woke up still on fire (the long gone lonesome remix) [Supernatural; Sam/Dean]
Author: Tripoli [
tripoli8]
Summary: Dean Winchester, Sex Cult Rookie of the Year.
Rating: R
Fandom: Supernatural
Warnings: This is a not-very-serious story about things I’m not one hundred percent cool with making light of, including peripheral references to drug/amnesia-induced sex that, as I read the original, at the very least toe the line of dubious consent. If you think I’m a huge jerk for cracking jokes about that kind of thing, hey, I don’t entirely disagree, but you might want to look elsewhere.
Spoilers: N/A
A/N: Title credit to The Long Winters and Hank Williams Jr.
kres is my beta ninja.
Title, Author and URL of original story: A Fiddle of Gold Against Your Soul, by
technosage
Dean lifted his head off something soft and girly-smelling and sneezed, but that was as far as he got.
Ow, he thought, and then connected the thought to the couch leg poking into his ribs. He tried to nudge himself out of the way without waking up his headache any more, but that just set off an explosive case of the spins. Oh my God, what was I drinking?
Whatever it was, there was still some left in the red plastic cup upended by his foot. It was stacked inside two other cups, and without lifting his head he could see two or three dozen more abandoned around what he assumed was either a yert or a really nice tent. Dean thought about leaning over to investigate, then felt his stomach roll, and he registered, I am hung over, I am sore, and I am going to puke.
And he was cold. He could see his own boozy breath in the air in front of him, and he was wearing some kind of gauzy white thing that barely even covered his chest and would almost certainly swoosh around in a completely horrifying way when he finally managed to stand up. It looked like it was put together with the crap somebody scrounged from a craft store, and it had a huge disco belt with acorns and lightning bolts stitched in, and the whole thing was edged with this gold stuff that he wanted to call brocade, except for the deep and insistent part of him that was in deep denial about knowing what gold brocade even was. He realized then that the thing he'd thought was a couch was more like a wire bed frame stacked on cement blocks with a crappy futon and a pile of blankets thrown over it.
Score! He tugged the blankets down over himself and went back to sleep.
Or tried to.
"Dean?” A woman unzipped the tent flap and stuck her head in. “The erastoi are ready. Are you not up yet? Never mind, I'll tell them you're not up yet."
"Wait, I'm up," he said, and managed to get to his feet without lurching too badly. He had no idea who this woman was, but since she would actually talk to him, he didn't want to mess up their new relationship by puking all over her. "I'm up. Where are we going?"
She held up her watch arm. “Time for school, Deano. Get your coat, I’ll walk you over.”
He staggered to his feet and looked around, helpless. “Um…which one’s…”
The woman started at him in blank expectation for a second, then laughed in surprise. “Wow, they were saving up the good shit for you.”
“Good shit,” he repeated.
“I don’t know. Matt-he’s the head erastes-that’s what you are-says it’s a blessing from Zeus, but I’m pretty sure it’s the kind they make in the finer trailer parks of Jefferson County. Here.” She fished a leather jacket off the ground for him-at least he had taste-and said, “I’m Lindsay. You probably forgot that. Do you remember any of last night?”
He consulted the jumble of images and names and the weird refrain of bless him Zeus, bless him Zeus that made up what was left of his long-term memory, and said honestly, “I’m not sure.”
“Well, don’t sweat it. I’m sure most people wish they didn’t remember last night either.”
Based on the number of empties alone, he’d been guessing another two or three dozen people wandering around at least, but his tent had to be one of fifty lined up on the bank of a sluggish gray river. As Lindsay led him through the tent city, all Dean could see around them was trees, but it looked like it was still too early for anyone to be up and about. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Mount Olympus.”
He looked around in alarm. “In Greece?”
“No, in Olympic National Park.” She paused. “In Washington.”
Okay. Well, at least they weren’t in Greece. Unless he was from Greece, but he was pretty sure he’d remember that. “And who are all these people?”
“The Children of Olympus. We’re out here in praise of Zeus Eleutherios, Zeus the Liberator.” She paused. “That’s who our camp’s dedicated to. There’s another camp outside Bellingham for Zeus Soter, the Savior, but they’re way preppy and kind of churchy, don’t ask me why.”
That didn’t sound nearly as weird as he had the feeling it should. He wondered how long he’d been here, if he’d been a follower of Zeus for very long. He didn’t think so; the place didn’t look familiar at all, and it was pretty much impossible to get that drunk. At the edge of the water, a young guy was trying to coax some kind of giant cow-monster to eat out of a bowl he held out temptingly, and he waved vaguely at Lindsay as they passed. “Is that where we’re going now? To worship Zeus, I mean.”
“Nope. You’re going to erastes camp, and I’m going back to bed,” she said. “The party last night was to celebrate your investiture as a priest of Zeus Eleutherios. There's a whole theory behind why they zap your memories, but I think they get you guys drunk so you won’t complain about getting dragged through a whole day of poli sci lectures before they let you get to the public sex.”
Dean wasn’t sure which part of that sentence made the least sense, so he just said, ”I’m not a priest.”
“Sure you are.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. He was sure he would remember that. “I would remember that. And even if I didn’t, why should I trust you people, when you just told me you drugged me so I can’t remember anything anyway? Who the hell roofies somebody to make them a priest? What if I don’t want to be in your little cult?”
Lindsay rolled her eyes. It seemed to be her default facial expression, at least when she was talking to Dean. “Number one, that’s not a very nice thing to say about people who just had a drunken orgy in your honor,” she said. “And number two, if you shut up for thirty seconds you can have this argument with Matt, and I can go back to my nice warm sleeping bag with my nice warm girlfriend inside. Does that work for you?”
Dean shut up.
The temple, when they got there, was closer to a shack or cabin than a tent, though it looked like somebody had thrown it together from whatever they pulled from the dumpsters behind Home Depot. "This is it?"
"Uh huh." Lindsay knocked on the pressboard door, then pushed it open. “Hey, guys, he’s all yours. He could use some coffee, though.”
“Hey, Dean!” somebody called from inside, and somebody else said, “Dude, it’s the Kegmeister!”
She held the door for him. “Have fun.”
----------
They finally turned him loose just as the sun was going down, right around the time the brainwashing was setting in and it was starting to sound totally normal and kind of cool for a god to zap your brain and send you up into the mountains so he could get drunk and have sex with random guys in your body. The way the other guys made it sound, he felt kind of surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
The idea (Dean had been told) was that the erastoi had been chosen as Zeus’s vessels on earth, and the eromenoi were his chosen…vesseled. Or something. Temporary amnesia, it turned out, was part of the deal. Dean was going to spend three hours tomorrow night as the human incarnation of Zeus, having sex with the human incarnation of Ganymede the Cupbearer, and they didn’t want him too distracted by being Dean when that happened. Zeus didn’t like sloppy seconds, either; he and his eromenos were to spend the next eighteen hours together, but no sex till sundown, period. Yes, Zeus counted oral. Afterwards, we promise, he got his brain back.
Lindsay was called to come and collect him. Fully initiated erastoi, he was happy to hear, got to have cell phones. And pockets. And pants. She was apparently in a much better mood at 7:30 at night than she was at six in the morning, which Dean couldn’t fault her for, since he was too. He still wasn’t clear on whether she had an actual job or volunteered to drag him around and rolled her eyes at him because it was fun, but since she currently qualified as the least crazy person he knew, himself included, he wasn’t going to sweat it.
Priest Dean’s philosophy on life lasted till they got back to the tent he’d woken up in, and Lindsay caught his arm before he went inside.
“Okay, before you go in there: Zeus sent a nice boy up to be your eromenos. He just got here this afternoon, and there wasn’t time to purify him before your orientation let out, so I just brought him to your place."
Dean felt his stomach drop. “Oh. Okay?” The priests had assured him that they didn't really seek out young boys or take anyone against his will, but some of the other eromenoi could have passed for older high school kids, and it kind of creeped Dean out that Zeus was just going to pick out some kid to send over like a Christmas present or a good bottle of scotch.
“He seems like a cutie-pie. You'll like him." Her voice dropped. “Zeus says he’s-” and she held her thumb and index finger all the way apart with a meaningful look.
"Sure I’ll like him," Dean said, because what the hell else were you supposed to say?
She gave him a quick smile, bright and fantastic, and ushered him inside. “Hi, Sam! We’re back.”
Dean ducked into the tent, and looked up, and up. The "boy" was the size of a soda machine, floppy-haired and layered in flannel, but he had a nice face, or probably would when it wasn't gaping in Dean's direction.
"Dean, this is Sam--Sam, sorry, what's your last name?"
"Rockford," Sam said, and eyed him up and down. “Nice dress."
Dean blinked. "Easy access." Sam seemed to be struggling not to laugh, and not at his joke. Well, wait till he sees what they’re gonna make him wear.
"Okay!" Lindsay said. "Well, I'll see you guys tomorrow night. You want somebody to bring dinner?"
"Sure, thanks, bye Lindsay." Sam was still smirking that little smirk, and maybe Lindsay was right about this being his eromenos, because Dean had the sudden feeling that getting Sam to smirk at him would turn out to be the best game ever.
She might have said something else, or rolled her eyes again. He wasn't paying attention.
“Thanks, Lindsay,” Sam said sweetly, and kept smiling until she was out of earshot.
As soon as she was gone, Sam thumped his shoulder. "Okay, the car's about a quarter mile into the woods. You didn't see my wallet anywhere around, did you? They took it when they jumped us. I hope it was them, and not some random homeless guy, anyway."
Is he looking for his condoms? "Uh, sorry. No wallet."
"Damn it. All right, I'll get it next time. Let's go. They took your shoes and everything, huh?"
"The ground is muddy," Dean heard himself say matter-of-factly.
"Okay," Sam said cautiously. "We can get them when we come back."
Dean shrugged off Sam's hand. "Wait, what? We can't go anywhere. Did they not tell you? The ritual's tomorrow."
"Dean." They stared at each other for a beat, and Sam's brows knitted together, incredulous. "Christo."
Dean shook his head in frustration. "I don't even understand what that means."
"Terrific," Sam muttered, and pulled out his cell phone. “Could you give me a minute?”
"Dude, you get reception out here, you be my guest. See if Dominos will deliver, while you're at it." He got up as manfully as he could in the robes, and left Sam alone.
He was loitering outside, in a wary staring contest with one of the cow-monsters, when he saw Matt wandering over with a milk crate stacked with tupperwares full of cheeses and grapes, that he'd last seen stacked in the temple mini-fridge. Each one was labeled with a piece of masking tape, where someone had neatly sharpied in EROMENOI, HANDS OFF. He grinned and elbowed Dean in the chest when he heard Sam's low voice from the tent. "How's it going in there?"
"Good, I think," Dean said politely. In all the erastoi’s talk about lunar calendars and astrological divination, they'd skipped the part where his sex life was the camp's answer to Monday Night Football. Then his brain registered that Matt was holding food, and he asked, "Is that for us?"
"The guys on kitchen duty made it special," he said with a bright smile. He handed Dean the milk crate, which turned out to have at least three bottles of wine tucked inside as well, and Dean wondered how lucky he was allowed to get before the ritual. The no-sex rule had been pretty clear, but if nobody was shy about helping him get his date liquored up, he wondered if they hadn't taken the initiative of sticking a bottle of lube or something at the bottom.
“I climbed the real Mount Olympus, once, in college,” Matt said suddenly. “There are beer cans and condoms all over the place.”
“Oh,” said Dean.
“I told Zeus, but.” He shrugged. "You kids have fun. Not too much fun, though--I think people are still kind of enjoying the fact that Dave’s eromenos went back to school and you can get to sleep before three in the morning."
Dean forced himself to keep a smile plastered on. "I'll gag him or something. Thanks for dinner, Matt."
He waved and headed back in the direction of the mess tents, shooting back a smile that Dean thought qualified as creepy since he couldn't possibly have known him before last night. He waved and turned to bring the food inside.
Sam was just hanging up the phone on someone named Ash when Dean was in earshot, thanking him for doing him a favor or answering a question. He gave Dean a little, nervous, rueful smile that made Dean feel like a child molester, and dropped his phone back in his pocket. "Thanks. So what are we supposed to do till this ritual happens?"
I'm so glad he thinks I know the answer to that, Dean thought. He stalled a minute or two finding glasses and pouring them each a drink. "I think we're supposed to get to know each other." He fidgeted, cleared his throat, fidgeted. Sam watched him. " So, um. Are you a student?"
"No," he said. "I'm a drop-out, technically. I'm on a road trip with my brother right now."
Dean nodded. "School's not your thing, huh? I get that. We spent all morning in this 'orientation' thing that was supposed to tell us how to be priests and what happens in this ritual we’re supposed to do, and all I could think the whole time was that all Zeus really cares about is that I'm a good lay, and I don’t need Zeus to tell me that, right?"
Sam grinned. Dean could get used to that. "What kind of stuff did they talk about?"
"I dunno. Boring stuff. Astrology, theology. How we’re not supposed to feed Cheetos to the sacred bulls. Then there was a powerpoint on rough anal, I still don't know how I feel about that." He paused. "For lunch we had a barbecue, though. It was pretty sweet. So, uh. If you're on a road trip with your brother, what're you doing hitching your wagon to a bunch of dirty hippies in the middle of the woods?"
"I got sidetracked," Sam said pleasantly. “How about you?”
That’s a really good question, Sammy. He forced a grin. “What, between working a shitty desk job all day or living in the woods with your friends getting drunk and having sex all the time? Gimme that old time religion.”
“Huh.” Sam frowned. “So what else happens in this ritual, exactly?”
Dean had zoned out and started doodling giant fanged cow-monsters about twenty minutes before they got to that part, but he thought he remembered some pictures. "Well…first I smoke a lot of weed, then I get possessed by Zeus, then you and me have sex. Everybody gets drunk and goes home happy."
Sam looked appalled. "You get possessed?"
"Well, yeah." He shrugged. It hadn’t sounded all that bad when Matt and the other erastoi were explaining it. "Who the hell knows what that really means, though, right? The guys were telling me that a lot of them take shrooms their first time. To, you know. Really get into character."
Sam’s mouth gaped open in amazement, or horror, or both.
"Uh, I probably won't," Dean added. Apparently.
"And you've seen this?"
"Well, no," Dean said. "Not yet. But all the other guys have done it, and they're fine."
He looked totally fascinated. "What else did they say?"
"The bulls are part of it too, but nobody will tell me how,” he said darkly. “Why, do you want to switch?"
"That's okay," Sam said, with feeling. "Are they gonna make me take a class like that?" He tried and totally failed to look casual. "Are they going to give me stuff that messes with my mind, for the ritual?"
Dean opened his mouth to tell him that losing your memory wasn't all bad, but realized he had no idea if that was true or not. "Not if you don't want to," he said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you and me are kind of secondary to this whole thing. We’re just reenacting the myth Zeus and Ganymede created. Although I don’t think Ganymede actually shows up, so just try not to laugh or anything.”
Sam still looked deeply concerned, but at least Dean didn't think he was freaked enough to change his mind. He should have asked the guys how they'd talked to their eromenoi. A lot of them had just been picked up by their erastes in bars in Forks or Victoria, and the rest seemed to wander in on their own, when Zeus called them-which was probably why nobody had thought it was weird when Sam wandered in asking for the new guy.
Sam thought that was nuts. "Why does everybody listen to Zeus? How do they know these guys they're grabbing off the street don't have AIDS or something?"
Dean had thought of that. Kind of. The other erastoi said that swapping body fluids was kind of the point, so why would Zeus send them somebody with AIDS? And anyway, Sam looked like an all right guy. “I don’t have AIDS. Do you have AIDS?”
“No, but you have no way of knowing that, dumbass. Jesus God, you're alone for two days and it's like a giant four year old with a fork and a light socket.”
He didn't sound that mad, just vastly irritated, and Dean realized he'd never asked how Zeus had annunciated Sam in the first place. “So if it’s such a dumb idea, why did you even come up here?”
Sam shook his head in disgust, and Dean realized he might have pushed that one step too far. He liked Sam, he'd decided. He wanted this eromenos guy, if he was going to have one, to be somebody like Sam. No, not like him. Sam. That wouldn't work if Sam got pissed off and left in the middle of the night. He didn't think he let his expression change, but Sam's mouth pressed thin and he clapped Dean on the shoulder. "To find you, you stupid jerk."
It was the weirdest thing to just hand to someone, but it felt a little like he’d won something, even better than being chosen by Zeus in the first place. Dean threw an empty plastic cup at his head. “That’s what I thought, bitch.”
----------
Phase One of “getting to know each other”, casual conversation, lasted about twenty minutes. That was when the erastoi showed up to confiscate their clothing. Phase Two lasted just under thirty seconds, which was about how long it took for random nudity to stop being fun and start being pure torture.
The plan to get Sam liquored up and cooperative was backfiring badly, on account of Dean's apparent lack of any native self-control and Sam’s totally shameless efforts to get him as drunk as possible on three bottles of wine. They'd already emptied two, and Sam was still clear-eyed and watchful, while Dean had started giggling like a little bitch at everything Sam said, up to and including “My parents are dead” and “I think we’re getting hypothermic”. And now their clothes were gone, which either meant that they were testing his self-control, or the camp was run by fratboys.
Actually, that would explain a lot.
But being cold and naked and plastered up against a big, warm guy’s naked body was not going to make it any easier for Dean to be a good little erastes, and keep his dick, if not in his pants, then at least out of Sam’s ass till tomorrow night.
With which Sam was no help. Once he’d felt confident they weren’t going to try and drug him or make him go to class, he’d been all about the idea of wrapping up the night by having sex with Dean, and wouldn’t take, “it will really, really piss off the gods” for an answer. Yeah, the being naked together all night thing was rough, but (Dean told himself) Zeus had brought them both here for a reason, and Sam could survive another eighteen hours. That was the only way Zeus would let this work long-term, and Dean liked Sam. Really liked him, not just in the we’re-going-to-have-sex-so-I-should-try-to-remember-your-name kind of way. Hell if he knew how the erastoi had figured out his type that fast, but if you had to be naked in a tent in October, there were worse guys to do it with.
Not very much more annoying. But worse.
Sam flopped back in a chair, jangling the duct-taped frame and not even trying to hide his gigantic hard-on. Dean wanted to tell him to stop being such a fucking slut about the whole thing, or go jerk off if he was that desperate, but then Sam might yell, and therefore stop doing that pouting…thing with his mouth. Sam looked at his watch and sighed noisily.
Dean put his cup down hard. “Dude, cut it out.”
Sam dropped his wrist and looked over at him, like he was deliberating, weighing something, all you-must-be-shitting-me. "Is somebody watching us? How do they know we're not having sex all night anyway?"
"Zeus is watching," Dean said, and Sam frowned. That idea had grossed him out a little too at first, that an invisible guy was hanging around keeping track of how much sex Dean wasn't having. He thought that would pretty much go away after the ritual; once Zeus had experienced sex from inside your body, he didn't really mind that you did too, the same way that his memory would come back once he didn’t need to leave room for Zeus’s presence. It wasn’t that hard to understand.
Somehow, in the middle of his fifth glass, Sam's back and shoulders struck Dean as looking really knotted up, and he tried digging the heel of his hand into Sam's lower back in small, easy circles. Sam practically melted against him, and Dean felt himself smiling, taking pleasure in Sam's pleasure. Sam liked this. Dean liked this. It felt as good as Sam’s skin, as good as the wine they were drinking, and he started to relax too.
Sam's eyes were closed in drowsy satisfaction. "You know if we were ancient Greeks, I'd be about twelve."
Dean's hands froze. "Come again?"
He tilted his eyes up, unconcerned. "Eromenos means beloved, right? Back in the day, eromenoi really were kids who were used to sexually pleasure grown men."
He blinked a few times. "Wow, that's a nice story, Sam, thank you."
“I'm just saying. And it was kind of embarrassing for everybody involved for the eromenos to be into it. You know, this whole hippie compound is total New Age bullshit, the erastes-eromenos relationship was totally classist and in a lot of places, they were discouraged from anal sex altogether. It would be considered really demeaning for a guy in my position, which makes me think being an ancient Greek was not nearly as much fun as it looks. Do you think Zeus was around for Stonewall?”
Sam was messing with him, he realized. The hell with that, he hadn’t entirely zoned out this morning. “Yeah, and I’m supposed to pay off your dad with a ton of liquor and virgins, too. Where should I send it?”
Sam opened his eyes and turned around. "That isn't appropriate foreplay conversation, is it."
"Not unless we were ancient Athenians or in NAMBLA, no."
Sam snorted. "You remember NAMBLA and not your last name, and I'm the one with problems?"
Maybe he was on to something there. Dean moved his hands back to Sam's shoulders and started to knead his thumbs in again. "How'd you know about that Zeus and Ganymede stuff?"
"I dunno, I read it in school or something." Sam laid back, slouching into the V of Dean's legs. Dean couldn't reach his back any more, so he sank a hand into his hair instead. “I was reading this thing that said-"
Dean shook his head in amazement. "Have you never been on a date before? Oh my God, dude, there's such a thing as--"
Sam hissed in pain and jerked away.
He gripped Sam’s shoulders. “Whoa, you okay?”
“Yeah.” He did sound okay, just startled. He grimaced. “I told you, me and my brother got jumped at a bar last night. It’s not a big deal.”
Dean laughed. “Professor Pederasty got curb-stomped in a bar fight? I’m shocked and appalled.”
Sam’s mouth fell open, and he snapped it shut. “Dude, don’t even start with me.”
After that, they were quiet. Dean was the drunk one-the drunker one, anyway-so he almost didn’t notice Sam starting to nod and then lean in against the bend of Dean’s knee, sliding down.
Dean thought about letting him just slide all the way to the floor, but his head would probably thunk pretty loud and Dean would feel a little bad, and besides, by then Sam would probably have left a drool patch on his knee, which would’ve been kind of gross even if they weren’t naked. He prodded him in the shoulder. “Hey. Sam. You’re falling asleep.”
“That’s true,” Sam mumbled half-into his leg.
He jiggled his knee again, and Sam finally, grudgingly tottered to his feet and somehow made it over to the futon-stacked-on-milk-crates they were using as a couch. He closed his eyes and stretched out, and Dean settled back, watching thoughtfully. His wine drunk felt good in his system, numbing the very last holdouts of his hangover, and mellowing him out all the way to his fingers and toes. The tent was cold and Sam was big, goofy and warm, and Dean decided, fuck it, and climbed in with him.
-----------
Dean didn’t know he’d fallen asleep till he woke up. The camp outside was dark and totally silent, now, and he blinked around blindly for what could’ve woken him
Sam's sleeping body stiffened and he made a pained noise, nnuh, little gasps of misery.
Dean put a hand on Sam's chest and rubbed slow, careful circles back and forth. "Sam."
Sam tightened around himself and moaned.
All right, that's enough. "Sam, come on. "
He jerked against Dean's body and took a sharp breath that evened out almost immediately, and it was over. He didn't turn around. "Sorry. Did I wake you up?"
"Nah." His hand was still spread over Sam's heart, and he still didn’t feel inclined to move it. "You good?"
"Yeah. It wasn’t…you know, it was no big deal."
Dean frowned. Clearly, so much not a big deal that he was going to go throw himself under the wheels of a bus. "Are you sure you’re okay?"
"Forget it." It sounded like please don't ask me, and Dean stroked a thumb lightly across Sam's collar bone, down the curve of his sternum. “Dean, who is Pithius?”
“I dunno. It sounds kind of familiar. Is that what you were dreaming about?”
Sam didn’t answer. “It sounds really familiar to me too. It’s gonna drive me nuts till I remember. When I can stand up we ought to go out to my car and look it up. My brother's got some stuff in there too, and I want to put it somewhere safe.”
"Sure, we can do that.” Their clothes were still gone, but what they hell, it was dark and he was wasted. “Whatever you want."
He rolled over, squeezing in so his head rested under Dean's chin, arms folded around them both. "I know you have no idea who I am or what I'm talking about, but I really wish we could get out of here."
It wasn’t exactly enthusiasm, but Dean felt a little jolt low in his belly of want and mine and most of all, we. He must have tensed or pulled back or something, because a hand slid over his hip, possessive and huge, and goddamn, please don't let this be the shoot-down because Dean had been good all night and he was getting really, really close to the point where a no was just going to kill him in his tracks. “But I’m stuck here as long as you are,” Sam said.
Even though it felt like eating glass, he said, "Look, don’t think about it like that, okay? If you want to go, you should go. I know we look a little weird, but we don't force people into this stuff. "
"I know you don't, Dean." His expression widened into a grin. "Besides, I'm twenty-three, and I can palm your head like a basketball. If you tried anything I'd just beat the crap out of you."
In a weird way, that was really reassuring.
----------
Five minutes later, Dean was scrambling to slam the trunk shut before somebody wandered by and saw them. "Sam! What the fuck!"
Sam looked quizzical. "You said I could keep some of my brother's stuff here. This is my brother's stuff."
"You didn't tell me your brother was Buffy the vampire slayer!" Sam spread his hands, helpless. "Dude, seriously, weapons aren't allowed up here, you need to put this shit somewhere else."
"We're on the side of a mountain!"
"Are the deer fighting back? I don't want it here. Zeus doesn't want it here."
Sam burst out laughing, and before Dean had to time to think about it, he'd decked him.
"Ow!" Sam cupped his jaw. "What the hell did you do that for?"
"I don't know, genius, maybe 'cause we're the last two guys on the planet who want Zeus pissed at us right now."
He massaged his forehead. "Dean, Zeus isn't real. This whole stupid religion is just made up to give a bored demon a stud farm."
"Dude, what's up with you? I thought you were here for Zeus. Now you’re going to have to make penance before the ritual, and it’s gonna be a whole thing."
Sam huffed a frustrated noise. "Oh, God." He raised his voice. "Sorry, O Zeus. Please don't sodomize me with a thunderbolt for being a gun-loving, cock-sucking redneck with a moronic brother who drives American--"
Dean took the keys out of Sam’s hand. "We're parking this at the ranger station. We can hike back in the morning."
Sam snapped his fingers. "Yeah, you know what, a naked hike in October, that's a great idea. Let’s just take it to Port Angeles; we can stop at my motel and--"
"Dean? Sam?" It was Matt, trailed by his eromenos, whose name Dean hadn’t caught. At Dean's shoulder, Sam noticeably tensed, leaning just slightly closer to the trunk. Matt stopped. "Wow, is that your car?"
Very calmly, Sam said, “Dean, get in.”
“What? Why?”
“Dean, get in the damned car before I drag you in by your stupid fucking hair.”
He had no idea how this had gone downhill so fast. “Fuck you, no way.”
“For Christ’s sake-“ He rolled his eyes and turned to face Matt and the others. “Christo.”
The effect was immediate. Matt flinched and snarled back, and it was too dark to be sure, but Dean thought his eyes changed color.
"Are you Pithius?" Sam asked. "What am I saying, of course you're Pithius. Dude, what kind of demon are you? Do you bring your friends up here?"
Matt, or Pithius, or whatever he was calling himself, stared at Sam in wary deliberation. His eromenos didn't move. "I want the erastoi. You can have all the others. And him, if you must," he added, with half a glance in Dean's direction. It felt greasy and calculating, and Dean thought to wonder if that was how eromenoi felt all the time.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm going to exorcise you one way or the other, okay? I know you don't go out of your way to kill people. If you help me out, I'll make it quick and painless. Deal?" Pithius's eyes flickered left, a tell so obvious even Dean knew what was about to happen, but before he could bolt Sam had a bottle of something in his hand. "Pithius, do not make me chase you, I swear to God."
Dean stayed tense, knowing something was about to happen quickly, ready to go after Pithius or hold off the other guy if he had to. Sam and Pithius were staring each other down, and the half-second before Dean stepped in, Pithius's mouth fell open. At first it looked like he was panicking, or having a stroke, but an explosion of black smoke poured out of his mouth, and that was it for Matt’s eromenos. He took off running into the woods, towards camp and the sane part of the universe. Matt, or Pithius, or whoever he was now, grabbed at his throat and hacked, then ran in the other direction even as they shouted after him to stop.
Sam sighed and dropped his shoulders, muttered skyward, as if the trees were responsible for all the shitty luck in his universe. Dean reached out and patted his shoulder experimentally. Sam sighed and looked over. "If this is Zeus's idea of a joke, do me a favor and tell him to go back to not existing."
"Dude, that's so not funny," Dean insisted.
-------
Dean got his memory back about an hour later. They’d pulled some clothes out of the back seat and taken the car a little closer to camp, Sam to sober up and come up with Plan B, and Dean to drink off the whole seeing-a-dude-puke-demon thing. Matt’s eromenos had made it back to the camp by then, and some person-in-charge that Dean hadn’t been around long enough to meet had called an immediate camp meeting to, Dean assumed, flip the fuck out as a cohesive unit.
Not that Dean blamed them. He’d been freaked out, and worried that Sam was not at all freaked out, and hadn’t even seemed to think it was that weird for a guy to show up half an hour after you had a nightmare about him, belching smoke and calling himself a demon. Dean felt totally okay with thinking that was weird.
It wasn’t like a big movie flashback playing in his head, or like waking up with somebody else's brain. One minute he was Dean, Sex Cult Rookie of the Year, and then Sam was mumbling at him to roll over so he wouldn’t choke to death when he puked, and all of a sudden he was Dean, Badass Demon-Hunter, there was no such thing as Zeus, and oh yeah, he really shouldn’t be here.
It made his headache worse.
Sam, of course, thought it was the funniest thing ever. Dean could tell right now, for the next two weeks it was going to be all Hey Lord Zeus, change the fucking tape already and but I slept in the wet spot last night, Your Holiness and I bet you could fart the bridge of Stairway and it would cure cancer. Pithius was a fucking dead man.
Sam dragged him back to go deal with Pithius, even though Dean was still drunk and they hadn’t even found his shoes yet.
Faced with two heavily armed Winchesters, Pithius turned out to be a total pussy. He’d only panicked in the first place when he realized he’d had the spectacularly bad luck of bringing not one but two hunters into his camp, and everything since had just been spin control. Lately Dean had been getting too used to them being Hell’s chew toys on a regular basis. It was nice to know they still scared the shit out of some demons, even if it was one of the lamer ones. They finally found him hiding out in one of the sacred bulls, which was one of the weirder exorcisms Dean had ever been present for, but they were in and out in ten minutes and the bull only stepped on his foot twice.
With Pithius out of the way, the other erastoi and eromenoi seemed to be wading out of their amnesia the same way Dean had. It turned out that not all of them had been into guys when they were in their right minds, which made the mass exodus of a demon's creepy porn dungeon seem a lot funnier than it probably should. They had enough room to give a few people a ride down the mountain, and Dean was going to offer it to Lindsay's family, but they’d either taken off right away or were staying out of sight. Some of the Children packed up their gear, but most didn’t seem to bother and just started wandering towards the trail which, as walks of shame went, would be pretty epic.
In the meantime, Dean had been whammied by a demonic sex cult for three days, and he wanted beer. And waffles. And mozzarella sticks. And he wanted to find a motel and have his beer-fogged but unwhammied way with Sam, and then he wanted to sleep on a bed not propped up on cinderblocks or milk crates for at least twelve hours, hopefully while Sam was out finding them a real hunt, since Dean had pretty much had it for the year with jobs that began or ended with him dressed like Cleopatra.
Sprawled out in bed that night, dozing under Sam’s arm, it seized upon Dean to reach over and shove his brother in the ribs. Sam was sprawled out half on top of him, so nothing really happened, but Dean said, "I can't fucking believe you. You were trying to get me drunk in the middle of a job just so I would have sex with you before the ritual."
Sam didn’t lift his head. "I was trying to get you drunk so you'd pass out and I could throw you in the back seat, dumbass."
“Yeah, well…” Dean hadn’t thought of that. “So what? If I wasn’t drunk, I could have dodged the projectile cow-monster vomit.”
“And yet, you’d still be a douchebag,” Sam mumbled into his pillow, already half asleep.
Dean decided to call it even.
tripoli8]
Summary: Dean Winchester, Sex Cult Rookie of the Year.
Rating: R
Fandom: Supernatural
Warnings: This is a not-very-serious story about things I’m not one hundred percent cool with making light of, including peripheral references to drug/amnesia-induced sex that, as I read the original, at the very least toe the line of dubious consent. If you think I’m a huge jerk for cracking jokes about that kind of thing, hey, I don’t entirely disagree, but you might want to look elsewhere.
Spoilers: N/A
A/N: Title credit to The Long Winters and Hank Williams Jr.
kres is my beta ninja.
Title, Author and URL of original story: A Fiddle of Gold Against Your Soul, by
technosage
Dean lifted his head off something soft and girly-smelling and sneezed, but that was as far as he got.
Ow, he thought, and then connected the thought to the couch leg poking into his ribs. He tried to nudge himself out of the way without waking up his headache any more, but that just set off an explosive case of the spins. Oh my God, what was I drinking?
Whatever it was, there was still some left in the red plastic cup upended by his foot. It was stacked inside two other cups, and without lifting his head he could see two or three dozen more abandoned around what he assumed was either a yert or a really nice tent. Dean thought about leaning over to investigate, then felt his stomach roll, and he registered, I am hung over, I am sore, and I am going to puke.
And he was cold. He could see his own boozy breath in the air in front of him, and he was wearing some kind of gauzy white thing that barely even covered his chest and would almost certainly swoosh around in a completely horrifying way when he finally managed to stand up. It looked like it was put together with the crap somebody scrounged from a craft store, and it had a huge disco belt with acorns and lightning bolts stitched in, and the whole thing was edged with this gold stuff that he wanted to call brocade, except for the deep and insistent part of him that was in deep denial about knowing what gold brocade even was. He realized then that the thing he'd thought was a couch was more like a wire bed frame stacked on cement blocks with a crappy futon and a pile of blankets thrown over it.
Score! He tugged the blankets down over himself and went back to sleep.
Or tried to.
"Dean?” A woman unzipped the tent flap and stuck her head in. “The erastoi are ready. Are you not up yet? Never mind, I'll tell them you're not up yet."
"Wait, I'm up," he said, and managed to get to his feet without lurching too badly. He had no idea who this woman was, but since she would actually talk to him, he didn't want to mess up their new relationship by puking all over her. "I'm up. Where are we going?"
She held up her watch arm. “Time for school, Deano. Get your coat, I’ll walk you over.”
He staggered to his feet and looked around, helpless. “Um…which one’s…”
The woman started at him in blank expectation for a second, then laughed in surprise. “Wow, they were saving up the good shit for you.”
“Good shit,” he repeated.
“I don’t know. Matt-he’s the head erastes-that’s what you are-says it’s a blessing from Zeus, but I’m pretty sure it’s the kind they make in the finer trailer parks of Jefferson County. Here.” She fished a leather jacket off the ground for him-at least he had taste-and said, “I’m Lindsay. You probably forgot that. Do you remember any of last night?”
He consulted the jumble of images and names and the weird refrain of bless him Zeus, bless him Zeus that made up what was left of his long-term memory, and said honestly, “I’m not sure.”
“Well, don’t sweat it. I’m sure most people wish they didn’t remember last night either.”
Based on the number of empties alone, he’d been guessing another two or three dozen people wandering around at least, but his tent had to be one of fifty lined up on the bank of a sluggish gray river. As Lindsay led him through the tent city, all Dean could see around them was trees, but it looked like it was still too early for anyone to be up and about. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Mount Olympus.”
He looked around in alarm. “In Greece?”
“No, in Olympic National Park.” She paused. “In Washington.”
Okay. Well, at least they weren’t in Greece. Unless he was from Greece, but he was pretty sure he’d remember that. “And who are all these people?”
“The Children of Olympus. We’re out here in praise of Zeus Eleutherios, Zeus the Liberator.” She paused. “That’s who our camp’s dedicated to. There’s another camp outside Bellingham for Zeus Soter, the Savior, but they’re way preppy and kind of churchy, don’t ask me why.”
That didn’t sound nearly as weird as he had the feeling it should. He wondered how long he’d been here, if he’d been a follower of Zeus for very long. He didn’t think so; the place didn’t look familiar at all, and it was pretty much impossible to get that drunk. At the edge of the water, a young guy was trying to coax some kind of giant cow-monster to eat out of a bowl he held out temptingly, and he waved vaguely at Lindsay as they passed. “Is that where we’re going now? To worship Zeus, I mean.”
“Nope. You’re going to erastes camp, and I’m going back to bed,” she said. “The party last night was to celebrate your investiture as a priest of Zeus Eleutherios. There's a whole theory behind why they zap your memories, but I think they get you guys drunk so you won’t complain about getting dragged through a whole day of poli sci lectures before they let you get to the public sex.”
Dean wasn’t sure which part of that sentence made the least sense, so he just said, ”I’m not a priest.”
“Sure you are.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. He was sure he would remember that. “I would remember that. And even if I didn’t, why should I trust you people, when you just told me you drugged me so I can’t remember anything anyway? Who the hell roofies somebody to make them a priest? What if I don’t want to be in your little cult?”
Lindsay rolled her eyes. It seemed to be her default facial expression, at least when she was talking to Dean. “Number one, that’s not a very nice thing to say about people who just had a drunken orgy in your honor,” she said. “And number two, if you shut up for thirty seconds you can have this argument with Matt, and I can go back to my nice warm sleeping bag with my nice warm girlfriend inside. Does that work for you?”
Dean shut up.
The temple, when they got there, was closer to a shack or cabin than a tent, though it looked like somebody had thrown it together from whatever they pulled from the dumpsters behind Home Depot. "This is it?"
"Uh huh." Lindsay knocked on the pressboard door, then pushed it open. “Hey, guys, he’s all yours. He could use some coffee, though.”
“Hey, Dean!” somebody called from inside, and somebody else said, “Dude, it’s the Kegmeister!”
She held the door for him. “Have fun.”
----------
They finally turned him loose just as the sun was going down, right around the time the brainwashing was setting in and it was starting to sound totally normal and kind of cool for a god to zap your brain and send you up into the mountains so he could get drunk and have sex with random guys in your body. The way the other guys made it sound, he felt kind of surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
The idea (Dean had been told) was that the erastoi had been chosen as Zeus’s vessels on earth, and the eromenoi were his chosen…vesseled. Or something. Temporary amnesia, it turned out, was part of the deal. Dean was going to spend three hours tomorrow night as the human incarnation of Zeus, having sex with the human incarnation of Ganymede the Cupbearer, and they didn’t want him too distracted by being Dean when that happened. Zeus didn’t like sloppy seconds, either; he and his eromenos were to spend the next eighteen hours together, but no sex till sundown, period. Yes, Zeus counted oral. Afterwards, we promise, he got his brain back.
Lindsay was called to come and collect him. Fully initiated erastoi, he was happy to hear, got to have cell phones. And pockets. And pants. She was apparently in a much better mood at 7:30 at night than she was at six in the morning, which Dean couldn’t fault her for, since he was too. He still wasn’t clear on whether she had an actual job or volunteered to drag him around and rolled her eyes at him because it was fun, but since she currently qualified as the least crazy person he knew, himself included, he wasn’t going to sweat it.
Priest Dean’s philosophy on life lasted till they got back to the tent he’d woken up in, and Lindsay caught his arm before he went inside.
“Okay, before you go in there: Zeus sent a nice boy up to be your eromenos. He just got here this afternoon, and there wasn’t time to purify him before your orientation let out, so I just brought him to your place."
Dean felt his stomach drop. “Oh. Okay?” The priests had assured him that they didn't really seek out young boys or take anyone against his will, but some of the other eromenoi could have passed for older high school kids, and it kind of creeped Dean out that Zeus was just going to pick out some kid to send over like a Christmas present or a good bottle of scotch.
“He seems like a cutie-pie. You'll like him." Her voice dropped. “Zeus says he’s-” and she held her thumb and index finger all the way apart with a meaningful look.
"Sure I’ll like him," Dean said, because what the hell else were you supposed to say?
She gave him a quick smile, bright and fantastic, and ushered him inside. “Hi, Sam! We’re back.”
Dean ducked into the tent, and looked up, and up. The "boy" was the size of a soda machine, floppy-haired and layered in flannel, but he had a nice face, or probably would when it wasn't gaping in Dean's direction.
"Dean, this is Sam--Sam, sorry, what's your last name?"
"Rockford," Sam said, and eyed him up and down. “Nice dress."
Dean blinked. "Easy access." Sam seemed to be struggling not to laugh, and not at his joke. Well, wait till he sees what they’re gonna make him wear.
"Okay!" Lindsay said. "Well, I'll see you guys tomorrow night. You want somebody to bring dinner?"
"Sure, thanks, bye Lindsay." Sam was still smirking that little smirk, and maybe Lindsay was right about this being his eromenos, because Dean had the sudden feeling that getting Sam to smirk at him would turn out to be the best game ever.
She might have said something else, or rolled her eyes again. He wasn't paying attention.
“Thanks, Lindsay,” Sam said sweetly, and kept smiling until she was out of earshot.
As soon as she was gone, Sam thumped his shoulder. "Okay, the car's about a quarter mile into the woods. You didn't see my wallet anywhere around, did you? They took it when they jumped us. I hope it was them, and not some random homeless guy, anyway."
Is he looking for his condoms? "Uh, sorry. No wallet."
"Damn it. All right, I'll get it next time. Let's go. They took your shoes and everything, huh?"
"The ground is muddy," Dean heard himself say matter-of-factly.
"Okay," Sam said cautiously. "We can get them when we come back."
Dean shrugged off Sam's hand. "Wait, what? We can't go anywhere. Did they not tell you? The ritual's tomorrow."
"Dean." They stared at each other for a beat, and Sam's brows knitted together, incredulous. "Christo."
Dean shook his head in frustration. "I don't even understand what that means."
"Terrific," Sam muttered, and pulled out his cell phone. “Could you give me a minute?”
"Dude, you get reception out here, you be my guest. See if Dominos will deliver, while you're at it." He got up as manfully as he could in the robes, and left Sam alone.
He was loitering outside, in a wary staring contest with one of the cow-monsters, when he saw Matt wandering over with a milk crate stacked with tupperwares full of cheeses and grapes, that he'd last seen stacked in the temple mini-fridge. Each one was labeled with a piece of masking tape, where someone had neatly sharpied in EROMENOI, HANDS OFF. He grinned and elbowed Dean in the chest when he heard Sam's low voice from the tent. "How's it going in there?"
"Good, I think," Dean said politely. In all the erastoi’s talk about lunar calendars and astrological divination, they'd skipped the part where his sex life was the camp's answer to Monday Night Football. Then his brain registered that Matt was holding food, and he asked, "Is that for us?"
"The guys on kitchen duty made it special," he said with a bright smile. He handed Dean the milk crate, which turned out to have at least three bottles of wine tucked inside as well, and Dean wondered how lucky he was allowed to get before the ritual. The no-sex rule had been pretty clear, but if nobody was shy about helping him get his date liquored up, he wondered if they hadn't taken the initiative of sticking a bottle of lube or something at the bottom.
“I climbed the real Mount Olympus, once, in college,” Matt said suddenly. “There are beer cans and condoms all over the place.”
“Oh,” said Dean.
“I told Zeus, but.” He shrugged. "You kids have fun. Not too much fun, though--I think people are still kind of enjoying the fact that Dave’s eromenos went back to school and you can get to sleep before three in the morning."
Dean forced himself to keep a smile plastered on. "I'll gag him or something. Thanks for dinner, Matt."
He waved and headed back in the direction of the mess tents, shooting back a smile that Dean thought qualified as creepy since he couldn't possibly have known him before last night. He waved and turned to bring the food inside.
Sam was just hanging up the phone on someone named Ash when Dean was in earshot, thanking him for doing him a favor or answering a question. He gave Dean a little, nervous, rueful smile that made Dean feel like a child molester, and dropped his phone back in his pocket. "Thanks. So what are we supposed to do till this ritual happens?"
I'm so glad he thinks I know the answer to that, Dean thought. He stalled a minute or two finding glasses and pouring them each a drink. "I think we're supposed to get to know each other." He fidgeted, cleared his throat, fidgeted. Sam watched him. " So, um. Are you a student?"
"No," he said. "I'm a drop-out, technically. I'm on a road trip with my brother right now."
Dean nodded. "School's not your thing, huh? I get that. We spent all morning in this 'orientation' thing that was supposed to tell us how to be priests and what happens in this ritual we’re supposed to do, and all I could think the whole time was that all Zeus really cares about is that I'm a good lay, and I don’t need Zeus to tell me that, right?"
Sam grinned. Dean could get used to that. "What kind of stuff did they talk about?"
"I dunno. Boring stuff. Astrology, theology. How we’re not supposed to feed Cheetos to the sacred bulls. Then there was a powerpoint on rough anal, I still don't know how I feel about that." He paused. "For lunch we had a barbecue, though. It was pretty sweet. So, uh. If you're on a road trip with your brother, what're you doing hitching your wagon to a bunch of dirty hippies in the middle of the woods?"
"I got sidetracked," Sam said pleasantly. “How about you?”
That’s a really good question, Sammy. He forced a grin. “What, between working a shitty desk job all day or living in the woods with your friends getting drunk and having sex all the time? Gimme that old time religion.”
“Huh.” Sam frowned. “So what else happens in this ritual, exactly?”
Dean had zoned out and started doodling giant fanged cow-monsters about twenty minutes before they got to that part, but he thought he remembered some pictures. "Well…first I smoke a lot of weed, then I get possessed by Zeus, then you and me have sex. Everybody gets drunk and goes home happy."
Sam looked appalled. "You get possessed?"
"Well, yeah." He shrugged. It hadn’t sounded all that bad when Matt and the other erastoi were explaining it. "Who the hell knows what that really means, though, right? The guys were telling me that a lot of them take shrooms their first time. To, you know. Really get into character."
Sam’s mouth gaped open in amazement, or horror, or both.
"Uh, I probably won't," Dean added. Apparently.
"And you've seen this?"
"Well, no," Dean said. "Not yet. But all the other guys have done it, and they're fine."
He looked totally fascinated. "What else did they say?"
"The bulls are part of it too, but nobody will tell me how,” he said darkly. “Why, do you want to switch?"
"That's okay," Sam said, with feeling. "Are they gonna make me take a class like that?" He tried and totally failed to look casual. "Are they going to give me stuff that messes with my mind, for the ritual?"
Dean opened his mouth to tell him that losing your memory wasn't all bad, but realized he had no idea if that was true or not. "Not if you don't want to," he said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you and me are kind of secondary to this whole thing. We’re just reenacting the myth Zeus and Ganymede created. Although I don’t think Ganymede actually shows up, so just try not to laugh or anything.”
Sam still looked deeply concerned, but at least Dean didn't think he was freaked enough to change his mind. He should have asked the guys how they'd talked to their eromenoi. A lot of them had just been picked up by their erastes in bars in Forks or Victoria, and the rest seemed to wander in on their own, when Zeus called them-which was probably why nobody had thought it was weird when Sam wandered in asking for the new guy.
Sam thought that was nuts. "Why does everybody listen to Zeus? How do they know these guys they're grabbing off the street don't have AIDS or something?"
Dean had thought of that. Kind of. The other erastoi said that swapping body fluids was kind of the point, so why would Zeus send them somebody with AIDS? And anyway, Sam looked like an all right guy. “I don’t have AIDS. Do you have AIDS?”
“No, but you have no way of knowing that, dumbass. Jesus God, you're alone for two days and it's like a giant four year old with a fork and a light socket.”
He didn't sound that mad, just vastly irritated, and Dean realized he'd never asked how Zeus had annunciated Sam in the first place. “So if it’s such a dumb idea, why did you even come up here?”
Sam shook his head in disgust, and Dean realized he might have pushed that one step too far. He liked Sam, he'd decided. He wanted this eromenos guy, if he was going to have one, to be somebody like Sam. No, not like him. Sam. That wouldn't work if Sam got pissed off and left in the middle of the night. He didn't think he let his expression change, but Sam's mouth pressed thin and he clapped Dean on the shoulder. "To find you, you stupid jerk."
It was the weirdest thing to just hand to someone, but it felt a little like he’d won something, even better than being chosen by Zeus in the first place. Dean threw an empty plastic cup at his head. “That’s what I thought, bitch.”
----------
Phase One of “getting to know each other”, casual conversation, lasted about twenty minutes. That was when the erastoi showed up to confiscate their clothing. Phase Two lasted just under thirty seconds, which was about how long it took for random nudity to stop being fun and start being pure torture.
The plan to get Sam liquored up and cooperative was backfiring badly, on account of Dean's apparent lack of any native self-control and Sam’s totally shameless efforts to get him as drunk as possible on three bottles of wine. They'd already emptied two, and Sam was still clear-eyed and watchful, while Dean had started giggling like a little bitch at everything Sam said, up to and including “My parents are dead” and “I think we’re getting hypothermic”. And now their clothes were gone, which either meant that they were testing his self-control, or the camp was run by fratboys.
Actually, that would explain a lot.
But being cold and naked and plastered up against a big, warm guy’s naked body was not going to make it any easier for Dean to be a good little erastes, and keep his dick, if not in his pants, then at least out of Sam’s ass till tomorrow night.
With which Sam was no help. Once he’d felt confident they weren’t going to try and drug him or make him go to class, he’d been all about the idea of wrapping up the night by having sex with Dean, and wouldn’t take, “it will really, really piss off the gods” for an answer. Yeah, the being naked together all night thing was rough, but (Dean told himself) Zeus had brought them both here for a reason, and Sam could survive another eighteen hours. That was the only way Zeus would let this work long-term, and Dean liked Sam. Really liked him, not just in the we’re-going-to-have-sex-so-I-should-try-to-remember-your-name kind of way. Hell if he knew how the erastoi had figured out his type that fast, but if you had to be naked in a tent in October, there were worse guys to do it with.
Not very much more annoying. But worse.
Sam flopped back in a chair, jangling the duct-taped frame and not even trying to hide his gigantic hard-on. Dean wanted to tell him to stop being such a fucking slut about the whole thing, or go jerk off if he was that desperate, but then Sam might yell, and therefore stop doing that pouting…thing with his mouth. Sam looked at his watch and sighed noisily.
Dean put his cup down hard. “Dude, cut it out.”
Sam dropped his wrist and looked over at him, like he was deliberating, weighing something, all you-must-be-shitting-me. "Is somebody watching us? How do they know we're not having sex all night anyway?"
"Zeus is watching," Dean said, and Sam frowned. That idea had grossed him out a little too at first, that an invisible guy was hanging around keeping track of how much sex Dean wasn't having. He thought that would pretty much go away after the ritual; once Zeus had experienced sex from inside your body, he didn't really mind that you did too, the same way that his memory would come back once he didn’t need to leave room for Zeus’s presence. It wasn’t that hard to understand.
Somehow, in the middle of his fifth glass, Sam's back and shoulders struck Dean as looking really knotted up, and he tried digging the heel of his hand into Sam's lower back in small, easy circles. Sam practically melted against him, and Dean felt himself smiling, taking pleasure in Sam's pleasure. Sam liked this. Dean liked this. It felt as good as Sam’s skin, as good as the wine they were drinking, and he started to relax too.
Sam's eyes were closed in drowsy satisfaction. "You know if we were ancient Greeks, I'd be about twelve."
Dean's hands froze. "Come again?"
He tilted his eyes up, unconcerned. "Eromenos means beloved, right? Back in the day, eromenoi really were kids who were used to sexually pleasure grown men."
He blinked a few times. "Wow, that's a nice story, Sam, thank you."
“I'm just saying. And it was kind of embarrassing for everybody involved for the eromenos to be into it. You know, this whole hippie compound is total New Age bullshit, the erastes-eromenos relationship was totally classist and in a lot of places, they were discouraged from anal sex altogether. It would be considered really demeaning for a guy in my position, which makes me think being an ancient Greek was not nearly as much fun as it looks. Do you think Zeus was around for Stonewall?”
Sam was messing with him, he realized. The hell with that, he hadn’t entirely zoned out this morning. “Yeah, and I’m supposed to pay off your dad with a ton of liquor and virgins, too. Where should I send it?”
Sam opened his eyes and turned around. "That isn't appropriate foreplay conversation, is it."
"Not unless we were ancient Athenians or in NAMBLA, no."
Sam snorted. "You remember NAMBLA and not your last name, and I'm the one with problems?"
Maybe he was on to something there. Dean moved his hands back to Sam's shoulders and started to knead his thumbs in again. "How'd you know about that Zeus and Ganymede stuff?"
"I dunno, I read it in school or something." Sam laid back, slouching into the V of Dean's legs. Dean couldn't reach his back any more, so he sank a hand into his hair instead. “I was reading this thing that said-"
Dean shook his head in amazement. "Have you never been on a date before? Oh my God, dude, there's such a thing as--"
Sam hissed in pain and jerked away.
He gripped Sam’s shoulders. “Whoa, you okay?”
“Yeah.” He did sound okay, just startled. He grimaced. “I told you, me and my brother got jumped at a bar last night. It’s not a big deal.”
Dean laughed. “Professor Pederasty got curb-stomped in a bar fight? I’m shocked and appalled.”
Sam’s mouth fell open, and he snapped it shut. “Dude, don’t even start with me.”
After that, they were quiet. Dean was the drunk one-the drunker one, anyway-so he almost didn’t notice Sam starting to nod and then lean in against the bend of Dean’s knee, sliding down.
Dean thought about letting him just slide all the way to the floor, but his head would probably thunk pretty loud and Dean would feel a little bad, and besides, by then Sam would probably have left a drool patch on his knee, which would’ve been kind of gross even if they weren’t naked. He prodded him in the shoulder. “Hey. Sam. You’re falling asleep.”
“That’s true,” Sam mumbled half-into his leg.
He jiggled his knee again, and Sam finally, grudgingly tottered to his feet and somehow made it over to the futon-stacked-on-milk-crates they were using as a couch. He closed his eyes and stretched out, and Dean settled back, watching thoughtfully. His wine drunk felt good in his system, numbing the very last holdouts of his hangover, and mellowing him out all the way to his fingers and toes. The tent was cold and Sam was big, goofy and warm, and Dean decided, fuck it, and climbed in with him.
-----------
Dean didn’t know he’d fallen asleep till he woke up. The camp outside was dark and totally silent, now, and he blinked around blindly for what could’ve woken him
Sam's sleeping body stiffened and he made a pained noise, nnuh, little gasps of misery.
Dean put a hand on Sam's chest and rubbed slow, careful circles back and forth. "Sam."
Sam tightened around himself and moaned.
All right, that's enough. "Sam, come on. "
He jerked against Dean's body and took a sharp breath that evened out almost immediately, and it was over. He didn't turn around. "Sorry. Did I wake you up?"
"Nah." His hand was still spread over Sam's heart, and he still didn’t feel inclined to move it. "You good?"
"Yeah. It wasn’t…you know, it was no big deal."
Dean frowned. Clearly, so much not a big deal that he was going to go throw himself under the wheels of a bus. "Are you sure you’re okay?"
"Forget it." It sounded like please don't ask me, and Dean stroked a thumb lightly across Sam's collar bone, down the curve of his sternum. “Dean, who is Pithius?”
“I dunno. It sounds kind of familiar. Is that what you were dreaming about?”
Sam didn’t answer. “It sounds really familiar to me too. It’s gonna drive me nuts till I remember. When I can stand up we ought to go out to my car and look it up. My brother's got some stuff in there too, and I want to put it somewhere safe.”
"Sure, we can do that.” Their clothes were still gone, but what they hell, it was dark and he was wasted. “Whatever you want."
He rolled over, squeezing in so his head rested under Dean's chin, arms folded around them both. "I know you have no idea who I am or what I'm talking about, but I really wish we could get out of here."
It wasn’t exactly enthusiasm, but Dean felt a little jolt low in his belly of want and mine and most of all, we. He must have tensed or pulled back or something, because a hand slid over his hip, possessive and huge, and goddamn, please don't let this be the shoot-down because Dean had been good all night and he was getting really, really close to the point where a no was just going to kill him in his tracks. “But I’m stuck here as long as you are,” Sam said.
Even though it felt like eating glass, he said, "Look, don’t think about it like that, okay? If you want to go, you should go. I know we look a little weird, but we don't force people into this stuff. "
"I know you don't, Dean." His expression widened into a grin. "Besides, I'm twenty-three, and I can palm your head like a basketball. If you tried anything I'd just beat the crap out of you."
In a weird way, that was really reassuring.
----------
Five minutes later, Dean was scrambling to slam the trunk shut before somebody wandered by and saw them. "Sam! What the fuck!"
Sam looked quizzical. "You said I could keep some of my brother's stuff here. This is my brother's stuff."
"You didn't tell me your brother was Buffy the vampire slayer!" Sam spread his hands, helpless. "Dude, seriously, weapons aren't allowed up here, you need to put this shit somewhere else."
"We're on the side of a mountain!"
"Are the deer fighting back? I don't want it here. Zeus doesn't want it here."
Sam burst out laughing, and before Dean had to time to think about it, he'd decked him.
"Ow!" Sam cupped his jaw. "What the hell did you do that for?"
"I don't know, genius, maybe 'cause we're the last two guys on the planet who want Zeus pissed at us right now."
He massaged his forehead. "Dean, Zeus isn't real. This whole stupid religion is just made up to give a bored demon a stud farm."
"Dude, what's up with you? I thought you were here for Zeus. Now you’re going to have to make penance before the ritual, and it’s gonna be a whole thing."
Sam huffed a frustrated noise. "Oh, God." He raised his voice. "Sorry, O Zeus. Please don't sodomize me with a thunderbolt for being a gun-loving, cock-sucking redneck with a moronic brother who drives American--"
Dean took the keys out of Sam’s hand. "We're parking this at the ranger station. We can hike back in the morning."
Sam snapped his fingers. "Yeah, you know what, a naked hike in October, that's a great idea. Let’s just take it to Port Angeles; we can stop at my motel and--"
"Dean? Sam?" It was Matt, trailed by his eromenos, whose name Dean hadn’t caught. At Dean's shoulder, Sam noticeably tensed, leaning just slightly closer to the trunk. Matt stopped. "Wow, is that your car?"
Very calmly, Sam said, “Dean, get in.”
“What? Why?”
“Dean, get in the damned car before I drag you in by your stupid fucking hair.”
He had no idea how this had gone downhill so fast. “Fuck you, no way.”
“For Christ’s sake-“ He rolled his eyes and turned to face Matt and the others. “Christo.”
The effect was immediate. Matt flinched and snarled back, and it was too dark to be sure, but Dean thought his eyes changed color.
"Are you Pithius?" Sam asked. "What am I saying, of course you're Pithius. Dude, what kind of demon are you? Do you bring your friends up here?"
Matt, or Pithius, or whatever he was calling himself, stared at Sam in wary deliberation. His eromenos didn't move. "I want the erastoi. You can have all the others. And him, if you must," he added, with half a glance in Dean's direction. It felt greasy and calculating, and Dean thought to wonder if that was how eromenoi felt all the time.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm going to exorcise you one way or the other, okay? I know you don't go out of your way to kill people. If you help me out, I'll make it quick and painless. Deal?" Pithius's eyes flickered left, a tell so obvious even Dean knew what was about to happen, but before he could bolt Sam had a bottle of something in his hand. "Pithius, do not make me chase you, I swear to God."
Dean stayed tense, knowing something was about to happen quickly, ready to go after Pithius or hold off the other guy if he had to. Sam and Pithius were staring each other down, and the half-second before Dean stepped in, Pithius's mouth fell open. At first it looked like he was panicking, or having a stroke, but an explosion of black smoke poured out of his mouth, and that was it for Matt’s eromenos. He took off running into the woods, towards camp and the sane part of the universe. Matt, or Pithius, or whoever he was now, grabbed at his throat and hacked, then ran in the other direction even as they shouted after him to stop.
Sam sighed and dropped his shoulders, muttered skyward, as if the trees were responsible for all the shitty luck in his universe. Dean reached out and patted his shoulder experimentally. Sam sighed and looked over. "If this is Zeus's idea of a joke, do me a favor and tell him to go back to not existing."
"Dude, that's so not funny," Dean insisted.
-------
Dean got his memory back about an hour later. They’d pulled some clothes out of the back seat and taken the car a little closer to camp, Sam to sober up and come up with Plan B, and Dean to drink off the whole seeing-a-dude-puke-demon thing. Matt’s eromenos had made it back to the camp by then, and some person-in-charge that Dean hadn’t been around long enough to meet had called an immediate camp meeting to, Dean assumed, flip the fuck out as a cohesive unit.
Not that Dean blamed them. He’d been freaked out, and worried that Sam was not at all freaked out, and hadn’t even seemed to think it was that weird for a guy to show up half an hour after you had a nightmare about him, belching smoke and calling himself a demon. Dean felt totally okay with thinking that was weird.
It wasn’t like a big movie flashback playing in his head, or like waking up with somebody else's brain. One minute he was Dean, Sex Cult Rookie of the Year, and then Sam was mumbling at him to roll over so he wouldn’t choke to death when he puked, and all of a sudden he was Dean, Badass Demon-Hunter, there was no such thing as Zeus, and oh yeah, he really shouldn’t be here.
It made his headache worse.
Sam, of course, thought it was the funniest thing ever. Dean could tell right now, for the next two weeks it was going to be all Hey Lord Zeus, change the fucking tape already and but I slept in the wet spot last night, Your Holiness and I bet you could fart the bridge of Stairway and it would cure cancer. Pithius was a fucking dead man.
Sam dragged him back to go deal with Pithius, even though Dean was still drunk and they hadn’t even found his shoes yet.
Faced with two heavily armed Winchesters, Pithius turned out to be a total pussy. He’d only panicked in the first place when he realized he’d had the spectacularly bad luck of bringing not one but two hunters into his camp, and everything since had just been spin control. Lately Dean had been getting too used to them being Hell’s chew toys on a regular basis. It was nice to know they still scared the shit out of some demons, even if it was one of the lamer ones. They finally found him hiding out in one of the sacred bulls, which was one of the weirder exorcisms Dean had ever been present for, but they were in and out in ten minutes and the bull only stepped on his foot twice.
With Pithius out of the way, the other erastoi and eromenoi seemed to be wading out of their amnesia the same way Dean had. It turned out that not all of them had been into guys when they were in their right minds, which made the mass exodus of a demon's creepy porn dungeon seem a lot funnier than it probably should. They had enough room to give a few people a ride down the mountain, and Dean was going to offer it to Lindsay's family, but they’d either taken off right away or were staying out of sight. Some of the Children packed up their gear, but most didn’t seem to bother and just started wandering towards the trail which, as walks of shame went, would be pretty epic.
In the meantime, Dean had been whammied by a demonic sex cult for three days, and he wanted beer. And waffles. And mozzarella sticks. And he wanted to find a motel and have his beer-fogged but unwhammied way with Sam, and then he wanted to sleep on a bed not propped up on cinderblocks or milk crates for at least twelve hours, hopefully while Sam was out finding them a real hunt, since Dean had pretty much had it for the year with jobs that began or ended with him dressed like Cleopatra.
Sprawled out in bed that night, dozing under Sam’s arm, it seized upon Dean to reach over and shove his brother in the ribs. Sam was sprawled out half on top of him, so nothing really happened, but Dean said, "I can't fucking believe you. You were trying to get me drunk in the middle of a job just so I would have sex with you before the ritual."
Sam didn’t lift his head. "I was trying to get you drunk so you'd pass out and I could throw you in the back seat, dumbass."
“Yeah, well…” Dean hadn’t thought of that. “So what? If I wasn’t drunk, I could have dodged the projectile cow-monster vomit.”
“And yet, you’d still be a douchebag,” Sam mumbled into his pillow, already half asleep.
Dean decided to call it even.