Due Supernatural [NC17] Sam/Dean, Part Three

[queenklu]

Once upon a time, Dean had a normal cop-like job, an average work-is-my life, where he didn’t get welcomed to Canada in the middle of the night (in the middle of Chicago) by a guy wearing long johns with a really bad habit of not blinking.

“Inspector Tiel?” Dean asked, somehow managing to sound only about one tenth of how on edge he really was. As soon as he got his badge back in his pocket he was clutching it hard enough to make his knuckles ache.

“Call me Cas,” the man said in an intense, gravely monotone, and shook Dean’s hand.

“Uh, okay. Cas.” Dean would call him honeypie if it got him to a certain cat-eyed Mountie. “Is Sam Winchester in, by any chance?”

“Constable Winchester,” Cas corrected, which just-No, whatever. “No, I don’t believe so. He expressed an intention to stay with you.”

Great, he’s speaking Canadian. Dean swallowed something ugly and made himself ask. “Right. Was there anything weird about Constable Winchester’s transfer?”

“He didn’t transfer,” Cas droned, blinking for the first time, “If that’s what you mean.”

“You had him on guard duty,” Dean pointed out, biting back the urge to slam Call-Me-Cas in a chair and shine a light in his eyes. “Why would you do that if he was staying as a guest?”

“…Duty to his country,” the Inspector said, as if Dean were a special brand of American stupid.

“Were his papers in order, did he show you his license to ride a horse-anything that proved he was who he said he was?”

“Oh, he is John Winchester’s son, no doubt about that.”

“…Would you care to elaborate?” Before I punch you in the head.

Cas let out something almost like a sigh, and Dean realized for the first time that for all he was being welcomed to Canada, he hadn’t been asked to step inside the door. “I had a passing acquaintance with John Winchester, but even so the man had a certain reputation that preceded him. After his wife died, the RCMP let him have free reign in the territories-he had an uncanny ability to show up wherever he was needed. A real sixth sense, you might say.”

Yeah, or…Dean thought, and cut off that thought before it could do more than send a chill down his spine. “And he just dragged Sam around with him? He would’ve been pretty little when his Mom died,” if he was remembering the dates right off the top of his head.

“Round about six months old, I heard,” the Inspector nodded. “I believe John had some network of friends who’d take care of Constable Winchester when he had to be elsewhere, but I don’t rightly know.”

Constable Winchester. As if he’d always been a Mountie, this little bundle of red serge. The question was already out of his mouth before he had a chance to vet it and send it far away.

“He and his dad get along alright?”

“Fairly,” Cas mused, eating up that unwarranted feeling of relief and spitting it out half chewed. “There was some big to-do over Constable Winchester attending college instead of following his father’s footsteps… But that was just before I left. It’s hard to get news from home. Obviously he came around.”

Or… Dean thought about the hat he had in the passenger’s seat of his car.

“How do you know-” His throat caught and he had to stop to clear it. “How do you know the man on your doorstep yesterday was Sam Winchester?”

Inspector Tiel full-out scowled at him, which translated to his eyebrows going a little crooked. “He had the Colt. Everyone knows that Colt’s been in the Winchester family for generations.”

“Yeah? What’s so special about it?” God damn that gun. Why had he put it on the fucking counter? How had Sam grabbed it without moving in Dean’s peripheral vision?

“Part of the mystery. Five generations of Canadian Winchesters and they wound up with an original American gun.”

“Huh.” Okay, not as interesting as he was hoping. “Did Sam give you any sort of indication of where he might go? Sights he wanted to see? Anything?”

Please, please let there be something.

“Well,” Cas said, and Dean’s gut squirmed, “he did show an interest in visiting the Chicago Public Library-”

“Hallelujah!” Dean exclaimed, hands actually up in the air because if he didn’t do that he was going to do something stupid. Stupider. Like hug the Chief Inspector of the Canadian Consulate. Who looked genuinely startled, in a surprisingly human way. “Thank you for your time. Also, you might want to wave some air fresheners around. At this moment in time I don’t give a damn but people are going to start thinking this is a frat house.”

Cas had really blue eyes when they were this wide. “My subordinates, I assure you. They have been severely punished.”

“Right.” Do not care, Dean added as silently as he could when he turned and all-but ran back to the Impala. The engine gunned with a deft twist of his hand, and Dean didn’t let himself look at the lump of empty red wool in the passenger’s seat, didn’t let himself think about what he’d do if Sam wasn’t there.

He was all the way to Pritzker Park-a five minute drive he made in two-the Harold Washington Library looming in the beams of his headlights, when he realized the dim glow of his radio was telling him there was no way in hell the library was open. There was no way in hell Sam could be there, unless he was sitting outside waiting for people to unlock the doors. The Impala rumbled quietly as Dean’s foot eased off the gas, but he coaxed her around the block, the building, then back the other way to peer into the shadows from a different angle. No Sam.

He parked on autopilot, and let his head rest against the steering wheel. “Now what?” he asked himself, not in any way expecting an answer.

A low, feral growl snapped his head back up, bringing him eye to golden, slitted eye with-

“Bela?” Oh dear god he hoped it was Bela on his hood, because otherwise he was going to get eaten by a wolf in downtown Chicago. At least if it was Bela eating him he could claim it made some sort of sense.

She snarled, and the tightening of her throat bared just enough of the silver chain around her neck to catch the light. Dean’s heart was still jackrabbiting, even with solid plate glass and-even as sturdy as his baby was, Bela’s weight should’ve been denting the hood at least a little. Instead it was like she weighed nothing at all, a wolf-shaped shadow that could still do some serious damage. The sight unnerved him just enough that he could tear his eyes away to look for Sam.

No luck. God, would it kill him to have just a little luck?

“Hey, now,” he snapped over her growling, “Do I look like someone who’s going to hurt Sam?”

He didn’t expect her to shut up, so the sudden silence made him flinch. She pressed her nose against the glass, almost like she was daring him to meet her startlingly intense stare.

Was he going to hurt Sam? Had he already? The questions pressed in on his mind with a feeling of edged concern, the smell of Sam-the smell of Sam?

He jerked back against his seat, Sam’s scent so thick in his mind it felt like he was drowning in it, and when Bela’s head cocked to one side he saw the charms dangling from her collar, pentagrams, letters in languages he didn’t understand, and tiny engraved disks with marks like the one Meg had made in entrails.

Maybe he wasn’t the one who would hurt Sam.

Don’t be ridiculous.

Dean gasped, and choked, and nearly pulled a muscle twisting to look for the fancy British woman who’d just spoken. “The hell-?”

Please try not to be so incredibly stupid. Come on, now, use your big boy words…

Dean shouted, “Screw you!” before he could think better of it. A soft snort yanked his attention back to the hood of the Impala, where, if he hadn’t known any better, he’d have said Bela was smirking at him.

Very Oscar Wilde, the woman’s voice said, and Bela’s tail wagged in time.

“Uh,” Dean said, staring as Bela’s teeth bared in a terrifying grin. “…Holy shit.”

Rather unholy, I should say.

“I don’t want to know,” Dean said quickly, shoving out his hands. If Sam was-if he wasn’t-Dean just didn’t want to know.

Too late for that now. She settled on the hood, taking absolutely no care with her claws, and the roots of Dean’s molars ached even though the rest of him had much more important things to worry about than his baby’s paint job. Her ears flipped forward, then back. I don’t understand why Samuel is not where I left him.

Something in her phrasing rubbed Dean the wrong way. “Because he’s a human being, and they tend to wander off. Maybe you should invest in one of those baby-leash things.”

And who would hold the other end? You? It seemed really unfair that she could give looks that withering from under all that fur. Dean, sweetheart, I don’t care what kinky little games you want to play with him. All I want to know is why he smells upset.

Dean really… He did not have an answer for that. He knew why he was upset-being run off on did that to him-but he didn’t have a fucking clue why running from Dean would get to Sam unless…

He didn’t realize he was staring at the damn hat in his front seat until Bela disappeared from his mind like a gasp, and he barely looked up in time to see her leap off the hood of the Impala. His own feet hit the asphalt before he knew his hand was on the door.

“Wait-!”

Dean didn’t really like the Harold Washington in daylight, mostly because it was judging him for all the books he’d never read with his GED and a give-‘em-hell attitude. Now in the darkness, with a half-wolf-half-something-else prowling up to the massive entrance and gigantic fucking gargoyles leering down at them from the roof, it looked like something straight out of a bad horror flick. “Where’s the thunder and lightning when you need it?” Dean muttered as he caught up to her, but Bela just flicked her ears at him disdainfully.

The brass handle of the massive glass doors didn’t give under his tug (surprise, surprise), and he gave her a pointed look. She rolled her golden eyes and raised a hind leg to scratch behind her ear, looking decidedly bored.

“God damn it.” Dean shoved Sam’s hat-when had he grabbed it? He hadn’t meant to-on his head for safekeeping and fished his lock picking kit out of his favorite belt buckle. “I promised Singer I wouldn’t do this shit anymore without a warrant.”

Bela ignored him as thoroughly as if he wasn’t there, even when the door peeled back on its hinges and she slid inside.

He tried his best not to think about Sam getting in here the same way.



If Sam was being honest with himself, he wasn’t used to buildings being this massive. If he were outside the space would seem nothing at all, but here…with its polished marble floors and looming archways, corridors reaching through the stacks of more books than one person could hope to read like beckoning fingers… Sam felt small and inconsequential, which was nothing new. The library just amplified it somehow.

He sensed Bela’s whispering mind coming closer long before he heard her clicking nails on the marble. She’d been quietly nagging him to come let her in for the last hour before falling silent a few minutes ago, presumably having finally found her own way inside. Sighing, he flipped shut yet another worthless book as he stood and turned to face her. “If you knew there was a way to get-“

He stopped. So did Dean.

“Hey, Sam,” he said, voice hushed in the gaping expanse of the abandoned library, but no less solid, or real. The glow from Sam’s laptop, from the Exit and security lights, did nothing more than throw shadows across Dean’s pale, tense face, across the standard issue Stetson he had perched on his head. Sam’s hat. He was wearing…

Dean followed his gaze and took it off, knuckles fumbling clumsily along the brim. He hadn’t done more than throw on a pair of jeans and his leather jacket before coming after Sam, or he would’ve done something about the way his hair was still flattened on one side where he’d slept on it. “U-uh,” he said, less a word than a soft exhalation, and looked down at the hat in his hands. “Guess… Sorry, I thought you might need it.”

Sam had changed clothes behind a dumpster a block from Dean’s apartment, feeling ridiculous in the pumpkin pants without the rest of the uniform to distract from it. Now, though, he almost wished he’d attempted to hail a cab in the get-up just so he wouldn’t feel so exposed now, in a ratty pair of jeans and a Stanford hooded sweatshirt one size too big his father had picked up at a thrift store for him eons ago. Sam fingered the ragged hem and tried to remember how to breathe with his insides twisting into knots.

“And, fuck, your coat.” Dean shook his head as if he were angry with himself, glaring at the floor. “Unless you took it before you-left, it’s probably still in the closet.”

“Keep it,” Sam told him, shocked at how wrecked it came out, all because of that fractional pause.

Dean looked at him immediately. Sam had been shot before-almost paralyzed-but...this. Well, it didn’t really compare.

“Not really a Mountie, are you, Sammy?”

The childish nickname sent up a flare of anger, mostly in self-preservation, even as his muscles strained against a fierce need to stand at attention. “No,” he said, voice cold. “I’m not.”

“Why the hell did you say you were?” Dean lashed out, taking a furious step forward with his grip threatening the pressed brim of Sam’s hat. “You think I wouldn’t help you if you were just the guy’s kid?”

“You. Can’t. Help.” Sam hit each word as hard as he knew how, teeth baring in a faint imitation of Bela, who’d made herself scarce. Naturally. Any time she would be of any use- Sam realized his hands were in the air before him, curling even as they shook. “It’s too- You just, you can’t help me, Dean. No one can.”

“Look,” Dean said, voice low and even, “I know it may feel like that-“

“You were never good at cop talk, Dean,” Sam cut in, scathing.

His gaze flickered as he registered the hit, then Dean tried again, slower, hand outstretched the same way as when Sam had held the Colt. Dean said, slow and easy, not some persona, “I don't know exactly what happened to your dad, but I know it was something real bad. And I know-I know it has something to do with things I don’t understand. But you gotta give me the benefit of the doubt, here-“

“Why?” Sam snapped. Dean was advancing, and Sam’s back hit a wall before he realized he was retreating. He was in a shallow alcove, escape limited and it startled him, scared him into blurting more than he meant. “You don’t know me! You’ve known me less than a day, and I was fucking lying to you.”

God, it felt good to say fuck again, another grimy Mountie layer peeled off his skin, leaving it pink and sensitive but his.

Something sparked in Dean’s expression at the word, bright enough that Sam could see it in the dark. Something like recognition. Like, There you are. Knew you were in there somewhere.

Which-he couldn’t have. Known, or seen. Constable Samuel Winchester wouldn’t have let him.

Dean’s focus drifted to something on the wall over Sam’s shoulder, then settled back on him with a burning sort of calm as he took those last steps into Sam’s personal space. “I know good when I see it,” he said, voice echoing in the embrace of their alcove. “Sam…”

He dropped the hat, and years of childhood conditioning made Sam flinch but Dean was already smoothing down the folds in Sam’s sweatshirt like he was settling a skittish colt, before his fingers curled into the fabric and held on.

“I do know you,” Dean said, hard like it was truth, close enough now that their foreheads were brushing and Sam could taste Dean’s breath on his lips, count each of the lashes fanning across his cheek.

Sam ducked just enough to touch, then more.

The kiss was supposed to make Dean back off, was supposed to make him leave. He didn’t expect Dean to stay, to lean into him, to split open a chasm of need inside Sam that-Christ, that was going to gulp them down, burn them up. God. God. Sam choked on a cry and tried to rip free before the flames could lick his fingers, but Dean followed him, pressed his hands to Sam’s face and his mouth to Sam’s lips and his everything against Sam’s desperation.

It was so, so different from the last time he’d been kissed.

Dean’s hand wrapped around the back of Sam’s neck and angled him better, coaxing kisses from him, eating at his fraying control without ever using his tongue. Sam didn’t understand that line he wouldn’t cross, but he buckled under the want of breaking it. His nails cut into the leather of Dean’s jacket, bunching and leaving bruises when he wasn’t careful and reached for the skin underneath.

Dean had no qualms about getting under Sam’s clothes, rough fingers leaving gentle burning trails over Sam’s ribs, learning him by feel. Sam arched into the touches, choking against the need to mewl against Dean’s mouth.

“Come on, Sam,” he begged, and Sam shook. He didn’t have any more he could give. He didn’t know how.

Dean’s hands stilled at his lower back, and for an frozen second Sam thought he’d found the Colt before he remembered it was tucked inside the bag near his feet. No, he thought as Dean’s fingers slid hesitantly over his skin and Sam trembled so hard it left him gasping for air, he’s found the scar.

He felt something shake loose in Dean too, and Sam broke, snapped, slammed Dean against the wall still warm with his own desperate heat and Dean arched into him with a gasp like yes. Sam tore Dean’s hands off him, pinned them too tight over Dean’s head, biting his lips with the words. “You can’t-you-“

“Yeah, I can…” Dean let out on a low, throaty sigh, sinking against the press of Sam’s hips as he turned his head and licked at Sam’s mouth. Sam gave instantly, panting hot around the slide of him, the taste of him, the smell-

Dean smelled like leather and heat, like energy, like life. Sam nearly killed himself pulling back from the ferocity of their kiss, but burying his face in the crook of Dean’s neck was like coming up for air.

“Come on,” Dean said against the shape of Sam’s ear, teeth brushing the whorls as he arched his neck when Sam bared his own teeth against Dean’s neck and tried not to bite down. “Come on, Sam.”

Sam obeyed, a helpless, almost juvenile snap of his hips that brought him flush against Dean, against the unmistakable hardness in his jeans. Pleasure shocked down his spine and pulled at his scar, distracting him just long enough for Dean to wriggle one hand free and bury it in Sam’s hair, tugging him back until their foreheads were touching and Sam was lost in the thrumming intensity of Dean’s gaze.

“-want you, Sam,” he heard Dean say over the roaring in his ears, voice just as raw as Sam felt, “I want you to. I want you.”

Sam didn’t know how to say yes with words-he barely knew how to say yes with his hands fumbling at Dean’s belt. It had been so long, so messed up and wrong the last time, and never with a man, never let himself do more than look and ache in silence. But he didn’t know how to say no, either. Not to Dean. When Dean’s free hand slid down Sam’s zipper to cup him, he let out a noise like he’d been holding his breath for his entire life.

Dean tugged his other arm free and Sam let him go, too shaky to do more than concentrate on holding himself upright as Dean helped Sam with his own buckle, moving to Sam’s before his jeans even slithered off his hips. Sam’s gaze got caught on the bared skin of his flanks-Dean had good thighs, meaty, made for holding onto and wrapping around his waist, and where, how were these thoughts bubbling out of some dark place? Sam tried to let go-he hadn’t meant to grab at all, let alone grab so hard-but Dean canted his hips back into the touch until Sam’s hand was fit around the curve of his rump, pulling him closer as Dean’s fingers finally got Sam’s belt undone and dragged everything out of the way until Sam’s cock slapped against the cotton covering his belly.

Dean’s mouth, kissed dark and sweet, dropped into a soft ohh…that Sam had to taste. He couldn’t bear Dean looking at him like that, didn’t he understand?

But he wanted to see Dean, as selfish and unfair as that was, and he ducked his head, hair falling into both their eyes. The shape of Dean in his black boxer briefs was obscene, straining the material, and Sam’s fingers were tracing the outline before he knew what he was doing, searching for a wet spot. There. Where Dean was wet for him, for Sam, and Dean’s breath stuttered in time to his hips.

Dean shoved his underwear down to his thighs and Sam didn’t move away fast enough to keep himself from catching Dean’s cock in his grasp. The heat was searing, the cry dragged from Dean’s throat tearing at the nerves in Sam’s spine where Dean’s nails were scrabbling for purchase.

“Good?” Sam stammered as he stroked Dean like he was drawing something ethereal from him. His grip faltered at the sound of his voice, the first word he’d spoken since this started.

“Yeah,” Dean panted, wide and wild eyed, “Yeah. Yes.”

He stroked in earnest this time, trying to make up for his failings by neglecting his own aching length, but Dean let out a displeased noise and wrapped his gun calloused hand around Sam’s cock and pulled. Sam’s knees buckled and he fell against Dean, involuntarily shoving their damp heats together and a simultaneous groan from both their throats. Dean instantly ducked his head to bite at the shape of Sam’s tendons, his Adam’s apple, and Sam felt desperate panicky tendrils of imminent release curling in the soles of his feet.

He gasped out indistinct noises, blindly trying to ease back but Dean caught him, wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close. “Hold onto me,” Dean ordered, his voice rough and beautiful, and Sam clutched at him before his brain could even process the words. Then Dean’s free hand wrapped around them both, and Sam forgot every language he’d ever learned.

His hips snapped vicious, brutal, knocking Dean’s hand away to fit himself against Dean as close as they would go, smearing semen over Dean’s belly and bruises down his hips as Sam’s vision went white. He heard, though, everything. Every wet slap of skin, every harsh desperate breath and the way it caught and keened when Sam’s writhing drove Dean over the edge. He felt his whole body contract with the first splash of Dean against his skin, felt it echo like a violent ripple through Dean’s frame. And when it threatened to give out, Sam was the one who held them steady, who pressed trembling numb kisses against Dean’s neck and jaw until he could feel the rasp of stubble against his mouth again.

Then Dean locked his shaking hands in the now-soiled Stanford sweater Sam still wore and sank down the wall, tugging Sam with him until they toppled and fell. Quite the pair, their pants around their ankles, trapped by their boots, sticky and pink in interesting places, fingerprints darkening over their skin.

“You-” Dean said before his chest even stopped heaving. Then his eyes caught on Sam, distracting him into giving Sam’s hoodie a weak tug. “Can’t believe I didn’t even get your shirt off,” he muttered, then dragged it over Sam’s head with a muddled single-mindedness that made Sam tip his head back against the wall and laugh until it hurt.



Dean’s brain was quiet in a way it hadn’t been in…pfft, he couldn’t remember. He was used to millions of things buzzing around in his head all the time; it was strange-he should have thought it was strange-that they’d all narrowed their focus to Sam. That he could do this with someone who was little more than a stranger without phasing, but the thought of Sam out of his sight again made his heart clench in his chest.

This wasn’t entirely new, sex with a guy-part of why Dean’s marriage had gone so spectacularly to shit (though he hadn’t cheated. He hadn’t ever fucking cheated. But he’d been really badly tempted, and that had been enough). But this felt…new. Terrifying. Fucking fantastic but. Yeah. First time he had to pull his gun and first kiss rolled into one, exhilarating without the certainty of anything turning out well.

It looked like someone had had the bright idea to paint a library-relevant quote into each little alcove, and even with Sam in his arms Dean’s eyes kept drifting up the wall to the one etched above their heads.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

-Christopher Morley

Dean sighed against the back of Sam’s neck, but Sam didn’t so much as twitch. He seemed content enough to be tucked between Dean and the wall, their clothes strewn under and around them, Dean’s fingertips tracing the inky flames of Sam’s tattoo.

Yeah. That had been a trip. Sam really, really did not seem like the tattoo type. But Sam didn’t seem like the owner-of-a-talking-half-wolf-type either, so.

Which reminded him, kick-starting the voices right back up. “What’s the other half?”

Sam let out an annoyed grunt-which should not have made Dean nearly as happy as it did-and frowned at Dean through the mess of his bangs. Dean had to work hard not to grin as big as he wanted to when Sam mumbled, “Other half of what?”

“Bela,” he said, keeping his grip loose even when Sam tensed up. Suddenly it wasn’t so hard not to smile, though he did try. “She’s half wolf and half something else, right?”

“Naturally,” Sam said, quiet and hesitant, and Dean didn’t even breathe deep in case that tipped the scales into Constable Winchester territory. God, if he never saw Sam that closed off again it would be too soon. Wearing that uniform was like putting a tourniquet on his entire body.

“Yeah?” he prompted after a moment when Sam stayed silent. “So what is it?”

Sam had kept some form of contact since they’d settled down; now, though, Dean could feel his fingers tensing on Dean’s arm, like he didn’t want to let himself hold on. Jesus, Sam was going to break his heart. Or make his eyes roll. Possibly at the same time.

“Hellhound,” Sam said, very small.

“Whoa…” Okay, so he hadn’t prepared himself for that. “Like-really?”

Sam’s elbow caught him not entirely by accident in the ribs as he flipped over. Maybe he shouldn’t have sounded quite so skeptical. “She spoke to you, didn’t she?” Sam accused, and that was easy enough to answer.

“Yep.”

“God damn her!”

“Well,” Dean drawled, unable to resist; Sam was cussing. Everything was hard to resist. “If she’s a hellhound, odds are pretty good- Alright, I’ll shut up,” he surrendered under Sam’s glare. Then his mouth twisted, not in a smile. “Is that what this is? Some sort of Satanist cult thing you’re a part of? Because…” He brushed a light nail over the pentagram in the circle of fire on Sam’s chest, and tried not to let himself notice the way Sam’s nipples pebbled. Talking dogs he could sort of wrap his head around… Fuck it, everything was so beyond him he didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted Sam to talk to him.

Sam pulled out of reach and loomed over him, frowning in a way that did not herald sexy times. Honestly, Dean was pretty okay with that; he’d come so hard he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get it up again right now in a room full of Sams with perky nipples. Well, maybe… In any case, it wasn’t that harshing his afterglow. He missed touching Sam.

“Actually, a pentagram is protection against evil,” Sam said in his you’re-being-schooled voice, so Dean slid his arms behind his head and raised his eyebrows, waiting. Definitely not smirking when Sam’s eyes got sidetracked to the shape of his biceps, following his skin down to the hollow of his throat. “Wait a moment,” Sam murmured absently, hands going to the back of Dean’s head and Dean thought, okay, fuck a roomful of Sams, and leaned up to be kissed.

Instead, Sam yanked the bag Dean had been using as a pillow out from under him. Dean made sure to make noise so Sam knew he was Not Pleased, even if Sam was too distracted digging through the bag to notice. Dean felt a scowl tugging at his features, and then a small shiver of something ugly and unnamable smoothed them out.

Because seriously. He did not have any claim on Sam. And no real right to get post-coital kisses. Fucking God damn, why did he keep doing this to himself? Cassie-she’d definitely played the too clingy card more than once, and Dean knew enough guys to realize maybe it was true. That there was a fine line between trying too hard and showing you cared, and Dean didn’t know where the fuck that line was.

He sat up and scooted back until he could prop up against a wall, as casual as you please with his insides tying into knots, just in time to catch a glimpse of brass in a fistful of leather strips Sam pulled out of the bag. And then Sam pressed it to Dean’s skin, right over his heart, and Dean’s gasp was less about cold metal than trying to get close enough to touch. Damn it. His fingers still tangled with Sam’s when he went to catch whatever it was, but that really wasn’t on purpose.

“It’s an amulet,” Sam said as Dean held it up to see, watching the tiny horned face twist between them, “It belonged to my father. Please wear it.”

Dean felt sucker-punched by this little piece of John Winchester and roundhouse-kicked to the head at that little ‘please,’ the determination on Sam’s face as he prepared for Dean to say no.

“Yeah,” he nodded dumbly, “Yeah, Sammy. Course. Okay.” Shut up. He bit the inside of his lip and- Christ, he’d made his mom take the clothes they donated to a charity out of town because the thought of seeing some guy walking around in his dad’s third favorite shirt made him nauseous. But Sam was giving him this?

Sam was suddenly on his feet, giving Dean a brief, relieved smile before he turned away to get dressed. And, don’t get him wrong, great view from back here, except for that white, knotted scar right at the small of Sam’s back. The one Dean hadn’t let himself think about since he’d found it, the one he’d known was a bullet wound with just that brief brush of his fingertips. Dean had one on his leg from a firefight busting a kidnapping ring, but there was a huge difference between getting shot in the fleshy part of his thigh and the vulnerable curve of Sam’s spine.

Dean stood before he knew he was going to move, but he got stuck. He couldn’t ask about that, could he? It wasn’t his-

“You get the guy who gave you that?” he asked, the rest of his mind apparently too distracted by putting on jeans to shut the fuck up. Lizard brain response, clingy scaly bastard whining mine mine hurt Sammy-which just goes to show how fucking stupid reptiles are-but something in his cop brain kept him from taking it back.

Sam went still, deathly still, then tugged on his sweatshirt like if he could hide it they wouldn’t have to talk about it. Dean zipped up, fastened his belt, and waited.

“I was…I was dating this girl. In college,” Sam said, and holy fuck, it was one of the more American things Sam had ever said to him, using actual incomplete sentences and everything, and Dean hurt with the urge to back Sam into a corner and hold him until everything bad went away. “She was,” Sam added, then broke off with a little twist of his head. “I wasn’t as careful… I thought once I was free of my father his world wouldn’t follow me. She was possessed. By a demon.” His eyes flicked to Dean’s. “Same as Meg Masters.”

Suddenly it didn’t seem so American any more-just…broken, and Dean felt like he was trying to breathe molasses. A sharp spike of pain snapped his attention to his palm, where he’d clenched his fist around the amulet hard enough for one of the small horns to draw blood.

And somewhere, behind that: Demons. Hellhounds. Animal Sacrifices. Bodies that fall out of three story windows but get up and walk away. All somehow true because…because animals don’t talk. Because Dean was good at reading people, and Sam wasn’t lying about this.

“I knew,” Sam said, this horrible little smile tugging at his mouth, “Not at first but. Near the end. Right at the end. Dad-my father,” he corrected, like he wasn’t allowed to call him that out loud, then shook his head and said, “He figured it out, he was going to exorcise her, and she was going to run before she let that happen. I was going to go with her.” He cringed and looked away, one hand jerking vaguely at his back. “He didn’t mean to hit me. It probably saved my life that he did.”

“Shit, Sam,” Dean said feeling every one of his twenty six years and coming up…really fucking inadequately prepared. Getting gut shot after a prize fight would be pretty close to how he was feeling, and he hadn’t even been the one to live through it. “I don’t-“ know what to say. What could he say? Your dad should’ve learned how to fucking aim? It was pretty obvious Sam had jumped in front of the bullet.

He wanted-he wanted to hug Sam, but even after all they’d done it seemed too intimate. Dean was a coward, fine. He was pathetic and insecure and he didn’t think he could take Sam shoving him away right now. Probably ever.

“Hey,” he said instead, forcing his hands to unclench and his cop brain to rise above the lizard one, “Hey, what happens to people when they get possessed? Do they have to be dead first for the demon to, you know…” He made a vague wiggly gesture with his fingers, but he didn’t really know how a demon crawled inside someone-they only showed the getting out in The Exorcist and damn, that shit was messy.

Sam shook his head warily, like he didn’t like where he thought Dean was going with this. “Sometimes their victims are aware of what’s happening, sometimes they black out. She told me she was possessing a girl who’d been hit in a car crash and declared medically brain dead, that she was just trying to live a normal life.” Sam’s face told him how much he believed that now, how much he’d wanted to believe it then. Then his expression hardened, fixing those beautiful eyes on Dean without an inch of give. “I wasn’t trying to save her. She could have taken that bullet and lived. I was running- I got in the way of the shot. He thought I was running to stop her. I’m not good, Dean. I was leaving with her, a demon.”

“With a woman you thought loved you,” Dean said over him, because-Christ. If Sam couldn’t see that… “I would more than gladly take a bullet for someone I thought loved me.”

It hung in the air between them like some delicate, twisted rope bridge. Not somebody they loved-someone they thought loved them. More in common than you’d think, a flatfoot cop and a fake Mountie, even if what they had in common was the fact they’d gotten badly fucked up somewhere along the line when it came to healthy relationships.

Sam folded one arm over his chest and brought his other hand up to rub over his face. “Do you think we’re cursed?” he asked finally, almost a joke.

“Hey, you’d know better than me,” Dean said, running with it if it meant he might coax a smile from Sam any time in the future. Then he shrugged, not breaking eye contact. “I think we’re just a little… We got dark spots. Like a…bruised apple. You know?”

A faint tremor ran across Sam’s shoulders, and Dean tried not to let his heartbeat stutter when he recognized it as the start of a laugh. “Our dark spots are pretty dark.”

“You’re-dark,” Dean fumbled and looked down, because it was either that or kiss Sam stupid. He busied his hands with looping the amulet around his neck, putting his clothes on, automatically checking his watch.

5:53

In seven minutes his alarm was going to go off telling him to wake up and go to work.

It hit him again, caught him by surprise because he thought some part of his brain had dealt with this. Work. Cop. Harboring a possible fugitive. Hell, fucking a possible fugitive. Illicit homosexual activities with-shut up. On top of breaking into a public library, which could maybe be spun to include the words ‘in the pursuit of’ but no one was seeing Dean whipping out his cuffs, were they? He looked at Sam, tired eyes, worn hoodie, everything about him fraying at the edges, and that was as familiar as breathing these days for Dean. Fuck, though. …Fuck. How did this happen? How did one day get him here?

“Is this the part where you panic and run?” Sam asked, his voice lowered and almost casual. Dean might have bought it if his eyes weren’t anywhere but meeting Dean’s. And okay. He could do this. He’d know what to do if he could just get a read on Sam.

“Maybe,” is what he said, but he really didn’t think so. It might have been saner to take off screaming, but whoever said Dean Harvelle was a rational human being?

Sam looked at him then, staring right down deep into Dean like he’d been able to from the first moment he’d stepped up to those cell bars. So Dean looked at himself too, looked for what Sam was looking for. Where was the paranoia that Sam had put a spell on him? Or the paranoia about not being paranoid, for that matter? Where the hell was the denial, the this-isn’t-possible and prove-it-to-me and you’re-a-liar-I’m-calling-a-priest-and-the-loony-bin-in-that-order? Where the hell was all this blind trust coming from, and could he call it blind trust when it felt like his eyes were wide open after a lifetime of being shut?

That’s it, he thought suddenly, stupidly, and nearly choked because he’d forgotten how to blink and gasp at the same time.

“This case,” he started, groping blindly for that tiny random thought. “One of the first cases I ever worked, I got called out on a homicide. Anthony Giles, bad rope burns on his wrists, throat slit so far you could see-” He looked away, his own throat working but afraid to swallow in case the rest wouldn’t come out. “I, uh. I tried questioning the wife but she was…freaking out. She kept saying her husband had been having nightmares about this woman with a slit throat and now she was having the same nightmares...”

Sam was watching him too intently, or maybe the exact right kind of intently if he was thinking what Dean was half-hoping he wasn’t.

“We didn’t want to haul her in until we had something concrete from forensics saying she was involved somehow, so we left her in the house with a police guard, you know, for her protection. In case there really was an intruder. I was there first thing in the morning to bring her in for more questioning-”

“Killed?” Sam asked when Dean’s voice just up and quit on him.

He nodded, and that knocked something loose enough to talk. “Slit throat, same as her husband. Like, exact same. Rope burns and everything.” Dean rubbed his own wrist without thinking about it, only noticing the gesture when Sam’s eyes fixed on his hands with something like muted fear.

“Did you have the nightmare too?” Sam asked like he didn’t want to know. Or like he wanted to reach out and touch Dean to make sure he was really there.

“I hadn’t slept in two days,” Dean said instantly, automatically, “I was in shock, running on coffee fumes, I-I don’t know. Yes. Yeah, I did.” And he felt something come free when he said it, a leech yanked off his skin. He’d felt the bruises appear out of nowhere like morbid, painful bracelets; he hadn’t been hallucinating those. Inspector Singer had dropped thinly veiled comments about safe words for weeks.

“Dean-” Sam’s hands reached for him before either of them realized Sam was moving, but they weren’t… Sam wasn’t holding on. Hovering less than a centimeter away from his skin, even with his clothes in between. Like Dean had some sort of force field, or Sam thought he did. And the bitch of it was, Sam didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. “You-” His brows came together. “How did you kill it?”

“Kill it?” Dean repeated, incredulous. “Sam, it was a dirty cop killing people to cover up a shitload of cocaine he smuggled from lockup. He confessed to both murders and we nailed him on a third when we found the body of his fence stuffed in a wall. There was no ‘it’ to kill.”

“Dean,” Sam said again, fingers squeezing for the briefest moment around Dean’s wrists, “Did the third victim look anything like the woman you thought you saw?”

And that, right there, was that little niggling thought shoved right to the surface and painted in neon colors so bright it hurt to look at. Dean sagged a little, fingers tangling in the ragged edge of Sam’s sleeves. Because she had, once they’d gotten a dental match and pulled up her record. She had a slit throat and rope-burned wrists, Detective Sheridan’s M.O., and Dean put that on the report instead of thinking about how he was apparently getting sympathy bruises from people he hadn’t even known were dead.

“It sounds like a death omen,” Sam said after a long moment of nothing, and he might have sounded distracted if he weren’t still staring at Dean like he was about to disappear. “The spirit-that’s what you saw,” he stressed like Dean was in any shape to argue, “Some spirits don’t want vengeance for their deaths; sometimes they want justice. She must have been trying to warn you, help you catch her killer.”

“She could’ve sent me an email,” Dean pointed out, just a little too shaky to be a joke. “I almost got shot by the guy.”

Sam’s hands clamped down and stayed, and Dean let himself feel like he’d won something.

Then Dean’s watch started beeping, startling them both into taking a step back. Sam’s hands left him like he was afraid of getting burned.

It was written plain as day in Sam’s guarded expression that he didn’t expect Dean to stay, that he was braced and ready for Dean to whip out the cuffs or just turn on his heel and walk out that door. And Dean caught himself wondering-for all that Sam had apparently caused a riff by choosing college over his dad, how many times had his dad chosen Sam over the job?

“So a demon killed your dad,” Dean said, because somebody had to.

Sam looked spooked, like he wasn’t sure what Dean was playing at, but he answered. “Yes.”

“Meg? Or whatever one’s in Meg Masters?”

“No,” he said, and Dean’s stomach thumped as Sam shook his head. “But she summoned the one that did.”