Riders on the Storm 5. Part III: Sam
"If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us." - Quentin Compson, Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
It's only been a week since the Devil's Gate, Dean takes the Doublemint Twins to their motel room that night and Sam sits in the car right outside the window. Dean doesn't care to close the blinds and he can see Sam, he knows he's out here with a front-seat view. Dean gives him a fucking thumbs-up, for crying out loud, when Sam looks up from reading about Faust. Apparently it's never a good idea to sell your soul for love. Who'd have known.
Dean will tell him later that he should lay off, and Sam will ask Dean how he can value his own life so little, that he'll lie back and accept his sentence.
Sam's an underhanded button-pusher, he knows that about himself. All he can hear is that he's a selfish little brother, selfish to ask Dean to kill him, selfish to die anyway, selfish now to be alive again.
It's not true but it's far better than the devastating alternative - that he is powerless in this situation. He hopes that somehow he has control over this, some purposeful influence over Dean, because otherwise he can do nothing about Dean's need to annihilate himself for the sake of his little brother. Otherwise Dean's just suicidal.
Sam really hates both options.
Watching Dean live wild and free, picking up chicks and getting drunk off his ass, confusing hedonism and seizing the day with honest to god nihilistic and suicidal behavior - it's misery for Sam because Dean feels entitled to all of it. Sam blames him, he blames him so much, but he also can't blame him because he owes Dean everything now, there would be no Sam Winchester if it weren't for Dean.
Sam just wants every minute of Dean's last year but he can't stand being around this guy, who doesn't talk about the Grand Canyon or getting out of the life, who goes out on the town to drink it all up and plays his sentence to hell for laughs.
He wants Dean in a way that those twins don't really touch. Sam thinks, he has more right to Dean than that. Dean pushed him away, pushed him down. Dean sold his soul for him. Dean might have a thing about Sam, their sexual hang-ups might possibly be mutual, but Dean won't ever acknowledge it and in the end Dean will leave Sam alone in the world to protect him. Dean wants Sam to live so he can be a successful big brother, whatever that is.
Sam just wants the little time and partnership he can get.
-
When the crossroads demon laughs at him, and brings it up, Sam's frustration with what Dean's become in his last year, she taunts him. "Admit it. You'll be happy without sloppy, needy, desperate Dean."
Her words stick in him and tear like barbs. She's wrong. That's exactly what Sam wants. He wants Dean to let go, he wants Dean to cry on him, he wants Dean to cling to Sam while he's grasping desperately to the last year of his life.
But maybe Sam has no right. Sam already pushed Dean away all those years ago. He's the one who left, and continued to hold Dean at arm's length during those years.
Sam looks across the car at Dean, who's humming along with Mick Jagger and keeping his eyes on the dark road.
Sam wants to box him up and keep him here, keep him who he used to be, where they used to be. Where an infinite indefinite longing was just like the road before and behind them: never shifting, just a constant with old and new ground they were certain they'd tread till they died young or faded away. But they'd be together. It was supposed to be together.
Now, there's an end point. So many things they have to resolve or be left forever unsaid. Sam has a hard time dealing with that. He's always wanted closure, or at least for things to end on his terms, which is like closure.
Sam's always worked best as a man with a plan, but now all he can do is search desperately for loopholes in Dean's contract while Dean works against him. Sam can see no resolution, no way this is going to turn out all right. No way they aren't rushing downhill towards each other to head each other off on the way to damnation. No way they can do anything to make this year not end horribly.
-
Sam's thinking about it, sitting like a shmuck at a table while the night-life is picking up around them. Dean's at the bar, a few more drinks in than Sam who's resigned himself to being designated driver tonight. He doesn't want to drink too much and get any more morose than this. He's still shaken and nursing his wounds from the confrontation with the crossroads demon he shot.
"Hey Sam," Dean says, sliding into the chair across from Sam to lean forward conspiratorially. "Lydia and her friend know where we can hear the Metallica concert, if we park up on this hill." Dean glances back at the girls at the bar, a brunette with blonde streaks and a bottle-blonde, who's maybe even a year or two younger than Sam. He wonders which one's Lydia, figures it depends on whether Dean's leaning towards blondes or brunettes tonight.
"Okay," Sam says, turning the page in his book on North American demonology.
"Well don't you want to?" Dean's looking at him a little impatiently. "Come on, I know you're determined to suffer, but we had a good hunt last night, so take a break."
"I'm just not in the mood to hang out with a couple of twenty-one-year-olds."
"Dude, they're twenty-four."
"Great. Go hang out with them if you want to."
"God, you're such a buzzkill, you make a man feel bad for spending a little quality time -"
Sam interrupts, "Quality time, really? This is what you want to do? You can do whatever you want. Go ahead, hook up with those girls, I'll meet you back at the hotel."
Dean looks suddenly confused, and hurt. "Sam, are you sure you're -"
"Look, it's your year, right? You've got carte blanche. You can do anything you want except let me weasel you out of it."
"Now hold on, that's not -"
"Not fair?" Sam's voice cracks. "Not true? Not right? What, Dean?"
"I don't need your permission to do shit."
"Course not. Just like the deal you made for me."
"I swear to god, Sam -"
"No, I know, I have no right to complain -"
"Shut the fuck up."
"I know." Sam's fist hits the table. He's breathing hard, staring somewhere to the left of his brother's face and pointedly not at him. "I don't have the right to, Dean. Don't have the right to ask for anything. Wish I hadn't." Sam's sure he's not making sense but that doesn't matter right now. He's feeling pretty dejected.
Dean looks confused for a bit till some clarity breaks on his face. He looks reluctant, uneasy.
"It's not your fault," Dean says, like he's automated.
"Don't tell me that." Sam is still breathing hard.
"You've had too much to drink. You don't know what you're talking about."
"You know what I'm talking about."
"Really?" Dean says, angrier now, visibly struggling to hold onto the edge of calm. "What do you want, Sam?"
Sam looks at him.
"You can do anything," Sam says.
"No," Dean says. "No, I can't. I can't just do anything."
"Yeah, you can. You're already damned." Dean winces. "Whaddaya got left to lose?"
Dean leans back. "Plenty."
Sam's mouth gapes like a stupid fish.
Dean stands up, and in a flash he, Lydia, and Lydia's friend are out the door.
-
Sam's been collecting signs. He's been staying up all night when Dean's been out, been working hard to hide some of the stuff he's investigating because it's to get Dean out of the deal that Dean doesn't want Sam poking at. The selfish asshole.
He's collected reports of animals going feral, whole towns with a rash of mayhem and missing persons - not as many dead as missing. A sort of mass madness that everyone denies but in some places they say it's like a tornado blew through. There are pictures of paths of destruction, and though police reports say it's kids driving their off-roaders into the woods and people jeeping off the trails there are no tire tracks, just massive crushing of underbrush, and dozens of animal tracks from every local wild thing and then some. A stampede.
The hounds of hell, by some accounts, chase the souls of the damned through the sky forever. If he can find the Hunter that drives this Hunt, maybe he can buy or bargain an exemption for Dean.
Sam's close to having enough to justify it as a hunt. In the meantime he's found cases and nudges them closer and closer to the trajectory of things, which is traveling south through the Rockies, heading towards western Colorado.
-
They're hunting nixies in the forest behind some poor family's back yard in Southern California. The kid is safe, and it's no worse than a particularly tricky exterminating job now - until Sam gets tangled up in a mushroom ring.
Dean has to burn it down, which takes a while even with a flame torch, since mushrooms are full of water. By the time Dean manages it, Sam's sick.
"Are you sure it's not just the fumes?" Dean asks as they drive back. His own eyes are red and watery.
"Pretty sure," Sam groans weakly. He feels dizzy and vaguely alienated from his body. He looks at his hands and moves his fingers, trying to connect intent with sensation.
"You should sleep."
"Or throw up."
"Whoa, whoa." Dean pulls over a few times on the way back to the motel but Sam is only sick once.
Sam gets to sleep for eight hours in the motel room while Dean goes back to make sure it's all taken care of, and when he wakes up he feels fine. Full of strange dreams he can't remember, but all in all, it didn't turn out too bad.
They're driving down the highway, in a stretch of hot Arizona desert halfway to Albuquerque. Sam's dozing off in the passenger seat to Ozzy Osbourne.
He's chasing something, running desperately through a forest. There's some desperation in his mind that hasn't taken shape yet - is this a hunt? Is he looking for Dean? Are they in danger?
But then he sees Dean running beside him, passing him up, so Sam puts an extra burst of speed, and they break out of the dark woods onto the top of a hill covered in golden long prairie grass. They run down it, and the grasses grow taller and taller, till they're taller than their heads. Sam is trying to catch Dean, grab his shoulder, his wrist, some part of him. Dean grins back at him bright and golden like this is a game, and Sam sure hopes so, but he knows its urgent he get a hand on Dean, that he not lose him in this grass.
Finally he tackles Dean, and they roll to the ground, flattening the grass thick underneath them. Sam's trying to pin Dean down and make him stay in one place, but Dean rolls them so he's on top of Sam. He grabs Sam's hands, has them in a grip crushed between their chests that Sam can't break loose, and then he puts his mouth on Sam's and kisses him.
Sam kisses back with no hesitation or reservation. Like this is a one-time-only deal. Then Dean reaches down and cups Sam's dick through his jeans, then he takes Sam's jeans off and strokes him, strokes and strokes.
Sam's staring down at Dean's hand wrapped around both their dicks and he wants so badly to come, he feels like he could come, but Dean's hand is still tight around him, trapping him. He looks at Sam so intently and intentionally and lustfully like he wants Sam like this, naked and spread out, and Sam is suddenly sure that they're going to do this, and Dean starts to move down his body, mouth open, and Sam's sure he's going to put his mouth on Sam's cock, and -
"Sam!" Dean says, and a hand lands hard on Sam's shoulder, fingers pushing against his neck, waking him up.
Sam half opens his eyes, which feel like lead, and by instinct presses his hands to his lap where they rested on Dean's shoulders in the dream - what? shit. Sam can feel that he's completely hard. He presses his crotch harder without thinking and it makes him whimper with almost-pain.
Dean swears, "What the hell?" and Sam moans because he feels like he's on fire. "Shit," Dean hisses, and Sam echoes, "Shit." as he comes.
His whole body shivers with it, and he can feel the wetness of his jizz spreading, his dick still hard but softening. He pants, and Dean twitches the wheel as if he's ready to pull them over. It all happened so fast he hasn't had time to adjust his driving.
"What the hell, Sam??"
"I don't know! I - fucking nixies, that mushroom circle did something to me." Sam flushes red and Dean's looking quick at him and away. "Can you pull over?" He asks, and Dean sighs, as if he was just waiting for permission, and stops on the shoulder so fast Sam nearly gets whiplash.
Dean gets out of the car first, Sam still weak-legged. It's definitely that mushroom circle. Dreaming about Dean that way… that's nothing new. But he never comes like a fourteen-year-old in his sleep.
When Sam opens the door, going to beeline for the trunk and his bag, find a dirty shirt to wipe up with, Dean bursts out with "What the hell is wrong with you?'
"Me? I didn't fucking mean to!"
"But it still fucking happens! All the time you're-" Dean waves his hand, not looking at Sam, and then just covers his eyes.
"All the time? What?" He doesn't all the time. Maybe he used to all the time. Sam's feeling wet and ashamed and confused as hell, brain not entirely awake yet, and yet still Dean is the one making this all about him.
"You drive me fucking crazy," Dean says, pressing the heels of his palm against his eyes, and Sam thinks about how he does that till he sees spots, leaving an imprint on his vision so he doesn't have to look at shit. Apparently Sam needs to let Dean have this moment.
And yet, shit, he can see Dean's lips as his brother wipes a hand down his face, horribly dear to him and precious now that Dean's a scarce resource. Sam's going to run out of Dean in less than a year.
"I drive you crazy?" Sam says.
"I swear to god, it's like you have an instinct for the worst timing." Dean's been looking away the whole time, opening the trunk with his keys, and finally looks at Sam as he says, "Clean yourself up." Sam sees his eyes flicker, thinks Dean looks afraid. Not a look he sees in the broad glaring daylight sun much, but there it is.
Sam stands there and entertains the possibility that Dean's just as affected by this as Sam is.
Sam remembers shit, all right? He obsesses over small details because that's how his brain works. He clings to little things and wants to work them out, wants Dean to talk about stuff that Dean doesn't think is a big deal, but Sam wants to unravel every knot in the world, and keeps things tucked away to use to his advantage later.
He doesn't know how it's to his advantage to remember that the other time Dean looked at him afraid while Sam had a hand on himself - six years ago, when they were messing around and maybe Dean was in a little over his head. Sam doesn't know what right now has in common with six years ago for Dean, except the world is ending for them again, they're careening towards a cliff and when they reach it, poof, that's the end, God knows if they'll ever have each other again. But Sam doesn't see a way out this time.
Maybe that's a lot in common, though. Maybe this time Dean is running and Sam is the one who would go to extreme measures to hold on to him.
-
That night as Dean sleeps one motel bed over, Sam decides he doesn't want to let this thing go. His brain is digging into Dean in every way, desperate not to let a moment go unseized by memory. He might as well do the same, get everything out there, resolved, right?
He tries not to think of it as making peace with the dead.
The thing is, Dean's already pushed him away. They've already gone so long abiding by the status quo, unwilling to speak or to act, as if they're really okay with the state of things unresolved as they are.
Sam knows what he wants but he's not going to manipulate a dying man. But he really fucking wants to ask Dean, so he's pushes boundaries, looks long and remorselessly, only takes what time alone he needs for research and sleep. He's sure Dean knows it, has seen Sam at it, maybe even recognizes what Sam's after. He wants to be horribly close, to do things they'd never dare before, when they weren't dead men walking.
Sam thinks about how Dean's been thinking about his little brother secretly, the sort of dwelling that would make Dean snap like he did on the side of the road that day. Sam shivers. Dean thinking about him, not even just the forbidden incestuous thoughts, but the caring ones too, the little looks and touches, the taking care he does of Sam.
Sam thinks about how two years ago he slid so easily into wanting to cover Dean's body with his, to rub against him. And before that, when Dean kissed him, when Dean touched him at night by the lake and watched him all those weeks. It makes Sam's gut knot tight and hot with purpose, lustfully wanting to paint all their lives with that brush, make it a teleological progression. He wants to convince Dean who he suspects has already told himself the same, the worst: you were reading me that book at bedtime all for this. You told me that story so that one day, this. When you bought me that backpack, when you stole my shoelaces, when you waited for me after school it was all so that one day you would fuck me. So that we would end up like this.
Sam feels hot all over, electric right through.
Sam feels very be all you can be about this. He's determined to open that forbidden door. It's like hallways between rooms, it's like windows opening in his eyes and the light here is Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean's shining like he always shines. Dean in the campfire. Dean in the grave fire. Dean in the house fire. Dean in all the fires down to the fires of hell.
It's terrible. It's terrible and Sam will be right there with him if it is the last thing he does. If it is the last thing whatever Sam turns into does.
-
next
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