Fic: Me and the Devil Blues, Sam/Dean, R
Title: Me and the Devil Blues
Author: britomart_is
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Word Count: ~2200
Notes: I'm sure this concept has been done before, but inspiration strikes where it pleases. Title courtesy of Robert Johnson.
Summary: It’s been nine months since the hellhounds dragged Dean into the Pit, and Sam drives along the coast highway with an empty passenger seat beside him. He hums along to Black Sabbath in the tape deck-Dean’s music, not his, but Sam learned to make concessions a long time ago.
It's been nine months since the hellhounds dragged Dean into the Pit, and Sam drives along the coast highway with an empty passenger seat beside him. He hums along to Black Sabbath in the tape deck-Dean's music, not his, but Sam learned to make concessions a long time ago. When he rolls down the window, he smells the Pacific. He likes being out here, some genetically ingrained American drive to push west, west, until you find freedom or you run out of land.
When he stops for food, Sam skips over the grease, gets the tuna melt. Making concessions can only go so far. Maybe Dean's body could handle the extra onions, but Sam gets heartburn. He gets a single at the motel that night, but it's okay. The first few months after Dean, Sam kept on getting double rooms. He doesn't bother anymore. He watched Dean's body burn on the pyre, knows there's nothing left to fill that empty bed.
The others, Bobby and Ellen, really, not many left who care, they still worry about Sam. Can't forget him in those first terrible weeks, not getting out of bed, not speaking. They couldn't do anything but watch him slowly kill himself, and then one day he got up, shaved off his beard, gassed up the Impala, and left. But they remember the sight of him broken. He doesn't call them back, but they still leave messages.
"I know it hurts." Sam imagines the look on Ellen's face, the silence on the other end of the line, if he called back to say Nah, it's cool, I'm all right. Thanks for worrying.
"You shouldn't be alone right now," Bobby's voice tells him. It's true. Bobby's right. Sam can't live alone.
"You did your best, there just wasn't an answer to find." Sam smiles and drums his fingers on the steering wheel.
Sam hunts, sometimes, but he also does the things he never had time for. He goes to the Grand Canyon, the Met, Fenway. A ventriloquism museum in Kentucky that he can't prove is evil, but it's still creepy as fuck. He goes camping in Yosemite when there's nothing to kill, just lies out without a tent, watching the sky get dark then light again.
He's still a damn good hunter. Better than he's ever been, faster and sharper, working alone with an unearthly precision. Sometimes he goes a little overboard, rips something to shreds when he could just put a bullet in its heart, but if it keeps him from going berserk on civilians, he figures splattering some vampire on the walls isn't too bad. All this time, nutcases like Gordon have been telling him he's got something evil inside him, or that he will, that it's his destiny, and ain't that a kick in the pants? Bastard was right.
When Sam does start calling Bobby and Ellen, it's not to accept their offers of shelter and comfort. It's not to talk about his feelings. It's to send them hunts. Demons. There are some nasty motherfuckers out there and someone needs to take them down. Bobby's probably noticed by now that it's only the demons Sam passes on, but doesn't know why.
Sam occupies himself with the other things he can kill, flesh and ectoplasm, and lets the others handle the exorcisms.
Light's filtering through the curtains when Sam wakes up disoriented. When his blurry vision makes out the hula girls on the wallpaper, he remembers the motel. He does not, though, remember the name of the naked girl who's dozing in his sheets. She's pretty, small and dark, not really his type. He remembers the way the corner of her mouth turned up when she caught his eye at the bar last night, but that's about it.
It's awkward saying goodbye to the nameless girl, Sam's not so good with this, but at least she's still breathing. Not like Wisconsin, or South Carolina.
The blackouts were worse when they first started. All Sam could do back then was clean himself up and not read the newspapers for a few days, avert his eyes from any bloody headlines. There are fewer blank spots in his memory, now, so he believes-has to believe-that it'll get better.
When the girl's gone, Sam jerks off in front of the mirror, palm dry and almost painful. He slams his fist against the sink when he comes.
Eleven months after Dean went to Hell, and Lilith starts acting up. Bitch. Bobby calls with the news, says she's swaggering across the Midwest with her army, big talker but mostly a nuisance with a handful of human casualties, so Sam drops his hunt in the bayou and comes back to the salvage yard for the first time in almost a year.
Sam tries to relax when Bobby hugs him but can't help being stiff. Ellen's there, talking about the other hunters in the Roadhouse, gathering forces to defeat Lilith's army. Sam listens, and says nothing. He taps a rhythm out on the table, scratches the back of his neck, sips the coffee he picked up on the way there. The house where they used to stay as children, where he mourned and rotted after Dean died, now puts him on edge.
"I need air," he chokes, and feels their eyes on him as he flees.
He says he'll sleep in the Impala and they indulge him because it's Dean's car and they're still expecting Sam to jump off a bridge every time they turn their backs. When the lights in the house go off, Sam gets out of the car and walks into town. He sits cross-legged in the center of the high school's baseball diamond, right on the pitcher's mound, and he waits for Lilith to come to him.
Sure enough, she wants him bad enough to show up on his terms. Lilith's looking like a high school girl now, some cheerleader she probably snatched from down the block. The girl whose body she's wearing probably goes to this high school.
Sam stands, and Lilith stops in her tracks, looks at him hard and sharp. And then the pretty girl's features stretch into a grin, and Lilith laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
"Oh, Sam," she says. "Is this what you've come to now?"
Lilith can fucking laugh at him all she likes, think he's broken, degraded, pathetic. She's underestimated him every step of the way.
Sam pulls the Colt from under his jacket, fires once, and the cheerleader's body is on the ground with a hole between her glassy eyes. It shouldn't be so easy, but it is.
Bobby follows the sounds and smells in the morning and finds Sam at the workbench, patiently melting the gun down into a puddle of useless metal. He's aghast, turns Sam out of the house, but that's okay. Azazel's dead, Lilith's dead, and the Colt will never kill another demon.
It's twelve months since Dean went to Hell and three since Sam pulled him back out, and Bobby catches on.
Sam never should have come back to Bobby's place, should have said too busy, find someone else to help-Bobby's too smart. A good hunter. And Sam, Gordon notwithstanding, is not really accustomed to being hunted. Not on his guard.
Bobby, like he always does, offers Sam a drink. "Not thirsty, thanks," he says, twitchy and uncomfortable.
"Got the books through this way," Bobby says, and tries to lead him through the living room. Sam stops in the doorway, and when Bobby turns the glint in his eyes says that he knows.
Sam's a good liar when the stakes are high, always been the best out of all the Winchesters even if they didn't realize it. Sam would have thought to bring a drink with him, would have found natural excuses to wander through the house on his own path.
But Sam's not in control today, and that's the mistake that gets them busted. They haven't quite figured it out, the sharing of space, so someone's always pushed to the back, frustrated and incapacitated. Someday, Sam thinks, they'll break down those boundaries of one soul and another and they'll be seamless, like they were always meant to be.
"Sam-" Bobby begins, looking sad, like a disappointed parent.
"I need-air. I just-" Sam backs away from the devil's trap in the next room, toward the front door, eyes flicking to ceiling and floor-did Bobby suspect already, leave traps everywhere?
He makes it to the front door okay, and it's Bobby's hand on his shoulder that stops him, turns Sam around to meet his eyes.
"Christo," Bobby says, and curses at Sam's flinch. He's going for the holy water when Sam pushes his way to the forefront.
"Don't," he says frantically. "Bobby, it's me."
"You're not Sam."
Sam sighs, never wanted to deal with this. "It's me, Bobby. I know what you're thinkin', but it's all right. I invited him."
Comprehension dawns slowly on Bobby's face and he looks even angrier than he did before. "What did you do?"
And Bobby's a friend, but he'll never understand that this is a good thing. He'll try to hurt Dean, thinking he's helping. Always trying to keep Sam from doing something stupid. "What I had to," Sam says with resignation.
When Bobby's body slams against the wall, Sam's not sure if it's him or Dean that does it. He leaves without checking for a pulse, needs to get out of there and never come back.
Dean wrests control back as Sam slides into the driver's seat. "Should've let me kill him. He'll tell the others. Hunt us." Dean adjusts the rearview even though it's already arranged for Sam's height, some stupid possessive quirk.
"He's a friend," Sam says, knowing Dean doesn't understand that, friend, so well these days. Doesn't remember pillow forts in Uncle Bobby's living room.
"You don't need him. You have me."
"I know," Sam says, and it's true. He has everything he needs. Dean wraps Sam's hand around the gearshift and they gun it out of the salvage yard, empty passenger seat beside them and open road ahead.
Sam was fast, but Hell was faster. By the time he got to Dean, even the Boy King couldn't salvage more than a cloud of black smoke. But it wasn't the first time Sam opened his body up to Dean (told you forever, always), so once more, like always, Sam let him in.
Even after everything he'd seen, it was still terrifying at first-that feeling of being crowded too tightly inside his own mind, thoughts and actions that weren't his own. He shuddered with revulsion, remembering Meg. But this wasn't Meg, it was Dean (almost), and Dean'd been letting Sam in for decades, giving Sam everything that belonged to him, so it was time to return the favor.
Soon Sam could almost forget why separate bodies mattered at all, when all their lives had been a slow slide of closer, closer, under each other's skins and in each other's hearts. "I need you inside me," Sam used to say, and Dean would comply.
Sam jerks off in front of the sink, lights off, moonlight coming through the window. The pleasure rolls through him continuously and yeah, it's always his hand, large and warm and familiar around his dick, but sometimes he's not sure who's moving it. When Dean takes over he's always trying to slow down, tease the fuck out of Sam. There's not exactly an entry in Dad's journal on the subject, but Sam's pretty sure that anything he feels, Dean feels, no matter who’s in control.
When he comes, Sam looks in the mirror and his eyes are black. He huffs a laugh and takes control back to speak. "Pushy bastard."
Dean takes over as he brushes his teeth. "If you do it it's masturbation. If I do it it's sex. Way better."
Sam rolls his eyes and fuck he missed this during those nine months. "Whatever you say, man."
They curl up in bed, sleepy and sated, plenty of room to spread out Sam's long limbs, no worries about stealing the covers. Sometimes Sam misses having a warm body to hold him as he falls asleep, misses waking up drooling on Dean's shoulder, his brother's morning breath hitting him in the face. But Dean's there with him, love and bickering and inappropriate jokes wrapping around him as he drifts off, and Sam never feels cold, never feels alone. Sam will never be alone again, and Dean will never leave.
In sleep, their minds are separate, and Sam's grateful that he never has to see what a demon dreams. If a demon dreams. Dean won't talk about it.
Sam falls asleep and dreams about his big brother, Dean's eyes and scars. His fingers curl instinctively around the amulet that hangs at his neck and he turns his face into the pillow that would have been Dean's. Whenever nightmares threaten, a quiet voice at the back of Sam's mind says I'm here, Sammy, and the nightmares go away.
Author: britomart_is
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Word Count: ~2200
Notes: I'm sure this concept has been done before, but inspiration strikes where it pleases. Title courtesy of Robert Johnson.
Summary: It’s been nine months since the hellhounds dragged Dean into the Pit, and Sam drives along the coast highway with an empty passenger seat beside him. He hums along to Black Sabbath in the tape deck-Dean’s music, not his, but Sam learned to make concessions a long time ago.
It's been nine months since the hellhounds dragged Dean into the Pit, and Sam drives along the coast highway with an empty passenger seat beside him. He hums along to Black Sabbath in the tape deck-Dean's music, not his, but Sam learned to make concessions a long time ago. When he rolls down the window, he smells the Pacific. He likes being out here, some genetically ingrained American drive to push west, west, until you find freedom or you run out of land.
When he stops for food, Sam skips over the grease, gets the tuna melt. Making concessions can only go so far. Maybe Dean's body could handle the extra onions, but Sam gets heartburn. He gets a single at the motel that night, but it's okay. The first few months after Dean, Sam kept on getting double rooms. He doesn't bother anymore. He watched Dean's body burn on the pyre, knows there's nothing left to fill that empty bed.
The others, Bobby and Ellen, really, not many left who care, they still worry about Sam. Can't forget him in those first terrible weeks, not getting out of bed, not speaking. They couldn't do anything but watch him slowly kill himself, and then one day he got up, shaved off his beard, gassed up the Impala, and left. But they remember the sight of him broken. He doesn't call them back, but they still leave messages.
"I know it hurts." Sam imagines the look on Ellen's face, the silence on the other end of the line, if he called back to say Nah, it's cool, I'm all right. Thanks for worrying.
"You shouldn't be alone right now," Bobby's voice tells him. It's true. Bobby's right. Sam can't live alone.
"You did your best, there just wasn't an answer to find." Sam smiles and drums his fingers on the steering wheel.
Sam hunts, sometimes, but he also does the things he never had time for. He goes to the Grand Canyon, the Met, Fenway. A ventriloquism museum in Kentucky that he can't prove is evil, but it's still creepy as fuck. He goes camping in Yosemite when there's nothing to kill, just lies out without a tent, watching the sky get dark then light again.
He's still a damn good hunter. Better than he's ever been, faster and sharper, working alone with an unearthly precision. Sometimes he goes a little overboard, rips something to shreds when he could just put a bullet in its heart, but if it keeps him from going berserk on civilians, he figures splattering some vampire on the walls isn't too bad. All this time, nutcases like Gordon have been telling him he's got something evil inside him, or that he will, that it's his destiny, and ain't that a kick in the pants? Bastard was right.
When Sam does start calling Bobby and Ellen, it's not to accept their offers of shelter and comfort. It's not to talk about his feelings. It's to send them hunts. Demons. There are some nasty motherfuckers out there and someone needs to take them down. Bobby's probably noticed by now that it's only the demons Sam passes on, but doesn't know why.
Sam occupies himself with the other things he can kill, flesh and ectoplasm, and lets the others handle the exorcisms.
Light's filtering through the curtains when Sam wakes up disoriented. When his blurry vision makes out the hula girls on the wallpaper, he remembers the motel. He does not, though, remember the name of the naked girl who's dozing in his sheets. She's pretty, small and dark, not really his type. He remembers the way the corner of her mouth turned up when she caught his eye at the bar last night, but that's about it.
It's awkward saying goodbye to the nameless girl, Sam's not so good with this, but at least she's still breathing. Not like Wisconsin, or South Carolina.
The blackouts were worse when they first started. All Sam could do back then was clean himself up and not read the newspapers for a few days, avert his eyes from any bloody headlines. There are fewer blank spots in his memory, now, so he believes-has to believe-that it'll get better.
When the girl's gone, Sam jerks off in front of the mirror, palm dry and almost painful. He slams his fist against the sink when he comes.
Eleven months after Dean went to Hell, and Lilith starts acting up. Bitch. Bobby calls with the news, says she's swaggering across the Midwest with her army, big talker but mostly a nuisance with a handful of human casualties, so Sam drops his hunt in the bayou and comes back to the salvage yard for the first time in almost a year.
Sam tries to relax when Bobby hugs him but can't help being stiff. Ellen's there, talking about the other hunters in the Roadhouse, gathering forces to defeat Lilith's army. Sam listens, and says nothing. He taps a rhythm out on the table, scratches the back of his neck, sips the coffee he picked up on the way there. The house where they used to stay as children, where he mourned and rotted after Dean died, now puts him on edge.
"I need air," he chokes, and feels their eyes on him as he flees.
He says he'll sleep in the Impala and they indulge him because it's Dean's car and they're still expecting Sam to jump off a bridge every time they turn their backs. When the lights in the house go off, Sam gets out of the car and walks into town. He sits cross-legged in the center of the high school's baseball diamond, right on the pitcher's mound, and he waits for Lilith to come to him.
Sure enough, she wants him bad enough to show up on his terms. Lilith's looking like a high school girl now, some cheerleader she probably snatched from down the block. The girl whose body she's wearing probably goes to this high school.
Sam stands, and Lilith stops in her tracks, looks at him hard and sharp. And then the pretty girl's features stretch into a grin, and Lilith laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
"Oh, Sam," she says. "Is this what you've come to now?"
Lilith can fucking laugh at him all she likes, think he's broken, degraded, pathetic. She's underestimated him every step of the way.
Sam pulls the Colt from under his jacket, fires once, and the cheerleader's body is on the ground with a hole between her glassy eyes. It shouldn't be so easy, but it is.
Bobby follows the sounds and smells in the morning and finds Sam at the workbench, patiently melting the gun down into a puddle of useless metal. He's aghast, turns Sam out of the house, but that's okay. Azazel's dead, Lilith's dead, and the Colt will never kill another demon.
It's twelve months since Dean went to Hell and three since Sam pulled him back out, and Bobby catches on.
Sam never should have come back to Bobby's place, should have said too busy, find someone else to help-Bobby's too smart. A good hunter. And Sam, Gordon notwithstanding, is not really accustomed to being hunted. Not on his guard.
Bobby, like he always does, offers Sam a drink. "Not thirsty, thanks," he says, twitchy and uncomfortable.
"Got the books through this way," Bobby says, and tries to lead him through the living room. Sam stops in the doorway, and when Bobby turns the glint in his eyes says that he knows.
Sam's a good liar when the stakes are high, always been the best out of all the Winchesters even if they didn't realize it. Sam would have thought to bring a drink with him, would have found natural excuses to wander through the house on his own path.
But Sam's not in control today, and that's the mistake that gets them busted. They haven't quite figured it out, the sharing of space, so someone's always pushed to the back, frustrated and incapacitated. Someday, Sam thinks, they'll break down those boundaries of one soul and another and they'll be seamless, like they were always meant to be.
"Sam-" Bobby begins, looking sad, like a disappointed parent.
"I need-air. I just-" Sam backs away from the devil's trap in the next room, toward the front door, eyes flicking to ceiling and floor-did Bobby suspect already, leave traps everywhere?
He makes it to the front door okay, and it's Bobby's hand on his shoulder that stops him, turns Sam around to meet his eyes.
"Christo," Bobby says, and curses at Sam's flinch. He's going for the holy water when Sam pushes his way to the forefront.
"Don't," he says frantically. "Bobby, it's me."
"You're not Sam."
Sam sighs, never wanted to deal with this. "It's me, Bobby. I know what you're thinkin', but it's all right. I invited him."
Comprehension dawns slowly on Bobby's face and he looks even angrier than he did before. "What did you do?"
And Bobby's a friend, but he'll never understand that this is a good thing. He'll try to hurt Dean, thinking he's helping. Always trying to keep Sam from doing something stupid. "What I had to," Sam says with resignation.
When Bobby's body slams against the wall, Sam's not sure if it's him or Dean that does it. He leaves without checking for a pulse, needs to get out of there and never come back.
Dean wrests control back as Sam slides into the driver's seat. "Should've let me kill him. He'll tell the others. Hunt us." Dean adjusts the rearview even though it's already arranged for Sam's height, some stupid possessive quirk.
"He's a friend," Sam says, knowing Dean doesn't understand that, friend, so well these days. Doesn't remember pillow forts in Uncle Bobby's living room.
"You don't need him. You have me."
"I know," Sam says, and it's true. He has everything he needs. Dean wraps Sam's hand around the gearshift and they gun it out of the salvage yard, empty passenger seat beside them and open road ahead.
Sam was fast, but Hell was faster. By the time he got to Dean, even the Boy King couldn't salvage more than a cloud of black smoke. But it wasn't the first time Sam opened his body up to Dean (told you forever, always), so once more, like always, Sam let him in.
Even after everything he'd seen, it was still terrifying at first-that feeling of being crowded too tightly inside his own mind, thoughts and actions that weren't his own. He shuddered with revulsion, remembering Meg. But this wasn't Meg, it was Dean (almost), and Dean'd been letting Sam in for decades, giving Sam everything that belonged to him, so it was time to return the favor.
Soon Sam could almost forget why separate bodies mattered at all, when all their lives had been a slow slide of closer, closer, under each other's skins and in each other's hearts. "I need you inside me," Sam used to say, and Dean would comply.
Sam jerks off in front of the sink, lights off, moonlight coming through the window. The pleasure rolls through him continuously and yeah, it's always his hand, large and warm and familiar around his dick, but sometimes he's not sure who's moving it. When Dean takes over he's always trying to slow down, tease the fuck out of Sam. There's not exactly an entry in Dad's journal on the subject, but Sam's pretty sure that anything he feels, Dean feels, no matter who’s in control.
When he comes, Sam looks in the mirror and his eyes are black. He huffs a laugh and takes control back to speak. "Pushy bastard."
Dean takes over as he brushes his teeth. "If you do it it's masturbation. If I do it it's sex. Way better."
Sam rolls his eyes and fuck he missed this during those nine months. "Whatever you say, man."
They curl up in bed, sleepy and sated, plenty of room to spread out Sam's long limbs, no worries about stealing the covers. Sometimes Sam misses having a warm body to hold him as he falls asleep, misses waking up drooling on Dean's shoulder, his brother's morning breath hitting him in the face. But Dean's there with him, love and bickering and inappropriate jokes wrapping around him as he drifts off, and Sam never feels cold, never feels alone. Sam will never be alone again, and Dean will never leave.
In sleep, their minds are separate, and Sam's grateful that he never has to see what a demon dreams. If a demon dreams. Dean won't talk about it.
Sam falls asleep and dreams about his big brother, Dean's eyes and scars. His fingers curl instinctively around the amulet that hangs at his neck and he turns his face into the pillow that would have been Dean's. Whenever nightmares threaten, a quiet voice at the back of Sam's mind says I'm here, Sammy, and the nightmares go away.