Just Be Still With Me 2

[roxymissrose]

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It was dark, to a human's eyes, pitch-black and featureless. Sam knew he was underground, in a room with damp cinder block walls, boxes stacked in the far corners. He was laying on the floor of a clear area, complete with a sink, a toilet, "Newsflash, vampires need to pee. a twin mattress, clean-cleaner than the one he and Dean had been using the last few weeks. He was startled to see the bag he'd taken from the shack, he'd thought he'd lost it somewhere on the hike to nowhere.

Someone was standing in the doorway, he could tell by the smell it was a vampire, but not one connected with them in any way-this was an unknown nest. The vampire met his eyes, his lip curled back in a sarcastic smile. He let his teeth drop a bit-startlingly white against his black skin. He drew his arm back, and Sam tensed, trying to prepare himself for whatever might come, despite being weak and sick.

"Here ya go, bud-dinnertime. Catch."

Something sailed through the air and landed with a plop near his foot. "Blood…" Sam snarled. "It's cold." Sam lifted it to his face and inhaled. "It's animal's blood! What the hell?"

"Hah-ha, fuck you, mouse eater, like what vintage you guzzle makes a difference. You'll drink this shit and love it. Or-" The thickset man drew a finger across his throat, muscles in his arms bulging, hazel eyes meeting Sam's as he smirked, the half-curl of his lips blooming in a full-out smile, flashing human-style teeth and deep dimples. "You feral fucks. You're all disgusting," he said cheerfully before turning on his heel and slamming out the door.

He ignored Sam yelling after him, "I'm not feral! I'm not feral, you bastard!"

Sam hesitated for a few seconds, then ripped into the bag of blood. It shot down his throat, barely touching the inside of his mouth and still he felt the greasy, slightly acid taste of it. He gulped frantically, emptying the bag in seconds. Dropped it to the floor and stood, panting, fighting to keep his food down.

"Not feral…." he muttered. He wasn't. Feral vamps slept under dirt and ate anything living or dead, including themselves when they got desperate. Feral vamps couldn't pass for human at midnight in a rainstorm. They were nestless, and gross and worse than animals...and he'd pretty much described himself and Dean. No, no, fuck that, they had a nest, they were their own nest. They didn't need anyone else, never had.

Sam froze, hands covering his mouth. Truth was Dean didn't need anyone else, least of all Sam. And the horror of that, was, somehow, some impossible way, it made Sam sad to realize that.

This is what he'd been feeling, had been feeling for a while. Sad. Sam rolled to his feet, shuffling around the cleared corner of the room until he bumped up against the mattress and collapsed onto it. The place was marginally better than their last camp; damp, smelling faintly of mildew and mouse, wet cardboard and dust. The mattress itself was a surprise, the sheets and blanket smelled clean. He drew his hands over the sheets, the material was thick and smooth under his hand and his skin liked it. Sam smiled-a smile that fell off his face when he clearly saw the filthy claw that dragged over the blanket.

He went to the sink and stared at the thing in the mirror. "I don't think...god, I don't want to be this anymore. I want something different. I don't want to be sad. I don't want to be bored." He pressed his hands to either side of his reflection, tilting his head, staring at who he was now. "I don't want to be ignored," he whispered.

"Good."

A tiny woman stood in the doorway, a female vamp. Her full lips were curled in a slight smile. Her stance, her expression, projected serenity; there was a hint of kindness in her eyes. Sam laughed. Sure. A kind vampire.

She was dressed like a children's librarian, a pastel print dress and a cream cardigan, sensible shoes...Sam had a feeling it was meant to be ironic. Her face was soft, and with the inhumanly smooth skin vampirism made, she looked like a doll-until Sam met her eyes.

The kindness he'd thought he'd seen was gone, replaced with a knife-sharp gaze that seemed to see right down into black hole where his soul had been. She crossed her arms and said, "If you're done with your life now, then here's your chance to make yourself a new one. It's going to be a long, long life, if you don't lose your head, so you might as well make it something you can live with. My name's Lenore, and I am the mistress of this nest. And we're…" she shrugged and chuckled softly. "We've been described as vegetarian vamps."

"What? That fucker laughed at me earlier, called me mouse-eater like he was some superior son of a bitch, and here y'all eat animals regularly? Fuck you. Let me outta here. I'm hungry for real food."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry if what I said made you think I was offering you a choice, like, would you like the aisle seat or the window? I meant, would you like to learn to live on pig's blood, or die?" She smiled again, her full lips made it a warm smile. She swept blonde bangs away from soft, blue eyes. "I'll let you think on it before you answer."

She took the door handle, looked at Sam again, and this time her eyes were deep, cold...old as the moon. "I hope you make the right choice."

The door slammed behind her, he heard the lock click but didn't bother trying to break it. They were vamps, of course it'd hold.
Die, or wish you were dying. Pig's blood. Fucking couldn't be worse than the deer he'd eaten, but that was desperation. He couldn't imagine sitting down to eat, tucking into a big old bowl of animal blood and thinking it was gosh-darn great.

"FUCK!" Sam swung around, fists clenched, teeth bared at the world. Why the hell had he left Dean, Dean and his imaginative ways with food, the way he made Sam feel safe, and needed and...yeah. Dean who didn't desire him anymore, who found him boring, that Dean. Sam lay back and closed his eyes. The world's shittiest cake, or death….



Weeks later, Sam was screaming for the slightest taste of blood, for mouse, for a handful of roaches, for anything-screaming until they dosed him with dead-man's blood until he passed out. When he woke, it started all over again. Finally, when he was emptied out, body, mind, and the only thing he remembered was "Dean", the smiling man, the one he thought was named Charles, came in with a bag of blood and a machete.

"Come on, bud. You're ready. Come and get it." He threw the bag on the cement floor and stepped back-not far, one or two steps, and waited. Sam reared up off the mattress and flung himself forward, teeth ripping out of gums, dry. If he had any moisture he could spare, he'd be slobbering with anticipation, crying because finally-food.

A few precious seconds passed while his confused body flip-flopped between two choices, bloodblooddblood-he chose the blood that was freshest, safest, and passed the heavy, seductive scent of cinnamon-molasses threaded through with a hint of rot-the smell of vampire blood-and fell on the animal blood. Safer, plus some deep, instinctive feeling told him if he took blood from the vampire, he'd never have Dean the way he wanted him again.
A few bags were emptied before Sam could finally cry with relief.



Dean struggled out from under a pile of rags and cardboard, scrubbing at his face, mud and blood flaking off, catching on the wind and blowing away like snowflakes. The wind was a combination of warm and cold, took him a moment before he could assign a name to it.

Ah. Even in a cramped corner in a dead subway tunnel, it made itself known.

Spring. Or the end of snowfall at least. He'd gone through blizzards into rainstorms without finding Sam. Winter was dead and spring was struggling to be born. He was never going to find Sam again. Sam was gone. Dead, or just really good at leaving him. He'd walked out of their nest and never spared another thought for his dear old big brother.

Dean fell back into his 'bed'; picked a bone out from under the pile. He wiggled it between his fingers as he idly read the graffiti obscuring the tiles on the tunnel wall. He tucked the splintered end into his mouth and chewed for a second before making a face and spitting the splintery, dried thing out. "Ugh. That's nasty."

He looked around himself, at the filth built up in the corners of the alcove he'd nested in, the crumbled concrete, rusted pillars holding up a decaying ceiling. It smelled of mold and piss and shit and rot. A low grumble in his chest became a growl, louder and louder until he was roaring with fury, and disgust at himself.

He grabbed clumps of the trash around him and threw it, handful after handful, streamers of torn, rotten fabric, bits of stinking rotten meat, skit-skitter noise of dozens of small bones skating across the concrete. What the fuck was he doing here? Why  the fuck was he here and especially why was he alone?

He shouldn't be alone.

"Sam! Get your fucking ass back!" he screamed into the dark, ruining whatever hunting he'd had planned, but right now with this weird, fucking ache behind his breastbone, pain that wasn't anything he could put a name to, he didn't even want food, god damn it. He just wanted, fuck, he wanted to go back to sleep, yeah. Wanted to crawl back under the pile of garbage he'd been living in and sleep for a million years.

It took two days and a raging hunger that drove him to coax a couple of rats close enough to drain dry, before he finally began to use his brain. His thoughts slipped around like sludge, trying to coalesce into sense, but he took his time and let them roll and slide, become solid. Time was something he was good at when he had to be.

Sitting in the near pitch-black, back propped up against one of those rusty, metal pillars, Dean fished up a sliver of bone from the pile of trash he was sitting on, used it to clean the dirt out from under his nails. He scritched and scraped, and let the thoughts slither through his head, build into something concrete.

He held his hand out, lips pursed, taking in his cleaned nails by the light cast by a couple of squat little emergency candles he'd lit earlier. The pale gold light made the place look a little less like a concrete tomb-he liked it. Flipping the bone sliver out into the dark, he finally took a look at the shape his thoughts had taken.

So. Obviously, there was something wrong with them. Him, the maker, so by extension, Sam.

Dean hadn't been turned in the way vamps turned humans to make more of themselves. He'd been savaged, torn to shreds, starved to death, revived, and then starved back to death, or close enough to make no difference. None of that nest had ever claimed him. They'd turned him without claiming him which left him nestless, without a maker. Tortured him, starved him 'til he tried to eat himself, then fed him until he recovered, just enough so they could starve him again-just for fun. Just because he was a Winchester.

See, but the whole time they'd tortured him, he'd held on to what was left of himself, because he'd known that Sam was coming; he'd be there to save him, whatever way it took.

Dean laughed. "Fucking rat bastards. And fuck Sam for not doing anything to stop it," he muttered. Everything about that night was crystal clear, unlike any other old memories. Maybe because it was the first memory of his new un-life.

He remembered getting loose, because that nest was all fuckin' idiots-his skeletal-thin wrists sliding out of the cuffs like butter, his broken thumbs not bothering him in the least when he ripped the head off the first dumb sonofabitch that went to check on the closet they'd held him in.

That first shot of vampire's blood was good, so good he'd come in his pants like a horny teenager, good enough to light him up inside, make him strong enough to escape. He hid himself in the city while he'd healed. That's why he loved these old abandoned subways, so dark and perfect, plenty of snacks hid away from everything but his vamp nose. Diner and snack-bar and moving food court.

It hadn't taken him too long to get back in shape. A coupla happy meals, a few nights laying low, letting human blood power him up so his body could heal. And then the fun of picking the rest of those scumbags off, one by one, just for the thrill of it. Hunters must have wondered what the bloody fuck was killin' those vamps-wondered what would suck them dry and then gift wrap them in their own intestines. Dean chuckled, rubbed at his eyes. Yeah, those were good days, followed by even better ones. Fuck, it was hot to hunt Sam Winchester.

Speaking of hunting… Dean stood, stretching because muscle memory told him it was the thing to do. It was night up above, which would hide his not-very-human-ness. At least he didn't smell too bad, even though he looked like he'd dressed himself at a mass murder scene. Shit. He definitely had to do something about that.

He left the platform, jumping up onto the catwalk, knocking dangling strands of dust-choked cobwebs out of the way as he moved, scrambling over garbage and silt. This was going to have to change, this way they lived, the things they did. He needed Sam. Without a nest, he had no direction at all. What little info they'd had on vampires made him think that he and Sam were fucked up. They might as well be blood-sucking ghouls-

Dean froze mid step. Well, what the fuck, that's exactly what he was, wasn't it? A fuckin'-a-"Ghoulpire. Vamphoul...ah shit, 'M a fucked-up mess, no nest, no fledgling, no nothing." Worthless.

Or maybe it wasn't totally true. He did have a nest, right? Sam wasn't dead-he was out there somewhere; who else did they need? Well, who else did Dean need. Sam must have needed something. Probably because Dean was broken, and he made a broken vampire and here he was fucking years later and just now feeling guilt and the fucking guilt was making him sad and even crazier.

Dean jumped across the trench, landing on the opposite wall's catwalk, and followed the rusting old tracks to a sliver of light that led to the stairs topside. Dean climbed the stairs out of the tunnel, vaulted over a barrier made to keep things out. It was full dark, probably around midnight, and in this part of the city, the stars were visible up above.

He strolled off down the wide, empty street. He came to a stop outside a boarded up building, close to downtown, but under-populated. Still, there a few brave bloodbags trotting around-he smelled sex and food and felt his gums prickling. Now he was sad and hungry. And, fuck, he missed Sam. A lot.

Dean leaned against a wall to wait, the chill of the damp brick under him spreading across his skin. He fished around in his jean's back pocket, somewhere in there was a pack of…found it. A creased pack of Salem's he'd found in a car he'd stolen. Kept the smokes and left the car behind like an asshole. Sam was right, he was shit at planning long term. Just one more reason why he needed Sam.

He lit one, the paper so wrinkled the tobacco was loose-when the flame hit it, the loose tobacco showered sparks. Looked pretty in the dark. He inhaled, liking the way the smoke warmed his lungs, spread the warmth through him-a reason why smokes were worth it. He held it inside a moment before letting the long stream of smoke out. A few minutes passed; he inhaled again, and this time the wind brought a tang of blood on it, a waft of body warmth that curled around on his skin.

"Hey buddy, you have one of those you can share?"

Dean looked him up and down; he was a lanky guy, just about as tall as Sam, standing there with his hand out-confident. Thirties, forties, maybe, wearing a goofy ski sweater, khaki pants; a smirk on his face just waiting to be wiped off. No doubt what the guy wanted, and he had to be desperate or planning something nasty, seeing as how Dean still looked like he'd rolled around on a butcher shop floor.

"Sure, I got one for you." Dean smiled, shifted a bit. "'S cold out here. Gotta car nearby? We can get comfortable."

"Better. I have a room. If you like."

Curling away from the wall, tossing the tall guy the pack, Dean smiled, "Sounds like the perfect place to talk news and finances, am I right?"



The motel room was okay-a double bed, a night stand, mustard yellow, black-out drapes pulled across the window. The door to a bathroom stood open, letting the scent of bleach and mildew fight with the reek of sex and smoke. Walking past the bed, he smelled blood: old, new; a whole palette of blood and pain. At the corners of the headboard screwed into the wall, he saw thin scratches in the paint, scraped down to the bare fiberboard, little flakes of blood caught in the hairline cracks. Looked like this was a fun place to be, and why not-this was a crummy dump in the asshole of the city. Who'd give a fuck what happened in a place like this, to the people who lived here?

When the guy reached out to turn on the light, Dean grabbed his wrist, nearly laughing at the feel of the guy's pulse pounding away under the thin skin. "Let me take a shower first. What do you need to get ready?"

The guy's breath sped up, his heart racing faster. Dean could smell the sweat beading up on the guy's skin. He swallowed thickly, and smiled. "Yeah, go shower, I'm just going to...I have a few things…" He held up a bulging, black, nylon bag.

"Things?" Dean asked.

"Nothing freaky, just, ha. Clothes, if it's okay; we can talk about cost and stuff but I'm good for anything."

"Yeah." Dean headed off to shower, thinking. Nothing the tall guy did could permanently injure him, but now it made a lot of sense why a guy like that would pick up what he thought was a guy like Dean. Dean was kinda surprised the guy was still breathing air, despite how big he was. Dumb ass thing to do, wander around alone in the dark looking for vics. But, he guessed, when you thought of yourself as being on top of the food chain, you felt stupidly safe.

Humans. Just couldn't imagine a greater threat than themselves.

Dean stripped quickly. Climbing in the grungy shower, he set the water as hot as possible, turning it down a touch when his skin went fire-engine red. He upended a skimpy fucking bottle of body wash into his hands and washed himself from head to toe: behind his ears, under his arms, between his ass cheeks-a super-thorough cleaning Sam would have been proud of. By the time he was done, the water was cooler and his skin had turned to a healthy-looking pink.

Grabbing a towel from the top of the toilet tank, he scrubbed off as much water as the barely absorbent towel allowed and dropped it on the floor. Something made him look towards the mirror. Leaning over the teacup-sized sink, he stared at the Dean in the glass. Lifting his lip, he focused on a particular feeling in his gums, willing his teeth to drop. His gums dimpled, parted, and pinpoints of ivory reflected wetly in the mirror. Dean took it in, cataloging all the changes he'd gone through the last few years. He rarely actually looked at himself since he'd been bitten and drained and raped and beaten and bitten again and turned. He'd looked, sure, but nothing more than a sideways glance, never actually seeing himself. No, he'd tracked all his changes through Sam. He'd watched Sam come undone, years after years peeling away what made Sam, Sam.

Sam, with his blood and mud clotted hair, his eyes sitting in black wells, cheekbones so sharp they looked deadlier than the fangs that tore through his lip sometimes. Dean rubbed his own lips, narrowed eyes staring at the knife-sharp planes of his face.

God, okay, thoughts about Sam needed to go on the back burner for now. He had work to do. Dean forced his teeth back, and grinned at his reflection.

"Hey, you coming out, or what?"

Dean strolled out, not bothering with the ragged clothes he'd stripped off. The tall guy had his back to him, fishing through the black bag. "I mean, didn't bring you here just so you could get a free shower. I have things I want-"

Tall Guy turned to him, words stopped dead in his throat at the sight of Dean. Dean smirked, He knew that he cleaned up damn good-he stopped, folded his arms over his chest because it made his arms look bigger that way; let his legs spread wider because his dick looked good, half-hard, still red from almost being boiled. With the pink tinge to his skin, he looked healthy, alive.

Tall Guy blew out a long breath, looking Dean up and down. "Will you wear cuffs?"

Dean grinned. "Sure, why not?"

Tall made a small pleased sound, taking cuffs and a bulky roll of leather from the bag, laid the roll on the bed. It smelled heavily of that rotten meat smell that no amount of cleaning could erase. Dean smiled wider, making sure his teeth didn't drop. This was about to get interesting.

Tall said, "Okay, so here's the deal...I like things different. I...how's your pain threshold?" He laughed, like he was joking, but Dean could smell sweat, high arousal wafting on the air. "I like to play, unh...with sharp things?" He giggled, and went on. "But I swear, I'm really careful, okay? And, well…" He reached into the bag again, and pulled out a stack of bills. "How about five hundred dollars?"

Dean laughed. "Five C for what I'm figuring is some crazy stuff that might put me out of commission for a while?" He could practically hear the guy's blood pressure spike, his heart race. "Fuck you." He swung away, his dick slapping against his thigh, a grin filling his mouth with teeth at the gasp Tall Guy let out, before he forced himself to calm down.

"No, I swear, no permanent damage, I mean, no damage at all really, just...a bit of scabbing maybe, when I'm done." Tall Guy's eyes drifted downwards, then back up to Dean's face. He smirked, said, "And c'mon, you're into it, aren't you? At least a little bit, yeah? It'll be good, I promise."

He fixed Dean with the most sincere, puppy-eyed, pleading look ever and Dean knew the guy was lying out his ass. That if Dean was human, there'd be nothing left of him at the end of this night. "Okay," Dean said. "I'm game. Stack it up, though."

"What, you want more money? Sure, yeah, of course." Why not? Right now the guy would give him the moon if he asked. Dean laughed softly. The guy expected he'd be dead in a few hours, after all.

Tall Guy pulled more bills out of his bag, and stacked them on the nightstand. "That's a thousand. You can count when we're done-unless you want to count now? No? Okay, so-here, put this on."

Tall dropped a pair of black underwear into Dean's hands. They were thin, lacy, and smelled brand new. Stretchy, so they'd fit skintight. There was a little pink bow right in the center of the waistband. "This it?" Dean asked and the guy grinned. When the Winchesters had still hunted, they'd put down a lot of things that'd smiled like that.

It went fast after Dean slid into the panties-handcuffs came next, real cuffs, not plastic play ones that could be snapped with a breath. Tall clipped chains to the cuffs, then attached the chains to the metal bed frame. Dean saw how someone could strip the varnish off cheap fake wood trying to break loose. His stomach cramped; he was racked with shivers for some damn reason. Being cuffed, stupid as it was, made him feel anxious. Fidgety. His chest kept rising and stopping as if he was having trouble breathing. What the fuck-he was a fucking vampire. This ass couldn't hurt him, so why the fuck was he freaking?

Trying to distract himself, he started talking to his dinner. "You play here a lot?" he asked and the guy grinned.

"Been a while since I've been in this particular motel, but yeah, I've been here with...dates...before." He pulled a gag out of the bag-a thick, plastic dick tinted matte black, attached to a strap. Held it up and raised an eyebrow. Dean gave him a quick nod. Tried to look nervous because a human would be getting nervous by now right, and it must look good because the guy smiled and fuck, he was getting nervous.

Why? Why get nervous? The guy was a dipshit; telegraphing his moves from a mile away. He was so overconfident. Him and his stupid dog chains. Hell, Dean could snap through the cuffs and chains like they were paper whenever he wanted to.

Tall was getting excited. He was half-hard, breathing heavier as he shoved the gag into Dean's mouth. Dean barely managed to cap his instinctual move to bite down, shred the silicone thing shoved what felt like halfway down his throat.

"There you go," Tall Guy crooned. He strolled around the bed, a sleek, black and silver Nikon in his hand. He took picture after picture, whir-click, whir-click, whir-click, humming and muttering to himself before finally stepping back. He undressed, quickly but neatly, folding his clothes and stashing them out of the way. He was fully hard now, practically dripping. He licked his lips as he untied the bundle he'd set on the bed, and lifted something that flashed in the light.

Dean bit down on the gag with human teeth, and waited.

A bright starburst of pain exploded and almost as quickly went dull. He snarled with the surprise of it, the jagged, electric feeling. Wasn't that vampires didn't feel pain, the feeling just didn't linger the way it did for humans, not unless there was magic involved. This was just some ham-fisted human asshole with a scalpel, cutting and biting at Dean. He cut and bit, taking his time, while Dean worked to shove past the swamp of memories brought on by being cuffed. He was rocked by horribly vivid memories from ten years ago, of being cuffed to a radiator in a secluded farmhouse, a dim, dirty, stinking place, where he screamed with hunger while every member of that nest ripped into him as his body struggled to handle the shift from human to monster. Pushed past the last crumbs of sanity, he'd ripped through his own flesh, sucking what little he could from it to stave off starving. Fuck, when they did feed him, it was vermin, bugs; anything they shoved in his mouth, he ate. Wiggling legs, feelers...god, he felt them even now, brushing around inside his mouth-

He fucking remembered feeling grateful for it-Dean gargled a laugh around the plastic dick.

Those fuckers had never expected him to ever be anything even close to sane again. Fucking bastards. They never understood who they were dealing with.

Pain flashed through him like a lightning strike, bringing him back from his hellish stroll down memory lane. He relished the pain lighting up sluggish nerves, filling almost deflated lungs again. He smelled his own blood, puddles and puddles of it. Felt his heart try and beat around something stuck inside it.

Tall Guy dropped like a sack of potatoes, sweat-slippery body splayed out over Dean's own sweat and blood slicked body, humping Dean like a dog. Dean's dick rose, hot and heavy-the smell of precome and blood reminded him of Sam and sex and food. It only took a few seconds before the guy came, shooting like a geyser between them, slamming the scalpel in Dean's chest deeper. Dean roared around the gag, coming as well.

Tall jerked back-that was probably not something that'd happened to him before. Dean grinned at him, tried to-the stupid gag needed to go. He snapped the chains, shredded the strap holding the stupid gag in. He bit down, just because it had annoyed him so, and spit the pieces into the air.

Tall gaped at him, mouth hanging open, his dick shriveling as his skin went the color of cheese. "What. What, what-?"

"It's okay," Dean said, looking down at his come-streaked body, blood sluggishly leaking from the left side of his chest where Tall Guy stabbed him, mixing with come to turn a streaky pink. He read WHORe carved under his heart, CUM HOLe carved in one thigh and BICH sliced into his gut.

"Fuck, you're dumber than I thought you were," Dean laughed. "You can't spell for shit. Don't worry, I'll teach you," he said. "First, though, I'm going to need a little something from you to heal this broken heart…" He pulled the scalpel free of his chest and stabbed the guy in the eye.

Dean grabbed Tall by the throat, cutting off his screams. "We used to put monsters like you down all the time, well, they were actual monsters and you're just pretending but. This isn't just pleasure, this is the right thing to do," he muttered against the man's throat, and let his teeth drop. "Well, okay, it's pleasure, too. And by the way, fuck face, it's b-i-T-c-h."



Dean was proud of himself. He'd kept the damage to a minimum-more or less. He'd found it harder than he'd thought it'd be to write with a knife, so he'd just grabbed a pen he'd found in Tall's bag and wrote MURDERER in caps across his dead chest. There was a hole in it, where Dean had ripped Tall's heart out, and left it on his crotch. Okay, that hadn't been necessary but it just seemed to fit. Let some cop have fun figuring out what had happened here. He was pretty sure that he'd gift-wrapped a bad, bad man for them. Like, done a good deed if you thought about it.

He'd taken another shower, traded out Tall's clothes for his dirty rags. He stood in the middle of the room, smoothing his hands across the ugly, but really soft sweater, then zipping up and buttoning the pants that fit decently if a little long. The stolen boots kept the cuffs from dragging on the floor. He snorted. When was the last time he'd cared about what he wore if Sam wasn't there to make him dress? He frowned. A long time, too long since Sam disappeared.

Fuck. It was time to find Sam, like, seriously look for him, and bring him back.



"Let me out, damn it. Let me out!" Sam swung a chair at the door, knowing full well the only thing he was doing was letting off steam because the flimsy chair barely held his own weight. Sure enough, it exploded into splinters when it hit the solid wood of his dungeon door.

"Shit," he muttered and did another turn around his corner of the basement, stomping back and forth, trying to burn off the jittery feel of too much energy. He wasn't hungry, he was just too energetic from being locked down too long. In fact, he felt fine, thanks to the stupid fucking pig's blood which was just marginally better than cow's blood, which was marginally better than rat-

He swung around to the door at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The door opened with a dramatic creak, and there she stood again: the mistress of this nest.

"So...Sam Winchester. How are we this morning?"

Sam barely suppressed a flinch at hearing his name from her mouth, but it should have come as no surprise-eventually someone was bound to make them. Him.

She cleared her throat, and one of her nest appeared, carrying a pair of mismatched chairs. He set them down with a smirk at Sam, and she sat, waving her hand towards the other chair like royalty granting an audience.

"So Sam, what's the verdict? Are we going to make formal introductions to the family, or are we going to introduce you to the back field? We've already dug a lovely pit, just in case we need to burn your shell."

Sam stared at her, mouth dropping open in shock. For some reason, her cavalier attitude about turning him into worm food was unsettling. His thoughts ricocheted like a ball on a roulette wheel, finally stopping on the one thing on his mind since he woke. "Dean."

She leaned back and raised an eyebrow at him, waiting.

"I want to find my brother."

"We'll help you, if you can live by our rules. If not-"

"I know, I know," Sam interrupted, coming to the end of his patience. He could only take this mysterious, imperious leader shit for so long. Dean would have gone for her throat by now. "Ya-da, ya-da, blah-blah, you kill me."

She laughed, rising to her feet. "You're an idiot. Entertaining, at least."

She walked out, and a few minutes later someone else came in. Sam smelled animal blood and old paper...old books, ink. He straightened, intrigued by the odd combination of smells. The female vampire who entered was tall, her blonde hair pulled back tight into a high ponytail. She held a couple of plastic bags in her hand.

"Breakfast. Help yourself to however much you want today. You'll find that while you need more than if it was human blood, you'll do fine with feedings once or twice a week. Our bodies adjust after a while. What you have to train yourself out of is wanting the hunt. Now that is the hard part. But given your background, I think you'll do fine." She winked at him as she tossed the bag, and closed the door on him again.

Sam hunched over on the mattress, staring at the plastic bags in his hands, sloshing with red-black liquid. The hunt. For the first time in a long, long time, he thought about not the hunt,  but The Hunt, about the mission their dad had left them with. They'd written that off a long time ago, along with any guilt or interest. But substituting hunting with the mission. He bit into a bag thoughtfully, wincing slightly at the taste. could be worse. This blood at least soothed his stomach and warmed his throat. Maybe he could do this after all.

The next time he got a blood bag, the girl who delivered it was an ethereal little thing-if not for the vamp scent, he would have called her fae, with her dark-skin, her fox-titled eyes in a heart shaped face, surrounded by a dandelion puff of dark chestnut hair.

She might look like a young girl, but her eyes were like Lenore's, old as the moon. She threw the blood bag at him; it wobbled through the air, just missing his head.

"I'm Nia. Lo says it's time for you to rise up from the darkness." She giggled to herself.

A comedian. Sam emptied the bag quickly before following her. He tried to be subtle about scenting her-she smelled really good for a vamp, more healthy than dead. He wondered vaguely what she'd taste like, and she whipped her head back to stare at him. Okay, so not as subtle as he'd hoped. He tried to smile like that other Sam used to, the look that said, 'please sir or ma'am I am a harmless little puppy.'

Maybe it worked-she rolled her eyes and snorted, but kept walking instead of trying to tear his head off.

They went up a narrow flight of stairs he didn't remember walking down; at the top, Nia held the door open and gestured Sam through first.

When Sam stepped eagerly out into the sunlight, a hiss ripped out of him, loud and pained. Sam threw his arms over his face, his teeth dropping and tears of pain spurting from his eyes. His knees gave out and threw him to the ground, where he rolled up like a pillbug trying to escape the sun's hellish fire.

This was wrong, wrong-what the fuck was happening? Sunlight was a little uncomfortable, sure, but this? Was like being hit with a blowtorch, almost like being born as a vamp again.

Seconds later, hot hands were pulling him to his feet, supporting him, and a deep, warm voice said, "Yeah, it's a shock to the system when you're out in the sun after a long time in the dark. You'll grow used to it again. I mean, you'll never vacation in tropical climes, but you'll readjust."

Sam looked up into crinkled-edged, warm, blue eyes. "I know," Sam panted, "I lived in the daylight before. It's just...I guess I've been in the dark for a long time."

The other vamp seemed to be studying him, his expression serious. His eyes narrowed as he listened to Sam, nodding as if what he'd heard was profound, and said, "Wow, that sounded like some line in a Hallmark movie, like, deeply metaphorical an' shit."

Sam was startled into laughing. "Fuck you, I'm sharing my pain."

"Yee-aah-don't. So, first things first. You're Sam, I'm Aaron." He grinned, and it lit up his blunt features, making him look friendly-handsome, even. "Now we've been introduced, I'll take you on the ten cent tour, starting with a visit to the girls."

Sam looked back at the farmhouse, but they walked away towards an open field, a barn sat in the center of the field, and off to the side, fence ran along the large plot, going right up into the trees that Sam figured must be part of the property as well. They walked along the fence for quite some distance before they ended up at a big open shed, where three large pink pigs lounged in the shade of some trees. They watched Sam and Aaron approach, curious, but not enough to stroll over and see what was what.

"There they are-the girls." Aaron made a sweeping gesture, a look of faux pride on his face. He glanced back at Sam, eyes dancing with mischief. "They really are good girls, though. They make it possible for us to maintain a lifestyle that lets us fly under the radar. We've been here a damn long time now, haven't had to move..."

He trailed off when he noticed Sam wasn't hearing him. Sam was staring across the yard. The girls were...big. Whenever he'd thought of pigs-the extremely rare times he did-he'd seen them as sort of chubby, pink little Charlotte's Web kind of creatures. These big, spotted, behemoths looked like they'd feast on him as well as table scraps.

"Impressive, aren't they?" Aaron's lips were pursed in a way Sam recognized, having grown up with that look. The fucker was trying not to laugh at Sam's befuddlement.

"They...don't stink?" What could he say? They were huge, alien presences that stared back at him with beady eyes too full of knowledge.

Aaron finally gave in to the laugh he'd been struggling to hold in. "They don't stink...well, because they have space and water and good lives, that's why. We're careful with them. You'll learn all about that later."

Sam found that they also kept goats, made cheese, and soap, and in general, were like...vegan hippie vamps, he thought and smiled sadly thinking of Dean, the Dean who would have said that with a satisfied little smile, the look he got whenever he coined a phrase. "VeHipires," he muttered to himself.

Aaron, walking ahead of him, turned and gave him a searching look. "You okay, kid?"

"Yeah, just. Taking it all in. it looks so...normal."

"Uhm. Lenore likes quiet. She likes neat. So do we. We're here because we made a choice. We're not the usual nest." Sam snorted quietly. He was hardly the one to judge what 'the usual nest' was. "We're not bound together by blood," Aaron said, "but we're family just as much. Hurt one of us, you hurt all."

Sam nodded. He understood the sentiment, and totally got the threat implied. He walked slower, dropping back as he thought about the situation he was in. What if...what if he and Dean could get a reset like this? Maybe not be gentleman vampire farmers, but live more like this? Calm, focused...could Dean give up the hunt though? Could he give up bathing in thick blood, ripping some snack bag to shreds and rolling in the hot insides and sucking rich marrow from the pink bones and tasting the fear spiral up and up and up as the screams joined them, fucking in pools of still-hot blood, tearing at each other like-

"HEY!"

Sam staggered forward, his chest working overtime to propel useless air though his lungs. His dick was throbbing, hard and painful behind his zipper. He was on his hands and knees, fingers stabbing down into the black soil.

Aaron was over him, his boot shoving Sam to the ground, rolling him to his back. His teeth were fully extended, his eyes cold chips of ice-that friendly, almost Teddy bear look morphed into the face of a killer. He worked his mouth, making his teeth slide back, and took a long, calming breath. Sam could practically see Aaron counting before he exhaled and took his boot off Sam's chest.

"Shit, son...you were broadcasting all over the place. Damn, seemed like you were so calm, too. Guess we got lazy." He stepped back, held a hand out to Sam, dropped it when Sam waved it away. "You okay? Gonna need to put you back in the cellar?"

"No, I'm good. No cellar," Sam said, getting his galloping heart under control. He'd spiraled so hard, his heartbeat had almost gone to human normal, it felt odd in his chest. He rubbed at his sternum, crouched in the dirt he'd churned up. "That felt...fucked up. A little good, a little bad. Mostly scary. How can I be like you when I want...I want, god, still want to rip someone to shreds?"

Aaron shook his head. "We all feel like that, all the time, to some degree or another. After a while, it gets easier. I mean, it never quite goes away, but hunting somethin' down, biting in and draining the life outta it don't occupy every square inch of your brain either. You're tough as an old boot, you're gonna make it, Sam. I can see that. Your brother's a big unknown, though…" he shrugged. "Dean Winchester's a volatile guy."

"Does everyone know who we were?" Sam asked.

"You were Winchesters," Aaron shrugged. "Y'all were the boogie men under the bed of little monsters, the things that went bump and slice in the night. Y'all certainly didn't get any less scary since, y'know, you died."

They walked quietly for a bit, and then Aaron waved at a barn in the distance. "And that's where we do our crafts to sell at markets and craft shows-" as if that's what they'd been talking about instead of reminiscing about being able to eat what they wanted when they wanted.

Sam fought not to laugh. Hipires, for sure.



"How do you have this farm? Are you squatters?"

He was sitting in the farmhouse kitchen-a spartan but clean room that surprisingly saw a lot of use. These vamps ate more often than he and Dean ever did-there were bowls of minced vegetables on the stone counter, waiting to be used for something, and bottles of wine lined a shelf above the counter. The angle of the room kept direct sunlight out; what light came in was through a filmy set of green curtains. The room felt like it was underwater, an effect Sam liked a lot. At the bottom of that pond near the cabin had always been a comfortable place to be.

Lenore and some of her nest were sitting at the handmade kitchen table with Sam, as Sam sipped his lunch. Aaron and Charles glanced at Sam, Charles setting his blood bag down to listen. The blonde vamp who'd told him about the pig's blood was sitting at the end of the table with a book and a steaming mug, seemingly totally engrossed in whatever it was she was reading. Sam smiled. No wonder she'd smelled of paper and ink.

Lenore answered Sam's question about the farm calmly. "No, we own it, all legally and above board. Some of us have-had-money. We pooled what we had, worked for the rest. The place was falling down when we bought it, no exaggeration. We lived almost as rough as feral vamps for a long time."

Sam caught the lip roll at feral vamps, and felt unaccountably embarrassed. "What does that even mean, feral? I mean, vampires are vampires. What, is there like a hierarchy?" Dad's journal hinted vaguely that there was, but info was scarce on creatures who were pretty much unicorns as far as hunters were concerned.

"Yes, there's definitely a hierarchy," Lenore replied flatly. "The Original Alpha and his court are the head, then descending order to the bottom: duchies, fiefs, families, nests, ferals. When the Alpha left us, we ruled ourselves; in North America, vampires organized into Families-there are a few in New Orleans, one in New York, in Chicago, and one in San Francisco.

Most common, though, are Nests, scattered around the country. A few vampires gather together and help each other survive, bond; that's a nest. As for Ferals…" she glanced at him, "usually nestless. Occasionally, being turned can burn out higher thought, or is so traumatic that the vampire never connects with anything beyond eat, hurt, kill. I've heard that sometimes vampires are deliberately made like that, to use as guard dogs. Or as punishment. Lone ferals die fast-at the hands of hunters, more often than not. Ferals are too loud, too messy, and not clever enough."

Sam poked at his remaining bag of pig's blood, thinking about what she'd said. It explained a lot about Dean, and about this thing that Dean and he had. He tried to sort the info dump he'd received into usable intelligence. "So, you guys are the good guys? Worried about the poor little bloodbags and their kiddies?"

"Hardly. This is all about us, and our comforts. We like having a place of our own-a place to put roots down. After a while, wandering just becomes...not pleasant. So, not so much worrying about humans."

Aaron, gnawing at a thin slice of bloody meat, snorted, twinkling eyes aimed at Sam. "Y'got that right," he growled, low in his throat, but he sounded more amused than anything else.

"This is not about being cuddly, kitten-loving creatures who are simply misunderstood-" Lenore rolled her eyes and went on. "We don't interact with humans besides the need for blood. Too different-what makes humans human is missing in us. Amanda says the missing ingredient is a soul, and we have to make an approximation of it as best we can. I agree."

The tall blonde vamp at the end of the table smiled at Sam; she had blood in the corner of her mouth, there was blood around the edge of the mug she held. Sam could smell it, feeling its heat from where he was. He picked up the lukewarm bag he'd been playing with and bit into one end, sucked.

"You've met my people here and there today. Let me formally introduce my nest. This is Aaron, my second. The valkyrie at the end of the table is Amanda, and this handsome devil is Charles. Nia, and Miles are out selling today-you met Nia this afternoon, I think? Anyway, this is my family with a lowercase f."

Sam squeezed the bag, letting the blood fill him. There'd been practically no conversation about vamps between hunters. Vampires had been considered a non-issue. But instead of being extinct, they were plentiful and complicated, and why had he and Dean not encountered any in all the years they'd been turned?

Lenore gazed at him, her sweet, placid expression never changing when she said. "And you're wondering why you never caught onto any of this in the years you've been what you are. Everyone knew; we heard stories. You were supposed to be feral. And, well, you scared people. The stories they told. Ferals are supposed to be killed, but here in this country, there's no council. No law. The Alpha hasn't touched these shores in almost a hundred years."

"So you looked at me and thought, let's reprogram that thing?" Sam stopped, peered at her suspiciously. "Did you stalk me?"

"Strictly happenstance. But Charles recognized you. Mouse eater."

They all laughed, and Sam bristled, but she said, "Anyone who tells you that they don't know what that blood tastes like is a liar."



OnTo Part Three