"
Michael hunches his shoulders. "He found me," Sam offers, and Dean cuts him off with a short shake of his head.
"Mikey," he says, scooting closer. The blanket slides down around his hips. The light glints off his necklace. The amulet is back on its thin cord, the saints’ medals and lion tooth vanished. "What happened?"
For a second, Sam doesn't think Michael will answer. He's twisting his head back and forth against his knees, his hands clenching. "I found Sam," he says, his voice low. "Talked him into waking someone up. So we did. And he. The guy didn't want to go back. So he poured a bottle of vodka over his head and lit himself on fire. Died and then got right back up like nothing happened. This fucking place won't even let you die if you - if you don't - if it doesn’t want to let us go. He got back up and he's probably still walking around like that, all -" He makes a noise in the back of his throat, small and pained. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have woken him up. Even if you rescued him, he’d be dead now and I shouldn't even fucking be here."
Dean had put a hand on the back of Michael's neck, but Michael shrugs him off. "We should've just found you and gone home. I shouldn't be here. I should be with my brother, not fucking up your hunt and putting everybody in danger and killing Chris. I let Asher down, I let Bobby down, I let you guys down. Fuck." He's crying, trying to hide his face from them, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, but when Dean's hand settles back where it was, he lets it stay there.
"Mikey. Dude. We can't go home," Dean says, his mouth twitching towards a comforting smile. "That's what Sammy's saying. We're all stuck here, like it or not. Me and Sam have ended up in a lot of places we had no business being. Doesn't mean no good ever came out of it. You're a hunter now, and we'll end this place together."
"Fuck this place," Michael mutters. The look he gives Dean takes Sam out of equation. He can see, really see the life that the Red Room gave them, stamped all over their faces. And then Michael smiles. "Hey, after all that - this is how I finally get to see you naked. Fucking figures, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," Dean says, and pulls Michael close enough to whisper something too low for Sam to hear - and press his lips to the skin behind Michael's ear. It's a small movement that's mostly hidden in Michael's hair, and that's probably, Sam thinks, why Dean did it. There's so much that Sam has never seen between them and he wonders if it's like this. If they've been this way all along.
"So, what do you think, Sasquatch?"
Sam blinks. They're both looking at him, their shoulders touching. "What?" he asks.
"Let's go find some kryptonite, hunt this fucker down," Dean says. "We need some clothes first."
"I burned my hands," Sam says, offering them up as proof.
Dean hisses through his teeth. "In the steam? Fuck, Sammy - that's no good. Can't hold a weapon like that."
"It's fine," Sam says softly, "I don't think it matters much. I don't think that's the way to beat the hotel."
He has to speak softly. If he doesn't, he's going to start laughing and he won't be able to stop. It came to him all at once, like the answer to a puzzle. He can remember doing hundreds of them as a kid: crosswords, word searches, anything to kill a thousand hours trapped in a hot back seat. Letting his brain relax until the letters rearranged themselves. Dean was always better at it than Sam was, better than their Dad, had always lived on a much more instinctual level than either of them. Sam had to work for answers that simply presented themselves for Dean and now, he can only blame his own nature for not seeing the truth earlier.
It had never been a secret that Michael wanted Dean. If that had been all Michael was hiding, he would've been left sleeping in the Impala at the edge of an empty field. Sam had known all along what was kept most safe in Michael's heart, had picked and nagged at it for as long as the kid had been with them: that bone deep conviction that he wasn't a hunter and never would be. Michael had hung on every one of Dean's words but taken all of Sam's to heart, and seeing it all poured out into Dean's open arms - I shouldn't even be here - only leaves a sour taste in Sam's mouth.
Michael's secrets are as obvious as Dean's are obscure. As obvious, Sam realizes with a dull sort of shock, as his own. Which is pretty fucking funny too.
"You don't think so?" Dean asks, frowning. "Why not?"
Because the Red Room wouldn't even let them die if it didn't want to.
Because Michael broke open and pulled himself back together and he's still here.
Because they have no weapons.
And it's that thought that turns the final tumbler and throws the gates open wide. Dean said it first, said it right in the beginning, when the Red Room was just another hunt and Michael was just some kid tagging along and Sam wasn't in love with his brother. We have no weapons, Sam had said, standing in the lobby and watching Michael rifle through luggage. And Dean said, we have you.
"Sam?" Dean asks, warningly. Sam looks up.
"They're just going to keep taking you two," he says. "Over and over again. The only way I've been able to find you is when they let me. But I think I can change that."
Dean's eyes narrow. He always was better at puzzles. "Whatever you're thinking ... don't, Sam. Don't do it."
Sam looks down at his hands. They ache as if they were on fire. The skin under his palms are filled with blood. Nothing's funny anymore. "I don't have any other choices, Dean. I can't take the one they're giving me. This is all that I can do."
Dean pushes up to his knees, the blanket falling away from his body, but Sam is faster. Dean's slowing down before he's halfway across the ridiculous expanse of bed, his face growing slack and stupid. He rears back, shoulders straight, blinking slowly, and Sam lets himself look. The broad strength of Dean's thighs. The curve of soft skin between hip and belly. The dimple on his shoulder where Sam shot him, so much smaller than the starburst on his back. His brother's cock hanging flaccid between his legs.
Sam lets himself want.
Michael doesn't even move; his eyes widen and he folds sideways, going to sleep as obediently as if Sam had told him to out loud. It's as easy to replace their dreams as it had been to brush them away, and Dean turns. Drops back onto his hands and knees and crawls back to Michael. Folds his body around Michael's. It doesn't hurt any less to see it again.
He watches them, for a long time. It's almost as peaceful as sleeping himself. He's exhausted. Worn down, every part of his body aching and sore. No way to tell how long it's been since he's slept. Since he's eaten. He's so hungry that he feels sick with it. But it feels good to watch.
He has to crawl up on the bed to touch them. It hurts to do it; his hands are stiffening up, that first agony fading to aching shock. He reaches for Dean first. The heat of his brother’s skin makes his palms burn. He traces Dean’s eyelashes with his fingertips, so softly that it barely hurts. He rubs a thumb over Dean’s mouth, careful of the blisters on his fingers, feels the barest touch of teeth. He hesitates, and then pulls back a little, slides the back of his knuckles down Michael’s belly, tracing the soft skin. His hands throb in time with his heartbeat.
“Friday,” he calls. He doesn’t worry about waking Dean and Michael. He buried them deep. He’d put them back at that little house if he could, but all he can do is make sure they dream of it. That they’ll wake happy.
He turns, and she’s there, sitting along the carpeted TV shelf as if she never left. The sleeves of her trench coat cover her hands, folded together against her bare thighs.
He stands and she follows suit, closing the distance between them. “Hi, Sam,” she says. “Seen enough?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I have.”
She holds out her hand for him to take.
She has enough time to flinch when he grabs her, but not nearly enough time to get away. He lifts her by the shoulders and throws her into the shower. She hits the wall as if she was actually a person, crumpling against it. He’s on her before she straightens, pressing her back with his body so that he doesn’t have to use his hands, her face against the tiles.
“Sam,” she gasps. The coat tangles around her body and she struggles inside of it, against him, her ass pressing back against his dick, “Sam, you don’t have to do this.”
He starts the exorcism and she laughs, her voice deeper than before, raspier, and he sucks in a breath. “This what you wanna do to him?” she says, thrusting her hips back against his. “You wanna fuck your brother, Sammy? Make him swallow your cock? You want Dean’s little slut for yourself? Bruise him up and send him back?”
He’s holding her, one hand on her shoulder and the other at her waist, forcing her up against the wall, her toes barely touching the ground as she kicks. There’s a smear of blood that her hair is sticking to but he doesn’t believe it, doesn’t believe in its reality. He keeps chanting, dumbly, his mouth shaping words that he barely even hears, and he keeps going even when the shower goes on. The suit sticks to him, water streaming down the back of his collar. It makes the clothing feel uglier, slicker than it did already. It’s hot enough to burn wherever it touches his skin. He grits his teeth where it sprays his hands.
Her face changes as if it’s melting under the water, her eyes filling with shadows, the ball of her nose broadening, her cheekbones lifting. She bares her teeth at him, both of them shouting, screaming. “You wouldn’ta been happy with a handjob, wouldja, Sammy? You were in that field, you’d have pushed Dean right over that fence and fucked him up the ass. Held him there however you could. No, you woulda grabbed him by the hair. Twisted his head all the way back until he could barely breathe. That’s the way you want him, don’t you?”
“Shut up,” he growls before he can stop himself, the exorcism stopping dead in his throat. He pushes his hand under her chin, forces it up and away from him. It takes barely a thought, a twinge, to sanctify the water that’s falling on them, and she screams loud and long. “Get out of her while you can, Bones.”
Spirits are anticlimactic. Demons howl, they fight with everything they have, but ghosts go with a whimper. Sunday faded away to mist but Friday drops, instantly boneless. Dead weight in his arms. Without the scrabbling of her bare feet against the tile, the room is abruptly, shockingly silent. The drums are gone, but Sam knows better to think that they’ll stay that way. He lets go of her, and she slides sideways for just a moment before crumpling. The body falls with a wet, heavy sound to the shower floor. The water slides into her open eyes.
He shuts the water off without moving, staring down at the body. He’s completely dry as he steps out of the shower. He glances down at himself; double-knit polyester becomes well-tailored linen. He straightens his collar. Tugs his cuffs into place. The suit is still mustard. He’s still playing in Bones’ sandbox, after all.
He can feel Bones coming for him. The anger that Sam felt when Sunday was exorcised is nothing compared to this.
“Come on,” Sam whispers, spreading his arms open wide. The ground rumbles under his feet and he hunches his shoulders, braces his feet. “Come on, motherfucker. Come and get me.”
The room goes blurry and dark, like the shadows are infecting the air, and even the walls shake. And Sam takes it all in, folds himself into ashy darkness.
Chapter 3 ** Chapter 5