Title: Love Makes Monsters
Genre: Sam/Dean
Rating: nc-17
Word Count: 1700
Notes: A Crimson Peak AU. Written for
this prompt over at
spn_masquerade. Warnings for violence and past underage. Many thanks to
dugindeep for helping me out with my whoopsies and assuring me that this makes sense for folks who haven't seen the film.
Summary: Sam's sure of only two things in this world.
On a clear day, when the wind isn't blowing up dust and the sun is at precisely the right angle, Sam can see Stull Cemetery from the dormer window in the attic. The brick husk of the ancient church stands sentinel in the center of it, surrounded by crooked crosses and cracked, unreadable headstones.
Sam grew up there, as much as he grew up anywhere, climbing on pale marble angels, tenting his hands and bowing his head and trying to be more like them.
They say that the devil haunts that old boneyard, that good, god-fearing people pass through the gates and come out with demons riding their backs. They say that there's a portal to hell there, one of seven.
They're wrong of course. Sam's sure of only two things in this world. This is one of them. His brother is the other.
***
Their mother died before the boys had a chance to know her. There had been a fire. Sam rarely enters that room of the house, nowadays. When he does, he thinks he can smell burning hair, a vague whiff of roses. The scorch marks on the ceiling are very, very real.
Their father also died that day, although it took his body years and a carefully aimed crowbar to finally realize it. In between, he called a barstool home and slowly went insane. He said he was a hunter, talked the ear off of anyone who would sit still long enough about ghosts and ghouls and the demon that took his Mary away.
The oldest son was left to raise the youngest. Dean did alright by Sam, and when it came right down to it, Sam did alright by Dean.
***
Sam can't see the cemetery today, and anyhow, that's not what he's looking for. He's in the attic, surrounded by all of Dean's things. The sawed-off he made when he was twelve, the spell box with a ten-year-old's shaky carving on the lid, a small arsenal, silver and salt.
A spider has been busy at the dormer window and Sam's careful not to disturb the web as he takes his chair beside it. The wait isn't long, and he's anxiously chewed through only his pinky fingernail when he sees the car pull into the long driveway, kicking up a pillar of dust under its tires.
He doesn't recall the dash down the rickety stairs, only knows that something inside of him that has been crooked for weeks has finally been put straight again. Sam doesn't do well on his own. He slips.
Dean busts through the door like a triumphant hero in some old-timey western, bow-legged swagger and road dust on their father's leather jacket. He's a physical force, sunshine-spots on his nose and his hair tipped gold. The smile on his face is the shape of everything Sam could ever need and for a few moments there, Sam can't look away, stands like some under-fed phantom, pale and night-blind.
A pretty woman hangs from Dean's arm, bubblegum lip gloss, curvy hips and a trust fund big enough to keep them in Jack and Jim for years. Dean introduces her and Sam doesn't take in the name. It hardly matters. For the rest of her life, Sam will call her honey or sweetheart and she'll smile at his mid-western charm.
Sam remembers Cassie. She was the first to come and the first to get buried. There was Jamie, then Lisa and after that, Sam stopped trying.
Her hand is small and delicate in his and Sam is very careful not to crush it. He makes dimples and kisses the diamond Dean's put on her ring finger.
Around them, the house shudders, a loud crack from deep in its foundation. Sweet Miss Honey startles, rolls her eyes and laughs at herself.
"The house has been around for a long time," Sam tells her. "It's made of old bones." He turns to Dean, crashes into his arms and holds him longer than a brother should.
"It's cold in here," Dean says and kisses his neck in a way that no one else can see. A swift vampire bite to Sam's jugular and Sam's slutty cock immediately gets hard and sticky in his jeans.
"They turned the gas off. The power, too. It's always dark in here anyway."
Dean holds him tighter, whispers, "I'm home now. I'll take care of it."
***
The kettle whistles on the stove. Sam takes down the delicate teacup and saucer from the top shelf, gold leaf on the rim and fancy red roses all around it, kept safe and apart from the cracked mugs lifted from all-night diners. The women Dean brings home like pretty things. His brother is proof of that.
Sam crushes up a pill and dissolves it in hot water, puts a couple drops of something special into it and adds extra sugar to cover up the taste. She'll sleep well tonight.
"You've been busy." Dean's at the table, peeling the label off his beer in long strips, watching Sam like he's trying to memorize him, like he hasn't learned everything about him already.
"A poltergeist. A couple of exorcisms." Simple dinner table conversation. "The Smith and Wesson locked up on me the other day."
"I'll take a look at it. Did they live through it? The exorcisms?"
"Dead before they hit the ground." Sam dips his little finger into the tea and touches it to his tongue. It's sweet, doesn't carry a hint of anything suspicious. He still has the knack. "You were gone a long time."
"Had a couple of false starts," Dean tells him, and Sam accepts that as explanation enough. "You missed me."
"No I didn't," Sam says.
Dean proves him wrong in three minutes flat, makes Sam moan and gasp and lick his own come off of his brother's fingers one at a time.
***
Honey rattles the padlock on the basement door, arches one perfectly plucked eyebrow in Sam's direction.
"Oh, you don't wanna go down there." Sam smiles his sweetest smile. "That's where we keep the bodies. And the preserves."
She laughs, hand sneaking up to cover her mouth.
"Here," Sam says, and pushes the cup across the table toward her. "Drink your tea." He'd been lying about the preserves.
***
Sam dreams sometimes, of women burning alive on their ceilings, little babies with blood on their mouths. He dreams of Dean's cock stuffed up his ass and the expression on his father's face when he finally found out the truth about his boys. He dreams of cold, heavy iron in his hands.
That last part is more like a memory.
***
Sam's agitated. Every time he gets like this, he can't force the ghosts back. One of them is hovering in the attic rafters, its skeleton mouth coming unhinged and its accusatory, twig-like hand pointing toward Dean.
Down below, Honey coughs and coughs and coughs. The medicine is working.
Sam's pacing the length of the attic, picking stuff up from the shelves and putting it back down again. In one corner is where he lost his virginity between Dean's cocksucking lips, down his fluttering throat. Over in the other corner is where he took a punch that broke three of his ribs and another that bloodied his nose. He took them gladly, so his brother wouldn't have to.
"Have you fucked her?" Sam creeps up on Dean but doesn't touch him. There's a charge in the room like a thunderstorm about to happen.
"Only with my fingers. It doesn't count." Dean closes the tiny gap between them, sets his teeth into the spot where Sam's neck meets his shoulder. "Nothing counts unless it's you."
Dean pushes Sam into the corner. He falls to his knees, mouths at Sam's crotch, nuzzles and licks at it until Sam feeds him his cock. Fucks his mouth, keeps at it as Dean's lips become swollen and bruised and the ghost in the rafters dissolves into nothing.
It's like he's twelve years old again.
***
Honey hasn't gotten out of bed for two days. She's pissed herself. Dean keeps promising her the doctor is on the way, holds the rose-petaled teacup to her lips.
Sam cuts a lock of her hair and she's too far gone to notice. He braids it and ties it off with a tiny red bow. Won't be long now.
***
The bed is groaning under them, thumping against the wall and the room smells like sweat and spunk.
Sam bites his own wrist to hold in his moan, flash of pain a counterpoint to the white-hot feel of Dean fucking him good and perfect, rubbing against his sweet spot with every shocky thrust. Sam's shaking, sweat in his eyes, bones like shattering glass as Dean takes him apart, rearranges his broken pieces and fills in all the gaps.
Dean kisses the back of his neck, wrenches him around to get at his mouth, buries himself as deep as he can go, calls Sam beautiful in a voice that almost makes him believe it.
There's a scratch at the door, hinges whining as it swings open and Honey is standing there. For a heartbeat, Sam thinks she's another ghost, translucently pale with a slash of spit-up blood on her mouth.
Dean doesn't stop, not as she gapes at them in shock, staggers backward and falls against the hallway wall. He rolls his hips harder, sharp snaps that push Sam along the bed, and he's laughing, bright and free and so, so real.
And in that second, everything becomes worth it. The long weeks when Dean is gone. Every scar and each broken bone. Each time Sam's had to wash the blood from his hands.
"It's okay," Dean says. "He's my brother."
***
That old Smith and Wesson fires smooth as silk. No lock-ups this time.
***
"Do you ever think that the monsters aren't real?" Dean's fucking around with his home-made EMF reader, pointing it around the room and trying to find a spot where it won't go off. Sam's at Dean's back, arms tight around his middle and chin hooked over his shoulder, leading him in a slow, back and forth sway.
"I know they're real." Sam loves his brother so much he wants to eat him alive. "They're us, Dean. Don't you see? We're the monsters."
end.
Thanks for reading!